Ammonite’s Man In Colombo

Just a week ago I was in huddled under canvas enjoying the bank holiday on the bright but chilly Devon coastline. A few days and a couple of quick decisions later, I found myself on malaria tablets and in the middle of the IIFA Bollywood film awards in Colombo.

It has been a hectic and sleepless couple of days but after a frankly terrifying six-hour drive through Sri Lanka’s stunning interior (overtaking buses and elephants on low-loaders), I finally made it to the wild south coast. Crashing surf and thick jungle greeted me along with monitor lizards and cobras spilling out of the forest and onto my hotel room terrace.

I’m in the depths of the Sri Lankan jungle on a week-long recce for a forth-coming Ammonite project (watch this space for details!). However I would be giving little away to say that I’ve visited one of Sri Lanka’s most pristine wildlife areas where I encountered a totally different ecosystem than I’ve become familiar with in Africa. Water buffalo appear like submarines from waterholes whilst smiling crocodiles line the banks. Lazy leopards hang in the trees contemptibly looking at the clambering vehicles surrounding them. It’s a great place.

Whilst I’m here I’ve been working with a fantastic local team who’ve been trialling a rather unique remote camera. Always keen on new technology at Ammonite I couldn’t help myself in lending a hand with the trial run this morning. Attaching a tiny HD camera in an underwater housing (that can apparently survive being run over) we fixed the camera to a kids remote control car and parked it in front of a herd of elephants. I’m not sure if being squashed by an elephant is in the manufactures warranty but fortunately we’ve not had to find out yet as the elephants took a curious interest before moving on without crushing our new toy. I’ve attached what can only be described as a mongoose’s eye view of an elephant with this post.

So it’s back to the office on Wednesday and leaving the warmth of Sri Lanka behind, look out for our posts over the summer as the Ammonite crew return to the jungle on our latest assignment.

Tom Stephens

It’s Not Cheating

After the splendour of the Sonoran desert, we find ourselves working in a lab in the Arizona State University, looking into little glass and plaster models of the interior of ant nests - with living colonies of ants inside. We have been filming some of the amazing social behaviour of the extraordinary Sri Lankan jumping ant. Some would say this is cheating. Perhaps it is. But the truth is that: we don’t have the budget to go to Sri Lanka. Even if we did, we would struggle to find a nest of this species and dig a huge hole next to it. Any behaviour we filmed wouldn’t be 'natural’ because the ants would all be freaking out about the huge hole in their nest. They would run up the lens, sting the operator, and would definitely refuse to act in a calm and relaxed manner. Our film would be worthless.

Thankfully, Dr Juergen Liebig of the ASU has already gone through that particular hell, and not only managed to bring some colonies back to the US, but has also managed to get them to breed in the lab 'like rabbits'. Juergen’s studies of the interesting social behaviour of these ants are what led us to the lab, and are what we are trying to depict on film - in the most natural way possible, with intimacy and the least disturbance of the wild ants.