Arctic and Antarctic

VHS cover

Arctic and Antarctic is the eleventh episode of the second season of Eyewitness. The topic of the episode is about the two polar regions, its wildlife, native inhabitants and attempts by outside explorers to conquer it. The episode aired on 24th June 1996.

Arctic and Antarctic is based on a book title that was first published in 1994, and has been republished in 1995, 2000 and 2012.

## Episode

### Introductory sequence

An ice sculpture of a penguin forms from ripples before melting away to become a real king penguin, which then shakes itself before the screen fades to white.

### Episode outline

Click here for the full transcript for Arctic and Antarctic.

Arctic and Antarctic. We know they’re both cold and white, and there’s one at each end of the world, but which is which? We think of them as similar, after all they have a lot in common. They are the ice worlds. The story of Hands Christian Anderson's Snow Queen is shown, revealing how ice is thought of as cruel and heartless, the opposite of warmth and love.

Ice may be the enemy of life, but the polar ice world is full of strange and intricate beauty. Billions of snowflakes make up the ice worlds. Snow compacts into hard ice. This ice sheet heads for the sea where solid chunks may break off and float away. Icebergs can be the size of Belgium, sculpted by wind and weather into giant ice sculptures, contain huge amounts of fresh water and are treacherous for shipping.

The Polar Regions lie at the top and bottom of the world. The frozen wastes of the northern arctic are home to the husky, while the southern Antarctic is home to the penguin. The magnetic North Pole changes position, while the geographic pole is fixed. The Earth’s magnetic field gives us the biggest spectacle of the polar skies, the Aurora Borealis. The tilt of the Earth’s axis means that the poles have constant daylight for half the year and constant night for the other half.

The arctic tern migrates from the North to the South Pole each year, and back again. The tern knew what was at the poles long before Europeans, who imagined it to be a warm and fertile land. The arctic is names after Arctos, the great bear constellation, with Antarctic simply meaning 'no bear'.

Although their homes are far apart, the husky and penguin both face the same struggle for survival. But the Polar Regions are not mirror images of each other, and rather are poles apart. The arctic is an ice-covered ocean while the Antarctic is a continent of land. Yet it is the arctic that has a long history of human presence. Each pole has its own unique wildlife, with no species found at both. The only non-human animal to visit both poles is the arctic tern.

With the arctic dawn, thousands of caribou, musk oxen and birds arrive to feed and breed around the North Pole. The seasonal movements of lemmings are an important part of the arctic food chain. Arctic peoples often see fluttering birds as reminders of the souls of lost children.

The summer visitors must feed and breed rapidly while the good weather lasts. Arctic plants make the most of the short growing season, with up to 500 wildflower species blooming as the daylight comes. Only a foot under these plants lies the permafrost which remains locked in ice year-round.

Early visitors in the 16th century came looking for safe routes through the arctic. Instead, they found the Inuit people who were warm, well-nourished and at home, having mastered their environment with a perfectly adapted culture. Siberian Evenki nomads believe that their shamans can access a spirit world to beseech the animal spirits for game.

Arctic peoples have harnessed the power of animals to get around. Huskies are still the safest means of crossing the ice, as they don't break down or run out of fuel and can detect hidden dangers on the ice. Huskies are well-adapted for arctic survival, with dense double-layered fur. They are not pets, but fierce and competitive working dogs. In Lapland, people use reindeer to pull their sleds. From this, and the image of the Evenki shaman, comes our vision of Father Christmas.

The arctic icecap itself has few visitors. With little food or shelter, most animals have to move into the polar seas. The walrus is one such survivor, consuming huge amounts of shellfish to build up hundreds of kilos of fat that keeps out the cold but makes moving on land slightly more difficult.

Polar bears know many arctic survival tricks, maintaining a higher body temperature than a human. Their hollow and translucent hair traps warmth. These seal-hunting bears can walk 80 kilometres a day and are tireless swimmers. They dig ice nests in which they rear their cubs throughout the winter. The idea of the ice nest was adapted by the Inuit and turned into the igloo, which are warm inside and can stand up to the wind. Humans also copy the polar bear's hunting habits, waiting by breathing holes for seals to emerge.

At the beginning of this century, the arctic received new human visitors who were racing for the North Pole. Two Americans, Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, both claimed victory but it is unlikely either reached the pole. Later, polar fever switched to the Antarctic. While the Norwegian Roald Amundsen used traditional Inuit techniques, the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott tried to innovate - using ponies instead of huskies and wool instead of furs - with fatal results.

The Antarctic is a hostile environment that distorts the senses and causes mirage-like illusions. Antarctica is the coldest place on the planet but surprisingly it is a desert, with only tiny amounts of snow falling each year and the blizzards being recycled snow. Three-quarters of the world's fresh water is stored in Antarctica. Cut off by ice and storms, Antarctica received few visitors. Captain Cook, while sailing past it, encountered many whales and seals which tempted sailors south. The local wildlife, fearless of humans, often ended up as dish of the day.

Animals visit Antarctica to fatten up, with abundant krill and plankton feeding whales and arctic terns. Albatrosses arrive to breed, with the chicks remaining on the nest right through the Antarctic winter. When not nesting, the albatross spends its life on the wing and may not touch the ground for years. Albatrosses were believed by sailors to bring the wind. Coleridge's poem describes the ancient mariner shooting an albatross, which left the sea becalmed. The crew perishes apart from the mariner who is condemned to wander to the end of his days, telling his sad story to everyone he meets.

Surviving the icy Antarctic waters is a challenge. The blood of the icefish contains a natural antifreeze. Those few species that have cracked surviving these waters have little competition, so are often very successful. Weddell seals spend the winter under the ice, where it is warmer and they have access to food. To breathe they must gnaw ice holes, which wreak havoc with their teeth.

The Antarctic’s most famous resident is the penguin. They are birds but cannot fly. Their legs have shorted and feet shrunk to reduce heat loss. The penguin spends a lot of time in the water, with its tail working as a rudder and its wings as flippers. Emperor penguins move inland as the Antarctic winter approaches and establish colonies to breed in. The females leaves their mates and goes off to feed, while the males wait out the winter storms with their eggs balanced on their feet. The females return just after the eggs have hatched, three months later. To find their chicks, the adults listen for the calls of their offspring.

Although the two poles are so different, the handful of polar survivors share the same extraordinary qualities and a unique level of adaptation. Could the husky and penguin live in each other’s ice worlds? The polar explorers did what nature had not and brought these two endurance champions together. For a brief time, they shared the Antarctic and the huskies thrived, even though it was colder than anything they’d ever known in the north. But a 1991 treaty banned all non-indigenous species from the Antarctic and the huskies went home to the arctic, leaving the penguins to their own ice kingdom.

## Animal species filmed for the programme

### Studio footage

* King penguin, *Aptenodytes patagonicus*
* Domestic dog, *Canis familiaris*

### Stock footage

* Polar bear, *Ursus maritimus*
* Adelie penguin, *Pygoscelis adeliae*
* Gentoo penguin, *Pygoscelis papua*
* Emperor penguin, *Aptenodytes forsteri*
* Arctic tern, *Sterna paradisaea*
* White tern, *Gygis alba*
* Reindeer, *Rangifer tarandus*
* Collared lemming, *Dicrostonyx sp*.
* Long-tailed skua, *Stercorarius longicaudus*
* Snow goose, *Anser caerulescens*
* Domestic dog, *Canis familiaris*
* Grey wolf, *Canis lupus*
* Arctic fox, *Vulpes lagopus*
* Walrus, *Odobenus rosmarus*
* Ringed seal, *Pusa hispida*
* Harp seal, *Pagophilus groenlandicus*
* Domestic horse, *Equus ferus caballus*
* Antarctic fur seal, *Arctocephalus gazella*
* Antarctic minke whale, *Balaenoptera bonaerensis*
* Killer whale, *Orcinus orca*
* Black-browed albatross, *Thalassarche melanophris*
* Antarctic icefish, *Channichthyidae sp*.
* Crabeater seal, *Lobodon carcinophagus*
* Weddell seal, *Leptonychotes weddellii*
* Sooty tern, *Onychoprion fuscatus*
* Beluga whale, *Delphinapterus leucas*

## Stock footage sources

* The Natural World: Birds of Paradox (1983) - Swimming gentoo penguin
* Realms of the Russian Bear: Siberia - The Frozen Forest (1992) - Reindeer-drawn sleds
* Life in the Freezer: The Bountiful Sea (1993) – Icebergs

## Credits

* Director - Alexandra Beazley
* Producer - Richard Thomson
* Writer - Lynette Singer
* Music - Guy Dagul
* Graphics Director - Dean Stockton
* Graphics Design - Stan Peplinski
* Camera - Sean Bobbitt and Matthew Poynter
* Set Design - John Brace and Mark Dadswell
* Production Co-ordinator - Nicola Melluish
* Production Assistants - Tilly Colaco and Quin Jessop
* Researcher - Shaun Whiteside
* Archive Researchers - Rebecca Cody, Philippa Graves and Anuschka de Rohan
* Graphics - Simon Kilroe, Kim Aldis and Kate Hood
* Editors
	+ Offline - Adrienne Ross
	+ Online - Tim Ellison
* Dubbing Mixer - Steve Cookman
* Music Engineer - Roger King

## Making this programme

Because snow wouldn’t last long in the hot Eyewitness studio, shredded polythene was used instead – while it was a good substitute, the husky wasn’t fooled. The husky performed brilliantly and was later graphically put into the snow shaker with the penguin. A programme about the Arctic and Antarctic needed some real ice, so the ice carver from Pond and River was brought in to create an ice globe. An iron was used to create it, rather than a chainsaw. Two were carved, with one used in the studio to set up the lighting and the second to be wheeled in at the last minute for filming – as it was, the crew worked so quickly that only one was needed. The real show-stealer was the penguin. Because it couldn’t come to the studio, the crew went to his home and built a studio for him. The penguin was a natural performer and couldn’t be happier. In the computer-generated Eyewitness Museum, the camera can go anywhere and a journey through the atrium leads to an ice cavern. In reality, the cavern was a glass-fibre model wrapped in blue cellophane. With careful lighting and the addition of a few more sheets of coloured film and icicles, the ice-cool effect was achieved. It’s hard to imagine the behind-the-camera activity that surrounds the model during the filming process when you see the serenity of the finished take.

## Home media releases

As well as being released on VHS, Arctic and Antarctic was also released as an interactive DVD and as part of the DVD release in America.

The programme on the interactive DVD release included fifteen hotspots (represented by a clip of the king penguin looking around)

1. Polar waters (from Ocean) – Linked to icebergs
2. Migration of leatherback turtle and polar bear (from Ocean and Bear) – Linked to arctic tern migration
3. The oceans of the world (from Ocean) – Linked to differences between Arctic and Antarctic
4. Arctic fox food storage (from Survival) – Linked to lemmings and predators
5. Arctic legends about polar bears (from Bear) – Linked to Inuit culture
6. How blizzards form (from Natural Disaster) – Linked to adaptations of the husky
7. Mythology of the giant panda (from Bear) – Linked to polar bear
8. Animal eyelids, including polar bear (from Sight) – Linked to polar bear survival tricks
9. Different species of bear and polar bear evolution (from Bear) – Linked to polar bear footage
10. Bear senses (from Bear) – Linked to polar bear hunting habits
11. Bear cubs (from Bear) – Linked to polar bear cubs
12. Survival tactics of polar bear (from Bear) – Linked to Scott and Amundsen South Pole race
13. Humpback whale (from Mammal and Ocean) – Linked to Antarctic whales
14. Tiger sharks (from Survival) – Linked to albatrosses
15. Weddell seals and seal blubber (from Survival and Mammal) – Linked to Antarctic seals

The interactive DVD also includes a ten-question quiz:

1. Which bird spends more of its life in daylight than any other bird? Correct answer: Arctic tern
2. Which arctic society has shamans? Correct answer: The Siberian Evenki
3. What animals did the arctic Lapps use to pull their sleds? Correct answer: Reindeer
4. Who is the North Pole’s most famous resident? Correct answer: Santa Claus
5. Which animal has hollow fur that acts like a greenhouse and keeps it warm? Correct answer: Polar bear
6. Who did the Inuit mimic when they built their ice nests or igloos? Correct answer: Polar bear
7. Who took ponies to the Antarctic? Correct answer: Scott
8. Which is the coldest place on Earth? Correct answer: Antarctic
9. What did Captain Cook see when he sailed around Antarctica? Correct answer: Whales and seals
10. Which bird do sailors believe to bring the wind? Correct answer: Albatross

Arctic and Antarctic America-release DVD coverEyewitness Arctic and Antarctic interactive DVD coverEyewitness Arctic and Antarctic interactive DVD alternative cover

**Writing staff**: Anne MacLeod • Ben Southwell • Ben Steiner • Brian Meehl • David Hanson • David Stafford • David Helton • George Bloom • Lynette Singer • Mike Tomlinson • Paul Thomas • Stan Cullimore
**Directors**: Gavin Maxwell • Justine Kershaw • David Hutt • Andrew Jackson • Justin Hardy • Ludo Graham • Jerry Foulkes • Derek Hall • Sanjida O'Connell • Caius Julyan • Bonni Cohen • Leanne Pooley • Edwina Vardey • Alexandra Beazley • Sam Hodgkin • Karen Walsh • Jack Weber • Richard Simkin • Alex Hearle • Brian Cummins • Ben Southwell
**Composers**: Guy Michelmore (season one) • Guy Dagul (seasons two and three)

**Season One**: Cat • Fish • Horse • Dog • Jungle • Bird • Amphibian • Insect • Shark • Elephant • Reptile • Dinosaur • Skeleton
**Season Two**: Desert • Tree • Ape • Mammal • Butterfly and Moth • Volcano • Rock and Mineral • Seashore • Pond and River • Weather • **Arctic and Antarctic** • Prehistoric Life • Shell
**Season Three**: Flight • Bear • Sight • Island • Survival • Mountain • Monster • Human Machine - Plant • Ocean • Planets • Life • Natural Disasters