Nat Geo Wild's Big Cat Week

The channel's annual feature is interesting and a visual treat, with a caged observer among lions as one of the highlights

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, November 27, 2014

 

ROBERT CAPUTO/AP If you want to know how cheetahs are able to run so fast, Big Cat Week is the place to go.

Big cats always end up being a tiny bit less mysterious after Nat Geo Wild’s Big Cat Week, and in a sense that’s too bad.
But a solid week of film showing lions, tigers, cheetahs, cougars, jaguars, leopards and their kin prowling through the wild never lessens the fascination.
This year’s series kicks off with Nat Geo regular Boone Smith getting as up close and personal as one would ever want to get with lions.

In a maneuver that parallels underwater divers who study great white sharks from inside steel cages the sharks are trying to devour, Smith camps out in a cage in the heart of lion country.
Since we’re seeing his report, we can figure that he didn’t end up as a feline snack. Still, the power of lion paws is impressive from where Smith is crouching.

This being the Nat Geo family, the footage here is great, while the narrators explain what it all means. Breaking down the biomechanics of a cheetah’s sprint wouldn’t carry a whole show, but it creates an interesting side note.
Smith’s findings include the role of male lions in the hunt, which some big-cat shows suggest is to lie around and wait for the females to come back with fdinner. Not so, it turns out. The males kill some of it themselves.

Another new episode here focuses on a female leopard working to protect her cubs in their first months of life. The challenge of her mission is underscored by the fact that she lost her cubs to predators the previous year.
It’s not all Darwinism, though. Big Cat Week is also fun — as long as the cage holds.

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