VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Explorer Bertie Gregory On Tracking Pumas, Whales & Elephants For ‘Amazing Animals’

Wildlife explorer Bertie Gregory shared his most memorable experiences and the innovative technology he utilized in studying animals in the wild in his newest uInterview. 

Gregory detailed to uInterview founder Erik Meers his latest series, Amazing Animals, and how he interacted with a puma named Pataka, which he’s known since she was a cub.

He remembered it as “a nostalgic mission in its concept” because “I met her for the first time when she was a cub four years ago and she was this lovely bundle of fluff. It felt like seeing an old friend again.”

Gregory and his team tracked Pataka for 51 days “up and down the mountains” calling it “both a physical and emotional roller coaster.”

Gregory explained that because of his history with Pataka, he feels “emotionally invested” especially when she was fighting a male puma.

“A big male puma was trying to kill her cubs and she was, she’s half the male’s body weight, standing in the way, snarling at him, swiping at him you can’t help, you know as well as concentrating on filming it, you go oh be careful, be careful,” he recalled.  

In filming expeditions like these, he used the latest technology that helped capture the uniqueness of these animals on camera. Drones were especially helpful as they have an “aerial perspective” and “allow us to show animal behaviors like never before.” 

One example was with killer whales in Antarctica. Gregory explained how “with the drone suddenly you see them, you know you can see their whole bodies but also how they’re interacting as a pod.”

These are very intelligent animals and the drone is able to capture how they interact. “The amount of coordination and teamwork and problem solving that you know an intelligence that these animals show, the drone is critical for that because it just lays it all out and sees exactly where they are and what they’re doing,” he said. 

Technology also allowed Gregory to locate forest elephants in the Central African Republic. These types of elephants are unique because they live in forests and “are very, very elusive and they really don’t like people.” This makes it especially difficult to film them. The team had to “use special technology to film them at night because a lot of them are very active at night, under the cover of darkness they’re a lot more confident,” he said.

Gregory explained that “we were using a military-grade thermal imaging camera so that basically you point it at pitch black and it shows you heat to a very high detail so you could see every detail of you or me or an elephant.” The camera showed “the pattern of blood vessels in their ears” which surprised Gregory who described it as “mind-blowing.” 

> WATCH BERTIE GREGORY’s PREVIOUS uINTERVIEW!

An important part of the series includes showing how people conserve nature. “We met some amazing heroes, these people that are doing their bit to turn around our relationship with the natural world and being able to shine the light on them as well as the animals was awesome and celebrate their conservation successes,” he concluded.

Amazing Animals is now airing on NatGeo.