Supersense — Season 1

Gavin Campbell takes a glimpse behind the scenes of the series Supersense and reveals the most advanced techniques used in wildlife filmmaking.

How do birds find their way? How does an electric fish perceive its surroundings? What's it like to see images formed from body heat? Supersense uses a new filming style to travel into a world filled with senses as remarkable as any human sixth sense. It flies with geese as they navigate by the sun and stars, swims with a dolphin through a magnetic landscape, discovers a mammal that senses body electricity and a fish that creates a forcefield. It finds animal meteorologists, animals that predict earthquakes, and even animals sensitive to the slightest breeze or the movement of water. 

How do other animals see the world? How do we appear to a gorilla? Why does a woodcock have 360 degree vision? What's it like to be a dragonfly? Through animal eyes, the world is filled with bizarre hues, invisible colours and strange patterns in the sky. On this journey, fly with a vulture as it scans the ground using magnified vision, hunt with a lion to discover how it views a wildebeest, and find a fish that simultaneously sees above and below the water. Plus a look through the eyes of a bee, and the discovery that even a goldfish has remarkable visual powers.

How does a church service sound to a bat? What does your cat really hear? Enter unfamiliar sound worlds to discover elephant conversations pitched below our hearing, birds that navigate using distant sound guides and whales that call across oceans. Find owls that hunt using sound maps, fish as noisy as birds, and rats that can hear a rattlesnake strike. Bats and dolphins create images in sound, and there is even a shrimp that uses sound as a lethal weapon. 

Salmon smell their way to their spawning grounds, fulmars and petrels use tube noses to find food and pigeons navigate by smell. Impalas and wasps show alarm with scent and skunks use it to deter predators. Moths use scent to attract a mate and a salamander uses dracula teeth to inject an aphrodisiac. Smell governs the lives of termites and mole rats as well as 10,000 snakes in a pit in Manitoba. Even human odours may have hidden powers. 

How does time appear to a bird, a shrew or even an elephant?Enter unfamiliar time-worlds where flies outwit humans in slow motion, birds slice through time to catch their prey and plants reveal strange movements. Discover how animals time their seasonal lives and how the moon influences mayfly swarming and the mass stranding of grunion fish. In this world, natural clocks control the opening of flowers, the activity of bees, the navigation of birds, and even an animal that invades the world once every 17 years.

How do animals make sense of the world? This journey starts inside a swan's egg, joins a wildebeest on migration and flies with a house martin from Africa to England. Discover why a moth flies to a light, and how a pigeon becomes confused by magnetic forces. Why do sharks bite communication cables, hatching turtles visit a hotel, spiders lure moths with sexual chemicals and fireflies flash deadly signals? And why do monarch butterflies, guided by a mysterious sense, congregate in a breathtaking spectacle?