The True Meaning of 'Au Naturel'

In a city in which animal life is largely confined to dogs, cats, pigeons, squirrels, and rats, pretty much any episode of the venerable PBS series "Nature" is apt to strike the viewer as a cornucopia of the exotic. In that sense, "The Best of 'Nature': 25 Years," the 90-minute anniversary episode airing on PBS this coming Sunday, may paradoxically seem like the same ol' same ol'. You know, Madagascar moths with tongues like whips, pregnant male seahorses, lovelorn elephants, melancholy chimps, cute polar bears, and the usual array of snuff-film predators.

And of course there are also human beings, those anthropomorphizing creatures that make documentaries like this one. That we can fall in love with practically anything that moves is not in question, but the jury is still out as to exactly what, and how much, the movers feel for us.

This anniversary episode gets off to a rollicking start with nature's version of a high-speed car chase. The cheetah, we are told, is the fastest creature on the African plain; the gazelle is the second-fastest. Unfortunately for the gazelle, it's also the cheetah's favored prey and has been for millions of years. Talk about bad luck. Still, there's a kind of gentleman's agreement at work, since it seems the cheetah (the cat as serial-killer, face like a death-mask), doesn't begin to chase until the gazelle (bulbous, long-lashed eyes, quivering snout) begins to flee. But after that it's really no contest, like a race between a steroidal sprinter of today versus one of 50 years ago. The end is clinical: a repeated artful tripping of the gazelle's back legs, much like a dirty soccer player, followed by a thrusting two-pawed takedown and a ferocious bite to the neck.

Gazelles have a remarkably tough time on this program. We are shown footage of a female gazelle patiently prodding a pompous baboon with its horns until the latter, which has been trying to steal the gazelle's baby, gives up and flees. But this is nothing compared with the scene that follows: A few dozen gazelles need to cross a river that is home to at least as many submerged crocodiles. "What happens next," as the narrator puts it, "is a scene of extraordinary terror." You can say that again.

Host Lynn Sherr, dressed in a pristine white pantsuit in a darkened studio featuring luminous images of penguins, apes, giraffes, and the like, describes all this as the "eternal battle between predator and prey." It's also the bread-and-butter of nature programs, which tend to be about either killing or cuddling. Animals are cute, animals are cruel. They're nurturers, they're murderers. Who could fail to be moved by the footage of a mama polar bear protecting her astoundingly tiny offspring from the cold under the sweeping northern lights? Yet the same polar bear would happily fell you with a single swipe of her mighty paw.

The program's visuals are unfailingly thrilling, whether grainy (a long-distance sighting of a Himalayan snow-leopard) or up close and personal in the "wet monsoon forests," which are "a paradise for creatures that slither, crawl, and hop." The forests are particularly paradisial for creatures such as the chameleon, whose long, sticky tongue shoots out at revolting length and speed to impale some poor unsuspecting stick insect. The voyeuristic element in such scenes, in which we peek in on nature at its most cutthroat, should not be underestimated. It's a bit like spying on a group of unbelievably weird neighbors.

Underwater life is examined, from tadpoles to whales, and we are shown a bird (the male manakin) that does a remarkably good version of a Michael Jackson moonwalk. Perhaps nothing is as astounding as a million-strong flock of finches in the Kalahari desert, swirling across the sky like an ever-changing abstract painting by Seurat.

As it develops, "The Best of Nature" turns its lens not only on animals, but also on the people who photograph and tend to them. We meet a woman, Linda Koebner, who once monitored a group of chimps who had been placed in a wildlife refuge as a reward for the years they had spent serving as guinea pigs for the development of the hepatitis vaccine. Eighteen years later, the woman, who remembers the chimps vividly, returns to see them. Will they remember her? They seem to. One of them grins wildly, politely displays his bottom, and then wraps her in a furry embrace. Tears pour down the woman's cheeks.

"Certainly the bond between pet and owner can be as strong and as deep as any human relationship," Ms. Sherr claims, which may be going too far. But the story of an old man forced to flee New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, leaving behind his only companion, "Con-Cat" — so called because she conned him into taking care of her — and his subsequent return to find Con-Cat safe, leaves no doubt that the relationship can be very strong on the human side. Con-Cat, I have to say, seems pretty cool over the whole reunion thing — "OK, so you're back" — but that of course is the essence of feline charm.

Last comes the relationship between a black man, Solomon James, and an Asian elephant, Shirley, in a Louisiana zoo. Shirley, 52, hasn't seen a member of her tribe in a quarter century, as the zoo can't accommodate a second elephant. But now she's being moved to a wildlife preserve where she'll rejoin an elephant she knew in her youth: They were in a circus together. Mr. James, who's been hosing her down, patting her trunk, and whispering sweet nothings in the direction of her floppy ears for decades, clearly loves her. But what does Shirley feel for him? A close-up of her wrinkled eye proves impermeable to interpretation. There's no doubting her joy, however, at being reunited with her own kind as she and her long-lost mate wander ecstatically through sun-dappled meadows like Adam and Eve, giant pachyderm division. "Finally!" you can imagine her thinking. "Someone with a trunk!"

bbernhard@nysun.com