BubbleCam

November 14, 2008 at the Memphis Zoo and Aquarium

Typically, giraffes are very nervous animals. Anything strange or unfamiliar automatically causes them to become timid. Richard Meek, one of the giraffe keepers at the Memphis Zoo, mentioned to us that a coat of paint had kept his tall friends at a distance for an entire day. They wouldn’t come anywhere near the altered area.
Needless to say, the BubbleCam crew expected little reaction from the skittish giraffes if we just hung a camera over the side of their wall. So how do we get around it?

We placed a substitute dome in the barn where we planned to hang the BubbleCam on the film day. It was just a plastic dome, nothing inside, and we kept it on the wall for two days with the hopes that the nervous giraffes would be used to seeing a bubble in their barn by the time we arrived on Friday to film.
They were eyeballing us the whole time we set up. With the camera successfully hung in the place of the dummy-dome, we stepped back with a sigh, each of us thinking there was no way these reluctant giants were going to give us any nose-to-nose with all our equipment, crew, and cameras hovering around.
Luckily, we were wrong.
The animals were very curious about the BubbleCam. Little Angela Kate, the two year old female giraffe, was not the least bit camera shy and she gave us some wonderful footage. Kenya, the large male, was also pretty curious. Each of the adult giraffes made an appearance on film and we are so excited that the BubbleCam captured such unique perspectives of these gentle giants.

Thanks for reading!
Kari Fleskes
with the BubbleCam Crew