TMCnet News
Professor's f-ant-astic film going head to head with Attenborough [Edition 3] [Gloucestershire Echo (England)](Gloucestershire Echo (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) INSECT expert Adam Hart may just be about to pip legendary wildlife presenter David Attenborough to a TV award. Professor Hart, of the University of Gloucestershire, helped to make a BBC Four programme about ants. Broadcast in March last year, Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony has now been nominated in the category of natural history and science for a prestigious Royal Television Society Programme Award. The documentary has been nominated along with the David Attenborough series Africa and the Channel Four documentary How to Win the Grand National. The awards will be presented by comedian Tim Vine at a ceremony in London on Tuesday. Professor Hart worked alongside entomologist Dr George McGavin and captured every aspect of life in a colony of ants. For a month, they used time-lapse cameras, microscopes and radio tracking technology to create a unique programme revealing the working of one of the most complex societies in the natural world. Professor Hart said: "It is a great honour for a programme I co- presented to be nominated alongside Sir David Attenborough. I am hoping to meet him at the award ceremony." He is professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire and also lectures in ecology, evolutionary ecology, statistics, research methods and animal behaviour. He has presented or contributed to a number of documentaries for the BBC television and radio, including On The Trail of the American Honeybee, about migratory beekeeping and Raising Allosaurus, about the prospect of bringing extinct animals back to life. He most recently featured on Chris Packham's BBC Two documentary series Inside the Animal Mind. A specialist in the study of hymenoptera, which includes ants, bees and wasps, he said: "Some of the most incredible animals on the planet aren't that much to look at on their own. "But when they come together, the ants and bees can achieve things that we often struggle to understand, let alone match. "With no-one to tell them what to do, ants and bees organise themselves and use simple but powerful rules to find food, make nests and raise their sisters and brothers. "Some of these ant rules are so powerful that big business is using them to solve some incredibly difficult problems - like routing deliveries or scheduling. "Whether it's co-ordinating millions of workers, building nests the size of houses, or pollinating flowers and crops, the world of bees and ants is one of nature's marvels." WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE RESEARCH? gloucestercitizen.co.uk/news "It is a great honour for a programme I co-presented to be nominated alongside Sir David Attenborough. I am hoping to meet him at the award ceremony." ADAM HART (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |