In ‘Cheetahs Up Close,’ a startling portrait of survival in the Serengeti
Filmmaker Bertie Gregory's new documentary special captures the extreme challenges facing the world's fastest land animal.
In the world of wildlife adventure, Bertie Gregory has seemingly done it all. He’s tracked pumas in Patagonia, swum alongside great white sharks without a cage in South Africa, and camped through a frigid, six-day blizzard to observe emperor penguins in Antarctica. But up until now, he had never experienced Tanzania during the Great Migration—one of the last large-mammal migrations on Earth.
Over one million animals roam the Serengeti during this sprawling annual feat, but in his new documentary special, Cheetahs Up Close with Bertie Gregory (streaming on Disney+ starting January 2), the wildlife filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer set out to film the nimblest of them all: the cheetah. Given their reputation as the fastest land animal, Gregory assumed they were untouchable in the animal kingdom. But after watching cheetahs in the wild and witnessing both the natural and unnatural threats they face every day, he realized he had it all wrong.
Below, Gregory tells us about the extreme difficulties cheetahs encounter in the wild, along with the technical challenges he encountered when capturing these cats as they’ve never been seen before.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How do you think Cheetahs Up Close paints a more precise picture of these beautiful animals?
Because they're famed as being the fastest land animal on earth and this amazing predator, we assume that must mean that they're at the top. But the reality is they are not top predators. Lions and hyenas are just on another level, and it shows just how hard [cheetahs] have to work to survive.
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One of the first questions you ask in the show is, “Why is it so hard for the fastest land animal to survive?” What are some of the struggles cheetahs face in their habitats?
Inside protected areas, alongside cheetahs, you also have things like lions and hyenas. Now, lions, as an example: very good at living inside protected areas, very bad at living outside. And what that means is you get really high concentrations of lions inside many protected areas, [making it] very challenging for cheetahs to live. So most cheetahs in the wild live outside of protected areas. But when they go outside of protected areas, they come under all sorts of challenges, whether that be conflict with livestock or their habitat getting broken up.
Because they're built for speed, not for fighting, their strategy when they get into trouble is to run away. And that means they need huge amounts of space—far more space than, say, a pride of lions. And because all our protected areas are these isolated pockets, those corridors between the connected areas are so important. And in many places, the connectivity isn't there.
What do you feel sets cheetahs apart from other predators in those protected areas?
Most predators inside an African national park are nocturnal or crepuscular. They're most active at dawn and dusk, and that's because it's easier to sneak up on prey. But cheetahs, because they cannot fight off hyenas and lions, have to hunt in the middle of the day. They've just got it really tough. Everyone steals their food, and they have to hunt at a really bad time of day when it's really hot.
(Rare photographs show African cheetahs in snowstorm.)
In the documentary, we see three male cheetahs face off with a wildebeest in the rain. Tell me a bit more about the technology you used to film that.
Some cheetahs love using the rain as cover because their prey’s guard is down. So we said, okay, cameras don’t like water. How do we make sure that we can film in rain or shine? As you saw in the film, Tom [Walker, the cinematographer] was using a rain spinner, where the front element of the lens spins thousands of times per second so that it basically just spins water off. Then I had a much less high-tech approach [with the drone] and just basically filled in all the holes with bathroom sealant.
Fortunately, both worked. What was amazing was that it was this ridiculous plan and it all came together. The cheetahs made an incredible takedown in pouring rain, which has never been filmed from start to finish like that before.
Had you ever filled a drone with sealant before?
Never! It’s a stupid idea! I really didn't think it would work. I've flown drones in the rain before and always thought they were sort of a ticking time bomb. Every time I sent that drone out, I was like, this could be a one-way mission. But each time it arrived back, very soggy but with the memory card intact.
Was there anything that stuck out to you while filming?
One thing that felt really important to cover inside protected areas is the effect of tourism on wildlife—particularly on an animal like a cheetah, which is trying to hunt when humans are active in the daytime. There are animals like lions, for example, who might get bothered by vehicles in the day, but they're still able to do most of their business at night undisturbed. For cheetahs, that's not the case.
I had experienced it firsthand when loads of vehicles would crowd an animal. We saw lots of examples of it not being done correctly, of people being too close. It's very easy to blame that on the guide. But the reality is many of these guides are under a huge amount of pressure. They don't get paid a lot of money, so getting a big tip is really important for their families and their livelihoods. So really, it's on us as visitors to ask more questions about the impact of what we're doing. Just because you're going to see wildlife does not mean you're helping it. It could be quite the opposite.
I don't want people to avoid seeing wildlife, because if done right, that is a very good thing. It’s actually critical to the animals’ survival—making sure that these animals have financial value is very important to justify their protection.
