We just watched a BBC TV series called Wild China, and if you enjoy nature programs you'll like this one. The photography is spectacular as they travel around the vast regions of China, showing many beautiful and bizarre creatures.
For example, the adult bamboo bat is about the size of a bumble bee; it's perhaps the smallest mammal on earth. They live only in bamboo stalks, squeezing through beetle-made slits that are only 4mm wide. I did the conversion, and that is an astonishing .16 (or 5/32) of an inch. The hollow bamboo stalk shelters a nursery of minuscule babies-- each mother has just one, but they all cluster together crying for their mammies when they fly home. An amazing bit of micro-filming.
There are many human mouths too in China (1.3 billion to be exact) and it isn't an exaggeration to say the Chinese traditionally eat just about any protein that walks, flies, creeps, swims or crawls on the earth. Exotic animal parts are also considered "medicine" and "taken" for different conditions, so the conservationists face an uphill battle. In China, I've seen for myself the appetizing sight of a tank full of live snakes and turtles greeting you inside a restaurant door. I guess you could say it's not that different from a tank of lobsters. But yuk.
Anyway, it was encouraging how the program shows recent conservation efforts to save some of the wild places and animals across this enormous country. I also noticed how many Asian wild flowers are common in our gardens, thanks to the plant "gathers" of previous centuries. If you missed it on PBS, Wild China is out on DVD.
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