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2010, 04-03:
Review of film: “BORN TO BE WILD” in IMAX 3-D
They’re cute, playful, very social-- and exceedingly needy, because they’re ORPHANS. One other thing: they’re NOT human...
... These creatures are the subject of a new documentary narrated by MORGAN FREEMAN. It concentrates on two exceptional women who are working to try to help some of the endangered WILDLIFE on the planet:
... DAPHNE SHELDRICK is an English lady living in Kenya, Africa. She at one point realized that POACHERS had been attacking various of the ELEPHANT herds & killing some of them for their valuable ivory...
... Those actions were leaving numerous ORPHANED baby elephants, who were too young to care for themselves. They desperately needed MILK to stay alive, but milk that humans drink was not proper for the large creatures...
... Daphne set about experimenting with various formula combinations, & finally “hit” upon one that could SUSTAIN the baby elephants and help them grow...
... She hired local workers to concoct the special prescription and feed it to the babies, who happily GUZZLED it down and kept developing... Eventually, a number of the elephants learned to use their trunks to hold the large bottles by themselves as they happily drank its contents...
... Elephants are unusually social creatures, and need to be around their own kind to keep them emotionally stable. Normally, the adult females care for the young. But, since these were orphans, Daphne made sure they were with OTHER pachyderm youngsters she and others had rescued...
... In time, she and her workers (& at times even her visiting grandkids) worked to integrate the young elephants with older juvenile elephants she’d helped raise...
... They are seen RUNNING around together (at times by holding the tails of the one in front of them), happily playing in the dry dirt (which they roll in at times), scampering around in WATER (which they loved to “shoot” at themselves & each other by using their trunks), etc...
... In between the scenes of the elephants, the movie takes us to the island of BORNEO in Indonesia. There, we see OTHER creatures needing help. There, DR. BIRUTÉ MARY GALDIKAS works with baby ORANGUTANS (which she’s studied for many years and become an expert on)...
... The name of the endangered reddish-brown creatures comes from Malay words meaning “Man of the Forest”, which is apropos since these great apes live mostly in trees and use their arms (which are longer than other primates) to help them nimbly move around there...
... One of the big problems they have is, their native rainforest habitats are being demolished (often for economic reasons like logging and mining and farming of palm oil trees), which leaves little land left for them in which to live...
... Like humans (with whom they share like 95% or so of the same DNA), they have opposable thumbs (which help them build nests and use tools to get to certain insects and fruits); they also have opposable big toes on their feet (to further help them grasp things such as tree limbs-- or even sponges to "soap" themselves, as shown below)...
... But, like human babies, they can’t care for themselves (and normally are fully dependent on their mothers for at least the 1st 2 years of their life). Thus, when Dr. Galdikas came to the area & found a number of the babies orphaned, she also set to work creating special MILK concoctions and other food to feed to them...
(... As they grow, orangs mostly eat varieties of FRUITS, especially ones with fatty or sugary pulps. They’ve been known to eat more than 300 different food items...
(... Studies at a German zoo have shown orangs are the first non-human creatures known to use “calculated reciprocity” wherein they consider the benefits and “costs” of giving GIFTS to others and keeping “track” of such gift-giving over periods of time)...
... Dr. Galdikas has utilized one of her children plus local people to help care for and RAISE the orphaned orangs (who happily hug and cling onto their caregivers as humans do). Bit-by-bit, they try to teach them to interact with other orangs and to be able to eventually live on their OWN in the protected forested reserves set up for them by the government...
... The fim alternates between the activities of the two women caring for the wild creatures. (For her working on the conservation of elephants & other wildlife (like rhinos) and giving help to her community in Kenya [where she was born], Daphne received the Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1989, and was given the title of Dame in 2006)...
... The story of how these women have worked so hard to rescue and help raise the amazing elephants and orangutans is really UPLIFTING, the story is finely told in this film (and the 3-D IMAX format helps tell their stories with special effectiveness...
... Thus, I am rating this enjoyable film at 9.0 out of 10 stars...
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