Bugs!  A Rainforest Adventure 3D Movie Poster

Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure 3D

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In Theaters: July 25, 2003

Documentary | 40m

Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure 3D

Insects are essential to life on earth. They pollinate plants and recycle waste. By managing life and death they are the true caretakers of the natural world. Over 3/4 of the world's insects live in the rainforests. One square mile of the rainforest holds as many insects as there are people on earth.

Bugs! 3D follows the life cycles of a mantis and a butterfly, from their birth to their inevitable encounter in the rainforests of Southeast Asia, where predator meets its prey.

Bugs! 3D stars Papilio, a butterfly, and Hierodula, a praying mantis, who live in an abandoned hut by a river, surrounded by lush tropical foliage and a supporting cast of other intriguing and extraordinary insects. When Papilio emerges all alone from an egg, deposited on a leaf, she resembles a bird dropping to help camouflage her from predators. This tiny caterpillar will undergo one of Nature's miraculous transformations in her short life span of eight weeks. A herbivore, she eats citrus leaves constantly, increasing her weight one hundred times in a few weeks - the equivalent of a human growing as heavy as a hippopotamus in just a weekend!

Nearby, Hierodula is born, bursting from an egg case along with two hundred brothers and sisters, sliding down a thread, and climbing up into the world, already a mini-mantis. A carnivore, he eats other insects, but takes his time on his hunting expeditions. His life span ranges from nine months to a year.

Along the way, we meet a host of other animals, which, in various deceptive guises, also inhabit the rich, green and humid world: Leaf Cutter Ants which consume 20 of the rainforest's leaves; Rhino Beetles battling for the favours of a female; the Trilobite Beetle hiding his tiny head under armor plating; a Scale Bug disguised as a ball of fluff; an aggressive Spiny Katydid; an Orchid Mantis which resembles the flower and the Thorn Bug, identical to a thorn. In addition, scorpions, tarantulas, frogs, lizards and a colony of three-million bats which consume two and half tons of bugs every night, skitter across the screen, some magnified 250,000 times their normal size.

Cast: Judi Dench
Director: Mike Slee
Studio: IMAX Corporation
Producer(s): Phil Streather, Alexandra Ferguson
Writer(s): Abby Aron, Mike Slee
Official Site: www.giantscreenbugs.com