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 |