Dancing Alberta bears, cheeky Toronto raccoons featured in BBC's Planet Earth II
'It's a side of bears that you wouldn't expect to see', says producer of follow up to acclaimed TV series
Bears busting a move in the Canadian Rockies and a rascally raccoon family in Toronto are among the animals profiled in Planet Earth II, the followup to the massively popular 2006 TV series that won four Emmys.
Debuting Saturday on BBC Earth, the visually arresting six-part series was filmed in 4K in 40 countries over a span of three and a half years, featuring exotic jungles, deserts, islands and grasslands.
The second episode visits the Alberta Rockies and shows grizzly bears coming out of hibernation and doing a dance against trees to scratch themselves.
Filmmakers captured the footage by installing cameras up high in trees that were identified by scientists as being among the type that bears like to use. They left the cameras there for several weeks and came away with intimate and hilarious footage.
"It's funny, that sequence feels a bit voyeuristic," said Elizabeth White, producer of Planet Earth II.
"The way they get into their dancing, it really looks like these twerking bears. It was a really fun one in the edit, they put some great music to it. It's a side of bears that you wouldn't expect to see."