538em;">Andrew Stewart | Manager, Corporate
Communications
Welcome back to Friday Feature, IMAX fans!
In celebration of the opening of Illumination Entertainment and
Universal’s
The Secret Life of Pets, now playing in select domestic
IMAX® 3D theatres, we’re taking a look—and likely letting out a few
‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’—at some of our favorite furry friends featured in
past IMAX documentaries.
IMAX has an awesome tradition of spotlighting the marvels of
outer space, but it also has a strong legacy of bringing attention
and awareness to our animal companions here on Earth—from the
diverse landscapes across Southeast Asia and Africa in films like
Born to Be Wildand
Mountain Gorillato the arctic (literally) in
To the Arctic.
Below are six (well, technically nine, with a few added babies)
furry, feature-worthy IMAX stars soaking up the spotlight:
Kristin,
Born to Be Wild(2011)
Kristin is a rehabilitated orangutan featured in IMAX’s
Born to Be Wild. Here she is pictured wadding through the
swamp in one of the Orangutan Foundation International’s release
sites in Indonesian Borneo.
Fun fact:
Orangutan means “person of the forest” in the Malay
language.
Kilaguni,
Born to Be Wild
Depicted in the film, two-year-old Kilaguni—who was rescued
after his mother was killed by poachers—graduates from the nursery
to Tsavo National Park—essentially a halfway house for
elephants—where he matures enough to finally be reintroduced into
the wild.
Fun fact:
Some infant elephants like to be bottle-fed from
underneath a blanket—the rough fabric reminding them of their
mother’s body.
Poppy (and infant),
Mountain Gorilla(1992)
During filming of
Mountain Gorilla, filmmakers were able to capture footage
of Poppy and her gorilla family undisturbed, in part, due to
previous behavioral research and tourism.
Fun fact:
Filmmakers first used a ‘dummy’ camera to gauge how the
gorillas would react to the real thing. The result: they
didn’t!
Lemur family,
Island of Lemurs: Madagascar(2014)
These cute guys are members of the Sifakas lemur family, one of
the many lemurs listed as endangered.
Fun fact:
Sifakas are primarily arboreal and built for jumping, not
walking.
Mother polar bear (and cub),
To the Arctic(2012)
Featured in
To the Arctic, this mama bear struggled to provide for her
cub amidst a changing environment resulting in shrunken ice
habitats.
Fun Fact:
Female polar bears have been known to swim up to 220 miles
over a duration of 10 days.
The Bay (aka the Rascal),
Horses: The Story of Equus(2002)
As one of three horses featured in this IMAX doc, the Bay first
trained in Australia to compete in “eventing,” one of the toughest
equestrian sports, before ending up in the movies as a trained
stunt horse.
Fun fact:
Today, there are more than 60 million horses on Earth.
