Natural World: Eye for an Elephant (1 of 20)

Natural World: Eye for an Elephant

Martyn Colbeck has spent 15 years scouring Africa for extraordinary images of the elephant. He has had to learn to read their minds and anticipate their every move. He has witnessed incredible behaviour: small secretive elephants deep in the Congo jungle, Echo the family matriarch giving birth at night, two huge bull elephants clashing heads in a deadly duel and mystical desert elephants gliding over the sandy dunes of Namibia.

My name is Martyn Colbeck and I've devoted 15 years of my life to filming the most intimate moments in the lives of African elephants.

I've witnessed the most incredible scenes - terrifying battles for supremacy...
emotional births...
and even the callous kidnapping of a youngster.
Unexpectedly, these fascinating animals hijacked my life...
and capturing them on film became my passion.
In 1990, I arrived on the plains below Mount Kilimanjaro.
My intention was to record the intimate lives of one family of elephants over a long time - something that had never been done before.
I needed to get close, physically and emotionally.