Whether they’re made of scales, feathers or skin, every flap of an animal’s wings is a testament to nature’s miraculous defiance of gravity.
“Flight is amazing,” says Kevin Calhoon, the Tennessee Aquarium’s curator of forests. “When I think of flight, I think about how much we don’t understand about how it works. I think about migration. I think about the fact that birds can not only fly, but can be so maneuverable in the air. It’s just amazing.”
Thanks to innovative camera work and eye-popping slow-motion scenes, audiences will see nature’s fliers in a whole new way when “Conquest of the Skies 3D” arrives at the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX 3D Theater, 201 Chestnut St., on Friday, Dec. 29.
In “Conquest of the Skies 3D,” the Emmy- and BAFTA award-winning team at Atlantic Productions explores the gamut of nature’s approaches to flight, from the improbable takeoff of the enormous Atlas beetle to the leaping glides of harlequin flying frogs.
Audiences will hunt at the wingtips of wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats as they snatch insects from the night skies of Borneo. They’ll fly in formation with whooper swans touching down at watery wintering sites in Scotland. One spectacular slow-motion sequence even puts the brakes on the lightning strokes of a hummingbird’s wings, showing how these tiny avians move through the air with such agility.