Documentary Description
Once every 48 years, forests of the bamboo known as Melocanna baccifera
go into exuberant flower in parts of northeast India. And then, like
clockwork, the event is invariably followed by a plague of black rats
that spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake.
For the first time on film, NOVA and National Geographic capture this
massive rat population explosion in the kind of vivid detail not
possible in 1959, when the last invasion occurred.
Shot in the Indian state of Mizoram, where the massive onslaught
occurred on schedule in 2008, this NOVA/National Geographic Televison
special shows hordes of rats emerging from the forest right at harvest
season, consuming entire crops and leaving subsistence farmers facing
starvation. The chance to document and study this remarkable rat
outbreak won't occur again for another half-century.
|
