Encounters at the End of the World Page #6

So even though they are a bit perturbed

at being handled,

they recover very quickly from it

and seem to behave normally after that,

and really that's the ideal for us is to have

an animal species that we can work on

that will not be so disturbed by the work

that's being done on them

that they behave abnormally,

'cause we want to know how these

animals survive, under these conditions

HERZOG In a field laboratory

adjacent to the colony,

they prepare the milk samples

that may ultimately provide insight

into human weight loss

This was just collected It's still warm

from the animal So if you see that

See, it's like, you know,

it's almost like pouring wax

It's really something else And if I let this

cool down, it would get pretty pasty

I wouldn't be able to pour it like that at all

It's at body temperature right now

The milk of the Weddell seal

is about 45 fat

It's about 60 dry matter, 65 dry matter

It's very, very high in protein

It's about 10 to 12 protein

and contains no lactose at all,

which is very unusual

And there's many things

about this place that are very unusual,

and one of the things that I find

very fascinating is how quiet it gets

It's the quietest place

When the wind is down,

when there's no wind,

it wakes you up in the middle of the night

because there's no wind,

and there's no sound at all,

and if you walk out on the ice,

you can hear your own heartbeat,

that's how still it is

And you can hear the

You can hear the ice crack,

and it sounds like there's somebody walking

behind you, but it's just the ice

It's sort of, you know,

these little stress cracks moving all the time,

because we're actually,

right here we're on ocean

We're not on solid ground, so

And you can hear the seals

You can hear the seals call,

and it's the most amazing sound

They make these really inorganic sounds

(SEAL CALLING)

They sound like,

I don't know, Pink Floyd or something

They don't sound like mammals,

and they definitely don't sound like animals

It's really out of this world, I can say that

OFTEDAL You get used to

a surface being solid,

and you sort of think in your mind

that you're on land, and then all of a sudden

you'll hear the sound

coming up through the floor

- You'll hear the chucks and the whistles

- And the booms

And the booms that come which are the

You realize there's

a whole world underneath you,

that seals are moving and competing

and fighting beneath you under the ice

while you're here sleeping in a tent

or working in a lab hut

(SEALS CALLING)

HERZOG We soon returned to

the prosaic world of today's McMurdo

David Pacheco works in maintenance

and construction as a journeyman plumber

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