ARDIE WALKS THE WALK

摘要

It wasn't easy getting Ardie, the quarter-pint animatronic aardvark, to keep up with the documentary's flesh and blood star, said inventor Stefan Hrabar. Even without a programmed walking pattern and an on-board processor, the full-size, breathing quadruped named Timmy was more than a match for the aluminum-silicon version, especially as night fell and the time came for eating termites. But walk Ardie does. He also turns his head, opens his mouth, and bats his eyelashes. Wildlife filmmakers Lynne and Philip Richardson, through their production company, Africa Wildlife Films, commissioned the ani-matron's construction with the hope that he'd help with a behind-the-scenes making of a film that could be packaged along with their main work, a program about the living aardvark.