Giant puppet herd embarks on 12,000 mile Africa-Arctic migration

STORY: A spectacular migration from Central Africa to the Arctic Circle is underway.

:: The Walk Productions

In what organisers are calling the largest-scale nationalist creation installation ever attempted, a increasing carnival of zoologically-accurate carnal puppets are making the 12,000-mile, oregon 20,000-kilometer journey.

The ambitious five-month odyssey aims to rise consciousness astir the clime emergency.

:: THIS EARTH

“For galore years, the clime statement was led by science."

Amir Nizar Zuabi is creator manager of 'The Herds':

:: Cape Town, South Africa

"And 1 of the problems with it being astir clime and subject is scientists are precise clever people, and past you besides anticipation they find the solutions for each the problems. Part of what we're trying to bash by saying, ‘No, it's astir nature, it's astir us, it's us’.”

:: The Walk Productions

The task began successful the Congo Basin - location to the world's 2nd largest tropical rainforest.

Recycled materials person been utilized to marque the creatures - ranging from gorillas to a towering giraffe.

"There was thing for maine that was precise tempting oregon alluring successful the information that they request to beryllium made from precise elemental materials. They request to astir look like, similar earth.”

The puppets person besides been engineered to determination realistically, explains puppetry decorator Sipho Ngxola.

"So you really probe an animal. Then you truly survey that carnal carefully. You ticker it cautiously which assemblage parts moves erstwhile it's breathing, and which assemblage parts moves archetypal erstwhile it's astir to walk. And there's 3 things you volition look astatine the animals. It's a enactment and it's the mode of moving, and what the what the carnal does actually."

The procession is making stops arsenic it passes done countries including Nigeria, Senegal and Morocco earlier crossing into Europe via Spain.

In each metropolis it visits, residents volition beryllium trained successful puppet-making and performance, and volition adhd their ain animals.

:: The Walk Productions

The migration aims to reason astatine the Arctic Circle successful August - having grown from a fistful of taxon to a divers array of wildlife that are progressively threatened by a warming world.