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If you were to call Vanessa Garnick on her cell phone, the mating call of a Costa Rican tree frog would go off in her pocket.
That's if she's able to get a signal, because as a naturalist she just might be in the jungles of Costa Rica among real tree frogs when that call is trying to come in.
Garnick, 28, and filmmaker Tristan Bayer, 29, are bringing the wilds of the world to the small screen with "Caught in the Moment," a new Animal Planet series tailored for the wired and multimedia savvy MTV audience.
The series is not just another show that makes high schoolers yawn through a post-lunch biology class. "Caught" is about showing rarely seen animals in their native habitats, and also about the thrill -- or the hours of patience -- involved in the video hunting.
Every episode ends in a customized music video featuring up-and- coming artists and footage from whatever far-flung location Bayer and Garnick have featured.
Bayer, son of wildlife documentarian Wolfgang Bayer, says he was born into his career.
"I was on location with my dad when I was 2 weeks old, in Canada," he said. "And then I was in Africa for about a year when I was 8 months old. So the first words I was learning were the African names of animals as we were scouting them."
He first met Garnick when both were toddlers, when Wolfgang Bayer used the Garnick family dude ranch in Jackson, Wyo., as a base for filming bison, wolves and other animals in nearby Yellowstone National Park.
Bayer said when he was a young boy he had a variety of dreams for his future, including becoming an astronaut and animator. It wasn't until he was 12, earning his first...