What happens when you give animals their own cameras? That’s the premise of the 2018 BBC TV series Animals With Cameras, which follows wildlife filmmaker and presenter Gordon Buchanan as he meets scientists who want to take a closer look at what animals get up to.
- They use tools, fight to the death and live in social groups – and are the closest living relative to humans
- Watch amazing BBC footage showing an unexpectedly adorable friendship develop between baby chimps and puppies
And in the first episode, in Cameroon, one young, orphaned chimp – named Kimbang – is due to be released back into the wild after a traumatic start in life. But before she is, scientist Mimi Swift wants to make sure she can recognise and respond to dangers.
So how do you go about testing this? By giving her a camera and hiding a fake snake in a tree, of course.
And it seems to be successful, as Gordon Buchanan says, “She’s improvising – using every tool at her disposal. She’s trying to hit it with the camera! That’s great.”
But as producer Hannah Ward writes on a BBC blog, “We quickly learnt that getting a chimp to wear a camera was no small task...”
“The difference between the chimpanzees wanting to wear the cameras and not wanting to wear them was miniscule and could change every few minutes, or the second that something or someone more exciting came along.”
