Chimps Deadly 60 Bites

On Deadly 60, I've had loads of incredible animal encounters.

Here's just one of my many favourites.

This is Deadly 60 Bites.

Up early in Uganda, we're racing through the forest to catch up

with a group of wild chimpanzees.

HOOTING

Yes, fantastic!

That is the chimpanzee long call.

It's just this excited wail that builds and builds.

We are utterly surrounded, and being pelted from above with figs!

Up since first light, the chimps are gorging themselves

on ripe figs for breakfast.

-Oh, no!

-This is what we expect in the forest.

Was that fig or was that poo?

-No, it's fig.

-No, it wasn't.

I'm sorry, Ronald, that is not fig.

That is chimp poo and it just clouted me right in the face.

I have a feeling this is how our day is going to go.

THEY LAUGH

Less than half of the chimps' diet is made up from fruit.

What they actually feed on a lot of the time is monkeys,

and even small antelope.

Chimps are ruthless hunters

and their favourite prey are colobus monkeys.

These leaf-eating monkeys are smaller and more agile than chimps,

but they can be cornered and caught when the chimps use

their team tactics to surround them in the trees.

Several males will chase the monkeys into an ambush,

then the hunters gather around to share in the meal.

This hunting may be gruesome, but the protein from the meat

is a vital part of the chimps' diet to help fuel those big brains.

Intelligence and teamwork, now that's deadly!

Here he comes...

This way.

He'll come down this vine here.

This is an adult male,

just beginning to descend.

A big male chimp like this would be

a fair bit smaller than me, but a lot stronger.

The arms are proportionally much, much longer,

great for swinging through the treetops.

A really powerfully-built animal.

Once they're down at our level,

we get a totally different perspective on them.

Their mood seems to have changed entirely

from the boisterous squabbling over fruit...

to silently stalking the forest floor.

(Look over there.)

Humans and chimps share a common ancestor.

They're our closest living relatives.

When you're this close to them, there's so much about appearance,

about their gestures, their facial signs that's very, very human.

But there's also

a lot about our similarities that makes them deadly.

High-swinging, tool-using, co-operative hunting...

Chimpanzees are on the Deadly 60.