100 Years of Wildlife Films

I remember getting our very first television. It was enormous.

About that size, except the screen was about that size.

Nine inches, black-and-white.

But on it I saw my very first wildlife programmes.

That was 50 years ago.

50 years before that,

the very first wildlife film appeared.

So, there had been 100 years of wildlife film-making.

And I reckon it's time we looked back.

In this two hour special we'll be featuring the passionate,

intrepid and sometimes eccentric individuals

who've gone to the ends of the Earth

to open up new worlds to viewers.

We'll chart the extraordinary changes in technology that have driven the industry.

And we'll look at how we, the audiences,

have been entertained and affected by what we've seen on our screens.

Indeed, this century of wildlife films may reveal as much about us

as about the animals themselves.

This programme contains some scenes that some viewers may find upsetting.

Throughout history, first drawings,

then paintings, then sculptures,

books, eventually cameras -

first stills, then movies -

and always the favourite subject - wildlife.

Now, let's face it, animals don't actually rehearse and they don't

"work on their image" like they say in show business.

But the fact of the matter is, in front of the cameras

they are naturals.

The pups try their best to keep alert along with their parents.

But it's a bit of a struggle when you've just woken up.

Right from the very beginning, film-makers recognised that animals

had a huge entertainment value.

This somewhat bizarre footage is the earliest known

moving image of a wild animal.

It was pictures like this that inspired

one man in particular when he wrote, "The actual movements of the wild creatures can now be captured.

"The secrets and all the wonders of nature can be brought to the platform alive.

"And I was determined to do it."

And do it he did.

He was Oliver Pike, who made the first fully-fledged wildlife film to be seen in Britain, back in 1907.

It was called In Bird Land

and it was a great success.

The proceeds funded Pike's second

and even more popular film about the birds

and people of St Kilda.

This, of course, was long before the invention of television.

So Pike showed his 15 minute movies wherever cinemas had begun to spring up

in Britain, America and across the Empire.

And people flocked and paid to wonder at them.

St Kilda isn't a cosy place to film even today.

Back then it was really remote.

And the camera equipment, well,

it wasn't exactly what you'd call portable.

This is the kind of equipment that Pike would have used.

It's made out of finest mahogany, or some other endangered tree no doubt.

Believe me, it is incredibly heavy.

You face it the right way, birds over there.

Film is in here. Of course, spool there, spool there, it's going to go round and round.

How does it go round? This rather fetching brass handle.

This is rather noisy. This is the way it goes.

RASPING WHIRRING

So, chances are, the first time he did that, all the birds would "woah" out of here

because it sounds like a machine-gun, doesn't it?

So he had a cunning plan. He was going to have to get them used to that kind of noise.

He didn't want to cart his camera up there every time

and not actually use any film, if you see what I mean.

So here's ingenuity for you.

He collected up some pebbles, like this.

He'd remembered to bring a tin can. Probably had baked beans in it.

Pebbles into the can and he'd go up into the sea bird colony and go...

And after...

I imagine, several days, possibly several weeks, they finally got used to this.

"Oh, it's just that nutty bloke with his tin can."

So the next time, he came up with his camera.

He placed the camera down, birds over there.

Rattled his tin can.

"It's all right, lads. Just the tin can."

Then he would stop that and immediately start doing that.

A sort of aural splice.

And the birds just sat there and thought, "It's all right, we're not being filmed. It's just a tin can."

It wasn't and he got some truly historic pictures.

Aw. It's flown away.

Of course, nesting birds don't fly away.

And they were a favourite subject.

Although it was still a precarious business filming them.

It also required a lot of ingenuity and, indeed,

camouflage.

Yep, that is the first example of cow-cam. Relishing and overcoming

apparently insurmountable problems is one of the hallmarks of a wildlife film-maker.

And the most intrepid of them all was Cherry Kearton.

Yes, it really is surprising that I should be sitting safely here to tell this story.

For only by a series of miracles have I escaped death, as you shall see.

Kearton's driving ambition

was to capture images the world had never seen before.

He was soon lured away from birds in Britain by faraway Africa.

It was in East Africa that Kearton did indeed make history

by capturing the first moving images of African animals.

The ability simply to get the shots

was the big thing.

How you put them together was very much of less importance.

And what Cherry Kearton did was get the shots.

He got amazing shots.

Not only was Kearton the first to film Africa's wildlife,

but he did so at a time when national parks didn't even exist

and telephoto lenses were a thing of the future.

What's more, in those days, travel was a very far from easy

as Kearton's wife Ada explains.

I'd never been there before and I went on my first safari with Cherry.

Of course,

it was very difficult in those days to what it is today

although... And the early days of Cherry, for instance, when he had to cross rivers

and that sort of thing, he had to walk on foot.

-But he went really in the hard way, you know?

-Yes.

He had such a wonderful way of understanding animals.

I found him very interesting.

Kearton combined a love of wildlife with a taste for adventure.

And I think that's a combination that most wildlife film-makers have had ever since.

Of course, the advent of commercial air travel

and lighter camera equipment did make things a little bit easier.

Nevertheless, getting to some remote locations was, and still is...

pretty difficult.

Whoa!

And a 1956 version of David Attenborough agrees with me.

A month ago, Charles Lagus and I returned from spending four months in search of a dragon.

Or, to put it another way, in search of the largest lizard in the world.

It lives on one tiny little island in the South Pacific, and nowhere else in the world at all.

The name of the island is Komodo.

And I have to admit that before we started planning this expedition,

I had no idea where Komodo was and had to look for it on the map.

The first night we went onto a coral reef, bumping up and down.

The captain was asleep, so we poled ourselves off the coral reef.

The next night we were becalmed.

And the next day I went down to him and I said,

"You have been there before, haven't you?" And he said,

"Blmmm..." I looked up and he said, "Not yet!" You see?

So, at last, we sailed safely into the wide, calm bay of Komodo.

This was the home of the dragon which we'd come so far to see.

Within half an hour, there was a rustle in the bush and there was the dragon.

He looked almost as though he had walked out of some prehistoric age.

This was tremendously exciting for us,

our first sight of this magnificent monster,

the climax of four months of arduous travel.

And getting to

unexplored places still isn't straightforward.

As cameraman Gavin Thurston found out

when he set off to film lowland gorillas in the Congo.

Eight hours after leaving Gatwick...

-Are we at the wrong airport?

-Yes, we're at the wrong airport.

Day two and the crew manage to find the right airport.

All right James, heads or tails?

Erm...tails.

-Do we know which side tails are yet?

-Yeah.

-That is tails.

-So where am I?

You can decide. I'll go in front.

Day three, a 17-hour dusty truck journey

in a vehicle that isn't... Well, it isn't exactly a Rolls Royce.

How's the journey, guys?

What do you think?

And after that none too luxurious ride, not even a shower,

they're into canoes for a 14-hour trip down the Congo.

Just the bare essentials on this trip.

Day six,

just when they think they've arrived there's still three hours to go - on foot.

It's actually quite a pleasant walk.

Shame we have to cart all this blooming film gear with us.

(We've finally arrived at the first of the three.

(Amazingly, we've seen our first silverback gorilla.

(It's encouraging to know that they're actually here.

(We've seen one within the first few minutes.)

Frankly, to see the animal you're hoping to film within the first few minutes

is, um, a miracle.

It's one of the...

inescapable facts of wildlife filming,

or indeed wildlife watching,

it doesn't matter how far you've travelled or how arduous the journey,

there's absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that what you're hoping to see will turn up immediately.

Or will turn up at all.

Scene 10, take two.

And I can't see a single hare.

Well, that's the problem.

You've got, first of all, to find your hares,

-and then to get close to them without alarming them.

-Cut!

This is the tropical rainforest,

famous for being the richest proliferation of life on earth.

So, where are the animals?

Bill, what's happening?

Well, I suppose the word

that would sum it up at the moment, Kate, is nothing.

-Simon, yes?

-Bill, I'm with you, mate. There's absolutely nothing at all happening here either.

Well, here I am, I'm looking at the monitors.

Look at my screen here.

We've got these infra-red lights on various things.

And what have we got up there at the moment?

Channel One, we have absolutely nothing.

Well, I'll be honest, I can't see anything at all, so I'm not going to bother to show them to you.

Some animals aren't just camera shy.

They take elusiveness to the brink of invisibility.

When cameraman Doug Allen set off to film snow leopards

in the Himalayas, it certainly tested his patience.

This is tedious stuff.

This is the seventh session that I've done.

I do three hours in the morning, three hours in the late afternoon.

Not a sign.

If you got just a little bit of hint, a wee bit of a sighting

now and again, your spirits would be lifted.

But right now

I'd swap a little bit of this animal's charisma

for a little bit more visibility.

MUSIC: "Air on a G String" by J S Bach

Five days.

That's 35 hours of watching.

Nothing. No cats.

After seven weeks of waiting,

Doug did get a glimpse of the elusive snow leopard,

but surely not enough to make a proper sequence?

In the Gobi Desert the bactrian camels proved to be

almost as reluctant to be filmed as the snow leopard.

It was eight days before this crew got their first sighting of camels.

And even then it was just their rear ends disappearing into the distance.

About...

three or four kilometres away. They spotted us from that distance.

That's going to be a problem, getting close.

They're capable of spotting us from about five kilometres,

and running for 70ks in the opposite direction.

So this is what's going to make the filming incredibly difficult.

It wasn't until day 36

that they got pictures of anything except camels running away.

ATTENBOROUGH: Not only did they start getting head shots of camels,

but fascinating behaviour.

Strange mating rituals and snow eating.

CAMEL CHIRPS

Wild camels remain one of our planet's least known animals, so this unique footage

was much-needed publicity for a species on the verge of extinction.

BAYING GROAN

One year later, proof that wildlife filmmakers don't give up easily.

A new location, a new team, an old quest - that elusive cat again.

This time they had to dodge falling boulders.

But luck was on their side.

We just got a report that there's a snow leopard up on the ridge.

We're too low where we were before.

Just trying to get some height just to get a better view of it.

And there it was, exactly as they'd been told.

Mark was lucky enough to spend two weeks filming the intricate behaviour of this gorgeous leopard

in the remote mountains of Pakistan.

But, most exciting of all, was the sequence he managed to get on the very last day of filming.

The cameraman's dream - that happy coincidence of patience and luck.

Many of the most magic moments from wildlife films have been when a cameraman has managed

to bring pictures from somewhere we thought was surely impossible.

Well, in the 1950s, there was a German cameraman, Heinz Sielmann,

who changed the direction of wildlife films forever,

because he was determined to show us things never before seen with the naked eye.

For example, what goes on inside a nest hole?

And the bird he chose to do this with was the woodpecker.

Hello. Good evening.

Now Heinz Sielmann has come all the way from Munich to show us the film tonight

and so here he is and we're very pleased to see you here Heinz.

Well, I was successful in finding a black woodpecker's nest

which was not higher up than about 20 yards.

-20 feet?

-20 feet, pardon!

-That's high enough anyway!

-Oh, yes!

To make a hole in the back of the nest,

Heinz could only chisel for 30 minutes every five hours

to ensure that the birds continued to incubate.

After 10 days, he put in a pane of glass surrounded by a camouflaged hide.

He then spent a further eight days accustoming the birds to electric light

so that's a total of 18 days before getting a single shot.

Well now, can we see the pictures that you took in the back of the...

-I hope we were successful by that work.

-Yes.

And back in the wood,

where the nests are, here's the black woodpecker bringing food

to its newly hatched young and, now, down she goes,

inside the nest.

Like Father Christmas coming down the chimney.

She wakes the young ones up

and she feeds each one by regurgitation.

Of course they're blind when they hatch out

and very undeveloped. It think it's really very exciting

to think of these pictures, the first pictures ever taken of woodpeckers

actually inside their nesting hole.

When his woodpecker film came just suddenly into our Look programme

it really revolutionised it that night.

The switchboard was jammed for an hour or so afterwards.

It got the biggest appreciation figure the BBC had ever had except for the Coronation.

And it pointed the way.

Heinz had set a new standard for everyone else to follow.

The huge popularity

of Heinz Sielmann's films indicated the public's appetite

for seeing things from a new angle, or new perspective

but the fact of the matter is that for quite some time,

some of the very best places

and some of the most interesting wildlife

was quite literally unfilmable

and the reason is that film requires quite a lot of light in order to register an image

and quite a lot of wildlife, on the other hand,

prefers to live in places that are distinctly murky.

The first time we went into a rainforest in West Africa,

Charles Lagus, who was the cameraman, looked up and said,

"Well, we can't film. There's simply not enough light."

There are few large animals in the West African forest

and the only one we have any chance of seeing is a monkey.

There's one sitting hidden in the treetop quietly feeding.

So, in fact, what we did was to largely film

just very wide-angle scenes of Jack tramping around

and all the detailed close-ups of the animals we actually did in the studio.

As more and more sensitive film stock

was developed it was no longer necessary to cheat the shots.

By 1990, Sir David could film

the superb bird of paradise deep in the tropical undergrowth.

And 17 years later,

the high-definition camera rendered the same bird

crystal clear.

MUSIC: "Dance Of The Hours" from "La Gioconda" by Amilcare Ponchielli

But there was an even bigger challenge

than filming in the half-light of a tropical rainforest.

A huge number of animals, rather inconveniently,

are only active at night.

When producer Amanda Barrett and cameraman Owen Newman set off to film leopards in the Serengeti

they began by using light-sensitive video cameras

that could produce colour images

even with low levels of light, for example at dusk.

But they soon discovered that leopards only like to hunt

when it's absolutely pitch dark

because it's then that they're invisible to their prey.

So the crew change plan and they began to film with infra-red.

Infra-red can only produce images in black and white

but the advantage is it's invisible to wildlife which means

it just carries on behaving naturally.

And the exciting thing was at night

the way they were stalking in the open.

They were using the cover of darkness to creep up on the animals.

The antelope were using their ears and noses to detect

any danger that was out there

and so the leopard had to be incredibly quiet

and the first time we saw a leopard

stalking in the open, putting just one foot down,

it would take maybe two minutes to find a place

where its foot was able just to find

a bit of ground that wasn't rustling.

It would put it there, it would stay and all the time

just concentrating on ahead.

ANTELOPE SNORTS

In their eagerness to snatch a kill,

hyenas try to shadow hunting leopards

but with their clumsy attempts to find the leopard in the dark

they often interrupt and spoil a hunt.

The invisible nature of infra-red lights means that at least

the film-makers won't be the ones to spoil the hunt.

LEOPARD GROWLS

Elephants might not enter these caves in Kenya

if they sense a camera crew inside

but with remote infra-red cameras David Attenborough could remain out of sight

and still find out what was luring the elephants underground.

It sounds like distant thunder.

ELEPHANTS SNORTS

(It's an elephant.)

Every foot is being placed very carefully.

Oh!

He bumped his head! Well, no-one's perfect!

THUD!

The passage here is so narrow the big male can only just squeeze through.

RASPING

And now I can hear that noise.

He's using his tusks to carve out the salt

and, of course, it's falling to the ground

so what he does now is use his trunk

to sniff it up and then blow it into his mouth. You can hear that too.

SUCKING SNIFF

RASPING PUFF

So infra-red cameras have helped discover what goes on

in the darkness of the night and inside caves but that's not all.

They've also revealed

some of the secrets of the beaver's private life.

No-one knew exactly what went on inside the lodge during winter

so when the beavers were away

we installed a couple of infra-red cameras in order to find out.

A branch from the fridge is being brought back to the lodge

for the whole family to feed on.

And another.

No wonder they don't need to hibernate with this ingenious set up.

The lodge is warm and safe,

even in midwinter, and the only sign of activity

in the snug home beneath the snow is hot-air

rising from the vent at the top.

Inside, our cameras catch a glimpse of what, at first sight,

looks like a very small beaver.

It's a muskrat.

There are a pair of them in here.

This is a new observation.

Do the beavers actually know, in the pitch blackness, that there are strangers among them?

We notice that the muskrats regularly left the lodge

to forage under the ice.

And, on several occasions, they returned a few minutes later

with a load of fresh reeds.

Perhaps the muskrats are paying rent

by regularly providing fresh bedding for the lodge?

Maybe that is why the beavers accept them

and even allow them to share their food.

Our infra-red lights, however, are no longer welcome, it seems.

The fact is, with ever-advancing technology, you can film just about anything.

If it's dark - night camera. Just a long way away - telephoto lens.

And if it's very, very small, well, time was

you'd have to use a microscope.

But, the world of microscopes and cameras was beginning to converge.

Ooh, there you go!

One of the first to try his hand with macro-photography was pioneering cameraman Percy Smith.

The trouble was, the lenses needed to magnify

such tiny creatures required an awful lot of light.

And lights are hot. So, to put not too fine a point on it,

the heat often fried the insects he was trying to film.

So, some clever bods at Oxford Scientific Films,

Gerald Thompson and Eric Skinner, devised a way

of defusing heat given off from their massive lights

so that they could film tiny insects without cooking them.

Basically, they created a cooling system

with a flask of water and some glass heat filters.

Having done that, they could get images like these.

Ah, lovely.

Yes!

Jolly good!

Today, the high-definition camera is sensitive enough to film animals

as small as insects

with minimal light

and lenses can now be smaller than a fingernail.

Combine that with a motion-control system like this one designed by cameraman Martin Dawn

and we can see insects on their level and get a real sense

of what it's like to live in their world.

You get a lovely sense of motion,

a sense of tracking.

You can, you know... Flying in a helicopter, at the moment,

over these extraordinary gigantic plants.

It's just given me, and hopefully others,

a new perspective on the world.

A miniature world inhabited by animals smaller than a pinhead.

They are tiny.

This minute little creature is a springtail.

It is less than half a millimetre long -

the size of a full stop.

Drying out is a very real danger for them and some waterproof themselves

regularly with a droplet of special grooming fluid.

You might even say that they have turned bathing

into an art form.

They even have two inflatable tubes that enable them to get to

those hard-to-reach places.

To help them get around through the leaf litter, these springtails,

as their name suggests, have a rather novel way of jumping.

They have a tiny two-pronged lever

beneath their abdomen.

One small flick from it can catapult them

six inches, some 15 centimetres,

into the air.

It's the equivalent of a human being jumping over the Eiffel Tower.

And if they happen to land upside down,

well...

they have a special way of righting themselves.

They use their grooming fluid dispenser to stick on to the ground

so that they can pull themselves back onto their feet.

One of the great contributions of macro technology

has been that it has made visible, fascinating and even endearing

some of those creatures that people find...

well, not exactly attractive or positively scary.

Talking of scary, there is one habitat, or maybe I should say environment,

that I personally admit do find a teeny bit terrifying,

but other people find it a vast and wondrous challenge.

I am talking, of course, of underwater.

As early as 1913 an American,

John Ernest Williamson was already having a go

at underwater filming in a diving bell made by...himself.

He even took his baby daughter down to show

just how safe it was.

A 30 ft tube connecting the diving bell to the surface

gave Williamson a constant supply of air.

Filming through a glass window, he brought back the first moving images

anyone had ever seen of life underwater.

The drawback was everything had to happen right in front of the window

otherwise he missed it.

In the 1950s, German film-maker Hans Hass

came up with a method of filming underwater

and moving at the same time.

So far, we had only been doing natural diving,

but I had equipment for two alternatives to this

and I wanted to put these to the test.

The first was an air pump with a pipeline leading to a diving helmet.

It was made of a transparent plastic

and simply stood on the wearer's shoulders.

Alfred was to try it first and Hans was to pump.

Movement was limited because the air supply was still attached to the boat.

I went to see how Alfred was making out and he seemed very happy indeed.

Hans pumped away in the boat and, for the first time, Alfred was not at the mercy of his lungs.

He could breathe as easily as if he were on land

and, so long as he kept within the range of the air tube,

could wander at will on the bed of the sea.

My second piece of apparatus was much more exciting

and I resolved to give no-one but myself

the pleasure of going below with this for the first time.

It was a lightweight oxygen equipment,

one of the earliest ever made. Xenophon helped me to put it on.

Just as one's first glimpse of a foreign land, one's first flight,

one's first love remains forever implanted in the memory,

so does my first underwater exploration

with portable oxygen equipment.

Gone is every shackle, gone is the tyranny of the lungs,

the deadly oppression that forces you to surface

every minute or two just when the most exciting vistas are opening before your eyes.

The development of the portable air tank was to revolutionise underwater filming.

It freed up the cameraman to move around at will

instead of waiting for wildlife to come to him, he could go to them.

Since the first attempts with diving bells and air pumps,

underwater filming has surpassed all expectation.

Of course, we like to see films about the animals we like best.

And it seems we can't get enough of the ones that remind us of ourselves.

The ones that WALK like us.

The ones that LOOK like us.

And we tend to take the next step of assuming that they probably THINK like us.

Maybe have emotions like us.

Even BEHAVE like us.

But, of course, we can't resist the cute and the cuddly.

And we also love the frisson of the big and scary.

For programmes to sell well on the international market, they must have universal appeal.

So, what are the ingredients for a successful blockbuster TV series?

Well, excitement, action, marvellous pictures, wonderful sound, yeah.

It must have been a bit of a shock to the producers at the BBC Natural History Unit

when, in the early 1990s, David Attenborough suggested the subject for his next series.

We heard that David had an idea.

He wanted to come up with his next series

and I was thinking on the same lines, so we went to his house.

David has always listened to our idea,

and he nodded and was very complimentary about it, and he said,

"I was thinking about something a bit bolder."

And by the end of lunch, we had all signed up to do six hours on plants.

I remember coming down the motorway back to Bristol.

Suddenly we all looked at each other and thought, "My God!

"We've agreed with David to do six hours on PLANTS"!

A series aptly called The Private Life Of Plants.

It was such a ridiculous idea to try and bring to the BBC1 audience things that don't move.

But it ended up really capturing people's imagination.

Strange though it may seem,

some plants can move not just their flowers and their leaves,

but they can travel from place to place.

Take, for example, this bramble.

Put brambles into fast-forward and they take on a life of their own.

Instead of taking 25 pictures a second, as film cameras do,

the process of time-lapse takes pictures much less frequently.

When the image is played back, this is the result.

We see a world we are normally blind to because we're moving at a very different pace.

Apart from showing plants in a new light,

time-lapse photography has also revealed fascinating relationships in the natural world.

When filming a private life of plants in Borneo,

the crew noted that the leaves of the ginger plant were heavily damaged.

Look at this. Clearly, it is a badly damaged leaf.

But where is the creature that is doing the damage?

By speeding up events, we could find out just what was going on.

This is it - a tiny caterpillar.

It's soft, it's defenceless.

It's clearly an excellent mouthful for many a bird.

So if it is to survive, it has to take steps to protect itself.

It starts by making a semicircular cut into the leaf from the margin.

But when the cut is only half complete, it starts from the other end.

It spins silk across the hinge.

That, as it dries, contracts, and helps the caterpillar pull over the segment to form a roof.

To make its tent a little more commodious, it cuts a pleat,

pulls it across, and now it it's got a little wigwam.

The whole process only takes a few hours and is usually done at night when there are no birds around.

Now the caterpillar can feed in safety -

shaving off the soft surface layers of the leaf, out of the sight of any hungry bird.

And at significant cost to the plant.

Whilst plants need speeding up for us to see what is really going on,

most animals can be appreciated better by slowing them down.

Its torpedo shape, strong jaws and awesome muscle power

make the great white the most powerful of all predatory sharks.

It's the lion of the ocean.

As early as 1934, a film about gannets

used the technique of slow-motion to show, for the first time,

exactly how these birds were using their wings to land.

When landing, the gannet seems to just flop down anyhow,

but slow-motion reveals controlled power.

The tail spread as a brake, the wings beating backwards

to reduce the speed, the feet outstretched to take the shock.

They must land exactly on their own nest

or they'll be pecked and harried by the birds through whose territories they pass.

Here's the perfect landing.

This revelation won the film-makers the US Academy Award,

now known as the Oscar for best one-reel short subject.

Slow motion shows the full beauty and strength of their flight.

At that time, it was only possible to film at a slightly higher speed than normal but today

specialised video cameras can slow down action as much as 1,000 times, turning seconds into minutes.

This was a technique used in the BBC series, Animal Camera.

The mantis shrimp - voracious hunter of the coral reefs, with probably the fastest punch of any animal.

Devastating to even the hardest snails.

How the shrimp generates the force to do this

has baffled scientists for years - until now, that is.

By combining the slow-motion camera with an underwater force meter,

we can finally see the astonishing truth.

The meter shows the shrimp's punch packs a staggering 60 kilograms of force.

Not so much a punch

as a hammer blow.

This huge impact is all down to the sheer speed of the strike.

Game over

in 1,000th of a second.

The speed comes from compressing this part of the claw

and storing energy which is released in this explosive burst,

with the acceleration of a bullet.

The camera also revealed another amazing event...

..flashes of light.

Moments before impact, a pressure wave in front of the claw causes the water to boil.

The steam immediately implodes, generating light, heat, and possibly adding to the destructive force.

Slow motion may give us insights into animal behaviour but, above all,

it's a magical way to see the natural world.

There's no doubt that the main appeal of wildlife films is visual -

stunning pictures that transport us to a different, magical world.

A world in which human beings might be considered a bit of an intrusion.

But back in the 1930s, undoubtedly the big advancement in the world of motion pictures

was the coming of the talkies.

And wildlife film-makers could hardly be expected to stick to making silent films.

They wanted to get in front of the cameras, and some did.

From Britain, there was Cherry Kearton. From America, there was Martin and Osa Johnson.

And they had very different approaches which told us something

about different attitudes to wildlife back in those days.

Martin and Osa Johnson had a rather, um, showbiz approach to presenting.

More Hollywood than documentary. The emphasis in their films was on THEM.

The animals were simply props whilst they acted out their dramas.

Now one of the rhinos has discovered Martin and Osa with their cameras.

Slowly the great beast comes on, his huge horn menacing.

In those days, it was great entertainment to see animals being shot.

Minutes seem like hours to Osa, as she trains her gun on the animal,

waiting until he is close enough to make a bullet effective,

calling on all her skill for an aim that will be true.

Closer and closer he comes.

Hunting safaris were at their height

and it was a time when the West saw nature as something not to be understood, but to be conquered.

Osa lets go another bullet and the rhino rears into the air

and thrashes madly about for a second and then drops dead in his tracks.

The Johnsons employed Hollywood techniques like back projection to add to the drama.

Closer and closer goes the boat, alert for whatever move the croc may make.

And there it comes! There's a sudden lunge, and he throws himself straight at the boat.

Phew! That was a close one. The party is all safe...

They were...entertainers.

Well, they had no knowledge of animal behaviour, that's for sure.

There's a mean look in those eyes and she's about made up her mind to charge the boat.

No, she's used her woman's privilege and changed her mind.

Yes. Well, in fact, their patronising attitude to animals

wasn't dissimilar to their attitude to people.

Human monkeys.

They're a tribe of natives whose homes and highways are in the tall trees.

Watch out there, boy, that's a dead-end street.

At about this time, I said to Osa, "Let's give the boys and girls some modern jazz."

Yes, well, they were neither zoologists or anthropologists.

In fact, Martin Johnson was normally a cook, and Osa a cabaret dancer,

a career which he clearly wished to continue.

Their condescending approach would be considered completely outrageous today, of course,

but in America they were the most celebrated wildlife film-makers of the early 20th century.

They made about 30 very popular movies before 1937,

when Martin Johnson was killed in a plane crash in LA.

And it was with deep regret that we said goodbye to the happiest little savages on Earth.

In contrast to the Johnsons,

Britain's first wildlife presenter, Cherry Kearton,

was keen to make his subjects, not himself, the centre of the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me put you out of your misery at once.

You are not going to see me for long.

Although I'm inviting you to come on this trip with me, you will only see me occasionally.

For my story of Penguin Island

is about the strangest little creatures

that bear a remarkable resemblance to human beings.

At first sight, they look like millions of tiny Charlie Chaplins,

at least about the feet.

Kearton's style was not only self-effacing,

it was undeniably anthropomorphic and, if you like, popularist.

But this was partly because, back in those days, there wasn't very much scientific knowledge.

The fact is, though, Kearton had a genuine love for, and interest in, animals.

I rested for a while on the terrace, watching a few thousands of my neighbours

going about each other's business.

Before long, I realised that unless I kept a close watch on my belongings, I'd feel the pinch.

For pinching was a recognised profession in this land,

a sort of "what's yours is mine if you're not looking" principle.

Of course, for the filmmaker to be in front of the camera,

somebody else had to be behind it.

In Kearton's case, it was his wife, Ada.

Am I right that when you were married, you gave up your singing career altogether?

Oh, yes, I did. But I think you've been wondering WHY I gave it up.

-Yes.

-Well, because there's so many singers, but there was only one Cherry Kearton.

He was a freelance performer.

He had a passion for wildlife, of course, but he had to, as it were, sell it to an audience.

And he sold it through his own personality.

In 1940, Cherry Kearton died suddenly as he left the BBC's Broadcasting House in London.

He was one of the great pioneers.

He was as good as anybody in his time, and, I would have thought, ahead of almost everybody.

And certainly in terms off affecting his audience,

including small boys like me, he was out there on his own.

Really, this is a wonderful sight.

Five million penguins surrounding me, braying their national anthem and cheering me on my way.

I am filled with sadness at leaving.

Kearton managed to combine authoritative insight into animal behaviour

with entertaining an audience.

And that, to a lot of people, qualifies him as the rightful founder of wildlife film-making.

Rather ironically, though, Kearton's death coincided with the birth of television -

the medium, of course, in which wildlife presenters positively proliferated.

Ironically, though, shortly after its arrival, TV shut down for the duration of the Second World War.

And it wasn't until 1953 that wildlife programmes first appeared on the telly.

The new presenters added authority and information to their films, changing the focus away

from pure entertainment, perhaps in response to the post-war resolution

to rebuild Britain through education.

First and foremost was Sir Peter Scott.

Peter Scott was the son of the famous Antarctic explorer Captain Scott,

who died when Peter was five months old.

It was his father's dying wish that his son would be interested in wildlife.

My father really wanted me to be interested in natural history,

and he wrote a message to my mother in the tent where he died in the Antarctic,

which got found the next spring when they were there.

And it was a letter in which he said, "Make the boy interested in natural history.

"It is better than games.

"They teach it at some schools."

His father's wishes were most certainly granted.

Peter Scott was to become knighted for his work in conservation.

He set up the World Wildlife Fund and he sold many of his paintings to raise money.

And he almost single-handedly saved this species,

the Hawaiian goose, from extinction. And they're very grateful.

What's more, Peter Scott presented the very first wildlife television programme,

and he did it live from Slimbridge in Gloucestershire,

which is exactly where I am now.

Whilst he's doing that, I would like to show you one or two birds that we've got on the water here.

Here are some red-breasted geese.

In fact, ironically, Peter had started off as a wildfowler, one of the top punt gunners of his day.

I'm bound to say that I passed through a period, and I don't...

I hate remembering it,

but I don't want to cover it up,

because it's true.

There was a time

when I really took a great delight

in successfully, er, killing.

And this, I...

I hate to think it was so,

but it was so.

Scott served in the Royal Navy during World War II, and he was twice decorated for bravery.

But like many hunters, once war was over, he turned his back on shooting.

When he came to Slimbridge, wildfowling was still going on here.

And he saw a female goose, wounded female goose,

lying out on the sands, and the male standing by it for hours on end.

And I think he thought that wasn't very nice, and he decided he wasn't going to do any more shooting.

Hello. Good evening.

His best-known series, Look, like other programmes at this time, was broadcast live from a studio.

Television cameras in the '50s were far too cumbersome to be taken into the field.

Marvellous. Now, on your marks, get set, go.

-Now don't go.

-Do you want to get out? Come on.

It ran for 12 years, surprising everyone by its popularity, not least Scott himself.

Nobody believed natural history was going to be something that lots of people would want to look at.

And then quite suddenly, when it took off,

it became enormously exciting, because then one suddenly realised,

"My goodness! We're getting to all these people."

This is what I'd been dreaming about.

And then it really was very exciting.

A nice, restful job, snail watching.

What Peter Scott was becoming the face of British wildlife programmes,

competition was beginning to appear in the rest of Europe.

GERMAN ACCENT: Here ve see Heinz Sielmann, engaged in a life-or-death struggle vith Peter Scott.

They are engaged in a bitter punch-up over repeat fees

and the overseas sales of their nature documentaries.

Now they have been joined by an enraged Jacques Cousteau.

Zis is typical of the harsh and bitchy vorld of television features.

The dashing Frenchman Jacques Cousteau was becoming the face of underwater films,

with cutting-edge images like these.

Night and day, head to tail, in lockstep, the spiny lobsters march.

Alongside the already known Austrian film-maker Hans Hass,

who had now teamed up with his wife, Lotte.

-LOTTE:

-On this, my first dive with oxygen, I met and photographed a shark.

Like Peter Scott, Hans had also been a keen hunter,

but he and Lotte began to reflect the post-war feeling of the time.

I discovered how much more exciting and how much more useful it would be

if, instead of killing these trusting, defenceless creatures,

I could photograph them in their natural surroundings.

I don't like killing fish either.

Until next time, then.

OK, next time. Goodbye.

And whilst these presenters became linked with underwater films,

another husband-and-wife team became the faces of films about African wildlife.

Armand and Michaela Denis from Belgium.

The Search For Gertie.

And it is the search for Gertie which brought us to Amboseli.

-You had better explain who Gertie is.

-Oh, yes.

Here it is. A female rhinoceros.

Well, they started at almost exactly the same time as I did, 1954.

And they had lived in East Africa for years,

and they had been filming on 16mm.

They had decades of film material available.

So much better to leave East Africa to them, who lived there, and concentrate on elsewhere.

Which is exactly what David did, and continues to do.

Here in the tiny Comoro Islands...

Here in the tropical rainforest of Sumatra...

Six feet beneath the surface of the Earth...

200 miles south of Java...

Fine ash is falling all around...

At night, it gets so cold that it can freeze.

That makes this the deepest valley in the world.

This is one of the coldest places on Earth.

Here, there's virtually no water at all.

This is one of the wettest places on Earth.

This is the biggest flower in the world.

This snow is not white...

This is the biggest creature that exists on the planet, the blue whale, and it's coming up.

It's coming up! There!

David's fascination for the natural world was kindled at a young age.

The family used to go on holiday in North Wales, on Anglesey.

Dave would disappear. You couldn't find Dave anywhere.

He was on the beach, and would collect not only anything that moved, but fossils.

He absolutely adored fossils.

So, it was no surprise he would one day appear on our TV screens,

grappling with animals in far-off places for his first series, Zoo Quest.

The series involved catching wild animals for zoos,

which isn't something you'd find Attenborough doing today.

But it's a clear reminder of how attitudes have changed.

50 years since his first TV appearance,

it'd be hard to find anyone who doesn't recognise David Attenborough,

or even an imitation of him.

Tonight, on Life On Earth, we look at a creature whose survival in the modern world

continues to baffle scientists and laymen alike.

So, what is it about him that's made him so popular to this day?

Is it his charisma? His credibility?

His never-ending enthusiasm?

Or his respectful, non-intrusive approach, which accounts for those characteristic hushed tones?

There is more meaning

and mutual understanding

in exchanging a glance with a gorilla...

..than any other animal I know.

In contrast to many early presenters,

David has always shone the spotlight on the animals, not himself.

Which is why, if you've ever wondered, we always see him wearing the same clothes.

People say, "Why do you always wear the same thing?"

It seems to me, that if you change your costume and wear, I don't know,

some kind of, I don't know, some kind of fashionable thing people say, "Why has he done that?

"Is it trying to tell us something? Has the climate changed?

You know, "What's he trying to do?"

So you are asking for attention away from what it is you're trying to talk about.

And his sole object in life at the moment is to make quite sure

that he and he alone mates with every single one of them and to that he must fight.

Since the beginning of his career,

Sir David has had more than a lifetime's worth of interesting encounters.

When I caught up with them at the top of the pass, I found to my horror

that the men were refusing to go any further.

They told me very firmly that this was the end of their tribal frontier.

I said, "Now, come on, lads."

And they said, "No good, no good." I said, "Why not?"

They said, "We no go along him." "Why not?"

HE REPEATS WHAT MEN SAID

That means they're cannibals down there. I said, "Now, lads.

"If it's another sixpence a day you want, you know, we can have a proper organised talk about this, you know."

And they said, "No, no, him no good. Him bad fellow."

And while I was actually saying this, with me being very British about the whole thing,

I suddenly looked down the slope and I saw behind a tree

a white cockatoo feather flash and I turned round again and there behind a boulder was the glint of a knife.

I thought, "Oh!"

And while I was in the process of thinking, "Oh!"

suddenly out onto the track about 70 or 80 men suddenly jumped out of hiding

and ran down towards us brandishing spears and waving knives.

And to say I was alarmed is to put it mildly.

Charles Lagus, who was my companion at the time with the camera,

had the presence of mind -

he'd got it in his hand - simply to turn it, so I know actually what happened.

What happened was I walked towards this screaming horde of men

and I actually heard myself, I stuck out my hand, and I heard myself say, "Good afternoon!"

LAUGHTER

It's true.

APPLAUSE

To my enormous relief, they greeted me not fiercely, but with considerable enthusiasm.

Laughing at myself, I discovered that this, in fact, is merely the normal New Guinea welcome.

In the 1960s, a new name became linked to wildlife programmes,

but this time they were specially designed for children.

The new series was Animal Magic.

And the new name, Johnny Morris.

Hello.

Isn't it rotten when you can't think of anything to do?

Yes, now let me have the hose, Wendy. Wendy!

Contrary to popular belief, Johnny Morris was not a professional zoo-keeper, he was an entertainer.

His playful humour and anthropomorphism is reminiscent of the early days of Kearton,

-but Johnny Morris took it one step further, he put words into the animals' mouths.

-Dear me.

Are you feeling quite quiet today?

"I am feeling quiet, thank you."

"We are just simple animals what is living a simple life

"and liking very much all the leaves that kind people are bringing to us from time to time."

"Yes, and I would like to second that." Good.

I mean, look at the clouds.

"I know, I just wanted to take him out today."

Oh, dear. Perhaps the sun will shine tomorrow.

"Perhaps I can sit on your lap."

Oh, yes. JOHNNY LAUGHS

Are you quite comfortable?

You are?

That's good, yeah.

Oh, my goodness me.

Is that all right for you?

How's the little one?

Don't you think you ought to support his head like this?

"Look, if you're so blinking clever, you nurse him.

"Go on, there, get on with it.

"Some people think they know the lot."

And some people bridled at the level of anthropomorphism,

but Johnny Morris's fun-filled series ran for 21 years.

Would you allow me to pull a little bit of your coat off? No, they...

Here it is, it comes off. Oh!

It comes off.

The series that replaced it turned out to be equally popular and ran for the same length of time.

We'd better cut there and start again!

It was called The Really Wild Show.

APPLAUSE

Sh! Right, hello and welcome to this.

CHILDREN: The Really Wild Show!

That's right, The Really Wild Show.

And a big welcome from Nick, Chris and myself to this,

the very first in a brand new series

of natural history programmes from Bristol.

By now, a whole new generation of wildlife presenters were running,

jumping and leaping onto our screens.

I need one of these...

..and a peregrine falcon.

Go! ..Go!

I can see the headlines now: "Wildlife presenter killed by assassin bug."

This is the best way in the world to see elephants.

They pass right underneath you but they have absolutely no idea that you're here.

And this one gets himself into a...

Hey!

Being kicked by a gorilla, I think, is a privilege.

The biggest Scottish river is this one, the Tay.

You've probably heard they're also learning to trumpet, which they seem to quite enjoy doing.

Oh!

What have we found? A couple of pairs mating over here.

Two of them, three of them.

Go, go, go! Go, go!

Good. Hunting lesson number one, pretty successful.

Wow.

Believe me, I've had ants in my pants and it's nothing compared to having a fiddler crab in your shorts.

In just a matter of minutes, I've attracted literally hundreds of beetles

and all with the tiniest drop of pheromone.

These are the moments I live for,

where time stands still.

So join me on an adventure into a mysterious world.

I feel very much like an astronaut

that has just touched down on the planet of penguins, a place inhabited by monochromatic dwarfs.

(I feel like I ought to be conducting them. OK...)

Go, go, go.

Without my clothes, I AM going to die.

All right, mate?

Yes, well, we all have our own styles and indeed our own thresholds of modesty.

But I do think a presenter can add something to a wildlife programme

by bringing in a certain style or attitude, or being a sort of a guide.

But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

The fact of the matter is though there are many wildlife films

that have no human involvement whatsoever

but they simply astonish us by their truly pioneering nature.

And in this case the pioneers themselves are the film-makers,

especially those who are prepared to take a few risks.

In a series Kingdom Of The Ice Bear, producer Mike Salisbury braved sub-zero temperatures

and dangerous predators to film polar bears emerging from their winter hibernation.

We were absolutely determined to capture that moment

when a mother bear brings out her cubs for the first time.

We had two sleds on the back of each snowmobile loaded with camping gear,

food, fuel, everything we needed for six weeks.

We found one den after about four weeks, and it seemed to be perfect.

We built a sort of half an igloo as a hide,

set it up and then she came out,

wandered down the side of the hill and off down the valley and that's the last we saw of her.

We thought, "Oh, no." There was no sign of cubs having been there at all.

We'd chosen perhaps the one den in the whole of Spitsbergen

where a mother bear had had a false pregnancy.

Right, I mean, I think in the last week of the rations and fuel and everything we had,

um, we found a den on a slope above the sea ice.

We made another sort of igloo hide.

In the end, the mother came out and we were really lucky

because she did this wonderful sort of sliding down on her back,

out of the den, with her legs in the air.

You really felt that she was delighted to be out after all those weeks in the den.

CUB WHINES

And then, the next day, she went back and got the cubs out and we got our sequence. Phew!

Within a few days of opening the den, a mother bear will take the cubs on short outings,

strengthening their legs for longer journeys across the sea ice.

A third cub has surfaced, but is too nervous to join the others, although on this first outing,

the attentive mother will not take them far from the safety of the den.

At Mzima Springs in Kenya in the late '60s, newcomers to wildlife films Joan and Alan Root

wanted to make their mark on the industry,

so they decided they'd start with the animal that kills more people in Africa than any other, hippos.

Hippos had been filmed on land, but the Roots wanted to be

the first people ever to get shots of hippos underwater.

Crazy idea? Possibly.

How were they going to do it?

Here at its moorings, is Scheme One, Mark 1.

The idea was that Joan should lie in the appropriately coffin-shaped hull

and do the filming while Alan punted her to suitable locations.

She was to film through the glass front of this particular craft and use the thing as a mobile hide.

Well, that was the idea.

So they set sail in Scheme One, Mark 1,

and headed both for deeper water and for hippos or crocodiles or whatever.

Trouble, the hippos sheered off and the glass steamed-up,

so squeegeeing was necessary.

But there wasn't much point even in clean glass if there was nothing to see,

and so they moved on to Scheme Two to see if that would work.

If anything, this is an even bigger failure than the floating tank.

Although it's certainly a lot cooler.

The way it works is I put my feet through holes in the bottom,

then lift the cage up on my shoulders

and walk around following the hippo.

In theory.

What it gained in coolness, it lost in manoeuvrability.

Also, when Birnam Wood came to Mzima, the wind would catch hold of it

and would care not a fig for the man below,

for the man who was in theory at the helm of Mark 1 Scheme Two.

So they left Scheme Two and mainly took to snorkelling instead, although the cages did have their uses.

Skin diving was infinitely more practical,

but with limbs totally exposed it meant keeping a very good lookout

at all times on a normal underwater camera, and then swimming as close to the quarry as one dared to go.

The Roots' ingenuity and perseverance had paid off

and they'd achieved exactly what they set out to do.

Their film Mzima made history by showing hippos underwater for the very first time.

It was a remarkable achievement, but not without mishap.

Not only did Alan get bitten through the leg when he found himself in the middle of two male hippos fighting,

but Joan also had an incredibly narrow escape.

A tooth passed millimetres from her face, tearing the mask

and breaking the glass, but incredibly leaving Joan unmarked.

Undeterred by their encounters, the Roots continued to work with dangerous animals.

Alan achieved these remarkable shots of this cobra spitting

out its lethal venom at, you guessed it, his wife, Joan.

Spectacles are enough to protect the eyes, and if it's quickly washed off, the venom doesn't harm the skin.

Wild animals are unpredictable, and sometimes a dangerous situation comes out of the blue.

Lacking a dart to deliver the vital antidote, there was only one thing to do - to try to inject it by hand.

Elephant biologist, Iain Douglas-Hamilton,

felt duty bound to administer the antidote

to save the stricken animal's life.

But think about it -

the camera man, Dieter Plage, his life was also in danger.

But he carried on filming.

When that failed, to drive in close was the only hope.

The needle went home, and so did Sarah's cross tusks.

Having, as she thought, wiped out her enemy,

she backed off to tend the bull, who was beginning to come round.

Film-makers in Africa quite literally taking risks with genuinely dangerous creatures.

Meanwhile, in Britain, film-makers were taking more technical risks

with creatures which were a little less dangerous.

Like birds.

Producer John Downer tried a number of ways to give viewers

the sense of what it's like to fly like a bird.

I wanted to make a film about bird flight,

but the only way I could see doing it is you had to be up there with them,

and so it was really

letting your imagination run wild, and think,

how can we use techniques to get up there,

techniques that hadn't been used before.

And so we put a little camera inside the nose of a model glider.

We redesigned the actual method of propulsion,

so the propellers from behind were pushing out so the camera could see forward.

And so we designed this new craft, and took it off

on to intercept birds on migrations, white storks on migration.

But when it came down, it clipped these trees, smashed into a thousand pieces.

The camera was a total write-off, film spewed everywhere.

So, model glider in pieces, John tried his luck with model helicopters.

We used to get through a model helicopter for every shot

because there was always some gremlin in the works, as so often happens.

Everything's fine when you test it, but as soon as you come to film, the thing plummets out of the sky.

So, abandon glider, abandon helicopter,

and John turned to the already tried-and-tested method of imprinting,

whereby newly-hatched ducklings adopt the first thing they see as their parent.

If you become that parent, it will follow you wherever you go,

and if you go up in the air, ultimately, when it can fly, it will go up there with you.

So, how do you fly alongside a bird?

Well, if you're John Downer you simply fix a parascender onto your back,

then get someone to tow you along in a Land Rover until you take off, like a bird!

And then crash like a TV producer.

Take two.

I got up in the air and thought, "Now's the time to release," so I got the duck out,

which was called Gadaffi, and cast it off.

And then it started to plummet, and I thought, "Oh, no!

"Is it going to fly?!"

And it dropped, and then suddenly found its wings, raced up

until it was literally there, and I was flying alongside it.

It was about a foot away from me.

It was the most magical experience.

And a magical experience resulted in magical images.

John Downer wasn't the first to use imprinted birds, but he certainly took filming of them to new heights.

Back down on the ground,

John Downer and others have deployed ever wackier ways

to get close to their subjects, though some of the cast clearly prefer to film themselves.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Ingenious. Intrepid. Or maybe just a bit silly.

But then again, that's one of the joys of wildlife - there are so many different ways to approach it.

It can be fun, or it can be a very serious scientific study.

In fact, some of the best wildlife films have been made by film-makers who have tapped in to the font

of knowledge accumulated by scientists,

who have spent maybe their whole lives studying a single species.

To film intimate details of elephant family life in Kenya, film-maker Martin Colbeck

had to work closely with elephant biologist Cynthia Moss, who'd studied one group for 25 years.

Well, the first thing we tried to do was to get to know all the elephants individually.

At that time, there were about 500 to 600 elephants in the population.

That was a very nice number to begin with because we felt that that was

within the realm of possibility, to know each of those individuals.

-How many hundred?

-Between five and 600!

How long did it take you to do that?

It took quite a long time. It took of a couple of years at least.

I think, in fact, that it wasn't until 1978 I felt I knew every individual in the population.

-How do you recognise them?

-By their ears, first of all.

That's the main characteristic.

Their ears are never absolutely smooth along the edge.

There's usually little nicks or holes or whatever.

And also the vein pattern is very distinctive.

But after a while, you get so used to them, and you recognise the whole elephant.

Cynthia's in-depth knowledge helped to record

some of the most enchanting moments ever captured on film.

Eli was born in 1990, crippled.

At the time, his chances of survival seemed slim.

But neither his mother, Echo, nor his sister, Enid, would desert him.

With amazing determination, he tried over and over again to stretch his bent legs.

Until, finally, on the third day, he managed to stand up.

By the time Eli was a week old, he was able to keep up

with the family, even though his legs were a bit rubbery.

In the 1960s, acclaimed film-maker Hugo van Lawick

teamed up with a young researcher, Jane Goodall,

who was at the start of what would become a lifetime study of Tanzania's wild chimpanzees.

In documenting Jane's research, Hugo's film knocked us off our pedestal

and made us rethink our definition of what it means to be human.

She moves in a little closer, and makes a startling discovery.

She sees a chimp picking a leaf, crumpling it in his mouth

and using it to sup up water

collected deep in the hollow of a tree.

Until this study, man alone has been considered the tool maker.

Chimpanzees have been seen drinking from natural water bowls in Uganda.

But on those instances, they merely dipped their finger into the water and licked off the drops.

The exciting fact in the Gombe Stream area

is that the chimpanzee, by initially crumpling believes into a sponge, is, in fact, making a tool.

In this film, our closest living relatives were shown as intelligent, sophisticated animals.

But, in the Tai Forest in West Africa, the Swiss biologist had discovered

a rather less peaceful side to their nature

and the BBC were keen to tap into his 10-year study.

Practically part of the group and able to recognise all the chimps individually straight away,

is a Swiss zoologist Christophe Boesch.

For 10 years, working almost every day from dawn till dusk,

he has studied and recorded the group's behaviour with his wife Hedwige.

How did you manage to get these animals so accustomed to you

so that we could stand this close to them as this.

Oh, just patience.

It took us five years.

-Five years?

-Five years just following them

and being always very quiet, never aggressive, always the same colours and clothes

and patience, patience.

At the beginning, it was absolutely the impossible.

It's quite difficult to imagine what it was at the beginning, just bottoms running away.

Moving quickly and quietly, the males are looking for colobus.

The hunt is on. The males start to climb.

Each hunter has his own special role to play.

This male is the driver.

He keeps the colobus moving in one direction.

Another climbs quietly into position, ready to block an escape.

This is the ambusher, waiting quietly ahead.

When the time comes, he will rush up and close the trap.

The driver leaps.

Now, colobus and chimp are in the same tree.

The ambusher rushes up to close the trap.

A hunter nearly grabs its prey.

HIGH-PITCHED SCREECHING

A capture! Females scream with excitement.

The hunters struggle to bring their victim to the ground.

Only after the kill has been dismembered does the forest finally quieten down.

We made a film about chimps hunting monkeys.

That was an extraordinary and powerful and alarming and dismaying thing to see.

Again, people say, "How can you put on such savagery of a predator catching prey".

And, "You are milking it for violence".

If they saw what you put out on the cutting-room floor

of this animal in suffering...

It is a very narrow line you have to tread.

You cannot, in my view, eliminate it entirely.

That is to sentimentalise and distort reality.

But equally, some of it is very hard to take.

This line between reality and sensitivity

varies depending on which side of the Atlantic you live on and, indeed,

which end of the century you're born into.

As early as 1910,

cameraman Carl Akeley staged this lion-spearing ritual in Kenya.

Although we only see one lion actually being speared, in fact,

he allowed 14 lions are to be killed just to get the sequence he wanted.

He did, though, spare the audience any bloodshed.

The Johnsons' film, Simba, earned them £2 million dollars.

Absolutely astonishing for 1928.

The success of these carnage filled films led to the feeling in America

that films without thrills and kills simply would not succeed.

..Already the big animal has seen her.

The bullet has found its mark.

Once king of the jungle,

and now merely 400lbs of dead beast and also...

Clearly, American tastes haven't changed all that much.

Witness this 1990 trail for the BBC's Trials of Life.

'..That exposes the struggle to survive through uncensored, shocking photography.

'Turner Broadcasting and Time Life Video

'dare you to take a walk on the wild side with Trials of Life.'

There are A team, B team and C team animals.

Insects are sort of C team, definitely, and lions are A team.

Anything that's big and scary and a predator is definitely what most people like to see.

'Join acclaimed naturalist David Attenborough

'for our close encounter with raw nature as you have never seen it before.'

It took out of context, a number of shots of predation and fighting

and cut them together so fast with extraordinary, exaggerated music

to give the impression that the series was all about violence,

which it wasn't.

'Trials Of Life is a first-hand account of the struggle to survive in a savage, untamed environment.'

The way it was marketed, I think, was absolutely brilliant,

as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of people would disagree

but I think it was brilliant. They did it tooth and claw.

'Violent footage shows you the life and death struggle to survive in a harsh and brutal world.'

American networks love their thrills and kills, but no blood.

So, whilst films distort the truth by over-representing kills,

they also distort the truth by sanitising the kill itself.

As the BBC series Big Cat Week Uncut showed,

animals are often DON'T die quickly.

It can take hours.

The showing of violence will always be controversial

and so, indeed, will the showing of sex.

In the early 1960s, an amateur film-maker, and Eric Ashby made history with his film A Hare's Life.

He did a daring thing and showed hares mating,

a first for wildlife programmes.

It was a discreet long shot but apparently shocking enough to result

in a flood of angry letters from an irate British public.

It didn't take long for Britain to get used to the idea of mating animals,

but it took very much longer in America.

In 1974, this scene from Survival's The Family That Lives With Elephants

was deleted before being transmitted on American networks.

Soon, inevitably, the young males become interested in the female calves.

They're beginning to become a thorough nuisance in the family.

Such scenes would only become acceptable on American TV in the late 1980s,

30 years after Britain had first shocked its audience.

Sex and genitalia, the very currency of power between the sexes,

are continually on show and become social assets rather than demonstrations of dominance.

So, the content of wildlife films over the last century

has had as much to do with the wider social attitudes

as it has had to do with the advances in science.

Nowadays, we respect and want to understand the intricate details of natural behaviour.

A pretty far cry from those early days

when unfamiliar animals were almost considered freaks.

A herd of loping, ungainly giraffes struggling to keep up with their brothers of the jungle.

The giraffes take on a grotesque, unreal appearance,

almost like tiny animated toys pumping their way across a shop window or nursery floor.

Our attitudes have definitely improved but, alas, the situation for the wildlife definitely hasn't.

When Cherry Kearton took these shots, there were an estimated 10 million elephants in Africa.

Today, there are just 500,000.

The vast herds of plains animals seen roaming across Africa in those days

are today replaced by small populations, confined within the boundaries of national parks.

As our species has increased, others have decreased.

In this relatively short time, some wildlife films

have sadly become vital records of species that no longer exist.

Just a few of the very, very many species that are seriously endangered.

And, it really does make you wonder, what if more wildlife programmes and films in the past

had been about conservation. Would that have helped?

Let's face it, those early films were about as conservation-minded is as a trip to the circus.

But the honest fact of the matter is, it wasn't until the 1950s

before people began to seriously suggest the biggest danger to wildlife was...

Yeah, you got it, man.

In his film, No Room for Wild Animals, Bernard Grzimek

made a brave move away from entertainment

to highlight the dangers of over hunting in Africa.

It made the powerful impact and as a result,

Serengeti National Park was established in Tanzania as a safe haven for wildlife,

which it remains today.

Since Grzimek, others have brought our attention to the plight of individual animals.

We are now fully aware that the Orang-utan is rapidly losing its habitat to the palm oil industry.

Five million hectares of rainforest have been destroyed for plantations,

leaving these red apes with no way to live.

If the relentless destruction of Borneo's rainforest continues,

wild orang-utans will be extinct within 10 years.

And we simply can't let that happen.

The oceans largest fish, the whale shark, has recently become the first marine species to become protected

under the Indian Wildlife Act thanks to Mike Pandey's film

which showed how these impressive creatures were being massacred on India's shores.

Scores of whale sharks lay on the beach,

hauled in to be slaughtered.

But for the local people, nothing seemed amiss.

For them, it was just another catch.

A recent film on the pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo,

looked at what happens to animals in war-torn areas like the Congo.

In 1998, deep tension surfaced again, neighbouring countries lined up behind different factions.

The Congo plunged into a bitter and protracted civil war.

Now even bonobo researchers came under suspicion.

Soldiers came to our campsite to arrest us

because there was a general belief that we were spies for the enemy.

The scientists were forced out.

More than 20 years' worth of continuous observations,

a valuable record of individual bonobo lives, came to an end.

As a result of this film, money has being donated for further research

and two new research sites have been opened up

to study the last remaining populations of wild bonoboes.

But, despite these positive outcomes, conservation programmes

can be extremely uncomfortable to watch.

This shocking footage led to the anti-fur trade campaign of the 1970s.

That we could generate this sort of public pressure to stop the front hunt,

as we were able to do to stop the Magdalen Islands hunt...

But however important that the message, not everyone can stomach images like these.

So, can films inspire concern for the natural world in other ways.

Of course there are natural history films that

send a straight forward conservation message,

and so there should be, but it would be a sad time, I think,

if every film felt impelled to focus itself in that particular way.

All good natural history films which are truthful are,

in themselves, conservation messages.

So in other words,

if you want people to care about the wild world, you have to let them know what it is in the first place.

That is the first thing. And if they then read the following morning in the newspaper

that that thing they've been looking at is endangered, then maybe they'll do something about it.

But if they don't know what it is, they won't.

Five million birds make this journey every year.

The success of the BBC's recent series Planet Earth

proves that there are millions of people captivated by the images of beauty in the natural world.

But, in this era of internet, mobiles, multi-channel TV,

film-makers have got to work harder than ever before to win their audience's attention.

50 years ago it was pretty well a straight-on look at what the animal was.

Now, you have ecological studies, you have life histories,

you have daily diaries as you do in things like Big Cat Diary,

and so on.

They go under the water, up in the sky.

The styles and scope of natural history filming today

is incomparably greater than it was 50 to 100 years ago.

In parallel with society, films are a continually evolving medium.

Just as they reflected attitudes 100 years ago,

programmes today, more than ever before, are shaped by the tastes and the culture we live in.

The popularity of soap operas has even spread into the wildlife film industry.