May 18, 2023 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:22:16
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| How are you, sir? | ||
| What's going on, man? | ||
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unidentified
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Very good. | |
| What an incredible piece of work you put together. | ||
| I mean, I'm so impressed and I loved it so much. | ||
| I mean, I don't even know where to begin. | ||
| Well, I'm very pleased you liked it. | ||
| You tell me, where do you want to begin? | ||
| How did it start? | ||
| Like, how long did it take, first of all, to get embedded to the point where they allowed you to be around them like that? | ||
| Okay, so, I mean... | ||
| We should tell everybody it's Chimp Empire. | ||
| It's Chimp Empire, yeah. | ||
| So a four-part series chronicling this unusual period in the Ngogo chimpanzees' lives, right? | ||
| So we are very, very lucky. | ||
| Basically, there's a scientific project out there that's been working at Ngogo for almost 30 years now. | ||
| So scientists, when they first arrived, the chimpanzees were not habituated to humans at all. | ||
| So they kind of came knowing there was a big group of chimps out there, but they didn't know anything about how many there were or who they were. | ||
| And they had to go through this process of habituation, which basically means sort of following them around and getting them used to humans observing them. | ||
| the chimps would just run off. | ||
| They'd have total fear for humans. | ||
| So they weren't even able to see them, let alone study them. | ||
| But they gradually overcame that fear and to the point where the scientists can just arrive with their notebooks and gently follow them around kind of within the group every day. | ||
| So after years of doing that, it makes it possible for a film crew to come in and kind of literally walk in their footsteps So that process of actually being accepted into the chimpanzees group, we had this previous scientific project that enabled us to do that. | ||
| And in terms of for the series, we had like 400 filming days. | ||
| We knew that we wanted to be sort of observing them in detail and from sort of within the group. | ||
| And yeah, we were able to do that. | ||
| We had a great crew, lightweight equipment, and sort of followed them around constantly for about 400 days. | ||
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unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Wow. | ||
| I mean, the footage you guys acquired, it's really amazing. | ||
| I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| It's like a chimp was carrying around a camera. | ||
| Was there any moment where they interacted with you guys where you thought maybe you were threatened or in danger? | ||
| You know, if you're filming lines or something from a sort of safari vehicle, you film them with a long lens and you're kind of spying on them from a distance. | ||
| So they might sort of clock that you're in a car from a long way away, but you're observing them and you're kind of not part of it. | ||
| You're looking in from the outside. | ||
| With chimps, partly because of the habitat they live in, right? | ||
| It's a dense rainforest. | ||
| So if you were 50 meters away, you can't see anything. | ||
| So you need to be close to the chimps to observe and film them. | ||
| And also, it wouldn't be a good idea to try and creep around and hide from them. | ||
| They wouldn't like that. | ||
| So you peacefully, gently make your presence known. | ||
| And they acknowledge you when you turn up. | ||
| They're certainly checking you out. | ||
| But then they go about their daily business and it's incredible how little interaction they have and how little that they sort of ever even come close to interacting with you. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| But what about if you have food or something that they want? | ||
| Do they get curious about things like that? | ||
| You know, they're very careful there. | ||
| The scientists for years have sort of made sure that, you know, the strict rules that you can't take – you take food in, but it's in concealed containers. | ||
| You don't eat in front of the chimps. | ||
| That's exactly the sort of thing that could cause a situation if there was some association with food or something that you had that they wanted. | ||
| So that's really carefully managed and they don't associate you with food and they just treat you as a sort of passive observer. | ||
| Having said that, you know, you're right in there and, you know, they could be just sitting around peacefully sort of playing or grooming each other or they could be doing something quite aggressive and they could be fighting or they could be patrolling for another group or hunting. | ||
| And then, even though none of it is sort of targeted at you, they are behaving in a way that can be quite intimidating around you. | ||
| I think the most disturbing thing to me with chimps is, well, there's two things. | ||
| One, that they murder each other. | ||
| But two, the hunting of the monkeys. | ||
| Watching them hunt and kill and eat monkeys is so weird. | ||
| Was David Attenborough the first one to capture that on film? | ||
| I don't know whether he was the first one. | ||
| I think Jane Goodall, back in the day, when she was doing the... | ||
| Well, she still has the Gombe Chimp site, but I think she and maybe a Nat Geo team, I think they sort of documented it for the first time. | ||
| And at that point, nobody knew this happened. | ||
| And then I think on a David Attenborough project, it was documented as well. | ||
| But Inungogo, you know, they're the biggest group ever known. | ||
| And they are a very strong and powerful group. | ||
| And there's a lot of males. | ||
| And it is often the males that are involved in the hunting. | ||
| And they have taken hunting monkeys to another level. | ||
| Was that... | ||
| What is that like to witness live? | ||
| Because primates eating primates, I don't know why, but it's just... | ||
| It doesn't feel right. | ||
| This is visceral reactions. | ||
| I think, yeah, it feels... | ||
| You know, because you kind of group primates together and we're sort of separate in a way. | ||
| That's how you think of them anyway. | ||
| And I think also you spend so much... | ||
| You know, if you're interested in chimps or you spend time around them... | ||
| You're constantly making connections between you and them. | ||
| So you're feeling, even though it's kind of a one-way thing, you're feeling those similarities all the time. | ||
| But then you see how they behave to other primates, and it's shocking. | ||
| You can't believe that, as sophisticated as they are and how connected you feel to them, You know, they don't feel that sort of level of compassion or empathy for other primates at all. | ||
| And they are, yeah, they hunt them regularly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How many did you witness them kill? | ||
| It was quite a lot. | ||
| I mean, you know, it's a completely sort of true, authentic story that we documented. | ||
| So everything in there is what happened and in the order that it happened. | ||
| But obviously we were there for 400 days, so there's quite a lot of things that we filmed that didn't make it in. | ||
| Now we didn't keep anything back that we thought was relevant to the story, but there are sometimes other examples or other hunts. | ||
| Hunts is a really good example. | ||
| You know, we didn't put in the series every time they hunted a monkey because it would be a lot of hunting monkeys. | ||
| We saw it quite a lot. | ||
| You know, I remember on the second shoot, but it was the first time a new camera crew had come out. | ||
| I was with one of the camerawomen, Lauren, and she was a really experienced woman in filming in hostile and remote locations, but had never filmed chimps before and wasn't really used to the environment. | ||
| And on our first day out, they hunted a big black and white colobus monkey. | ||
| And, you know, I mean, it's everything that goes along with it. | ||
| It's the sort of the cooperation, the teamwork. | ||
| You know, there's a tension in the air when you know that they're going to hunt, they've decided to hunt. | ||
| But it's not on yet. | ||
| And they're sort of moving around the forest trying to get in a position where they can successfully catch this monkey. | ||
| But then once they go for it, then they're just chasing it. | ||
| And it's chaos. | ||
| And, you know, they are organized in a way they know exactly what they're doing. | ||
| But you're sort of running around after it and you quite often don't know exactly what's happening. | ||
| Where's the monkey? | ||
| Where are the chimps? | ||
| And she was just like... | ||
| Where am I? Like, what have I got myself into? | ||
| But she was absolutely amazing because she sort of, you know, held the shots and a lot of what she filmed that day is in the series, actually. | ||
| But, I don't know, the energy, when you're there and you're watching it, the energy of the whole thing takes over. | ||
| And, you know, maybe this isn't a good thing, but I think when you have seen it quite a few times and you accept it as part of the natural relationship between these two species... | ||
| desensitized to it. | ||
| And yeah, I remember the first time I saw it being very shocked. | ||
| But once you've seen it quite a lot and you know it's a natural part of their lives, you don't feel the same way about it, actually. | ||
| Is that their preferred food, do you think? | ||
| Well, they're mainly fruit eaters, ripe fruit specialists. | ||
| So, you know, their territory is filled with fruiting trees. | ||
| And those trees fruit at different times and at different cycles. | ||
| And they have this incredible knowledge of all the trees that are in their territory. | ||
| And they have a good idea about when they're going to come into fruit as well. | ||
| So they're always moving around this vast territory and sort of checking out what's in fruit and what isn't. | ||
| And they'll know that something's not quite ripe yet, but that'll stay there. | ||
| And they'll come back and they'll feed off that tree in the days immediately after. | ||
| So that's really, to survive, they depend on fruit. | ||
| Monkeys seem to provide a different purpose in the chimpanzee community. | ||
| They're definitely valuable from a nutritional point of view, but there seems to be other things going on as to why they hunt. | ||
| I'm going to use some of the wrong terms here that scientists probably wouldn't support, but they do seem to enjoy it. | ||
| It does seem to provide some sort of cooperative function. | ||
| It's not sport, but at the same time, it's not purely for survival. | ||
| There's something else there. | ||
| And I think when you watch them share meat after they've hunted a monkey, that's when some of its sort of function becomes clear because who catches the monkey and then who gets a share of that becomes a really political business. | ||
| And that feels, you know, from our perspective watching it, that suddenly it all sort of fell into place a little bit because who gets meat and who doesn't has a sort of, it's very political. | ||
| Yeah, it seemed like that in the documentary, particularly when the female with the baby got some, and the one male that didn't got very upset and attacked her. | ||
| Yeah, that's a kind of a classic example of it, or... | ||
| Yeah, you know, they're all there trying to get a piece of meat because they want to, but it risks upsetting other chimps. | ||
| Because there's only so much meat. | ||
| There's only so much. | ||
| Not a lot of chimps. | ||
| Yeah, and the strongest alliances are being served in that situation. | ||
| So sometimes chimps get a scrap here or there. | ||
| In that particular incident, she made it away with quite a big share of the monkey. | ||
| And I think, you know, I wasn't there filming that particular moment, but I remember the crew saying when they came back, it did feel like that's trouble, actually. | ||
| Good for you for getting a share, but actually you're going to get into trouble somehow. | ||
| But because, you know, whether she was aware that there was somebody who's, you know, a high-ranking male was being excluded at the same time. | ||
| So there was this tension between the males. | ||
| And then this was further complicated by a female getting a share. | ||
| And then he just blew his lid. | ||
| It's just so fascinating to watch the communication and just the politics that are involved and all the negotiation and the way they treat each other. | ||
| Was that surprising to you that it was so complex? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I mean, I've worked with chimps before. | ||
| You know, I'm not a chimps scientist. | ||
| You know, I'm not an expert in that sense. | ||
| But I have, you know, I've done a film myself a few years earlier on the Ngogo chimps. | ||
| And I also worked on another one years previously. | ||
| So... | ||
| So some of that I knew, and in part that was why we made the series, that we knew there was going to be this level of complexity. | ||
| But we'd never, and I don't think anyone has ever committed that much sort of filming resource and dedication to that intense of a period. | ||
| So we sort of seemed to be able to record it at a level of detail that I hadn't seen before and I don't think anybody else has. | ||
| And that, so that did surprise us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it surprised me personally. | ||
| It's the sense of awareness. | ||
| Like, you know, as far as we know, there's quite limited vocal communication with chimps. | ||
| You know, they make sort of, they make food grunts, which tells other chimps that they're enjoying some food. | ||
| They make pant grunts, which are a sort of, oh, oh, oh, oh. | ||
| This noise that they make to each other, which is a signal of submission. | ||
| And there are various calls. | ||
| But as far as we know, there's not a huge amount of complexity in that. | ||
| There's not a lot of language. | ||
| The amazing thing is that there seems to be some other level of communication going on, that they somehow know what each other are about to do. | ||
| Or in some circumstances they don't and they're surprised and it causes conflict. | ||
| But I think about particularly when you watch chimps go on patrol, right? | ||
| They patrol their borders, the borders of their territory. | ||
| And they do that in silence, and they do that for a reason, because they don't want anybody outside their territory to know where they are. | ||
| But how to coordinate that when they're not making any noise to each other at all? | ||
| They're looking at each other, and they appear to be reading each other's intentions, and they kind of know, without anybody saying anything, that we're going on patrol now. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| That was very fascinating. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I was trying to figure it out myself. | ||
| Like, how are they coordinating this? | ||
| Like, how do they know? | ||
| You know, I had endless conversations with the scientists at AT&GoGo about that. | ||
| You know, they're stumped as well because there aren't really any signals that this is about to happen. | ||
| And, you know, they'll be lying around or grooming or doing something completely disconnected. | ||
| And then one chimp will get up and just start walking off in the direction of the border and And then the others will join. | ||
| And then as they start moving closer to the border, the amount they vocalise just goes down and down and down to the point of being completely silent. | ||
| And yeah, it's a mystery. | ||
| There must be something going on there. | ||
| And often... | ||
| You know, maybe it's associated with specific individual chimps who the other chimps know that those guys are patrol leaders. | ||
| You know, years ago, in the early days when the scientists were first there, There was a chimp called Ellington, and he was the patrol leader when Ngogo was one big group. | ||
| He never showed any real interest in the dominance hierarchy, so he never made a play to be alpha. | ||
| Didn't really seem that bothered. | ||
| He was a high-ranking male, but he was not engaged in that internal dominance struggle at all, really. | ||
| But of all the patrols that they witnessed there, Ellington was the one who was present for the most and quite often leading them. | ||
| So he seemed to have this attraction to that behaviour or this ability or desire to To go and patrol their borders more than other chimps. | ||
| And maybe in some ways that explains the lack of communication, that it's actually the very fact of Ellington getting up and moving off for no apparent reason does communicate to the other chimps, okay, we're going to go on patrol now. | ||
| And, you know, the sort of modern version of Ellington, who was around during our filming period, is a chimpanzee called Rollins, who similarly has never shown any real interest to make it to the alpha position. | ||
| While all the other males are sort of, you know, jostling for position there, and you get the feeling that ultimately they all want to be on that top spot, and they'll just get as high as they can. | ||
| Rollins doesn't seem to have that desire, or certainly it doesn't appear so, but he is the patrol leader. | ||
| He's always out there in front and taking the Western group on patrols, and they do it a lot, and it's very often him. | ||
| And what was interesting was that his younger brother, who really is just an adolescent chimp, Damien, he was just kind of coming of age or just come of age when we started filming for Chimp Empire. | ||
| And he really grew into that role during our filming period. | ||
| He became Rowlands' sort of second-in-command during that period. | ||
| And they were so... | ||
| I mean, they look very similar anyway. | ||
| They're very different ages, actually. | ||
| They've got the same father, different mother. | ||
| Very different ages, but they look the same. | ||
| But they don't know that they're brothers. | ||
| But for some reason, they have this extremely close connection and both appear to have a real desire to engage in this territorial behaviour. | ||
| It's so wild to watch because there's sentries, there's ones that are on the lookout, they hold a particular post, and there's no communication. | ||
| I mean, that doesn't appear to be. | ||
| I mean, this is the thing. | ||
| I've often asked about, how is this functioning? | ||
| You know, you don't, like I say, other parts of their lives, they're making vocalizations and signals that even though you don't understand what they are, you can start to see patterns, like the food grunts, for instance. | ||
| You know, that's a very, it's a unique sound, and they make it when they're enjoying food. | ||
| And then the rest of chimps gather and they enjoy the same food. | ||
| So there's a clear way to observe that and to try and understand what it means. | ||
| But patrols are, yeah, they've, you know, we know a lot about them through the scientists at N'Goga and through observing them ourselves, but there are mysterious elements to it that nobody understands. | ||
| Do you think it's taught behavior, like the main ones had to learn this out of necessity and then everybody else sort of observed this behavior and recognized the importance of it? | ||
| I think it's a good point because... | ||
| We were thinking about that a bit. | ||
| When we were there, so Burgle, this young chimp who was just sort of coming of age, he started attending patrols. | ||
| So he's young, he's only 10 years old. | ||
| But he's an orphan so he'd always hung out with older males anyway. | ||
| And during our filming period he just really started becoming a more frequent attendee of these patrols. | ||
| Now they're dangerous and most younger chimps won't do that. | ||
| But, yeah, you wonder whether that's where it kind of starts, that you're mimicking the chimpanzees that you want to be friends with, and you want to be like, and you know that this is just something you see them do, so you do it with them. | ||
| And if you do it regularly enough... | ||
| Exactly that. | ||
| You don't need to communicate that much. | ||
| You all know each other extremely well. | ||
| You know by the way you're walking and the direction you're heading and who's there, what it is you're doing. | ||
| So maybe there's just a lot of that. | ||
| Did you wonder if somehow or another there's some sort of telepathy? | ||
| I mean, some sort of communication that we don't understand, whether it's pheromones or something? | ||
| Personally, I wondered all sorts of those things. | ||
| You know, what is it? | ||
| Is there some other signal? | ||
| You know, I mean, until there's proof for that, it's just pure speculation, but there's a gap in the understanding there, from a scientific point of view. | ||
| And, you know, like I say, if they were here today, the scientists from Rungoga, they would be saying the same thing, that we don't know exactly how those patrols are instigated and how the chimps involved know that they're on patrol. | ||
| We do not know that. | ||
| So, you know, that leaves your imagination to run wild a little bit. | ||
| Certainly the way that... | ||
| I mean, I think telepathy is maybe a bit strong, but I mean, who knows? | ||
| We don't know that it's not happening. | ||
| I imagine, from my personal point of view, there seems to be quite a lot of sort of signalling through eye movement. | ||
| Again, this isn't supported by the scientific data necessarily, but... | ||
| There's, you know, they're very sensitive to where each other are looking, or at least they appear to be. | ||
| And I remember one chimp, he sadly died, although he leaves a lot of offspring at N'Gogo. | ||
| But there was a chimp that featured in a film I made a few years ago at N'Gogo, and his name was Pinsa. | ||
| And when I first saw shots of Pinsa, I felt this, like, something different about this chimp. | ||
| And I don't know what it is. | ||
| And in hindsight, I can't really believe that I couldn't spot it, but there was something that just seemed very human about him. | ||
| I was sort of looking more closely, and I realised Pinsa had sort of completely white sclera, like you and I, right? | ||
| So, you know, when I look over like that, you know exactly where I'm looking, and that's a very, it's an important part of human cooperation. | ||
| We follow each other's gaze, and therefore you know what it is I'm interested in, or maybe what I'm about to do. | ||
| But in chimps, I was reading around it after I saw this chimp pincer with his white sclera, whites of the eyes. | ||
| Officially, chimps don't have this characteristic. | ||
| They're supposed to all have, like, brown... | ||
| Where we have whites of the eyes, they have brown. | ||
| So the difference in color between the iris and here is less similar. | ||
| Oh, there we are. | ||
| Okay, I mean, it's a good one. | ||
| That's not even the best sort of picture of Pinsa. | ||
| And obviously you can see a bit of discoloration. | ||
| They look like quite unhealthy whites of the eyes there. | ||
| He has a very defined difference between his iris and whites of the eyes. | ||
| So with Pinsa, even at a distance, you can see where he's looking. | ||
| That may not seem like much, but in a species where we don't fully understand their communication or they appear to be doing things without any vocalizations, I wondered, like, you know, how come Pinsa's got this and what impact does it have? | ||
| I talked to, you know, there are other examples, actually, and there was a chimp in Gombe, I think he was called Mr. Wurzel, who had a very good example of whites of the eyes as well. | ||
| But we started looking into it at Ngogo, and I started talking to the scientists about it. | ||
| And they were like, well, yeah, Pencil does have whites to the eyes. | ||
| We've never really thought about it that much. | ||
| And it's not that they didn't notice, but as filmmakers with our lenses and things, we're often looking at the chimps in a level of detail that the scientists don't see every day. | ||
| So in a way, we're sort of providing them with some sort of visual data that was of interest. | ||
| And actually, they did a proper study on it at N'Gogo and tried to find how many chimps at N'Gogo had this sort of whites of the eyes. | ||
| And they found, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was quite a reasonable percentage of it. | ||
| You know, Pincel's a great example, but had some version of that. | ||
| They don't know why this is, but in my sort of excited sort of way, I was thinking, well, here's the biggest group of chimps ever known. | ||
| They cooperate on levels that you don't see regularly in other chimpanzee groups. | ||
| You know, they're on these territorial boundary patrols all the time. | ||
| They hunt all the time. | ||
| They're very successful on a cooperative level and they appear to be doing these things in silence. | ||
| What role do these whites of the eyes play? | ||
| And, you know, anecdotally, the scientists kind of agreed that there was, you know, there's a possibility that it does play some role. | ||
| Like I say, you know, they're scientists, you know, so it's different. | ||
| They need the data to support that. | ||
| But there was, you know, what's interesting about Pinsa is that even though he never made it to the top either, but he fathered a huge number of offspring and he was always there on these cooperative behaviours. | ||
| So he's as if there's a hunt going on, Pinsa's around. | ||
| So this was, like I say, it was just my hypothesis from a non-scientific point of view, but I thought he played a sort of disproportionate role in sort of cooperative behaviours. | ||
| But again, it's just an area... | ||
| They know an absolute ton about the chimps in Gogo. | ||
| It is incredible, from behaviour, genetics, everything. | ||
| They've studied that group of chimps very thoroughly. | ||
| But there's still a lot they don't know. | ||
| So this whites of the eyes characteristic, this is a very unusual characteristic. | ||
| It's very unusual genetic variation. | ||
| It is. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Do his offspring have this? | ||
| That's exactly what the scientists wanted to know, because obviously for it to be of evolutionary benefit, it needs to persist. | ||
| His offspring don't actually, not in a way that, you know, if every kid that Pinsa had came out with these eyes, you would suddenly think, well, he has a little mutation. | ||
| He's been reproductively successful. | ||
| And this could help and it could actually change. | ||
| But no, they didn't find that, actually. | ||
| So, you know, for instance, Rollins, who's the patrol leader in the West, that's Pence's son. | ||
| And he doesn't have that. | ||
| He's got incredible eyes, actually. | ||
| They're very piercing, but he doesn't have the same eyes. | ||
| How common is that variation? | ||
| I say we because the scientists generously made me an author on the paper and I think, you know, I didn't do any of the real science work on it at all. | ||
| But I think because of the conversations we were having, it sort of inspired that particular study. | ||
| I think they found that there was, again, don't quote me on the numbers, but something in the order of sort of 13 individuals at N'Gogo. | ||
| So a non-trivial percentage. | ||
| That sounds very science-y, but it means that it was a significant percentage, enough to take note of. | ||
| And And that's as far as the study's got. | ||
| They don't really understand the impact of that, if it has any impact at all. | ||
| You know, it could just be random variation. | ||
| And because N'Gogo is such a huge group... | ||
| You know, you would expect to see more variety and more incidences of things that occur on low levels. | ||
| So they still really don't understand the role of that. | ||
| But it was interesting to me on two levels. | ||
| I thought it was fascinating because it made me just wonder about what's going on behind those eyes. | ||
| But also as a human, you just engage with pincer in this, you know, it's like suddenly there's a part of his face that feels a lot more familiar. | ||
| I remember one of the scientists who was there years ago when I was there, Kevin Potts. | ||
| And like I say, they'd say different things around the fire at night as to what they'd say in the scientific papers. | ||
| I remember Kevin going, oh, I'm totally with you on Pinsa. | ||
| And he said, honestly, someday I'll be out there following Pinsa around and he's just sitting there close to me. | ||
| And I just think, any minute he's going to just turn around and say, what are you doing, Kevin? | ||
| There he is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, look at those eyes. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| He's... | ||
| So unusual. | ||
| He was remarkable. | ||
| I mean, that's Kevin Langegraver, one of the scientists from Ngogo that... | ||
| Yeah, I mean, everybody loved Pinsa and everybody was very, very engaged with him. | ||
| But even at a distance, you see. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You see, what's he thinking? | ||
| What is he about to do? | ||
| Um... | ||
| And you have to wonder, it makes us think that. | ||
| So, are the other chimps reading anything from that? | ||
| Was there any correlation between chimps that have that characteristic and specific roles they play in the tribe? | ||
| Well, I mean, as we said, it's, you know, it's a small portion of them and very little sort of, they've done no specific study on it. | ||
| But Pinsa was the best example. | ||
| He appeared to be more involved in the cooperative behaviours than your average chimp. | ||
| You know, that's what, you know, the scientists in Gogo were saying, you know, when there's a hunt, Pinsa's there. | ||
| You know, when there's a patrol, he's there. | ||
| But chimps without white sclera would be doing that as well. | ||
| The interesting thing about Pinsa was how many offspring he had. | ||
| You know, he never... | ||
| He was actually a low-ranking male his whole life. | ||
| And he had the same number of offspring as the alpha male at the time. | ||
| So he is an alpha male that sort of dedicated his entire life to knocking off other guys on his way to the top and all the stress associated with being an alpha male at N'Gogo. | ||
| And actually, you know, ultimately it's all about having kids. | ||
| And he had fewer kids than Pinter, who had just hung out at number 18, number 19, you know, shying away from fights, but was very successful. | ||
| But those things could be completely unrelated because... | ||
| Pinsa was also fascinating in that he had a different sort of strategy with females as well. | ||
| He spent a lot of time with females in ways that some of the higher ranking males didn't. | ||
| So they wouldn't really spend much time with the females, concentrate on their male relationships. | ||
| And then when the females, you know, were in a reproductive state, an oestrus, then they'd go, alright, okay, now it's time, and use their position to gain access to her. | ||
| Whereas Pinsa played the more sort of girlfriend-type game. | ||
| He'd spend a lot of time with females, even when they weren't reproductively... | ||
| In that state. | ||
| So it wasn't for immediate benefits. | ||
| But he spent a lot of time. | ||
| He put the hours in. | ||
| And yeah, the Ugandan field trackers, they used to love Pinsa. | ||
| And they used to describe these different female chimps as Pinsa's girlfriends and Pinsa's wives, depending on how much time he spent with them. | ||
| But he spent a lot of time with females. | ||
| So... | ||
| Is it anything to do with the whites of the eyes? | ||
| He was just a fascinating chimp and he did things in a bit of a different way to what your average male chimp is expected to do. | ||
| It's so interesting that he has that characteristic and then he also exhibits behavior that's slightly more human. | ||
| And clever. | ||
| I totally agree. | ||
| You're encouraging me in loads of ways in which the scientists are like, you've got to. | ||
| There's no proof for that, James. | ||
| There's no proof for that. | ||
| It's okay to speculate. | ||
| I'm with Joe now, so we can go down there. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, you can get really fascinated and carried away with those things. | ||
| And the thing is, there's loads we just simply don't understand about it. | ||
| So all of that is possible. | ||
| But yeah, in scientific world, you need that proof, that data to support it. | ||
| But like I said, privately, everybody adored Pinsir and was fascinated by him and knew there was something different. | ||
| Well, I appreciate the intellectual discipline, separating it that way and saying there is no real scientific evidence. | ||
| But my goodness, it's so fascinating. | ||
| The whole thing was incredible. | ||
| I mean, I feel like I learned more watching those chimps from your documentary than anything. | ||
| And I've been obsessed with chimps, like you see with a skull and everything, my whole life. | ||
| I think they're so interesting. | ||
| They're so close to us. | ||
| I mean and you know at one point in time we were sort of in the same group of hominids and something happened to us and they sort of remain the same. | ||
| I think out of all the animals that human beings have ever studied, none of them are as fascinating as chimpanzees. | ||
| Because of our direct connection to them, our close relation to them, I totally agree. | ||
| I mean, you know, some people love animals because they're different in different ways. | ||
| And some people don't like chimps because they're very similar in some ways that are really good and in some ways which are quite dark. | ||
| You know, there are lots of similarities. | ||
| You know, there are important differences as well, and I think that is what makes them so fascinating. | ||
| If they were really, really similar, then it would be too similar. | ||
| The intrigue is sort of where does that similarity end and the differences begin, and I think... | ||
| That's a very personal experience watching chimps. | ||
| I think that's why people find it so cool as well. | ||
| You relate to different qualities in them as a species or different individuals. | ||
| I hope that's what we did for Chimp Empire because we tried to pick a real range of perspectives. | ||
| Because they are complex creatures. | ||
| They are all different. | ||
| And, you know, you can say chimpanzees are like this or chimpanzees are like that or a chimpanzee of this age does this or that. | ||
| And some of those generalisms are true and are useful. | ||
| But that sort of individual variation, that difference in personality from chimp to chimp that really affects what happens to them and what they do and who they have relationships with, that's what's really fascinating. | ||
| And I think as a human just, yeah, you gravitate towards different qualities and different chimp characters. | ||
| No, I think you did a fantastic job of highlighting that. | ||
| It's so compelling and so interesting. | ||
| What is it like to be embedded with this tribe? | ||
| For so long and then go back to regular civilization. | ||
| Is there like a bit of an adjustment period? | ||
| Well, we were there as a team. | ||
| We were there for about 400 days. | ||
| So that's a huge, totally missed. | ||
| The team members, our human team members, swapped in and out. | ||
| So the camera crew, which was made up of four people usually, two on each group, they'd do sort of between six weeks and two months at a time. | ||
| And then they'd come out and leave the forest, leave Uganda, come back home, get their lives in order, you know, have some rest. | ||
| And then they'd come out for another two months when the second team was finished, and we sort of tag-teamed the camera crews. | ||
| I was not out nearly as often as the camera crew, so I personally would go out at the start of the shoots and help set up with the camera teams and introduce them to what we were trying to do and the characters we were following and how we wanted to film them. | ||
| At the same time, it's a real sort of observational documentary. | ||
| So my role in it was to try and give them a good sense of the overall approach that we were taking, the dedication that we wanted to film specific characters day after day after day, and that Only after filming them, in that sort of level of commitment, are we going to really get a sense of who they are. | ||
| And that involves filming chimps when they're not doing stuff that's very interesting. | ||
| I remember early days, Gus, who's one of my favourite chimps, the antisocial adolescent, I just thought he was going to be an interesting character from the start. | ||
| But the camera team who were sort of tasked with following him for miles and hours and hours during the day, they were coming back at the start and going, you know, I don't know about this Gus guy. | ||
| He doesn't do a lot and he's often on his own. | ||
| And they'd be hearing all this commotion over this other part of the forest. | ||
| And as a camera person, it's like... | ||
| I'm filming the guy who doesn't do anything. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Where's Jackson? | ||
| I can hear Jackson kicking off. | ||
| And, you know, they're jealous of the people who had the more sort of immediately exciting targets. | ||
| But that was what we had to do to bring that diversity of characters to life is that, you know, some characters won't do a lot on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| But then when they do... | ||
| And you're fully invested in them and you're with them. | ||
| And it was his inactivity that was kind of Gus's story, actually. | ||
| He was often on his own, which meant he wasn't doing a lot because he's just him in the trees. | ||
| But then when he came out of that sort of isolation and tried to groom someone, desperately trying to make a friend, you were with him. | ||
| You know, you're like, oh, this guy, he's coming to the group. | ||
| Maybe he's going to Maybe someone's going to groom him back. | ||
| So it was, yeah, it was important to follow that range of characters. | ||
| But being sort of immersed for that long, you know, it's an incredible experience. | ||
| And I think that for everybody involved in it, that was part of it. | ||
| You're living, you literally live within the N'Gogo chimpanzee territory because the The scientific study has a camp. | ||
| It's like this small island in the middle of the Ngogo territory. | ||
| It's a completely pristine rainforest in every direction, but there's a little clearing, and it's been there for decades. | ||
| And there's a selection of sort of tents and little log cabins, very low impact and small, but that's where the scientists and the Ugandan field trackers stay every year when they go out there. | ||
| And we stayed there. | ||
| But being immersed in it, even at night time, you know, where you can hear the sounds of the forest and you know the chimps are out there sleeping not that far from you, That really helps with engaging in their lives, actually. | ||
| Had we been able to sort of like nip in and out and stay in a hotel outside, you know, everybody wanted, you know, you miss the comforts a lot, you know, and when you do get out, you love it. | ||
| But it was an important part of the process to be properly immersed and to live in the forest and it just, it helped you sort of feel what they feel a little bit. | ||
| I would imagine that the coordination of filming and then the editing process of trying to piece together a narrative is incredibly complex and difficult because you have 400 days of footage that you want to boil down to four shows. | ||
| It is very difficult. | ||
| And I think, you know, we couldn't know, we had ambitions for it, but we couldn't know how successful we were going to be at it. | ||
| You know, I mean, I'm... | ||
| We managed to film a lot more than I ever expected. | ||
| So the schedule and the technical workflow, you know, batteries charging, how you offload all the footage each day, the dailies. | ||
| All of that stuff was sort of based on an assumption that we wouldn't have the level of access that we actually had. | ||
| And the team was so good. | ||
| And the cameras had evolved quite a lot since I was filming Chimps even a few years previously. | ||
| So we got an enormous amount of footage. | ||
| It's also just working with a team of scientists who just totally believed in it and enabled us to get that level of access, helped us predict what was going to happen, where they were going to go. | ||
| So we filmed a lot more than I ever expected. | ||
| And yeah, condensing that down and simplifying it into a four-part series was a huge challenge. | ||
| Like I said, from the beginning, we were totally disciplined about certain things, you know. | ||
| However, we were going to tell the story that unfolded over that 18 months. | ||
| There's not the option to make things up or create stories that didn't happen. | ||
| The challenge was going to be, what do we not use, basically? | ||
| We filmed a lot more than we ever needed and we did that in terms of range of characters as well. | ||
| There are whole character storylines that we filmed that didn't make it in. | ||
| So that's where we were, that's where our editing process and our sort of creative approach to it. | ||
| Was that we're going to be able to make these really dramatic and accessible stories by a mission, by what we don't have in. | ||
| But that process is sort of like a sculpting process. | ||
| You sort of come back with a hundred hours worth of footage off one shoot and we did six shoots. | ||
| And then you sort of go through that and just gradually sculpt it down to the characters and the moments in those character stories that you feel are the most interesting or reflect what really happened. | ||
| Now, what is that process like? | ||
| Well, first of all, you said you have these camps. | ||
| Is there electricity in these camps? | ||
| No, nothing. | ||
| So how are you recharging batteries? | ||
| So a combination of solar and generators. | ||
| So we had a couple of generators that we would stick on for certain little hour slots during the day. | ||
| And that would cover downloading the footage when it came back and also charging batteries and radios as well. | ||
| So we had a few electrical needs that... | ||
| That the scientists didn't have and weren't set up for. | ||
| So there were some things we needed to do. | ||
| Yeah, we had two generators. | ||
| We tried to use them as infrequently as possible because even though they were quiet for a generator, but still you don't want to be chugging away and using up fuel in a sort of low impact situation there. | ||
| But we did need a bit of power. | ||
| But we're always able to offload cards and charge batteries and then we're ready for the next day. | ||
| And then you have to do it again and again and again. | ||
| I would imagine that at the end of the day there probably has to be a very complex system of No, that and tried to piece together a storyline and to know on what cards and what hard drives you have what data because you're not uploading it anywhere correct do you know internet access | ||
| no nice it's all that This is quite technical stuff. | ||
| If you're interested in that, I can get into it. | ||
| Yeah, please, please. | ||
| So, yeah, and we went through loads of sort of working out how do we make sense of this? | ||
| Did you coordinate this in advance before the expedition began? | ||
| Yeah, huge amount of work beforehand on all sorts of things. | ||
| So all the camera, we tested out a ton of cameras. | ||
| So there's lots of things on the technical camera side that we had to, and that involved going to local forests in the UK. This is in terms of capabilities. | ||
| Low light capability and weight and ease of use because, yeah. | ||
| Not to get distracted by that. | ||
| I'll come back to all the logging and things. | ||
| But the camera side, there's a scientist who was one of the first guys out called David Watts. | ||
| He's a professor at Yale. | ||
| He's a very big deal, very eminent scientist. | ||
| But he chose for his own personal purpose Interest to carry around a little camcorder. | ||
| Not from day one when he was there, but very early from when he first went to see the chimps in the early 90s. | ||
| He carried around a tiny little palm camcorder. | ||
| Mini DV tapes or something at the time. | ||
| And he's had various versions over the years as they've got. | ||
| A bit more modern, but something that's about 400 grams that he could just stick in his backpack with a bottle of water. | ||
| Over the years, he's filmed things that no film crew has ever managed to get. | ||
| Now, he films them like a scientist. | ||
| It's video data for him. | ||
| You know, he's not filming it for, you know, it's not a 4K Netflix production. | ||
| But he's just filmed moments in their lives that have just been impossible for film crews, carrying enormous equipment, very heavy tripods, so they're stable in the forest, giant long lenses. | ||
| Traditionally, film crews have only really managed to capture small parts of their lives. | ||
| Whereas David was filming these incredible things regularly. | ||
| It just felt like he had this amazing access. | ||
| And I remember thinking, if we can find some version of that where we have the same level of access that David has, but with cameras, with new technology that will deliver for a sort of 4K Netflix production. | ||
| You know, so in the end, I mean, if I had the camera on the table now, you'd be like, well, that doesn't look very small. | ||
| And it was, you know, and the camera crew would be like, well, they were quite heavy, actually. | ||
| And you had to carry them around in backpacks. | ||
| But they were significantly lighter and easier to use than things that would normally be used on those sorts of shoes. | ||
| So that made an enormous difference. | ||
| And I think that... | ||
| But in a way, that's related to this huge volume of footage. | ||
| So we sort of came up with this fantastic setup with the cameras, but it allowed these camera people who were fit as well and just like super keen to just film all sorts of things that we didn't expect to get. | ||
| Then we have this huge challenge where we've got volumes of footage that, you know, often with things that you kind of, you know, you might film a grooming scene for sort of two hours and then in the end you only want to use a few shots of it. | ||
| You know, you're still representing what happened there, but you've got this huge volume of stuff to cut out. | ||
| So yeah, long months before we ever went there. | ||
| We're trying to work out how we're going to organize this stuff. | ||
| And we need to organize it, like, when it's fresh. | ||
| Because we need to know who's in that shot. | ||
| We can't just end up in the edit with, like, 300 hours of, like, who's that chimp again? | ||
| Oh, I think that's Carter. | ||
| You know, you just can't do any of that stuff. | ||
| So I imagine, like, I imagine reality series do a similar thing, actually. | ||
| The sort of observational docs where you're just filming a ton of people all the time or CCTV-style stuff. | ||
| But for us, we needed to straight away back up the footage and then assess what we had. | ||
| And every single shot needs to be logged with which chimps are in that shot, what are they doing, what are the conditions, and then there's all the data that's built into it that says when it was and even in some case GPS information. | ||
| So all of that went into every single shot. | ||
| So at the end of it, we've got this enormous library and this cool bit of software where you can go, I'm pretty sure I know the story beats that we've recorded with Gus, but let's just type in Gus and bring up every shot of Gus that we got over the year. | ||
| And it would go, and then that's Gus, everything that we've got of Gus. | ||
| And so, you know, we had to, once we knew the characters that we wanted to be viewing this story through, we were able to sort of concentrate on them and sort of build out of the narrative that we filmed there. | ||
| Yeah, build their storylines in parallel to the storylines with the group. | ||
| Now that there's cell phones that are capable of 4K, and you're talking about how this one scientist was able to get access with this very small camcorder, was there any thought of using cell phones? | ||
| Because they're so small now and the cameras are so good. | ||
| They are, and they are really good. | ||
| In the forest, they are less good, actually, because it's a real low-light situation. | ||
| And you don't have the ability with... | ||
| You can zoom in on most phones, can't you? | ||
| But the quality goes right down. | ||
| It's a digital zoom, so you're not using as much of the sensor. | ||
| Although they are extremely impressive, and when you're in a situation with loads of light, the images look... | ||
| You can blow them up on a screen like that and they look good. | ||
| But they don't actually compare to professional cameras in that type of situation. | ||
| But when you're talking about this one scientist that had this very tiny camera and all the incredible footage that he was able to get, I would imagine that with cell phones today, particularly with these, there's various add-on lenses, little cases that you could put on a small cell phone. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It wasn't... | ||
| I don't think we didn't think about it a lot because of the assumptions at the time was that it still wasn't going to be quite enough. | ||
| But I agree. | ||
| I mean, I think there's... | ||
| You know, you'd certainly... | ||
| They would be recording at a level that you wouldn't have been able to before. | ||
| I still think we... | ||
| Our compromise was to try and get the highest quality possible whilst getting that access. | ||
| So like I say, if I actually got the camera out now, you'd be going like, that looks like a pretty big deal. | ||
| You know, it's bigger than these cameras, for instance. | ||
| But... | ||
| But it was still relatively small compared to most nature show setups. | ||
| So when you're filming, you film for 400 days. | ||
| How long is that editing process? | ||
| So, we went through like a huge pre-editing process, which is what I was talking about earlier. | ||
| Going from that, right, this is everything that we've shot, reducing it right down to, you know, the best bits and the most relevant scenes that we'd filmed. | ||
| You know, Gus is quite a good example. | ||
| We would, you know, film him for hours, not doing very much and looking... | ||
| Like he was struggling socially. | ||
| So you don't actually need to make that point and to share that experience with the viewer. | ||
| You only actually need a small amount of that. | ||
| So there's a phase of it where you sort of just reduce it down to everything that you think. | ||
| Boil it right down. | ||
| This was the story that we recorded in its most representative chunks. | ||
| And that really helps. | ||
| You get it right down to a manageable level. | ||
| And then looking at that and thinking, okay, well, how are we going to divide up this narrative across four episodes? | ||
| And obviously that's where we had quite a lot of choice. | ||
| You know, it's... | ||
| The story unfolded in a particular way, but we could choose when to introduce the different groups and we could choose how much to expand certain parts of the story and then how much to sort of compress times during that narrative that we recorded. | ||
| So there are quite a lot of creative choices there. | ||
| Like I say, the overall series at the end, that's what happened. | ||
| But there's a whole load of bits that we sort of compressed because you didn't necessarily need to see this period between that and that, and it wasn't relevant for the story. | ||
| But yeah, editing, so a lot of work done before the edit, because you couldn't have expected any editors to come in and just go, well, you know, there's the rushes. | ||
| Make us a good opening show, will you? | ||
| So loads of work done before the editors got on board. | ||
| But then, yeah, four different editors, about 20 weeks per episode. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, so what's that, like five months or something? | ||
| But you know, that sounds like a really long time, and it is, but you have to be in a position to share a cut with, in this case, Netflix, about halfway through that process. | ||
| So actually, you know... | ||
| Putting together a show that really works and illustrates the story that you've captured in a dramatic way, it takes quite a lot of work. | ||
| And that needs to be representative of where you're going by the time you first show it. | ||
| I would imagine that's one of the biggest challenges of this whole piece, this whole series. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, lots of different challenges along the way. | ||
| And in some ways, like each time you knock off one of the challenges, you know, you feel a bit more relaxed about it. | ||
| I personally, I love being in the edit. | ||
| That's sort of my happy place. | ||
| I mean, I like being in the field. | ||
| I used to like it more when I was younger and fitter, actually. | ||
| Like, it's... | ||
| It's getting harder. | ||
| I mean, it's not like I'm an old man or anything, but the camera crews are younger and fitter than I am and lighter. | ||
| But the edit is, you know, that's... | ||
| I love that part of the process. | ||
| And, you know, you can really... | ||
| You can edit shows in a lot of different ways, and the style and tone and the music and things. | ||
| A lot of the overall feel of the series starts to come to life. | ||
| And I think we are fantastic. | ||
| Editor Sam Rogers, who I've worked with a few times before, and he did the first episode. | ||
| And he did a really, really good job. | ||
| Great instincts for it. | ||
| And we were very well prepared. | ||
| And we, you know, initially we didn't do any sort of narration on it because we wanted to sort of do a test of like, how much are you going to just engage with these chimps? | ||
| And not be told what's happening or what might be about to happen or what that means. | ||
| Let's just do it without any commentary at all to start with. | ||
| And it was a fantastic exercise because then we showed Sarah at Netflix that first cut. | ||
| And everyone loved it. | ||
| And you could follow it. | ||
| And you were just like, you were right in there. | ||
| And you know, in a way, I sort of, in some ways, I missed that first version because it was kind of, it was an odd experience. | ||
| Just sort of like, no, just, we are just going to be following the chimps. | ||
| And the edit and the music and the sound is going to sort of tell us what's happening here. | ||
| You might have liked that because it was a very direct experience with the chimps. | ||
| Have you thought about releasing a different version that doesn't have narration? | ||
| It seems like you have so much footage. | ||
| I would imagine that it's just more people watching. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, in the end, because we've got Mahershala Ali and I just loved that part of the process as well. | ||
| So I think in the end, you know, I thought it was a great exercise, but actually, you know, we wanted it to reach a broad audience. | ||
| We did want another layer of thought process there and some interpretation. | ||
| And, you know, Mahershala did a fantastic job. | ||
| And I think that, you know, yeah, there are other voices we could have had on it that I may have sort of regretted and that may have taken something away from that. | ||
| And I think that that was, yeah, for me that sort of confirmed that, yeah, we lucked out with Mahershala and he was fantastic because it gave it something else. | ||
| It gave it an extra sort of conceptual That I think really, really helps. | ||
| It certainly makes it more relatable to humans. | ||
| It does, yeah. | ||
| It makes it easier to follow along, especially if someone is not completely fascinated with just observing chimp behavior with no narration. | ||
| Yeah, and the thing is, you can't, like stylistically, there's whole sections that you could follow actually without any narration. | ||
| But then that becomes quite an unusual experience if you go like 20 minutes without hearing a word and then Mahershala pops up because you need to know something here about what's at stake. | ||
| You know, and that's often how we sort of tried to shape the narration, was sort of on a need-to-know basis. | ||
| You know, I think we, you know, because the voice really worked, we sort of decided to use it a little bit more. | ||
| But our initial approach was, well, I think in certain situations, you know, for instance, Gus going to groom Abrams or whatever, You need to know what's at stake there. | ||
| You need to know that he doesn't actually have any grooming partners and that this sort of opportunity with a chimp like Abrams could change his situation. | ||
| And you could, you know, partly you could follow that visually, but I think it really, it helped sort of really solidifying some of those thoughts. | ||
| You have so much footage and four shows. | ||
| Has there been thought about expanding this and doing more episodes? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think it would be hard because we sort of... | ||
| Because the series covers the true chronology of events. | ||
| So all the sort of real drama and real things that happened throughout that period... | ||
| You know, represented in the series. | ||
| So quite a lot of the footage that we didn't use are just sort of other examples of the same thing that we didn't, you know, less descriptive versions of, you know, or repeated behaviours and things. | ||
| So there wasn't a lot of things that you sort of feel, ooh, there's a whole other show in there. | ||
| And also they weren't things that, you know, how the series concludes. | ||
| That was really at the end of our final shoot. | ||
| So, the footage that we have is sort of supporting material for everything that's sort of out there. | ||
| But, I mean, you know, the story still continues in GoGo. | ||
| You know, things are still going on there and still changing. | ||
| Do you get updates? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we're pretty close to all the scientists there and have been for years. | ||
| We're friends and stay in touch. | ||
| I'm seeing one of them tonight, actually, who lives in Austin. | ||
| But they are often texting things that are happening now that they know we'd be interested in. | ||
| Now, has there been thought about doing another series? | ||
| Because this has obviously been very successful. | ||
| Well, you know, I think... | ||
| I mean, it's hard to say. | ||
| You know, it's only been a few weeks. | ||
| So it's hard to say how successful it is yet. | ||
| Because Netflix doesn't tell you. | ||
| No, they don't tell you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're crafty with that. | |
| Yeah, they are. | ||
| It's obviously anecdotally from people that I know. | ||
| I mean, so many people recommended it before I watched it. | ||
| I got so many text messages like, you must watch this. | ||
| This is right up your alley. | ||
| So many people told me about it. | ||
| Well, I think because of your interest, you might get a bit of a bias on the overall conversation on it, maybe. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I'm assuming. | ||
| Because people know you're in the chimps. | ||
| I think, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I read the Twitter feed each day. | ||
| I can't resist or refresh that and see what people are saying about it. | ||
| And really... | ||
| Yeah, I'm really excited about the feedback. | ||
| You should be. | ||
| But I don't know, yeah, whether it's going to get bigger or bigger or who knows. | ||
| I mean, I personally and the whole team who were involved in it, you just kind of fall in love with that place and the people who work there and all the chimps. | ||
| You know, whether we're filming or not, you want to find out what's happening. | ||
| Because you're following that story, whether you film it or not. | ||
| And I think we'll always be on a sort of like, you know, we want to find out. | ||
| Is Abrams in charge? | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah, there's things that are happening that we're constantly being updated about. | ||
| We'd love to go and do a second season, but I think that's... | ||
| Quite an undertaking. | ||
| It's a huge undertaking, but I think we learnt so much on the first one that I'm in a lot of the pain about how to do it. | ||
| It will be a much easier thing second time around. | ||
| But also seems like one of the most unusual situations where there has been these embedded scientists in this area for 30 years. | ||
| And these chimps are so accustomed to it. | ||
| I mean, it's like to try to reestablish that somewhere else. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And this is a very unusual group of chimpanzees too, right? | ||
| It is. | ||
| I mean, there are other chimpanzee sites, several other chimpanzee sites around Africa where they have a similar, you know, the chimps are habituated, long-term scientific projects. | ||
| You know, Jane Goodall being the perfect example. | ||
| You know, here... | ||
| Her project has been there long before the guys were studying Ngogo. | ||
| So that's much longer term. | ||
| You know, there's study sites in Thai and the Ivory Coast and Fongoli. | ||
| You know, there's many of them. | ||
| What's unique about Ngogo is as well as having that level of access and data and sort of so you just have so much information about the chimps but there's also just a ton of chimps. | ||
| And And they are quite unique in that the Ngogo territory is surrounded by forest in every direction. | ||
| Whereas at other sites, often, you know, chimpanzee habitats are sort of bordered by farmland or human settlements of some kind. | ||
| So they're quite sort of, it's a little wild pocket in amongst an area that is less wild. | ||
| And I think this is unique for study sites of chimps. | ||
| They have... | ||
| It's wild in every direction outside of there. | ||
| So that does impact their behaviour and their sort of group dynamics because... | ||
| The edge of their territory is not like some land they can't go on. | ||
| It's land they can take because it belongs to other chimps. | ||
| Whether you enjoy watching that aspect of chimpanzee behavior or not, there's another layer to what happens at N'Gogo. | ||
| You know, loads of other chimpanzee sites, they have different things that they do. | ||
| You know, for instance, in Fongoli, in Senegal, they use spears to hunt bush babies. | ||
| You know, there's sort of this, in every little, in every different chimpanzee site, there's like a An associated unique behavior or culture. | ||
| Scientists wouldn't call it culture, but a simple way of looking at it, there's different things that they do that are separate and different to other chimpanzees. | ||
| So there's observed chimpanzees that use spears? | ||
| There are, yeah. | ||
| I haven't observed any of them at all. | ||
| I've never been there or filmed that, but yes, they... | ||
| They use sticks. | ||
| But do they sharpen these sticks? | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| And my partner, Rosie, actually made a film about those chimps. | ||
| We're quite chimpy in our household. | ||
| And she'll be able to answer that better. | ||
| But I know that they use spears, and I think they make spears. | ||
| So I don't know whether they sharpen them, but they certainly strip them down so that they are... | ||
| Like a spear. | ||
| And they jab in holes for bush babies. | ||
| What is a bush baby? | ||
| It's like a little nocturnal primate. | ||
| They're very cute. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| How conflicted is that? | ||
| I mean, just watch them tear the monkeys apart with their hands. | ||
| But having them use weapons and spear them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, chimpanzees, you know, have used tools since Jane, well, Jane Goodall, they've used tools probably for thousands and thousands of years, we don't know. | ||
| But, you know, Jane Goodall discovered that many years ago. | ||
| So making, not just using tools, but making tools. | ||
| It's quite cool, isn't it? | ||
| That is so cool. | ||
| Interestingly, the Ngogo chimps, they do occasionally use a tool for something or other, but they're not. | ||
| In West Africa... | ||
| In the Ivory Coast, the chimpanzees there use big rocks to crack nuts, and they use sticks to fish for ants. | ||
| And same thing in Gombe and, like I say, in Fongoli, they use spears for bush babies. | ||
| So tool use is quite a big thing for chimps, generally, around Africa. | ||
| But at Ngogo, they're not big tool users. | ||
| And it's interesting. | ||
| They maybe have just never... | ||
| You know, tools are a solution to a problem for the gyms. | ||
| They identify that they need something and that tool will help get it. | ||
| And it feels that in GoGo that... | ||
| Actually, they've not really had that need. | ||
| Because of the fruit and because of the prevalence of monkeys? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| It's such a rich environment. | ||
| Loads of fruit. | ||
| They've just hammered the monkeys there. | ||
| I remember, yeah, John Mutani, one of the scientists, saying, yeah, N'Gogo, they don't, you know, they don't use a lot of tools. | ||
| They cooperate on really interesting levels. | ||
| That's the thing that feels that is the identifying or the defining quality of the N'Gogo group. | ||
| It's their sheer population size. | ||
| They're just a massive group. | ||
| And maybe as a function of that, there's levels of cooperative behavior there that they achieve getting the things that they want through cooperation rather than tool use. | ||
| When you're observing them hunting after monkeys, is there speculation that there's two things going on? | ||
| That they're hunting the monkeys for food, but also that they're preventing the monkeys from eating the fruit? | ||
| Because they must be in competition with the monkeys for these prized resources. | ||
| Because, of course, the monkeys eat fruit as well. | ||
| They do. | ||
| I don't think that's a thing. | ||
| But I think the overriding thing is they're just like hunting the monkeys. | ||
| Because the thing is that does exist with other animals, with predators. | ||
| I think that coyotes, one of the reasons why they target cats, It's not just for food, but that cats are also predators. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I don't know? | ||
| And I don't think I've ever really asked that specifically to the scientists there, but I'm guessing that there's so much fruit around You know, those sorts of things might be driven by a scarcity of food. | ||
| So therefore, take out your competitor for that food. | ||
| And I think what they'd probably say was that it's such a rich environment and actually they just seem to love hunting monkeys. | ||
| Which is a shame. | ||
| Is it a shame? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Well, it's hard, you know. | ||
| I feel like I've been desensitized to it a little bit. | ||
| So, you know, obviously don't go, yes, they've got that monkey. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But you accept it. | ||
| And you... | ||
| Yeah, you don't... | ||
| I think if you're following the N'Gogo chimps, you... | ||
| You're sort of, like, on some level, you're kind of with them, really. | ||
| And therefore, you know, you're not, like I said, you're not rooting for them. | ||
| You don't really want them to do that, but you totally accept that they do. | ||
| But, you know, in previous years, there used to be a lot more monkeys there. | ||
| So the chimps are actually having a probably negative impact on the numbers of the monkeys. | ||
| But is this just, they have a very specific territory. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And this is just in their territory. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're having a big impact. | ||
| So is there a prevalence of monkeys outside of their territory? | ||
| And do they ever go outside of their territory specifically to try to target monkeys? | ||
| I know that they go to areas of their territory or areas at the edge of their territory where they know there are more monkeys still. | ||
| Because, yeah, one time monkeys were much more common within their territory. | ||
| You know, they'd avoid the chimps or whatever, but there were known groups of monkeys there. | ||
| And now there are less. | ||
| Because they're so effective at hunting them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's one of the images of this torso of a monkey and they're just eating it. | ||
| And it's so weird because there's just something that's just so uniquely disturbing about watching a primate eat a primate. | ||
| Yeah, see? | ||
| It's like, it is what they do. | ||
| It is, yeah. | ||
| Unfortunately, if you follow chimps, and a lot of chimp groups do that, in fact, everywhere where you find chimps and monkeys in the same place, it happens, I think. | ||
| Yeah, it is part of what they do. | ||
| Do you find yourself rooting for the monkey to get away, or do you find yourself rooting for the chimp to get the monkey? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Because you kind of want to capture... | ||
| The actual successful hunt. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Not necessarily, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
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No? | |
| No. | ||
| And I think that, you know, particularly the type of thing that we were doing, it wasn't sort of, you know, we want that behavior. | ||
| You know, we weren't going out to get behavior sequences. | ||
| We just wanted to film what happened. | ||
| And in a way, them attempting to hunt something and failing is also an interesting story. | ||
| Does that happen often, where they attempt to hunt monkeys and the monkeys get away? | ||
| It does happen, yeah, not very often. | ||
| Most of the time they're successful. | ||
| Yes, I think so. | ||
| And you do, I mean, having said I'm a bit desensitized to it, I think, you know, the natural thing is you're seeing a much bigger animal go after a much smaller animal. | ||
| So in almost everybody, there's an underdog there and there's, you know, you kind of, you are on some level thinking that Come on, if you just get out to that skinny tree, get out to that skinny branch, they won't follow you there. | ||
| You know, because that's the challenge on... | ||
| The monkeys try and get out right on the tips of the branches, which are... | ||
| You know, they won't hold the chimps white. | ||
| So that's the safe bit. | ||
| But then it's quite a precarious position, because where do you go from there? | ||
| You're just kind of delaying things, really. | ||
| Because they know exactly where you are. | ||
| It's hard, because, you know, those monkeys are... | ||
| They're complex creatures as well. | ||
| And I think, you know, if we were focusing on them a lot, we'd start to engage with them as individuals and, you know, it would feel different. | ||
| And it's important to remember that. | ||
| But, you know, the purpose of this series was we wanted to experience what it was like to be an Ngogo chimpanzee. | ||
| And from their perspective, monkeys are food. | ||
| Did you observe noticeable patterns in how they hunt or strategies of how they hunt these monkeys? | ||
| No, not. | ||
| I mean, not really. | ||
| Other than, like I said, there are sort of stages to it where, you know, it's not they'll just suddenly start hunting. | ||
| There'll be a process where one of the chimps might hear some monkeys or they might have gone looking for them in a particular area and there's different stages where they kind of know there's monkeys in the area and they're sort of feeling their way around and maybe they've heard a call and they're sort of making their way gradually over there. | ||
| And then when they identify an opportunity, right, okay, there's a group of monkeys here and they're up in that tree. | ||
| And then they can often be very quiet, a bit like being on patrol at that point where, you know, they're just kind of getting as close as they can and in positions where they can be most effective without making any noise and without scaring anything off. | ||
| And then generally it's sort of it takes just one chip to just go for it and then the chase is on so there's no element of surprise or anything it's just it's a rush and they're trying to corner the monkey or monkeys in positions in the trees where they can get to them. | ||
| One of the things that they observed in the David Attenborough capturing of this sort of behavior was that they will sort of ambush them. | ||
| They will set up traps. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I think a lot of people sort of have different opinions about this and I think probably every hunt is different and I think sometimes you might observe those things and then in your mind get a sense that, oh, this is how they must do it because during that hunt he was over there and he was over there and they appeared to do that. | ||
| In my experience, there didn't seem to be that sort of pattern of behaviour. | ||
| It was not as organised as that, actually, when it came to those parts of the hunt. | ||
| Also, it's a very difficult thing to observe and to film. | ||
| So you really, having said, we're getting amazing details of their lives. | ||
| But there are some activities that they do, like a hunt, where you're looking through windows in the canopy and you see a chimp leg it across there and over there and then suddenly someone's got the monkey. | ||
| And making sense of that... | ||
| You know, I think scientifically it's really hard. | ||
| But from a filmmaking point of view, you're capturing moments and you can piece together what's happened there. | ||
| But there's definitely things that you haven't seen that have gone on behind trees or leaves. | ||
| So I think it's hard to kind of know exactly how they do it. | ||
| Is there any concern while you're doing this that you're interfering in some sort of a way or that you're going to upset them, that you're getting in the way of the hunt or getting in the way of their natural behaviors? | ||
| It's a constant consideration. | ||
| You know, the worst thing we could possibly do is to go in there and try and observe the sort of real world of the Ngoga chimpanzees and then find ourselves having an impact on that, being sort of participating in it. | ||
| So that's not... | ||
| That's no longer the real world of the chimpanzees. | ||
| That's the world of the Ngogo chimps when they're sort of distracted or impacted by human observers. | ||
| So that would just ruin the whole point of it. | ||
| So it's a constant consideration. | ||
| Weirdly, and it does, I don't really have an explanation for it, and I've not really heard one that works for me, that oddly... | ||
| Apart from sort of acknowledging you, They just don't seem to be impacted by your presence at all. | ||
| They pretty much ignore you. | ||
| And chimpanzees are so spatially aware. | ||
| They live in this three-dimensional forest world where they can just go from tree to tree, horizontal, vertical. | ||
| They're very aware of everything that's around them. | ||
| You would assume in these chaotic moments that, you know, you might get in one's way or run into and it never happens. | ||
| And it's as if, but then again, you never see a chimpanzee run into a tree either. | ||
| You know, they know where everything is. | ||
| And for some bizarre reason, they're totally accepting of this sort of passive presence in the forest, these strange bipedal creatures that sort of follow and are close and sort of within, observing them. | ||
| And it's not like they acknowledge you. | ||
| They know you're there. | ||
| They're not just like, like I said earlier, you're not spying on them. | ||
| You're kind of part of it. | ||
| But they're not interested in you. | ||
| It's strange. | ||
| Until you're there and you're in it, it's sort of an impossible thing to describe and it's a very difficult thing to understand until you're actually right there. | ||
| And I think when something's kicking off and there's a lot of excitement and chaos within the group, if you haven't experienced that before, it's intimidating and you can't quite believe that you're not somehow going to get swept up in it. | ||
| But you don't at all. | ||
| And there's been decades of this happening at Ngogo where they accept this sort of passive presence in the forest. | ||
| I mean, it must be so weird. | ||
| You're there when they get up and you follow them around all day and... | ||
| You know, when they take a shit, when they're making friends with somebody, when they're doing anything that they're doing, you know, and you're just, you're there. | ||
| But they appear not to mind at all, and it doesn't appear to impact their behavior at all. | ||
| That's so fascinating. | ||
| How close do they get to the photographers, the humans, the camera people, like, So, you know, there are strict rules that can go on anywhere working with chimpanzees. | ||
| Because we're so similar, they're susceptible and vulnerable to sort of human infections. | ||
| So even things that don't really bother us, like a cough, if we had a cough or a cold, that would be quite dangerous to transmit. | ||
| Was this during COVID that you filmed all this? | ||
| You know, we started just after lockdown. | ||
| But we were prepared to do it before COVID kicked in. | ||
| Then COVID happened and the whole world shut down. | ||
| And then we got out there as soon as we could afterwards when things were starting to open up. | ||
| You know, because Uganda wouldn't let any flights in for a long time. | ||
| But as soon as they did... | ||
| We went out there, and we had to be tested regularly for COVID. People were worried about what would happen if a chimp got COVID. Naturally very worried. | ||
| But actually, in place already, there were, you know, you have to wear masks. | ||
| You can't go closer than seven metres. | ||
| If you're not feeling well or anything like that, you mustn't go and see the chimps. | ||
| And that's important because chimps, a common cold, can be lethal to chimps. | ||
| Yeah, so for that reason, you have to stay seven meters away from them in the forest. | ||
| That's not much. | ||
| It's not, no. | ||
| I mean, they say seven meters is an absolute bare minimum. | ||
| They encourage you to do about 10 meters. | ||
| I think it's just 20 feet. | ||
| Yeah, it's not a lot. | ||
| So how far is that? | ||
| Nothing that's across this room. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's about the length of this room. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| It's about the distance you should be. | ||
| And you make a concerted effort to make sure that's the case. | ||
| However, like I said, the chimps don't know that rule. | ||
| So you can do whatever you can to maintain that distance. | ||
| And, you know, if they come a little closer or come to sit down sort of, you know, within that seven meters, you move back slowly. | ||
| But you don't, you know, it's not advisable to sort of jump out of the way or, you know, you take your opportunity and you slowly get that distance between you back. | ||
| But yeah, it doesn't feel like a lot at all, particularly if there are chimps in every direction. | ||
| And because the N'Gogo group is so big, there can be a lot. | ||
| You can be in the middle of quite an amazing thing. | ||
| I know some of the most dramatic parts of chimpanzee life at N'Gogo. | ||
| You know, it's the patrolling and a lot of the slightly more aggressive elements, but most of the chimps' day is spent doing things that are just really enjoyable to be around. | ||
| Watching chimps groom is one of the most relaxing. | ||
| It looks so relaxing. | ||
| It has quite a soporific effect on you. | ||
| If you're in amongst a group of chimps and they're all gently grooming each other, you feel very sleepy. | ||
| It's quite odd just watching it. | ||
| It just looks so... | ||
| It's very gentle. | ||
| These huge males who are Capable of all sorts of things. | ||
| Very tenderly sort of groom each other or younger members of the group or the females and like it really, it looks so gentle. | ||
| They're just going, finally going through each of the hairs there and just really checking if there's anything that's worth coming out. | ||
| And they just, they often sort of fall asleep or look very relaxed. | ||
| And those moments are kind of amazing, actually, because you sort of let, they really make you relaxed. | ||
| And then a few kids will be playing around, sort of, you know, they're not interested in long grooming sessions, so they're just tumbling around in the trees and things. | ||
| And that's the majority of chimp life, actually. | ||
| And what's so interesting about them, because it's such a far cry and such huge difference between the more aggressive side of chimpanzees. | ||
| But yeah, that's what makes them so fascinating. | ||
| That situation, they can be like that in the morning and you can feel like you've just stumbled into this sort of paradise situation. | ||
| Everything's so delicate and it's so tender and playful. | ||
| But then by, you know, come the afternoon, you know, they've got a job to do at the border and it's a completely different atmosphere and it's tense and same thing. | ||
| Your heart rate is raised and your state is determined a lot by what the chimps are doing. | ||
| The grooming aspect of their relationships is very unusual. | ||
| It's very unique and very fascinating to watch because they sit there and they allow each other to do this, but there's also this social hierarchy aspect of it. | ||
| Are they looking for bugs? | ||
| What are they looking for? | ||
| They are, yeah. | ||
| So there is a real practical function. | ||
| They're looking for ticks or other sort of external parasites. | ||
| I don't know what the other things are, but they're big hairy creatures and in the forest things get stuck in there. | ||
| And ticks in particular. | ||
| We, as humans going through the forest, you've got to be really careful with ticks as well. | ||
| So, yeah, they are looking for specific things. | ||
| But then if you watch what they're doing and how they do it, and particularly with our real close-up lenses, you can see in great detail. | ||
| You can see the hairs parting and exactly what they're going for. | ||
| I don't know, it feels like, yes, that's an important part of it, but actually they're kind of stroking each other. | ||
| and how long you do it for um and then when you turn around and and do it back all those things feel like they're much greater social value than so you know there's partly a cleaning each other keeping each other healthy that's definitely important and i think you know they have to do it for that reason but there's so many other layers to that the relationship building | ||
| and yeah so when you're interacting with these chimps is there ever a moment where the chimp tries to engage with the humans no No, but, you know, there are occasionally individuals. | ||
| Like I say, they're all individuals. | ||
| So saying anything about the chimps do this or they don't do that, like, you know, we're really generalizing. | ||
| There are occasionally individual chimps who, even if they're not a threat to you, they are showing a level of interest that is different to others. | ||
| And there's a chimp called Rich Burgle, the chimp, who's one of our focal characters in the West. | ||
| And he's always been very comfortable near humans. | ||
| Because usually the chimps, they have that little bit of, a tiny bit of residual fear of humans. | ||
| And I think that's what makes them quite comfortable of that distance as well. | ||
| They're okay if you come there, but they actually don't want to be any closer. | ||
| That 7 to 10 metre rule suits them too, generally. | ||
| That's a comfortable distance, but it's as if the chimps, they don't really want you coming sitting next to them. | ||
| That's not okay. | ||
| And I don't know whether that's just what they like or whether they're used to it, because over the years that is the distance that scientists have kept or whatever. | ||
| But you do get some chimps that decide to come closer. | ||
| Yeah, and Rich Burgle is one of those chimps. | ||
| He orphaned at a young age, very well habituated, no fear of humans whatsoever. | ||
| You know, he's never made contact, but I think everybody who works with him would say, you know, he's the one that will come and sit a little closer or will walk towards you and then at the very last minute veer off. | ||
| And he's just kind of curious in a way that the others aren't. | ||
| Now, when the chimps are on patrol, that's a uniquely intense and aggressive moment, and it's so wild to watch, to see them, these hulking chimpanzees move through the forest in coordination. | ||
| When you're there with that, and you're very close to these violent encounters, Is there any concern there that you could get caught up in this sort of violent frenzy and maybe be in danger of being attacked? | ||
| You know, there isn't actually. | ||
| I mean, let me rephrase that. | ||
| I would say on a personal level, of course, right? | ||
| You know, you come, you hear about these things happening, you know it's a possibility, will be there when it happens, when it's filmed. | ||
| So we ask exactly the same question. | ||
| So this is... | ||
| You know, I've been through the exact same process as you are now and have this conversation with the scientists like, are we going to be safe? | ||
| You know, is it safe for us to where should we be or where should we not be if this happens when we're there? | ||
| So totally, we had exactly the same questions and we just didn't know. | ||
| And we were reassured by the scientists, you know, you'll be amazed. | ||
| Like, if you see those things, they will happen, but they will ignore you. | ||
| And their only warning was that definitely don't get too close, you know, because the level of excitement around the chimps during these encounters, you know, if there's ever a time when they could accidentally come very close to you or suddenly see you and get a bit of a fright, you know, they wouldn't want to take that sort of a risk with it. | ||
| So they did. | ||
| We were warned, you know, keep a respectful distance from that. | ||
| But, amazingly, and there's a little behind-the-scenes clip that we've sort of released on YouTube now, and you can see that during the biggest encounter that we filmed... | ||
| The camera people were sort of like in it and around it and sort of at one stage sort of like accidentally between the two groups as they were sort of standing off and you know that the certain way I mean the chimps move so fast and they organize, | ||
| reorganize, separate or whatever so you can try and be in the perfect position but then that perfect position could quickly become where you don't want to be because of where the chimps have gone So through no fault of their own, there are times when they're in there. | ||
| It's a bit like being a war reporter or something. | ||
| But weirdly, they're so focused on what it is they're doing and have no interest in involving or redirecting their aggression to the humans at all. | ||
| I think... | ||
| You know, because of, you know, there are some quite high profile and sort of like pretty tragic sort of human chimp interactions. | ||
| In N'Gogo? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I mean sort of like things that have happened at zoos or whatever. | ||
| And I think that it does give a sort of an unusual impression of what chimps are like in the wild. | ||
| They have all that sort of capability. | ||
| And more so, you know, the Ngogo chimps, there's so many of them. | ||
| And they are engaged in these sort of violent competitions with other groups. | ||
| That's a very real thing. | ||
| And it can get serious. | ||
| But their relationship with people is just completely different to a relationship chimps might have with people in captivity or if they've been kept as pets or something. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, it's just, it's not, I totally get it, and those are exactly the sort of things I wanted to know before I stepped in and go-go. | ||
| Well, I mean, you know, you need to know. | ||
| But amazingly, when you've been there, around it, And even once you've just been on a single patrol with them actually, and they are exhilarating. | ||
| When you go on patrol with Inkoko Chimps, it's amazing. | ||
| They are taking you on a journey to the edge of their border and they're fully committed and they're coordinated. | ||
| And they don't seem to care that you're following them. | ||
| And they're allowing you to sort of be there. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Yeah, it's an incredible experience, actually. | ||
| It's real adrenaline. | ||
| Yeah, there they are. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| This was my favorite part. | ||
| Just watching them move in coordination and just wondering, like, how do they know? | ||
| Like, what are they doing? | ||
| It almost seems like they're gesturing in some ways, like that chimp with the one hand. | ||
| Oh, so this is the behind-the-scenes bit. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| You know, gestures quite often are in our form. | ||
| Oh, hands all over each other, though. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's undeniable. | ||
| These sort of reassuring gestures. | ||
| They know. | ||
| They're in this like tense situation. | ||
| They're nervous. | ||
| I think that you can read into that. | ||
| They're sort of telling each other that like, I'm with you. | ||
| I'm with you. | ||
| I'm here. | ||
| That physical contact is just, you know, it's just reassuring each other that we're in this together. | ||
| It's you and me. | ||
| And when violence does break out, what is that experience like? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| When you're seeing chimp-on-chimp violence from several feet away, that has to be wild. | ||
| I don't really want to give away any spoilers for the series because some of these things are sort of like... | ||
| Major plot points in the series. | ||
| I don't think it matters. | ||
| I know what you're saying and I appreciate your artistic sentiment. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| But it's so good. | ||
| It's so good that even if you say what happens and people get to see it, it's so good. | ||
| I mean, and I would say that, like I said, I often personally, I wasn't there for many of the things that happened. | ||
| But I was some and I have been there previously in Gogo where certain things have happened. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| I think that is chimp on chimp violence is a lot harder to watch than the chimp on monkey violence for me personally. | ||
| And whether I'm there myself or whether I'm seeing it recorded later on, I think there's kind of a sadness to that personally. | ||
| Quite often it's because in truth it gets more serious if the chimps outnumber them significantly. | ||
| So when chimps are kind of equal-sized groups, when they come into contact... | ||
| They're usually less violent situations. | ||
| Because there's too much danger. | ||
| There's too much danger. | ||
| There's too much at stake. | ||
| It's kind of a bit bravado. | ||
| They run at each other a few times. | ||
| But if there's enough chimps on either side, you can pretty much know that in this immediate situation, no one's going to get badly hurt. | ||
| They get badly hit when they're outnumbered. | ||
| And obviously that, on a human level, just no one likes seeing that sort of thing. | ||
| There's just a... | ||
| Yeah, it's just horrible. | ||
| Unfortunately, we've all sort of seen that personally, or clips of that in humans, and it's the most uncomfortable, horrible stuff. | ||
| It really makes you horrible. | ||
| So, yeah, all of that stuff is very hard to watch. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Well, and I'll say even, you know, interestingly, like I said, the scientists in GoGo, we know them really well now and we've worked with them for a long time. | ||
| So, you know, we share things and they share stories on a more personal level with us. | ||
| But they are obviously better than we or a viewer would be at detaching themselves. | ||
| This is just what happens. | ||
| They're there to observe and try and understand. | ||
| It's not an emotional thing. | ||
| But even they who have been there for many years... | ||
| And I think particularly because they've been there for many years, sometimes you see an act of violence on a chimp that you've known and been following around for ages. | ||
| They may not care about you, but you really care about them. | ||
| And it's sad. | ||
| Yeah, it's very sad. | ||
| During the filming, at least on the show, there's one instance of chimpanzees killing another chimp. | ||
| Was there more of that? | ||
| You're blowing all this. | ||
| I'm not! | ||
| I'm not! | ||
| You think it's a spoiler alert, but I'm telling you, it's so complex and so fascinating and so good. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
| No, no, that's fine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| It's you for me. | ||
| It doesn't really matter. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So that happens. | ||
| Was it only one time while you were there? | ||
| Well, yes. | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, there's another thing in the series we're not going to talk about. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because that really is a spoiler. | ||
| But yes, a couple of occasions whilst we were there. | ||
| And that is, I mean, is it conflicted? | ||
| Do you almost have this feeling that you want to intervene and protect the chimp? | ||
| I think, yeah, everybody who's been around, those feelings, you wish it wouldn't happen. | ||
| You don't want this to conclude in the way that you think it might. | ||
| But again, I think I totally understand why you're asking, but I think once you've been around them enough and you have to have this commitment to... | ||
| And it's part of the same point that you were asking earlier about that impact on their lives. | ||
| You want zero impact on their lives or minimal, right? | ||
| You don't want any negative impact. | ||
| You actually can't make too much of a positive impact either. | ||
| Also, it just wouldn't be practical. | ||
| It's not safe. | ||
| What could you do? | ||
| Shout and make a noise and try and disturb them just enough for a moment that the chimp could get away. | ||
| Possibly. | ||
| But I think that it wouldn't be ethical to do it. | ||
| It is natural behaviour. | ||
| I mean, that's my take on it from what I've seen at Ngogo. | ||
| This is part of their natural behaviour. | ||
| They are competitive. | ||
| And they're territorial. | ||
| And those, you know, those behaviours have served them well in the past. | ||
| So you can't, as much as it's from a human observer point of view, that same thing, taking that same situation out as something you observed in the street... | ||
| All those natural sort of tendencies, desires to intervene and stop something, you know, they're there for good reason. | ||
| But, you know, this is the entire scientific project, our commitment as filmmakers to observe but not interfere. | ||
| I mean, that's all part of the same thing. | ||
| If you stepped out of that role... | ||
| In any circumstance, you've crossed a line in a really odd way. | ||
| And in a way, that sort of helps with what you're feeling when you see or observe those things, because you know there's absolutely nothing you can do about this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, of course, ethically, you really can't intervene. | ||
| But it's still sort of... | ||
| I mean, what an amazing experience for you as a human being to have gone through this. | ||
| It's just such a rare, rare insight into these animals and these incredibly unique creatures and their behavior. | ||
| You must feel so fortunate just to have experienced, just as a human being, just as a life experience to take that in. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Yeah, I really do. | ||
| I've been very lucky in lots of bits of my job that I've done over the years. | ||
| I think that it's a great job. | ||
| It's very hard work, a lot harder than probably what people appreciate. | ||
| But extremely lucky on loads of things. | ||
| I do feel with the Ngogo chimps in particular, like you say, as a human being, from an existential sort of point of view, there's like... | ||
| I'm so fortunate. | ||
| And not really... | ||
| Not many people get to see that. | ||
| And they are our closest relatives. | ||
| And they are... | ||
| They're fascinating because of the connections we have with them. | ||
| They're also fascinating because they're different and they're all individuals. | ||
| And it's a chance to just, you kind of feel a part of something that has, you know, brought that important knowledge and information to people. | ||
| Yeah, so I feel personally very fortunate. | ||
| How do you top that? | ||
| Are you always trying to top your work? | ||
| I mean, what you've done is so extraordinary. | ||
| I watched it and at the end of it I was like, how do you beat that? | ||
| I mean, you are always trying to make something better than you did before. | ||
| On a personal and professional level, you want... | ||
| You want to do really cool stuff that people like. | ||
| So yeah, I'm always thinking about what could move things on. | ||
| I think making a series about the Ngogo chimps is quite hard because they feel... | ||
| For all the reasons we just said, they are our closest relatives. | ||
| They are the biggest group. | ||
| In terms of story and character, which I think is probably... | ||
| You're a chimp nut and you love... | ||
| All bits of it. | ||
| You're fascinated on levels that a lot of people maybe don't appreciate. | ||
| So I think you get the whole thing. | ||
| But I think potentially what the broader audience is really responding to is the characters and the stories. | ||
| There are real chimpanzee characters that you can follow through the whole series. | ||
| And that is hard, certainly harder to do with other animal species. | ||
| You know, there's so much going on there in terms of individual variation and, you know, chimp psychology. | ||
| You know, you're always just wondering, what are they thinking? | ||
| What are they going to do? | ||
| What's he making of that? | ||
| What does she want now? | ||
| You know, they invite that level of intrigue, that depth of character, the genuinely different characters who all kind of want quite different things. | ||
| And that, as a sort of storyteller in the natural world, is quite a unique opportunity. | ||
| So... | ||
| Yeah, I don't know, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll just rest for a while. | |
| Do you have another project lined up? | ||
| I mean, we finished working on Chimp Empire quite a long time ago. | ||
| So it's been about a year or something we finished the edit. | ||
| So I am working on other stuff already. | ||
| But I can't. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| I would imagine if I was Netflix, if I was one of the CEOs, I would be in immediate conversation with you about season two. | ||
| I think you're very wise. | ||
| We have talked about it with the commissioner, Sarah Edelson. | ||
| She loves the series and was behind it from day one. | ||
| Shout out to Sarah. | ||
| Yeah, shout out to Sarah. | ||
| And she... | ||
| We've talked about it. | ||
| We talked about it even before we started, actually, because I think, you know, she could see the potential, actually, that, you know, this isn't a... | ||
| This is a, you know, it's a window of time into the Ngogo group, but they don't stop having interesting stories just because we stopped filming them. | ||
| So we sort of knew there was that potential, and And there is a kind of a conversation that's sort of bubbling away. | ||
| But I think waiting, I think it is the sensible thing to wait. | ||
| Let this series have its impact, whatever that will be. | ||
| Like I said, I personally love to do it and I think the whole team would be like, we can't stop now, can we? | ||
| Because it's still happening at N'Gogo. | ||
| Okay, the story for the series is finished, but the N'Gogo story continues. | ||
| And we've learned so much and all that. | ||
| At the same time, there is an argument for saying, you know, it feels quite definitive and, you know, people would worry about what we don't want to do is just... | ||
| Rehash the same sort of narratives. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It wouldn't be the same thing, because all the chimps get older and new characters want different things, and that story happened in that time, so everything that happened there won't happen again. | ||
| But still, the experience of watching season one... | ||
| It's partly you're following that story, but you're also being introduced to the Ngogo chimps. | ||
| And you're learning about what they do and how they do it, how they relate to each other. | ||
| So there's a lot of that experience, which if you did a season two, in a way it would be great because you would jump straight into a story and not have to have as much exposition about the groups. | ||
| Yeah, don't I? Do you think it should be another one? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, without a doubt, I would watch it. | ||
| When an alpha controls the group, how long generally is their reign? | ||
| And what happens to them when they get pushed out? | ||
| So that's, interestingly, that's different in different chimp groups across Africa. | ||
| But at Ngogo, I think, like, six, seven years is the average, like, good tenure. | ||
| There have been chimps who have taken the alpha position... | ||
| I've not done it very well and have been out after a year. | ||
| There's one chimp there, Bartok, who was in charge for 10 years, but he was very successful alpha and very politically astute. | ||
| So I think the average at Ngoga was sort of six or seven years. | ||
| Yeah, and that's quite a long time. | ||
| It's fascinating because it's similar to presidential reigns. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, exactly, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it is interesting. | ||
| I wonder, you know, it's like the peak of their prime and their control. | ||
| It's like they have a term limit. | ||
| It is interesting because regardless of age as well, so it doesn't really feel like, yeah, there isn't, there isn't, like at Ngogo, there's an average sort of expectancy of Alpha ship. | ||
| And I think that's, yeah, six or seven years. | ||
| And that's why we knew that Jackson, at the start of when we were filming, we knew that he was entering a period where things could get tricky for him because he'd been in charge for about six years. | ||
| And it is very interesting that that tends to be the term. | ||
| And the longer the study goes on for, the more interesting those things become. | ||
| Because I think in the early days, when they were first observing the chimps, they were like, okay, well, he was in charge for three years, he was in charge for seven, and there didn't seem to be any pattern. | ||
| So it was all sort of, well, you're just at the top until someone knocks you off. | ||
| But it does seem interesting that they don't see them lasting that much longer. | ||
| You know, they expect them not to stay there for much longer. | ||
| Is there any evidence that they learn from the chimps that are successful and they mimic this sort of political behavior and sort of like social awareness of keeping everybody happy and sort of like governing and, you know, and a sort of an effective Sort of harmonious way? | ||
| Well, whether they see other chimps doing well through that, I don't know. | ||
| I think that's a good question. | ||
| I don't know the answer to that, actually. | ||
| I mean, there's certainly, there's leaders in, they adopt different strategies in Individually. | ||
| And definitely the ones that are better at managing their political relationships and their allies, they stay in power longer and they have an easier time of it. | ||
| Like Bartok, I mean these are chimps that passed long before this series, but you would be interested in it. | ||
| Bartok is a small guy. | ||
| I mean, I always looked big when he was alpha because they tend to sort of, they just hold themselves differently. | ||
| So they puff their hair out. | ||
| It's called pylorect when they stick all that. | ||
| Their hair goes on and it literally gives them a different silhouette, a different body shape. | ||
| And so when you are alpha, you tend to look bigger anyway. | ||
| But even when he was like that, he didn't look as big as the other chimps. | ||
| He was a relatively small chimp, but he was the longest serving alpha they've ever had at Ngogo. | ||
| So he was the most successful leader there. | ||
| And it was right at a time when Ngogo was still one massive group. | ||
| So he probably was leader at the time when the group was biggest for the longest period, and he was also the smallest guy they've ever had in charge. | ||
| And they put all that down to he was extremely good at keeping his relationships going with all the other big males. | ||
| So all the big guys that could threaten him, he was grooming them all the time, keeping them happy. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And what happens to them when they get overthrown? | ||
| Do they just assume a lesser position? | ||
| They do. | ||
| At Ngogo, everything is okay after that. | ||
| They might get beaten up badly in the overthrow. | ||
| They might get a bit injured there, but it's never been lethal. | ||
| Whereas at other sites, I've heard that alphas have been killed in the transfer of power. | ||
| Interestingly, that's never happened at Ngogo. | ||
| The incoming, there could well be a big fight and some minor injuries, but then that's it. | ||
| And there's a new dominance hierarchy established. | ||
| And as long as the outgoing alpha is submitting to the incoming one in the formal way, the pant grund, Whenever he comes by, then that's just, okay, we've sorted this out. | ||
| We now know, like, he's on top. | ||
| And the other chimps know. | ||
| But what happens then is they can sometimes retain a sort of high position in the hierarchy. | ||
| Like Miles, for instance, who's Jackson's giant friend. | ||
| He was alpha for quite a brief period and then I can't remember who was after and then I think could have been Jackson actually who took it off Myles. | ||
| Myles remained high up there in number two and number three spot. | ||
| He's always remained powerful. | ||
| But some of them, Bartok, I think just after he left the alpha position, he just began the trajectory down the hierarchy and just retired. | ||
| He was out of it. | ||
| Not competing anymore. | ||
| I'm old, I'm done. | ||
| They just accept the new position. | ||
| Yeah, and they really drop down, all the way down the hierarchy. | ||
| They're no longer competing in the higher levels of the dominance hierarchy. | ||
| They retire from that. | ||
| Are you aware of Robert Sapolsky's work with baboons? | ||
| No. | ||
| Sapolsky spent a lot of time embedded with baboons, and one of the things that he observed that's incredibly unusual is there was a group of baboons that was eating food that was in garbage that was from, I believe it was a resort. | ||
| And these particularly ruthless alphas who would have first access to all this kind of food, They got poisoned because they ate this bad food and they wound up dying. | ||
| And it completely changed the way they behave with each other. | ||
| The ruthless alphas died and all of a sudden it became this sort of utopian civilization amongst baboons where they didn't exhibit any of that barbaric behavior. | ||
| And they were much more kind to each other. | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| That is fascinating, and that just shows the outsized impact some individuals can have on the overall sort of culture of a group, right? | ||
| Much like humans. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think the same thing has happened at N'Gogo on lots of different levels. | ||
| Like, the central group ran by Jackson... | ||
| There's a lot of competition. | ||
| There's not as much play. | ||
| It's all quite a harsh existence. | ||
| And then the Western group, who are much smaller in number, they spend much more time playing and socialising. | ||
| And the females in that group have a nicer time. | ||
| They get beaten up a lot less often. | ||
| And that doesn't sound like a very nice thing as a positive. | ||
| Oh, and the females don't get beaten up as much. | ||
| That's a good thing. | ||
| Unfortunately, in chimpanzee society, that just does happen. | ||
| I mean, chimps beat each other up. | ||
| It's a bit of life, and the females get a part of that as well. | ||
| But interestingly, females seem to love being in the West, and there's quite a lot of incoming feelings into the Western group, incoming females into the Western group. | ||
| So they've got a small number of males, but a huge number of females, and females have left the central group and gone to the West. | ||
| And they play a lot. | ||
| Now, how do they make transitions from one to the other? | ||
| Like, if there's the West group, how does another chimpanzee become embedded in that group? | ||
| Well, as a male chimpanzee, you can't do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They can't. | |
| No. | ||
| Any male chimpanzee going over to the other side would just be met with extreme hostility. | ||
| Females, it's part of the natural cycle. | ||
| When females reach sexual maturity, they leave the group where they were born. | ||
| Lots of animals do that, actually. | ||
| Is it to encourage genetic diversity? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So same, you know, you see that in quite a lot of different animal species. | ||
| And they do that, you know, 10, 11, whatever, maybe a few years later, but at some point around that period, they will make that change. | ||
| And they arrive at a completely different group. | ||
| They travel across the forest and they sort of hang around on the edges of that new group and just gradually get accepted in. | ||
| But, you know, chimpanzee communities accept females arriving from other groups. | ||
| Do other females challenge that? | ||
| Do they... | ||
| They do. | ||
| They generally get a very hard time when they first come to the group, actually. | ||
| Partly because the males are all very interested, and it's a purely positive thing for a new female to arrive at the group. | ||
| But the females that are there already will often be quite hostile to that new female for quite a long period of time. | ||
| I think, you know, during our series, our filming period, one of the females that we knew well left the group where she was. | ||
| And you sort of... | ||
| You worry about them because it's inevitable that they're going from a place where they know everybody and they're treated relatively well and you know it's their sort of family and social group and then they're traveling across to a group where everybody is sort of hostile but the local females in particular And that might last a while as well. | ||
| So for the first couple of years even, it could be quite a nervous, anxious existence. | ||
| But yet they're compelled to do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, when they do this, do they ever go back and forth? | ||
| Not that I know of, no. | ||
| So they quit that group, they join another group, and that's where they stay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As far as I know, yeah. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's the new life. | ||
| But the interesting thing now at Ngogo, because the former giant Ngogo group is now central group and western group, so in a way this is going to make transferring as an adolescent female a much easier thing to do because some of them will transfer from central group to the western group. | ||
| Where they know everybody, actually. | ||
| Because until a few years ago, they were part of the same group. | ||
| So that's different to before. | ||
| So when the females from the central group go to the western group, they know chimpanzees already? | ||
| They'll know some of them. | ||
| Yeah, I mean it's been a few years. | ||
| How many? | ||
| I think it was 2018. Oh, fairly recently. | ||
| When they finally really split. | ||
| And what was the cause of the split? | ||
| So, I mean a number of different things that kind of go back quite a few years. | ||
| I mean, the sheer size of the group, you know, had never been documented anywhere. | ||
| The Ngogo, the numbers of chimpanzees in the original Ngogo group are more than twice the size of the next biggest group. | ||
| So it was a bit of a mystery how they were holding together anyway, and also whether they would hold together forever. | ||
| Can they really just keep on growing and maintaining, staying as one group? | ||
| Bearing in mind there's still the same sort of social structure. | ||
| So you still have a single alpha male, but the group is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. | ||
| Even back when I was there a few, in like 2015, previously, so this was before they split, but at that point, I remember Kevin Langergrabber, one of the scientists that was there at the time, And they he was explaining that actually the Ngogo community is a bit different. | ||
| Like they are one group, but they have these little subgroups like neighborhoods within within the territory. | ||
| And so they're already describing some of these neighborhoods as the Easterners and the Westerners and stuff. | ||
| They were part of the same group. | ||
| And the males would patrol the territory together. | ||
| They were on the same team, but they hung out in different areas. | ||
| And it was quite, you know, they'd really have an association with that area that was much stronger. | ||
| And they did think that that was the beginning of sort of, okay, we're sort of spending less time with them. | ||
| When we see them, we'll groom and it'll be fine, but we're gradually spending less time with each other. | ||
| And that was sort of the beginning, I think, of these sort of divisions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, I don't know, big fights, particularly between Jackson and the other, what became the leading Western males. | ||
| Yeah, big fights there that I think contributed to this sort of growing divide. | ||
| And then there just came a point in 2018 where the scientists were saying, You know what? | ||
| They're properly separate groups. | ||
| Now, this is it. | ||
| Do any of the females from the western group go to the central group when they reach sexual maturity? | ||
| I don't think that's happened yet, no. | ||
| But I think they will expect... | ||
| I mean, this is all new, because 2018... | ||
| Five years ago. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, this is... | ||
| The whole thing about this series, which I feel like, you know... | ||
| You're asking me where I felt lucky. | ||
| I mean, I'm very lucky to just spend time with the N'Gogo chimps, but at this period... | ||
| It's fascinating because, you know, brilliant for filming and the potential for interesting story to unfold was right there from the start. | ||
| But it's also, it's scientifically, it's unknown territory. | ||
| And, you know, we worked with... | ||
| I keep name-checking people, but it's sort of reminding me of the different roles that they sort of played. | ||
| John Matani, who's one of the main scientists there, he was really the one who sort of highlighted when this happened, sort of how unique this was going to be. | ||
| And I remember thinking, oh, this is amazing. | ||
| This new thing has happened at Ngogo. | ||
| But he was saying, well, look, of course it's a fascinating thing to happen. | ||
| But now we have two groups that are both completely habituated to human presence and they're rivals. | ||
| And so, as scientists, we can be there and study what happens between these two groups and as filmmakers too. | ||
| You have access to this sort of being on the two different sides of this chimpanzee rivalry and with equal access. | ||
| Now, that had never happened before because usually chimpanzee groups... | ||
| The habituated group, the ones that scientists have got used to human presence, you can study them and film them very closely, but the wild chimps, the truly wild, not used to people ones, you can't get close to them as a scientist or as a filmmaker. | ||
| You know they're out there, you can hear them, but you can't get close to them. | ||
| So the split presented this fascinating situation Scientifically, but also this really unique filming opportunity. | ||
| We can literally be embedded in these two different groups. | ||
| And nobody knows what's going to happen over the next year or two. | ||
| But we know it's going to be interesting. | ||
| And we know there's a new situation here that, yeah, anything could happen. | ||
| That sounds like a pitch for season two to me. | ||
| Because there's so much that could happen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is. | ||
| And honestly, yeah. | ||
| It does sound like I want to pitch for season two. | ||
| It is fascinating what's happening there at the minute. | ||
| You would find it personally fascinating. | ||
| Oh, I'm sure. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I mean, just watching it, I find it personally fascinating. | ||
| Listen, I just think you did a fantastic job, and you should be very proud of it. | ||
| And as a person who is very fortunate enough to be alive when this is airing on Netflix, it's really groundbreaking stuff. | ||
| And I mean, until I understood, until I knew the... | ||
| I mean, we kind of watched some of the behind-the-scenes footage, but I had no idea how long it took to get these chimps accustomed to the scientists and... | ||
| The camera people being there. | ||
| It's just so unique. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can't underestimate that. | ||
| I know it sounds like I'm trying to share credit with them for it, but you just cannot underestimate how valuable that is. | ||
| That's true of almost any... | ||
| Well, the vast majority of cool things you see captured on film with animals is, okay, the film crew did a great job, but usually that was because there were years and years and years of sort of scientific work beforehand that even just enabled you to get in a position where you could see it, but also to understand it and what was happening. | ||
| And it's so, you feel it with the Ngogo Chimps, we just felt it from the beginning, you feel it every day. | ||
| All the things that you're wondering about, things that amazed me at the start, those are possible because of decades of work and decades of tracking and following these chimpanzees in the most responsible way as well. | ||
| What would be a sort of fragile relationship between humans and our closest relatives. | ||
| All the things that's amazing about it because of what they did over the decades there. | ||
| And everything that we knew about every one of those chimps, we were able to study their back. | ||
| In fact, before we even went out, we could study their backstories, like for over 200 chimps, detailed information about every chimp, when they were born, who their relationships were with, certain events in their lives, any trauma that they'd had, who they liked, who they didn't like. | ||
| We got a proper sense of who each individual chimp was. | ||
| And all that, you know, that's just, that's all the scientists providing that. | ||
| So... | ||
| Yeah, I'm not just giving them a shout because I feel like they deserve it. | ||
| It's just, if you're actually interested in understanding how that works, like that, we slid in on the back of that. | ||
| That is how this sort of project works with the access to the chimpanzees, but actually it's the access to the scientific project. | ||
| And the Ugandan field trackers who do it. | ||
| And they've just, you know, they've done it for 30 years. | ||
| And then, you know, fortunately, they said to us something really interesting happening and they supported us doing it. | ||
| Well, I mean, so fortunate and so unique. | ||
| And I remember the first time seeing the very first episode, just blown away. | ||
| Like, how? | ||
| How did they do this? | ||
| How did they get so close? | ||
| I mean, it's like, are they using drones? | ||
| I was like, do they have camera traps everywhere? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Like, how are they doing this? | ||
| It's just so incredible and just so fascinating, so unique, and congratulations. | ||
| That means a lot. | ||
| Thanks very much. | ||
| Oh, my pleasure. | ||
| And thank you very much for being here. | ||
| I really, really appreciate it. | ||
| Can't recommend it enough. | ||
| Chimp Empire is on Netflix right now. | ||
| There's four parts. | ||
| They're all amazing. | ||
| You guys nailed it. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| And I really, really hope you continue to do it. | ||
| I really hope you have season two. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| And thanks for having me. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Do you have social media you want to tell people about? | ||
| I don't really. | ||
| No, I'm not big on social media. | ||
|
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Good for you. | |
| Good for you. | ||
| Congratulations on that. | ||
| No, not really. | ||
| I'll just give my personal email. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| Unless, I mean, there's something that someone could contribute, I doubt. | ||
| No, I don't have any personal social media presence whatsoever. | ||
| But there's, I mean, there is actually, like, the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project have a Facebook page. | ||
| And they sort of, yeah, and they're very good. | ||
| They kind of, they get the things that people from the public will be interested in. | ||
| They post things about what's happening at Ngogo.com. | ||
| So, people who are genuinely interested in what's happening with the Ngogo Chimps, there's a Facebook page. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, we'll send them to there. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Really, really appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
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Thank you. | |
| Cheers. |
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