The BBC’s Life series, currently airing on BBC1 Monday nights at 9pm, has captured stunning footage of primates in both Ethiopia and Sulawesi, Indonesia.
The tiny spectral tarsier, one of the shortest primates in the world, has been filmed hunting at night in the jungle of Sulawesi, Indonesia.
The tarsier stands 13cm (five inches) tall and has massive eyes that enable it to see in the dark. It belongs to the only group of carnivorous primates.
Tarsiers have evolved little in the past 45 million years and may have separated early from other primates.
A BBC team filmed the tiny tarsier for the natural history series Life.
Watch the BBC’s tarsier footage
Two troops of baboons have also been filmed entering a pitched battle.
The fight, filmed by the BBC Natural History Unit, appears to be triggered by male baboons attempting to steal females from the harems of rivals.
Usually, the two troops live relatively peacefully alongside one another on a 1km-long cliff in the Awash National Park in Ethiopia.
Watch the BBC’s Hamadryas baboons footage
But they violently clash in a sequence broadcast as part of the series Life.
“The scale of the fight and the way the males are so dominant is just unparalleled in primate society”
says Miss Rosie Thomas, a member of the Life production team who filmed the sequence.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
What a wonderful series this Life production is on bbc. Just amazing the way they have captured and filmed the whole set of programmes.
I had to smile about the males fighting over the females. Human nature is not so different. However the human female now is quite dominant herself.
The primates can teach us a lot about ourselves.