Episode
Natural World: Uakari: Secrets Of The English Monkey
Overview
In the flooded forests of the Peruvian Amazon lives one of the world's rarest and most mysterious primates, the red-faced uakari monkey. Local people call them English monkeys because of their resemblance to sunburnt visitors. Now there is a new Englishman on the scene, Mark Bowler, a young biologist who battles through the forest in his quest to understand the monkeys' secret lives. The film shows the first footage of these extraordinary animals in the wild and reveals why ice cream could be the greatest threat to their survival.
Details
- Series
- Natural World
- Season
- Season 28
- Episode
- Episode 16
- Air date
- 2009-03-26
Episode context
Uakari: Secrets Of The English Monkey is Episode 16 in Season 28 of Natural World. It aired on 2009-03-26.
Previous / Next
More episodes from this season
Episode 14: A Farm for the Future
Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon into a low-energy farm for the future. Last year's high fuel prices were a wake-up call, and realising that food production in the UK is dependent on fossil fuel, particularly oil, Rebecca sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores other ways of farming and learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.
Episode 13: Cassowaries
This film follows the dramatic attempts to save these endangered giant birds, and reveals their fascinating natural history for the first time. Narrated by David Attenborough.
Episode 12: Snow Monkeys
n 1970, a picture of a snow monkey bathing in a hot spring graced the cover of Life Magazine. Ever since, Japan's hot-tubbing primates have been protected and well fed for the enjoyment of tourists and photographers - they have become international superstars of the natural world. But while their unique lifestyle has brought fame, the rest of Japan's snow monkeys lead very different lives, enduring incredible hardships as they fight for survival in their beautiful but unforgiving mountain home.
Episode 11: Elephants without Borders
Botswana's elephants are doing very well, too well perhaps. People are worried that too many elephants will damage their fragile desert home and have suggested that up to 60,000 should be culled.
Researcher Mike Chase studies ancient elephant migration routes - he has tracked them across vast deserts, desolate salt pans, and Angolan minefields. Now he thinks he has a plan that could safeguard their future.
Episode 10: Man-Eating Tigers of the Sundarbans
Tiger experts in Bangladesh have a problem: how can they encourage local people to protect the beautiful and endangered Bengal tiger when these animals have developed a taste for human flesh?
The Sundarbans forest is one of the biggest tracts of mangrove forest left in the world. It is rich in wildlife and provides important forest resources for communities living around its edge. But up to 50 forest workers are killed by tigers each year and now the boldest animals are sneaking into villages at night.
This gripping film reveals the tension and heartache of living so close to a killer cat and follows the bold attempt by one village to teach street dogs to scare away the rogue tiger on their doorstep.
Episode 9: Polar Bears & Grizzlies: Bears on Top of the World
This moving film reveals the differing fortunes of a mother polar bear and a mother grizzly bear, and their new-born cubs, in a rapidly-changing world. The shrinking Arctic ice may be making life much tougher for polar bears, but it is offering new opportunities for grizzly bears to the south. Where once the lives of white and brown bears could not have been more different, in summer-time they now meet along shores and islands almost all the way to the North Pole. Amazingly they have even interbred. It Is a remarkable story of how bears, ever intelligent and resourceful, are adapting to a warming world.
Episode 8: The Mountains of the Monsoon
This moving film reveals the differing fortunes of a mother polar bear and a mother grizzly bear, and their new-born cubs, in a rapidly-changing world. The shrinking Arctic ice may be making life much tougher for polar bears, but it is offering new opportunities for grizzly bears to the south.
Where once the lives of white and brown bears could not have been more different, in summer-time they now meet along shores and islands almost all the way to the North Pole. Amazingly they have even interbred. It Is a remarkable story of how bears, ever intelligent and resourceful, are adapting to a warming world.
Episode 7: Cuckoo
The sound of the cuckoo is to many the very essence of spring, yet behind the magical call is a bird that is a cheat, a thief and a killer. Just how does the cuckoo trick other birds into accepting its eggs and raising its young? Why don't the duped foster parents react as they watch the baby cuckoo destroy their own eggs and chicks? And why do they work so relentlessly to feed a demanding chick that looks nothing like them and will soon dwarf them?
Episode 6: Great White Shark: A Living Legend
Wildlife film. South African naturalist Mike Rutzen is crazy about great white sharks. He never saw Jaws, so he doesn't share the terror that makes these sharks the world's most feared predator.
Episode 5: Cork - Forest in a Bottle
Every time we weigh up which bottle of wine to buy, we hold the fate of nightingales, rare black storks, secretive wild cats and one of the world's most remarkable trees in our hands. It has all to do with the stopper. If it is cork, it probably came from the bark of one of the ancient cork oak trees from the Montados, in the Alentejo region of Portugal.