people had stories about
these human-like forms who lived in the
mountains but they weren’t quite like
people
there were drawings of them and there
were pictures of the tracks of them
they are the root of the story of the
yeti all know that legend
but very few people have seen the animal
behind it
i’m emma nappa and i’m the producer for
the asia episode of seven worlds one
planet
it was a story that i really wanted to
tell we did a lot of research in the
office
a lot of dreamings asia is one of the
most extreme continents it’s got
the highest mountains the hottest
deserts so the monkeys for me were a
really good fit because very few people
have seen them before and they live in
this incredible mountain range which is
very difficult to survive especially as
a monkey
now in the depths of winter crew is
desperately hard to find
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i also really wanted to feel a bit like
a like a fantasy almost
a lot of asia feels quite unexplored
feels very very romantic
the snub does monkeys fitted into that
quite well because they are the
root of the story of the yeti people had
stories about
these human-like forms who lived in the
mountains but they weren’t quite like
people
there were drawings of them and there
were pictures of the tracks of them
so we all know that legend but very few
people have seen
the animal behind it the snub knows
monkeys is also
a stunning animal it’s absolutely
beautiful and
one that david attenborough has wanted
to film for a long time
so to have the opportunity to finally be
able to
go and film that was really special
the head of the family leads them to the
edge of their territory
in search of something to eat
so these monkeys live in only a couple
of really high really inaccessible
mountain ranges in china those mountain
ranges
have been relatively unexplored and
especially
to the world outside china nobody has
been allowed access in there for a very
long time
it’s also a really hard place it’s
incredibly cold there so for the monkeys
to be able to survive they have to have
these really strong family bonds
there’s hardly enough to sustain one
monkey let alone a family
but they share it peaceably
survival depends on the group keeping
together
i was just amazed by their colors really
how stunning they were
and also just how ferociously they
fought
a rival group
they too are searching for food we
wanted to get family interactions and we
knew that the group sometimes came in
contact with each other
but you don’t you don’t know really what
that looks like i hadn’t seen any
footage before there’s hardly any photos
of that kind of behavior
i knew the babies were going to be cute
i’d see a couple of pictures of those
but the fights that they get into and
those teeth it’s just incredible
to be that close to a dramatic event
like that is quite special
like with many sequences we work with
scientists who normally spend their days
with the monkeys so monkeys are
used to people being around them the
crew has to be quite small you have to
be respectful of those animals
you always have to remember that even if
a scientist is has been following them
they may
may not accept a film crew so at first
the film crews
stood back used a lot of traditional
camera techniques cameras mounted on
tripods
while the monkeys got used to them and
then we started to be able to take in
the handheld moving cameras which make
it look
more beautiful and more dynamic and the
monkeys luckily
accepted that staying safe around
animals when they’re doing something
dramatic
is about understanding those animals and
being there for enough time that you to
some extent can predict what they’re
going to do
so we we want to get close enough to
film the behavior well to show people
what those individual animal characters
are doing but we’re doing that with
knowledge and with
weeks from us and years from the
scientists of observing the animals and
knowing
what is possible without putting
ourselves in danger
the challenge was the environment which
is very snowy very cold
primates don’t live there people don’t
live there if they did we’d have known
about them a long time ago it’s
an inhospitable place so that that was
the challenge i think for the camera
crew was trying to follow these
monkeys which were adapted to that
environment through some pretty
pretty tough terrain
outnumbered the intruders retreat
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their leader is the last to go
it was really fun showing david the
footage of the snow monkeys he tried to
film them back in the 60s i think
and that area of china has been quite
hard for western crews to get into
so he’s still really only seen pictures
of them
and then when we showed him the the
footage all graded with the beautiful
colors
it was it was lovely watching his
reaction because
they were more beautiful than he thought
and he was really surprised and really
happy
that we’d managed to do that shoot to be
able to
to have that as part of this program for
him was really really nice
to watch david attenborough’s
documentaries when i was a kid that’s
what i remember these things we thought
i can’t believe that’s true i never knew
animals could do that
one of the joys of doing this job is the
surprise that the newness that is still
there in the natural world people often
say are there any stories left to film
and yes there’s a lot the the natural
world is
absolutely full of amazing wonders
nature is incredible so to me being able
to show people something they’ve not
seen before that’s such an
amazing feeling that or at the natural
world
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you
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