The chimp who would be king:

New natural history series looks at dynasties in the animal world.

Elements of both The Godfather and Game Of Thrones are present in the first episode of Dynasties, the latest stunning BBC wildlife series presented by Sir David Attenborough.

It zooms in on the survival battles of five of the most celebrated and endangered animals on the planet.

Filmed in Senegal, West Africa, the first programme focuses on the dynastic struggles that afflict a group of chimpanzees, led by the alpha male known as David.

He has been the leader for three years, the point at which alphas usually get toppled. Without allies to help him protect his leadership, David is in an isolated position.

As the dry season begins, leaving the group short of food and water, David is threatened by ambitious male rivals who are prepared to kill him for his crown.

The episode – which is followed by programmes about emperor penguins, lions, tigers, and painted wolves – shows the brutal power struggles that grip this troop of chimpanzees. In so doing, it underlines the parallels between human and animal behaviour.

Attenborough readily acknowledges these similarities.

“That’s why we watch. There are those kind of problems with all animal societies – evidently pertinently so among our closest relatives which are chimps. That’s why we called it Dynasties – harking back to Hollywood as it were. And we had no idea how that story would turn out.”

The family of chimps portrayed in this episode are anything but cuddly. They give off an intimidating sense of aggression that might take some people aback.

“Viewers will be surprised by how scary chimps are,” Attenborough says. “In the bad old days, zoos used to hold chimpanzees’ tea parties.

“The animals seemed all lovable and sweet, but anyone in a zoo knows very well that one of the most difficult animals to keep is the old aggressive male chimpanzee.

“He is extremely powerful and very bad-tempered. Chimpanzees actually hate visitors and throw things at them.”

At one point in the episode, a chimpanzee is left for dead, but Attenborough says filmmakers cannot intervene in such situations.

“You make things infinitely worse. Sometimes a problem is more complicated than it seems.

“I watched something which was absolutely agonising – a small baby elephant that was dying of thirst when the whole family was several days from water.

“This poor little thing was dying and you think, ‘Why didn’t you give it a bucket of water?’ But you’re in the desert and you don’t have a bucket of water. The creature is very close to death and has to walk for another three days if it’s going to get to water, so all you’re doing is prolonging the death.”

The presenter adds that, “All you can do there is watch tragedy. But tragedy is part of life and you have to show it. You can’t have sunshine throughout your life. To have done anything else would only have made matters worse and distorted the truth.”

Like Blue Planet II, which closed with a very strong and influential warning about the dangers posed to our seas by our overuse of plastic, Dynasties also carries a powerful environmental message.

At the end of the opening episode, Attenborough highlights that, thanks to a goldrush, the chimpanzee population of Senegal has become critically endangered.

The programme also states that because of human destruction of their habitats, 80 per cent of chimps across the West have disappeared over the past 20 years.

Attenborough reflects that, “When you look at the range of locations in Dynasties – going from the South Pole to West Africa – the common worry is allowing animals space. In every case, except the Antarctic, we show the encroachment of the human population.

“These animals are under great pressure, but how do you solve this? It’s a huge problem, not just for animal behaviour specialists, but also for politicians. It’s about raising people’s awareness and recognising animals’ right to space.”

Attenborough asserts that it is vital to deliver these warnings about the harm we are doing to our own planet.

“It’s a message I’ve been preaching for 50 years. The natural world doesn’t belong entirely to us. We have a moral responsibility to the natural world as well as a practical one not to screw it up, otherwise we are going to be in big trouble. And we are screwing

it up.”

“Tragedy is part of life and you have to show it.” – David Attenborough