Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure | BBC Player | Premiering 8 May

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:02]And I was just about to start talking when I felt a hand come on on on my head and she twisted my head so she could look straight in my eyes.

[00:00:15]After months of planning, we traveled to Rwanda for one of the last shoots of the series.

[00:00:24]We had no idea what we were about to witness.

[00:00:35]There's one ape, however, that spends nearly all its time on the ground.

[00:00:40]It lives here 10,000 ft up on the flanks of the volcanoes of Central Africa on the borders of Rwanda and Zaire.

[00:00:49]The gorilla.

[00:00:51]You don't stare at a gorilla.

[00:00:53]That's a challenging thing to do. So, you keep your head down.

[00:00:57]And you make these [music] low vocalizations all the time.

[00:01:04]>> [snorts] >> And that's a sort of conversational acknowledgement that you're in their presence. [music] It seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolize all that is aggressive and violent when that's the one thing that the gorilla is not and that we are.

[00:01:30]And John said, "Go over there and when you get to them, start talking about the thumb and the forefinger and how it was important to grip things."

[00:01:42]"Right, John." I said.

[00:01:44]Next thing we know is that her two youngsters come out and actually sit on him.

[00:01:53]>> [music] >> That was a moment that when you could barely only saw the top of David's head, literally.

[00:02:05]And my jaw dropped. I mean, everyone's jaw dropped. Didn't expect this at all.

[00:02:15]I honestly don't know how long it was.

[00:02:18]I suspect it was about 10 minutes or quarter even quarter of an hour. I was simply transported. I mean, you just didn't encounter time. There's these extraordinary acceptance.

[00:02:39]And I was just about to start talking about the the opposition of the thumb and the forefinger when I felt a hand come out on [music] on my head.

[00:02:48]And it was a adult female.

[00:02:50]And she twisted my head so she could look straight into my eyes.

[00:02:56]And looked inside my mouth and put a finger in my mouth.

[00:03:00]And then made this belch vocalization.

[00:03:02][music] So, I did my best to respond. And you saw her look into one of his eye and then into his other eye. And I thought, my god, his head's going to come off and we haven't finished the series yet. Which was a very uncharitable thing to think.

[00:03:19]And I left um called back to the address and I said, "That's one of the most extraordinary moments of my life. Was it wonderful?"

[00:03:29]He said, "Well, we got a got a bit."

[00:03:32]I said, "Only a bit?" He said, "Well, yes. I could have waited for you. I didn't want to run out of film when you're in the middle of explaining about the thumb and the forefinger."

[00:03:46]Extraordinary, [music] really. I mean, it was one of the most privileged moments of our life, really.