Chacma Baboon - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In 2011, the British Television Channel ITV1 aired an eight-episode miniseries, hosted by popular British comedian Bill Bailey, with exclusive features from the series on itvWILD. The series followed the lives of three different family groups of Chacma baboons in South Africa. The series focuses on the baboons' abilities to adapt to human settlement and their complex social lives. It is generally structured within a narrative, with each adult baboon having a name and being treated as an 'actor' in the story. The three families of baboons have each developed their own ways of life; the 'Smitz' group spends most its time trying to rob food from tourists along a coastal highway, the 'Tokai' group has remained in a more natural forest area, and the 'Da Gama' group lives on the rooftops of an apartment complex. The program is the second attempt by Bailey to produce a semiserious nature documentary, and it has received good reviews.