Murder in the Troop

As Sideshow Bob once opined, television is essentially a "bottomless chum bucket," and even when I am petsitting at a house with cable I usually prefer to read over endlessly channel surfing for a nature program that I probably won't like anyway. Some programs on PBS, however, are notable exceptions, and I recently came across some YouTube videos of a Nature documentary all about baboons that I wish I had caught when it aired. I didn't always like baboons, but between reading the excellent book A Primate's Memoir (if you haven't read it already, I urge you to do so) and taking a course with primatologist Ryne Palombit (who works with baboons in Botswana) I've become more and more interested in them (I'm still anxious to get my hands on a copy of Baboon Metaphysics). Hopefully the film, entitled "Murder in the Troop" will be released on DVD soon, but until then here are some clips;

In the meantime, however, Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History (also a Nature documentary) has been released on DVD and I can't wait to see it. Humans have been horribly unkind (and that's putting it mildly) to our closest living relatives, primates that are so close to us and yet rarely deemed worthy of compassion. Here's a preview/introduction for the documentary;