Attenborough Revisits 1979 Gorilla Scene for Cbeebies Iplayer
Sir David Attenborough revisits his 1979 gorilla encounter in a new documentary on cbeebies iplayer, returning to the moment a female mountain gorilla watched him from just a few feet away. The film also traces how the crew reached that clearing in Rwanda at all, with Attenborough now approaching his 100th birthday on 8 May.
Rwanda on 9 January 1978
On 9 January 1978, Attenborough and his team arrived in the Virunga Mountains planning a sequence that would show a gorilla's thumb and explain how thumbs and fingers help apes grip tools. They climbed 9,843 ft, or 3,000m, up 45-degree slopes to glimpse one of the few surviving mountain gorillas, at a point when the population in the Virungas had dropped below 285.
The footage that emerged in Life on Earth in 1979 showed more than the planned science lesson. A female gorilla observed him from close range, and Attenborough told the camera, “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know.”
Dian Fossey in Volcanoes National Park
Weeks after the team sent Dian Fossey a letter, they received an invitation to visit her in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park. Fossey, who founded the Karisoke Research centre, introduced the team to the gorilla group and taught them how to behave in the gorillas' presence.
Attenborough said, “We couldn't have got anywhere near them without Dian,” and the documentary makes that dependence plain. The crew did not simply find the gorillas; they were taken in by someone who already knew the family, the terrain and the rules.
Poppy and Pablo
Once the team were among the gorilla family, the scene turned intimate fast: Poppy tried to take off Attenborough's shoes, three-year-old Pablo lay down on him, and an adult female gorilla put a finger in his mouth and belched at him. Those details give the 1979 sequence its staying power, because the film now reads as both wildlife history and a record of a rare encounter that could only happen with Fossey's help.
The new documentary is worth watching because it connects the old footage to the conditions that made it possible, and to the conservation pressure around the Virungas. With Attenborough nearing 100, the film lands less like nostalgia than a reminder of how narrow that window was for the mountain gorillas and for the camera crew that reached them.
