Gorillas Revealed on WildlifeDirect with live coverage from Limbe

When Jana Jirátová and her boss Miroslav Bobek visited us from Czech Radio last month we had never heard of ‘The Revealed’ – a Big Brother parody played out by Gorillas in the Prague Zoo. The competitors were members of a lowland gorilla family; Richard, Moja, Shinda, Kamba and others.

The show was odd in so many ways, a TV program done by a radio company, the public were voting on Gorillas- and learning about themselves in the process. The interesting part to us was the link with Gorilla conservation. After 72 episodes, the Czech public did not allow the show to end even though the siverback Richard, had ‘won’ the popularity contest.

The show used 17 cameras hidden in the Gorilla house of the zoo, and captured the ins and outs of gorilla politics, births, deaths and captivated the imagination of the public, and the show won the prestigious BBC Wildlife “Wildscreen Award”. Public interaction and bringing it to Africa, has made this show even more exceptional.

Of course we leaped at the offer to partner with Czech Radio and bring The Revealed to WildlifeDirect because the project now benefits one of our bloggign partners, the Limbe Wildlife Sanctuary where live coverage is about to debut. We love the ingenuity behind this idea, and we think you will fall in love with the characters and the project too. Here is a note from the team who have just landed in Cameroon

“In a couple of days, we are setting off for Central Africa. As of April 1, we will start posting reports on WildlifeDirect from our journey to the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon, our visits to local schools where children received our books, negotiations about our future cooperation and, most importantly, from our expedition to tropical rain forests. We have received a unique chance to travel to the forest in the southern part of the Central African Republic and track a troop of lowland gorillas, the only of its kind in the world. We shall see how our plans materialise – but we will do our best…”