Robot 'spy' gorilla records wild gorillas singing and farting, because nature is beautiful

Mountain gorillas have been caught on camera as they "sing" during their supper, a behavior that has never before been documented on video. Filmmakers captured the astonishing footage of the primate crooners with a little help from a very special camera: a robotic "spy" designed to look like a young gorilla. The singing apes make their television debut on April 29 in the returning PBS series, "Nature: Spy in the Wild 2." Like its predecessor, which first aired in 2017, the program documents remarkable up-close glimpses of elusive wildlife behavior, seen through the "eyes" of robots that are uncanny lookalikes of the creatures that they film. But this time, the robot animals display an even greater range of realistic behaviors, enabling them to interact with the wildlife that they're spying on. Though human camera operators typically keep a safe distance from wild gorillas, the lifelike animatronic gorilla spy was able to infiltrate a troop and film their daily routines, which included an impromptu suppertime serenade. Footage of the singing gorillas is featured in the first episode of "Spy in the Wild 2" and shows the apes reclining amid dense foliage in a sanctuary in Uganda.