NATURE investigates the sometimes exasperating efforts of people and wild animals to adapt to each other when their worlds collide in Animals Behaving Badly.

The escalating battle for space on this planet between people and wild animals has grown increasingly one-sided, as humanity asserts its domination. But a few intrepid species are successfully challenging, harassing, and even exploiting us on our own turf.

How people are dealing with these incursions — and what we can learn from them to the benefit of both wildlife and humans — is the amusing and enlightening focus of Animals Behaving Badly. The filmmakers traveled to various parts of the United States and Canada, and as far away as New Zealand and Australia, to show us examples of animals behaving “badly,” and of the varying human reactions.

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Online content for Animals Behaving Badly was originally posted May 2003.

The Pemón, a Carib Indian people, are thought to have come to the Gran Sabana roughly 600 years ago. Prehistoric stone tools, though, have been found that suggest humans lived in the Lost World as long as 9,000 years ago. Today, about 75 percent of the nation’s entire population of 20,000 people live within Venezuela’s Canaima National Park.

Though Mount Roraima was included on a map published in Paris in the mid-17th century, the Pemón had no known contact with the outside world until the 18th century when Capuchin missionaries arrived in the Gran Sabana to convert them to Catholicism. A series of five books by the 20th-century missionary Frey Cesaro de Armellado still provides the best source of information about the Pemóns’ traditional shamanistic beliefs.

Other Europeans soon followed. In the mid-19th century, German explorers Richard Shomburgk and Theodor Koch-Grünberg wrote widely about their travels in the Gran Sabana, sparking much interest in the region. Scaling Mount Roraima became the goal. Supported by the Royal Geographical Society of London, British explorers Everard Im Thurn and Harry Perkins in 1884 became the first to accomplish this feat. Lectures by Thurn about their adventures prompted Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, to pen the bestseller fantasy “The Lost World,” published in 1912.

Other explorers followed. One of them, American pilot Jimmie Angel, was on the hunt for a supposed “river of gold” to which he had earlier transported another explorer. Angel never found the gold, but in 1933, he did find a waterfall. Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world, tumbling some 3,212 feet from the top of Auyantepui. Seven years later, the Venezuelan Ministry of Development backed an ambitious exploration program of the so-called Lost World, largely bringing its isolation to an end.

According to Pemón legend, this animal represents the spirit that was instrumental in saving man’s fish supplies:

Water snake

Black frog

Giant otter

Lizard

Wonder about supper in the Lost World? Pemón cuisine relies on what’s immediately available. Like bugs. Termites and ants are ground up with chilis for spicy sauces to add a dash of flavor to meat. (Read more in Wildlife.) Given the Lost World’s abundance of rivers, fish are also popular — a spicy fish stew called “tuma” with manioc wafers is one common repast. Meat such as agouti (kin to the guinea pig) or deer can also make an appearance. Breakfasts feature dumplings — reportedly quite fatty — and coffee. Kachiri, a manioc root liqueur, is the preferred alcohol. Food remains an issue for the Pemón, who are resorting more to growing their own produce rather than harvesting wild food items. In the 1990s, reports circulated that electricity companies involved in the construction of a major power line through the Gran Sabana to Brazil offered free food to counter local opposition to their project.

PEOPLE

No, these are not just back-packing, camera-toting tourists. These are the Gran Sabana’s native Pemón Indian population, too. Since the early 1980s, the park’s population has increased by a factor of five. Pemón farmers set seasonal fires on the savanna to clear forest from farm land and kill off rattlesnakes and spiders from pathways. As the population grows, savanna fires are becoming more frequent. At the same time, resident Pemón are increasingly dependent on tourism for their livelihood. No real plan for managing the impact of tourists on the Lost World yet exists. Within Canaima National Park, rules require tourists to bring down all garbage from the tepuis, but the remains of campfires have been found on the tepui summits — a worrisome sign since the mountain’s vegetation does not easily grow back.

MINING

Gold and diamond mining operations are extensive in the areas bordering on the Lost World. Miner hamlets exist throughout Canaima National Park. Though mining within the park itself is prohibited, great mineral wealth is thought to exist within its precincts. Mercury, the run-off from gold mining, has already contaminated Guri Lake to the north of the tepuis region and is feared to pose a threat to northward-running rivers that stretch through the Lost World. Once in the river, the mercury can poison wildlife and humans that depend on its waters for sustenance. Deforestation and disruption of these rivers’ water flow are additional concerns. Illegal mining is frequently practiced on the tepuis’s lower slopes, though, as yet, the inaccessibility of the mountains’ higher elevations has kept the practice relatively contained.

POWER LINES

To sell electricity to Brazil and bring power to Venezuelan gold mines and logging companies, Venezuela is building a 470-mile long series of high-tension power lines that would stretch through Bolivar State and the Canaima National Park en route to Brazil. Pemón residents and conservationists worry that the $400 million project will only encourage mining within the park and contribute to the destruction of forest and endemic flora and fauna on the low tepuis of Sierra de Lema. This range of mountains to the north of the Canaima National Park remains largely unexplored. For the past several years, the Pemón have kept up a steady protest against the power lines, blocking work on the sites and, in 2000, knocking down seven of the power line structures.

The name of the Pemón group fighting construction of the power lines is:

Rainbow Warriors

Tepuis Warriors

Wek-ta Warriors

Rally for Roraima

For all the Canaima National Park’s size and grandeur, no concrete plan has been drawn up to handle that most degrading of tourist imprimaturs: trash. During a 1999 clean-up campaign, participants collected some 794 pounds of trash from the route up Mount Roraima. The park stipulates that what goes up a tepui, must come down, but enforcement mechanisms are few. In a park the size of Belgium, there are reportedly only 12 park rangers.