>> Tonight, we all become spies in the wild as we look back on the groundbreaking miniseries from PBS nature, cleverly disguising over 30 animatronics by cameras as animals secret to capturing animal behavior like never before and giving us a glimpse of what life is like in the great outdoors.

We take you undercover as this special edition of MetroFocus starts right now.

♪ >> This is "MetroFocus," with Rafael Pi Roman, Jack Ford, and Jenna Flanagan.

MetroFocus is made possible by the Peter G Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund.

Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

And by Jody and John Arnhold.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.

Rafael: If you thought our friends over at nature could not get you any closer to life in the wild, think again.

Spike in the wild, a five part miniseries presented right here on PBS features over 30 cameras disguised as different species of animals that secretly record life in the animal kingdom.

You won't believe what they caught on video.

Just take a look at this clip from the first episode, love.

>> For three long months, she protected her eggs day and night.

As she waited for this moment.

Now, she meets her babies for the first time.

They're delicate, and vulnerable.

But they are not safe here.

She must get them to water.

Her solution is extraordinary.

Despite having the most powerful bite in nature, she carefully gathers them in a throat patch beneath a stockade of deadly teeth.

She is as gentle as a crocodile could ever be.

She won't leave any behind.

Even spy hatchling.

Safe in her cavernous mouth, all survived unscathed.

And spy hatchling is still filming.

Rafael: Joining us now with more on the spy in the wild miniseries is the executive producer of nature, and John Nolan, one of the designers of the spike camera technology featured in the series.

Welcome, it's a pleasure.

John, I found out you are no slouch, you worked on Harry Potter, where the wild things are, hell boy, warhorse, think virtual -- thank you for coming.

All the way from England.

Let me start with you.

These despite creatures are amazing.

Blue saw one of 30.

There are so real, it's like Westborough for animals.

How do you go about getting them so right?

>> There's lots of research going on to YouTube, Google, finding out about anatomy and form, we had to look at videos where we would find the animals in slow motion are at high speed, footage of them so we could actually try and create the same movement with robotics, engineer metal in a way to obviously get them to work exactly as they would in the wild.

Rafael: And they respond to other animals as they would in the wild.

>> Absolutely.

Rafael: Fred, we see a lot of interaction between the creatures and the spy creatures.

The real animals and the spy creatures.

Obviously, record cameras and camera operators were able to get close to these animals as well.

How did that happen?

>> This is probably the most ambitious thing we have ever done.

There are about four or five people involved in shooting a sequence.

In some cases you had to operators of the animatronics animal, the movements and everything.

And you would have a proper camera person with a regular lens filming the white shot, and you mentioned over 30 animatronics animals, which is true, but there were an additional maybe 25 cameras that were used in fake tree stumps, in boulders and rocks and tree limbs and things like that.

They were surrounded by cameras, and a number of people were watching.

Everything was recorded.

They recorded thousands of hours of footage.

Each night, they had to go through.

And just weed out the stuff that they did not want because it would be overwhelming to do this later.

Rafael: A fundamental question I have had, which we have talked about in previous discussions about these documentaries and that other people have is that our these animals really fooled?

Are they really full by these spy creatures?

Or do they know it is not one of them and they get used to it?

>> John might differ, because his spy creature is so perfectly created, but there really was not an intent to fool them, in fact, what is interesting about the entire stores is -- series is what you see in the first moments when they first encountered the spy creatures.

The idea was twofold, to get these incredibly close up shots because you had spy creatures with cameras in their eyes that got very close to the animals.

The second thing was just to watch how they would react to these sort of things.

To me it's like if we put a human mannequin between us we would be curious about it, and we would look at it, but for the most part we would know it's not real.

Rafael: Do you think that they are full or not, John -- fooled or not, John?

?

>> First but second, and for us that his job done, even for that first interaction where the animal might buy into our robot being real, then that is job done for us, it's something that I guess the rest of the documentary is based around, if you like.

Rafael: We'll have 15 seconds, the theme is love.

Do they show love?

?

>> That's not a 15 second answer, it's very hard to know how you experience love from how I do, but there is that bond and signs proves that with -- they have these feelings.

Rafael: This is a really a great leap forward with these spy camera document trees.

How well do we know what animals think and feel?

Answering that question was one of the missions of nature's miniseries spy in the wild and to that end, the serious producers use cameras designed to look, move and even smell like animals and other things to spy on their subjects in their most intimate moments.

Take a look at this scene where a spy camp disguised as a cobra is facing a meerkat who is bravely attempting to defend her comments in the Kalahari desert.

>> Being a sentry is risky business, as they are easy targets for prisoners.

-- predators.

But with young pups to protect, they take greater risks by climbing higher.

Here they see predators sooner, but they are vulnerable to birds of prey.

Their self-sacrifice is about to be tested.

This is no ordinary cobra.

It is a spy cobra.

With no regard for her own safety, she prepares to face the snake.

She reacts as she would to the real thing, rightly protecting the colony and their precious cubs with no lock for herself.

-- Sock for herself.

Her aim is to harass the snake into leaving.

But with spy snake holding its ground, the meerkat calls for reinforcements.

Rafael: Joining me to talk about the spy in the wild series is the executive producer, Fred Kaufman.

Fred, the series -- >> Let me interrupt you, that scene with the meerkat, the fake meerkat was actually smeared with poop so it would smell like the others, people asked that question.

Rafael: They even had a pool camera -- poo camera.

This series has been a huge hit, especially on social media where some of the segments have gotten millions of hits.

What is it about this series that people find so compelling.

>> Is how lifelike the animatronics look.

And the other thing is that I think whenever you look -- introduce these look-alikes you want to see how they react.

Are they fooled, are they not fooled, are they threatened, do they want to destroy these robots, how will they first react to them, and to me, that is the highlight of each of the segments.

The cover sequence that we saw was interesting.

The meerkat investigating is the century, she is the one who is standing on top of these bushes looking out for eagles.

And when she notices this cobra, it is her job to investigate and protect.

When she calls for reinforcements and we did not show, we don't have to show the entire clip, they all come look again marching up.

Rafael: Westside story stuff.

>> It's really suspenseful.

And what I thought was terrific was there was a point where the sentry goes you know what, I don't think that this is real.

Rafael: I want to get to that because first of all, it's an interesting idea to find out if they are not fooled, but if they are, is that a disservice to the animals, fooling them, and argue kind of changing the natural scheme of things?

>> I think anytime you do something that is not observational there is a level of controversy, but that's how you learn things, you poke and prod and Paulette things, and out of that comes big scientific rewards.

With all of the animals that we film, we were working with specific researchers who have been looking at these animals for years.

They -- there was always a research group that we were filming.

And we were taking direction from the scientists.

We knew when to place these robotics out in the wild, it was not just an arbitrary decision, and the behavior that we filmed was interpreted by these scientists so we knew that we -- what we were seeing.

Our feeling was that if they allowed us to do this then there was a degree of acceptance.

Rafael: Were they fooled?

>> It depends on the animal.

We saw it tortoise try to mate with the animatronics.

I think for most animals there is a level of curiosity which they discover that OK, this is not one of us.

And more importantly, it's not a threat, and it's not going to hurt us.

So they were ignored.

What ends up on television is that first moment.

Rafael: One of the most disturbing scenes is when the chimps gather together very smartly to accost these baboons.

Essentially, they ambush them intelligently, and it becomes very violent.

I have to say the most frightening thing is it is at that moment where animal behavior looks more like human behavior to me.

Let me ask you the big question that the series Stripes answer.

Did we discover that animals behave more like human beings than we ever thought?

>> I don't think we discovered but reinforced it.

And certainly the scene you're talking about is disturbing and has been filmed before, where a troop of chimps is aware of a troop of baboons, through its territory and they attack and they kill a baboon and end up eating it.

They sort of strategize, they come out in different ways.

They're vicious.

They can kill.

The territorial.

There are number of scenes with chimpanzees in the series where you see this jealousy and conniving and deception.

Males are kicked out if they try to mate with a female when the FMAP, that is his role.

In a lot of ways, they are like us.

I have a lot more questions, but we are out of time, but you have to come back in the next couple of episodes.

Rafael: Animals are known as the Masters of misbehavior.

What makes them break the rules?

The fourth installment of an interest spy in the wild captures releasing behavior that might provide the answer to that question.

Here's a look.

>> Spy in the wild continues with a look at mischief and mayhem in the natural world.

Youngsters are often up to no good, even the most deadly behave animals must abide by some rules, ingenious do spy creatures are on-site to witness devious deeds and lessons learned, all from a whole new perspective.

Rafael: Joining me to reveal why animals cannot seem to stop themselves from Breaking Bad's niches executive producer Fred Kaufman.

Fred, welcome back.

>> In this episode we see mischief and deception, criminal behavior among many other things within the animal world.

Are we seeing the dark side of animals here?

>> It does seem that way.

We want to think of animals as being pure and altruistic and creatures that we want to pet, but as we see in order to survive in the wild and to live in a social group, there are all sorts of devious ways to get ahead and get what you want and that is what we look at.

>> The animals that we come to really love, like meerkats and penguins and dolphins for goodness sake, misbehaving here.

We have to rethink how we have been thinking about these animals?

>> I think we just need a bigger, clear picture of their behavior, such as letting ourselves to what we think that they should be.

With banquets, they can be vicious as they tried to create a nest and we have a scene where , to impress the females, males try to the best nest and they will often steal pebbles from another male, which leads to fights and other things.

With meerkats, a terrific story, I had not seen this before, where only the Queen is allowed to mate and this younger upstart wanted to get into the the fun and was kicked out of the group.

Rafael: Because she started to play around with meerkats from another group.

And they caught her.

>> And they said that's it for you.

They threw her out.

It's so much like how we behave, in our social structure.

With clearly the one with the most seniority, the oldest person has all of the pillage is and the younger upstarts have to wait and listen and wait for their turn.

Rafael: Are all of them versions except for the Queen?

>> I guess so.

If they have any on the side, that happens as well.

Rafael: Speaking of which, it seems like sex is one of the prime movers to misbehaviors.

It seems to be one of the themes of the show, is it?

>> Is instinct will to pass along your jeans, your DNA.

That is a very strong instinct.

And therefore there will be all sorts of ways for the males to make that happen.

And their hormones search as well, -- search as well, and all of these individuals have personality, and some may not be satisfied with waiting.

Or they will look for an opportunity and do it sort of carefully away from everybody's crying eyes.

Rafael: You see this among chips.

>> All the time.

You see them looking around.

It's very entertaining, but it's a very serious matter.

They're either kicked out of the group or they can get into death battles.

Rafael: What are other reasons that cause animals to misbehave besides sex?

>> In these social structures where there are defined roles for everybody, the higher you are on the social scale, the more privilege you have.

And there's one scene with a wolf pup where the families out hunting, and they have a babysitter to watch the pups, and she gets annoyed because they are off fully around a little further away from the addendum they should be, and she goes out to teach them a lesson.

They have to be subservient.

And they have to go on their backs.

One of them does not want to do it, and she has to T7 a lesson.

And our wolf pup spy cam doesn't want to do it, so that gets knocked over.

So, you do see these kind of behaviors where they are trying to reinforce who is in charge, where you are in the pecking order, that were the keeps the whole group together and defines behavior.

Rafael: Last time we spoke, these animals look most like human beings, I said, behave like us when they are behaving badly.

That is one of the missions of the series, to show that in fact animals we have a lot more like human beings than we ever thought.

Do you think that is true?

>> I do, there is one interesting scene with the chimps and we have a push baby in a fake log and the bush baby is a little primate that comes up and down and watches it and the chip goes up to the bush baby with a branch with leaves and he pops himself out and he is trying to prep -- impress the females.

Rafael: He sits there, then the females shop and then he starts to act out.

>> What guy can't relate to that, he's puffing himself up and making himself more courageous to impress the female, and when she is not interested and walks away, he stops.

44 Rafael: What surprised you the most about this?

>> It didn't surprise me, but how clever and smart these animals are, I don't think that they were really fooled, I think the way they approached the animatronics was very interesting and very telling, I think that once they recognize it is not a threat they sort of ignored it.

Once they feel, also, a little wolf pup gets paid on -- peed on by the matriarch, and there is a feeling that they -- because they don't behave naturally they suffered in.

If you're not being subservient, you get messed with.

There is this Egret that gets splashed with mud.

I think that was the effort saying you should be flying away.

I think there is a lot going on that we are discovering on.

Rafael: Nature's fire department's series spy in the wild recorded animal behavior in 21 countries over a three year time stretch, employing more than 30 Emmett Rice by cameras.

These robots got -- spy cameras, which included an orangutan, a crocodile, and egret, and two baby hippos infiltrated the most intimate habitats of the natural world and captured extraordinary animal behavior in the wild.

Now, the final episode of the series explains how the concept of spy creatures evolved and shows us the painstaking efforts that went into building and deploying these amazingly lifelike models.

>> Spy in the wild concludes with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series.

Made the creators whose cutting-edge designs and technology built an army of remarkable spy creatures.

And follow the filmmakers who took great risks to deploy them in the wild.

Rafael: Joining me now is Fred Kaufman.

Welcome back.

>> In this last episode we get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of these robots.

I had to call them about, because the more than that.

There like Westworld for animals as we have said before, and you can see that in this episode.

Talk about some of the spy cams that most impress you.

And how long did it take to build these?

>> It takes months because were getting measurements of actual animals you want to re-create.

You are creating a clay model first, and sharing that with scientists to make sure it looks good, then you take it to the next step and build a skeleton and he put in all the electronics and servos and things, the orangutan has 25 face movements.

It actually takes two people to operate it.

They're very advanced and complicated and time-consuming, and you have to take them out and test them.

It does take a while.

Rafael: They don't just move, they move like this supposed to move.

We see the crocodile, the crocodile in his skeleton version, just doing the crocodile walk.

The research that must've gone into that.

>> A lot of research and trial and error in decisions about which animals to try to even re-create.

When we want to go.

A lot of thought goes into how to create and place them in the wild, where the cameras go and what we can hope for.

>> How much have these spy cams evolved over the last 16 years?

How much have they contributed to our knowledge of the intimate behavior of animals in the wild?

>> There was an interesting scene in one of the earlier films where we had, one of the most popular sequences that have been discussed and is on YouTube, we created an animatronics monkey that you find in India, it was on a branch.

And it effectively fell over, we did not plan that.

And it was thought to have died by the other monkeys.

And the females would come over and lift this dead monkey and the males were not.

They would set the come over and sort of touch it agreement.

That was exactly what happens with real babies of this species that might die in the wild.

It reinforced a lot of what scientists had seen.

Again, the thought process of how they react to some of these animals, these animatronics and surprisingly surprisingly, very very few were destroyed.

There was an anticipation that we would lose a number of them, and the enemas -- animals were not very violent or belligerent with the spy cameras, they either excepted them or realize that they were no threat.

Rafael: How much did we learn about how they feel?

>> I think that studies now and the way that scientists are positioning their work is far more towards the emotional side of animals, which they did not do 25 years ago.

You would never give in animal and name, it would be a number, part of a study group.

And now, there is more and more observation be made where they are noticing animals playing and perhaps loving.

I mean, elephants love each other, and I could use that word love, they are just strongly emotional, you could see it.

This is trending towards more emotions that they share with us.

Rafael: What is next in the technology?

How much more advanced can you get in technology and how much closer can you get to these animals than you did?

>> Where doing another series which will feature animatronics animals more on the move with migrating animals.

The challenge is how do we make the move better and more seamlessly?

They are a little clumsy in this series, and they weren't meant to move so much.

The next challenge is how do we make the move more seamlessly?

And there is always a challenge of making them look better and small cameras and what we can do with them.

It's always improving on what you have.

Rafael: Thanks so much.

This is been a great series.

>> Thank you for turning into MetroFocus.

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>> MetroFocus is made possible by The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund.

Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

And by Jody and John Arnhold.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.