BBC Earth’s new animal show “Animal Einsteins” takes a look at some of the planet’s most ingenious animals and explore the cunning skills they’ve developed in order to survive and thrive in the animal kingdom.
Starting April 26, the six episode series, through help of experts, experiments and science will see Packham shine light on some of the animal kingdom’s savviest species in the daily battle for survival.
From bees that can do maths and play football, and apes that use body language humans can understand, to cuttlefish that can disguise their gender, the series will show how the intelligence of the animal kingdom and the ingenuity it takes to survive.
“There’s quite a lot of wow moments, there are stories here which are going to stop people in their tracks and get them to completely re-think the way that they probably consider other animals’ intelligence,” said Packham.
He said the most unusual skill he has learnt about from the series was from cuttlefish who disguise themselves as females to bypass the other males.
"Mourning cuttlefish make half of their body look like a female and then they can sneak past another male and it is just unbelievably cheeky.
“The minute its under there, the male side attracts the female and they get to mate, and it’s so sneaky and so brilliant that they have the capacity to change their colouration to mimic the opposite sex, for me that was just joyous,“ he said.
One of the highlights for him while filming were finding out new things and just being astonished by it.
“I like trying to imagine how animals perceive the world, because we think about our eyesight, but we also did a thing about animals that see in polarised light.
”You just can’t imagine it, it’s beyond our comprehension.
“I like being challenged by things like that which are beyond our comprehension. I like animals that are also better at doing things than we are,” said Packham.
Catch Chris Packham on “Animal Einsteins” on BBC Earth from April 26 at 7pm.