Want to see a barefoot man climb a 250-foot tree without a rope just to get honey — while wild bees sting his eyeballs? This is a heart-racing, jaw-dropping tour through the jungle lives we never think about but will never forget.
Trailer for “Human Planet” Series
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- A man named Tete in the Congo climbs a giant tree using just a vine—risking a fall that could kill him—to harvest honey while bees swarm his face. He does this to feed his kids.
- The Piaroa kids of Venezuela casually hunt palm-sized tarantulas in the jungle. They roast them over fire and eat them like crab meat. This is their lunch, and they start doing this at age 5.
- Korowai tribes in Papua build 35-meter-high houses in trees using no nails, no scaffolding, just vines and wood. Why? To avoid spirits, floods, and enemies.
- The Matis of Brazil prep for a monkey hunt by injecting poison from frogs into their own bodies and squeezing noxious juice into their eyeballs. They say it gives them energy and sharpens their senses.
- In the Amazon, some women literally breastfeed monkeys. They bond with the animals—but they also hunt them. It’s part care, part survival.
Watch “People of the Trees” (“Human Planet: Jungles”)
This episode isn’t currently streaming on major platforms, but you can watch the first part of it here on YouTube.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 90/100
- IMDB Rating: 8.7/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Rating: not rated
Director’s Note
This is Episode 4 of the landmark BBC series “Human Planet”—a globe-spanning docuseries that explores how humans adapt to extreme environments. This one focuses on jungles and treetop living. Every story is shot cinematically, with intense color, incredible close-ups, and intimate access to some of the most remote people on Earth.
Release Date: January 2011 (BBC Two, UK)
My Review of “People of the Trees”
The Setup
The jungles of Earth are packed with life—but this episode is about the humans who call it home. From the Congo to the Amazon to Papua, it shows how people climb, swing, build, and hunt in the trees, surviving with skills most of us couldn’t dream of. No voiceover moralizing. Just people doing incredible things, every day.
More Highlights from the Doc
- The Matis use a 4-meter-long blowpipe to silently shoot monkeys in the treetops—and they mimic 10 different monkey calls to lure them in.
- In Papua New Guinea, men from the highlands wear elaborate feathers from Birds of Paradise for courtship displays. The bird-hunting alone takes days.
- The Bayaka women of the Congo Basin make music with water—literally slapping rhythms onto the river’s surface to create song. No instruments. Just hands and harmony.
- We join a government flight in Brazil searching for an uncontacted tribe in the rainforest. Aerial shots reveal huts hidden in dense green canopy—these are people who have never seen outsiders.
Cameos – Lesser-Known Details from the Doc
- In the Amazon, hunters believe frog venom gives them spiritual and physical power—it causes intense vomiting and hallucinations during the ritual.
- Those 35-meter treehouses in West Papua? Some have ladders built into the tree trunk itself—and they sway with the wind.
- The tarantulas hunted by the Piaroa are de-fanged by the kids, roasted, and eaten like soft-shell crab. The kids even scrape out the abdomen as a delicacy.
- We learn that some monkey species are raised as pets for years—only to be later eaten. The emotional complexity is real.
- The Bayaka sound-making in the water isn’t just music—it’s a signal to men upstream that food has been caught and it’s time to gather.
Wrap Up:
“People of the Trees” is the kind of doc you’ll think about for days. It makes the jungle feel like a place of magic, danger, and unshakable human genius.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc