Your Inner Monkey

This film explores what human hands, vision, and brains reveal about our evolution from ancient primate ancestors.

Our primate progenitors had bodies a lot like those of modern monkeys and spent tens of millions of years living in trees. From them we inherited our versatile hands, amazing vision, and capable brains—but also some less beneficial traits, including our bad backs and terrible sense of smell.

This film is the third episode in Your Inner Fish, a series that originally aired on PBS and is hosted by anatomist and paleontologist Neil Shubin. Shubin journeys to meet our ancient animal ancestors while revealing the impact those animals have had on our bodies. Due to international distribution restrictions, the series can be streamed only in the United States and Canada.