H igh on the cuteness scale this week is TBS's "Dobutsu Kiso Tengai (Unbelievable Animals)" (tonight, 8 p.m.), a variety-cum-quiz show that covers animals both wild and domesticated.
The long-running series is notable for its coverage of primates. Almost every week, chimps or monkeys are set to challenging tasks (extracting fruit from a trickily constructed box; figuring out the best way to cross a moat), and the celebrity panelists are asked to guess how the animal will solve the problem.
The show is also the medium that made creepy-crawly otaku Shoichi Sengoku a superstar in his own modest way. Though Sengoku is the head of the Natural Environment Research Center, he comes off as the kid down the street with the neatest collection of bugs and snakes.
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