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Sir David Attenborough is to investigate the life and mystery death of the circus elephant that inspired the Disney film Dumbo.

In the BBC special he has access to the skeleton of celebrity animal Jumbo at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Working with a team of scientists and experts, he has pieced together the dramatic history of the creature, believed at the time to have been the largest elephant in the world.

Sir David analyses his bones, pictured, to find clues to how he lived and died – and why he suffered terrifying night rages.

Arriving at London Zoo in 1865, Jumbo was a firm favourite with Queen Victoria and her children.

But behind the scenes he would smash up his den, breaking his tusks and being dosed with large amounts of alcohol.

When London Zoo sold him to PT Barnum’s circus in America, there was outrage among the public.

While he was turned into a star, with 20 million people coming to see him, his life ended tragically and mysteriously. Sir David explains Jumbo’s troubled mind and looks at how society no longer enjoys seeing elephants living in captivity.

The film, Jumbo: The Life of an Elephant Superstar, is part of a raft of upcoming natural history commissions for the BBC.

Chris Packham is to make a film about the T-Rex, which has been inaccurately described for centuries.

It might not have been green. It may have had stripes, and it could even have been covered in feathers.

In the film, Chris will then attempt to create the most accurate CGI representation of the T-Rex ever produced, using up-to-the-minute technology, along with new palaeontology and zoology methods, plus access to Tristan, the fullest fossil of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the world.

Chris tells us: “Big, fierce and extinct. It’s the most famous, most glamorous poster pin-up in the zoological world. It’s the greatest animal that ever lived and perhaps the most misrepresented too.

“It’s time to put that right.”