Monkeys are seen consoling each other after the death of “robot baby monkey.” Photo from BBC.

Footage taken from hidden cameras designed to resemble animals in the wild has captured a touching moment.

The upcoming BBC documentary series Spy in the Wild takes the novel approach of using life-like animatronic animals with cameras embedded in their eyes to gather first-person footage of wildlife.

And as a preview clip for the first episode shows, this unique recording method proved to be very effective. So much so that in one instance it even tricked a group of langur monkeys in India into believing the robot was one of their own.

The “baby spy monkey” and its realistic movements managed to convince the other monkeys that it was alive. So when one of the monkeys dropped the robot, they all mistakenly believed it had passed away. In the footage, they all look over at the “dead monkey” and quietly console each other in an apparent display of grief.

“We began to see that the cameras were not only recording, they were sometimes eliciting behaviour in a way that made you think,” executive producer John Downer told The Telegraph.

“You were having that connection between the spy creature and the animal that you never get with any kind of filming, and so things would develop that you didn’t expect.”

Spy footage of animals in their natural habitat to be featured on the program also includes a mother alligator with her newly hatched baby, as well as a family of prairie dogs engaging in various displays of intimate social behaviour.