The white-tailed deer is one of Nature's most graceful animals, but one too many can be a dreadful pest. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the complex relationships between people and animals, from deer to dogs. Also the story of Washoe, the first chimpanzee to learn sign language.

SEGMENT 1:

Cultural anthropologist Richard Nelson tells Judith Strasser that deer were almost exterminated in America in the late nineteenth century. Now their population has exploded to the extent that they threaten their own food supply, and wreak terrible damage on farmers trying to grow the human food supply. Nelson's book about deer is called "Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America."

SEGMENT 2:

Jeffrey Masson makes no bones about his love of dogs. He says they are capable of more pure and intense emotion than people and shares some remarkable dog stories with Steve Paulson. Masson is the author of "When Elephants Weep" and "Dogs Never Lie about Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs."

SEGMENT 3:

Roger Fouts (with his wife Deborah) runs the Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute. He tells Jim Fleming that as a young psychologist, he began thirty years of work with a chimpanzee named Washoe -- the first chimp to learn American sign language. Fouts tells Washoe's story in a book called "Next of Kin." Also, bad boy British satirist Will Self tells Steve Paulson about his new book, "Great Apes." The book posits a complete reversal in the roles of chimpanzees and humans and chronicles the adjustment adventures of a debauched London painter who goes to bed a human being and wakes up a chimpanzee.

Distribution dates:

• week of 11/30/97 - hour 2
• week of 11/29/98 - hour 2