ANIMAL behaviour expert Dr David Sands is to feature in an TV documentary.

Experienced traveller and scientist David, from Chorley, is to lead a group of tropical fishkeepers on a month-long trip hundreds of miles up the River Amazon by motorboat and dugout canoe for ITV's "To the ends of the earth" programme.

But the doctor, of Blackburn Road, is more worried about his fellow travellers than the beasts he might encounter as he travels through South America in October.

He has already gone on five expeditions along South America's rivers to study fish, but added that his four companions were "amateurs" and he expected the film director to be hoping that sparks will fly.

He said: "We will all be sleeping and living in these little boats for four weeks and I can imagine things might get quite tense when we've all been together for a while -- I'm calling the film Five Go Mad in the Amazon!"

Father-of-five David has come face to face with tarantulas and paddled through piranha infested waters but said wildlife didn't really scare him.

He said: "When you see spiders or poisonous water snakes, they are just going about their business. It's the things you can't see, the imagined threats, that are scariest. "Once I was paddling up a little stream and I heard something walking beside me along the bank in the forest, tracking me. It could have been anything and I was scared it might be a jaguar. I didn't even have a rifle with me."

David said the darkness was hard to get used to, as it's impossible to even see your hand in front of your face at night.

His spookiest moment came at night when he heard a strange howling, slowly coming closer through the rainforest.

He said: "I was terrified. It sounded like a pack of Indians coming over the hill and I thought they were coming to get me." Despite the pitch darkness he managed to load a rifle, but when he woke a guide, he shrugged off his fears.

David said: "He just said they were howler monkeys, which make this strange sound as they travel at night."

But even the howler monkeys weren't as frightening as some of the humans he met -- his boat was once stopped by a group of armed teenage soldiers who appeared out of the Guyana jungle! Nowadays David -- who has even had a fish named after him, the Corydoras davidsandsi -- spends most of his time helping cats and dogs and their owners get along better.

His work is nationally recognised and he recently took part in filming a new series of BBC's 999 Rescue, giving advice on how to fend off a dog attack.

His TV appearance is likely to be screened in October as part of the new series, but viewers will have to wait until next year to see "Five Go Mad in the Amazon."