Original subtitles

Specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this Collection, Sir David Attenborough has chosen documentaries

from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

MALAGASY VALIHA MUSIC

Madagascar is famous for its land animals.

But it's almost equally famous for the strange creatures

that live in the seas around its shores.

Up on the north-west coast, up here,

there's a tiny island called Nosy Be,

where there's a marine research station

staffed by French scientists

and we had an invitation to go up there to see what they were doing.

As soon as we arrived,

we went down to the shore to see what we could find among the rocks.

The island is surrounded by a coral reef and, at low tide,

you can walk out into the sea for nearly half a mile

across the sharp coral fronds.

Like all coral reefs throughout the world, this one was teeming

with a bewildering variety of animal life, some of it unfamiliar,

and some very like the sea creatures

that you can find round our own shores.

Here, a brittle star, just like our own brittle star,

but rather larger than most and deep purple.

We didn't see many of these creatures during the day,

for most of them are hiding in crevices among the coral.

But, at night, they came out and covered the reef

in enormous numbers, and then they are truly spectacular,

because their wriggling arms are luminescent.

Sea urchins, too, were astonishingly abundant and, again,

they are very like their European relations.

Except that this one is a delicate shade of pink.

These longer-spined ones are black,

with phosphorescent spots in the middle.

You have to be fairly careful how you pick them up.

Their long, sharp spines are hollow, very fragile, and filled with poison.

If one pricks you, its point tends to break off in your hand.

It's extremely difficult to get it out

and usually the wound turns septic.

And here, beneath a rock,

something that certainly does not occur in European waters -

a sea snake.

It has an extremely venomous bite

that can kill a fish almost instantaneously.

But, fortunately, it seldom attacks anything except a fish.

I had already discovered that Madagascar

has a knack of providing the unexpected.

Most of its land animals are unique and occur nowhere else in the world.

But nearly all sea creatures throughout the world

have a very wide distribution.

Even here, Madagascar produced something special, at least for me.

In this pool, I found, to my surprise,

the mud skipper.

I was surprised because

in other parts of the world where it occurs

it lives up to its name and literally skips across mud.

Here in Madagascar, you can more properly describe them

as rock skippers.

Their front fins are modified to serve as legs,

so that they can clamber out of the water and sit on top of the rocks,

breathing, not through their gills,

but through the wet surface of their skin,

rather in the same way as a frog is able to do.

But though I had watched them many times elsewhere

I'd never really understood why on earth

they should bother to come out of the water.

After all, it isn't as though they're forced to do so.

They never live far away from the tidal pools

and water is always there if they want a swim.

But, in spite of that, they are always wriggling up into the air.

They don't, as far as I know, find food up on the rocks,

so what do they do?

Well, here in Madagascar, I found at least one answer.

These two were starting their courtship.

Their dorsal fins are brilliantly coloured blue, red and white

and, for ten minutes, these two grotesque little creatures

sat on top of their rock in the middle of the pool,

ecstatically flirting their fins at one another.

It seems that for a mud skipper

the only place to conduct your courtship

is on top of a rock, out of water.

The marine research station had its own boat

and we were invited to sail with them on one of their outings.

The scientist in charge was particularly interested in sharks -

what species occurred around the coast, what they fed on,

whether they migrated and so on.

And, in order to study them,

he had to catch specimens at regular intervals.

The method he used was basically the same as the Japanese use

for catching tunny.

A line paid out over the stern as we steamed along, with glass buoys

attached to it to keep it afloat and, every few yards, another line

clipped onto it, which will hang downwards

with a bait on a hook at the end.

For tunny, the Japanese use an enormous line

sometimes 50 miles long.

But we used a shorter version, a mere five miles.

Every now and then,

we put over an empty oil drum with a flag attached to it to mark

the position of the line as it lay on the surface of the sea.

At the end of our five-mile run,

we stopped our engines and lay drifting for an hour or so

to give time for the sharks to come to the bait

while peacock fish played inquisitively around our bows,

their brilliant fins flashing turquoise and yellow

in the blue water.

And then, about midday, we started steaming slowly back

over the course we had taken during the morning,

pulling in the line as we went.

Very soon, we had made a catch.

But it wasn't the shark we were hoping for, it was a tunny.

Maybe from the scientific point of view

this was a little disappointing,

but it wasn't as far as the crew were concerned, for this meant

that there would be delicious, fresh tunny steaks for dinner

that evening in many parts of the village back at Nosy Be.

Tunny swim in schools, and when you catch one

you're liable to catch many.

Anyway, we certainly did that morning.

Soon, we were back at a point where the line had been in the water

for several hours, and there

the tunny had been hanging on the hook

for some considerable time.

This was grisly proof that there were many shark around -

and an unpleasant reminder of what they can do not only to other fish,

but to a man.

The remains of a magnificent sailfin marlin that had been given

the same treatment by the sharks.

Well, at least it showed that there were plenty of shark around.

And then, at last, we sighted the fin that we had been looking for.

This was a big one and he was hooked.

We were not fishing for sport.

The main thing was not to lose the shark,

and the skipper had his own method of making sure that we didn't.

GUNSHOT

This was the first of five big sharks that we caught that day,

all of which were due to be taken back to the laboratories

to be identified, measured, dissected

and to have the contents of their stomachs examined

as part of the marine laboratory's detailed research programme.

But to see the most exciting and famous fish

that the Madagascar Research Institute has ever handled,

we had to go to their main laboratories

in the capital, Tananarive.

And there I was privileged to see

one of the most remarkable creatures in the world, the coelacanth.

Until 1938, scientists only knew the coelacanth from fossils

and they believed that it had become extinct over 60 million years ago.

Then one, alive and snapping,

turned up in the trawl of a boat fishing off South Africa.

It was a scientific sensation of the century.

But, infuriatingly, its internal parts had been destroyed.

In spite of an intensive search, it was not until 1952

that another was found,

in the Comoro Islands, just off the coast of Madagascar.

It turned out that the Comoran fishermen

caught one or two each year.

But they didn't value them highly.

Their flesh wasn't particularly tasty, they said,

and only their huge, rough scales were useful -

excellent for rubbing down the inner tubes of bicycles

before mending a puncture.

But to the scientist, the coelacanth was of paramount interest.

For it seems certain that fish very like it

were the creatures from which the whole of the amphibians,

reptiles, mammals

and, indeed, man himself are ultimately descended.

Every detail of its anatomy, therefore, is of absorbing interest.

Its fins have long fleshy lobes at their base,

which make them quite unlike the fins of any other living fish.

And there seems little doubt

that these represent the first rudimentary legs

which enabled the ancestral amphibians to drag themselves

from the water and begin the colonisation of the dry land -

a process that the recently evolved little mud skippers

are now repeating all over again on their own account.

Furthermore, when scientists examined

the internal organs of this strange creature,

they discovered that it had the beginnings of an air-breathing lung.

If any animal in the world deserves the much-used expression

"living fossil", it's surely this.

I had already come to believe that almost everything in Madagascar

was strange, weird, or, more often than not, almost prehistoric

compared with other creatures in the world,

and here was yet another confirmation.

From Tananarive, we headed westwards to a patch of dry forest

which we had been told was particularly rich in animal life.

And we took with us this time, as a guide and interpreter,

George, one of the Madagascan scientific assistants

from the research laboratory.

George was extremely skilful at catching

and caring for animals of all sorts

and had a very wide knowledge of the natural history of Madagascar.

On this trip, he was not only going to help us,

but he had some work to do on his own account, as well.

He was particularly interested in catching small reptiles

and he had one especial objective.

He wanted to catch a representative sample of the lizards

that abound in this patch of forest,

and I went off to hunt with him.

Scuttling around the trunks of the trees,

we found many small thorny-tailed lizards,

which seemed almost impossible to catch,

so quick were they in their movements.

But George had his own methods.

BIRDSONG

The best way to keep a newly captured lizard is in a cloth bag

which is sufficiently loosely woven to allow air to pass through.

The lizards can get a good foothold on the cloth

and, in the semi-darkness, they lie quiet and tranquil.

I, on the other hand,

went off to look for creatures which were much easier to catch -

chameleons, and there was one in this tree.

Its strange eyes revolve independently,

so that it looks in two directions at the same time.

But not being able to focus both eyes on the same object

has one disadvantage.

It makes it very difficult indeed to estimate how far away objects are

and, if the object is a tasty morsel of food, this knowledge is important.

It's probable that this rocking motion is a trick to help

the chameleon get over this difficulty.

Obviously, the farther away the object is,

the less it will appear to move when you rock your head.

And now he's spotted something.

Missed it.

But no mistake this time.

The victim - a large cricket.

That tongue, which can be shot out to a distance

greater than the length of the chameleon's body,

is really a hollow tube,

encircled along its length by rings of muscle.

Normally, it's a roundish lump in the bottom of the chameleon's mouth,

but when the muscle bands suddenly contract,

the lump is squeezed and converted in a fraction of a second

into a long, thin tongue.

The pad at the end of the tongue is very sticky

and will pick up anything, unless the object's wet.

Then it's almost useless.

So when it rains the chameleon just has to go hungry

until things have dried out.

But, splendid though the chameleon's tongue is for capturing insects

that are a long way away,

it is not quite so efficient when you want to use it

to remove something really close to, stuck on your lower lip.

Chameleons are not difficult to catch,

providing you can get fairly near to them.

But that's not always so easy,

for they often cling to the highest branches of the tree.

Once you have got close to them, they are usually most obliging.

This chameleon, though a splendid creature,

brown with flecks of red and a big helmet on his head,

was really quite small compared with others that we found in this island.

This one was over twice as big

and among the most brilliantly coloured

of all chameleons in the world.

His eyeballs are bright rust-red and his body and legs striped

and blotched with a vivid green.

The toes on each foot are divided into bundles of two and three,

converting the foot into a sort of pincer,

so powerful that, with its hind legs and tail alone,

the chameleon can get a sufficiently firm grip

to allow it to leave go entirely with its forelegs

and, with the front part of its body quite unsupported,

twist round from the branch to aim its tongue

at an insect away on one side or the other.

Indeed, chameleons seem incapable of walking

without taking a really hard grip.

They have needle-pointed claws,

so that when one this size walks on you

it can be quite a painful experience.

This, I think, is one of the most magnificent

and vividly coloured reptiles I've ever seen anywhere.

And here's yet another sort of chameleon.

This one doesn't have the two horns on the front of his nose,

but instead he's got a crest on the back of his head.

Madagascar, in fact, is the home of the chameleons.

There are more chameleons in Madagascar,

more different sorts of chameleons,

than the whole of the rest of the world put together -

something like between 30 and 40 of them.

This is not quite the largest.

There is one even bigger which is over two feet long.

This one will feed on little lizards,

but the really big one will take mice.

But then there is also a tiny one,

one which is only about an inch and a quarter long.

The smallest of all the chameleons and, indeed,

the smallest reptile of any kind in the world.

Unfortunately, we never found that one.

But these things, of course,

are perhaps most famous for their ability to change colour.

Actually, it's somewhat exaggerated, their ability.

And they don't change their colour to suit their background so much,

as to suit their emotion.

If they are really upset... If you tease one,

or as, for example, when I first caught this one

and picked him off a branch and he didn't like it,

he turned black with fury.

The way they can do this is that in their skin

there are many thousands of tiny small pigment cells

of different colours

and they can expand one set, the brown set, if they wish to,

or contract it and so remove the brown from their skin.

But they're most fascinating creatures to keep

and we had quite a lot of them after a few weeks' collecting.

The local people are terrified by these animals.

They believe them to be thoroughly evil.

And we actually made use of this,

because our car didn't have a lock on it.

And we often had to leave a certain amount of... Come on.

We often had to leave a certain amount of equipment in the car

um, and I didn't want anyone fiddling with it.

So we just used to take this chap out of his cage

and sit him on top of the equipment

and we were absolutely certain

that no-one was going to interfere with it.

But apart from lizards and chameleons

there were many other smaller, fascinating creatures to be seen

in that patch of forest.

Most of Madagascar's native trees have been felled

and replaced by plantations of eucalyptus imported from Australia.

Unfortunately, many of Madagascar's animals can't find the food

they require in this new and foreign environment.

But even so, the place was not totally barren of animal life.

Dead logs, to anyone looking for animals, are fascinating objects.

You can never predict what you'll find beneath them -

giant millipedes, perhaps,

snakes or, here in Madagascar, as always, something very special.

You might think at first sight that these small creatures

are baby hedgehogs.

But they're not babies, for these are fully grown,

and neither are they hedgehogs,

although they seem to resemble them so closely.

They are a strange, extremely primitive creature called a tenrec.

And they live nowhere else in the world but in Madagascar.

The local people have superstitions and taboos

connected with nearly all their animals

and they have them about even such an inoffensive little beast as these.

Many men, particularly if they reckon themselves to be brave

and strong, are unwilling to touch them.

The tenrec they regard as a cowardly creature,

because when danger threatens it rolls itself into a ball.

So it stands to reason, they say,

that if they had much to do with it

they, too, might be infected by cowardice.

We made quite a collection of tenrecs of several different species,

which we brought back to London.

But these two I'm especially fond of

because a month after we'd got them back to the zoo,

to our surprise, they gave birth to these babies.

Unfortunately, the female was not a good mother

and killed several of her young.

So it was decided to take the remainder, these two, away from her.

It was a difficult decision to make,

for you can never be sure how creatures as young as these

will take to a substitute diet.

The composition of milk varies quite a lot

from one kind of animal to another.

And as no-one, as far as we knew, had ever bred tenrecs before,

the zoo had no previous experience to work on,

nor had they an analysis of tenrec milk.

However, they fed these babies on cow's milk,

greatly diluted with water and sweetened with a little sugar,

giving it to them to begin with from a pen filler.

Fortunately, they took it so successfully

that, within a few days, they had developed enough

to be able to lap up milk when it was given to them a few drops at a time

from a hypodermic syringe, as they're doing here.

When they were first born, their coats were merely furry,

but now, after a week,

the bristles are already beginning to thicken into tiny spines.

And here is their father. He's full-grown.

I'm very fond of him.

He really, if you can discount its spines,

he doesn't really have a very hedgehoggy face.

I'd better put him back before he crawls all over me.

The tenrecs, as a group,

are really a most extraordinary collection of creatures.

For one thing, they are about the most primitive of all living mammals.

For another thing,

they have the record for the number of babies born at one time.

A tenrec, not this one, but other ones,

can produce 16 or 18 babies in one go

and the record is 36.

They're also remarkable because

they come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes in Madagascar.

This one, the one I've just shown you, is perhaps the spiniest.

And he relies for his defence on his spines and hardly ever bites.

But he has got a trick, when he gets cross, of jerking his neck up.

There. Jerking his neck up and trying to stick you with his spines.

You wouldn't do that. Come on.

But this one, slightly larger, is also spiny.

He doesn't do that at all. He doesn't bite.

But he uses his spines by keeping himself rolled up in a ball

most of the time.

Of course, he is mostly nocturnal and only comes out at night

so, under these lights here, he is unwilling to unroll.

But there are...

Are you going to unroll?

No.

But there are other tenrecs, bigger than these two,

which don't have spines.

And here is one. Let's see you.

And because he doesn't have spines... Whoops!

Because he doesn't have spines,

he relies for his defence on his teeth.

And, from past experience of this chap,

I'm not going to put my hand inside,

because I know he'll give me a very nasty nip.

This one hibernates during the cold season

and, before it hibernates, it eats and gets very fat indeed

to provide a sort of store of fat to last him over the hibernation period

and, at that time, the Madagascans go out and hunt for them with dogs.

Because of that, we had considerable difficulty

in getting hold of any, because as soon as the Madagascans caught one,

they ate him and said that he was very good eating indeed.

So we were very glad to be able to get this one.

He lives mostly on earthworms.

And they're feeding him on earthworms in the London Zoo

and, indeed, he seems to have put on a lot of weight since I last saw him.

The last and perhaps the most remarkable thing about the tenrecs

is that they have no relations anywhere else in the world

except...not Africa, close by,

not even India on the other side of the ocean,

but in the islands of Cuba and Haiti, where there's a strange creature

called a solenodon, which is related to this and looks somewhat like it.

But not having relations anywhere else in the world

is pretty common with all the things of Madagascar.

With one exception - this.

A crocodile, which is the same crocodile as is found in Africa.

But to the Madagascans, this is no ordinary crocodile,

this is a god,

and it's photographed in the act of eating its sacrificial meal.

But I'll tell you about that next time.

MALAGASY VALIHA MUSIC