Original subtitles

This blue ball of all the blue balls that live in all of space

is the best blue ball because this blue ball has animals on it.

Life takes so many forms, only a mad man would try and record them all.

So that's what we're doing.

We're hunting down animals from every corner of our globe,

but we aren't hunting with guns or lasers.

We are hunting with cameras and our minds...

...though mostly cameras.

We found amazing things.

We will show you the amazing things we found

and you will be amazed at the amazing things we've discovered

in this amazing landmark series,

Round Planet:

The Story of Everything.

For legal reasons my producer, Tabitha, is now telling me

I have to point out other planets are available. Ugh.

Madagascar, the world's oldest island,

formed 88 million years ago after breaking away from India and Africa.

Wow, look at India go.

From up here it may look titchy but it's actually bigger than France or six Portugals or five Icelands with two Belgiums stuck on the side.

I started an ecotourism resort here back in '99.

Didn't end well.

I-- I won't let it affect this narration though, Tabitha, I'm a pro.

Nearly all of Madagascar's reptiles and amphibians,

most of its mammals and plants,

and over half its birds are found nowhere else on earth. A fact I always included in the orientation talk at the eco resort,

but, note to self,

I'm not here today to talk about that particular graveyard of dreams and money.

I'm here to talk about Madagascar's life

and it is simply extraordinary.

There's a reason it's not called Normal-a-gascar.

Madagascar, island of wonder,

and not the well-known Dreamworks animation franchise,

Let's be clear on that.

Much like Rutger, my business partner at the eco resort,

Madagascar has two distinct and very different sides.

It is divided north to south by a mountainous plateau

that runs the length of the island.

These mountains act as an immense cloud barrier,

blocking moisture laden winds blowing in from the Indian ocean.

It stops almost any rain getting to the west,

bits of which are bone dry ten months of the year.

The clouds are penned in,

like great fluffy sky sheep, to the east side of the island,

The wet side.

It absolutely hoses down.

Five meters of rain can fall in a year, and where there's rain there's,

and you may be ahead of me on this, rainforest.

Ah, that noise takes me back.

The most famous of Madagascar's unique inhabitants are the lemurs.

Over 100 species last time I counted,

but this honking marvel, the Indri, is the biggest.

Its loud territorial calls penetrate the forest for over a kilometre

in every direction, ensuring that a resort manager

has to spend each morning dealing with complaints from tired and tetchy guests.

The indris feed on leaves, fruit and flowers.

Unlike humans they don’t blend them up in a juicer,

They actually eat them... just using their mouths.

Those huge muscular back legs and massive lobster feet

are perfect for leaping from tree to tree

and also useful if you absolutely have to shut up

the lemur honking on the next branch.

The indri are critically endangered,

though when five make the noise of 100 it is hard to tell.

Their agility is quite remarkable…

most of the time.

More sopping wet rainforest

and thanks to all the rain bamboo grows like stink here.

It's the perfect habitat for the bamboo lemur.

It lives amongst the bamboo.

It eats the bamboo. It is all about the bamboo.

This one is after the tender new shoots,

even some sort of massive fly flash-mob isn't putting it off.

Yes, it all looks very nice and balance of naturey,

but what you're really watching here is a war.

Thanks to an evolutionary arms race between eater and eaten,

the new shoots of some Madagascan bamboos

are packed with enough cyanide to kill a man or a greedy woman stone dead

and these lemurs eat 12 times the lethal dose every day with no ill effects.

Nobody knows how they're still alive.

I should add here that when those 14 dutch tourists got ill,

there was no concrete evidence it was from the catering at my eco resort.

That was the official finding and if you doubt it,

I can send you a photocopy of that document.

Not my fault, is that clear?

Right, glad that's sorted out.

Ok, so a visual reminder that we're still in the wet bits.

Ooh, and now danger music.

Time for a bit of predation then.

Bingo.

I'm practically psychic.

This praying Mantis is an insect killing machine, constantly on the alert for prey,

which it grabs with its scythe like forelimbs and eats alive.

Its massive eyes and ability to rotate its head all the way back

give it 360 degree vision.

As a result, much like the current Mrs. Wedgewood,

it's almost supernaturally aware of the smallest movement,

which is why I am currently sleeping on the sofa bed.

The deadly mantis waits for prey to come its way.

When you're this hard you barely need to bother.

It knows no compromise. It knows no mercy. It knows no...

…oh, yes, you weren't expecting that were you?

Yes, it's not often you get a twist in a natural history programme.

That's a first.

But not my first remember?

I was the first naturalist to film a badger in full colour.

Terry Nutkin said it was him, it wasn't.

And so the hunter becomes prey.

The chameleon's tongue is one of the wonders of the natural world,

unless you're an insect, then you'd just call it the death rocket.

It's like one of those party squeakers but with a big wet fist at the end.

The tongue travels at 26 body lengths per second,

Or 20 feet per second to you and me.

Sticky mucous and a sort of suction cup help it grab its prey,

which it then hauls into its gummy mouth.

It must be nice when your means of survival doubles as a party trick.

A creature of stealth,

the chameleon moves slowly to avoid detection,

Convinced it is perfectly camouflaged to its surroundings.

Let's be frank, it does look a bit like a tree

but it looks a lot more like a chameleon.

All that stuff about chameleons changing colour to hide is a lot of rot.

Yes, they change colour but they do it to show off.

Sorry, Tabby, sorry. Funny mood today.

You'd think branches would grow on trees in Madagascar, and they do,

yet these two lizards still want to have a tear up

over the right to occupy this twig.

To a male panther chameleon this is the perfect spot for wooing a lady friend.

So, he'll defend his barky penthouse with all his might.

The twig of destiny is safe once more.

Of course, a forest of wet trees means a forest floor knee deep

with rotting leaf litter;

an all-new realm of Madagascan weirdness.

Look at this miniscule thing.

It's a female pygmy chameleon.

It's got all the bits a normal chameleon has;

googly eyes, mitten feet, lovely curly tail,

but just ridiculously tiny.

Possibly one of the smallest vertebrates on earth.

It's so small it makes an ant look enormous,

unless that's an enormous ant.

Now it could be, this is Madagascar.

And what's this in mushroom city?

It's the male pygmy chameleon, who is even smaller.

Because these tiny ground dwelling things are so rare,

when they do encounter a prospective mate there's no time to hang around.

Now that he's found her he'll follow her around for days.

Eventually he'll grab onto her tail and climb very slowly onto her back.

He's just sitting there waiting for evening when he'll make his move at last.

Don't they make a lovely couple?

At least until the day they get crushed by a careless lemur.

Night falls on Madagascar and out come the freaks.

Everything you've met so far has been positively conventional.

Aye, aye, who's this?

Little 'in joke' for the lads and lasses at the Zoological Society there.

The aye-aye has highly developed fingers, which it uses to tap on trees.

No, it's not communicating with the dead, it's looking for insects.

Many Madagascans still believe aye-ayes are evil and hunt them,

when all the aye-ayes want to do is dig out insect larvae and munch it,

and what's wrong with that?

Still, it's quite an odd thing to come across when you've wandered

into the jungle in tears after all your masseurs quit because it turns out

Rutger hasn't paid them for two months.

But water under the bridge, chaps, water under the bridge.

So that's the wet side of the island.

But what about the other side where it doesn't rain and rain until

all the tourists write nasty things on trip advisor?

That must be where all the singing lemurs are,

the fun stuff, the pretties, right?

Wrong.

If anything it's more peculiar.

It's not just dry here, it's right through dry and out the other side.

The plants and animals have learned to survive on very little liquid at all,

but it's not pretty or in any way normal.

It is darn clever though.

This is the spiny thicket.

It's called that because it's a thicket... and it's very spiny.

There's little to no standing water

and the prominent form of plant life is didiereaceae,

which is latin for "Ow, I've got a massive spike stuck through my hand."

What's that Tabs? "Well if it's not it should be."

Oh, they've all got the sound down anyway, Tabitha.

So, can life thrive in this forbidding environment,

where temperatures soar past 45 degrees?

Well, come on, this is a wildlife show so of course

I'm now gonna tell you that, yes, it can.

This bauble-eyed munchkin is the Verreaux Sifaka.

"I see dead people."

I-- I like that film actually, very good.

I don't normally like Bruce Willis, but that film was very good.

This species have managed to colonise a forest so sparse

that some people say it isn't a forest at all but a desert.

They nibble the tiny waxy leaves between the pointy spikes.

Then, for pudding, they eat the fruits from the Euphorbia,

A plant full of caustic skin blistering sap,

And to get from hell cactus to hell cactus, these nutters jump.

Oh you know who's not gonna be able to deal with that?

Yeah, you and me both mate.

When they are done with one tree, if you can call it a tree,

they leap over to another.

Somehow they land between the spikes every time.

But how do they do it?

Well I actually ordered a book from Amazon which has the answer

but it came while I was out so I'm afraid I cant tell you.

The spiny forest isn't the only challenge facing inhabitants

on the dry side of Madagascar.

In the giant Baobab forests

it just gets so ridiculously hot and arid that life opts out for a bit.

The Baobab copes by storing up to 100,000 litres of water in its trunk,

which is the equivalent of 100,000 litre bottles of water.

Um, I think that must be a misprint, Tabs.

Well no, we'll re-record it later.

Carry on.

But at last, after months of drought, the rain comes.

The Baobab goes into leaf towards the end of the dry season

in an attempt to reproduce.

No, this isn't a banana doing a striptease.

It's a baobab flower.

Oh lovely set of pollen.

The rains don't just wake the tree up.

In holes in its huge trunk tiny mouse lemurs stir

after spending the scorching summer asleep.

It's only the females that are sensible enough to do this.

If you're a grey mouse lemur this is happy hour

and that flower is a cut price picture of nectar margarita.

Oh hello, giant moth, would you like some nectar too?

Here, let me just...

Well, so much for the gentler sex.

Giant moths nil, lady mouse lemurs lots.

Though of course it makes no odds to the baobab trees

whose flowers are pollinated by all the rumpus.

And so, everyone's a winner...

except the moths, obviously, who are dead.

Once the rains are over and the flowers have gone,

baobab trees and these female mouse lemurs

return to their dormant state in the pitiless, scorching heat,

like Garth, the cameraman, between assignments.

Well he doesn't watch this, Tabitha, so he won't hear it.

A few animals do tough it out though, even in the driest times.

Got something to prove I expect.

Yes, you're hard as nails, we hear you.

These fluffy things are juvenile flatid bugs, a type of plant hopper,

and not, as my editor suggested, tiny knitted octopuses.

They emerge in ghostly swarms at night to suck sap from the vines,

and, by the looks of things, wave at each other. Or are they high

As they feed, the nymphs pump out sugary waste known as honeydew,

which is a slight euphemism.

Even beautifully back lit that's still bug poo.

The honeydew coats the branches and leaves,

attracting insects and this little fellow.

This is the male mouse lemur

and at just 60 grams he's the smallest primate on the planet.

He usually eats fruits and flowers and stuff but when things get really dire

these tiny animals abandon all sense of pride and decorum and eat things

that no mammal should ever have to eat.

No, not the cockroach too.

Ugh, that's right, wash away the shame.

To be fair, eating insects isn't a bad strategy.

They're highly nutritious.

This cicada might not look tasty to you but you're not a ring-tailed lemur,

at least I assume you're not.

This one is gagging to get her mitts on one of these crunchy little beggars.

These lemurs get their name from their distinctive Nokia ringtone.

No, it's from their tail.

I knew that, Tabitha.

Oh, stop hopping.

But, if they got their name from how bad they are at catching cicadas

they'd be the butterfingered wally.

Or clumsy clawed monkey thing.

Oh, really.

Oh dear, and now she's been beaten by a wasp.

Wasps one, lemurs, you need to take a long hard look at yourselves.

A terrifying four centimetres of wasp grabs a cicada,

stings it to paralyse it and drags it off to its nest.

She will lay her eggs on this cicada

and her larvae will feast on its paralysed body.

My joint 7,000th favourite way to die don't you know.

But now the wasp's done all the hard work,

the ring tailed lemur comes in and steals the cicada.

None of the work, all of the benefits.

Typical.

Whatever the morals, she's clearly smarter than she looks.

So, despite the challenges, with one side wetter than an otter's pocket

and the other drier than a camel's airing cupboard,

things live here

And, what's more, they're brilliant at it.

You've got to respect the sheer ingenuity

of every strange life form that makes this terrain their home.

Unlike me. Oh goodness knows I tried.

You know what got us in the end, is that Rutger had filled out

a c735 form and in fact we should have completed the j674.

I was $3 million in and it turned out we didn't have planning permission.

Now, you know I don't bear grudges, Tabby,

but if I ever see that man again, I swear...

Oh. Yes, uh, Madagascar,

island of wonderful freaks.

It's ok, Tabs, I caught up in the end.

If Madagascar looks like a tough place to survive, or start an eco resort,

it's an even tougher place to film.

Luckily, camera operators are amongst nature's marvels.

This common camera operator, Cinematographer "north-facias"

is preying on this yellow thing.

It has patience of steel but the camera operator is on day rate

so he can sit here for literally ever, if necessary.

As long as the batteries last, the camera operator is going nowhere.

But the frog doesn't seem to have plans either,

Unless of course you count staying still as a plan.

It's a waiting game and the camera operator is determined to win,

And to those who wait come prizes.

Prizes like this.

The first-ever filmed frog burp.

Yeah, I know frogs don't burp, Tabby, but just dub something on,