Original subtitles

Cuba is a tropical paradise, but it's a paradise full of surprises.

Beyond the cities lives a wild mysterious island

teeming with uniquely Cuban animals.

Each bizarre creature is a story of triumph against staggering odds.

How did they get here? And how have they survived?

Cuba holds many mysteries that are only now being revealed.

It's a story that stretches back in time,

beyond the period of human settlement.

It's a tale of titanic forces,

ocean currents, wild storms and an amazing island ark.

Cuba has a long history, from 1492 when Columbus landed,

through the Spanish colonial period

that created so much of old Havana,

to modern times of revolution,

Communism and the rule of Fidel Castro.

Millions of tourists are drawn to Cuba each year

by the attractions of music, cigars and tobacco.

But beyond the fields, the cities and the beaches lies a wild Cuba -

a little known world with a much longer but equally colourful

and fascinating history.

We can see part of that history alive and well

in the tropical seas that surround Cuba.

The coral reefs teem with fish.

They can claim to be the best in the Caribbean, and this, in part,

is due to Cuba's recent past.

For since the revolution, in 1959,

these seas have had little fishing pressure.

This reef may look much the same now as it did thousands of years ago.

And now, as then, there are predators searching for an opportunity.

The top predator is the Caribbean reef shark.

The seas around Cuba are spectacular -

in their clarity and the profusion of life they support.

But the sharks and the coral fishes are not exclusively Cuban,

for they can be found elsewhere in the Caribbean.

If you want to see uniquely Cuban wildlife,

you need to look back to the land and to understand the nature of Cuba

you must go back in time.

Cuba's wild history stretches back millions of years.

During the last Ice Age, much of the world's water was locked up as ice

and so the sea level was lower.

Cuba was a bigger and broader island.

What are shallow seas today were then lush freshwater swamps.

These swamps covered much of Cuba, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands

and must have been home to millions of mosquitoes

and to a variety of other creatures,

including this...

the Cuban hutia.

These large rodents

can still be found today, along with the mosquitoes.

They tend to stick to the pockets of high ground avoiding the water...

..and for good reason.

There's another creature that lives in the swamp -

Cuban crocodile.

This crocodile can grow to nearly 13 feet, and weigh 280 pounds.

It has the reputation of being the most aggressive crocodile

in the world.

The Cuban crocodile evolved here about two million years ago

and it evolved alongside the hutia.

Occasionally hutias have to venture out to reach better feeding.

They're neither the most elegant nor efficient of swimmers.

The commotion alerts the crocodiles.

Now it's a matter of time,

will the hutia reach dry land before the crocodiles reach it?

The crocodile evolved to hunt hutias and not just in the water.

The hutia may appear safe when feeding in the trees,

but appearances can be deceptive.

The crocodiles have a fine sense of smell

and pick up the scent of a hutia carried on the tropical air.

Swimming slowly upwind,

they home in on the isolated tree from over a mile away.

The hutia is six feet up the tree.

But this crocodile has a way of reaching its goal.

The hutia has no way of escape.

The crocodiles have all the time in the world

to improve their high-jump performance.

The leaping crocodiles evolved on Cuba

in the swamps that covered vast areas during the ice age.

But the swamps were not always that large.

As the sea level changed,

some wetlands would have been transformed into forests.

Today, the dry forest is the home of many of the birds of Cuba

like the Cuban parrot.

Birds must have flown to Cuba over a period of millions of years.

The more recent colonists, like the turkey vulture,

have remained the same as birds on the American continents.

Other more ancient arrivals evolved into Caribbean birds

found on several of the islands.

But some birds are wholly Cuban, found nowhere else on Earth.

Their ancestors, typically woodland birds, were ideal pioneers.

They were strong flyers, able to reach the island.

But once there, they stayed put in the forests.

Over time, these birds changed into uniquely Cuban creatures,

like the national bird - the Cuban trogon.

Over many generations, the birds adapted to their island home,

the process of evolution moulding them to their surroundings.

There were new plants and animals to feed on

and new patterns of weather to cope with.

The climate has an important influence on animals.

Cuba has distinct wet and dry seasons.

Many of the birds evolved to breed with the onset of the summer rains.

THUNDER CRASHES

The heavy rains stimulate not only the birds.

This event triggers a wildlife spectacle that begins below -

on the forest floor.

The trees grow straight out of the rock.

This is an old coral reef, exposed by the changing levels

of the sea and land.

These crabs evolved about four million years ago.

They're true land creatures, but they still breathe using gills

like their marine ancestors, so they dehydrate easily.

They time their emergence to the high humidity brought by the rains.

The males leave the rocky-floored forest and dig a shelter

in the soft soil closer to the coast.

Here they wait for the females.

The land crabs can range in colour

from dark red to bright yellow, but they're all the same species.

Some males mate in the shelter.

Other males mate beside their tunnels,

fending off other interested parties.

The male's embrace may look gentle,

but with claws there's a limit to tenderness.

Once the sperm is transferred, the crabs separate

and the males and females make their way back into the forest.

After a few weeks, the females reappear

carrying their ripe eggs in a pouch.

Again the numbers grow as the crabs move once more out of the forest.

They're headed for the sea, their ancestral home.

The urge to spawn is so great that nothing stops the migration.

The crabs climb walls and cross paths.

They even walk through the grounds of hotels.

Their journey may be as long as six miles and can take several days.

They need to find shelter during the hottest part of the day

if they're not to die of dehydration.

Trees provide natural cover.

But today the crabs can also enjoy the benefits and luxuries provided

by tourist hotels.

They swarm up the windows and crawl under the shutters

to avoid the hot ground and direct sun.

They're quite prepared to share a room with human guests,

especially if there's air conditioning at night.

The next morning, the swarm is on the move

on the last part of their journey.

How the crabs know where the coast is, and in which direction to move,

is a mystery.

The final part is the toughest.

The sharp pinnacles of an old coral reef are like

miniature mountains for the crabs.

In the cool of the morning, the crabs finally reach their goal.

They can only spawn when the sea is calm, for otherwise they'd risk

being washed off the rocks and swept out to sea.

These are land crabs and they cannot survive in the sea.

They shake their precious cargo of eggs into the sea.

This is their last connection with their ancestral home.

The eggs hatch immediately

and the next generation starts its life in the Caribbean Sea.

The sea becomes a soup of crab larvae

and the bounty does not go unnoticed. Mullet suck in the eggs.

But they have no real impact - the numbers are overwhelming.

For a few weeks, the coastline of the infamous Bay of Pigs

is awash with billions of baby crabs.

Wave after wave arrive at the coast to spawn.

Every day, new crabs shed their eggs into the Bay of Pigs.

Once each female's pouch is empty, she heads back to the forest.

It's on the return journey that the crabs face their greatest danger.

There are millions of them in this one small area of Cuba.

This annual spectacle has taken place every year for aeons.

Evolution has hard wired it into the crabs' brains.

They know how to find the sea and how to avoid dying from heat

and loss of water.

But evolution could not prepare them for the modern world.

They have no way to deal with traffic.

HORN TOOTS

Tourist taxis give the crabs a chance to escape to safety.

But other traffic is less considerate.

Instinct tells the crabs that shade offers shelter.

The result is carnage.

TYRES CRUNCH

Nothing in their four-million-year history could prepare them

for Russian trucks.

The dead ones attract other crabs for an easy meal.

But for many, it's their last.

The walking wounded and survivors head for the side of the road

and the safety of the verge and the dry forest beyond.

They'll not venture out of the forest again until the rains return.

Living in the same forest is a bird whose ancestors may have arrived

on Cuba around the time of the crabs.

The bee hummingbird.

It's the smallest bird in the world - two inches long.

That makes it the same size as a dragonfly.

The male weighs only a five hundredth of an ounce.

This is half the weight of a penny.

Yet, despite their size, the birds are very aggressive.

Each male defending its territory with song and flashes of iridescence.

If this fails, the males fly up over 300 feet

and then power dive down on their opponent.

The males display all day, using large amounts of energy.

When they power dive, they reach speeds of over 90 mph.

The wings beat 200 times per second and the heart rate

is a staggering 1,000 beats per minute.

The male's display not only drives off intruders,

it also attracts females.

Like the male, she has huge energy needs.

Whilst incubating, she reduces her body temperature to decrease the time

she must leave the eggs unguarded.

WINGS REVERBERATE

These smallest of birds live on an energy knife-edge.

A lowered body temperature

means less need for food and so the female can return to her nest sooner.

The male guards his patch of forest not for the benefit of the female,

but for his own.

For the territory holds his most precious resource - flowers.

He may sip from as many as 2,000 flowers a day to obtain

the nectar he needs to fuel his energetic lifestyle.

The bee hummingbird is a miniature specialist, feeding on small flowers

that insects normally visit.

The reason is the ancestors of the bee hummingbird

did not have Cuba to themselves.

They shared the island with another hummingbird

and today there are still two species.

The Cuban Emerald is over twice the size of the bee hummingbird,

but still smaller than a chickadee.

The Cuban Emerald,

like the smaller bee hummingbird, is found nowhere else on Earth.

The two hummingbirds evolved on Cuba and, by becoming different in size,

avoided competing with each other.

Being bigger, the Cuban Emerald is more of a generalist

and feeds from a wider range of blossoms.

They include this curiously shaped flower.

But this blossom is not designed for hummingbirds.

The birds are really plundering nectar

destined for another creature, one that only appears after sunset,

and then only on the darkest of nights.

These creatures shun light and can only be recorded

by infra-red or black light.

Nectar-feeding bats fly as far as 50 miles in search of food.

They first detect flowering trees by scent.

After the initial approach,

the bats then use their powers of echolocation.

The flower's shape reflects a narrow beam of ultra-sound

back to the bats, guiding them to the nectar.

The bats extract the nectar in less than a second.

Nectar is a rich source of energy and the bats quickly fill their stomachs

and then return to their cave.

Here, the nectar feeding bats are not alone,

for there are over 30 species found on Cuba.

Like the birds, the different kinds of bats

arrived over many millions of years.

Many of the secrets of Cuba's bats have been discovered

by Professor Gilberto Silva.

He's studied them for over 50 years.

Cuba is largely composed of limestone and is riddled with caves.

There's a higher density of caves in Cuba than any other place on Earth.

This particular cave is the home to a rather special bat.

Years ago, when Gilberto first entered its sleeping chamber,

he nearly died -

there was so little oxygen to breathe.

How the bats survive in their anoxic chamber

remains one of Cuba's mysteries.

Nowadays, Gilberto waits outside for the bats to come to him.

Like the nectar bats they will not fly in light.

Gilberto captures them using the sound of their wings alone.

Only when safely in the hand, can he use a lamp.

The butterfly bat has that very Cuban characteristic of being small.

In fact, it can claim to be the smallest bat in the world.

Like the diminutive hummingbird, this tiny bat can only be found on Cuba.

Other species of bats crowd larger caverns.

The combined body heat of hundreds of thousands of them

raises the temperature to over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The urine-soaked floor ensures the chamber is very humid.

Perfect for bats...

and purgatory for anyone other than a dedicated bat scientist.

Cuba is home to millions of bats.

And with so many bats, it's no surprise that there's a predator.

The cave boa.

These snakes have a special technique for catching their prey.

In the pitch dark, the draft of a wing beat stimulates them to strike.

The caves that are home to the snakes and bats

were formed by underground rivers.

Over millions of years, as the level of land and sea fluctuated,

these rivers found new courses.

New caves were created and old ones drowned.

The result is that water filled caverns are scattered throughout

the limestone landscape of the dry forest.

Some connect with the sea and have salt water.

Here, surrounded by forest, reef fish can feed on fruit.

These caverns reveal their past to divers.

Their chambers are decorated with stalactites and stalagmites

that could only have formed when the cave was full of air.

The water is crystal clear, filtered by its journey through the limestone

and light can penetrate deep into the cavern.

But beyond the limits of daylight

is a world into which only specialised cave divers may venture.

The divers always explore as a team, for this is dangerous work.

This Cuban cave diving group

has been exploring and mapping this dark world for many years.

These inner recesses of the Cuban underworld hold their own secrets -

the remains of a human that fell in long ago.

But there's life here too -

over 500 yards from the surface, beyond the narrowest of passageways.

The life this deep in the cave has evolved

to live in perpetual darkness.

The light of the diver's torch may be the first

that this fish has ever experienced.

And it doesn't like it.

The fish's scientific name is lucifuga -

the animal that flees from light.

And that's most appropriate.

Little is known about these unique Cuban cave dwellers,

for they're rarely visited and shun light.

It's thought they evolved from fish that lived in the depths of the sea.

That dark world

may well have prepared their ancestors for life in these caverns.

Here, they slowly lost their eyesight and the pigment in their skin -

becoming mysterious ghost-like creatures.

It should surprise no-one that fish arrived on Cuba by swimming,

but 12 million years ago

a less obvious candidate arrived by the same means.

The ancestors of this lizard, the rock iguana, crossed the sea

from Central or South America - a distance of 125 miles or more.

Though they look incongruous, the iguanas are actually good swimmers

and when they tire, they can inflate their chests and float like corks

whilst they take a break.

By a combination of hitching lifts on floating vegetation, drifting

and swimming, a few iguanas found their way to the shores of Cuba.

Those that did, became the founders of a dynasty.

No competitors and lots of space -

Cuba must have seemed a paradise.

A paradise, that is, apart from the flies.

FLIES BUZZ

The large flies accompany the iguanas and drink the fluid in their eyes.

Like most creatures that arrive on islands -

but unlike the bee hummingbird and the butterfly bat -

the iguanas grew large.

An adult male can be five feet long and weigh as much as 20 pounds.

Despite their fierce appearance and impressive size,

rock iguanas are, for the most part, peaceful vegetarians.

The iguanas arrived on Cuba before the crocodiles

and many of the birds, bats and fish.

But another kind of lizard had colonised Cuba

long before the iguanas.

They were carried to these shores

on rafts of floating vegetation, as long ago as 30 million years.

At that time the sea level was changing rapidly

turning mountain ranges into islands.

And isolated on each island, new species

of these small Anolis lizards evolved.

Today, there are around 55 different species

of these fiercely territorial creatures.

Some species are adapted to life on the rocky forest floor.

Others live on sedges and grasses.

Many dispute for space on the bushes and low trees.

They all have a dewlap, but have evolved

different ways of showing it off.

There are even anoles in the tops of tallest palms, like this blue anole.

The story of the anoles is a clear example of an ancestral animal

evolving into many different species to fill all the different habitats.

The anoles have had 30 million years to evolve

into a huge array of species, each carving a niche for itself on Cuba.

But there were animals on Cuba before the anoles arrived.

One possible ancient Cuban

can be found in the woods that clothe these steep limestone mountains.

The Cuban tody is diminutive.

There are only five species of tody in the world -

all found on Caribbean islands -

and the Cuban tody is the most colourful of them all.

TODY CHEEPS GENTLY

Todies defend a tiny patch of forest.

They're real stay-at-homes, rarely leaving their territory

and never leaving the shelter of the forest.

They feed by snatching insects off leaves,

flying no more than a few yards on short rounded wings.

Is it conceivable that this tiny bundle of feathers could have flown

125 miles across the sea to Cuba?

Well, the tody may not have moved to Cuba.

Cuba may have travelled to the tody.

Millions of years ago,

before Panama existed, Cuba was much closer to the continent.

At that time, the tody could easily have fluttered

the short distance from America.

In Cuba's remote rainforests live other creatures

that can claim to be ancient Cubans.

Their ancestors joining the island before the tody.

This is an Eleutherodactylus frog.

It is one of over 60 species.

Like the Anolis lizards, they've carved up Cuba.

Some live on the forest floor, others along the streams.

There are even Eleutherodactylus frogs

in the treetops, living amongst the air plants.

You could argue that the todies may have flown to Cuba

and that these small frogs may have survived

a long sea journey aboard a raft.

But scientific evidence suggests

that they were early pioneers that hopped aboard 70 million years ago.

They have one big advantage as pioneers.

Their tadpoles don't need fresh water.

In less than 20 days, the embryo transforms

from a few cells to a miniature adult inside its transparent sphere.

This remarkable adaptation allowed the frogs to live far from water.

These small frogs emerged from their eggs

to colonise Cuba, from the treetops to the forest floor.

Luis Diaz is the Cuban authority on Eleutherodactylus frogs.

He and his colleagues have discovered new species

in the last few years.

The most remarkable of these was found as recently as 1996.

They live in the leaf litter on the rainforest floor.

To find them, you have to kick up a bit of a fuss.

The creature has a very Cuban distinction.

In a family of small frogs, it is the smallest.

In fact, it's the smallest four-legged creature in the world.

This is an adult.

It's a third of an inch long.

The frog fits comfortably on a thumbnail.

At this size, a female can only produce one egg.

These frogs may have reached the limits of miniaturisation.

Cuba's journey didn't start 70 million years ago

when the frogs joined.

It was on the move before then.

Going back in time, Cuba was not in the Caribbean, but the Pacific.

Could any animals have lived on Cuba

as it moved through the Pacific Ocean?

For part of that journey Cuba itself may have been submerged.

So the seas are the most likely place to look for an animal whose ancestors

may have prowled the rocky shoreline of Cuba around 80 million years ago.

The Goliath grouper lives in rocky canyons and caves.

Today, it can be found in both the Caribbean and Pacific,

so its ancestor might have patrolled Cuban Pacific waters long ago.

It ventures out at night onto the sandy plains of the sea floor.

It has an epicurean's taste for lobster, but a glutton's appetite.

This Goliath grouper weighs 440 pounds

and so a four pound spiny lobster is just a bite-sized snack.

A grouper this large can consume many lobsters in a night.

All big groupers are females, as the males change sex as they grow.

The mouth on a six foot long female is over a foot and half across.

Plenty of room for another lobster.

The ancestral Goliath grouper may have lived in Cuban waters

millions of years ago,

but could the ancestors of any Cuban land animals have lived there?

We can never be sure, but a bird might have.

Flamingos are strong flyers and have an ancient heritage.

There are fossils from over 50 million years ago.

Ancestral flamingos could have colonised

the muddy shores of an ancient Cuba,

in the periods when it was above the sea.

Today, Cuba is home to the largest colony

of Caribbean flamingos in the world.

Over 100,000 birds.

They nest close together in a remote part of the coast.

FLAMINGOS BICKER

They seem to need the company

of other flamingos, but still bicker over space.

The rich thick mud is a great benefit to the flamingos.

It stops predators from approaching the colony and it provides

the raw material for the nests.

But it also clogs the feathers of the nesting birds.

The nesting flamingos have a strict daily routine.

They sit during the heat of the day to protect the eggs

from the tropical sun.

Then, as the day cools, they gather into groups and fly

to the nearest fresh water to drink and bathe.

This could be an image from the distant past.

A daily routine that may have taken place millions of years ago.

If there were land animals on Cuba over 80 million years ago,

they may well have been flamingos, though we may never know for certain.

But no land animal could lay claim to the title of the oldest Cuban.

That must go to a creature

that could have visited primordial Cuba.

When it was still being created

by the forces of the Earth, over 600 miles out, in the Pacific.

Cuba then would have been a raw, new island with little vegetation.

But its remoteness and lack of land animals

would have suited this possible first wild Cuban.

For it would have required only a sandy beach.

Cuba was born 100 million years ago,

but there would have been turtles then, as there are today.

For these marine reptiles have a most ancient lineage.

Female turtles only come ashore to lay their eggs.

Dry land is not their world

and they're clumsy and uncomfortable here.

The whole visit takes little more than an hour.

And then the turtle returns to its world -

the sea.

But a brief visit just like this

may have been the very first life on Cuba.

The story of wild Cuba runs for 100 million years.

In that time, as the island moved from the Pacific to the Caribbean,

many creatures have arrived on its shores.

Today, their descendents live alongside more familiar Cuban icons.

But it is these unique creatures

that make Cuba the wild island of the Caribbean.