All language subtitles for Attenborough abd the giant egg. Madagascar (2011)_en

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: This is a story
of an ancient island, an extinct giant

and a mystery that I've been
puzzling over for half my life.

Fifty years ago, I came here
to the island of Madagascar

to make a series of programs
about the island's remarkable wildlife.

That was way back
in the early days of television,

when everything was in black and white.

It was one of the first
natural history series that I'd made.

Madagascar lies in
the Indian Ocean, here.

And even on a globe this size,
it looks a tiny island,

perhaps because it's dwarfed
by this vast continent of Africa.

But, in fact, it's an immense island,

over 1 ,000 miles long,
bigger than the British Isles.

I was astonished by the animals I saw.

They were unlike anything
living elsewhere.

And while I was here,
much to my surprise,

I acquired an extraordinary object

that has been one of my most
treasured possessions ever since.

Down in the south of the island,
I found, lying in the desert sand,

pieces of what looked like
very thick eggshell.

I knew that a huge, extinct bird
had once lived down here.

These must be bits of its eggs.

I asked the local people about them.

They were more than obliging.

The fragments were all small,

and could give little idea
of the size of a complete egg.

But, then, a young boy brought in these.

At first, I thought they were just
a collection of exceptionally big bits

that he had picked up over some time.

But then I noticed that two of them
looked as if they might fit together.

I had, apparently, got myself
a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

And they did fit.

So I joined them with the sticky tape
we used to seal our film cans.

Soon, I had built up two halves.

This was a single, immense egg.

And it was virtually complete.

I reckoned it must have contained
as much as 1 40 chicken eggs.

The bird that laid it
must have been a giant, indeed.

But this raised all kinds of questions.

How old was this egg?
When did the bird die out?

And what does it tell us about man's
relationship with the wildlife here?

Here is the egg, professionally
put together, almost as good as new.

It is, to me at any rate,
a wonderful object.

After all, it's the largest egg
ever laid by anything.

But what particularly fascinates me
is the thought of the bird that laid it.

What sort of a creature was it?

Well, stories about gigantic birds
have been circulating

in Europe since the 1 3th century.

When Marco Polo, the great Venetian
traveler and explorer,

came back from the east
with stories of a huge bird,

so big that its wings covered
an extent of 30 paces

and its quills were 1 2 paces long,

and it's so strong that it'll seize
an elephant in its talons

and carry him high into the air and drop
him so that he is smashed to pieces.

Stories of a bird so big
they could lift an elephant.

And that's what gave it the name
of "elephant bird" .

But after those
rather unbelievable stories,

there were other,
more concrete stories, too,

in the 1 7th century.

This is an account of Madagascar
written by Flacourt,

who was a French governor of the island.

And he lists all the animals that
he knows in the island of Madagascar,

and he draws most of them.

But if you look through here,

there's no picture of a bird
that could be an elephant bird.

There's an egret, there's a heron,
but nothing bigger.

But he does say that there was
a big, ostrich-like bird

in the south of the island.

So maybe he heard stories
of the elephant bird.

But was it alive then? He doesn't say.

Of course, we know now
that the bird is certainly extinct.

But when did it disappear?

Since I collected this egg,

techniques have been developed
which enable us to date it.

So I've sent off a small fragment of it
for that to be done.

It will take a little time
for the results to come through,

but, after 50 years, I guess I can wait
a few weeks longer.

Meanwhile, I'm off to Madagascar,

to have another look
at its wonderful animals

and see how things have changed
in the last 50 years.

Some species are thought to have
disappeared since I was last here

and new ones have also been discovered.

Could the story of the elephant bird,
whatever it turns out to be,

help me understand
what's going on there today?

Fifty years ago, Madagascar was
little known, certainly in Britain.

Until only a few years before,
it had been a French colony.

I really didn't know anything about it
and started to read about it.

And the only illustrations I could find
were drawings

or photographs of stuffed specimens
in French publications.

And so I thought, "Okay, that's great.
Nobody else has filmed there."

And I don't think there had really been
any natural history film made

in Madagascar at all in 1 960
that I could find.

It was just me
and Geoff Mulligan with his camera.

And we were there for four months.

Because the island has been cut off
for so long, evolution has had a chance

to produce a whole range
of unique animals and plants.

But, first,
what about the elephant bird?

Beyond the legends,
what more do we know about it?

The country's capital is Tananarivo,
or Tana, as the locals call it.

And the place to go if you want to find
out about the island's natural history

is, obviously, its museum.

It had stuffed examples
of some of the animals

I already knew something about.

But I also found a mounted skeleton of
the huge bird that interests me so much,

one of the very few that exists.

So how tall was the elephant bird?

Not an easy question to answer,

because very few skeletons
are totally complete.

And so, many of the mounted specimens
have been put together

with a number of bones
from different specimens.

And if you get overenthusiastic,
maybe it's quite possible

that you stick in one or two
extra neck bones,

so we can't be sure
about the length of the neck.

Nor can we be sure
about the posture, really.

This one looks to me rather front heavy,

and it could well be that, in life,
the animal was more upright,

in which case,
it stood very tall indeed.

What, 1 0 feet, 1 2 feet?
That sort of size,

in order to be able to reach
the leaves of trees on which it browsed.

But a more safe characteristic
is weight.

And you can be fairly sure
the estimate of that,

and it's reckoned that the elephant bird
weighed around half a tonne.

The extinct moas of New Zealand
might perhaps have been taller,

but this was certainly the heaviest bird
that ever existed.

And, of course, it was flightless,
like an ostrich.

Most of its remains have been found

down in the dry, hot southern end
of the island,

where I had collected my egg fragments.

So, on leaving Tana,
that's where we headed.

Sounds like forever, 50 years, to me.

But it's really the day
before yesterday, I reckon,

that I was here
doing that sort of stuff.

I can't believe that it's 50 years.

Southern Madagascar really is
one of the oddest places in the world,

if only because of
its bizarre vegetation.

I hadn't known what
the spiny forest was,

that there should be plants,
like long fingers,

20 feet high, 30 feet high,

with spines all over them
and little leaves, you know?

Extraordinary.

This spiny forest was once widespread
in the south.

But now there are only
a few pockets of it left.

Big leaves would lose
a lot of precious water in a hot desert,

so these plants have very small ones

that are protected from browsing animals
by sharp spines.

But what browsers?

Presumably, one was the elephant bird.

Some browsers, however,
are still around,

and 50 years ago,
we went to look for them.

The spines make this a fairly
uncomfortable place to move around in.

But, eventually, we found
those browsers.

And they're still here.

Sifakas, a wonderful kind of lemur.

(WHISPERING) They're feeding on bark,
stripping away the bark.

They're not particularly upset
by my presence,

any more than they were
when I first saw them 50 years ago.

What is astonishing about them
is the way they move through the forest.

Very unlike monkeys.

Monkeys, when they leap,
leap hands first,

with their torsos more or less level.

But these marvelous creatures
jump upright,

because they land with their feet first,

which accounts for why, when they
come down to the ground, very rarely,

their legs are so long
that they can't walk on all fours,

as many monkeys do,

but have to stand upright on their very
long legs and their rather short arms.

And that gives them this lovely
balletic movement

when they get around on the ground.

There are quite a number
of different species of these.

And they differ mostly
in their coloration.

Now, this one with its dark brown cap,

and I think this is actually
one of the loveliest.

I can just hear them making
that slight "sifa, sifa" noise,

which is a kind of a slight,
I think, uneasy noise

that they make when
they're just a little worried,

and which gives them
their name of "sifaka".

Their faces, with that long snout
and moist nose,

are really rather dog-like.

But it's when you see their hands
that you realize

they're related to monkeys and to us,

these grasping hands.

And I've actually had a pet lemur
a long, long time ago.

And it held on to my hand
in the most charming way.

On that first trip, I kept a journal.

And reading it now reminds me
of how excited I was

seeing these creatures
for the first time.

"Before they started feeding,
the adult male and female

"treated us to a captivating display
of wrestling.

"The female was sitting on her bottom
on the branch, with her feet dangling,

"while the male came along
and put a half-nelson on her.

"Then the match started.

"There was no question of sex,
nor of aggression,

"for they often broke off to look at us.

"It was pure play
and enchanting to watch."

I've got notes here of what we filmed.

Well, it's all 1 00-foot reels.

A 1 00-foot reel runs
for two minutes, 40.

And you know, two minutes, 40,

and you've got to stop
and take the thing out, as well.

And, of course, the lenses we had
were very poor,

and we didn't have zooms either.

So that now, if you see
something up there,

you get the wide shot and then
you zoom in quickly and you've got it.

But if you did that then,
you'd have to take that lens out

and put on another socking great lens.

(WHISPERING) I had never seen a living
sifaka until I came here to Madagascar.

It was such a shock and a thrill

to see them in the wild
for the first time.

And it's just about
as great a thrill right now,

as they're bounding away on the ground.

Sifakas are well adapted to living
in this world of spines and thorns,

and so, doubtless,
was the elephant bird.

But adaptation is often
a two-way process.

This is the seed of
a particularly strange plant

that grows in this arid spiny forest.

It is armed with a series
of ferocious hooks,

which would have caught on the legs
of the elephant bird,

and so be distributed
throughout the forest.

Now, presumably, it's us and our cattle
who do the job.

As you go farther south,
it gets drier and hotter,

until, eventually,
there's not enough moisture

to sustain even the spiny forest.

And here, once again,
I found egg fragments, lots of them.

Fifty years ago, I thought I'd been
amazingly sharp-eyed to find a few bits.

And I certainly was very lucky to be
brought enough to reconstruct an egg.

But there were so many pieces here,

I think that I must have been
half-blind before,

or in quite the wrong place.

Of course, these thick shells
don't turn to powder,

like, say, chicken eggshells would do
over a few days,

but remain solid and firm
for a long time.

Even so, there are vast quantities
of shell out there.

So there must have been
a very substantial population of birds.

What happened to them?

Now it's so arid that
it's difficult to imagine

huge flocks of giant
flightless birds living here.

But they must have done so.

How greatly has the climate
of Madagascar changed?

We can get clues from examining
the fossilized bones of other animals

that were around at the same time
as the elephant bird.

And there were certainly
some very extraordinary ones,

some quite tiny, and some giants
quite unlike anything around now.

This is the skull of the biggest
of all the lemurs.

It's got a head much bigger than mine.

And, indeed, it was probably
about the size of a young gorilla.

This animal lived in trees,

and that's confirmed
by a look at its teeth.

These are the teeth
of a leaf-eating animal,

not a grazer, not a meat eater,
but a leaf eater.

So this animal lived in trees,

and probably hung around,
rather like a koala,

only very, very much bigger.

And that tells us that where this lived,
there was forest.

The rolling hills of the island are now
nearly all bare of trees.

Yet bones of this giant lemur
have been found

in many widely-separated places
all over the island,

strong evidence that, once,
the whole of Madagascar was forested.

When I was here 50 years ago,

I speculated that elephant birds
had disappeared

because their habitat had dried out.

And I put that down
to a changing climate.

Now we know that, although the climate
here has indeed become much drier,

that change took place
many thousands of years ago,

and that elephant birds living in
the spiny forest managed to survive it.

So climate change alone can't be blamed
for the bird's extinction.

Are there any other clues
that might suggest

an alternative explanation for that,

and for the fact that the giant
lemur's forests have also gone?

Well, it's been discovered
that those giant lemurs

all disappeared
over a very short space of time.

And that was when human beings arrived.

Madagascar was one of the last places
on Earth to be reached by human beings.

They didn't get here till
around 2,000 years ago,

and then, of course,
there were just a few hundred.

Fifty years ago,
there were around six million.

Today, there are 20 million.

Was it human beings who exterminated
much of the island's animals,

the elephant bird,
as well as the giant lemurs?

Did they, perhaps, hunt them for food?

One of the ways that you can tell

whether or not human beings
hunted an animal

is to look at the animal's bones.

This is the bone of an extinct lemur

that dates from about 2,000 years ago,

when human beings
first came to this island.

And when you look at it,
you can see, at the top there,

cut marks.

So we know that this lemur was killed,
or at least eaten, by human beings,

who cut the flesh away from the bone
with some kind of knife.

But the interesting thing is, although
we also find elephant bird bones,

hardly a one of the elephant bird bones
have cut marks.

So we can't really blame
the disappearance

of the elephant bird on hunters.

If it wasn't climate change or hunting,
what else could it have been?

Although Madagascar is
only separated from Africa

by a relatively narrow stretch of sea,

many of the first settlers came
not from there,

but from Southeast Asia,
thousands of miles away.

In fact, the people who live
in the center part of Madagascar

originally came from right across
the other side of the Indian Ocean,

here, in the Malayan region.

They must certainly have hunted
the animals,

but they also did something else,
which in the long run,

was far more devastating
for the island's wildlife.

They were farmers.

And they cleared the forest to grow rice
and to provide grazing for their cattle.

As the numbers of people increased,

so more and more forest
was cut and burnt.

It's a process that is still going on.

So, all over the island,
the landscape began to change.

I'm on my way to the west of the island,

where a few, small patches
of that ancient forest still remain.

These strange, beautiful trees, baobabs,
are fire-resistant,

and too big to cut down.

So, in many places,
they are the only remnants left

of the original forest
that once covered this land.

It would have been difficult for
a creature the size of an elephant bird

to live without vegetation of some kind,

and today, even the smallest of animals
are struggling to survive here.

One of those that have managed to do so
is the tiniest of all known lemurs.

It's called Madame Berthe's mouse lemur,
and it was only discovered 10 years ago.

Melanie Dammhahn is part
of a team of scientists

who are studying the animal,
trying to work out how to protect it.

DAMMHAHN: Oh!

-Tiny, tiny.
-Tiny, tiny.

Just only 30-gram body weight.

-Yeah. Smallest primate in the world?
-Smallest primate in the world.

-Big eyes, small ears.
-Very big eyes.

-Yeah.
-And a wet nose.

-Yeah.
-Yeah.

Melanie and her colleagues
catch these lemurs and tag them

to build up a picture
of their behavior,

essential knowledge
if they're to be properly protected.

And how long will he have
been in there now?

-A few hours.
-That all?

So we collect him at night
and then he stays in camp

and sleeps in there,
and then we release him the next day.

And you've caught him how many times?

-Maybe around twenty in three years.
-Twenty.

So he's accustomed to it.

He's accustomed to it.

And do they travel very far?

-They travel very far.
-Really?

They have, like,
a three-hectare home range,

so that's quite a bit
for an animal like that.

-Certainly is. Yeah.
-Yeah.

They might even run,
like, five kilometers a night.

-Really?
-Yeah.

An animal like that. I think that's...

-Amazing.
-Amazing, yeah.

Okay, let's see him go.

He's coming.

ATTENBOROUGH: Come on.
Come on, little one.

That's it. That's it. Oh!

The work Melanie and her team are doing

is vital for the survival
of this little lemur.

It's also revealing just why it is

that this tiny creature lives here
and nowhere else.

This particular Liana
belongs to a species

that only grows in this patch of forest.

And on it, and on no other kind
of Liana, lives this little insect.

It's a bug which feeds
by sticking its mouth parts

into the Liana and sucking out the sap.

It then digests what it wants
and excretes the rest

as honeydew, a sort of sugary liquid.

And it's that honeydew, that sugar,

that Madame Berthe's lemur needs
in its diet.

So Madame Berthe's lemur is only found
in this particular patch of the forest

because of this insect and this Liana,

which just shows how complicated
ecological connections can be,

and how much you have to know
about an animal

if you're really going to conserve it.

It's more than likely
that the elephant bird

was nowhere near as fussy
as a mouse lemur,

but it certainly needed
much greater quantities of food.

So as more and more of the forest
was cleared,

there was less and less room
for animals of all kinds.

Elephant birds were among
the first victims of deforestation.

As people came in and cleared the bush

in order to make space
for their own crops,

there was less and less foliage
for the birds to browse on,

and no leaves whatever
on the great trunks of the baobabs.

And yet we know that,
unlike the giant lemurs,

the elephant bird didn't disappear
as soon as the people arrived.

Recent archaeological research
suggests that the birds

lived alongside human beings
for hundreds of years.

Perhaps they were protected by something

that is still deeply rooted
in the lives of the Malagasy people,

fady, a belief about the intimate way

in which human beings are connected
with the natural world.

They believe, for example,
that many species of animal

contain the spirits of their ancestors,
and must not, therefore, be killed.

When I was here making
these Zoo Quest programs,

we watched a traditional ceremony
which centered around a fady

connected with Madagascar's
only surviving giant, the crocodile.

Here, at the sacred lake of Anivorano,

they tell a story of a wandering
holy man who appeared in the village.

No one, apart from one old woman,
offered him refreshment.

After warning the old woman to leave,

he then flooded the whole village,
drowning everyone in it, except her.

The people here believe
that the crocodiles in this lake

are descendants
of those original villagers,

and they come here to give them
sacrifices of meat

in return for their blessings.

Many animals in Madagascar
have some kind of fady attached to them.

This is a chameleon.

And Madagascar is the home
of the chameleons.

There are more different
kinds of chameleons

and more spectacular chameleons here
than anywhere else in the world.

They are, of course,
very specialized lizards.

But local people
are very frightened of them.

They move in this odd way
and they have these bizarre eyes.

And they think that once glance
from a chameleon is risking death,

and to hold one would be disaster.

Now, when we were last here,
somebody broke into our car

with all our equipment in it
and broke the window.

And so we couldn't lock the car.

So I took one of these
splendid chameleons,

and put it on the steering wheel,

and when anybody opened the car door,
it sort of glowered at them,

and nobody did, except us.

These beliefs in fady are still very
powerful and widespread in Madagascar.

And, in some cases,
it's they that have been responsible

for the very survival of a species.

This giant baobab is one of
the most famous individual trees

in the whole of Madagascar.

The people believe that it's the home
to the spirits of the dead.

And they bring offerings,
which they place around its base,

of rum and other things,
to ask the ancestors to bring them luck.

But the spirits will only remain as long
as the forest surrounds the tree.

So, thanks to this tree and that belief,

one of the best pieces of dry forest

in the whole of Madagascar
is still protected.

Many Malagasy communities have
such beliefs about the natural world.

Could it be that it was fady
that helped to protect

the last dwindling populations
of elephant birds,

enabling them to survive longer
than they might otherwise have done?

It's easy to imagine that creatures
whose eggs were big enough

to start legends all over Europe

would be surrounded by feelings of awe
or even fear.

But that did not save the elephant bird
in the long run.

The territories they required
were just too big.

Madagascar has one of the highest rates
of forest loss of anywhere in the world.

It's estimated that 80% of it
has now gone.

All the wetter parts of the island
were once covered by rainforest,

which, like rainforest everywhere,

was hugely rich in animals
and plant species.

And this being Madagascar, most were
species that existed nowhere else.

The changes here have been
particularly dramatic.

When I was here in 1 960,
all this land was covered in rainforest,

trees 1 00 feet high, with lemurs
and all kinds of birds and insects.

And then they built this sawmill.

And, for 25 years, it operated,
consuming the forest,

until the forest was all gone.

So then they left the sawmill,
and the land has gone to waste.

They also started to mine here
for nickel.

Madagascar, in fact, has some of

the richest untapped
mineral deposits in the world.

Exploiting them requires great corridors
to be cut through the forest.

Many animals that require big
territories won't cross such corridors.

So, just like the elephant bird,

they're squeezed into
smaller and smaller patches,

and, ultimately, they vanish,
just as the elephant bird did.

This patch of forest in Andasibe,
on the eastern side of the island,

is one of the largest
remaining fragments,

and it's the last home of the biggest
of all surviving lemurs,

the indri.

Joseph Randriada Thuandru
has lived here all his life.

In fact, he was here when I was filming
in 1960, although we didn't meet.

Then, he was hunting the indri for food.

At that time, I had an idea
that stories about the indri

might have given rise to myths
almost as fantastic

as those surrounding the elephant bird.

Many people consider
that this strange creature

is the origin of the legend
of the dog-headed man.

Marco Polo wrote about
the dog-headed man,

and this is an illustration
from a natural history book

published some 300 years ago.

Well, obviously, we wanted to film this.

And before we went to Madagascar,

I visited a very
distinguished British naturalist

who had spent seven years there,
and asked him about the indris.

He told me that, as far as he knew,

it had never been photographed
or filmed alive.

The animal which was the most dramatic
animal on the series by a long way

was the indri, which we had been
the first people to photograph alive.

It took us a hell of a time to find it,
you know, traipsing through the forest.

And, nearly always, you heard a call,

so you'd go through the bush
and try and look for it,

and then, as soon as it saw you,

woof, it was gone,
bounding through the forest.

So all we got for days and days
was nothing but backsides

of these things sailing away from you.

Since people at that time, like Joseph,
were still hunting indris,

it was hardly surprising
that they were scared of us.

After several days of failure,
I had an idea.

I decided to record
their extraordinary calls,

and then replay the sound, in the hope
that the animals might call in response

and reveal themselves,
or even come closer.

(HOWLING)

And it worked.

Although we didn't get
as close as I might have wished,

we watched them for several days.

(HONKING)

"We never saw a group of more than four.

"This in fact, I think, is the source
of much of the charm of it.

"Monkeys living in troupes
have a troupe discipline,

"and an order of seniority
established and maintained by battle,

"the males fighting
one another ferociously.

"Not so with indri.

"They live en famille.

"The old male doesn't need
to assert his rank by fighting,

"and, consequently, the atmosphere
is one of affection.

"Once, we saw a young male
join a young female, sitting behind her,

"his legs stretched out
on either side of her.

"They licked and embraced one another
for half an hour.

"Then suddenly, a bird screeched,

(SCREECHING)

"loudly and startlingly.

"Immediately, the male put a protective
and reassuring arm around her.

"It was most touching to see."

(CHUCKLING)

Anthropomorphism run riot.
But there you are, that's what I wrote.

Joseph, the one-time hunter, still uses
his skills to track the indri,

but no longer in order to kill them.

Now he works as a forest guide.

What made you stop hunting them?

(SPEAKING MALAGASY)

Have people's attitudes towards
the indri changed over the years?

Without Joseph to help us,

it would have been impossible
for us to get near the indri.

But this group is so used to him
that they're not frightened.

Indeed, it seemed to me
that they almost welcomed his company.

(INDRI HOWLING)

Thanks to him, I now had a chance,
for the very first time,

to get really close to them.

(SOFTLY EXCLAIMING)

They could easily collect these leaves
from the trees themselves.

But they seem to choose to take them
from the hand of a human being.

(WHISPERING) Well, that was
an astonishing experience.

Fifty years ago, I spent days
and days and days

searching through the forest with these,
following the noise.

But now, this group is so accustomed
to seeing people around,

that I've been right close up to them,

something I had never believed
could have been possible.

I thought these were the most
elusive, shy creatures.

It certainly took me a long time
to find them.

But that they can now be so trusting

is a marvelous testament
to how people here

now react towards them and cherish them.

It's a heart-warming kind of realization

that wild creatures like this

and human beings can live
alongside one another in harmony.

And they are such astonishing creatures.

I mean, apart from being so beautiful,
they have these very staring eyes,

looking straight at you,
straight through you.

And then they have these
very human-like hands,

just taking something.

But when you look down at their feet,
huge, great calliper feet,

when they've decided that
they've had enough of you,

they simply flex those
enormous hind legs,

and just with a vast bound,
of what I suppose

three yards, four yards, just whoosh,
and they're gone.

It was wonderful to see
how the relationship

between the indri and the local people
living alongside them

has changed so much.

But then, our attitudes
have changed, too.

When I came here 50 years ago,

I was asked to collect some animals
alive and bring them back to Britain.

That was how zoos operated
in those days,

believing, misguidedly,
that when one of their exhibits died,

you could always go out
and catch more to replace it.

And I did my best
to assemble a few animals

I thought might make
interesting displays.

The Zoo Quest series started as
a collaboration with the London Zoo.

So I found myself as an animal catcher,
as well as everything else.

One Centetes, one Coracopsis,
one roller,

24 fody, those are like sparrows.

Ten chameleons, six assorted lizards,
three boas, 100 myriapods.

(CHUCKLING)

Bonkers.

And I had to feed all these damn things.

(CHUCKLING)

Funny way to make television programs,
I can tell you.

And I had collected some beautiful,
well, myriapods.

What did it say there?
I think it was 1 00 or something.

And they were lovely millipedes,

the size of golf balls
when they're rolled up,

and when they weren't, they would
run around like little trains,

red with black stripes on them.

And they got out in the middle
of the night in the hotel,

and they were all over the corridor
and all in the rooms,

and madame was not pleased,
not at all pleased.

(LAUGHING)

In rainforests like this, you come
across all kinds of unexpected delights.

(WHISPERING) This rather large snake,

um, is quite harmless, in fact.

But it's quite mysterious, too,

because that, you would think
in Africa, was a python.

And Africa's just over the way.

But, in fact, it's a boa constrictor.

And its nearest relatives are right on
the other side, in South America.

It's one of the mysteries
of Madagascar's fauna.

Now, the last time I was here,
there was a belief

that animals like this, this boa,

were the incarnations
of people's grandmothers.

I did have some inhibitions
about what people would think

if I caught one of those
and took away their grandmother,

so I never did.

This beautiful lemur
has now become a symbol

of the fight to conserve the forest
and save it from the fate that overtook

so many of Madagascar's animals
in the recent past.

So, why did the elephant bird disappear?

It could have been climate change,

which turned much of its land
into desert.

It could have been that people destroyed
the forests where it browsed.

I doubt if it was hunted to extinction.

Anyone who's seen an ostrich in the zoo

knows it's got a kick
that can open a man's stomach.

And an enraged elephant bird,
many times the size of an ostrich,

must have been truly
a formidable opponent.

I suspect it was these, its egg.

They may not have been able
to tackle an adult bird,

but they could take its eggs,
which were a huge source of nourishment.

And so I think it's probably these
are the reason

why the elephant bird is no longer here.

Even if the bird itself was held in awe,
or maybe fear, by the people here,

they might not have had too much trouble
in robbing it

of its huge, nutritious eggs.

So, although there were several factors
threatening the bird's survival,

it could have been people
eating the eggs

who dealt the species its final blow.

Today, we've come to realize that,
if you want to preserve a species,

you have to preserve the whole community
of plants and animals.

Some people here are trying
to tackle that problem.

Rainer Dolch manages one such group
in indri country.

I asked him how much forest remained.

As we speak, it's very fragmented.

Unfortunately, in this particular area,

we have almost no
continuous forest any more.

This is a fragment
of about 800 hectares.

One crucial issue for conservation is
to link these fragments with each other,

so that there could be genetic exchange

between plant and animal species
that live there.

ATTENBOROUGH: So if they remained
as fragments, really,

the inhabitants, the animal inhabitants,
are doomed, huh?

Yeah, that's pretty much the case,

and there is studies
concerning the indri, for instance,

saying that a minimum size for a forest

in which the indri can survive
is about 1 ,000 to 1 ,200 hectares.

-So you have to link them up.
-Exactly.

And how are you doing it?

Well, one thing that we try to do
is actually re-establish

the rainforest
in between these fragments

by planting trees that we actually raise
in this nursery here

from the seeds that we collect
in the forest.

And how's it going?
How many are you replanting?

Well, we now have replanted an area
of about 1 ,000 hectares.

You, ideally, have at least 60 species
per hectare that you plant,

so this is kind of hard work.

How many trees do you think
you have planted?

If you take 1 ,000 trees per hectare
as a rule of thumb,

then this makes slightly more
than a million trees now.

A million trees in how many years?

That's in three years of planting.

Fantastic. A million in three years.
That is a lot of trees.

This is just so heartening and exciting.

How long do you think you're going to be
before you can complete these corridors?

Well, I would say that probably
you would need 20 years or so

to be sure that the trees replanted
have actually re-grown

to something that you'd call a forest.

So we would actually look at
all these reforested areas

for the next two decades to come.

ATTENBOROUGH: Projects like this
are wonderfully encouraging.

When I was here 50 years ago,
we had no idea how complex

forest systems were like this

and how difficult they would be
to reconstitute.

But plans like that can only work

if they have the support
of the local people.

South of Tana, in the central highlands,

there's a new initiative
which is an inspiring example

of how a local community project

could help the future
of the country's wildlife.

The coordinator of this project,
Eugenie Raharisoa,

told me that the people here
have very little to live on,

and that they need their local forest
to survive.

(SPEAKING MALAGASY)

So, in order to provide work for local
people which doesn't destroy the forest,

Eugenie has helped set up a scheme
to produce silk,

which, by tradition, the Malagasy use
to weave a magnificent fabric.

First of all, the caterpillars
of a particular moth

are released into the forest.

When they change into cocoons,
they're collected.

Then the silk is unwound from the cocoon

and spun into a thread, which is dyed
and, ultimately, woven.

The scheme has created work
for all the women in the village,

including Marie Razafumala.

(SPEAKING MALAGASY)

This project has completely changed
people's attitude to their forest.

The villagers now have an incentive
to protect the trees,

which provide them with
such a valuable income.

And that, of course, in turn,
protects the wildlife.

Initiatives like this silk project
bring hope for the future of Madagascar.

Fora young man, the Zoo Quest trip
was an exciting adventure

to what was then,
in television terms at least,

an unexplored land.

Coming back after 50 years
has been really fascinating.

This time, I won't be returning home

with a collection of animals
for the London Zoo.

But I will be coming back
with a greater understanding

of how and why Madagascar has changed.

I've seen a country
which has been heavily exploited.

But I've also seen glimmers of hope
for the future of the wildlife here.

And I've been thrilled to get so close

to some of Madagascar's
most wonderful species,

a reminder of just how special
this island is.

Fifty years ago, I found the egg
of what was surely among

the most spectacular of all the animals
to evolve here.

Now, there is still one final detail
to fill in.

How old is my egg
and what might that tell us?

Here, in the basement of
the archaeological department

at Oxford University,
there's a carbon dating apparatus

which can accurately find the age
of ancient objects, natural and manmade.

It's a complicated process,

involving all kinds of
very sophisticated techniques.

But I've been told that Thomas Higham,
who took the sample from my egg,

has got a result.

You took a tiny bit of this, I know.

-A very small amount from the back.
-A very small amount.

And tell me, come on, what's the answer?

Well, our date suggests that this egg
is 1 ,300 years old.

-No.
-Yes. Yeah.

-Say it again, 1 ,000...
-1 ,300 years old.

And that puts it at what date?

About 700... 600 to 700 AD.

And did that surprise you?

Um, I thought it was quite a lot younger
than I thought it would be, actually.

-You thought it was younger?
-And I say that... I did.

And I say that because I checked back
on all the other eggshell dates

that we've dated from Madagascar
from this species,

and the youngest date that
we've ever got is about 900 AD.

Here is 600 AD, 800 AD.

And your dates are these ones
that just sit in here.

These are the youngest ones.

So it's quite a recent one,
in terms of...

It is, indeed.

So this, in fact, was one of the last
of the elephant birds.

I think, within 1 00 to 200 years,
perhaps, yes.

Ah.

The chick that came out of this
was one of the last.

Absolutely amazing.

When do you think it disappeared?

I think somewhere before 1 ,000 AD,
it was extinct, largely extinct, yeah.

ATTENBOROUGH: So there we have it.

My egg is 1 ,300 years old,

and one of the most recent eggs of
its kind that the university has dated.

But that doesn't mean that it was
the last ever laid.

And it could be that some of these
astounding creatures

lived on until much more recently.

But what we have discovered is
that elephant birds and human beings

did manage to live alongside one another
for hundreds of years.

So it wasn't the usual story
of finding a new species

and then exterminating it
within a few decades of finding it,

as happened with the dodo in Mauritius,

a much smaller island
not far away from Madagascar.

Nonetheless, the elephant bird did,
ultimately, disappear,

another example of how human beings,
in their ever-increasing numbers,

can so easily have a lethal effect
on the animals around them.

For me, this egg is a reminder of
how easy it is for species to disappear

and be exterminated,

as human beings take over more and more
of the natural world.

But there is hope.

We understand more about ecology
and ecosystems,

more about what needs to be done
to protect the natural world.

And I hope, certainly, that we take
those lessons to heart in Madagascar

to save its wonderful wildlife,

for it is, indeed, an island of marvels.