Madagascar (2011): Season 1, Episode 1 - Island of Marvels - full transcript

BIRD SQUAWKS

60 million years ago,
on the shores of this tropical
island,

an extraordinary story began.

The waves brought ashore
an odd band of survivors...

a few ancient creatures that had
been accidentally swept across
hundreds of miles of ocean

from a distant land.

They found themselves here,
in a place unlike any other.

Totally cut off from the rest
of the world, these castaways
made this island their own,

gradually evolving
into a collection of wildlife that's
strange, rare and utterly unique.

So rare that more than 80%
of the species are
found nowhere else on earth.

The island was Madagascar.



This is the story of what happens
when a set of animals and plants

are cast away on an island
for millions of years.

This is how this curious
wonderland came into being.

It had all begun
millions of years earlier

when a great slab of land broke
apart to form the continents
as we know them today.

Africa went one way, and India
went the other, and an orphaned
chip of land was cast adrift,

and ended up hundreds of miles
from the nearest land.

Its unusual geological history,
its isolation, and its resting
place in the tropics,

were to shape Madagascar's
fortunes.

It's the world's oldest island,
and it's had time to develop
an astonishing range of landscapes.

It's split in two by a spine
of mountains

that runs its entire length,
and each side
has its own character.

On the western side
lie huge forests populated
with strange, bulging trees.

Further south, an alien world...
a parched and sandy wilderness,



with an immense lake of salt, and
gnarled and twisted spiny woodlands.

And on the eastern side,
lush jungle drenched in rain.

It's this combination
of long isolation
and varied landscapes

that's created
the eccentric diversity of wildlife
which makes this island so special.

These rainforests are unlike
any other rainforest on earth,

and they are home to Madagascar's
most successful inhabitants.

They are lemurs.

There are 80 different types,
from nocturnal, mouse-sized
creatures

to this, the biggest,
the size of a child. It's an indri.

They are direct descendents
of those first primitive mammals

that had washed in from Africa
by chance,
and now they live nowhere else.

PIERCING SQUEAL

CALL IS ANSWERED BY OTHERS

They have almost dog-like faces.

But they are primates,
related to us.

And when you watch them,
you can see it.

They are highly social.

At two years old this young male
is an adolescent, but he's
still close to his mother.

His little sister
is just six months old.

This family group will stay together
for several more years.

Lemurs also have the grasping
hands and feet of all primates.

It's fundamental
for a life in the trees...

as well as an effective way to put
a stranglehold on an older brother.

For an indri, childhood is long.

It's nine years before
they are fully adult.

There's plenty of time for play,
and perfecting their impressive
jumping skills.

And perhaps even a spot
of showing off.

Everywhere you look, Madagascar
has echoes of elsewhere...

at first glance similar,
but with different origins.

On the rainforest floor,
an animal emerges that might
be mistaken for a hedgehog.

But she's only the most distant
relation. She's a tenrec,

another of Madagascar's
own inventions.

And these are her youngsters.

Dozens of them.

Tenrecs have the distinction
of giving birth to more babies
than any other mammal on earth -

as many as 32.

Her babies are stripy,
the better to hide in the
shadows of the rainforest floor.

Their ancestors too had washed
in from Africa and, like the lemurs,

they have diversified
into many different species.

As well as being Madagascar's
equivalent of hedgehogs, tenrecs

also take the place that moles
and shrews would occupy

anywhere else in the world.

Madagascar's rich forests have been
isolated from outside influence
for so long,

they have become
an evolutionary cauldron, producing
increasingly extreme forms of life.

And none are stranger than this.

It's a giraffe-necked weevil,

and this is a male.

And this is the reason
for his extra long neck.

He uses it for fighting.

Meanwhile a female weevil, who's not
quite as long-necked, is beginning
an ambitious construction project.

She's snipping through
the leaf's veins,
and making little creases in it.

She also appears
to referee the fight.

She finally mates with the winner.

Then, using her powerful legs,
the female starts to
fold the leaf in half.

She then curls up the end,

and inside the curl,
she lays a single egg.

All around the rainforest edge,
females are busy rolling and
curling their leaf nests.

Each seems to have her own design.

Only in these particular
rainforests, and only on this one
particular type of soft leaf,

are conditions right
for her to make her nest.

It's an astonishingly
specific behaviour.

The expectant fathers are
apparently just getting in the way.

But they may be guarding
against tiny insects that would
parasitise the newly laid egg.

The female has bitten tiny
notches along the leaf's ribs,

to form a kind of Velcro strip
to help all it stick together.

A few final folds,

and the nest is complete.

When she finally snips
the leaf roll off,

it falls to the forest floor
to hatch.

All that effort for just one egg.

Madagascar has had a turbulent past.

At its birth it was ripped from
India and Africa, and the geological
upheavals have continued since.

The north of the island is speckled
with slumbering volcanoes.

On the forested slopes lives
another Madagascar speciality.

A chameleon!

Chameleons weren't amongst those
pioneering castaways.

Theirs is a different story.

It's thought that they evolved
here in Madagascar itself.

They are wonderfully adapted
to a life in the trees.

Their toes are fused,
so their feet grip like tongs,

and the arrangement of their
legs is unusual for a reptile...

they're beneath their body.

This allows them to walk on branches
thinner than their body.

A male panther chameleon,

one of the biggest.

A second male is in his tree.

He won't like that.

If the intruder doesn't back down,
there will be trouble.

They are evenly matched -
it's neck and neck.

HISSING

The territory holder wins,
and the loser takes
the quickest way out.

In these isolated forests,
chameleons have taken
a variety of paths,

and have diversified
to an astonishing degree.

Some are miniatures, and have the
rich forest floors to themselves.

A pygmy chameleon,
the world's tiniest reptile,

tiptoes through the leaf litter
on the steep volcanic slopes.

She's so tiny,
she's scarcely bigger than an ant.

And over here, in a forest
of toadstools, a male.

He's looking for her.

He's even smaller than she is.

Finding a mate in a giant world
is challenging.

And it's somewhat hazardous,
when you could get run over
by a millipede.

It takes a while,
but when he finally reaches her,
he has a special tactic.

He's not going to let go.

They're not mating,

simply riding around
until the time is right.

He barely touches her... just
an occasional gentle little sway.

They can go round like this
for days.

But at least they won't
lose each other

in their big volcanic forest.

The heart of Madagascar
still rumbles
with geological activity.

The centre of the island
is a wide plateau of uplifted rock.

Here there are still
thousands of earthquakes every year.

Over aeons of time,

millions of these tiny earthquakes
have torn a vast hole

right in these
central uplands, forming this,
Madagascar's biggest lake...

Lac Alaotra.

Around the edges of this massive
body of water, there are reed beds.

But the vegetation is not fixed.

It floats in great mats
in water three metres deep.

It's tricky and inaccessible
to most.

But one creature has adapted
to live here, and only here.

This is the Lac Alaotra reed lemur.

Not only is it small enough to climb
the thinnest reeds, it can also
survive on a diet of tough grass.

Unusually for a primate,
it lives its whole life over water.

And it only lives on this one lake.

This family group
has a patch of reeds to themselves.

But they have a problem -

to find enough to eat, you have
to move from reed bed to reed bed,

and that takes skill and practice.

These lemurs can swim,
but they prefer not to.

So they have developed a special
technique for crossing the reed beds

without ending up
in the water below.

Their mother is an old hand.

Even with a baby on her back,
she is surefooted, and her older
children are getting the hang of it.

These lemurs are so specialised

that they would struggle
to live anywhere else.

While Madagascar's centre
was shaped by volcanic fire,

the western side of the island
has an entirely different story.

For millions of years, this
landscape was drowned, and layers
of limestone formed underwater.

When the ocean finally retreated,
this is what was left.

It's a gigantic, ancient reef.

The seabed was pushed up,
creating a great block of limestone.

Over time, it's been carved by water
into forests of giant pinnacles.

This is the Tsingy - one of
Madagascar's strangest landscapes.

Underneath, it's riddled
with caves, dissolved away
by underground rivers.

In places the limestone has
collapsed, creating deep canyons,

and in among them have
grown little oases of forest,
filled with oddities.

The isolated forests
are rich sources of food,

but not easy for outsiders to reach.

The great walls of rock make moving
between them, across razor sharp
blades of stone, seem impossible.

Not so.
This too is the haunt of lemurs.

This most diverse group of primates
has adapted to thrive
all over the island, even here.

These are crowned lemurs.

They don't live up here,
but they must cross the peaks

to find fruiting trees
in the forest pockets.

Exposed to the tropical sun,
it's devilishly hot.

The group seeks shelter
and a brief respite.

The lemurs are vulnerable here,

and need to get a move on.

There's still a way to go
before they reach the forest.

They get to what looks like the
most daunting part of the journey -

a 30-metre drop where
the limestone has fallen away
to create sheer cliffs.

But crowned lemurs
are as good at rock climbing
as they are at tree climbing.

Once down,
they'll find shelter from the heat
and plenty to eat.

But they must be on their guard.

There is one danger that
every lemur on the island fears,

a hunter that climbs
as well as they can -

the fossa!

No big African predators
made it to Madagascar.

There are no lions,
no leopards, no wild dogs.

Instead the island's top predator
is a giant mongoose.

And it eats lemurs.

But it has more curious habits.

It's the mating season,
and this female has stationed
herself 15 metres up a tree.

She's chosen a branch that
will just support her own weight,
plus that of a male.

A male approaches. If she approves
of him, she'll allow him to mate.

If she doesn't, she'll back
away to a thinner branch,
and he won't be able to get to her.

She's only fertile
for a few days a year,

so setting herself up in this tall
tree is a good way of advertising
her availability to suitors.

And it seems to work. This is the
sixth male she's entertained today.

The great diversity of Madagascar's
wildlife is driven

not only by the variation in
landscape but also by the climate.

The spine of mountains running
the length of the island blocks
the rain blowing in from the east.

While the east coast
is drenched year-round,
the west lies in a rain shadow.

The plants that have evolved here
have had to adapt to an arid world.

Some places get less than
a tenth of the rain that falls
in the rainforests of the east.

This is the land of the baobab.

These bizarrely shaped trees evolved
to store water in their trunks.

They are tough
and can live to a great age.

This baobab may be
over 1,000 years old.

In these desiccated landscapes,
many plants have evolved

these bloated trunks to store water
for the driest times.

The west of the island
is dotted with these fat oddities.

Many survive by just clinging with
long roots to cracks on bare rock.

Like most plants here, this
uncarina stores water in its stem.

And it is also economical
with its flowers, putting out
a few a day, over several months.

This gives maximum opportunity
for pollinators to visit.

But this is not
what the uncarina needs,

a sunbird has become a nectar thief.

Piercing the base of the flower
it by-passes the pollen entirely.

But the sunbird is not alone.

Unfortunately for the shrub,
it's another flower bandit.

In a place as tough as this,
a flower is well worth the effort.

Madagascar is 1,000 miles
from end to end.

The variation from north to south
is extreme, and the further south
you go, the drier it gets.

Most of the time, the rivers
here are barely ankle deep.

But there's just enough
water and nutrients

for a fringe of forest
to take hold.

And in Madagascar, where
there's forest, there are lemurs.

These are sifakas.

They are superb acrobats, adapted
to leaping from trunk to trunk.

But where the gap is too great or in
more open stretches of river bank,

they abandon the trees
and do something extraordinary.

Their hind legs are too long to walk
on all fours, so they stay upright,
and gallop.

These river forests are an oasis
in this dry landscape.

That can lead to some spectacular
competition for territory.

A female paradise flycatcher
is busy building a nest.

Both male and female
have red feathers,

but the males
are particularly striking,

with long tail plumes and bright
blue rings round their eyes.

Curiously, although all males
start out with red feathers,
some males turn completely white.

No-one knows why, but it's something
that's exceedingly rare in birds.

Another Madagascar oddity.

The red female and her white partner
construct the nest between them.

It's a delicate affair,
built of leaves and grasses

woven together with cobwebs,
and it takes days of careful work.

A red male watches nearby,

breeding territory is
particularly jealously guarded.

The white male must see him off.

Danger averted,
the couple return to work.

But there's worse to come...

..a drongo!

For some reason it sets about
destroying the carefully-made nest.

There is nothing the flycatcher
couple can do about it.

SQUAWKING

The drongo isn't even
stealing the material,

just chasing the flycatchers
from their territory.

Competition for space
is that fierce.

The female gives up and leaves.

Maybe she'll look
for a more assertive male.

Go far enough south
and the island changes once more,

into a landscape
of scrub and spines.

This place
may go years without rain.

Strangely, there is water here.

This vast lake is ten-miles long,
and just two-metres deep.

But it's not what it seems.

Greater flamingos fly 250 miles
from Africa to breed here.

But they pretty much have it
to themselves,

because this is not fresh water,

it's a salt lake,

gradually evaporating
in the heat and drought,

and it's hostile to life.

This whole area has been getting
drier for the last 40,000 years.

But the plants and animals here are
uniquely adapted to extreme aridity.

Mornings are surprisingly chilly.

A rare Verreaux's coua,
found only round this lake,

puffs itself up
until it's almost spherical.

Ring-tailed lemurs sunbathe too.

The most adaptable
of all the lemurs,

they can cope with the dryness,

but they can't go
without water entirely.

RUSTLING AND CHIRPING

A giant fig, surprisingly
and persistently green, wafts its
thirsty roots across the ground.

There's water here somewhere,

but it's hidden.

It's part of a southern river system
that flows underground here,

carving holes into the limestone
like a Swiss cheese.

But it can only be reached
in a few places.

For the ringtails, it's a life-line,
and they visit every day.

In the water, too,
there are curiosities...

strange white fish,

found only in these caverns.

They have been trapped in these
underground rivers for millennia,

and they too
have gone their own way.

They have not only lost
all their pigment,

they've lost their eyes too.

They also swim upside down.

This may be to help them
feed on the surface,

but in a dark world,
it barely matters which way is up.

Here in the far south of the island,
the extreme conditions make this
a land of rare specialists.

There is wildlife that's found
nowhere else in Madagascar.

A little nocturnal mammal,
whistling in the dark.

It's Grandidier's vontsira, one
of the world's rarest carnivores.

They survive on a diet of
almost nothing but insects.

As the climate here dried,
only the toughest
and most adaptable stayed on.

Grandidier's vontsira,
able to survive on such a diet,
was able to hang on.

THEY SQUEAL

They're sociable, and playful.

But their lives remain
largely a mystery.

The intense dryness
of this end of the island has
demanded some ingenious behaviour.

In this desert scrubland,
desiccation is just as problematic
for a spider as for a mammal.

An empty snail shell would make
a perfect refuge from the heat.

But it's not safe lying on sand.

So this spider begins
an astonishing process.

It attaches silk to the shell,
and starts to haul it into a bush.

This is the first time
this has been filmed,

and may be the first time it's
even been observed in the wild.

Each new strand
is shorter than the last,

so the shell gradually
gets pulled up.

Technique is key.

It's important that the shell
is secured from several angles,

for maximum stability.

This spider has got it wrong.

And when the wind springs up,
it totally loses control.

This one shows
how it should be done.

This is the farthest southerly point
of Madagascar.

Beyond this is nothing
until you reach Antarctica.

This is the oldest, most arid
and most remote landscape of all.

The spiny trees are dwarves,
bent by the wind.

And on these windswept cliffs
there are radiated tortoises,

one of the world's most
beautiful species.

They're only found in
these southern scrublands.

A male sets off in pursuit
of a female.

He'd be able to mate with her if
only he can get her to stand still.

He uses the front of his shell to
lift her back legs off the ground.

She seems less than willing.

It's a slow process,
but radiated tortoises
don't do anything very quickly.

They don't become parents
until the age of 20,
and they may live to be 130.

One legendary individual
was claimed to be 188,

which would make him
the longest-living animal on earth.

It's also one
of the most endangered.

It's hunted, and its unique
spiny habitat is being destroyed,
bit by bit, cut down for firewood.

It was once abundant on Madagascar.

Now it could well be extinct in
the wild within the next 20 years.

On this same windswept beach
lie thousands of fragments
of egg shells.

These are the ancient nest sites
of an astonishing creature...

the biggest bird that ever lived.

The elephant bird stood
more than three meters tall,

and a thousand years ago it would
have roamed these spiny scrublands.

In the warm sand it laid its huge
eggs... bigger than dinosaur eggs.

This astonishing bird only
lived in Madagascar, and it
was extraordinarily successful.

But then, it totally disappeared.

These egg fragments and bits of bone
are all that remains to
show it was here at all.

Two thousand years ago,
humans first came to Madagascar,

and it seems the elephant bird
started to vanish soon after.

It's a story that's continued.

Many of Madagascar's wild
landscapes and species are under
threat of disappearing forever,

just as we are beginning to discover
and understand the extraordinary
diversity of life here.

It's only during the last few
decades that we've really started to
appreciate this curious land.

Let's hope it's not too late.

Much of Madagascar's wildlife is
secretive, and a challenge to
find, let alone film.

The team were keen to tell the
story of a little lemur that only
lives on this one remote lake.

There are very few of them left,
because they've long been hunted,

and the reed beds where they
live are being cut down.

But in one village on Lac Alaotra,
the local people have made strenuous

efforts to save the reed lemurs, and
they knew where they might be found.

Field assistant Jonathan Fiely
and cameraman Gavin Thurston
set out with local

fisherman and wildlife guide
Ndrina Rajohonson, who has spent
many months following the lemurs.

The team wanted to film its
specialised way of moving through
these floating beds of reeds.

Easy for the lemurs...

not so easy for a film crew.

In fact, in the tangled reed beds,
it seemed almost impossible
even to see them at all.

They are so nimble, they simply
melt away into the reeds.

The team negotiated the channels
in an attempt to track them down.

The trouble was,
there's no dry land here.

Gavin would have to try
and film them from a canoe.

Following a cyclone,
the lake was deep
and the water particularly choppy.

We're going to need a bigger boat!

It's way too rocky, and the
boat's going all over the shop.

We've got a few toys up
our sleeves... we've got a big stick,
to help stabilise the canoe.

This must look like
sort of Amateurville,

and it is quite precarious... you
know, we've got sort of ?40,000-worth

of camera balanced in a rocky canoe,

which looks like we've just hired
it from the local boating lake.

But I'm feeling positive.

It was back to base for Plan B.

Gavin and Ndrina decided to build
a platform. But it would have
to be very carefully designed.

It turned into quite an undertaking.

We're trying
to adapt this construction,

so that when we
get out to the reeds we don't
need to use any nails at all.

I'm just worried that if they start
banging the nails

it's going to drive these animals
even deeper into the reeds,

so we're making this
precarious 4-metre high platform
above the water without any nails.

At dawn the next day,
the platforms were loaded
up to be taken out to the reed beds.

Getting the canoes through the
tangled vegetation was hard enough.

Moving through with the
platforms was a different matter.

And the whole operation had to be
completed as quietly as possible,
for fear of scaring the lemurs.

One false move and the whole team
would end up in the water.

At last, a clear and stable
view through the reed bed.

Gavin got himself settled
and started filming.

But it wasn't easy.

The very thing he wanted to film,
the lemurs on the move,

was limited by the fact that
when they moved off, Gavin could
only wait for them to return.

It is quite frustrating really...

because it doesn't matter how
much experience you've got,
with something like this...

filming from the boat was too wobbly,
and working off the platform you're

literally stuck in one place in the
hope that they'll come within sight.

I think we'll get it, in-between that
and this sort of cyclonic weather.

THUNDERCLAP

Just as they'd got set up,
a storm was rolling in.

The last place you want to be
is on a lake, in a canoe,
in a thunderstorm,

so they paddled back as quickly as
they could, and then could only
wait for the storm to pass.

That took three days.

Finally, it dawned clear and calm.

Things were looking more promising.

(Gavin's just inside the reed-bed
right over there.

(We set him up
about 5.20 this morning.)

The team were in luck.
The lemurs were feeding right next
to where Gavin was stationed.

With Ndrina's careful guidance,
they were in the right
place at the right time.

It might look a bit Heath-Robinson,
but at last Gavin was getting shots
of one of the world's rarest lemurs,

moving and feeding in the reeds,
and for the first time,
a mother and her baby.

But even after ten days,
they were still unpredictable.

(It's 7 o'clock in the morning...

(and they've gone to sleep!

(They're just tucked
down in here asleep.)

I've really quite
grown to like them...

it's just quite sad that they
are critically endangered.

They only live in the reeds
around this one lake,
and there's very few small

areas of reeds left, and if those
reeds do disappear, then the lemurs
are going to disappear with them.

And I think it would be
really sad to lose such a
cute cuddly little lemur like that.

These little lemurs have been
pushed to the brink of extinction

by hunting, and the gradual
destruction of their reed beds.

But the quiet determination of
people like Ndrina mean that local
attitudes are beginning to change.

Madagascar is one of the
poorest countries in the world.

It's as much as most people
can do to earn a basic
living from the land.

And yet it may be the passion
and involvement of local people

that is key to preserving its
unique, and increasingly
fragile, wild treasures.

In the next episode we travel
into Madagascar's most
luxuriant landscape.

Between the wild peaks
of the eastern mountains
and the tropical shore

lies a magical world of rainforest
where nature has run riot.

It's the jewel
in Madagascar's crown.