The Living Planet (1984–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Jungle - full transcript

THE LIVING PLANET

A PORTRAIT OF THE EARTH

I am sitting surrounded by the
greatest proliferation of life

that you can find anywhere
on the surface of the earth.

I'm up in the canopy of the jungle,
the tropical rainforest.

Here there is a greater bulk of
life, both animal and plant -

and a greater diversity too -
than can be found anywhere else.

This huge proliferation comes from
two main causes: Warmth and wetness.

The wetness comes from the
abundant equatorial rains,

the warmth from the tropical sun.

Between them, those two factors
have created the jungle,



which stretches in a broken
green band right round the earth.

This particular patch lies in South
America, right across the equator,

stretching for 600 miles
both north and south of it

in a vast blanket, almost
unbroken except for the rivers.

Here there is probably more unexplored
territory than anywhere else in the world.

Travel east from here along the course
of that greatest of rivers, the Amazon,

and you reach the Atlantic.
Continue along the line of the equator,

across the ocean,
and you come to the west coast of Africa,

another gigantic river, the Zaire -
that used to be called the Congo -

and another vast tract of jungle.

Eastern Africa doesn't get as much rain
and the jungle dwindles into savannah,

but across the Indian Ocean the
great green rainforest reappears

along the western edge
of India and Sri Lanka.

It covers south-east Asia,
Burma, Thailand and Malaysia,



the huge islands of Borneo and Sulawesi
and the smaller archipelagos of Indonesia,

and farther east still, New Guinea.

Beyond lies the
vastness of the Pacific,

for the most part empty of land except
for scatterings of tiny islands,

until, having girdled the
earth around the equator,

you come back to the greatest
expanse of all, the Amazon jungle.

The kind of tree I've climbed doesn't grow
in groups but as isolated individuals,

and it's by far the tallest
tree in this particular jungle.

It's a kapok,
and it grows to over 200 feet high.

If the canopy of leaves formed
by the rest of the jungle

can be called a sea of leaves,
then the crown of the kapok

is an island which rises above that sea,
and it has a climate all of its own.

There is more sunshine up here
than below and there's also wind,

which is virtually unknown
in the depths of the forest.

The wind causes some problems.

It can rob a tree of its moisture by
evaporation from the surface of its leaves,

so the kapok has very small leaves.

The wind also brings a benefit -

it distributes the kapok seeds,
which are extremely fluffy.

They float gently across the top
of the canopy for mile after mile.

The crowns of these
giant trees are the home

of the biggest and most
fearsome of all jungle birds.

There are flying hunters very
like this one in most jungles.

In South America the harpy,
in Africa the crowned eagle,

and here in Malaysia
the hawk eagle.

All patrol above the surface of the canopy,
occasionally plunging down into the leaves

at great speed to seize a squirrel,
a bird or even a monkey.

All produce just one nestling

which they must feed with
meat for almost a year

until it too is big enough to hunt.

These high outposts above the
jungle are excellent vantage points

from which to scan life
in the canopy below.

Few other creatures dare fly above that
sea of leaves when there are eagles about.

Coming down from the airy
sunlit branches of the kapok,

you leave the breeze and the dazzling
sunshine and enter a different world.

Here the warm still air is heavy with
moisture, there's hardly a breath of breeze,

the leaves above cut out
much of the sunshine.

The canopy - millions of leaves stretching
in a vast endless mosaic of green,

each leaf exactly angled to collect
the maximum amount of light.

Many have a special joint
at the base of their stalk

that enables them to twist and
follow the sun as it swings overhead.

It's an isolated world,
many of whose inhabitants

are born here and will die here,
without ever leaving it.

Insects are everywhere.

There seems no limit to the variety
of their shapes and colours.

Some prey on others, most derive
their sustenance from the trees,

collecting the seeds, sipping the nectar,
sucking the sap and munching the leaves.

Weaver ants use the leaves
as walls for their nests.

Workers, feet hooked on one leaf,
lock their jaws on the edge of another

and haul the two together.
While they hold the leaves in position,

other workers use the colony's grubs
as tubes of glue, gently squeezing them

so that they produce
threads of sticky silk

which they weave back and
forth across the junction.

Eventually they produce an enclosed globe
within which they can rear their young.

The insubstantial green terraces of the
canopy are the pastures of the jungle

and a multitude of
creatures graze on them.

These in South America are squirrel monkeys,
but every jungle has its monkey troops

that scamper with total
confidence through the branches,

fastidiously selecting the right
kind of tree, the juiciest bud

or the particular shoot
that most takes their fancy.

There are no seasonal changes here
comparable to winter and summer in the north,

so there is no one time for the
shedding and the renewal of leaves.

Neither is there any particular
season for flowering.

In this eternal summer, trees vary
greatly in their flowering cycles.

Some bloom every ten months,
others every fourteen.

A few may only flower once in a decade.
But the rhythm is far from haphazard,

for all the individuals of one species
produce their flowers at about the same time,

as they must if they are to
cross-pollinate one another.

With so little breeze within the canopy, the
trees can't rely on the wind to pollinate.

Most depend on insects
and other animals,

bribing them with lavish
feasts of pollen and nectar.

Bigger creatures have to be persuaded
to transport the heavier seeds.

Their rewards are the fruits.

Birds do much of this work during
the day, swallowing the entire fruit,

digesting the flesh and voiding
the seeds later and elsewhere.

At night,
other creatures take on the job.

The majority of bats eat insects, but
in the tropics many have specialised

in collecting fruit and
live on nothing else.

There are a great number of different
kinds of figs in the jungle,

each with its own fruiting rhythm.

Since the bats are such accomplished
fliers, they can range far over the jungle

and can always find figs of
some kind, ripe somewhere.

Some feast on them in the trees,
many prefer to carry them away

and feed in the familiar
safety of their roosts.

Trees can be cropped
in many different ways.

The pygmy marmoset has
specialised in collecting sap.

The front teeth in its
lower jaw project forward,

and with them it scrapes away
the bark causing the sap to run.

Marmosets live in families, each with
its own territory in the branches,

and each has at least
one of these sap wells

which the family keeps open and
productive and vigorously defends.

Still though the air is, it carries the
microscopic spores of ferns and mosses

which lodge in the crevices
of the tree bark and sprout.

As they flourish and decay, their
remains accumulate into a compost

on which other plants can grow.

Their dangling roots collect
moisture from the humid air,

and so the broad branches become balconies
loaded with orchids and bromeliads.

Bromeliads are relations
of the pineapple

and each one has its own
population of animal lodgers.

The rosette of leaves forms a
chalice that is always full of water,

a useful drinking place
for the canopy animals.

For some frogs, it's more
than that. It's a nursery.

This little female arrow poison
frog laid her eggs on a leaf.

As they hatched, she allowed a tadpole
to wriggle up onto her moist back.

Now she must find a
pond for it to swim in.

She reverses into the water and allows the
surface tension to pull her tadpole off.

Several species of arrow poison
frogs use bromeliads like this,

and most regard their parental
responsibilities as being over at this stage.

Mosquitoes are likely to lay here,
so with luck,

there should be some wriggling
larvae for the tadpole to feed on.

But this frog doesn't take that
chance. Every three or four days,

she returns to every plant where she left
a tadpole and in each she lays more eggs.

But these are not fertile.
They are food for the tadpole

and will sustain it until it's big
enough to catch insects for itself.

For such frogs,
like so many creatures up here,

the canopy is a complete world,
suspended above the surface of the earth,

that they never need leave.

When you descend from the canopy,
you leave behind

the most densely populated part of the jungle

and enter a kind of aerial
halfway house of spindly saplings,

hanging lianas and
bare branchless trunks.

Here, I am about halfway down,
about 70 feet above the floor,

midway between the ceiling
of leaves in the canopy

and the carpet of leaves below.

Up here, there are very few leaves -
these huge tree trunks don't sprout many.

There's nothing much but empty space,
so very few creatures come here to feed,

and apart from birds and some flying
insects, the only creatures I'm likely to see

are those that use these huge tree
trunks and the dangling lianas

as vertical highways between the
world above and the world below.

Snakes with no legs and
claws with which to hold on

might not seem to be
well suited to climbing,

but in fact some can ascend the
vertical trunks with astonishing ease.

The paradise tree snake of
Borneo maintains its grip

by pressing sideways with its
coils and propels itself upwards

by sending ripples down the line of angled
backward-pointing scales on its underside.

But it has an even more
unexpected accomplishment.

By pulling its ribs forwards, it flattens
its body, turning it from a rod into a ribbon

so that it catches the air, and by
waving its coils it can, to some extent,

control the direction of its glide.

But in these Borneo forests
there are even better gliders.

This squirrel has a cloak of furry skin
that stretches from its wrist to its ankle.

When it's about its normal business,
the skin looks a bit untidy,

as though the animal were rather sloppily
dressed, but when the squirrel leaps,

then it becomes the very
summit of gliding grace.

Most other mammals in this midway zone
travel from tree to tree along the lianas.

Marmosets are capable jumpers and
confidently leap a yard or so.

But they are not always
convinced that they can make it.

The uakari is not nearly so athletic.
It sometimes avoids too big a jump

by throwing its weight back
and forth on a sapling,

so that it sways and carries
it across to the next tree.

Few large creatures visit this
middle part of the jungle to feed,

for there are comparatively
few leaves here,

but lizards scuttle up and down the trunks,
for there, as almost everywhere else,

there are insects to be collected.

Spiders hunt here too.

These termites collected their food
from rotting vegetation on the ground.

They are laboriously carrying it all up here
because it's up here, within the trunks,

that they have built their nest.

Other termites hang
their nests from branches

and these are often
commandeered by others.

A bird originally dug this hole,
but the bat took it over

and now uses the termites'
work as a convenient roost

from which to hawk for insects.

The pillar-like trunks of the huge
trees provide homes for a few birds.

A big bird like a macaw needs a
nice open approach to its nest,

and the hole is relatively safe, for
few non-flying robbers can reach it.

This hole started when a dead branch fell,
but the macaws have enlarged it greatly.

They usually have just two chicks,

but keeping them properly
fed is a considerable labour,

for they will stay in the nest
hole for over three months.

Like all parrots,
macaws feed their young

by regurgitating chewed-up
fruit from their crop.

Both parents labour away, bringing
loads of fruit throughout the day,

for it's bulky food and the
youngsters need a great deal of it.

Holes in tree trunks are
very valuable properties.

Only a few creatures can make them,
but plenty will gladly move into them.

So, after one family has left,
other creatures soon turn up

to inspect the vacant property.

The golden lion marmoset, like all
its family, is incurably inquisitive.

They may already have a hole of their own,
but it's always worth inspecting

alternative accommodation.

And their curiosity has paid off - the
hole contains a meal, a few cockroaches.

As it approaches the ground, the huge
creeper-swathed trunk of the kapok

flares out into buttresses which
the tree needs for its stability,

for its roots are very shallow.

The fact is that the forest floor
is not a very fertile place.

This is partly because it is so dark,
much of the light having been cut off

by the tiers of leaves up in the canopy,
and partly because the torrential rains

wash away much of the
nutriment that is in the soil.

So the roots of the kapok tree, and indeed
of any other plant that grows down here,

have to find their sustenance
not deep in the soil,

but from up on the surface - from this,
in fact, the litter of dead leaves

that's continuously
falling down from above.

And the processes which release that
sustenance are in fact very swift.

For down here there's very little wind, so
it's extremely humid; it's also very warm,

and those two factors together suit
the processes of decay very well.

Bacteria and moulds
work unceasingly.

Fungi proliferate, spreading their
filaments through the litter.

Within days of a leaf landing,
they creep all over it,

breaking down its tissues and returning
its nutrients back to the soil,

where the roots of the trees, close
to the surface, quickly reclaim them.

And as the fungi themselves flourish, so
they put up their spikes and umbrellas,

from which they spread their
spores through the jungle.

The most spectacular of all growths on the
forest floor is not a fungus but a parasite

To find it,
you must discover first its host,

a particular species of
vine that grows in Sumatra.

If the plant is infected, a huge solid bud
will periodically emerge from its roots.

When it's swollen to the size of a cabbage,
it slowly, over a period of four days, opens.

Rafflesia.
Its body is a network of filaments

that run through the tissues
of the vine, absorbing its sap.

It has no stem or
leaves of its own.

The only time it becomes visible is when
it puts out these monstrous flowers,

the largest in the world.

The petals are leathery and
covered in raised warty patches.

It gives off a powerful smell
which to our noses is revolting,

for it is the stench
of rotting flesh.

The local name for it is
"bunga banki", corpse flower.

That smell is irresistibly
attractive to flies

which feed on carrion,
and they flock here.

It's they that
pollinate the flower.

The seeds are small and probably
carried through the jungle

on the hooves of pig or deer that
might tread on the flower inadvertently

and later, elsewhere, kick the
bark of another trailing vine stem

and so infect that
with another Rafflesia.

The forest floor is littered with the
debris of trees, huge fallen trunks,

branches ripped off by a storm and
leaves falling in a steady gentle rain.

It's here that the termites collect their
food, removing it particle by particle

and carrying it away for
treatment in their nest.

Their incessant labour,
like the work of the fungi,

is a crucial link in the life of the
forest, for the termites are bringing

the nutrients in the wood
back into circulation.

Few other creatures can eat dead wood
and leaves, but lots can eat termites.

The workers are
guarded by soldiers.

This particular kind have
nozzles on their heads

from which they can
squirt a sticky repellent.

But they can do little
against attacks from above.

Spiders sling silken ropes across the
marching columns and, hanging from them,

lasso the workers one at a time and
haul them up to be eaten in mid-air.

A whip scorpion. It doesn't have a sting like
a true scorpion, but it scarcely needs it.

The tip of its long antennae
tell it where there's prey.

Yet another varied population of
creatures lives within the leaf litter.

Down here it's always moist, so soft-bodied,

wet-skinned creatures
can survive very well.

A planarian worm smoothes its way
by laying down a carpet of slime.

Peripatus, halfway between a worm and
a millipede, and a hunter of spiders.

Beetles. One of the few creatures apart
from termites that eat rotting wood.

Such inhabitants of the litter are, in turn,
food for hunters from beneath the soil.

A blind, legless burrowing lizard.

Not all these leaf and wood
feeders are defenceless.

This phasmid, a large flightless prickly
stick insect, has a powerful kick.

It gives warning of its strength by
rattling its useless wing covers.

The smaller, less savage litter
feeders are collected by little mammals

that trot through the leaves, deftly
snapping up a termite here, a beetle there.

In the Madagascar rainforest,
a tenrec,

a more distant cousin
of the European hedgehog

than its coat of
prickles would suggest.

In African forests, the elephant
shrew, highly strung, skittish,

prone to career off at suicidal
speed if it's startled.

Its long sensitive trunk enables it to
investigate the depths of the leaf litter

with the minimum of
noise and disturbance.

But there is one inhabitant
of the forest floor

who makes more varied use of more
parts of the jungle than any other.

Human beings have lived here
for tens of thousands of years,

perfecting the techniques and
accumulating the knowledge

that enables them to meet all
their needs from the jungle.

The Waorani in Ecuador,
or Auca as they used to be called,

are among the few people left who have
not abandoned any of their ancient skills.

Their favourite fruit is chonta,
a kind of palm,

but its trunk is armoured with the most
ferocious spines and impossible to climb.

The Waorani know how
to deal with that -

lash a small stick to the end
of a pole with a strip of bark,

put a ring of lianas around your ankles and
then climb a smooth-barked cecropia tree

growing alongside the
unscalable chonta.

The cecropia doesn't grow next
door to the chonta by accident.

The Waorani plant one beside
every chonta tree they find,

clearing a space for it so that it
can get sufficient sunshine to grow.

Within only a few years,
it's stout enough to be climbed.

The Waorani know their
individual chonta trees

as well as if not better than a
fruit farmer knows his orchard,

and they visit them regularly.
They grow all over the jungle,

and often the people have
to make long journeys

to collect their fruit and walk for hours
carrying the heavy stems back to their huts.

Chonta can be eaten in all kinds of ways
except one, raw. It has to be cooked.

The Waorani now have a few metal cooking
pots but they still make some from clay,

coiled and then baked
in an open fire.

Hammocks are woven from palm fibre,
cups and basins made from gourds,

and the hut itself from
branches thatched with leaves.

The pet parrot eats its chonta raw.

The family are going to get
theirs as an alcoholic porridge,

and the cook chews it, adding her
own spittle so that it will ferment.

The parrot chicks also take their chonta
pre-chewed from their foster parents' mouths,

just as they would from the
beaks of their real parents.

The people traditionally are entirely naked,
except for a string around their waist.

In these temperatures,
clothes are not needed for warmth.

But the Waorani take great
pride in their appearance

and need little excuse
to decorate themselves.

The seeds of the achiote plant, when
squashed, produce a vivid red paint.

Black comes from charcoal mixed
with the juice of the genipa plant.

Face and body painting
lasts a long time,

for like many forest people,
the Waorani sweat very little.

In the humid air, sweat doesn't so
readily evaporate and cool the body

as it does for people elsewhere,
and the Waoranis' skin

doesn't produce it
in great quantity.

A vine is the source of
that famous poison, curare,

with which the Waorani
tip their blowpipe darts.

Scrapings from it are wrapped in leaves
and water poured through the mash

to dissolve out the poison.

The darts are made from
slivers of palm wood.

Steel knife has been obtained from outsiders
by barter and is a treasured possession.

But even now the Waorani may do this job
with a stone blade or an animal tooth.

The curare has been boiled
down into a sticky paste.

Carefully, each dart is tipped with it
and then put in front of the fire to dry.

Fibres from the seeds
of the kapok tree,

deftly twirled round the
back end of the dart,

will give it an airtight fit
in the barrel of the blowpipe.

In Waorani hands it's
lethally accurate.

Hunters communicate with
one another in the forest

by using the buttresses
of the giant trees.

Such thumps are audible for miles,

and in the forest, where you can't see
for more than a few yards around you,

sound is much the best
form of communication.

The jungle animals certainly exploit
it to proclaim their territorial rights

and to summon their mates.

In each jungle,
there's one mammal up in the canopy

which has become
the champion singer:

In Madagascar the indiri lemur,
in South America the howler monkey

and in south-east Asia the gibbon.

The siameng, with a huge resonating
throat sac to amplify its voice,

has the loudest call of all gibbons. Families
sing to one another across the valleys.

Sound is not so effective
beside the thundering waterfall,

so one frog that lives in such a
place in Borneo uses sign language.

Tree lizards, up in the branches where they
can easily see all over their small territory

use a flag on their throat.

Many birds use both media -
sound and vision.

These calls, echoing across the
Borneo forest, are invitations

to one of the most spectacular theatrical
performances in any jungle anywhere.

The display will
take place on a stage

that has been carefully cleared
and cleaned by the dancer.

It's an argus pheasant.

The cock has summoned a hen with his calls
and now he leads her to his display ground.

The immense fans,
lined with eyespots,

are the greatly elongated
feathers of his wing coverts.

There are no pheasants
in South America.

There, the dancers come from
another family, the cotingas,

and one of them, the cock of the
rock, performs in competitive groups.

As many as forty male birds
assemble in one patch of the forest,

but each has his own cleared
arena on the ground beneath him.

The performers squabble among themselves
while they wait for their audience.

And here it is, just one.
A single drab female.

The dancers descend,
each to his own stage.

The dance itself consists of little
more than a few bobs and bounces

in the shafts of sunshine
that spotlight the stages

though there may be squabbles among
the performers during the course of it.

The female may or may not be impressed
by the relative merits of the costumes

or the dance steps, but in
some way she makes a selection.

A tap on the back of the
winner and he claims his prize.

The jungle is a very stable,
unvarying place.

There's no wind down here, the humidity
and temperature remain much the same.

Even the length of the days and the nights
remains almost the same throughout the year.

And what's more,
it's a very ancient place too.

Mountains get eroded by glaciers
within thousands of years.

Plains turn into deserts
inside centuries,

lakes fill up with mud and
become swamps inside decades.

But the jungle is
millions of years old.

And that may be an explanation of one of
its most extraordinary characteristics,

the great diversity of animals
and plants that are found here.

It's as though this great age
has enabled the forces of nature

to produce specialised creatures
to live in every tiny niche

in this ancient and
stable environment.

Just consider, for example,
how many creatures have developed

not just a generalised camouflage but
a close and precise impersonation.

A young stick insect looks
like a poisonous ant.

Yet when it grows up,
it becomes a prickly twig.

A beetle has become a winged seed.

A bug dresses itself
in a costume of lichen.

A mantis is a dead leaf.

A lizard, dappled foliage.

Leaves, twigs, tendrils and stems,
some fresh, some green,

some apparently blotched with
mould. None vegetable, all animal.

A stump on a branch?
No, a bird on its nest. A potoo.

The fertility of the jungle depends
not only sunshine but on rain,

and nowhere does it fall more
abundantly than here in the tropics.

A big storm is preceded by a violent gale
which for a few minutes lashes the tall trees

and rocks the canopy.

The huge heavy drops begin to fall, first
slowly and then in drenching torrents.

In places, the floor of
the forest becomes a flood,

sweeping in sheets through
the trees down to the rivers.

When the storm has passed, then the blessings
of the water it has brought can be enjoyed.

The jaguar is an excellent swimmer and
seems positively to enjoy doing so,

for it's seldom
found far from water.

It actually hunts as it wades, catching
crocodiles and frogs and even fish.

One of the small creatures
which doesn't enjoy a soaking

manages to pass the storm in perfect dryness
and is still snug in its remarkable shelter.

The leaf of this heliconia is hanging
in an unnaturally protective way.

The creatures lodging beneath have bitten
through the veins along the mid-rib,

so that the two sides flop down
around it and keep out the splashes.

It's a pair of white
tent-making bats.

The storm has brought
water to the thirsty.

It has knocked down valuable fruit for the
hungry, well worth storing for a later date.

But it can also bring
death to the aged.

A giant kapok has fallen. Maybe it had
lost one of its huge branches from decay

and was already badly out
of balance before the storm.

The great weight of water hanging on its
foliage was finally more than it could carry.

The death of this old tree was the
starting gun for a feverish race.

The competitors are
the spindly seedlings

mostly buried under this
wreckage of branches.

Had this tree not fallen, they would
have been doomed to an early death,

because once they had consumed the food
in the big seeds from which they sprouted,

there would have not been enough light
down here for them to grow any further.

But this tree fall
has changed all that.

The huge rent in the canopy above is both
the prize and the finishing post of the race.

Those seedlings that can grow
fast and get up there quickest

will got their place in the sun, spread
their branches, flower and set seed,

but the rest will have no chance.

The process is
extraordinarily swift.

To begin with, shrubs appear which
specialise in open sites like these.

They flower quickly and disperse their
seeds to other temporary clearings,

but in a year or so the sapling
trees have over-topped them.

As they grow higher,
some begin to flag.

Only one or two complete
the course to sunlight,

where they will
spread their branches.

So the jungle floor once more
becomes darkened by shadow

and the green canopy
is again complete.