foreign [Music] Malaysia is a land where life has run riot insects glow in the dark plants play tricks on animals ugly is beautiful it's a patchwork of different worlds towering mountains deep dark caves impenetrable forests waterlug swans and in every corner Wildlife has found a way to survive in doing so it's produced some of the most bizarre forms of life imaginable [Music] some glorious freaks of nature [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] Malaysia is one of a handful of countries internationally recognized as being Mega diverse a fifth of all the world's animal species live
here despite its having just 0.2 percent of the world's landmass it's not just the amount of different species that's so surprising but how strange many are Malaysia is home to some of the largest smallest and downright weirdest forms of life on the planet many occur nowhere else on Earth [Music] [Music] the secret behind this incredible biodiversity lies in Malaysia's hot wet climate and its huge variety of different habitats Malaysia sits just north of the equator in the tropical belt where rainfall is high and temperatures warm it's a land of two halves West Malaysia is a
peninsula the very tip of indochina's mainland Eastern Malaysia covers the top quarter of Borneo the third largest island in the world during the last ice age the two were connected by land bridges eighteen thousand years ago the glaciers retreated sea levels Rose and Borneo was cut off and when isolated life can evolve in Peculiar ways [Music] there are a hundred species of animal in Borneo that occur nowhere else on Earth and there's one that wins the weird Race by a nose [Music] for proboscis monkeys beauty is surely in the eye of the beholder males have
the longest noses of all primates the echo Chambers amplifying the male's calls which intimidates Rivals and impresses females the biggest knows in this patch belongs to an alpha male he's the boss of a small group of females and they're young but one of his hiring has had a head turf a bachelor Troop young males leave their families and hang out together in gangs until they're strong enough to take over a horim of Their Own and they're always on the lookout for a flirtatious female [Music] the dominant male doesn't seem too upset for the imminent infidelity
but he's keeping a BDI on things [Music] but a brief rainstorm extinguishes the spark of romance or perhaps it's just not worth putting the alpha males numbers out of junk proboscis monkeys aren't the most graceful of primates [Music] their Pot Bellies seem to make jumping difficult but they're key to their survival packed with friendly bacteria divided into Chambers like cows a proboscis monkey's stomach is like a huge fermentation bat and this unique digestion system means they can carry up to a quarter of their body weight in their stomach slowly gleaning every last morsel of nutrition
[Music] the bacteria even neutralize toxins meaning proboscis monkeys can eat leaves that would poison other animals even so they choose their food carefully [Music] the search for the tastiest leaves and shoots leads this youngster away from The Troop but the mangrove forest isn't the safest place to explore unsupervised especially when gymnastics isn't your strong suit lurking below is the world's largest living reptile fearsome Giant can grow to seven meters long [Music] a saltwater crocodile [Music] [Music] the monkeys might seem safe in the branches but they can't afford to lose their footing laughs [Music] a mouthful
of more than 60 teeth and the strongest bite force of any animal would make short work of a monkey meal and the Croc has a secret weapon using its powerful tail a Croc can leap over a meter into the air in under a second this monkey will think twice before venturing so low next time Rising above bony of Swampy forests is a very different landscape [Music] Mount Kinabalu Malaysia's highest mountain it's a huge plug of granite that pushed up through the surrounding Rock 15 million years ago the geological blink of an eye and it's still
going up growing five millimeters a year [Music] reaching over four kilometers into the air the mountain Towers above the land below an island in the sky as you climb the plant life changes temperatures cool and soils thin [Music] plants have evolved a mind-boggling number of ways to cope six thousand plant species grow here half of all the plants found in the whole of Malaysia [Music] pitcher plant the strangest of them all these plants have come up with an ingenious way to supplement their diets they're carnivores attracted to the smell of sweet nectar a fly dances
with death on the plant's Rim a just a few centimeters below is a deadly Reservoir fluid filled with digestive enzymes dissolved the bodies of anything unlucky enough to fall in thank you the plant's ribbed Edge is designed to make insects lose their footing but the fly takes off in the nick of time [Music] a moth is not so lucky even if it managed to clamber out of the lethal pool with waterlogged Wings it would have no way of escaping the plant's Wicked spines but pitcher plants are not just agents of death over time the fluid
in the pitches is diluted by Rainwater and they're colonized by Midge and fly larvae but these squatters pay rent they help break down the plant's prey and keep bacteria at Bay remarkably there is one species of mosquito whose larvae are only found in one type of pitcher plant but the sweet scent of nectar has attracted something else something much bigger than an insect foreign explorers who first found this plant 150 years ago reported finding the carcass of a dead rat inside [Music] but this tree shoes nimbled hose are in no danger of losing their grip
in fact it's the ideal size to straddle the pitcher's bowl without falling in [Music] it seems to have outwitted the plan polishing off its nectar Supply in one go [Music] but nothing is quite as it seems in This Strange Land the Shrew pays for its meal in kind leaving droppings inside that provide the plant with most of the nitrogen it needs this pitcher plant has evolved to be the perfect true loo up to three meters of rain falls in Malaysia each year that's like the entire content of the Pacific Ocean emptying over the country add
12 hours of daylight 365 days a year and you've got the perfect conditions to grow a jungle [Music] two-thirds of Malaysia is carpeted in rainforest some of which is 130 million years old it's the oldest forest in the world a primeval place that predates Humanity a place where dinosaurs May once have roamed those Giants are long gone but come face to face with one of these and you'd be forgiven for thinking dinosaurs are still alive and well a rhinoceros beetle growing over 10 centimeters long male sport formidable horns and have a temper to merge [Music]
the second nail is straight into his territory foreign ly matched neither is willing to back down their tough exoskeletons are like battle armor flexible and almost Unbreakable rhinoceros beetles are the strongest animals in the natural world capable of lifting 100 times their own body weight that's like you or me lifting three elephants [Music] but each holds his ground clinging to the tree bark with hooks like grappling irons at the end of each foot thank you [Music] at last the Intruder is put in his place and this is what all the fuss is about thank you
a female [Music] by gently caressing her with his feeler-like pulps he's tasting her assessing her suitability as a mate [Music] but after all that effort it seems she doesn't meet his exacting standards he's more fighter than lover thank you the rainforest has constant conditions allow life to run riot [Music] to survive in this competitive world you need to specialize and that drives the evolution of ever stranger life forms [Music] staying out of sight is a sure way to survive and some insects have perfected the art of Disguise [Music] as long as your forearm this giant
stick insect all but disappears among the branches of a tree it can hang motionless for hours surreptitiously grazing on the foliage it mimics [Music] an orchid mantis takes this deception a step further disguising itself as a flower but this is no herbivore and its costume is as much decoy as camouflage lulled into a false sense of security and expecting to find a nectar meal of its own a passing fly's lunch before it even sends Danger [Music] trembling like a blossom blowing in the breeze the Mantis slowly stalks its prey okay there are many different kinds
of mantises and all other racist predators devouring anything that comes within snatching distance the secret to their success lies in their eyesight this green mantis keeps a very close eye on an end foreign mantises have compound eyes each made up of ten thousand omatidia tiny clusters of photoreceptor cells this gives them almost 360 degree vision when a mantis spots a Target several facets of its compound eyes line up visible as a black dot that resembles a pupil close range a mantis has a cute three-dimensional vision viciously accurate but of all the weird and wonderful animals
in the rainforest there's one more perfectly suited than any other to life in the trees [Music] its name means person of the forest orangutan found only in Malaysia and Indonesia these strange apes are some of the most endangered animals in the world sharing more than 97 of their DNA with humans orangutans are one of our closest Cousins cannily familiar but they're unusual among great apes in that they're the only ones that live almost entirely in trees their arms can span two meters from fingertip to fingertip ideal for swinging between branches [Music] opposable thumbs and Toes
effectively give them four gripping hands eight times stronger than humans they can travel as fast to the Treetops as a man can run on the forest floor bright orange hair might seem an odd color for an animal living high in green trees but these Ginger apes are surprisingly well camouflaged in their leafy home because the green pigment that plants use for photosynthesis reflects green light but absorbs red and yellow it's stored the orangutan's orange color becomes harder to detect among the Shadows between the leaves or perhaps they're just good at hiding orangutans have evolved to
be Forest specialists but they also play a vital role in shaping the very Forest they depend on they eat over 400 types of food much of it fruit whose seeds are dispersed as they move through the trees many are effectively planted with their own little pile of fertilizer and as orangutans bend and snap branches to make the nests they sleep in each night they open up holes in the thick canopy which lets light down into the forest depths below unlike other great apes that live in troops orangutans are solitary animals except for mothers and they're
young they have one of the longest periods of childhood in the natural world staying with their mother for eight or ten years learning the do's and don'ts of life in their Forest Home and first on the list of don'ts is don't let go [Music] babies are permanently clamped to mum's hip Clinging On quite literally for dear life [Music] a drop from the Treetops would be fatal [Music] thank you [Music] this young female has long since mastered the art of tree climbing and is now just a few months away from leaving her mother and making her
own way in the jungle but she still has some final vital lessons to learn bamboo shoots are a good source of food when fruiting trees are hard to find [Applause] she'll need to learn what dangers lurkia too a cat snake two meters long and notoriously bad tempered they coil in trees waiting to Ambush birds and small mammals an orangutan is too big to tackle his prey but an inquisitive youngster might get a nasty bite that could prove deadly the rainforest is a three-dimensional place not one habitat but many only two percent of sunlight filters down
to the forest floor and down here it's a different world [Music] this bridal veil fungus quickly absorbs nutrients from decaying Leaf litter and helps recycle them through a network of filaments connected to tree roots fungi is so efficient at cleaning up dead vegetation that soil has little time to accumulate [Music] but despite the meager soil the world's largest flower has found a way to survive here the Rafflesia is no ordinary flower its Bloom can be a meter across and weigh 10 kilos it has neither Roots leaves nor stems but instead lives as a parasite inserting
strings of tissue into a vine absorbing all the nutrients it needs from this host Rafflesia buds can take 10 months to develop into flowers and once they bloom their lettery petals unfurl for just a few days locally it's known as the corpse flower not only because of its peculiar resemblance to a putrefying piece of meat but because it also gives off the stench of Rotting Flesh the smell wafting through the still air attracts carrion flies which act as pollinators [Music] oh after just four days of flowering the huge petals wither and die [Music] Malaysia's jungles
can seem like an impenetrable wall of green but running through it all is water 150 river systems spread into a network of creeks and streams slicing up the forest [Music] a whole new habitat is opened up for wildlife [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] Giants out of the forest [Music] a grassy River Bank is the perfect place for a herd to gather [Music] even these elephants are Oddities they pick me elephants found only in Borneo the smallest elephants in the world they stand almost a meter shorter than their Asian cousins an adaptation
to living in dense forest [Music] this Riverside shindig is a social event relatives who may not have seen each other for months get a chance to catch up and reaffirm bombs foreign [Music] elephants form strong emotional ties their relationships between friends and family can be as complex as our own [Music] [Music] all right but like all elephants they love mud [Music] blood helps protect their skin from the hot sun and from biting insects and it contains minerals that are an important food additive an elephant's bones and tusks need more calcium than is found in plants
alone [Music] but most mud baths seem to be for pure pleasure [Music] elephants are good swimmers they're bulk making them buoyant in the water [Music] when taking two tons of weight off your feet is the ultimate way to relax [Music] getting out is a lot trickier than getting in even the smallest of these little leviathans can get stuck in the mud [Music] foreign over the whole herd slips into the green gloom and vanishes from sight [Music] [Music] at a far smaller stream another social Gathering many thousands of times smaller than an elephant but Giants among
their own kind Roger Brooks birdwings are some of the largest butterflies in the world the size of a human hand these are all newly emerged males trying out their new wings for size the water here is full of sodium and potassium minerals that butterflies need to help develop their flight muscles relatively speaking they drink more than an elephant each butterfly can suck in several hundred times its own body weight in water squirting the excess straight out the other end adults live for just a few weeks but priming their huge Wings is time well spent the
some of the strongest flyers in the Butterfly World and once their wings are fit for flight each butterfly will spend much of the rest of its life in the air thank you Malaysia's trickling waterways shape the landscape carving up its forests and even sculpting Rock [Music] over millennia streams and rivers have gradually eaten to Malaysia's soft Limestone bedrock formed many millions of years ago from the compacted bodies of dead sea creatures this limestone is soluble in fresh water dissolving grain by tiny grain poles have become Hollows caves excavated into cabins [Music] Malaysia is home to
some of the largest cave systems on the planet some are so vast you could park 40 jumbo Jets inside [Music] these are some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth but even here Malaysia's extraordinarily biodiversity has found a toe hold a bat Roost three million strong the cave provides a safe haven from predators and the dry place to sleep during the day but where there are bats there is back guano lots of it a gigantic pile a hundred meters high and seething across its surface cockroaches in their Millions the guano alone is enough to feed
them but a bat that's lost its footing is the Ultimate Prize [Music] as the bats leave the cave to feed at night another species returns to roost cave swiftlets one of the only Birds able to use echolocation to navigate clinging to the cave walls they meticulously build nests using strands of their own saliva tiny Nest can take over a month to construct and it's some of the most valuable real estate in the world for centuries these nests have been prized as the main ingredient of a curious local delicacy bird's nest soup Intrepid locals climb over
60 meters on makeshift ladders to collect the nests with no safety harnesses or specialist equipment it's incredibly dangerous work one slip could be fatal but the rewards outweigh the risks Nest can sell for nearly two and a half thousand dollars a kilo fueling a global market worth nearly 5 billion but of all Malaysia's bizarre habitats strangest are found on the coast [Music] Malaysia has lots of coastline over four and a half thousand kilometers [Music] some of it is fringed with mangroves one of the oddest environments on Earth mangroves are halfway points between Land and Sea
extreme tidal zones where the world changes from The Saltwater Seascape to an exposed mud flat every six hours to withstand the constant push and pull of an ebbing and Flowing Tide trees in the mangrove forest develop a scaffold of roots that brace against the moving water [Music] as the tide goes out the topsy-turvy world is revealed [Music] Roots grow upwards poking out of the waterlogged soil instead of stretching down into it the tree's only chance to absorb oxygen [Music] [Applause] fish think nothing but walking on land a mudskipper is perfectly at home out of water
it breathes through its skin and carries a bubble of air in its Guild Chambers like a scuba diver's tank the receding tide triggers a frenzy of activity [Music] mudskippers eat microscopic organisms that they filter out of the Mind they can only feed when the mud is exposed [Music] together at high tide they Retreat into Burrows to stay out of the way of predatory fish then with just a few hours before the sea floods back again it's every mudskipper for himself [Music] disagreements over grazing rights can lead to disputes with neighbors the Flesh of a fin
is usually enough to let others know this spot is taken but squabbles can break out mudskippers seem to have pulled off the impossible walking is surely the ultimate achievement for a fish but there are some definite disadvantages to life on land they're perhaps the only fish in the world to be bugged by mosquitoes [Music] girl picking their way through the mudskipper melee fiddler crabs also make use of low tide to feed males use their oversized claws to attract females and fight off rivals but they're a bit of a hindrance when it comes to eating they
have only one hand free to collect food [Music] small clawed females can feed twice as fast ing through sediment she swallows anything edible and spits out the drugs [Music] [Music] crabs and mudskippers compete for food but are no real threat to each other but there are animals here that would happily make a meal of either an Otter's webbed feet and sharp claws are the perfect weapons for snaring slippery fish and flat back teeth are ideal for crushing crab shells but both potential victims have evolved eyes on the tops of their heads giving them a panoramic
view of the world to safety but the first glimpse of danger as night Falls these bizarre Mangrove Woodlands get even stranger [Music] they're transformed into a flickering Fairyland tiny lights is a message a coded love letter b Into The Ether fireflies gathering together in their thousands males twinkle in synchrony a United effort to attract females [Music] fireflies are actually tiny beetles each individual just a few millimeters long [Music] picking a prime spot for performance is a serious business [Music] light is produced in their abdomens the result of a reaction between oxygen and a chemical called
luciferin this bioluminescence is almost 100 efficient the light produced is cold so the beetle loses no energy as heat by concentrating their efforts The Beetles ensure females are all drawn to the same place giving the males more opportunities to mate [Music] one flashing light in the darkness would be easy to miss but a treeful is a signal of female Firefly finds hard to resist [Music] in fact these living tree decorations are so visible the traditionally local fishermen have used them as beacons to light their way home [Music] Malaysia's animals and plants have exploited every opportunity
to carve out an existence and so have adapted to some very strange ways of life [Music] bizarre creatures that at first glance seem like freaks of nature are revealed to be Pinnacles of evolution supremely adapted to a unique way of living [Music] but specialization can also mean fragility [Music] proboscis monkeys with their vat-like stomachs so perfect for digesting Mangrove leaves cannot survive anywhere else humans now outnumber wild orangutans nearly 120 000 to one as more of Malaysia's rainforests give way to Palm plantations the orangutans place on our planet becomes increasingly precarious thank you the secret
behind Malaysia's abundance of weird and wonderful wildlife it's Patchwork of different habitats preserve those habitats when the wildlife will continue to thrive [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign
