Imagine being transported to a place with humidity above 90%, with more diseases than anywhere on Earth, and where every breath draws a cloud of insects. Charlotte Uhlenbroek takes up the challenge in this exploration of the world's rainforests. All the jungles are very different. On each continent the same niche is occupied by a different species - Spider Monkeys in South America and Gibbons in South East Asia. Charlotte compares the situations she finds in each jungle together with the solutions the creatures in each have adopted to survive. Many individual films have been made about rainforests, but no one has ever attempted a global look at them on this scale. A combination of sheer adventure and the latest technology enables the viewer to experience the planet's most complex terrestrial habitat in all its glory.
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Episode # 101
This high frontier is one of the least known and least seen habitats on earth, but it has the greatest concentration of life on the planet. In the jungles of Borneo where the trees are tallest, Charlotte's quest is to find out what it's like to live 200 feet above the ground in a complex three dimensional world where one slip could be fatal! For us humans used to walking on solid ground, it's an incredibly difficult place to explore. But using all kinds of modern technology, Charlotte climbs up into this remarkable but precarious world to reveal why it's such a special place. Using ropes, platforms, balloons, cranes, gondolas, inflatable rafts and raw climbing skills she searches for spectacular concentrations of wildlife and finds out why the jungle canopy is the most diverse part of the most varied ecosystem on earth. This journey gives us unique perspectives on this little known world. First Charlotte goes in search of the canopy experts to show her the ropes. Orang utans are much heavier than her but are remarkably good climbers, reaching high into the trees. But watching the youngsters learn you realise it takes many years of practise to really get the hang of it. The gibbons are even better, the gold medalist acrobats of the canopy - they just leave orangs, and especially humans, dangling. This is a world where squirrels, lizards, frogs and even snakes can fly!
Rebroadcast
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Length : 50 min
MPT
