"Indonesia is a land of creatures lost in time" "Castaways from two continents settle the island chain of Indonesia the greatest archipelago on earth" "Marooned on this scatter of islands their descendants were cut off from the outside world" "Many became unique" "Today, these thousands of islands have a wider diversity of life than anywhere else on the planet" "Both above and below the water creatures that live only here rub shoulders with new colonists from east and west" "Indonesia lies on a ring of fire and the land still bears the scars of its violent birth" "15 million years ago, seas stretched unbroken from Asia to Australia but deep below the waves huge pieces of the earth's crust were on the move" "Where these giant fragments collided molten lava spewed from the seabed" "New land was born" "Over millions of years what was once open ocean became an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands" "Today, these islands form a line of stepping stones running 5000 km along the equator from northern Australia to Asia" "Some of the islands were built by volcanos others are fragments of the continents" "like Borneo" "Borneo was once part of Asia so Asian animals colonized its forests" "They've been isolated so long that some are now quite different to their relations on the mainland" "They've become new species like the proboscis monkey" "Proboscis monkeys are found only here in Borneo, along rivers and in coastal mangrove forest" "They get their name from the male's enormous nose" "He has a gut to match" "Proboscis monkeys eat leaves that huge stomach has full of bacteria to help digest them" "Though the monkeys can deal with old leaves they much prefer tender young ones" "To find them, they often have to cross rivers and that can be dangerous" "The murky water hides a stealthy hunter" "Crocodiles eat proboscis monkeys" "Is that a crocodile or just a floating log?" "Crocodiles home in on any splash in the water" "The monkeys strain every sinew to clear the danger in a single leap" "They can't afford to put a foot wrong" "For some, the river is just too wide" "Every crash could be a dinner bell for the crocodiles" "Even now an unseen killer could be homing in" "The crocodile was just too late but its time will come crocs kill more proboscis monkeys than any other predator" "Close to the sea, the mangroves are flooded by the tides the creeks here are too wide to jump so as the best of the food is on the other side" "the monkeys have to swim for it" "They paddle across as quietly as they can the slightest splash could bring disaster" "These unique animals even have partly webbed feet ideal for life in Borneo's mangroves" "Borneo is an old island, a fragment of mainland Asia others in the archipelago are much younger" "A new island appeared as recently as 1928" "that eruption was just one chapter in a long story" "Krakatau" "In 1883, one of the greatest explosions the earth has ever known ripped Krakatau apart" "But just 45 years later, a new island burst from the sea the child of Krakatau" "Today, the child is still growing this is island building in action" "This is just one of 155 active volcanos in Indonesia" "Every day sees an eruption somewhere in the archipelago this is the most violently volcanic region on earth" "Within a year of its birth" "Krakatau's child received its first colonists" "Plants came their seeds carried by wind and waves" "volcanic ash is a fertile seedbed" "Animals arrived too spiders on the wind birds and bats on wing" "This is a story that's been repeated all over Indonesia when the volcanos sleep, the colonists float in" "Rich volcanic soils attracted another kind of immigrant people" "Fertile ash, ample rainfall and tropical sun make volcanic slopes like these the bread basket of Indonesia" "People have been farming here for countless generations" "Terraces in Java date back 2000 years" "The mountain gives but it can also destroy" "Living in the shadow of the volcano is dicing with death remind us the fire beneath the surface never far away" "These are soils so rich that yield 3 crops in a year and they need to for Java is the most densely populated island in the world" "With almost 115 million people it has half Indonesia's total" "Java's terraces have been feeding people for 20 centuries and feeding them well enough to support elaborate civilizations" "The ruins of Borobudur date from the 8th century only a society that knew where its next meal was coming from could have afforded such flowering of art and craftsmanship" "Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world" "Indonesia's peoples are as diverse as the wildlife and for much the same reasons" "Over the centuries, waves of immigrants colonized these fertile islands they came from many different lands" "each with its own cultural heritage" "Isolated on remote islands, old cultures flowered in new ways" "beauty blended with bizarre" "Masks like these perhaps inspired by the strange creatures that shared these island homes" "And few could be stranger than this the babyrussa" "It lives on just one island" "It's a pig, but a pig with a difference" "Only the males have these extraordinary tusks no one knows what they are for" "An early explorer suggested they were hooks so the animal could hang its head from the branch when it was resting" "but then why doesn't female have them?" "It's more likely they're used for some male chauvinistic pig activity like fighting or attracting a mate" "These extraordinary creatures live only in the forests of one extraordinary island lying at the very heart of the archipelago" "Half of it was once part of Borneo the other half fragments of Australia" "Some 15 million years ago they collided to form Sulawesi" "Sulawesi's animals are the castaways of two continents" "It's now isolated so they have been left alone to evolve in their own way" "Sulawesi's forests have masses of fruit trees especially figs" "So there's plenty of food for fruit eating animals and birds like hornbills" "The ancestors of these enormous birds came from the forests of southern Asia" "This is the red-knobbed hornbill" "It's found only in Sulawesi one of 88 bird species unique to the island" "With so many fig trees in the forest there's always one in fruits somewhere figs make up most of their diet" "Fig trees need hornbills as much as hornbills need figs" "They rely on the birds and animals to disperse their seeds" "When a fig tree's in fruit it's a focus of activity for all kinds of creature" "Crested black macaques are one of 7 kinds of monkey on Sulawesi" "like red-knobbed hornbills all 7 are found nowhere else" "Their ancestors originally came from Borneo more than 100km to the west" "During the last Ice Age sea levels were lower and the straits that separated the island much narrow" "The movements of the earth's crust that assembled Sulawesi triggered volcanos too" "One of the island's most remarkable birds uses volcanic heat to hatch its eggs" "It's the maleo its ancestors came from the east - from Australia another legacy from Sulawesi's mongrel past" "These chicken-sized birds nest in colonies they bury their eggs in hot volcanic sand" "The eggs are huge 5 times the size of a hen's egg" "The chicks will need those reserves of energy because their parents play no part in their upbringing" "The eggs are buried and abandoned" "In 3 months, they'll hatch incubated only by the heat of the sand" "The red-knobbed hornbill takes parental devotion to the opposite extreme" "These giant birds pair for life" "This is the male the female has a yellow knob on her beak" "Hornbills nest in holes in tree trunks but females are walled up inside for safety most kinds narrow the entrance with mud but volcanic soils don't bind well so this one seals herself in with her own droppings" "Fig seeds make good glue" "For the next 3 months, she'll depend on her mate to bring food for herself and the growing chick" "He carries fruit in a pouch in his throat" "He can hold as many as 250 figs" "Even when his mate breaks a way out the male's task isn't over" "The chick won't fledge for another month" "He'll feed it until it leaves the nest" "Sulawesi's beaches of black volcanic sand hold a special attraction for the monkeys" "There're often the one place where they can find freshwater" "Volcanic soils are very porous during the dry season many streams disappear but the water still flows beneath the surface" "The monkeys have learned to reach it by digging in sand" "The first westerners to visit Sulawesi's shores thought these creatures were apes" "Misled by the apparently lack of a tail they christened them the black ape" "In fact, they are monkeys with a typically monkey way of life" "They live in troops of 30 to 100" "Each with its own range a tract of jungle big enough to support them throughout the year" "Most of their diet is fruit from the forest but beach combing can bring all kinds of delicacy" "and the sea makes a great playground" "As evening falls, the monkeys will retire to the trees" "The night belongs to another world" "One of Sulawesi's strangest creatures serenades the moon with its unearthly cries" "The tarsier" "These tiny gremlins of the night are the monkey's distant cousins" "They live in pairs each with its own patch of forest" "At dusk and dawn couples state their territorial claims with a piercing duet" "Though they weigh no more than an apple tarsiers are perfectly formed hunters" "They catch insects, small reptiles and amphibians" "Huge eyes help them see in the dark sensitive ears pinpoint their prey and long hindlimbs make them prodigious leapers" "They can jump nearly 20 times the length of their body the human equivalent of 4 times the world long-jump record" "Tarsiers may be tiny but 40 million years of evolution have honed their hunting skills to perfection" "East of Sulawesi over the sea towards the sunrise lies the least explored of all the islands in this mysterious archipelago" "New Guinea is a giant fragment of continental crust only 10,000 years ago it was part of Australia" "Rising sea levels after the last Ice Age cut it off" "Though it's separated only by shallow sea it's a world apart" "Well into the 20th century few visitors ventured far into the interior" "New Guinea has an incredible range of habitats from coral reefs to coastal mangroves dense tropical jungle to high mountains" "The interior is so rugged that even today, parts of it are almost unknown" "This impenetrable landscape has a far-reaching effect on the wildlife" "Neighboring valleys are virtually cut off" "Islands of forests separated not by sea, but by mountains" "Just as islands in the ocean develop a distinct form so these islands within an island have their own unique inhabitants" "Some time in the distant past a drab crow-like bird settled in New Guinea's forests" "Over the years its descendants were isolated in separate valleys" "Today, there are many different kinds among them some of the most spectacular birds in the world" "They're the birds of paradise" "This tiny jewel is the king bird of paradise the smallest of all like the rest, he has a dozen courtship display" "The king's range overlaps with another bird of paradise the magnificent" "He creates a special arena to show off his display a patch of forest floor he clears of every fallen leaf and twig" "He'll use it for several years" "In both species the females are drab and brown only the males flaunt flamboyant plumage" "It's the females who decide to which mate with and the males will go to ridiculous length to impress them" "Although they look different these two species are actually very closely related close enough to interbreed if a female picked the wrong mate" "If you take away the colors these dancers are almost identical" "Both species use similar movements a sign of their common ancestry" "The males dazzling in distinctive plumage helps the female pick a mate of her own kind" "The mountains of New Guinea's central spine rise high above the tree line to over 5000 meters" "These barren highlands are a barrier to birds form the forest below" "There's no reason for them to cross" "Cut off in their jungle valleys the birds of paradise flowered in splendid isolation" "There're just 42 kinds of bird of paradise in the world" "New Guinea and its offshore islands have 38 of them all descended from that one crow-like ancestor" "With their magnificent plumes birds of paradise attract more than a mate" "The feathers that are so vital to their courtship can also be their undoing" "People prize them for their own displays and the locals are expert hunters" "New Guinea is more sparsely populated and better forested than other islands in the chain" "It still has room for birds of paradise" "Further to the west in the heart of the archipelago it's a very different story" "People have been clearing the jungle to grow food for centuries" "When the trees go so do many of the unique creatures of these island forests" "The Bali starling the last census found only 14 still live in the wild" "All across Indonesia, people are replacing the island's natural inhabitants" "So many of these creatures are unique" "It's almost impossible to live here without destroying something" "But the human cultures that displace them have a beauty of their own" "The Barong dance of Bali tells a story of the age-old struggle between good and evil" "an echo of another timeless conflict between people and the natural world" "The dance came to Bali from India more than 1300 years ago" "Over the centuries it developed in its own way now like the Bali starling it's unique" "Right across the archipelago" "Indonesia's cultural diversity is matched by the many ways that people exploit wildlife" "Here on the southern coast of Java they reap a strange and hazardous harvest" "What these men are after is worth more than its weight in gold" "To gather it, they will risk their lives" "It's hidden deep in the cliffs below in caves guarded by a turbulent sea" "Suspended from flimsy ladders of rattan and bamboo they brave cliffs that tower 100m from the waves" "If the men fall here their bodies are never recovered" "People have been doing this for centuries the techniques have changed little across the years" "Skills handed down from father to son over the generations" "There're no safety ropes, a fall would bring certain death" "This is what they are after - bird's nests" "The birds are cave swiftlets" "They build their nests off saliva" "The nests are used to make bird's nest soup" "To us, warmed up swiftlet's spit may not seem very appetizing but in Chinese cuisine it's a highly prized delicacy" "There's been a trade in bird's nests for hundreds of years they're so valuable that people even try to sell fake bird's nests counterfeits, woven from noodles" "Collecting rights in every cave are owned and jealously guarded" "Nests are gathered early in the season when the birds have just finished building" "Most pairs will make another nest and breed successfully so the harvest can be sustained year after year" "Where people share the islands with wildlife they seldom leave it untouched but not all of Indonesia's 17000 islands are densely peopled" "Some are still primeval wilderness lost worlds that time has passed by" "On these distant islands even the animals look like something from the age of the dinosaurs" "The fabled island of Komodo it's home to a creature that could have stepped straight from pages of myth and legend the Komodo dragon" "In reality, it's not a dragon nor even a dinosaur but a gigantic lizard" "These 3m monsters live only on Komodo and a few islands nearby" "They are scavengers and hunters big enough to kills pigs, deer even people" "It's the breeding season the formidable males must battle for the right to mate" "Komodo dragons are the heaviest lizards in the world" "A full-grown male can tip the scales of 250 kilos" "He'll try to use that massive weight to throw his opponent and pin him down" "If the contestants are evenly matched these contests can last an hour" "Weight wins these wrestling matches the smaller male is defeated leaving his rival free to pursue the female but she'll give him the run-around before deciding whether to accept him" "For most of the year males dominate the smaller females driving them off as they compete for food so he has to convince her that he's not just trying to attack her" "Eventually his scaly caresses will reap the reward" "Next year, there'll be a new generation of dragons" "10000 years ago an even larger lizard lived in Australia a 7m monster" "10 times the weight of these" "Could it have been the dragon's ancestor?" "Komodos now isolated by ferocious currents that are hard to cross" "The dragons are island castaways like so much that came here from cross the sea" "Right across the archipelago the ocean carried colonists to this scattered isles" "It's the ocean that created their rich variety and the ocean has life of its own" "It's there we'll go on our next program" "The Underwater Wonderland of Indonesia"