David Attenborough tells the story of one of the most intriguing wild places on Earth, Madagascar, in this fascinating new three-part series. "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," he explains.
In splendid isolation, Madagascar has evolved its very own, quite extraordinary wildlife -- more than 80 per cent of it is found nowhere else.
The stars are the lemurs -- Madagascar's own primates. The indris, the size of a small child, leap like gymnasts among rainforest trees. Crowned lemurs scamper around Madagascar's weirdest landscape -- the razor-sharp limestone tsingy, which looks like something from another planet. And sifakas, ghostly white lemurs, leap upright on their back legs, moving like ballerinas across the forest floor.
Male red giraffe-necked weevils use their necks to fight each other, while the females use their necks and beefy thighs to build leaf nests with the complexity of origami. Chameleons stalk the forests, and none is more intriguing than the pygmy chameleon, the world's smallest reptile, which delicately courts a female in its giant world.
Filmed for the first time for TV, and possibly never before observed in the wild, a spider hauls an empty snail shell, 30 times its own weight, up into a bush to use as a shelter from the heat. And the fearsome fossa, Madagascar's only big mammal predator, looks for a mate -- 15 metres up a tree.
Many of Madagascar's wild landscapes and species are under threat of disappearing for ever. David concludes: "It's only in the last few decades that we've really started to appreciate this curious land. Let's hope it's not too late."
The behind-the-scenes Madagascar Diaries shows the challenges of filming the reed lemur in the middle of Madagascar's biggest lake.-YT

(from Feb.9,2011)

Episode two here: http://videosift.com/video/Madagascar-Lost-Worlds
Episode three here: http://videosift.com/video/Madagascar-Land-Of-Heat-And-Dust