It's been called a wildlife gold rush.
A new golden age of discovery
and it's happening right now.
During the last ten years,
scientists have discovered a staggering quarter of a million
new species of plants and animals,
so throughout the course of the next hour,
we're going to travel to the ends of the Earth to show you
some of the most exciting and amazing of these creatures.
We reveal some incredible new discoveries along with
the scientists who found them -
a huge Tanzanian monkey, a fish with a see-through head.
How can you not be excited about that?
A shrew whose nose has a life of its own and the world's longest insect.
It would almost be like discovering a new species of elephant.
It's almost beyond belief.
So I'm going to show you my personal favourites.
My top ten of the most extraordinary and incredible things discovered
in the last ten years.
The things that have made this a truly thrilling Decade Of Discovery.
For the last 2,000 years, we humans have been attempting
to identify and name as many different species as possible.
Currently, the total stands at around two million
but there are millions more out there.
Some scientists believe tens of millions more,
which just goes to prove that even in the 21st century,
the natural world is still full of surprises.
Now to the first species on my personal top ten countdown
of the best new discoveries.
We go where few people have gone before - space.
The final frontier.
Maybe not because we actually know more about the surface of our moon
than we do our deep oceans
and the ability to find new species down there is truly awe-inspiring.
Scientists believe there might be more new things living
in those deep oceans than all of the Earth's other environments combined.
Marine scientists now have state-of-the-art equipment
which can go to more than 7,000 metres
and discover species that defy imagination.
This is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
and it's here that George Matsumoto is at the forefront
of deep sea exploration.
'It's remarkable how almost every time we go out to sea,
'we'll see something new.'
It might be a new behaviour, a new discovery, a new species,
a new instrument being developed.
Something's always happening when we go out to sea.
This new equipment not only films animals in high definition,
it also collects live samples.
And some of the discoveries have been spectacular.
The biologists could hardly believe their eyes when they saw
this extraordinary fish
with a see-through head, and yes, it is real.
Known as the barrel-eye fish, those weird green balls are actually
its eyes and what looks like its eyes are in fact its nostrils.
It's straight out of a sci-fi film.
And another deep-sea oddity filmed in our decade is the aptly-named
big fin squid, captured properly on camera in 2001.
Elegant and sinister.
But despite being strangely compelling,
neither of these oddballs made it to my top ten.
For this, we're staying in California
and we're at 1,500 meters beneath the Pacific Ocean.
A metre-wide jelly that nobody had ever seen before.
It's got the big arms so it has no tentacles and so it has arms
that hang down that we call oral arms.
It's sort of their mouth,
and it has the stinging cells not only all over its oral arms
but over the whole bell, so we assume that somehow it's capturing food
on top of himself or on the arms.
We really don't know.
We still don't know what it eats because we've never been able
to collect an adult specimen.
We don't know what eats it. This is a great example of how little
we know about the deep sea,
when you have an animal that big, and we really know nothing about it.
Even though we're discovering these incredible things
with a remotely operative vehicle,
we're still only getting a tiny snapshot of what we think really lives down there.
What a start!
Straight in at number ten, it's the mysterious big red jellyfish
but next up, we have a record-breaking giant that's a little closer to home.
Go into a forest and turn over almost any log
and you're certain to find a mass of invertebrates.
Many of the things you'll find are insects like this beetle.
In fact, at the moment, almost half of all of the known species
on the planet are insects - that's just under a million.
I have to tell you that, unbelievably,
every year, we're still discovering hundreds of new insect species.
With so many different species,
working out whether you've found something new would be almost
impossible without a simple but brilliant system to organise them.
In the 1700s, Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus came up with taxonomy,
a system which divides every living thing into class,
order, family, genus and species. Let me explain.
Imagine. You feel a bit peckish.
You think to yourself,
I'd really like a good old Cox's British apple.
So you pop into a supermarket but when you get there,
none of the products that they sell are in any sort of order.
They're randomly placed on the shelves.
Finding that Cox's would be almost impossible.
Thankfully, supermarkets don't do this.
They use a system which is very similar to the science of taxonomy.
They classify things and then they put them in order.
So class - that would be fruit and veg - and then you'd have order - fruit - and then you'd have family.
That could be orchard fruit.
Then you've got genus - apples - and finally, species - that would be Cox's.
And here is the Cox's of my dream and it took me less than a minute
to find it, proving that taxonomy works, even in supermarkets.
The next creatures in my decade of discovery are true freaks
of the invertebrate world and taxonomy played its part
in identifying and naming them.
The spider with the world's largest leg span, Heteropoda maxima,
was first described in 2001 in Laos, and I'm sorry to have to tell
all of you arachnaphobes that this spider's leg span is almost a third of a meter.
And if that wasn't potentially scary enough, get this -
in 2007, the shocking pink millipede discovered in Thailand
startled the world,
but don't be tempted to pick it up.
It secretes cyanide.
So what compels scientists to explore where the rest of us
fear to tread?
Professor Quentin Wheeler is an entomologist and he's director
of the International Institute for Species Exploration.
Today, he's in Arizona, looking for a new species of beetle.
For me, every time I go collecting,
it's analogous to an astronaut setting foot on a new planet,
where everything you see is unusual and new.
Life on Earth is so poorly known, with 90% of the species awaiting
discovery and description and so this level of discovery truly is one
of the last major frontiers of humanity.
So pushing back those scientific frontiers, at number nine
on my list, is one of the most exciting finds of the last decade.
A true giant of the insect world.
Described in 2008, it was found on the island of Borneo.
One of the only specimens of this amazing creature is kept in London
at the Natural History Museum.
Meet the longest insect on the planet - Chan's megastick.
This stick insect measures precisely 56.7cm in length -
that's almost as long as my arm.
And if you think about the equivalent in botany or zoology,
it would be finding the blue whale or a redwood tree this late.
For me, it's really emblematic about how little we know about
the diversity of insects, that the largest one could have escaped
our attention until the 21st century.
Despite its enormous size, virtually nothing is known about it.
Scientists believe it lives high up in the rainforest canopy,
which has made it hard to find and kept it a secret until now.
Insects are at the foundation of our ecosystem so to find new species
and work out their role, well, it's pretty crucial really.
It's been said several times by several famous biologists
that humans could disappear tomorrow
and the rest of biodiversity would go on and hardly take notice.
But if the insects disappeared tomorrow,
virtually every terrestrial ecosystem would collapse overnight.
So more than worthy of its place at number nine on my list
is Chan's megastick, officially the world's longest insect
and a truly awe-inspiring discovery.
How do you go about finding a new species in the 21st century?
The modern scientists have a lot of technology at their disposal.
When you think about it, there is Google Earth and GPS
for identifying and then exploring remote ecosystems.
They've got laptops with vast databases of known species on,
which they can refer to.
And then they've got DNA analysis which might tell them
whether they've found a new species or not.
The most fruitful tool of all is sometimes the camera trap.
People set these looking for something specific but then,
flash, bang, wallop, they get a picture of something completely new,
the likes of which has never been seen before.
In 2007, a BBC expedition to Papua New Guinea
caught this large woolly rat on their camera trap,
and the team then managed to find this docile and obliging rodent
and to record it as a brand new species.
Top work, though I have to say the rat didn't make it
to my list at number eight.
No, that was another creature discovered on a camera trap.
An unlikely relative of the elephant and to find it we travel to Africa
to the heart of Tanzania in Udzungwa National Park.
This vast, beautiful park with its pristine forest is a bit
of a hot spot for finding new species.
Italian scientist Francesco Rovero is here to study
small deer-like creatures called duikers.
Along with his colleague Rueben Mwakisoma,
they've set some camera traps to monitor their comings and goings.
But one day something really strange popped up.
When we first saw the photos, we knew right away there was a new species.
It looked like an elephant shrew or sengi, but considerably bigger
than any of the known species,
and also its colouring was totally unique, going from a grey face,
with a yellow chin, to a ginger back and ending with a black bottom.
A bit of a jazzy little animal really.
It was extremely intriguing, irresistible even,
and from that moment on, Francesco and Rueben were on a mission.
Somehow they had to capture one.
They knew where it was walking so the next job was to find its home.
This looks like a pile of leaves but, in fact, is a nest of a sengi.
Elephant shrews dig burrows and they cover themselves
with a blanket of leaves.
The size of this one's home was the first real hint
that this was going to be a whopper.
We are talking of a length about 60 centimetres,
of which 25 is the tail and the rest is the head and body.
That's about 20 centimetres more than other species.
The plot thickened.
All that remained to do was to catch one
but this was not going to be easy.
When we first tried to trap the sengi,
we used to nets like this which have proved
successful on other species. But unfortunately, it didn't work.
We think that the mesh was not large enough for the size of our sengi
so it was able to break through.
With the mystery elephant shrew too strong for conventional netting,
it was time for plan B.
Now it was a waiting game.
Day after day passed with no luck,
but eventually their patience paid off.
I remember very well the afternoon that we were crawling
in the forest and checking the traps,
with Rueben, the assistant I have been working with for many years,
and the guy that set the traps,
and he spotted that we had something in one trap
so he ran down, called me and said,
"We got it." And I couldn't believe it. So I ran, too.
Look at this.
Here's Francesco's remarkable footage of what they found.
Let's clear something up.
Weirdly, these elephant shrews are not related to shrews
but they are distantly related to elephants.
Watch carefully and you'll see a resemblance.
Elephant shrews are monogamous.
They pair up for life but choose to sleep alone in a private nest.
Very modern.
Sengi is the Swahili name for elephant shrew, so at number eight
on our list is the now officially-named grey faced sengi.
Getting the name of a new species exactly right is just one step
towards letting the world know
they exist but scientists still face a stumbling block.
This is my old school playground in Southampton.
Some things never change.
But imagine if this school didn't have a register.
They wouldn't know how many children are here, which children are here,
if any of the children were missing, or if any new kids had turned up.
It would, of course, ultimately just be chaos.
Thankfully, of course, they do have a register,
but a similar problem was experienced
by the world's scientists
because, unbelievably, there is no central register
for all of the world's known species.
As a consequence of that,
some of them have been named several times over.
Yes, recently, one rather unprepossessing
species of sponge was discovered to have been given 56 different names.
Marine scientists have been attempting to deal with this issue
and, to that end, they have conducted a thorough census of the marine environment
and it's given rise to the discovery of no less than 6,000 new species,
bringing the total up to about 250,000.
But, given that we've only explored 5% of this,
the self-same scientists think that there could be as many
as a million different species living in our oceans.
That says only one thing to me -
there's plenty more to be discovered.
And if you want to find a new marine species
then a tropical reef is a good bet.
Although they make up less than 1% of the ocean floor,
they support up to 25% of all of the known marine creatures.
One species discovered there in the last ten years
is the psychedelic frogfish. Seriously weird.
Each fish has its own colour pattern, a bit like a fingerprint,
so scientists can tell them apart.
How thoughtful.
It bounces along the sea floor using its fins to push and it squirts
water through the gills, a bit like jet propulsion, only slower.
And for a bit of sea floor housekeeping, what about this ornate
sleeper ray with the Latin name Electrolux addisoni.
First described in 2007, it owes its Electrolux name
to its habit of vacuuming up sand and gravel whilst it's feeding.
So if these two fish didn't make it on to my list, what did?
They are brilliant but at number seven in my top ten discoveries
of the decade is a top predator,
who hangs out on the shallow reefs of West Papua, Indonesia.
The area is slap bang in the centre of one of the most bio diverse
marine areas in the whole of Indonesia.
Mark Erdmann from Conservation International
was the first scientist to lay eyes on this brand new species.
It was in February of 2006.
We were running a rapid biodiversity assessment
of Cenderawasih Bay. We were counting all the species of everything
we could find in the water.
I took the initiative to do a night dive and see if we could
find anything different and I was doing it on my own.
Almost immediately upon getting into the water,
there was this shark walking around on the bottom.
I immediately came to the surface, called the boatman over
and shot back to the ship to show my colleagues.
We realised we had a new species.
Mark had discovered a new species of bamboo shark,
which was quickly nicknamed the walking shark.
In many ways, this shark is more like a puppy dog
than it is a fearsome sea creature.
Like its unlikely cousin, the Great White Shark,
it's still a carnivorous top predator.
It's just a bit more relaxed.
It's basically feeding off the bottom in an area which has a lot
of coral and trying to swim into the coral would be a difficult thing.
It walks along the bottom, poking its head into nooks and crannies here and there and looking for food.
It's cute.
In a savvy move, scientists turned the shark into a local celebrity.
An iconic species spreading the word to protect its reef home.
Two thirds of the world's reefs are in big trouble, but since
the walking shark became famous, local conservation efforts
have increased and one little piece of a very important habitat has been safeguarded.
So at number seven, our bamboo shark is a fantastic example
of the importance of finding new creatures.
The story of our next species begins way back in the 1800s.
Now then, in Victorian times, orchids were thought to be so sexy
that women couldn't even own them and in fact the suffragettes
even smashed up the Orchid House at Kew.
The name orchid comes from Orchis, the Greek for testicles.
But the plants' steamy reputation is also enhanced by the fact
that the flowers are only there to attract insects
in terms of reproduction.
But then, when it comes to stirring passion and lust in the human heart,
in plant terms, nothing comes close to the orchids.
Blimey!
Orchid fever started in the Victorian era
when great plant-hunting expeditions were launched
to the far flung corners of the empire in pursuit of these exotic flowers.
It was both highly lucrative and extremely dangerous
and many of these early plant-hunting expeditions
ended in the gruesome deaths of the adventurers,
through illness, animal attacks and even murder by their fellow hunters.
Throughout this period, orchids became the prized possessions
of the aristocracy and Queen Victoria even created the post of Royal Orchid Grower.
These days, every garden centre across the land is packed with these
flamboyant blooms and the orchid trade is just as lucrative as ever.
But whilst these showy hybrids sell for about £10 a time,
some of the prized wild specimens sell for £150,000 per plant.
That's per plant.
And the fever to discover new species of orchids is just
as virulent as ever, with up to 2,000 new ones being described
in just the last ten years.
In the cloud forests of Peru in 2001, this pretty Stanhopea orchid was discovered.
Peru has become a real hotspot for finding new species like this.
And in 2008, one of the world's tiniest orchids was discovered
growing on the roots of another orchid.
Its flowers are just 2cm wide and one cell thick.
So what is at number six on my list?
Well, it's a very flamboyant flower which originates in the Andes
mountains of Peru and frankly, it's created a sensation.
I think it would almost be like discovering
a new species of elephant, for example.
I mean, it's almost beyond belief that this thing has been discovered.
Its sheer size and the depth of its colour have got orchid breeders
like Chris Purver from the Eric Young Foundation in a spin.
It is the Holy Grail.
It's the thing that people want to discover.
It's time to reveal the plant which has set the orchid world ablaze.
It's a giant slipper orchid called Phragmipedium Kovachii.
Three times the size of anything seen before,
this outrageous flower casts a spell over everyone who sees it.
There's something you can't explain that really does get you hooked.
We have great passion here.
Lust for having the plant and hybridising with it.
Once you really start to appreciate orchids, it becomes an obsession really.
It's orchid mania. The obsession is orchid mania.
Hmm, however the story of the discovery of this siren
of the flower world reveals the darker side of the orchid trade.
You see, it was found being sold at the side of the road
in the Peruvian Highlands by orchid-hunter and dealer Michael Kovach,
who then illegally imported it back to the US.
Lady slipper orchids are covered by the international convention for the trade
in endangered species or CITES, and they cannot be exported from the wild, so this was a wildlife crime.
Kovach was duly prosecuted and fined, but despite this, the orchid
still bears his name, Phragmipedium Kovachii.
A few legal specimens are now in the hands of a select group of orchid breeders and with its huge flowers,
up to 20 centimetres across and a new shade of vibrant purple, it presents a once in a lifetime
opportunity for breeding amazing new hybrids.
The reason it's so important it that it's just such a huge flower,
so everything you breed from it
is going to give you a bigger flower
and it's particularly important from a commercial point of view because
it's a billion pound industry and this could open up a whole new area
for cut flowers within this group.
So does this giant orchid truly justify its place in our top ten?
It's a Goliath, that is what really makes it stand out from the rest.
This is the find of the decade.
Some people will say it's the find of the century.
No doubt about it then, at number six, it is a femme fatal of the flower world.
If you're into orchids, that has to be the discovery of the last decade.
I mean that's not your Top Shop - that's at the other end of the scale. That is Dior couture.
But plants are not just beautiful, they are a great medical treasury as well.
25% of all of our pharmaceuticals have been derived from rainforest plants and even here in the UK,
the humble daffodil has a compound in it that may yet prove to be a cure for Alzheimer's disease
and thankfully governments have wised up to this and over 28,000 species of plants are now protected
from over-exploitation through international trade.
So far, here's my selection of the weird and the wonderful.
At number ten, it is a mystery jellyfish which reveals how little
we know about our deep seas.
At number nine, the world's longest insect proves
there are still record-breakers out there to be discovered.
The fabulous sengi at number eight shows the importance of a bit of luck and a lot of patience.
The bamboo or walking shark at number seven demonstrates how a species can save a habitat.
And at number six, the orchid reveals the personal risk
people will take to find a new species.
So we're half way through and you have got to agree
what an exciting array of species from around the world
but I know what you're thinking.
Have any new species been discovered in the UK in the last ten years?
The answer is a big yes.
We've got ourselves a new...
slug.
Hmm.
First found in Cardiff in 2007, the ghost slug is carnivorous
and sucks earth worms up through its blade-like jaws.
It's nice but it's not in my top ten.
No, of course not.
My countdown continues with some seriously exciting creatures.
Coming up we have two brand-new species of primate,
one actually being discovered during the making of this show.
We've got a huge carnivorous plant and a gecko that proves that life is constantly evolving.
But let's start with our nearest living relatives, those primates.
This titi monkey with its bushy red beard was found in 2010 in Colombia.
It's fascinating scientists as it mates for life and the dads do most of the child-rearing.
Also in 2010, this snub-nosed monkey was discovered in Myanmar.
This picture was digitally created from photographs of hunted specimens.
Local people say that when it rains,
the monkeys get water in their upturned noses and they sneeze.
But the primate that makes it on to my list, leaping in at number five,
really was a huge surprise to scientists
and to find it we're going back to Tanzania, this time to the Mount Rungwe region.
Early in our decade of discovery, this dormant volcano was about
to reveal one of biggest biological surprises of the past ten years.
Back in 2002, 2003 we were working with villages around the edge
of Mount Rungwe, one of the more remote areas,
and we started to hear about an animal called "kipunji".
Despite this tantalising report,
biologist Tim Davenport didn't believe it was a real animal.
Mainly because the local people, they have spirit animals.
The boundary between real animals and spirit animals is a little bit blurred.
So we assumed initially it was a spirit animal.
But eventually, Tim did become convinced that this mythical monkey
was in fact real, and then the hunt was on.
He and his team committed themselves to the task,
spending month after month scouring the forest.
We got news from someone in the village that they had seen it the day before.
High up at about 8,000 feet.
So we set off early the next morning with this guy, who was a former hunter.
It took a long time.
This is an area which is high, up to 10,000 feet.
It's steep, it's very forested.
Suddenly, he shouted out, "kipunji", and we all looked up and...
saw this thing for the first time.
We knew it was something different by the crest on the head,
which is triangular-shaped and going up to a point,
and the triangular-shaped tufts on the side of the cheeks.
At first, Tim's team thought it was a type of monkey called a mangabey,
but then a local farmer managed to trap one,
and when they tested its DNA, they could hardly believe their luck.
It was a new type of monkey, more closely related to a baboon.
But what's even more exciting is that this is the first new genus,
or group of monkeys, to be discovered since the 1920s.
So much more than just being a new species,
this was a truly amazing discovery. There were just 1,117 kipunji
at the last count, so they're critically endangered.
But the good news is that the government in Tanzania
has now declared their home a nature reserve.
In Tanzania, everyone assumed that most large animals here were known
and recognised and described to science. And now,
we can only wonder at what there is still out there to be discovered.
Yes, the charismatic kipunji, with its characteristic
Mohican hairstyle is officially the rarest monkey in Africa
and more than deserves its place
at number five on my list.
Discovering new primate species, a big animal like that,
in the 21st century, you've got to admit that's amazing, and it strikes me as intrinsically romantic
that there are still places out there that we haven't yet stuck our noses.
Yet when I was a kid, I was obsessed with maps.
I'd invent my own islands.
Here, look, here's Packham Island in its own archipelago.
And here, another one, complete with a great range of habitats,
where I would imagine fantastical species.
But, you know, some people, well, they never grow out of this stage of fantasising about remote places.
In fact, they make a career out of visiting them in search of new species.
The Tepui mountains in Venezuela - remote, mystical and dangerous.
Definitely the stuff of boys' own adventure stories.
And living out his dreams of going there to discover new species
is Stewart McPherson, a new breed of explorer with an intense passion for plants.
Climbing mountains in the cold wet rain,
just to find strange plants on the tops of different unexplored peaks
is a very strange profession and I guess a strange personality. Stewart is a world expert
on carnivorous pitcher plants. Just 27, he's written several books
on the subjects and has personally discovered 12 new species.
So what is it about these weird plants that get his juices flowing?
Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated with plants,
particularly these carnivorous plants. They're just so alien, so unusual,
they completely turn the tables on the natural world. They all form a vessel,
a water-containing vessel out of their leaves. Its like a cup.
It's, in most cases, rimmed by a lip and that is very slippery, often with
inwards-pointing spines, and they have a form of nectar.
Animals try and get at that nectar, fall into the liquid
and can't escape, and then are digested inside.
These plants have been known to trap animals as big as rats.
On his 2010 expedition, Stewart was convinced he would find
new pitcher plants growing on the tops of these mountains.
Each is like an island. They've been isolated with huge cliffs and, in many cases,
the tops have been separated from the rest of the world for, in some cases, millions of years.
Well, he was right, and during his expedition, he discovered
what he thinks is a new pitcher plant growing on Mount Yurani.
But this wasn't the only potential new species he spotted.
On a nearby mountain, he found this new hybrid pitcher plant.
But actually, neither of these has made it on to my top ten.
No, for the species at my number four on the list,
we travel with Stewart to the Philippines,
to the island of Palawan and to a mountain known as Sultan's Peak.
This island is now the island of the largest species in the world.
The land of giants, really. With the promise of huge new pitcher plants,
Stewart and his team start an arduous climb to the top of this little-explored mountain.
We initially set out to try to trailblaze and make our way through.
In many cases, we were up to our waist in water, because the cliffs
were really high and you just couldn't walk through the forest.
We finally got to the mountain top and there, growing on the last hundred metres or so in elevation,
on the very top of the mountain was this spectacular new plant.
It was a much larger plant than all the other species
known from the Philippines. The pitchers themselves are just simply gigantic.
So big, you can put your whole hand inside.
Bright red colouration. Really hairy, just really different
from the other ones known in the area. So it was immediately apparent,
within ten seconds of seeing it, that it was a new species.
So to find something like that at the beginning of the 21st Century is just incredible.
Certainly is. So at number four on my list is
the giant carnivorous pitcher plant, Nepenthes palawanensis,
found by a new breed of old-school explorer.
One of the fascinating things about the natural world is how...
groups of species can exploit the same resource at the same time.
Here, we're looking over some mudflats, and up to 15 different species of wading bird
can live here at the same time.
At the back, you've got a curlew, very long bill for probing deep down
into the mud to reach the food none of the others can. Then you've got
oyster catchers, a much more powerful bill for breaking open shellfish.
And close to the edge, things like dunlin and redshank.
These things are picking off the little guys.
So they are all able to co-exist here, and this is a model
that can be applied to environments all over the world.
Places like the forest of Madagascar,
where waders are replaced by lemurs.
Next up is a total exclusive and to find it,
we're with one of the world's leading lemur experts, Russ Mittermeier.
He heads up Conservation International
and he has been studying lemurs for over 40 years.
What has been discovered here in the past ten years
is just phenomenal.
We have, since 2000, 42 new species of lemurs.
Now, a lot of those have just been in the past four or five years.
This is truly incredible. The forests of Madagascar
are the only place on earth where you can find lemurs,
but over 90% of their habitat has already been destroyed by human activity,
so there's a real sense urgency to find and catalogue all of the lemurs that are still left.
Every time a new species of lemur is discovered, a case can be made for saving its forest home.
So is this a really powerful motivator
and Russ himself has had two of these lemurs named after him.
Mittermeir's Sportive Lemur
was discovered in north-western Madagascar in 2008.
And again in 2006, this tiny mouse lemur,
one of the smallest in the world, was named Microcebus mittermeieri
after the man who has worked so hard for lemur conservation.
So then at number three on my list, we were in Madagascar, in Daraina,
a forested area in the north of the island.
And it's here that Russ is convinced
he'll be able to find a brand-new species of lemur.
The last time he was here, he glimpsed a lemur he'd never seen before.
He's been determined to find it ever since.
He suspects it might be a rare type of lemur called a Phaner
and, if he's right, it is going to be an important discovery.
If you look over the past
ten years, 42 new species of lemurs described,
but we have not yet described a new species of Phaner.
So this would be the first, and that's very exciting.
A Phaner is a nocturnal lemur with forked markings on its head.
It lives deep in the forest and is one of the most endangered in Madagascar.
They are only active at night, but there should be one giveaway which will help in the search.
They're very loud. Right after sunset, they vocalise a lot, and so we should be able to locate them.
Whether or not we will be able to actually capture one is another story.
Russ is joined by an expert team of trackers, including fellow lemur scientist Ed Louis, from Omaha Zoo.
Now, this is a hugely important quest.
If they can locate the Phaner lemur and it's a new species,
then Russ can make a case for saving the whole forest.
ANIMAL CALL
It's a distinctive call, but is it the new species they're looking for?
We'd better get moving. We're chasing the Phaner now.
There's a couple of groups, so it's a bit chaotic. We've got to get moving!
ANIMAL CALL CONTINUES
Something out there in the open. The team must act quickly
if they're to tranquilise the lemur. It's gone, it's gone.
Take a look at what we got.
You got it, you got it. It's still up there, it's still hanging on.
Maybe we should have somebody climb to get it. I'm a little worried it's getting stuck up there.
The tranquilliser doesn't hurt the lemur, and one of the trackers
carefully retrieves this precious animal.
Oh, right! Hee-hee-hee!
It certainly looks like the Phaner lemur Russ remembers, but it's too early to tell.
He's a mature male, been in many fights, obviously, for his territory.
So cute!
Look at the big pads, and the little toes. You can grab hold...
Very nice to finally get a close look at it, and hopefully, we can describe it very soon.
It looks a bit different from the others, but the genetics are really going to tell the story.
Look at that. It's got that side thing too.
I don't know what that is.
It's morning, and the tranquiliser is gently wearing off.
All lemurs are adapted to eat something different in the forest.
Phaner lemurs have specialised teeth
and a long tongue for eating sap and nectar.
But a strange structure in this little lemur's mouth
could provide some of the proof they need to declare it a new species.
Look at that! What is that?
Is that some sort of...
for nectar? It must be something to capture the nectar.
I've never seen that on the other Phaners.
This little fella's still a little groggy. He's coming off
his sedative, but we'll release him later tonight.
We've taken all of the measurements necessary, some blood samples.
We have all the data that we need now to determine whether or not he in fact is a distinctive species.
He'll have a bit of a headache,
but will be none the worse for his ordeal.
Although not finally confirmed,
Russ is convinced it will be declared a new species.
So, at number three on my list is a lemur which will be named Fanamby,
the Malagasy for challenge.
The discovery of that lovely little lemur species could prove to be a real bonus to conservationists.
As they seek to protect it and its forest home,
they could prevent thousands of other species from becoming extinct.
But we've got to remember that extinction is very much a natural process.
Now, let's imagine that all of the Earth's species
can be represented by this wooden block tower game here.
Only three per cent of the species that have ever evolved to live
on Earth are still here on Earth at this point in time.
All of the rest have disappeared.
What's been happening is that as species become extinct,
at the same time as this is happening, new species -
better adapted to conditions at that time - were evolving.
And, if you like, they sort of pile up on top
and the whole system is retained in a sense of balance.
But what's been happening recently, say in the last 25 years,
is that the rate of extinction is much, much greater than the rate of evolution.
And new ones haven't had a chance to evolve. They simply
can't evolve quick enough.
As more and more species become extinct, the system
becomes unstable, and the end result has a certain...
inevitability about it.
Whoops, just precipitated another mass extinction event.
But the good news is that evolution hasn't stopped,
as my penultimate species certainly shows.
Lizards are masters of adaptation.
Take this giant two-metre-long monitor, described in 2010.
It comes from the Northern Philippines and it's a pragmatic vegetarian.
It's evolved to eat fruit due to the lack of animal prey.
And at the other end of the scale,
this tiny dwarf gecko was discovered in 2001 in the Dominican Republic.
It's only 16mm long and it's the world's smallest,
and it's evolved to eat the tiniest of prey.
But the species at number two on my top ten is something really special.
In fact, it could be described as the biologist Holy Grail.
To find it, we're travelling to northern Malaysia,
and to Perlis State Park.
In this unique and protected area, limestone rock formations provide
the perfect setting for one of nature's most incredible events.
Our guide is explorer and scientist Lee Grismer.
He and his team have already discovered over 50 new species between them.
Actually, near to this location, they recently discovered
this snazzy little lizard, the Langkawi bent-toed gecko.
But once Lee had returned home to the US, things took an unexpected turn.
Our Malaysian colleagues sent me a picture of a gecko
they'd found in a cave. They said, "Hey, we think this is
"this new one that you guys described,
"but it looks sort of different."
I could not believe what I was seeing!
15, 20 seconds later, I bought a plane ticket to Malaysia.
The reason that Lee was so keen to get on that plane
is because his Malay colleagues might have stumbled across something incredible,
evolution in action, so he's en route to the cave to find out.
Lee also has a hunch as to why the geckos could have moved into the cave.
Outside these caves, there are plenty of pit vipers.
What we know for a fact is that this forest-dwelling pit viper feeds on forest geckos.
OK, we've actually seen this. Therefore, if you're a forest gecko,
and you can move into the cave and acquire the adaptations necessary
to crawl round on flat, rocky surfaces, you've just avoided a major source of predation.
So what's happening here is that the geckos are adapting to cave life
to survive, but to prove it's a new species, Lee has got to get some DNA.
OK, I got it... All right.
This is a species that we think is on its way to becoming
a cave-adapted form from a forest-adapted form.
The adaptations that this animal has for living in a cave and climbing around on vertical surfaces
are these long limbs that stretch out like this
and allows this gecko to flatten its body surface
and keep it close to the cave wall, that way, it can climb faster,
and things like that. And the skin is becoming much smoother.
Now, for the first time ever, witness what could be two brand new species side by side.
The forest-adapted gecko
and the cave-adapted gecko.
These things are radically different to the forest ones.
I mean, look at it, it's even got a different colour pattern.
Guys, I'm thinking we got a new species here.
I'm pretty well convinced.
If Lee's theory is correct, then we are witnessing speciation in action.
That's the incredible transition when one animal becomes two.
What makes this situation so unique is that biologists are often like crime scene investigators, OK?
They come to the scene of the crime after it's already happened. Species are already here.
Well, this is very different, OK? We're at the scene of the crime.
We're watching it happen, OK? And so we can actively
see how speciation is taking place.
This is a bold claim. Everything now rests on whether
forensic analysis proves Lee correct.
Have we really caught the process of evolution
with its hand in the cookie jar?
Hot news.
Hot news! Since we made that film, the scientist Lee Grismer
can confirm that that little cave gecko is indeed a new species.
It just goes to prove that evolution never stops.
It might slow down a bit, it might speed up, but it can't afford to stop, because conditions
on the planet are constantly changing, both biologically and physically,
so species we have now must evolve into new ones in order to survive,
and one of the mechanisms that they use is natural selection.
We can demonstrate this using these coins.
Let's imagine that the British coinage is, in fact, a species.
Imagine that a couple of pounds
get together and breed,
and they give rise to a whole range of offspring.
A few two pence pieces here,
maybe some more pounds.
50s, 20s and, of course,
some pennies too.
Now, each of these individuals might have an advantage.
If it were valued, then quite clearly, it would be the pounds
and the 50s that would prosper, but what about if a predator
was swooping across here, hoping to prey upon them?
Well, these shiny two pence pieces
would be very obviously spotted
and soon weeded out of the population,
as would the silvery 50s and 20s.
In fact, even the pounds themselves
would gradually disappear.
That would leave the humble pennies better camouflaged,
as they are on this tabletop.
They would live longer,
breed more frequently,
and their percentage in the population would therefore increase.
Any little, little advantage
held by an individual will ultimately be beneficial,
and over a period of time, all of the pounds would become pennies.
A bit like the UK economy, really.
All of the species in my top ten are brilliant examples of natural selection at work.
We've met Big Red,
the giant jellyfish.
The world's longest insect.
A sengi with a prehensile nose.
A shark, which has saved
its reef home.
A stunning orchid
that's caused a scandal.
Africa's most endangered monkey.
One of the world's largest pitcher plants.
A brand new species of lemur.
And a gecko caught in the act of
changing into a new species.
And now, it's time to find out
which new species made it to number one on my list, and it's a creature
which proves just how fast the process of evolution can work.
To find it, we have to travel to Panama and to the tiny
island of Escudo des Veraguas, 17km off the Caribbean coast.
9,000 years ago, rising sea levels
cut this three-square-kilometre island off,
and its wild and beautiful ecosystem
was left to its own devices,
marooned in the Caribbean Sea. What makes it so exciting is that
some of its wildlife has evolved
into genetically distinct species,
including one of the most unusual and enigmatic creatures on Earth.
Scientist Bryson Voirin makes regular trips out to the island
to try and unravel the evolutionary secrets of the island's most laidback and mysterious resident.
Escudo is a really special, unique place. It's had all this time
for these animals and plants to evolve on their own,
independently of the rest of the world.
Despite this wealth of exciting species, Bryson only has eyes for
the Pygmy three-toed sloth. They're only found on this one island, in the whole world.
It's a very funny animal. In almost every language,
the name sloth is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
But they're actually not as lazy as you'd think.
So what makes these Pygmy sloths unique?
Pygmy sloths seem like the perfect adaptation for a Caribbean island. They're slower than normal sloths,
they sleep at different times of day and night, they're much more laidback. If you handle them,
they're much calmer, they're not aggressive at all, whereas a normal sloth would be. So they're the...
what you'd think of as the typical Caribbean lifestyle. They just hang out.
It's not just their chilled personalities which set them apart from the mainland sloths.
They're really specially adapted just for life on this island.
They're about 40% per cent the size of a normal sloth,
and they eat only mangrove leaves.
Normally, sloths will eat all the different trees,
but these guys only eat mangroves, and because mangroves
are very poor nutrients, that's why they're smaller.
This low-energy diet also accounts for their lethargy,
and Bryson is employing the latest technology to try and understand
the secrets of their sleep patterns.
I'm studying sleep in Pygmy sloths by using a little microcomputer chip
that we attach to the top of the head of a sloth to record their brainwaves
and see how they're sleeping throughout the day and night.
The results further confirm the unique behaviour of the island residents.
If we compare Pygmy sloths versus mainland sloths,
there are some differences in the nocturnal activity in the sloths.
We think that might be linked to nocturnal predators on the mainland. There's a lot of jungle cats
that will eat sloths at night on the mainland, but out here on Escudo,
there's no predators, so these sloths are much more active at night time. These cool Caribbean customers
have one more adaptation which makes them
perfect for this island lifestyle.
They can actually swim very well. They actually float and they just do
the doggy paddle, and they can swim better than they can walk.
It's really weird. Very strange to see the world's slowest mammal swimming better than it can crawl.
These sloths are perfectly happy swimming in saltwater, between mangrove patches.
Maybe he's looking for a new mate,
or for some new habitat, new mangroves.
But they can't swim to the mainland, it's too far, so they're isolated out here.
So the Pygmy sloths have no way of leaving the island, and this means
it's the only home for these gentle and defenceless little creatures.
That makes them extremely vulnerable.
Because there's only 200 of these animals on this one island,
every one counts, and so even just one mangrove tree
being cut down really threatens the entire population.
The island of Escudo is a marine nature reserve.
No-one is allowed to live there or interfere with the wildlife
or habitat, but unfortunately, the rules are not strictly enforced.
Every time I come out here, there's fewer and fewer sloths and more and more people.
I honestly think that the future for the Pygmy sloth is not going to be that bright.
They're still illegal logging of mangroves,
so people are poaching them, and the numbers are just so small that
anything could wipe out the whole species,
so if I had to guess, I would say that I would bet in ten years,
there will not be a species anymore. Like so many of the new species
in our Decade of Discovery, the Pygmy three-toed sloth is at a crossroads.
Unless conscious efforts are made to protect them and their fragile habitats,
they'll be lost to science, when they still have so much to teach us.
The Pygmy sloth just shows how fast evolution could happen.
I mean, this species has only been cut off for about 9,000 years,
so it just shows how fast evolution and adaptation can occur.
So it's a really, you know, amazing discovery.
So here's the big question - does the Pygmy three-toed sloth
deserve to be at number one
on my list? Let's ask the expert, although I think he might be biased.
These are really cool animals. They're perfectly adapted for their ecosystem.
They're really neat, they're like ninjas, they're very Zen. They're just totally cool!
We'll take that as a yes, then!
I think what the fabulous Pygmy three-toed sloth and all of those other species in my top ten
have shown us, is just how much we have to learn about
all of the other life we share this planet with.
But then at the same time, just how fragile and how precarious that life is.
I mean, we'll never know how many things disappeared
before we even knew they existed. But then if scientists' projections are right, there could be...
tens of millions of more things out there just waiting to be discovered.
New animals, new behaviour, new to science.
But you know, perhaps to me the most exciting thing of all
is that standing here at this point in time,
I can't even imagine what might be discovered during the next decade.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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