Madagascar

- Season 1

(2011)

What is it that makes Madagascar so different from the rest of the world? This first episode finds clues from Madagascar's extraordinary animals, plants and landscape to discover how the island's remarkable past has produced its intriguing present, like the Tsingy - a series of jagged limestone peaks which have cut off animals in isolated gorges, allowing them to evolve into their own unique species.

On the east side of the island, rugged mountains rise dramatically from the palm fringed Indian Ocean. These uplands catch drenching rains almost all year round - steep and inaccessible, they are the most diverse part of the island. "Lost Worlds" travels from the highest mountains, where trees are few and it's cold enough for frost, through the lush, cloaking rainforests, down to the tropical coast, discovering the ringtailed lemurs, the jeweled geckos and the predatory wasps. So what is it that has made this narrow eastern strip in particular so rich in life?

The south of Madagascar is home to its most extraordinary landscapes - from forests of "upside down" trees, to alien "spiny deserts." In stark contrast to the east, this is a place that's bone-dry for most of the year - but it's extraordinarily rich in wildlife. Here only the toughest and most opportunistic survive - and some of the strategies for survival are ingenious. "Land of Heat and Dust" follows the long dry season of this arid landscape to see how life copes, as it waits for the brief rains.

In 1961, David Attenborough was handed a very special memento while filming in Madagascar: egg fragments belonging to the largest bird ever. Now, he returns to the island and asks whether it holds the clue to saving the country's remaining wildlife.