[music playing]
DAVID SCHWIMMER: In a tropical sea
halfway between Asia and Australia,
is a mysterious world of islands.
Sounds nice, right?
A paradise, but with a difference.
There are monsters here.
[hiss]
And not just your run-of-the-mill monster--
a Komodo dragon, over 10 feet long, excluding the drool.
A dragon king, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not
picking up that tail to look.
And that's not all.
This is just one island in the land
of the strange, each island home to more extraordinary life--
aww.
But why do dragons exist only here?
And how did these islands come to be so different?
To answer these questions is to take the first steps on an epic
journey, a journey through space and time,
revealing the forces that shape life
and uncovering the mysteries of the wild.
Hi, I'm David Schwimmer.
Don't touch Komodo dragons.
This is "Mysterious Planet: Islands of the Dragon King."
That's what I just said.
The island of Komodo is famous as the place
where dragons really do exist.
And it's the place where I once lost my luggage.
But why here?
[chirping]
A Komodo dragon searching for a meal.
It's the dry season, and water is
confined to just a few pools.
[flies buzzing]
Water buffalo come to the pools to cool off.
Komodo dragons come here for water buffalo.
This is what's known as a Komodo singles bar.
Well, hello there.
The buffalo is three times the size of the dragon.
But the dragon has a secret weapon, confidence
and a venomous bite, a lethal potion that causes sudden shock
and inhibits the clotting of blood,
like too many gin and tonics.
One bite, and the buffalo's fate will be sealed.
Yeah, got him, got him.
[hiss]
That's the-- OK.
That's more than one bite.
That's-- oh, it's a party.
But all is not as it seems.
Though the dragon has been killing this way for millennia,
buffalo are not its natural prey.
Buffalo were brought to Komodo just a few hundred years ago
by people.
So what was this natural born killer designed to kill?
Hopefully, not actors.
Well, certain actors.
The answer is hidden in the dragon's past
and is a clue to solving the mystery
of how it came to be here.
Other islands hide further mysteries.
Komodo is just one in a sea of thousands of islands
here in the heart of Indonesia.
And they are all extraordinary.
Right in the middle is Sulawesi, like a giant letter
K, covered in impenetrable forest, tipped with volcanoes.
Home to more unique life.
A crested macaque, a monkey native to just this island
that has found ways to survive.
I peel my gourds the same way, except I use more foot.
It's resourceful, like any island castaway,
but it has other, more surprising characteristics.
Crested macaques live in some of the largest
groups of any monkey.
And they all have the same punk hairdo,
because they all love product, and uniquely expressive faces.
Group sizes can reach as much as 100,
so getting on with each other has become a priority.
And that is where the faces come in.
They have an expression for every occasion.
Hey, don't mess.
I'm strong.
But I'm friendly too.
I'm really friendly.
Hey, let's play.
Hey, stay back.
I'm not in the mood.
Did you touch the thermostat?
All these faces diffuse social tension
and have helped make these monkeys some
of the most peaceful on Earth.
Then again, there's not that much to fight about here.
They got lucky on Sulawesi, which might be
the title of a Steely Dan song.
Crested macaques eat all kinds of food,
but fruit is their favorite.
And there's an abundance of it here,
so long as you can reach it.
But luckily, they're monkeys, and they can climb and stuff.
On the slopes of Sulawesi's volcanoes
nurtured by its volcanic soils, this forest
is rich with some of the highest densities
of fruit trees found anywhere.
It's this super abundance of food that makes living
in such large troupes possible.
But there's something else going on, something more mysterious.
On islands to the west of here, the trees are
alive with the song of gibbons.
Orangutans crash through the canopy.
Here, though, there are none.
It's great for the macaques, as they
had the fruit to themselves, but they
are all alone, like monkey pioneers
in a land that time forgot.
Beautiful, peaceful, but strange.
As the sun sets on Sulawesi's forest,
things are about to get even stranger.
And nothing gets weirder than Sulawesi after dark.
As night falls on Sulawesi's mysterious forest,
something is stirring inside an old strangler
fig tree, something besides my feelings of being terrified.
A spectral tarsier, gremlin of the night--
or gremlin or any other time of day, if you think about it.
By day, it huddles up with its family inside the old tree,
like we all do.
Now they are just waking up.
Aww, cute.
These tarsiers are tiny, less than 4 ounces.
They would fit in the palm of your hand.
But their eyes are huge.
Each eye is bigger than its brain,
leaving no room for the eyes to move in their sockets.
So when the tarsier wants to look around,
it swivels its head up to 180 degrees like an owl.
Don't try that at home.
It hurts.
The huge eyes are so sensitive they
can see night like we see day.
They can see moonlight in color.
And although their eyes may see everything,
their tiny brains will never understand irony.
But don't be misled by their cutesy appearance.
These little gremlins are the world's only
entirely carnivorous primate--
great.
Beware, all bugs of the Sulawesi night.
This bloodthirsty family is at large.
Powerful legs propel them into the forest, 40 times
their body length in a single jump.
Guided by owl eyes, leaping with frog-like legs,
gripping with alien fingers, thinking with tiny brains.
And when the prey tries to hide, they
lock on with ultrasensitive ears, like a bat.
They are the perfect hunting machine, like a mini furry
shark of the jungle.
But the tarsier is not the only predator here.
A Sulawesi python, the biggest python on Earth.
Time to call in the family before they become the victim.
But tarsiers have one more trick up their sleeve.
It's recently been discovered that many of their calls
are ultrasonic.
One theory is that it acts as a secret alert,
warning each other of danger but too high for predators to hear,
so they don't give their position away.
The world's biggest python moves on.
The world's most carnivorous primate returns to the safety
of the family tree.
Enough excitement for one night.
Aww, and now they read "Goodnight Moon."
They're just so cuddly and vicious.
Venture further into the forest and encounter
more mysterious life.
The babirusa-- not as cuddly.
A pig with tusks that grow right through its upper jaw,
sometimes even piercing its own head,
taking piercing to a whole new level.
Another creature unique to Sulawesi.
But quite a mouthful, even for a python.
Without the tusks, he might give it a try.
And these streams are scorching hot, heated
from beneath by volcanic power.
From the hot earth, zombie life emerges.
[thumping]
OK, what is-- what's happening?
The-- what?
What is that?
OK, that's an eye.
That's an eye.
What the heck?
Oh.
Hello.
A bird.
A baby malleefowl.
Its mother abandoned it as an egg
to incubate in the thermal ground,
causing many years of future therapy.
It's just hatched, and already it's in danger.
Thanks a lot, mom.
Yeah, that's a snake.
But the zombie chick is born flight ready.
Whew, just in time.
This forest is strange, stranger perhaps than any on Earth.
But why?
It's another mystery lost in the past,
like the story of the Komodo dragon.
On the island of Komodo, the story of the dragon's past
has been hidden by the arrival of people.
[children shouting]
To find out what came before, we need to travel back in time.
In just a few hundred years, the dragon's world
has changed completely.
I, too, know what it's like to be in a new world
but locked into an iconic role.
With people came not only buffalo,
but villages with chickens and goats,
all potentially on the dragon's menu.
Occasionally, humans have been eaten too.
I'm not blaming a dragon for being a dragon,
but that's not cool.
But this is all very new to the dragon.
It is an ancient creature.
And no one taught it soccer.
When its ancestors first stalked the waterholes of Komodo,
they were looking for a very different prey.
Before people, before buffalo, are stranger creatures.
Some are giants.
A stork the size of a man.
Others are relatively tiny.
Pygmy stegodons, ancient dwarf elephants, which are, in fact,
smaller than the storks.
Back then, herds of them roamed these islands.
And they are the dragon's favorite prey.
Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
[elephant trumpets]
I call trunk.
It's clear from the story of the dragon, what we see today
is only a snapshot in time.
Turn back time--
Cher-- and we start to get a glimpse of the bigger picture.
There are deeper forces at work here,
shaping life not just on Komodo, but all
across these mysterious islands.
In a forest clearing on Sulawesi,
another bizarre creature is about to make an appearance.
Wait for it, wait for it.
Come on, guys.
A malleefowl, parent of the zombie chick.
Mallees don't sit on their eggs.
They bury them, using the natural heat
of the ground for incubation.
They do use volcanically heated soils, but in a few places
there are sandy clearings in the forest where the ground
is warmed directly by the sun.
But digging is not easy in this soft sand.
If only she had some help.
Oh, hi, honey.
About time.
A male, her partner.
Better late than never.
Mallees pair for life.
He always helps with the digging.
And she needs help.
Whoa.
Clearings like this are rare, so mallees come from far and wide.
There can be up to 100 pairs here, each pair
with an egg to deposit.
If our couple is not careful, the neighbors
will fill up the nest hole as fast as they can dig it.
We've all had neighbors like that.
You know who you are.
Quickly, she lays, while the male deals with crowd control.
Hey, yo, yo, back up, buddy.
Hit the sand, pal.
Lady with egg coming through.
Outta here.
Nice.
Take a break.
Whew.
Job done.
It's all up to the zombie chick now, which is
a lot of pressure on the kid.
For two months, the egg lays buried, 'till one starry night,
the cycle repeats.
[cracking]
Come on, buddy.
But as the zombie chick emerges from the ground,
this unusual behavior echoes the story of its past
and gives us a clue as to why life on Sulawesi is so strange.
Again, we need to go back in time.
But first, pee break.
On the island of Sulawesi live strange creatures
found nowhere else on Earth.
But why?
Roughly every 100,000 years the earth
goes through a major Ice Age.
As more and more water gets locked up in ice at the poles,
global sea levels fall.
Now the unique position of this world of islands
comes into play.
As land bridges form, Australia and Asia start to join up.
And ta-da!
In these islands, the animals and plants of the two
continents mix.
The malleefowl's ancestors originally
come from Australia, where their cousins still bury eggs today.
Other creatures come from the opposite direction, from Asia.
But as sea levels rise again, this strange mix of life
gets stranded on these islands, like when your friend left you
at a party before Uber existed, and evolves
to become even stranger.
Over time, it happens again and again,
creating more unique life, especially right in the middle,
in Sulawesi.
But the journey to get here is not easy.
Only a select few colonizers make it across.
And that explains why one of the biggest carnivores
here is just 4 ounces and why macaques get
these forests to themselves.
But changing sea levels are not the only factor that
shapes life in these islands.
On the other side of Sulawesi is the island
of Halmahera, home to another unique animal
and another mystery.
This is Wallace's standardwing, a bird-of-paradise, a male.
It's named after naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who
first described it and first started
to wonder about the origin of the strange creatures
of these islands.
Also known as bird with the thingy hanging off it.
It's dawn.
And every day starts the same way.
He's preparing himself to impress a female.
Perhaps today will be his lucky day.
It's a numbers game, am I right?
It's time for his routine.
Here we go.
The forest is still dark, so he starts with some parachuting,
showing off his beautiful streamers against the sky.
Check out the streamers, ladies.
Hopefully, somewhere there's a female watching.
We have so much in common.
He's in luck.
Here she is.
Now for phase two of his charm offensive.
Oh, yeah, here-- here we go.
Here it is.
Wave the streamers alluringly at her.
Yeah, baby.
Oh, yeah, there-- she'll love this.
There it is.
Work it.
And as the sunlight begins to filter
through the forest canopy, a flash of iridescent color,
irresistible for sure.
But she's just not interested.
Are you crazy?
Look at these streamers.
Ugh, oh well.
There's always tomorrow.
If only she knew what unlikely events brought
them here in the first place.
Like the strange creatures of Sulawesi,
Wallace's standardwing originally
came from somewhere else.
Its ancestors lived on Halmahera's giant neighbor
to the east, the island of New Guinea,
where most birds-of-paradise are found today.
But the standardwing's journey is one
of the most remarkable of all.
[explosions]
This extraordinary land of islands
was formed by some of the most violent forces on the planet.
And it's still being shaped by them.
As continents collide, unimaginable forces
are unleashed.
And just over 100 million years ago, a brand new island
is being born.
Schwimmerville-- I mean, the island of Halmahera.
But not as we know it today.
Sulfurous, lifeless, like me after Taco Tuesday.
And thousands of miles on the other side
of what we now know as New Guinea.
But the Earth's crust beneath the ocean
here is continually on the move.
New islands don't stand still for long.
And Halmahera is no exception.
As it sails off, it starts to cool and turn green.
Wow, beautiful.
But most important is what happens next.
After a 15 million year journey, suddenly
it collides with New Guinea.
I mean, there was probably some anticipation, right?
They were probably out there-- did it collide yet?
Did it collide yet?
Anyone?
In geological terms, the collision is brief--
a hit and run.
But it is just long enough to pick
up a tiny stowaway, the ancestor of Wallace's standardwing.
As the island continues its journey west,
the stowaway bird evolves to become the unique species
we see today.
But its origins date back to that one moment
when two islands collide, and a bird-of-paradise sails across
the ocean on an island boat.
Over the ages, nature's forces have
been the architect of great change across these islands.
But there is another mystery here,
a more puzzling phenomenon.
And a clue to that comes from the island of Flores,
just next to Komodo.
In 2003, in a remote cave on Flores,
a remarkable discovery comes to light.
A skull, ancient and tiny--
a child, perhaps?
But it has fully formed adult teeth.
As an almost complete skeleton emerges,
it becomes clear that this is not a human at all,
but a completely new species--
Smurf?
A human-like creature, just three feet tall,
that somehow made it to these islands thousands of years
before us, probably in very small boats.
A discovery that completely changes our understanding
of life in these islands.
On the Indonesian island of Flores,
a startling new discovery--
the skull of a tiny human-like creature, a brand new species.
Meet Homo floresiensis, better known as the Hobbit.
I'm not kidding.
50,000 years ago, this cave is their home.
And honestly, it could use an update.
We know from evidence found with the skull
that they most likely used stone tools to hunt pygmy stegodons,
those dwarf elephants.
They might have even raced them.
There is evidence of other creatures too--
Komodo dragons, waiting for an opportunity.
But then something happens.
At the back of the cave, traces of charcoal
suggest that all of a sudden someone
starts making fires here.
And it isn't hobbits or elves.
Humans have arrived.
But what's really fascinating is that at the exact same time,
hobbits vanish.
And that's not all.
It's also the last record of giant storks
and pygmy stegodons.
And shortly after that, Komodo dragons disappear too.
Something triggers an unprecedented wave
of extinction here.
And it looks like the most likely cause is us.
Well, not me.
I have an alibi.
I think it's that guy with the glasses.
Did this hobbit meet early humans?
Was our species the cause of its downfall
and the end of its world?
And why are they standing like that?
Only it would know for sure.
But if the arrival of humans did have such a profound effect
here, it puts a whole new spin on the story
of the strange creatures of these islands,
and one in particular.
For a long time, it was thought that Komodo dragons were unique
to Komodo, that they evolved like so much
of the strange life here as the result
of being isolated on an island.
But dragons are different.
Travel back in time, and we find a history
intimately linked with our own.
Now the final piece of the puzzle is coming into place.
Just recently, fossils of Komodo dragons
were unearthed over 2,000 miles away in the Australian Outback,
and in the other direction as far as Java.
Thankfully, this map is not to scale.
Once, the dragon's kingdom stretched the length
and breadth of these islands, from Australia
to Komodo and beyond.
It's looking like the real reason
the dragon is found only here is because it
disappeared everywhere else.
And the cause of that disappearance, most likely,
is us.
But how did it get here in the first place?
Dragons are excellent swimmers--
like I needed that for my nightmares.
And we now know that the females can actually reproduce
without the need for males.
Just one individual can populate a new island.
So in the end, it turns out that the dragons are
the ultimate island colonizers.
And the real dragon king is, in fact, a dragon queen.
Right on, ladies.
Right on.