The rainforest canopy
floating a hundred feet above us
has been an unknown world
- until now
"Yes!"
A new breed of explorer
is now venturing
onto the green roof of the world
going where no one has gone before.
We join the adventures
of these Heroes of the High Frontier
In the darkest depths of the darkest
forest, the crew assembles.
The pioneering spirit
harnesses modern technology
as a courageous band sets off
on a voyage of discovery.
A flame ignites a quest
to a place of our world,
but, until now, always just above our
reach... the rainforest canopy.
Almost a century ago
explorer William Bebe wrote:
Yet another continent of life remains
to be discovered,
not upon the earth, but one or two
hundred feet above it.
There awaits a rich harvest
for the naturalist who overcomes the
obstacles and mounts
to the summits of the jungle trees.
The rainforest canopy is home
to more living creatures
than anywhere else on the face
of the earth.
Many are born here
and will die here, too,
rarely, if ever, touching the earth.
Their lives, their whole world
has been a mystery.
The canopy is the last
biological frontier on earth.
Biologist Terry Erwin began exploring
this world just 16 years ago.
Since he had no way to reach
the canopy,
he brought it down to earth.
Clouds of insecticide welled up -
and a rain of entirely new and
unknown creatures came down.
So many creatures of so many kinds,
it seemed there were 20 times
as many species
on this planet as we had thought.
The canopy was a hot-bed of
evolution.
Just what was going on up there?
There was only one way to find out.
A combination sling-shot, fishing pole
is Nalini Nadkarni's own invention
for shooting a line a hundred feet up.
"Yes!"
"Oh, my God."
Accuracy is essential.
To get that all important
first line up over a limb,
a climbing rope is hauled up to which
she attaches her Jumar ascenders.
Ever since her first climb,
for 19 years,
"I realized, at that moment,
that first rope climb,
I knew where I was going
for the rest of my life,
I was going up in the canopy."
It takes hard work and courage
to conquer this new world
- but when they climb, Nalini and
the other canopy researchers
are also returning to a very old world.
Our ancestors lived in trees.
Perhaps, we are returning to a place
buried deep in our primal memory.
A place of primal fears.
Braving these dizzying heights
the first canopy researchers
discovered a complex web of life.
"We really felt like pioneers,
we felt like we were frontiersmen,
going to where
no human had ever gone before and,
and everything we picked up
was something new and
something different
- new species, new interactions."
Nalini learned that giant forest trees
actually sprouted roots from their
uppermost branches.
Jay Malcolm found that animals
believed to be extremely rare,
were actually common creatures
if you knew where to look for them.
Meg Lowman investigated
the chemical warfare
between animals and plants,
a source of the canopy's
bewildering diversity.
And Neil Rettig spent months
up a tree,
unveiling the life of one of the
world's most magnificent eagles.
Working in the canopy
has taught them
that this is where the rainforest
lives...
...where light is turned into life.
The canopy is a powerhouse
of the forest.
It's where sunlight changes into
stored energy.
It's where trees reproduce, where the
flowers and the fruits are,
where pollination takes place,
where fruit dispersal takes place
so I think it's really where
everything's happening in the forest.
This is where the birds feed.
You can see where, where all the,
the bark and the, um, eh,
the epiphytes have been sort of
knocked off
because this is where the birds
themselves
and the monkeys come and feed
on these big fruits.
I can't believe I'm in top of this tree...
"Today I got up much higher than I
ever had before,
I was able to shift the ropes around
and I was actually able to get to
the very top of this tree.
"God! Wow!"
"I can see forever!"
Just 25 years ago,
up the rivers of Surinam and Guyana,
came an expedition
in search of one of the canopies
greatest predators.
It was the personal quest of
a 23-year-old Neil Rettig.
He and two friends sought to witness
and film the life of the Harpy eagle.
The Harpy's life in the wild
was practically unknown
until Neil strapped on spikes
like telephone repairmen use
and jury-rigged a reinforced cable
big enough to wrap around the huge
girth of a rainforest giant.
Somehow, they scaled one hundred
and fifty feet to reach the nest.
"When I think of the crazy things
that all three of us did (Wolfgang,
myself, and Allen), it's unbelievable.
I mean, we're lucky we're still here."
They built a blind from which
they could watch the nest.
They used a ladder to climb
from the crown of one tree
up into the nest tree itself.
While exposed outside the blind,
they were under constant scrutiny
and frequent attack by the most
powerful eagle in the world.
When the blind was complete,
Neil looked through his lens
to meet the fierce gaze of the Harpy
for the first time.
"The harpy eagle will, will always
be my favorite bird of prey.
I feel like I'm part of it
or it's part of me."
After a month of observation,
a tiny ball of fluff appeared between
the mother's powerful talons.
Neil was the first to ever glimpse,
not to mention film,
a newly hatched Harpy
chick in the wild.
But his exhilaration
almost proved fatal.
"I had just finished spending three
days in the blind
watching the chick hatch
and I was completely overwhelmed
with, with excitement;
and I started climbing down, using
the belts and the climbing spikes,
and I was just thinking about
other things,
I was daydreaming,
I was so excited that the chick had
actually hatched and I filmed,
in the early morning when the chick
was a tiny little baby,
and I just, I remember leaning
backward
and just falling into space
- and it was like slow motion.
I remember falling down and trying
to grab a hold of the, a palm tree,
crashing through the vegetation and
landing on my back
and then, then I couldn't breathe.
And I looked up and, uh, Wolfgang,
my, uh, associate was coming out of
the blind
and the eagle came and ripped off
a piece of his pants
and flew away with it
- he shot back up in the blind and
he said he'd come down in the dark.
Well, finally, they, they,
he climbed down
and they carried me out in the
stretcher and,
one week later, I was, I was climbing
again, that's how crazy I was."
Protected by luck and a motorcycle
helmet,
Neil suffered only a few broken ribs
from his 55 foot fall.
He continued to film, capturing the
parents hunting
like sharks among the green billows
of the canopy.
Sloths are a favorite prey
of the Harpy.
Usually, they eat part of the carcass
before bringing it to the nest
- but, this time, dinner is delivered
alive.
Neil, who had survived a fall
from five stories,
was felled by a tiny insect bite.
Infected by a parasite,
he was forced to leave.
I knew someday I had to go back
and complete the entire study
and actually document what happens
when that young Harpy makes its
first flight.
Neil was one of the first to venture
up into this high flung new frontier
but he and other pioneers
will soon climb into canopy's
all over the world.
The rainforest canopy is like an
eighth continent,
an archipelago of floating islands
that encircles the globe in a belt
above the equator.
Originally, it covered 12% of the
planet's land area,
but more than half of it has been
destroyed by logging and agriculture.
Yet, it remains home to more than
half of all the animals
and plants living on earth.
Canopy explorers are discovering
that each island of rainforest
has a nature all its own.
Malaysia's canopy is one of the
highest
and most unattainable in the world.
Like giant lollipops, trees rise a
hundred feet
before spreading their crowns into
the clouds.
From miles around, animals are
gathering here for a great event,
unique to Southeast Asia's
rainforests.
They are coming for a feast.
In the course of a just a few weeks,
most of the trees here will bear
fruit,
laying out a banquet in the sky.
The seeds of the tallest trees...
...helicopter down a hundred feet
into the canopy below.
From there, it's another hundred feet
down into the dark.
Orangutans make an endless
pilgrimage
through these tree tops in search of
food.
They travel alone except for females
and their young.
They maintain detailed mental maps
of huge tracks of forest,
memorizing the location of each
favorite fruit tree
and the shortest routes between them.
While still a baby at mother's breast,
an orang begins a lifetime
of learning
just where and when to find
ripe fruit.
When a wave of mass fruiting hits
a valley,
it gives the orangs something even
more precious than food
- a chance to socialize with
their own kind.
Infants get a rare chance to play with
other youngsters their own age.
Long thought to be loners by nature,
we now know that orangs enjoy
each other's company
- when there's enough food to
go around.
Even the big males are welcome to
join the party.
Gibbons, too, relish the sweet,
abundant fruit.
Orangs would usually threaten a
gibbon who dared to eat
in the same fruiting tree,
but with plenty of food of around,
the little ape can eat his fill
in peace.
Then he swings away with
effortless grace,
hundreds of feet above the ground.
Orangs are too heavy for
such acrobatics.
Instead, they descend to the under
story,
where they put their weight to
good use.
Still 50 feet above the forest floor,
they sway back and forth on the
pliable saplings,
working their way between the taller
fruiting trees.
Moving among the trees
presents special challenges
for all canopy creatures...
...especially those without limbs.
A snake requires exquisite balance.
This one is quite comfortable
with life out on a limb.
The flying snake glides
from tree to tree.
It flattens its body into a ribbon-
shape, swimming through the air.
It's not easy to escape such a
talented predator.
Ribs raise wings,
as a warning at first.
Flying dragons soar through the open
colonnades of a Malaysian forest,
just one leap ahead of
their predators.
These are the gothic cathedrals
of the canopy,
but there are places that resemble the
tangled webs of jungle lore
- the lush forests of Costa Rica.
Here, epiphytes, the plants growing
on the trees,
may weigh more than the foliage of
the trees themselves.
Woody vines called lianas knit
the canopy together
providing by-ways for all sorts of
creatures
and making a prehensile tail
a useful and common adaptation.
The booming calls of howler
monkeys
attract the attention of a passing
jaguar.
For canopy animals,
it is the forest floor that is
a dangerous place.
A jaguar would love to snatch
a howler,
if only it could reach their treetop
refuge.
The close-knit canopy...
...is a green roof shading
the forest floor.
A dark netherworld populated
by the undead.
Most seedlings that sprout here
slowly starve in the endless gloom.
But vines make their own luck,
they flail about following
every sunbeam to its source.
Some climb using tendrils
that coil tightly,
pulling the plant skyward.
Others take a more direct approach,
wrapping their stems around any
support that leads up to the light.
When they finally break out
into the tropical sunshine,
they turn the power of the sun
into the stuff of life.
No sooner is light turned into
substance than it is consumed -
transforming the sun's energy
yet again.
Orchids don't have to fight for
their place in the sun,
they start life up here already.
They are epiphytes, so-called
air plants,
which thrive without any connection
to the earth below.
But one infamous plant makes
the most of both worlds.
The tiny seedling sends down roots.
Just thin strands at first,
heading a hundred feet to the forest
floor below.
Once it connects with the earth,
it gains new power.
Its leaves compete for light
with the host tree,
while its roots multiply and merge
into misshapen limbs.
They wrap around the trunk
of the host in a deadly embrace,
constricted and starved of life,
the host usually dies and rots away,
while the roots solidify into the
trunk of a forest giant
with an empty heart.
The strangler fig may be a killer,
but it also provides food for
countless animals
and support the thousands of
epiphytes in lush hanging gardens.
Epiphytes are the particular
passion of Nalini Nadkarni.
She practically lives up here
when she's working.
She studied the cloud forest
and each day is reminded of how
it got its name.
"I think one of the most amazing
feelings of working in the canopy
is when the mist and fog and
cloud roll up the mountainside
and it hits the forest, it hits the tree
in front of you,
and you suddenly realize you are
being enveloped in a cloud."
This daily misting provides just
what epiphytes need.
Mosses catch droplets drifting past.
With each drop,
they gather a bit of dust,
some from as far away as
the Sahara Desert.
Soil builds up
and the hanging gardens grow in size
and diversity, building more soil.
A kiss from a desert wind, blown
wet and warm feeds the forest.
"I suddenly feel like this is
what an epiphyte feels like,
this is the nourishing mist and fog
that's coming through.
So I feel it on my face, feel it
on my hands
and I understand better what an
epiphyte is."
Nalini has discovered that the moss mats,
that blanket the
oldest branches, play a vital role.
"These mats are just full of roots,
they sort of knit the soil together...
I'll just finish clipping these last
roots,
and then the moment of peeling
them away.
Watch this.
And what you see is this soil and
it's just riddled with roots.
It smells great,
it's like this very earthy smell,
which is kind of funny when you
think of where, where we are,
but you can see that the branch
is actually not all that thick.
Um, the branches always look a lot
more thick
when they have their moss mats
on them.
So there are lots of invertebrates,
insects, earthworms
that live in this material high,
high above the forest floor,
you have to get up here,
you have to look in these plants,
you have to look in this soil to
figure out, really, what's happening,
what's going on up here."
Nalini's perseverance and her daring
led her to a remarkable discovery.
"A really amazing thing about
these moss mats are that
they can actually nourish the tree
itself, they can feed the tree.
Some species of trees can put out
roots from their own branches
and trunks that go into this soil
and take in food and water.
And, so, the epiphytes are getting
support,
they're getting their place
in the sun,
but the tree is getting nutrients and
water from the mats
that the epiphytes make.
So, it's kind of like the epiphytes
are paying rent to a landlord
and it's just a really amazing
situation."
Suspended in three dimensional
space,
these hanging gardens are like
coral reefs in the sky
- creating opportunities for a whole
community of life.
They provide good pickings for
a Kuati.
Flowers are nectar, even ants for
protein,
even ants for a protein snack
- with a bite.
But ants are just the appetizer.
Fruit is the main course.
Following its nose, the Kuati is led
to the very summit of a great tree.
Monkeys with prehensile tails are
better equipped to feed up here.
Though the Kuati is no canopy
specialist,
he is not to be denied.
He searches for the ripest fruit.
His cast offs feed a band of Kuati
females and their young
on the forest floor.
The seeds would never survive
beneath their parent tree anyway,
where specialized fungi and insects
wait to prey upon them.
Animals connect the sun lit canopy
with the earth below in many ways.
Flowers are designed to
attract animals,
but leaf-cutter ants are not
invited guests.
They strip palatable blooms
en masse.
Millions of ants working together
collecting the bounty of the canopy
and sucking it down into the earth
below.
Whether it's carried or
just float down,
it is rapidly recycled back into
living matter.
Fingers of slime mold spread
over the leaf litter,
breaking it down into plant food.
The gossamer threads of fungi
help the roots of trees
absorb 95% of the nutrients -
building forest giants that rise up
into the light.
The leaf litter hides many miracles.
A strawberry frog guards its eggs
which develop in a puddle of
rainwater.
As soon as the tadpole hatches,
she moves it to a more secure
nursery,
encouraging it to wriggle up
onto her back.
No bigger than a thumbnail,
she undertakes a phenomenal
commute, heading straight up.
She climbs in search of a bromeliad -
an epiphyte with a rosette of leaves
that channel rain and mist into
a central reservoir.
This tiny ocean in the sky comes
complete with miniature sea monsters
- mosquito larvae, feeding on
rotting debris.
This debris also acts as fertilizer
for the plant.
She drops her tadpole off in the
first empty reservoir she finds.
But her work is not yet done.
She has other tadpoles stashed
in other bromeliads,
and every two days she makes
the rounds.
Her offspring's telltale vibrations
signal her to lay another egg -
but this egg isn't fertile, it's dinner -
it's her tadpole's only food -
a brilliant strategy for survival
until a thirsty coati happens by.
It takes researchers years to
discover such elaborate strategies
and just seconds for a coati to send
them astray.
The sky-high world of epiphytes is
made up
of millions of such little life
and death dramas.
"I love epiphytes.
I don't know why I do.
I think it's something about they live
in the treetop,
and ever since I was a little kid,
I like climbing trees...
it was a world I could escape to, no grown-ups,
no grown-ups climb
trees so it was just my little world
where I could go up and read
and... It's been 17 years
and every time I put on my Jumars
and go up a rope,
it's that same feeling of
exhilaration,
of what will I find today,
what will I learn today...
The rain forest canopy yields
its secrets
to only the most determined
explorers.
It took Neil Rettig fourteen years to
return to Guyana
and his work with the Harpy eagle.
"I think what's at the center of the
connection with the canopy is,
for me, a link back to my youth,
when I was a 23-year-old wild
adventurer.
Just the odors of the flowers and bird
calls open up all these memory banks
that had been shut down for all
those years - it was unbelievable.
It was just like I had never left."
A Harpy's calls help lead Neil
to its nest
just a few miles from his old
study site.
Neil was now one of the world's
best wildlife cinematographers
but he was as thrilled as ever to set
his eyes on a Harpy chick.
"It was like having a reunion with
an old friend."
"Possibly, one of the new adults
was the baby from 1975."
For six months, Neil kept his vigil.
As he watched the chick grow,
he wondered if he would finally
capture
the maiden flight of a harpy on film.
Every day brought Neil and the chick
closer to their goal.
While Neil watched the chick
prepared,
exercising and testing its wings.
Then one day, Neil turned the
camera on just in time.
A long awaited milestone
for the chick, its mother,
and perhaps most of all - for Neil.
Such long term dedication has
coaxed a few of its secrets
from the canopy,
but as the light of a day fades,
a cloak of mystery descends.
The next frontier in canopy
exploration
beckons out of the gathering dark.
Few have dared to climb into this
high flung wilderness at night,
when it comes alive with a whole
different community of animals.
They come out to reap the bounty
the canopy built by day.
Bats are the unsung heroes
of the rainforest.
They hover over the branches,
sniffing out the ripest fruit.
Only just able to carry its prize,
it flies to a roost where it can feed
in safety.
Bats play vital roles in pollination,
insect control
and the reproduction of trees.
The bat eats the sweet flesh of the
fruit but discards the seeds.
They fall far from their parent
tree's shadow,
where they have a better chance
of surviving.
Animals help many canopy plants
reproduce.
Epiphytes face unique challenges
spreading their seeds around the
hanging gardens.
One solution, a sticky coating that
keeps the seeds
from falling to the forest floor
and attracts a particular species
of ant.
These ants are strong enough to
win the tug of war with the plant.
They carry them to their nest
but they eat the nutritious coating
leaving the seeds to sprout.
The seedlings grow turning the nest
into a garden
overflowing with the ants favorite
food plants,
some of which are never found
anywhere else.
A canopy mouse quenches its thirst
in a mouse size bromeliad.
Mice eat epiphyte seeds and are, in
turn, eaten themselves... by Boas.
It's flicking tongue tastes
the victim's presence
as it follows it out onto the
thinnest vine.
Sometimes, there's no where to go,
but down.
It spreads its limbs like a parachute.
The mouse crashes through foliage
hurtling six stories down.
It weighs so little - air resistance
slowed its fall enough
so that it landed safely,
one of the benefits of being a small
creature in the canopy.
Small animals thrive in rainforest
canopies the world over.
In the Great Amazon Basin,
they could travel from treetop to
treetop for thousands of miles.
The woolly opossum was thought
to be one of the rarest of the
Amazon's creatures.
Its prehensile tail is naked at the tip
to give it a strong grip.
They are built like little wrestlers.
Babies cling tightly to their mothers,
who grasp the thinnest of lianas
with powerful feet.
Those without a family in tow have
more freedom of movement.
They are all searching for sweets.
They drink nectar and eat fruit.
The mother must seek her dinner
elsewhere.
Using aerial roots as a ladder
she follows another sweet scent.
So sweet is this perfume it distracts
the opossum from its meal.
The aroma of ripe banana proves
irresistible.
Mother and offspring are lucky to
have missed this treat.
The wooly opossum finds the
morning light unnerving.
By now, it should be hidden in the
darkness of its lair.
But it has no need to fear,
the trap was set by biologist
Jay Malcolm
who is exploring the night-world of
the canopy
with some startling results.
"These wooly opossums are the
single most abundant mammal
in this forest,
more abundant than any other kind
of rodent,
more abundant than any kind
of monkey,
or any other kind of mammal
and that was a total surprise.
People knew that there were things
up there,
we just didn't know how many
or where,
so, when we started doing this,
everything we found out was
brand new.
Gaining access to the canopy and
putting traps up in the canopy
has really allowed us to enter
a new world,
a new realm of, of research.
And, we, uh, know almost nothing,
there's new species of small
mammals,
so, there promises to be a lot more
surprises."
"Off you go."
From museum rarity to common
critter -
they just had to look for it
in the right place.
To service as many traps each day
Jay learned an ancient technique
of tree climbing.
"This is called the picoino or
foot-belt,
it's the same method that the
Amerindians have always used
to climb up palm trees.
The way it works is what you're
really doing,
you're sort of pushing out against
your heels,
so you're really sort of turning your
feet into a pair of pliers."
To climb seven stories in a manner
of seconds,
a feat that requires incredible
strength and stamina.
Should he lose his grip,
even for an instant,
he would crash to the ground below.
Having attached a small pulley,
he raises a simple and ingenius
frame for his trap.
Once it is in place,
he slides down like a fireman on
a very long and rough pole.
Then he simply raises his trap
into position
where it will await an
overnight guest.
Jay finds that he captures opossums
only within the undisturbed canopy.
Canopy animals are stopped short
where the fabric of the forest is
slashed by a clear-cut.
Thirteen years after the chain
saws stopped,
this place is still a no-man's land,
a desert.
"An area that's been cut over
and used,
and you know what it's like walking
down there,
it's hot, full of all sorts of burrs
and messy stuff,
from a life standpoint it has been,
basically, trashed
- there's not much left there,
it's just a, a tragedy."
Despite efforts to save it,
the rainforest is being consumed
at an unprecedented rate,
lending an air of urgency to
canopy exploration.
But in the face of such a huge
problem,
you have to dream larger still.
A lighter than air arc ascends
with the dawn.
Suspended beneath is the
canopy luge,
a sled bearing excited researchers
on the trip of their lives.
Among them, is one of the founders
of the field,
Meg Lowman, who has explored
canopies the world over,
but, today, she goes where no one
has gone before.
Their mission - to trawl the green
sea of the canopy
and to get some inkling of the
biological richness it contains.
right or left... exactament...
The blimp maneuvers the luge
carefully.
Sidling up to a tree crown a hundred
and fifty feet in the air.
As soon as they are close enough
to reach,
nets are wielded frantically.
...encore
They scoop up insects and collect
whole branches in an all out effort
to gather as many samples of
canopy life as quickly as they can.
It would have taken weeks of
difficult and dangerous
climbing to get the samples they
amass
in just one morning on the luge.
The luge is part of
Operation Canopy,
which invites the best researchers,
the world over, to join its venture.
They also use the canopy raft,
a web-like platform dropped
over the crowns of several trees.
Walking atop the swaying trees is
like walking on the face of the sea.
"I guess I feel really special
walking on the tops of trees
and I really tiptoe all the time
because I'm frightened of
disturbing these poor little buds
or snapping a branch,
but, in actual fact, with the raft
and its wonderful mesh floor,
our weight is dispersed really nicely"
Meg's work in the treetops has
shown that over millions of years
plants evolved poisons to defend
themselves from being eaten,
while insects evolved ways to
overcome these toxins.
Rain forest plants and insects are
waging a bio chemical war.
The arsenal of poisons and antidotes
created by canopy plants
and animals are a pharmaceutical
gold mine.
They are the stuff that medicines
are made out of.
Who knows what cures to what
dread diseases may be hidden
among the samples collected by
the crew of Operation Canopy?
Each evening the best canopy
scientists in the world...
...share a meal along with their
ideas by swapping techniques,
samples and data they are beginning
a new era in canopy research.
They have blazed a trail into the last
biological frontier
- opening this eighth continent to
exploration.
Upon their shoulders the next
generation can scale new heights.
Today, canopy tours offer a thrilling
new perspective on life.
But the greatest thrill is realizing
we are part of this beautiful world
floating above our own,
for good or ill.
The same pioneering spirit that
brought up into the canopy
has given us the power to destroy it.
The first canopy explorers have
given us a unique opportunity
to save this amazing world.
We have a choice.
It is up to us which path we take.