South Pacific - Episode 05: Strange Islands

Description

The fifth programme looks at the unusual animal life of the South Pacific. Species have evolved new behaviour to take advantage of ecological niches. On New Guinea, kangaroos such as the dingiso have become arboreal, taking the place of monkeys. The lack of predators on the ground has resulted in more flightless birds than anywhere else on Earth, including the kagu from New Caledonia. The Solomon Islands are home to the monkey-tailed skink, the largest of its kind. Unlike any of its relatives, it has a prehensile tail, forms social bonds and has turned vegetarian. The differing bill shapes of Hawaii's honeycreepers are used to illustrate how one colonising species can evolve into many specialists. In New Zealand, Fiordland crested penguins raise their chicks in the forests and short-tailed bats behave more like mice, hunting wetas on the ground. The fate of some New Zealand animals illustrates the fragility of island life. The kakapo, once a successful and abundant herbivore, was defenceless against Maori hunters and introduced predators. There are now 70 million Australian possums in New Zealand's forests, where they out-compete native wildlife. Controlling introduced species is a huge problem across the South Pacific. Wild tuataras can still be found on Stephens Island, but the flightless wren was not so lucky - the last of its kind were killed by pet cats before it was declared a new species. The collapse of the Rapanui civilization on Easter Island shows that human beings are not immune to this precarious existence.

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