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Deep Jungle – Monsters of the Forest
If a nutshell is too hard to be cracked, how can it be indispensable to the existence of untold numbers of living things? That's one of the intriguing mysteries of rainforest ecology tackled in the second hour. Highlights: With the aid of state-of-the-art graphics, Deep Jungle imparts an understanding of the complex ecologies centered around the giant trees of the rainforest. Focusing on a section of jungle in Peru, the film explores the life history of a giant Brazil nut tree and the debt it owes to a forgetful rodent – and also perhaps to the Spanish conquistadors. British tarantula expert Martin Nicholas comes to the same Peruvian jungle, prompted by a local legend describing a spider so big and fearsome that it eats chickens. What he finds is that the stuff of legends is sometimes true. "Spider Man" also treats viewers to an ultra close-up look at the world's most deadly known spider – and it's not the one that eats chickens. Roundly attacked by bees and wasps, researcher David Roubik considers the ordeal more than worth it as he searches for a pivotal creature in the ecology of the Peruvian jungle: the bees that pollinate the Brazil nut tree and a rare orchid. The male bees collect the oily perfume from the orchid and use it to attract a mate. Without the perfume, the bees would never mate and would disappear, and the whole of the Brazil nut world would fall apart. The film shows that much of the rainfall in a rainforest is generated in part by the trees themselves, illustrating that even animals that live in rivers or flooded areas miles away from the dense forestry trees are dependent on the heart of the jungle. In a segment underscoring the fragility of the jungle ecology, graphics depict the potential destruction of a section of forest resulting from a life-and-death struggle between a Brazil nut tree and a giant strangler fig tree. Growing from a tiny seed that lands on a branch of the nut tree, the strangler envelops the host with its roots and slowly squeezes the life from it.
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CC - Closed Caption
HD - High Definition
16:9 - Anamorphic Widescreen
LTR - Letterbox
DVI - Descriptive Video Information for the visually impaired
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