The Creepy Crawlies

Unusual creatures abound in the Deep Jungle

A chicken-eating tarantula. A moonwalking bird. These are just some of the unusual creatures that a group of intrepid scientists finds hidden under the rainforest canopy in the new three-hour series Nature: Deep Jungle, airing Sunday, April 17 and 24 and May 1 on WHYY-TV.

In the following article, executive producer Fred Kaufman offers a hint of the many surprises awaiting viewers:

When I first heard the pitch for a mini-series on the jungle, it conjured up all kinds of intriguing images. As Deep Jungle series producer David Allen says, "Unusual and Elusive are the second names of almost all the creatures in the jungle, and Deep Jungle is full of these moments."

There's the first-ever clear image of a Sumatran tiger. An infamous, giant moth with a "tongue" over 12 inches long. A bird that does the Michael Jackson moonwalk in the

forests of Central America. A new species of giant tarantula fabled to eat chickens. A 10-ton killer tree. The

first-ever monkeys to be discovered using tools. Chimps

that commit murder. And these are just some of the headline acts.

The world's jungles (more commonly referred to as the rainforest) are the Earth's most complex, diverse and possibly most valuable ecosystems. Intriguingly, the forest canopy -- virtually unknown until a few years ago -- remains largely unsurveyed, despite the fact that the so-called "high frontier" is home to 40 percent of all plant species. But what I'm sure will really grab viewers is the story of research scientists at work, hacking their way through the undergrowth, flying through the forest canopy, and observing the behavior of such animals as gorillas and orangutans in a way that's never been done before.

In true Indiana Jones style, archaeologists Rene Munoz and Charles Golden tramped into the jungles of Guatemala into an area that civil war kept researchers away from for years. In the forests of Uganda, Africa primatologist David Watts searched for the origins of politics and warfare in chimps. In Central America, Kim Bostwick discovered the Red Capped Manikin,

and learned the secret of a peculiar dance.



Phil deVries -- a.k.a. "the bug guy" -- traveled to Madagascar, where he hunted for an infamous rainforest creature, an animal legendary in the annals of jungle exploration.

This project, our most ambitious to date, presented enormous challenges -- and resulted in startling new information. Deep Jungle producers tackled questions scientists have pondered for decades, from the origins of evolution to the search for new drugs to fight AIDS. Getting answers required more than 20 filming trips to 15 different countries. Just getting to some of these places -- never mind finding and filming the animals -- required enormous dedication.

Consider this: each shoot meant hauling around more than 1,000 pounds of gear through a rainforest, with nary a skycap in sight. Filming the tigers in Sumatra involved a 10-hour trek into the forest, with crew members crossing the same river seven times while maneuvering several miles of precipitous jungle gorge.

Cinematographers like Dave Allen followed

scientists up 150-foot trees, where they perched on platforms to capture the action.

On the ground in Peru, filmmakers crawled on hands and knees, cameras in hand, in close pursuit of snakes.

They, like the researchers whose fearless work they captured on film, were on a quest -- for chicken-eating spiders, moonwalking birds, and all the improbable-sounding secrets the rainforest holds. For at its heart, Deep Jungle is a classic adventure story.