Mysterious Islands in the Sky Unlock Secrets of Our Past: Return to Tepuis | Short Film Showcase

Morini outside been sitting in my tent for the past two days I got dropped up on top of this by helicopter and it's been raining ever since it's clear enough right before the storm hey Bruce are you doing I feel like I'm drowning that's it well you've heard of the dark heart of Africa in a sense this might be called the dark heart of South America we're on top of up about a mile high to pooi which is a flat-topped Mesa a really remote one that I've lusted to return to for many many years this is called why acid pool it's in Guyana we're exploring this because it is a biodiversity hotspot on the planet meaning that a large number of species occurs here and what's really exciting to a biologist most of them are new to science oh my goodness I hear one of the most beautiful sounds in the world a ringing whistling call it's coming from the little toads that I'm looking for here it's what the expedition is all about on the summit's of tepui as you might expect the animals and plants there also to be ancient and so I've come here to look at a group of little toads that populate tepui summits to find out if in fact they are as ancient as you might expect I'm here with Mark Senate a North Face climber and Joe Reese National Geographic photographer on a previous expedition over on Roraima I had seen the deep chasm on why I so poo so in order to explore the chasm and study this bizarre little toad I needed mark to help me get down there and especially back up this is a small crevasse in Rock leading down to this giant chasm I want to explore the forest in the bottom of it so mark is like less than 200 feet down and that's our next challenge my next challenge the three of us headed down into the hole that it was Bruce's first rappel and he told me that straight out so the guy's 71 his first rappel is a free hanging rappel into a sinkhole on tepui kind of a tough place to learn how to do this when he was on the way down Bruce kind of got pulled over backwards by his pack and he was kind of dangling upside down I was down below doing like a fireman's break to slow down his descent which appeared to me was getting out of control anyways he made it and we got him down down to the bottom well I'm in this several hundred foot deep chasm after trying rappel for me this is what I would call a lost world within a lost world and tonight I'm going to be wandering around in here with my lights looking for a frog that's only known from down here this particular tepui and the chasm is crucial because it's kind of an intermediate stage between the lower elevation cloud forest species which climbs up trees and the higher elevation to pooi summit species that are called pebble toads they have the same kind of feet they're obviously all very related to each other but the question is which came first so we're going to go back in the hole today we're going to see if Bruce found his frog see how he did during the night Joe and I just came up with a back-up plan for getting him out of the hole but none of that's going to occur until until he finds his frog oh I spent my first rugged night here and did not find this frog I'm convinced it is a unique species because of several things the call and the like I have to dig all around all day to find one and do whatever it takes today tomorrow what we haven't we have to have one I'm just about to say boy this is going to be tough we're gonna have to go back in the morning and really dig dig around all this Moss again and there on a little leaf sack one of these priceless little babies and then I realized oh they do what the lower elevation one does they smae sit on leads and I start looking within ten minutes I found another one and then by 9:30 I'd found four this is fabulous I I do want to stand of the night I'd like to do some more work on their ecology I didn't have my camera with me on and on and on the audio yacht about we're successful yeah Tipu e's are an evolutionary archipelago just like the Galapagos Islands but what's really interesting about tapu e's is they are potentially much older whereas the Galapagos made 5 million maybe 5 million years old at most the tapu e's could be in the 40s to 50s millions of years and this little gal and her friends on to poi summits may give us the answer to how long they've been isolated I'm trying to set up basically the beefiest rig that I've ever set up in my life just to make sure that that we can get Bruce out of the hole I pretty much tied together this entire troll forest I think I have ten trees interlinked this is one of the crazier things that I've ever setup I can confirm that he just moved up about six inches so he's got 199 and a half feet to go alright I'm on three hunkler whoo this is the rope that you came off on did you know Bruce is just what is brill it matters for us to do basic science like this because it answers all kinds of fundamental questions that human beings are concerned with and if it weren't for science I wouldn't have these clothes on I wouldn't have a metal cup I wouldn't be drinking coffee I wouldn't be flying up here in a helicopter science is important and I'd like to think I'm a scientist so to learn we're all about diversity is and then learn about how we can conserve it is in my opinion one of the most important things I can do in my lifetime you

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 2,365,123

Rating: 4.8836117 out of 5

Keywords: Short film showcase, national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, Showcase, short films, filmmakers, wildlife films, films, tepuis, south america, pongo media, joe riis, avatar, the lost world, pebble toad, filmmaking, biodiversity, islands in the sky, tepui, bruce means, herpetology, frog

Id: S9K8QcjwjYs

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 11 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/aidenb79]

This looks like the spot in Up, you know the great big waterfall, was it based off this spot? I wonder...