Nature's Oddest Looking Animals | Top 5 | BBC Earth

[Music] in the tropical forests through New Guinea one male is dedicated to making an unforgettable first impression the six-plumed bird-of-paradise is cleaning his display ground he obsessively tied is every fallen leaf his stage must be meticulously tidy for what will be an incredible performance a few attractive berries to help decorate the floor this final touch is hardly ever seen might he think he's found a bit of old snakeskin some scientists believe he's trying to add the scent of a snake to ward off predators for others it's a cleaning cloth and he's polishing a perch for a female later he uses a bigger bit of rag and does the same only strong healthy and well-fed males can afford the time and effort for the most meticulous preparation and in theory they're the ones with better genes to pass on you have a highly critical audience so it's time to rehearse the main act [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] his dance steps perfected he's ready to start the show for real he spots a female nearby so quickly goes to get more berries to tempt her in disaster he's left his polishing rag on the dance floor it's perfect for her nest she flies off without even seeing his dance he delivers his berries too late he never got a chance to win her heart and he lost his precious polishing cloth back to work from Oscar's monkeys they are named after their strange tumescent noses but proboscis have also been called the cows of the canopy they are the only primate with a digestive system equipped to chew the cud to minimize the level of any poison in their bodies no one plant can dominate their diet so they are constantly on the move and then pick only the youngest less toxic leaves their immense bellies are packed with a very long extended gut and a complex stomach with four separate chambers that take 50 hours to digest dinner and despite all this most of the forests foliage is too difficult to digest in this nutrient war driven by the monsoon the trees are run away winners they not only dictate the bodies and lifestyles of these monkeys but ensure that the density of mammals is kept low in the rainforests of Australia the giant castle is in danger from a feral invader March 2018 the BBC's seven worlds one planet team arrived in northern Queensland their aim to film one of the world's largest birds the cassowary we are in the daintree rainforest in North Queensland and it's one of the oldest patches of rainforests in the world growing to a height of one and a half meters and equipped with enormous dinosaur like claws cassowaries have been described as the planet's most dangerous birds but these feathered Giants are shy and prefer to stay hidden in dense tropical rainforest there are only around 2,000 left in Australia to locate them the team set up a series of camera traps but instead of cassowaries they discover another animal that could threaten the future of the entire forest there's like eight pigs enough that when was that we put up loads and camera traps around the place and most of the footage we got back were of feral pigs pigs are not meant to be in this rainforest they were brought to Australia as farm animals by European settlers in the 1700s they soon escaped and now there are around 24 million living feral across the continent damage we see it all over the place they're trying to find some food but then doing so they disrupt all the topsoil so that if it rains heavily which it does all the time all the soil washes away and then the trees can't stand up so they're basically causing havoc they also eat all the food banks can grow massive so that can really be a threat to our kasseri especially the Czech pigs are omnivores as well as stripping the forests of the fruit the cassowaries depend on they can eat their eggs and even their chicks with such a small population this new threat could see the cassowary disappear forever from Australia which would be disastrous for this ancient rainforest the castle is crucial for the Daintree rainforest to survive their keystone species and this fruit in particular relies on the cassowary to germinate it goes through Casarez gut and once it's done that it is obviously food out and it is able to grow in its own little pile of Caffery fertilizer it's estimated that over a hundred plant species here depend almost entirely on the cassowary as their method of seed dispersal they can eat fruits that are you know this big they walk kilometers in a day so they take them really far away and I have really gentle digestive system [Music] so if the cassowaries are at risk all the other plants and animals that rely on them are also in danger invasive species are now the number one threat to Australia's native wildlife they have already contributed to the extinction of more than a hundred indigenous species of flora and fauna it's hard to predict just how many feral pigs there are in the Daintree but the camera traps suggest their numbers are increasing at this moment little is being done to remove or prevent the spread of pigs so unless action is taken soon Australia may lose another of its iconic wildlife species [Music] compared parent fish nearly a metre and a half in length their jaws are so powerful they can bite through rock when they descend to feed the reef itself is under threat they are indiscriminate feeders taking both rock and coral alike in their quest for our game these fish play a large part in the erosion of the reef the rock and coral they swallow emerges later as a fine sand on a single reef they can produce tons of it every year this soft sound forms the tropical beaches that we find so alluring over time the sand builds up to form an island which is then colonized by animals and plants [Music] trees take root birds arrive [Music] the guano from thousands of terms which have chosen to mist here enriches the sandy soil which then can support more plants [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: BBC Earth

Views: 1,016,890

Rating: 4.8841238 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, bbc, bbcearth, bbc earth, nature, david attenborough, documentaries, wildlife, animals, Nature's Oddest Looking Animals, strange animals, ugly animals, funny animals, biodiversity, top 5, animal compilation, odd animals, strange looking animals

Id: GLPjP3hjhMM

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020