This forest world may look peaceful, timeless and unchanging, but that is far from the truth, this is a battlefield. The battle is at its fiercest on the forest floor...Where only 2% of the sunlight filters through.
Some feed on dead plants. Others eat them alive. And some reveal their existence in an eerily beautiful way. In Africa, in the Congo, this is known as chimpanzee fire.
It's a river of leaves across the jungle floor...Part of a vast network that extends for miles through the forest. To avoid congestion, worker ants dig trenches around obstacles. Thousands of pieces are delivered every hour to the waiting fungus. Fed by such a continuous supply, the fungus grows rapidly, filling the chambers in which it lives...So the ants excavate more space.
It seems that the fungus has the upper hand...And the bixa tree will not survive. But it fights back...Using chemical warfare. The bixa tree floods its leaves with toxins that could kill the distant fungus. As the ants carry the fragments back, they are themselves poisoning the fungus on the tree's behalf. It's a long-distance attack.
This is a poison arrow tree, one of the tropical world's most heavily defended plants. Its trunk is tall and slippery and exudes a poisonous sap. It appears to be almost invulnerable. But even so, just as this individual reaches maturity, its life has become endangered. Each monsoon season, it is invaded from above. It attracts hundreds of shining starlings. Its immense smooth trunk makes its high branches abovea safe place to nest, but over the years, this has created a major problem for the tree.
After feeding, the starlings return to the nest to digest their food, with inevitable consequences. Every year, they produce almost a quarter of a tonne of droppings. The toxic chemicals they contain create a dead zone that completely surrounds the tree. The toxins are absorbed by its roots and travel up through the trunk and into every leaf. Branch by branch, the tree is slowly dying. It has become a victim of its own success. It has been poisoned.
Of course, we urgently need to protect the healthy forest that still remains. But looking foward, we must take what may well be our last chance to re-build the lost rainforest...And preserve the treasures of the tropical world for future generations, and with it, ultimately protect all life on this, our green planet.