The Philippines are a chain of around 7,000 tropical islands in the western Pacific.
Unique wildlife has flourished on these ancient islands; they are a breeding ground for many rare, beautiful and bizarre animals.
Giant bugs patrol the dense forests of Palawan Island, home to the mysterious Bearcat, an animal which looks like a cross between a bear and a cat but is related to neither and seems as agile in the trees as a monkey.
Plants turned predator line the edge of the forests, while rivers help carve one of the world’s most spectacular cave systems, a subterranean world crowded with bats and mysterious insects. Palawan’s prehistoric coastline is the hunting ground of marauding giant lizards which will eat anything they can catch.
On the island of Bohol, swamp-like mangroves are raided by gangs of macaques with a taste for the unusual, crabs. Youngsters hunting crab for the first time learn the hard way that some food bites back. Bohol’s ethereal ‘chocolate hills’ rise above forests where the lucky butterfly’s taste for poison help it escape a spiders clutches, and huge swarms of fireflies light up the dark with dramatic lightshows.
And as darkness descends, the Tarsier, one the Philippines most enigmatic creatures, comes out to hunt. An animal so small it would sit in the palm of a human hand has the largest eyes relative to body size in the animal kingdom... and the appetite to match.