Description

British tarantula expert Martin Nicholas eagerly heads towards the Peruvian Amazon, inspired by a letter he has received about a local legend, that of the deadly chicken spider. At a reported eleven inches in length and with huge fangs, this spider is so big that it preys on chickens from local farms. The rest of the Deep Jungle team's mission is to find out how the great ecological machine that is the Amazonian rainforest really works. It's been discovered that the lucrative Brazil nut tree only survives in virgin rainforest. As soon as areas of the forest are destroyed, the tree dies. When we can see how a cube of forest containing the Brazil nut tree works, then we can spot the key that holds it all together. We travel back in time to see how the tree began its life and how its life was actually saved as a seedling by the invasion of the Spanish Conquistadors 500 years ago. David Roubik suspects that one creature holds this great web of connections together. In his mission to find the pollinator of the Brazil nut tree he is viciously attacked by bees and wasps. It's a breakthrough though as he discovers that these bees pollinate the Brazil nut tree's rare orchid. It's this that forms the key relationship to this part of the forests existence. Meanwhile, Martin Nicholas stumbles on the Bullet Ant, owner of the most painful sting in the insect kingdom and the Wandering Spider, the most deadly in the world. His search for the legendary chicken spider continues, with the help of a miniature camera. In the dead of night, the camera hits jackpot, capturing this huge spider on film for the first time. Finally, graphics recreate how our experimental cube of forest comes to the end of its life through a battle between a giant Strangler Fig tree and the Giant Brazil nut tree. We see how the strangler grows from a little seed on the Brazil Nuts branches and slowly envelops it in its tentacle-like roots and squeezes it to death like a giant constricting snake.

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