The sights, smells, and sounds of the deep jungle; a giant moth with a foot-long tonque, an oversized tarantula that feast on chickens, and a band of chimpanzees capable of murder are just some of the headline acts viewers can look forward to in the upcoming PBS "Nature" mini-series

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2005 by Fred Kaufman

While the science and research we uncover in "Deep Jungle" is indeed fascinating, for me, it is the people we feature that make the series come "alive. In true Indiana Jones style, archaeologists Rene Munoz and Charles Golden tramped through the jungles of Guatemala into an area where, for years, civil war had kept researchers away. While seeking lost civilizations, Munoz and Golden encountered dense jungle, inhospitable insects, and a strange building more than 1,000 years old, a fragment of the Mayan civilization. In the forests of Uganda, Africa, primatologist David Watts looked for the origins of politics and warfare in chimps. In Central America, Kim Bostwick discovered the Red Capped Manikin, and learned the secret of a peculiar dance. We went along with Phil deVries--the "bug guy"--off the East coast of Africa, to the Island of Madagascar, where he has been hunting for an infamous rain forest denizen, a creature that is legendary in the annals of jungle exploration. It is an extraordinary giant moth so bizarre that, at first, no one even believed it could exist. But deVries found it--by first locating a very special flower, an orchid that seemed to defy the laws of nature. The story started, actually, way back in 1862, when naturalist Charles Darwin examined this unusual flower that had everyone baffled. The flower hid its nectar at the bottom of a long narrow tube, seemingly making it inconceivable that any feeding insect ever could reach it. Darwin, however, famously predicted that somewhere in Madagascar there must be a gigantic moth with a tongue 12 inches long. Darwin's peers ridiculed him. Some 150 years later, deVries rediscovered the famous Comet orchid high in a tree--and "Nature" was there. The scientist was certain it would appear in the dead of night, so he rigged an infrared camera high in the tree. Again, as with any natural history film, luck was as important as skill. While hawk moths have 15,000 scent receptors and can pick up smells from long distances, it's a big jungle out there. Was he successful? Moreover, did the "spidercam" capture the freakish spider? Are there really such things as "moonwalking" birds? To find out, you'll have to tune in to "Deep Jungle."

Fred Kaufman is executive producer of the PBS series "Nature," which is produced by Thirteen/WNET New York.