New Zealand is a fairytale archipelago with a turbulent geological past. A land with astonishing creatures: flightless birds, night dwellers and even living fossils. Evolution has run wild on this isolated land, producing some of the world's most unusual animals.

Australia is a floating laboratory whose ancient geological past and changing climate have triggered mutations in the animals here, culminating in over 200 species of bizarre pouched marsupials, which are all equipped with astounding survival features.

On Brazil's ancient Cerrado grassland a community of eccentric creatures are all inter-dependent, and all life revolves around the landscape of mysterious mud-caked monoliths.

Africa's freshwater Great Lakes are the birthplace of the biggest, fastest, and perhaps the strangest mutation of any vertebrate on Earth. Could these fish actually be as intelligent as chimps?

The land of lemurs, an ancient primate family that evolved from only one small group which arrived on the island more than 60 million years ago. For them Madagascar became the land of evolutionary opportunity and today there are almost 100 living species.

Isolated from the Asian mainland, Japan's animals have been forced to endure the most violently active islands on earth in a climate of extremes. Animals cast away on these outcrops must find innovative ways to overcome periods of starvation.

Africa's Albertine Rift immense geological forces have created a huge variety of landscapes and transformed the climate. The unique residents of this evolutionary hotspot have been shaped by the Rift and evolved bizarre and unusual ways to survive.

An amazing array of plants and animals survives in the Namib, the world's oldest desert. They've had fifty million years to evolve cunning ways to cope with the heat and harvest water from the fog that often blankets this unique coastal desert.

India's Western Ghats are a lush, jungle refuge in an otherwise parched landscape. They intercept most of the summer monsoon rain, creating a home for wide range of iconic animals and weird mutants all adapted to make the most of the monsoon rains.

Costa Rica is the most biodiverse country in the world for its size. It is a great evolutionary melting pot resulting from the migration of animals from North and South America when a great land bridge joined the two continents 3 million years ago.

A titanic collision between India and Asia created the tallest mountain range on earth and forced up the vast Tibetan plateau -- often described as "The Roof of the World." Only those creatures that could adapt to hostile alpine conditions survived in the highest ecosystems on Earth. Mutation and evolution combined to create a cast of rugged mountaineers with unique anatomy and behaviour that enables them to thrive at the very limits of life on our planet.

Borneo: a strange place of mutant creatures and plants seen nowhere else on Earth. Pygmy forest mammals, weird co-evolved partnerships between plants and animals, the world's rarest ape and incredible gliders, occupy these 130 million year old jungles.