Last Chance To See: Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

Douglas Adams wrote a story abut a world that was unexpectedly demolished by hideous creatures to make way for a hyperspace bypass. It was meant as a joke. After years of pondering the absurdities of life on other planets, Adams decided to ponder the life on this planet and the absurdities of what we are doing to it, as tree by tree and creature by creature, we demolish the world around us. Since this was a job he was hopelessly unqualified to do, he teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine and together they set off around the world with a succession of BBC sound engineers to find some of the world's rarest and most endangered creatures. Mark provided the knowledge, experience and expertise and Douglas provided the ability to point in trees and say, "Gosh, what's that?" a lot. The went to Indonesia to find the man-eating Komodo dragons; to New Zealand to find the largest, fattest and least-able-to-fly parrot; to China, to find the blinded and deafened river dolphins of the Yangtze; to Mauritius, to find the world's rarest and most sexually confused kestrel; and to Zaire, to find some of man's closest living relatives, the gorillas, the world's most endangered rhinos and some customs officials who out to be endangered but seem not to be.