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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?