Curious places in Malaysia

This Bornean rainforest has remained intact for 130 million years. Longer than any other tropical forest, sheltering the world's smallest elephant and one of the last wild orangutan populations.

Deep inside a Borneo mountain lies a single, unbroken cave chamber so vast it could hold 40 Boeing 747s.

This bizarre plant looks like a tiny sea anemone with translucent appendages. It parasitizes fungi in peat swamps and has been seen only a handful of times. Some Thismia species are known from single specimens.

This mantis doesn't just mimic flowers. It's actually more attractive to pollinators than real flowers through supernormal stimuli. Pollinators preferentially land on the mantis, which then eats them. It's evolutionary advertising fraud.

A mycoheterotrophic orchid with no leaves that emerges from leaf litter to flower, then disappears completely. It survives on fungi for years between flowering events. An orchid mastering patience.

Rafflesia flowers on Dipterocarpus vines can take 9 months to develop from bud to bloom, then last only 5-7 days. Years of hidden growth for less than a week of reproduction.

Deep beneath a Malaysian island lies a labyrinthine cave where sea turtles enter but never leave, their perfectly preserved skeletons littering the silty floor.

One of the most primitive orchids, with three fertile stamens (most orchids have one). Its flowers show what ancestral orchids looked like before they evolved elaborate pollinator deception. Living fossils revealing orchid origins.