Episode list

Join National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore as he travels to Madagascar to photograph creatures found nowhere else on the planet, and add them to his Photo Ark. Joel's main goal is the rare and acrobatic Decken's sifaka. This lemur's home is a stone forest blanketed with razor-sharp pinnacles, which they've adapted to safely maneuver, often clearing 20 feet in a single jump. You don't have to travel 10,000 miles to find rare animals. Joel hops down to the Florida Keys, where sea level rise is real. He's on a mission to photograph the endangered Lower Keys marsh rabbit and time's running out before sea water destroys its home.

Joel will go anywhere to add another rare species to the Photo Ark. He travels to Spain to photograph the Iberian lynx and gets a rare look inside a breeding center that's brought them back from near extinction. But scientists working in China might be too late in saving the Yangtze giant softshell turtle. With only three left in the world, Joel witnesses an attempt to artificially inseminate the last known female. Joel hates hiking, but in Cameroon, he has the opportunity to glimpse the rarest ape in the world and gets close enough to nap in a Cross River gorilla nest. But the highlight of the hike is extracting beetles from cow dung - because every creature matters.

In his 25 years as a National Geographic photographer, Joel Sartore has learned to never ignore the smaller creatures. Get up close with insects with faces and features usually found in sci-fi flicks. Joel goes in search of larger animals and boards the rarest rhinoceros in the world onto the Photo Ark before it goes extinct. There are only three northern white rhinoceros left on the planet. Joel's got one more hike-he'd-rather-not-hike in him where he tags along a kiwi egg rescue. By taking and hatching these enormous eggs, scientists give these birds a fighting chance against invasive species. If they didn't rescue the eggs, the species would go extinct.