Islands are home to nature's strangest creatures - from lemurs to Komodo dragons. Islands are also priceless laboratories for the study of evolution. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the emerging science of "island biogeography." Also, neurologist Oliver Sacks visits the "island of the colorblind."

SEGMENT 1

Neurologist Oliver Sacks tells Jim Fleming about Pingelap - a tiny atoll in the South Pacific where some eight percent of the population is colorblind. He explains what the colorblind can and cannot see and how their community has adapted to their condition. Sacks practices at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His new book is "The Island of the Colorblind."

SEGMENT 2:

Nature writer David Quammen is obsessed with islands and their strange life forms. He talks with Steve Paulson about the emerging science of island biogeography and what it reveals about evolution. Quammen is the author of "The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions." Also, Alison Jolly is a primatologist at Princeton University who's been studying lemurs for thirty five years. She tells Steve Paulson some of what she's learned from the lemurs of Madagascar, including some hints about our own origins.

SEGMENT 3:

Donald S. Johnson is a sailor and the author of "Phantom Islands of the Atlantic." He tells Judith Strasser about islands reported by pioneering sailors which no one else has ever been able to find but which stayed on the maps for years.

Distribution dates:

• week of 03/02/97 - hour 2
• week of 09/28/97 - hour 2