All language subtitles for D09FCF5219EB60EBE95E4256AF6899EC_eng

The World's Greatest Wilderness The
world's greatest wilderness.

The only place on earth to see the full
majesty of nature.

There's so much more here than we ever
imagined.

I'm standing where the equator cuts right
across the middle of the continent.

To the north of me,
there's an immense desert

the size of the United
States of America.

To the west, a vast rainforest the size of
India.

And behind me, for thousands of miles,
the most fertile savannas in the world.

From the roof of Africa to the deepest
jungle.

Rarely seen places and untold stories.

There's nowhere in the world where
wildlife puts on a greater show.

This is the last place on
earth where you can come eye

to eye with the greatest
animals that walk our planet.

This is Africa.

Our journey starts in the far southwest.

In the oldest and strangest corner of the
continent.

Here, the thirsty land is covered with
thousands upon thousands of circles.

We still don't know their origins.

Poisonous plants.

Foraging insects.

And even magnetism.

Have all been suggested.

But each ruled out.

The circles don't move.

And their shape never varies.

They're unchanging.

Much like this part of Africa itself.

Ancient and arid.

It almost never rains on this land.

Yet there is water here.

Hidden away.

To survive here, life must use every trick
in the book.

Winter.

Dawn temperatures can fall well below
freezing.

And that's a problem for this drongo.

It's too cold for his normal prey.

Flying insects.

But he has a plan.

The drongo is the Kalahari's greatest
trickster.

And these are his victims.

A family of meerkats.

Desert specialists.

After warming up in the morning sun, the
meerkats begin their search for breakfast.

The drongo can now begin his tricks.

But he must first win the confidence of
his victims.

He spots an eagle on the hunt.

And sounds a warning.

One that sends the meerkats gratefully
scurrying to safety.

Danger over.

And now he has their trust.

He sounds another warning.

And he's ready to take them down.

But this time it's a false alarm.

Thank you very much.

The meerkats fell for it.

This all seems too easy.

He tries the same trick again.

But the meerkats aren't stupid.

They'll only fall for it once.

The juicy scorpion won't be for him.

Then, suddenly, the sound of a sentry's
warning.

No meerkat can ignore that.

Sentries never lie.

But the sentry sees no danger.

Guess who?

Of course, it's the drongo.

He's learned to mimic the meerkat's own
warning call.

And now he can enjoy his prize.

A gang of meerkats.

Outsmarted by a bird.

The drongo is only deceitful in the
hardest winter months.

For the rest of the year, he provides
honest protection.

So, in the long run, the meerkat family
profit as well as the drongo.

It's a much harder life if you haven't yet
learned the tricks of your trade.

This young leopard is just a year old and
at a critical point in his life.

His mother has battled
to raise her two cubs, but

finding enough food for
them is now beyond her.

From today, he'll have to fend for
himself.

Kalahari means land of great thirst.

Prey is scarce.

Of all the leopards in Africa,
these have to be the most resourceful.

A big warthog.

Potential prey.

But armed and dangerous.

His mother tried to tackle one,
but it nearly killed her.

He spots something more promising.

A steenbok.

That's more like it.

He won't strike unless
he can get to within just

four meters, and without
making the slightest sound.

A jackal barks an alarm.

But the steenbok still has no idea it's
being stalked.

The nearer he gets, the quieter he must
be.

He's blown it.

A good opportunity like that won't come
around very often.

Hungry and thirsty, he heads back home.

And spots a kill stashed in a tree,
almost certainly by his own mother.

And like any teenager, he thinks nothing
of raiding her larder.

Booby-trapped.

It's not really his day, is it?

Some young leopards grow up to be
brilliant opportunists.

But even they find life hard here in the
Kalahari.

These bizarre little birds are baby
ostriches.

They're just a few days old.

In time, they'll become superb desert
survivors.

But in the Kalahari, these early days are
perilous.

Like leopards and
meerkats, adult ostriches can

extract all the moisture
they require from their food.

The chicks, however, won't survive much
more than another day without water.

But there's none in sight.

How can their parents conjure up water out
here?

The youngsters follow their parents as
they head out onto a featureless wasteland.

It seems like a suicidal journey.

The Etosha salt pan.

Here, water is more often a mirage than
reality.

It's now well over 40 degrees centigrade.

Their father shades his chicks from the
midday sun.

Another mirage?

No.

The ostrich family is not alone out here.

Surrounded by miles of
sun-baked mud, sweet,

fresh water wells up
from deep below ground.

Although the ostrich
parents have guided their

chicks to water,
there's still a problem.

Traffic.

Heavy traffic.

These tiny, fragile birds could easily be
trampled underfoot.

The water is tantalizingly close.

Where prey gathers, predators are never
far behind.

The brook.

The brook.

The brook.

The brook.

Falling lions have unwittingly done the
young ostriches a favor.

The water hole is now clear.

Sometimes you need a bit of luck in life.

Their first ever drink.

And just in time.

Their father's done his job.

A black rhinoceros.

The Kalahari's most cantankerous resident.

They don't like company.

And they certainly don't like sharing a
water hole with lions.

Fortunately, for everyone else,
that is, they only visit twice a week.

The Kalahari is the black rhino's last
step.

Their first stronghold.

And here, under the cover of darkness,
at one secret and very special water hole,

rhino abandon their
normally solitary life and

come from miles around
to meet under the stars.

Using the latest starlight
camera, we can reveal

for the first time the
rhino's true character.

This young female seems nervous.

She senses other rhinos close by.

A mother appears from the shadows with her
calf.

Tentatively, they greet one another.

They may be ill-tempered by day, but
now they become gentle and affectionate.

More and more arrive.

We had no idea that rhinos met to
socialize and build friendships like this.

The young female has an admirer.

But she doesn't seem keen on him.

She's excited about something.

Or someone.

Here comes a really big male.

This time, she's much more welcoming.

Who would have thought that rhino could be
so flirtatious?

The first male tries to come between them.

Somehow or other, he's got a pair of
antelope horns stuck on his nose.

It looks as if she's been run over by his
eccentric style.

He leads her off, away from the party.

He leads her off, away from the party.

But then he starts to risate.

Will he resist?

He will do it.

Will he?

Will he resist?

Or will he?

He may have style, but he's turning out to
be something of a disappointment.

He was

blind from the start, now he's become so
keen on her.

Almost like a spider, he's still very
alertly watching.

With so much.

The only way she can get rid of him is to
pretend she's asleep.

To see so many rhino in one place is a
revelation.

And that's the power water has here.

The power to bring together the greatest
gathering of rhinos anywhere on Earth.

Spitcupa.

An ancient volcano that towers above a
plateau that is two billion years old.

This land has remained unchanged for
longer than any other part of Africa.

Animals here have had a
long time to find inventive

solutions to the
challenge of finding water.

It

means life must await the chance arrival
of rain.

When it does fall, it has an extraordinary
effect.

Each sporadic downpour may only last
minutes, but it can bring life.

And in spectacular numbers.

Red-billed quilea.

They're the most numerous bird in the
world.

In all, more than a billion live here in
the Kalahari.

No one knows quite how, but they seem to
have an extraordinary ability to locate

the fall of rain and then instantly
exploit the bonanza that follows.

These nomads now have just five weeks to
find food, build a nest and raise a brood.

But they're not alone.

The rains have also created a plague.

They are the only ones that can survive
the February of spring.

These are armored ground crickets.

Giant insects with voracious appetites for
meat.

With the quilea parents away feeding,
their chicks are defenseless.

This is the first time they have been able
to survive the spring.

The adults return, but

the cricket fights back, squirting its own
foul-tasting blood into their eyes.

The cricket is still
alive, but the stench of

its blood attracts the
attention of others.

Now it is the target.

These crickets become cannibals.

The crickets are still
alive, but the stench

of its blood attracts
the attention of others.

All too soon, the bonanza
brought by the rain is over, and

the quelea head off in search
of the next rare downpour.

The Kalahari is scarred
by rivers that have long

since run dry, the water
claimed by the thirsty land.

But it's not gone far.

Deep below lies a secret, one that was
discovered only twenty-five years ago.

Humid air rushing to the surface gives
this place its name, Dragon's Breath Cave.

The shaft descends for sixty meters until
it meets...

water.

The water is still there.

Here, there is a massive chamber big enough
to swallow three jumbo jets nose to tail.

Filled with cool, fresh water.

The world's largest underground lake.

This is fossil water.

It's been trapped here undisturbed for
thousands, if not millions of years.

We have no idea how deep the lake is.

Divers have been down to a hundred meters,
and still there's no sign of the bottom.

Remarkably, Dragon's Breath
is part of a vast cave system

that extends beneath the
Kalahari for thousands of miles.

Even here, in this lonely cave,
there is life.

Golden catfish, only found in this one
cave.

They're the rarest and most isolated fish
in the world.

Life down here is as challenging as it is
in the desert above.

There's no food, except the debris that
occasionally falls onto the surface.

And these catfish are totally blind.

They're not afraid.

The only world they know is the one they
sense through touch.

A blind fish living in
perpetual darkness, deep

beneath one of the most
arid regions of Africa.

Such cruel irony.

So much water, hidden away, out of reach.

Along the western edge
of the Kalahari, the land

becomes so dry, it seems
impossible to escape.

But it's possible that any life could
survive here.

The Namib.

A million square miles of sand,
exquisitely sculpted by the wind.

This is the oldest desert in the world.

Respite comes from fog rolling in from the
Atlantic Ocean.

It condenses into a few precious drops.

Just enough to sustain life.

A Pompylid wasp is searching the dunes.

She's not looking for a drink,
but for somewhere moist to lay her egg.

How will she pull off a trick like that?

The entrance to a burrow.

That's worth investigating.

She may be tiny, but
once she decides to dig,

she can shift extraordinary
quantities of sand.

She's unearthed this spider for a grisly
purpose.

It's so dry, the only place
with enough moisture for

her egg is within the
body of another living thing.

First, she must paralyse her victim.

But then, the spider plays its trump card.

The act of paralyse the victim is not
easy.

The aptly named Golden
Wheel Spider can cartwheel

fast enough to escape
its gruesome fate.

For the wasp, her near-impossible search
goes on.

If it's hard enough for
a tiny wasp to survive

here in the Namib, how
is it possible for a giant?

A desert giraffe.

It's difficult to imagine
how such a huge

animal can live in a
place with so little water.

This old male is at the very limit of his
endurance.

The land may be bone dry, but there are
signs that water once flowed here.

The Hoa Nib.

One of Namibia's rivers.

River of sand.

The trees that line these sand
rivers send roots down over

30 metres to tap water that
lies deep beneath the river bed.

These trees are the giraffe's salvation.

Even if he has to stretch to his very
tallest to get a mouthful.

Even on tiptoe, he still
needs a half-metre long

tongue to reach the
leaves he so badly needs.

He's ruled the stretch of the Hoa Nib for
over a decade.

And this prime territory is attracting
females.

He waits confidently for her.

But they've got company.

A young male.

The old bull won't tolerate a rival.

Pushing and shoving, they size each other
up.

The young rival seems to think he has a
chance and attacks.

The first few blows usually settle things
in such battles.

But here, the stakes are high.

To lose means exile in the desert.

Neither will back down.

As the fight intensifies, they change
tactics.

The young male aims for the rump.

The old bull targets his rival's legs.

The old bull is down.

Is this the end of his reign?

He knows a knockout blow is coming.

But the old bull ducks.

And strikes a blow to his rival's
underbelly.

Out for the count.

The old bull is victorious.

But only just.

The sand river remains his to rule.

It's a river that is about to be
transformed.

Under clear blue skies, water floods down
the Hohenib.

The welcome consequence of rain that fell
hundreds of miles away.

The water may only flow for a matter of
hours.

But this miraculous flood is
enough to provide a lifeline

for the trees and the
giraffes of the Hohenib River.

It's what makes this place worth fighting
for.

Here, fossil lakes, secret water holes,
desert fog and ephemeral rivers like this

provide just enough water for life to get
by.

No matter how tough it gets.

It's hard to find more
inventive solutions to

staying alive than in this,
the most ancient corner.

The river of Africa.

For four years, the
Africa team searched the

continent for new
and surprising stories.

Not only of strange and unfamiliar
creatures, but also of some we think we know.

Veteran wildlife cameraman Martin Kolbeck
took on the challenge of shedding new

light on the life of Namibia's desert
giraffe.

I jumped at the opportunity
of working with an

animal that I hadn't really
spent much time with.

Straight away, they proved to be quite an
eye-opener.

They're very bizarre looking animals.

We just kept looking at them from different
angles and they looked even weirder.

The combination of the
sort of weird close-ups, the

beautiful landscape that
they're in, they're amusing.

I got really attached to them actually.

Overlying all this, we were always waiting
for a fight.

But to see a full-blooded fight is very
rare.

So the only way that we were going to see
it is if we stuck at it day after day,

every day, for 30 days.

We were lucky enough that we found a male
guarding a female.

And out of nowhere, this male came around
the corner.

And almost immediately faced up to our
male.

Absolutely no warning that this was going
to happen.

So it was complete pandemonium in the car.

But luckily, I got the camera up and running
in time to actually capture this fight.

And it all came down to one minute in real
time.

When I filmed it, you don't see it in slow
motion.

And you just have to go with the flow.

You're not experiencing the fight.

You're just basically framing it and
capturing it.

So it was only afterwards
when we looked at it in slow

motion that you could really
understand how ferocious it was.

You can see the impact on the skin.

You can see the ripples going through the
flesh.

But it was the final blows that delivered
the real surprise.

It was like one of those chimneys falling
down.

The last moment, the head just went clunk.

And we thought it was dead.

We thought this thing was dead.

And it lay there for, it must have been
three minutes.

Eventually, this thing suddenly got up.

The one that was lying down.

And the two of them were then standing.

And then the one that had been knocked
over completely then just said,

I've had enough.

Okay, okay, you won.

And I'm off.

I think it's very unlikely I'm going to
see anything like that again.

I think that's a once in a lifetime.

I really do.

It won't be easy to look at giraffes in
the same way again.

On the other side of the desert,
another of Africa's great animal icons was

attracting the attention of the team as
they staked out a secret water hole.

They hoped to reveal a very different side
to the personality of the black rhinoceros.

The team have heard that at night,
rhinos behave a little strangely.

A specially built starlight camera would
allow the team to pierce the darkness.

It's amazing.

That's filming something we can't even
see.

Yeah, we can look out there now.

Yeah, it's just black, isn't it?

But through this, it looks as sharp as
day.

Rhinos are notoriously antisocial.

Yet here they come.

They come to revel in each other's
company.

This is amazing.

This is such intimate
behaviour which you

can only see filming
them at night like this.

It's incredible.

But it wasn't just cameras that would show
a new side to rhinos.

By concealing tiny radio
microphones around the water

hole, the crew hoped to
eavesdrop on the night's activity.

And what they heard was astonishing.

They're really talkative.

They really are, aren't they?

These guys are far more communicative than
elephants, even.

They just carry on and on, chatting away.

It's a beautiful crystal clear night.

So we've got beautiful starry shots.

Loads of amazing noise, puffing and
huffing.

So it's about two in the morning.

We've one rhino left up here.

The rest of them have
gone to bed, but he's

decided to lie down
on top of the radio mic.

.

.

The crew prepared for one more night at
the waterhole under the full moon.

It seems that they're not really here for
the water, but more to socialise.

A bit like going out for the evening.

He's got some kudu horns on and his face
draped over his nose.

That's all on camera, dude.

These images have a
particular poignancy in a world

where rhino horn is worth
more than its weight in gold.

Poaching is going through a really bad
time right now in southern Africa.

If you averaged it out, a rhino has been
killed every day for the last year.

That's really sad.

It's a very serious poaching.

It's a huge concern that what we saw in
film just won't happen again, ever.

It's only now that technology has revealed
a new side to the rhino's personality.

The black rhinoceros is a symbol of the
African bush.

But it seems that this creature has been
long misunderstood.

For the Africa team,
revealing giraffes and

rhinos in this new light
was just the beginning.

Africa may be a continent we think we
know, but it's still full of surprises.