Original subtitles

[birds chirping]

Downloaded from YTS.BZ

[tranquil music]

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

[wildebeest lowing]

[narrator] In this idyllic paradise,

a place virtually brimming over with wildlife,

there is always a certain tension.

They have to be wary,

watching out for that one sign that will save their lives.

And only those who are alert will see it.

[birds squawking]

And even then, it may just be imagined.

Today this phantom is real.

But no threat at all.

She's exhausted in that

drooling, all-dignity-abandoned kind of way.

Besides her particular style of relaxation,

this little leopard is unique in another way.

She has the most unusual jade-colored eyes.

And this is her story.

Toto is an affectionate Swahili name for "small,"

and she is tiny.

But she has her name for another reason as well.

Let's start at the beginning, or perhaps even before that.

On the banks of a river in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy

on the edge of the Maasai Mara,

a much larger female leopard is having difficulty sleeping.

It is hot.

But her discomfort is because behind these beautiful spots,

inside her swollen stomach, is where Toto is waiting,

and not too patiently, to begin her tale.

And her name is Fig, who, pregnant or not,

seems to enjoy lying face down and tongue dangling.

But enough of this lounging around.

Fig must find a safer place today

in an area with one the highest concentrations

of lions and hyenas on the planet.

A nearby safari camp.

Perfect for what she's planning.

She maneuvers her way-out-of-balance body

into a very un-leopard-like descent,

and heads across the small trickle of a stream.

The camp is on the banks of this benign little river.

So, today, a large leopardess called Fig

makes a decision that changes everything.

She finds a quiet spot under tent number five.

And here she gives birth

to Toto, a single cub,

who within days is stumbling around blindly under the deck

and in and out of the nearby undergrowth.

She's sure of herself, but not terribly surefooted.

Climbing is in her DNA.

And Fig is seldom far away.

Her landlords, the camp,

decide to just close off the tent

and mark it as "occupied."

This five-star haven becomes

the cub's earliest memories of home.

And like her mother, she has a tongue

that seems to have a mind of its own.

For two weeks, the leopards are in residence

in this small camp that is called Mara Toto.

And hence the cub's name.

Fig was smart enough to have found a secure refuge.

But having a cub on the banks of a river

brings its own risks.

[hyenas whooping]

She keeps watch constantly.

And there's little she can do about the awkward positioning

of a dead hippo not far from the den,

or the action it attracts.

[whooping]

[yipping]

[whooping]

[shrieking and growling]

While they're distracted

and Toto stays under the brush and tent, she'll be safe.

But Fig doesn't take her eyes off the hyenas.

Then she sees it.

One clan member can somehow smell

beyond the stinking carcass.

[thunder]

Rain in Africa is both a gift and a danger.

The trick is in deciding which it is today.

Fig doesn't have the luxury of using the opportunity now.

If Toto gets confused, or even adventurous,

she'll wander off, and the rain will wash her scent away.

Fig must get back, quickly.

[thunder]

But instead of staying safely under cover,

Fig makes another decision that may be wise or fatal.

She hears it and knows what's coming.

With hours of steady rain,

the mild-mannered river has turned into a raging torrent.

It breaks the riverbanks, flooding, making new paths

right through their home, the camp.

Their lair is swamped,

their safety swept away.

Their survival is now totally up to Fig,

so she's always on the move.

Fig is aware that what lies beyond the horizon

is another event that will change their lives,

and it's on its way.

It starts with the painted horses.

Over 250,000 zebras splashing across the Mara River

on the way to her territory.

[wildebeest lowing]

The hypnotic sounds of well over a million wildebeest

startle and amaze Toto now,

and fill the air with anticipation and chaos.

[lowing]

[zebra braying]

Despite the danger of being trampled,

Fig is on the lookout for an even greater threat,

the inevitable nomadic lions.

They'll disrupt everything with their adolescent attempts

to wreak havoc across the plains.

Fig is a master at making use

of the ultimate chaotic event of the year,

but she won't have it all to herself.

[hyena yipping]

The herds are tired and wary,

so they head into the open, away from any ambush points.

It may not be what Fig wants,

but the young lions will hunt in the open.

The hunt is on.

One thing is sure: Someone will die tonight.

The young nomadic lions set the ambush.

But they don't give it everything they've got.

[zebra braying]

Fig watches, desperate for her chance at a wildebeest.

But at what risk?

The thermal images unveil the night

that Fig and the lions inhabit.

It's a view into the world through heat.

And she spots an overheated wildebeest,

courtesy of hours of bungled lion attempts.

[yowl]

[bellow]

It's a standoff.

And sometimes it's useful to display,

even against an opposing species.

[grunting]

She might be able to take on

the pregnant young female hyena.

But hyenas can't keep their spoils secret for long.

The word is out.

[yipping]

Even more hyenas will appear from the darkness all the time.

One last defiance and she has to leave.

[lowing]

And as suddenly as they arrived,

the herds turn south into Tanzania,

and leave the Olare Conservancy and the Mara quiet once again.

[birds chirping]

[braying]

The migration stayed in her territory

much longer than expected this year.

Three vital months for Fig

to be able pass on some tricks of the trade

and to develop Toto's tree-climbing skills.

Their bond grows each day.

But Toto isn't aware that these lazy days are also changing,

as the heat climbs

and the herds go off away from the now-stagnant river,

following their noses to new water

across the shimmering plains.

[braying]

Besides the lessons in climbing

and being confident up high in the trees,

Toto has to be taught a lot of other skills.

The departing herds leave short, cropped grass;

a challenge for any Thomson's gazelle

that could really use the cover now to give birth.

One of Toto's lessons is to look outside

of her small bubble with her mother.

She hasn't noticed what Fig is watching.

[birds squawking]

Fig's sudden move nearly sends Toto flying out of the tree.

And she's heading for the newborn.

Thomson's gazelles have a tactic evolved for just this.

They simply leave the fawn and step away as a decoy.

Now, at last, she has Toto's attention.

Fig circles.

But the Thomson's gazelles' tactic even fools a zebra,

and that complicates matters.

To the young stallion,

something about the grass just doesn't seem quite right.

For the zebra, it's quite a surprise

when the small brown spot in the grass

gets up and walks away.

Well, walking may not be the best description

for this particular move.

But it's innovative enough to keep the zebra interested.

Each time the Tommy fawn stumbles,

his new zebra minder is there with a helping nudge.

But this relationship is not helpful to Fig's ambitions.

But perhaps it teaches Toto something.

She'll be more aware of her surroundings now.

Demanding and hungry cubs often force mothers

to go out hunting again and again.

But in the wake of the migration,

Toto isn't hungry and is very forgiving.

But there are more opportunities

in the Olare Conservancy after the main migration leaves

when stragglers and lost individuals come through.

[braying]

It's a time of abundance.

Many young don't make the crossings.

So now Fig and Toto take advantage

and just scavenge these easy meals.

The first thing she does

is analyze the placement of Fig's kill.

It doesn't help that she sees everything that moves

as something to play with.

[purring]

Fig coaxes Toto to take over, to test her strength.

With so few trees here,

knowing how to get a kill up high is vitally important.

Fig's sudden movement to chase flies, however, is a mistake.

It signals Toto to play.

It may not have been the intended lesson of the day,

but it'll work.

This one is all about mock hunting.

[yipping]

The usual suspects hear the rough and tumble,

or smell the fresh kill.

It was Toto's responsibility to position the kill higher.

Oh, well. Mother saves the day.

Another valuable lesson about distraction.

[yipping]

[yipping]

Since the early days under the tent,

Toto has grown up with the ever-present threat

of this particular clan of hyenas.

And they have a specific family perfume

and very puzzling social arrangements.

[shrieking and growling]

[yipping and whooping]

Surprisingly enough, this is all about mating,

and winning the attention of the lead hyena female,

who they gang up on and attack.

It's a curious courtship,

but it's the way that things are done

in this particular clan.

[whooping]

It's once the ritual is over that Toto has to be careful.

[snarling]

[snarl]

Toto and the hyenas are way too close for comfort.

[yipping]

But she has backup.

Having chased off the hyenas,

well, in her view anyway,

Toto has a new spurt of confidence.

She's a killer in small spots.

[growling]

When Fig patrols to warn the hyenas,

it's Toto's chance to get things squared away.

She has good strength for her size.

And she's busy solving the puzzle:

Placing a floppy item into the forks of trees.

But the thorns and gravity don't help.

They watch her, perhaps recognizing

that there's a lot that could go wrong.

But Fig's back.

[growling]

Mistakes like this often lead a mother to reprimand her cub.

But Fig and Toto seem to have a very different relationship.

There's a bond that usually starts to wear off

around this age.

[whooping]

[grunting]

[whooping]

[barking]

Now, when Fig goes off hunting at night, Toto follows.

Just watching her mother, the skilled huntress,

should be enough,

but as a typical adolescent

she's now determined to make her own way.

[snorting]

She's learned that blending-in lesson,

much of which isn't really her doing anyway,

but something she inherited just by being a leopard.

[snorting]

She's still small, a Toto, but she's constantly on the move.

A mongoose catches her attention,

but then, everything does.

Unlike Fig, she moves though the open,

even though she's quite obvious

to anyone who can see well at night.

[squeaking]

[squeaks]

And she's experimental.

[hisses]

A newly-emerged monitor lizard baby is worth a tentative prod.

[squeaks]

This phase of her life is all about exploring

this strange nocturnal world that she'll soon inherit.

The undergrowth yields endless possibilities for adventure.

But curiosity comes with risks,

and tonight she'll certainly discover that.

Eerie beings watch Toto from above.

But there are enticing creatures

on the ground for her...

some of them armed with sharp attitudes,

unwilling to be intimidated.

This porcupine seems the right size prey for Toto.

It's simply a test of confidence.

[rattles]

[rattling]

When barbed quills aim in her direction, enough is enough.

Sometimes when Toto meets spiky strangers

in the shadows,

she defaults into appearing harmless,

or even a little mad.

The take-home lesson from her night along the river

is that being a solitary leopard here,

it's just not that easy.

[distant roaring]

Cute or not, she's going to need more training.

And Fig is back to provide just that.

Toto doesn't seem to hold on to the disappoint of failure

for very long.

It's probably a leopard trait she's inherited,

like so many others.

The ability to just shake it off and move on.

But all cubs need to supplement what comes naturally

with the real skills they get by watching their mothers.

Now, the next lesson.

A flush of young warthogs may allow just that opportunity.

[oinking]

She watches as her mother turns into silent liquid.

[oinking]

[oinking]

Fig's kill and her strategy that led to it

are well-absorbed.

And now it's Toto's turn to recreate what she learned.

And it's through these moments of mock killing and play

that she learns how the muscles of a warthog respond.

The weight, the smell.

She's starting to see food as prey.

Toto's kill ends in exactly the same way,

a meal nicely delivered back to her mother.

Toto's attention span is still shorter than it should be,

and the Thomson gazelle lesson taught her to be aware

of everything around her.

Today the industrious hamerkop, or lightning birds,

quickly catch her eye.

Now she has a management problem.

She must keep her kill

and investigate the huge architecture in the sky.

So, she simply takes her pig kill along with her.

[squawking]

But when she commandeers the nest,

all the birds' intricate work on the roof structure

is destroyed.

Toto barely notices.

For her, it's a high-rise play platform.

It's hard to tell if Fig is indeed impressed

or just positioned nearby in case.

It's all quite exhausting.

The very stable structure

makes a perfectly good hammock even better,

because it's just a little bit higher

than Fig's perch for the day.

Persistent, but it's folly.

The renovations will cost more in energy

than just starting from scratch downstream.

[squawking]

What Fig has to decide soon

is when to let Toto go,

to let her begin life on her own.

She's still small.

Will she be ready to outsmart the constantly agitated hyenas?

When will her play turn real enough

for her to kill on her own?

Maybe tonight.

This could be Toto's big night.

She's spotted a sleeping antelope.

[heartbeat]

But she fails to watch behind her.

Energy burn on a missed kill is high.

[snorting]

A scrub hare.

More her size?

The patience lesson pays off.

But the timing isn't quite right.

Time to find something bigger and slower, perhaps.

It's a swift kill.

[squeaking]

And it's her first.

A momentous moment.

Pumped with success,

she gets the kill up as high as she can manage,

and this time without fault,

despite the immediate arrival of the competition,

and with no backup from Fig.

And it's right here, right now,

that Toto becomes entirely what she was born to be,

the perfect leopard.

A blend of both her inherited qualities

and what she learned from her diligent mother.

As Toto, this jade-eyed leopard,

surveys her domain and enjoys the peace of a full stomach,

we must ask what her future might be.

Can we learn to understand her value as an individual,

as real character struggling to survive in this fragile mosaic?

And if we can learn to respect, protect and celebrate

all such leopards,

then she may well have a future.

[distant grunting]