Original subtitles

NARRATOR: \hA pride of lions.

Africa’s most fearsome hunters.

Their territory,

a small patch of land in Zambia’s wild Luangwa Valley.

They share this land with rival hunters,

potential prey,

and thousands of other remarkable animals.

While the pride struggles to catch a meal big enough to satisfy them,

we spend one day

and one night here...

And meet the animals that also call the pride’s land home.

It’s early afternoon

and the pride rests in the lengthening shadows.

Nine-strong and led by three adult lionesses,

they are the top predators here.

And the valley provides them with plenty of prey.

But recently, they haven’t had much luck.

With their male away patrolling the territory,

their last few hunts for large prey have failed.

(GROWLING)

They’re hungry.

(GROWLS)

All they’ve managed is a small kill.

A warthog caught off-guard.

But when you have so many mouths to feed,

it’s barely even an appetizer.

Warthogs have savage tusks that can reach over 25 inches long.

This time, the risk has been greater than the reward.

Battered and hungry, there’s too little left to go around.

The lionesses leave the scraps to the rest of the family.

A young male will need around 11 pounds of food a day to survive.

There isn’t even enough left for the vultures to pick at.

(VULTURES SQUAWKING)

This is the pride’s land,

20 square miles of pristine wilderness

on the banks of the meandering Luangwa River.

But they aren’t the only animals that live here.

With the sun past its peak, high midday temperatures are fading fast.

The cooling air rejuvenates all the animals that call this land home.

Stirring from their siestas, it’s time to wake up

and get on with what remains of the day.

(WARTHOG GRUNTING)

Warthogs emerge after hiding from the midday heat in their burrow

and head to what remains of a lagoon.

Their homes are usually within strolling distance of a water source,

and the muddy edges of the lagoon

provide the perfect place for an afternoon dip.

Warthogs are part of the pig family

and are also in the same order of mammals as the hippo.

Like all pigs, they don’t have functioning sweat glands,

so to regulate their temperature, there’s only one option...

To wallow.

Mud stays cool longer than water

and protects their skin from the sun.

A pig and muck go hand-in-hand.

(SNORTS)

It’s such an essential part of a pig’s lifestyle

that some scientists believe spending so much time in the mud

is what stopped them from evolving the ability to sweat in the first place.

(ELEPHANT GRUNTING)

The afternoon draws out more of the valley’s wildlife to the local watering hole.

Under the watchful eyes of the pride.

Above, a squadron of great white pelicans ride the rising thermals,

fueled by the afternoon heat.

They’re attracted by the narrow crescent of water below,

one of the few water sources left within the pride’s territory.

Sweeping low over the water in formation,

they work together to channel air under them and generate lift.

(SQUAWKING)

Those that fly alone waste up to 14% more energy.

Preening is top priority,

keeping their feathers aerodynamic as well as waterproof.

Flapping their gular sac is a pelican’s way of cooling down.

It’s still too hot to fish for now.

In the woodlands,

the shade brings relief to the savannah’s more secretive creatures.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

The late afternoon’s cooler temperatures draw a herd of greater kudu

tentatively out of the shadows.

After a day of foraging on herbs, leaves and flowers,

a thirst-quenching drink at the lagoon is too tempting to pass up.

But breaking cover has its risks.

A kudu would be the ideal meal for the unsatisfied pride

and certainly worth investigating.

The big bull takes the lead.

The females know something’s not right.

(SNIFFING)

Smelling, they search for any signs of a threat.

The lioness stays downwind.

Giant ears swivel to locate the sounds of any predators.

Their acute senses make them tough to sneak up on.

(WARNING GRUNTS)

The lioness has been made.

(KUDU GRUNTING)

(GRUNTS)

With all their attention on her,

the lioness has little chance of a successful hunt.

It’s over before it even began.

Returning to her pride, she reaffirms her bond with her sister.

She may not have succeeded in providing for the pride this time,

but fewer than one in five daytime hunts are successful.

The fast-approaching night may provide more opportunities.

Unlike lions, wild dogs rarely hunt at night.

They prefer dusk and dawn.

The pack is getting ready to head out and the pups are excited.

(PUP BARKING)

They’re a year old and finally grown-up enough

to join the rest of the pack on their daily expeditions.

Maybe tonight will bring their first hunt.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

Back at the lagoon, marabou storks join the pelicans.

These big birds are talented scavengers,

feeding on any remains they come across.

Their grotesque featherless heads,

cloak-like plumage and love for carcasses

mean they’re often referred to as the "undertaker bird".

But they don’t exclusively feed on carrion.

The low water level means fish are tightly packed together.

Easy pickings.

The marabou wade right in.

Pelicans and yellow-billed storks aren’t far behind.

Dredging the lagoon, marabou lead the procession,

closely followed by the yellow-billed storks.

Probing the water and mud with their gaping bills,

the storks feel for their food.

Pelicans drag their net-like sacs through the water,

and spoonbills sweep side to side.

The fishing party pushes prey into tighter and tighter groups.

A wall of birds and roiling water leave the fish desperate.

There’s no way out but up.

As the sun dips toward the horizon,

the hustle and bustle of the afternoon begins to subside.

With the party winding down, it’s time to find a roost for the night.

They’re not the only ones calling it a day.

Baboons head homeward after a day of foraging on the plains.

Guinea fowl take one last scratch before turning in for the night.

The lions watch and wait while all around them settles down.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

As the last light reaches across the valley...

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

...the day shift hands over to the creatures of the night.

While some return to the safety of their treetop homes,

the ground below comes alive.

Matabele ants are on the march.

Under the cover of darkness, they’re moving house

and taking all of their belongings with them.

Up to 2,000 worker ants carry precious packages.

Black cocoons

and white developing larvae.

The next generation.

The larvae are the colony’s brood, its prized possessions.

The adults will defend them without mercy

from anything that comes too close.

Following a chemical trail laid down by the lead scout,

they head towards their new home.

Matabele ants are semi-nomadic.

Once they find a home, they will only be there for a month

before moving on again to fresh hunting grounds.

It’s 10:00 and the full moon hangs high above the valley.

Night is the domain of the predator.

This is when the lions are most active.

(IMPALA CALLING)

But the full moon’s bright light is ruining their element of surprise.

The impala and puku see them coming.

(IMPALA CALLING)

While the pride struggles to catch its next meal,

the lagoon appears empty.

But it’s not as quiet as it seems.

Honey badgers have emerged from their burrows.

They are nocturnal and will spend most of the night foraging

in the dried lagoon beds.

Honey badgers are opportunistic feeders

and these lagoons hide a buffet just below the surface.

Frogs and insects have buried themselves to escape the dry season,

making them hard to find.

(SNIFFING)

But an incredible sense of smell

helps the badgers pinpoint food easily.

They have to eat around two pounds a night to survive,

and this means they’re always on the move.

Tough and industrious, they can cover over 25 miles in search of food.

A marathon every night.

(ANIMAL HOWLING)

All this activity stirs up insects for another nocturnal animal.

More than 1,200 species of bat exist worldwide

and almost three-quarters of them are insectivores.

Each must eat a third of its body weight a night,

hundreds of insects every hour.

Like honey badgers, they cover great distances.

The lions have come down to drink.

With half the night gone, they’ve been unable to make a kill.

Under the canopy of a nearby ebony grove, a sausage tree is in bloom.

Their chandelier-like flowers open at dusk

and each only lasts one night.

Brimming with nectar and pollen, they attract a host of insects,

and the bats home in for a feast.

(HYENA HOWLING)

On the edge of the ebony grove,

a spotted hyena den is also drawing in the bats.

They feed on the insects attracted to the remains of the hyenas’ last meal.

It’s 2:00 a.m. and the clan is out.

(CUBS WHINING)

There are six new cubs.

Stuck underground for most of the day,

they have plenty of energy to expend.

It’s time to play.

(PLAYING NOISILY)

They’re neighbors from hell for a sleeping baboon.

Hyena society is highly competitive.

Cubs are born with their eyes open and teeth bared.

From birth, they fight savagely with their siblings.

It creates a hierarchy that will last for life.

After two weeks, aggression begins to give way to play,

and after a month it becomes even more enthusiastic,

helping them to establish friendships and to integrate into the clan.

(HYENA LAUGHING)

But they can get a bit carried away.

Exhausted,

the little cubs settle down to suckle.

Their mother invests far more resources in her milk than other carnivores.

It has three times the fat and protein content of a human’s

and her cubs will be completely dependent on it

until they’re eight months old.

But to provide this nutritious milk, she must eat frequently.

Her acute sense of smell can locate food up to two and a half miles away.

And a stench on the wind catches her attention.

It’s two hours before dawn.

(IMPALA CALLING)

Hunt after hunt.

Failure after failure.

(HIPPO GRUNTING)

The pride has no luck.

They give up for now.

The full moon has spoiled their chances.

Stomachs rumbling, their attention turns from prey to one another.

Lions are the only truly social cat.

Grooming helps them maintain the close bonds needed to hunt cooperatively,

even when it doesn’t go to plan.

(DISTANT ROAR)

Distant roars echo through the cool night air.

Their male is calling, the sound carrying almost five miles across the valley.

(ROARING)

Proclaiming, "This land is ours."

(ROARING)

And tonight, he is louder and closer than he has been for some time.

They head towards the sound, hopeful for a reunion with their pride male.

The hyena mother’s incredible sense of smell

has led her to a buffalo carcass.

It’s rancid,

but her strong stomach acid will kill any bacteria on the decomposing meat.

It has more than enough nutrients for her to produce the rich milk

her cubs need to survive.

Access to the food depends on her ability to dominate others in the clan.

(GROWLING)

As the matriarch, she quickly puts others in their place.

(GROWLING)

The more she can stuff down before her clan-mates,

the better chance her offspring will have of surviving.

(HOWLING)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

Dawn breaks in the ebony grove.

Silence has fallen over the hyena den.

The clan rests after the activity of the night.

With the pride nowhere to be seen,

baboons descend from their roosts.

(CHITTERING)

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

Like beacons in the morning light,

the sausage flowers are attracting even more admirers.

Like bats, birds are drawn by the insects’ presence.

Carmine bee-eaters,

named for their favorite prey, gather on nearby perches.

(SQUAWKING)

Unlike bats, they don’t use sound.

Their incredible eyesight helps them catch their marks with ease.

In the cool morning air, the animals are full of energy.

Young rams move together as part of a bachelor herd.

They may not hold any territory yet,

but this ragtag group of youngsters still establishes a hierarchy.

(ROARING)

A single male roars, putting on a show for the other rams.

For impala males, this is how you sort the men from the boys.

(ROARING)

And it’s contagious.

Chasing one another lets the rams see who’s in the best condition.

The boys’ unruly behavior is largely ignored by the females.

These highly ritualized displays

rarely lead to any serious fights,

so injuries are uncommon.

Their excited roars carry up to a mile along the river.

The impala bachelors aren’t the only boisterous animals this morning.

Baby baboons play on the riverside.

(SCREECHING)

Their big brains need training to develop.

Climbing, jumping and chasing are the perfect ways to learn to be a baboon.

(SCREECHING)

Adults may play less as they get older,

but it won’t save them from becoming target practice.

The midmorning sun steadily marches on.

The pride dozes at last with bellies full.

They managed to meet up with the male and take down a young hippo.

Finally, they’ve made a kill big enough to satisfy the entire pride.

But they’ll have to wait if they want seconds.

The male dominates the carcass.

Younger cubs have joined to wait for their share.

For one hungry juvenile, it’s too much to just sit and watch.

(GROWLING)

But Dad is unwilling to share.

When it comes to feeding, cubs are lowest on the ladder.

Persistence eventually wins out.

The male has had his fill and allows the others to tuck in.

An adult lion can easily eat over 60 pounds in one sitting.

This carcass won’t last long and they all know it.

The valley is hotting up,

and as the sun rises further into the cloudless sky, shadows begin to retreat.

With the lions otherwise occupied,

the kudu venture out into the open to quench their thirst.

But they won’t drop their guard.

Lions aren’t the only predators around.

Perimeter checked, they head down to a pool to drink

before temperatures become too unbearable.

In this climate, they need to drink

one and a half gallons a day to survive.

They head back to the woodland,

where they’ll be able to feed, protected by the shade of the canopy.

The male returns to the carcass.

It’s time for thirds.

But it’s getting too hot to eat out in the open.

If the male is going to be this greedy,

a drink at the river might be a better option.

An explosion of color catches their attention.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

It’s noon and the carmine bee-eater males

are beginning to return from their morning hunt,

bug in beak.

These are romantic tokens for their mates,

delivered straight to the burrow.

But a carmine colony can be a rough neighborhood.

Hard-earned gifts are eyed up before they even reach their rightful recipients.

It’s easier to steal than work for your bug.

This one’s made it past the thieves.

His mate quickly comes to collect.

Better to be safe than sorry.

(SQUAWKING)

On the other side of the river,

African skimmers carve through the shallow waters.

Like the carmines, they nest in areas exposed by the low water levels.

But instead of digging a burrow in the bank,

they make a scrape in the damp sand.

The moist sand keeps their eggs cool

when the sun hangs high in the sky.

But it leaves the clutch vulnerable to wandering predators.

A ground hornbill is named for its habit of stalking over land in search of prey.

There’s little he won’t eat.

Frogs, insects, even tortoises can fall prey to his powerful bill.

A couple of skimmer eggs could make a delightful snack.

This should be an easy meal for the largest species of hornbill.

(SQUAWKING)

But he should know better than to mess with a pair of worried parents.

(SQUAWKING)

The skimmers are dwarfed by the hornbill,

but the safety of their clutch comes first.

The mobbing is too much.

He’ll have to look for food elsewhere.

At 2:00 in the afternoon, the searing sun bears down on the valley’s inhabitants.

The male lion is out on patrol

and the females lounge in the shade.

The heat of the day and that full feeling has them at its mercy.

If they could, they’d sleep all day anyway.

Under a sausage tree, the kudus are keeping to the shadows.

Sausage fruits hang from the branches above.

They can grow over a foot and a half long and weigh almost 22 pounds.

The flowers have already fallen,

fine dining for the valley’s herbivores.

But some kudus aren’t quite so elegant.

This female’s gone for a sausage fruit instead.

Quite the mouthful.

Rock hard, it’s tough to get down.

Maybe another.

Maybe not.

(LION ROARING)

The male lion’s roars carry across the valley again.

But this time, weighed down by a belly full of hippo,

he isn’t really putting in much of an effort.

(LOW ROARING)

The blazing sun slowly begins its journey back towards the horizon.

From dusty lagoons to leaf-littered woodland,

shadows begin to lengthen and rake across the ground once more.

The wild dogs shouldn’t have to get up for an hour or so yet.

Like the lions, they’re taking the afternoon off.

But in the bush, you’ve got to be careful where you lay your head.

(BEES BUZZING)

African honeybees have built a hive inside a nearby tree.

Legendary for their aggressive nature,

they will defend their nest by attacking anything that moves.

Bee guards patrol the area investigating any potential threats.

(BEES BUZZING)

A swarm of angry bees isn’t the best lullaby for a tired wild dog.

(YOWLING)

African honeybees sting 10 times more frequently than their European cousins.

There’s no option other than to find somewhere else to sleep.

An hour before sunset, vultures circle in the soft light of the evening.

(VULTURES CALLING)

They descend en masse to the carcass of a young elephant.

The male lion is here too.

But with the table crowded and his belly still working on this morning’s meal,

he’s content to just watch and wait.

(SQUAWKING)

Fifty ravenous birds jostle for a position where they’ve ripped the carcass open.

(SQUAWKING)

The boldest birds get first feed.

The lappet-faced vulture is the largest vulture in Africa.

Its strong hooked beak easily tears through tough hide, tendons and cartilage.

(SQUAWKING)

His aggression and power

mean the smaller white-backed vultures wouldn’t dare challenge him.

But other lappets will.

Fights over the carcass come thick and fast.

White-backed versus white-backed.

Lappet against lappet.

(SQUAWKING)

Gorging, the vultures wolf down two pounds of meat a minute.

Vultures may have a bad reputation,

but removing festering carcasses keeps the environment disease-free.

Some have overdone it.

And as the sun falls, the circle of satisfied birds grows.

The scent brings in a hyena.

A sure sign of the fast-approaching night.

Alone, he’s no match for the watchful lion.

(SQUAWKING)

The day is coming to an end.

As nocturnal creatures begin to stir from their dens,

impala and puku prepare for the night ahead.

The pride may have fed today,

but it won’t be long before, stomachs empty,

their attentions turn to the next meal.

Every night is a long night for those that call this valley home.

♪

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