Original subtitles

[narrator] Battle can be brute - ugly. - Sometimes so are the combatants

He looks like Pac-Man that's gone through a wood chipper.

[narrator] But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If you were a female warthog, you'd be like,

"Wow, that's Bradley Cooper right there."

[narrator] Whether it's looks that can kill...

You notice the teeth right away.

[narrator] A family feud...

You're fighting with your own siblings. [narrator] Or all-out assault...

They'll kick, they'll bite.

[narrator] Looks aren't everything.

But like do you smell beautiful?

Ugly, beautiful.

It's certainly memorable.

It is on.

[intense music]

[narrator] Everyday, everywhere,

our planet is a battleground.

Turf wars...

Food fights...

And mating mayhem rage on,

as animals outwit and outmanoeuvre

their own kind

in Battle of the Alphas.

The warthog is one of East Africa's most striking animals.

At first glance, they do seem to have a face

that only a mother would love.

[laughter]

Warthogs get a bad rap.

Everybody's always talking about how ugly they are.

Well, if you were a female warthog, you'd be like,

"Wow, that's Bradley Cooper right there."

Don't be so biased by your human prejudice.

[narrator] So, if Joe Average Warthog wants a chance

with the ladies - he's gotta fight for it.

They're horribly aggressive creatures,

especially when two males come into contact with each other,

the sparks can fly.

[narrator] Warthogs live in sounders that form larger clans

though adult males are usually solitary.

From 20 months they're roaming around getting big,

getting strong, getting into some scraps.

Then around four years of age, they're usually ready

to find some available ladies to mate with.

[narrator] It takes a male with a brave heart

to chance his luck with this clan.

But it's more about aroma than amour.

It's not just how you look, but like do you smell beautiful?

That big nose is a really evolutionarily

tuned machine for picking up information.

A female advertises that she's interested

by peeing around the edge of the territory,

and makes sure that that pee hits the ground and maybe

sprays up and hits her a little bit too.

So putting out little bulletin boards on the edge

where the males are likely to encounter them.

They can smell and tell how many females are around,

which one of them are receptive,

even down to which ones may be more receptive than others.

And a male upon finding this puddle of urine

does what any self-respecting warthog male would do.

He pees on top of her pee as a way of saying,

"Yeah, I'm into this. Let's go for it."

We call that counter-marking.

It's like if you put a Post-it up with her number on it,

and instead of ripping the number off,

he puts a post it on top of it saying,

"I'm responding to your ad, but I'm also making it

a little bit harder for anyone else to read what you put down."

[narrator] With scent glands around their eyes and tusks,

males also leave other fragrant notes.

When they rub their face on something,

it gives an indication of their height or their size.

And so you'll often see them trying to like inch up a little bit

to place that mark as high as they possibly can.

[narrator] Once word is out,

he tries to woo the sow with his beats.

The male indicates his excitement

through these very rhythmic grunts.

He sounds like a little train,

and he's following up behind her like a little train.

[narrator] However, he's not the only one

wanting to make sweet music.

Males, in particular, can get very aggressive

with one another, especially

when they're competing for access to receptive females.

[narrator] Some choose to retreat to safety

rather than duke it out.

But neither of these two are turning tail.

They will often size each other up first,

so they'll come face to face.

Really gives them the opportunity

to check out the competitor.

They send tons of visual signals.

They lift up that crest of hair on the back.

They arc the tail to cover the rump.

They lift the head up high.

Sometimes they'll even paw the ground like a bull

to show that they're ready to fight.

If they're really, really well paired,

it'll escalate up to the next step.

[narrator] The head is the warthog's most prominent feature

and carries its most dangerous weapons.

You can see the big tusks. Those are mostly for show,

they can push things around, but the real danger happens

with the lower tusks, which are much sharper

and can slice flesh very easily.

They push those faces against each other,

applying all of that weaponry,

trying to get that manoeuvre in

so that it can slash the other one. But at the same time,

holding all the opponent's weapons away from your own body.

[narrator] This is where those "warts" come in handy.

Those aren't actually warts. They're fleshy pads

that protect it against the weapons of the opponent.

It provides that cushion for all that head-to-head impact.

[grunting]

[narrator] Males have three pairs of "warts".

The largest pair is near the eyes

and can grow up to 15 centimetres long.

The others are on the snout and the lower jaw.

Though fights to the death are rare,

they do bring them to their knees literally.

It helps them maintain their balance.

It's very easy to tell when one of these fights is over.

Usually, one of them is left standing holding that territory,

and the other one is squealing and running away

like a little piggy.

[squealing]

[narrator] But the female makes her feelings known

if the winning boar "bores" her

There's this interesting perception

that in all of these systems,

females are just these passive participants.

But she can still say yes or no.

And even if he sticks around,

she doesn't have to mate with him.

She can literally sit down.

[narrator] With a lucky mate selected,

they get down to making piglets.

Until next time, when Bradley Cooper and the boys

get to battle it out all over again.

[♪]

Some animals' film-star looks may be open to interpretation

but one animal is for sure no handsome prince.

This is not your average backyard pond frog.

The giant, African Bullfrog

likes to stand out in a crowd.

He's a proper uggo.

He looks like Pac-Man that's gone through a wood chipper. - Maybe not the cutest thing you'll see

but it's pretty dang unique

because it is just absolutely huge.

The males can reach about 10 inches

and up to two pounds in weight. That's a big frog.

[narrator] During the dry season,

African bullfrogs hide out underground

for up to 10 months.

It goes into this estivation chamber,

almost like hibernation, but it's really just a deep, deep sleep.

[narrator] But when the rains come, the ground erupts.

Once the rains start to fall,

these guys and girls force their way up from underground,

and then they motor en masse to the newly formed ponds.

[croaking]

[narrator] African bullfrogs are solitary,

except in breeding season.

As temporary pools form,

the bullfrogs congregate to determine

who's the dominant male.

And the biggest bruisers have the best shot.

The trick is, you want to be in the middle,

the deepest part of the pond

because that is the area that's going to survive the longest.

So the big alpha male frogs,

that's where they're aiming for.

So it's an absolute mosh pit to try and get to the centre.

In order to do that, these males will fight and fight.

[narrator] A group of frogs is called an "army",

and these soldiers know how to wage war.

When the males are trying to get to the centre

and that fighting starts.

It's like thousands of drunk sumo wrestlers

dancing around in a can on the back of a bucking bronco.

They are just launching themselves

as living cannonballs at each other,

and anything goes, because it is on.

[narrator] And their best skill is their most famous.

They hop, they skip and they jump.

We all know frogs jump. These guys are exceptional,

they've been actually found to jump two meters.

That is multiple times their own body length.

And for an animal that essentially looks like a beach ball with feet,

that's pretty impressive.

They have these thick, big bodies,

that they use as weapons. When they're fighting,

these frogs will actually propel themselves at each other.

[narrator] Big is beautiful in this froggy fight club,

here more really is more.

These guys are really well equipped.

They are one of three species of frog in the world

to have some sort of teeth-like structure.

They're called odontodes,

and they're really just these structures that grow out of their flesh.

But it makes them incredibly good at combat,

and it makes them pretty aggressive fighters.

And they allow the frog

once its gripped something to keep gripping it.

[narrator] Useful, because his aim

is to take out the competition.

Because of these tooth-like structures they have,

they can cause severe damage

and they can actually kill one another.

And that's absolutely not unheard of

in these types of fights.

They will even consume smaller males

if it takes that to achieve this dominant status

that they are the alpha male of that pond.

[narrator] Finally centre stage,

he must now attract the females

So the African bullfrog also has a very deep,

a very bellowing call.

Now this call is incredibly important

because it's actually a way to locate female bullfrogs.

[narrator] Hearing the male's call,

she swims underwater to meet him in the middle.

But as every basketball centre knows,

you must defend your position to score.

So even if a male successfully mounts a female

and they begin mating, that does not mean

that mating is going to continue successfully.

This fight is still happening.

There is just no chivalry anymore with these creatures.

They will cannonball themselves into the back of mating couples

to try and knock the female out of the grasp of the male

so they themselves can have a chance to mate.

It really is a full-on froggy free for all.

[narrator] As the males fight, limbs fly in the air

as they jump and chomp down on one another.

The usual winner is typically the largest male.

That male is likely going to mate with several females.

So, for the winner,

it's a chance to father the next generation,

and that is so vital when you have these very,

very limited breeding periods.

Hence why they have such aggression

to get into the right places, to get a chance to mate.

[narrator] As many as 4,000 eggs may be released.

And having fought so hard to father them,

he stands guard.

So, upon first glance, it looks like

the male is actually a pretty attentive parent.

He actually watches over the eggs

and watches over the hatchlings.

But then, we realize that the male is actually

eating some of the hatchlings.

So you know he's guarding them,

but is he only guarding them so he can eat them?

You know who knows. It's a mixed bag

of how we feel with respect to these babies here.

[narrator] Those that survive daddy daycare

must now endure the dry season.

The frogs return to these estivation chambers,

where they will return to their deep, deep slumber

until the rains begin again.

[narrator] Though no sleeping beauties,

they rest up until next year,

waiting for their chance to battle it out

for their own offspring.

While bullfrogs raise their ugly mugs to wage war,

in North America, family feuds have a familiar face.

Turkeys surely have to be one of the best-known birds

on the planet.

The wild turkey is one of the most colourful,

flamboyant and round birds in North America.

And some would argue one of the ugliest birds.

It's got these wattles under its throat.

It's got these kind of creased caruncles,

warty skin on the back of its head.

It's got this long snood that dangles unattractively

from the end of its beak.

[narrator] It may be business in the front,

but it's all party in the back.

It's got the most astonishing plumage.

Got this fan of bronzed,

bluey, violet iridescent feathers.

Ugly. Beautiful. It's certainly memorable.

[narrator] For wild turkeys, blood is thicker than water.

And in their lives there will be blood.

[intense music]

By the time they're six months old,

the male siblings branch off on their own.

This band of brothers forages together by day

and roosts together at night.

But like all siblings, they squabble.

In order to climb up that social hierarchy ladder

to get your best chance of reproducing,

you have to fight at every stage of the game.

You're fighting with your own siblings for dominance.

These fraternal battles are really quite intense.

And they're incredibly important because the winner

is the one that will potentially get to mate with the females.

Basically gets all the action.

[narrator] Before a brotherly battle breaks out,

there's a warning call.

One of the things that you will hear,

threat-cooing almost like a pigeon.

And it sounds really sweet, but in fact,

it's coming from an enraged bird

about to unleash all of its feathers and beak

and spurs on another bird.

The threat coo.

[narrator] The intensity level of these brawls for dominance goes from zero to 100 in the blink of an eye.

One of the first things they do is they'll hit them

with their wings and they try to bite their face

or their neck.

And they will sometimes even grab the back of their neck

and try to push them down to create dominance.

They really go for it.

It's so important.

They'll drive their advantages home with their bills.

They'll try and bite each other

and they'll try and bloody the animal.

They'll go for the eyes,

the caruncles around the back of the head. They'll kick, they'll bite.

Wild turkeys have really dangerous and lethal

sharp spurs.

It's like a three to four-inch knife

sticking off the back of their leg. Razor-sharp.

It's incredible.

[narrator] But their most dangerous weapon is their beak.

One of the reasons the head and the neck is such a target,

that's a lot of where their display is.

It's not just the feathers, it's not just the tail,

it's the colours. And that bright snood

is very important for attracting females and showing dominance.

And if you actually do damage to any of this,

you're really going to hurt that bird's chances

of being able to attract a mate.

[narrator] They twist and turn,

trying to pin their opponent in a battle-ending hold.

They'll actually sometimes headlock

and almost wrestle them into submission.

Like holding it in a half-nelson.

[narrator] After all that fighting,

most brothers would want nothin to do with one another.

But not wild turkeys.

The loser brother becomes a wingman

and bodyguard during mating.

You will actually get brothers that will display in unison.

This kind of reproductive strategy

is called kin selection.

So even though the subordinate brother

is a real integral part in this amazing display,

it won't get to mate.

[narrator] So why do it?

He probably hates his brother because he's better looking, right? Like it's really interesting.

But in fact, his own DNA is still being passed on.

They share a huge amount of DNA.

He might not have the action.

Who knows if his brother dies or even gets shot,

then he may well be able to step up and be the main man himself.

[narrator] Though they fight,

this is a brotherhood that lasts.

Brothers may well spend the rest of their lives together.

It's a very strong bond.

[narrator] In the end,

these beastly brothers have each other's backs.

Well, at least one of them does

All species fight their own kind.

But for the top of every food chain, there is no contest

this is an apex alpha.

[growling]

When I think apex predator,

what traits we'd have to pick?

Trait A, trait B, trait C.

A lot of those traits that Nile Crocodile

already inherently has.

They're not always pleasant to look at,

but to me, it's phenomenal.

[narrator] This veteran apex has perfectly evolved.

It's an ancient predator, and it is built for the kill.

The ancestors of the Nile Crocodile date back

to about 240 million years old.

[narrator] This prehistoric predator

has an appetite for danger.

They're really not afraid of anything.

It will take on other amazing predators.

It has been known to eat hyenas, wild dogs,

and even the king of the jungle, the lion.

[narrator] But a thirsty young wildebeest

can be perilously unaware of what lurks beneath.

It's sunny, the water is shimmering,

and you're just going to go take a sip.

So you prance right in. Unbeknownst to you,

there is a 15-20 foot Nile crocodile in the water,

its eyes peeping out, watching you as you go in.

And it has a plan to ambush and eat you.

[intense music]

[narrator] When this apex alpha attacks,

it's armed to the teeth.

You notice the teeth right away.

With between 64 and 68 of these razor-sharp teeth

that it loses and gains back throughout its lifetime.

[narrator] Their brutish smile also has force.

They've got that huge mouth that clamps shut

on whatever it wants, with great power.

5,000 pounds per square inch.

Stronger than a polar bear.

It's stronger than a lion,

and it's certainly stronger than us humans.

And that means that once you're gripped, you're gripped.

But if you wanted to open its mouth,

you'd have to use a hydraulic car jack.

It actually is able to grab the wildebeest

with this immense strength, clenches down incredibly hard,

and then drags that wildebeest into the water and submerges it.

But the jaw only works one way, open-close, open-close.

It can't twist and grind.

So the way that these animals break up a meal

is that they go down into the water,

potentially drowning anything that's still kicking.

And then they start to do what's called a death roll.

They spin and spin and spin,

which allows them to shed and tear off parts of their prey,

which are then small enough to swallow whole.

[narrator] And it's not just death on the Nile

for this predator's prey.

They're ridiculously cosmopolitan.

With a name like Nile Crocodile you might think,

well, they're just going to be in the Nile.

But they're actually found in central and East Africa. And all the way south to South Africa.

[narrator] But that's not all.

They've also spread out to the shallow coastal systems.

Although the Nile crocodile is a freshwater species,

they actually are incredibly tolerant of saltwater.

Being able to go into saltwater is no mean feat.

You've got all that salt, which absorbs moisture.

The crocodile doesn't want to end up all wrinkly

and craggy, he's wrinkly and craggy enough.

They have special glands on their tongue,

which almost act as like weird mouth kidneys

that allow them to excrete the extra salt

they're picking up.

[narrator] Whether in salt water or fresh water

this apex rules.

When in the water, their body literally undulates

from side to side, from the tip of their nostril

to the end of their tail.

Their tail is so immensely powerful, it propels them.

And this is where more of its stealth work comes in.

It can move slowly at the water's surface

without disturbing any drinking animals

and then when it gets within about a meter,

that massive, powerful tail kicks in.

This is just a rudder of muscle.

It propels the crocodile forward like a missile,

allowing it to leap clean out of the water.

Even more phenomenal than that,

it can launch itself directly upwards

and actually get prey that is in an overhanging tree above it.

[narrator] This hunter prizes patience.

Nile crocodiles can spend two hours under the water,

and they do this by shutting down various parts of their body

and changing up their metabolism.

So they have a four-chambered heart.

But when they go underwater,

one of those chambers shuts down.

This helps conserve oxygen.

They redirect blood flow in their body,

so it's only going to the most vital of organs.

They're not wasting oxygen on bits that they're not needing.

This is where they go for one extra little bonus.

These animals will actually swallow rocks.

So you heard that correctly. Crocs eat rocks,

some crocodiles have actually been found to have

up to five pounds of its body mass in rocks.

[narrator] Scientists have no definite answer

on whether this helps with buoyancy or aids in digestion

but one thing does rock and that is their eyesight.

They have an incredible field of vision.

It has these little eyes that stick above the water

like the periscope of a submarine.

[narrator] But sometimes, even these covert assailants

have eyes bigger than their bellies.

That's when they need backup.

Although a lone solitary hunting species,

it's also found frequently to hunt cooperatively.

Because if one croc has made a dive for an animal

that's maybe a little too big or maybe a little too strong,

it won't be too long before another croc comes in

thinking he can get a slice of the action.

And then another croc, and then another croc.

And what we see is this melee of jaws

ripping this poor thing to pieces.

But, on the upside, everyone goes home with a goody bag.

[growling]

There aren't many reptiles that I would feel

incredibly frightened to be in close proximity to.

But the Nile crocodile is certainly one of them.

The Nile crocodile ticks each and every box

you could possibly want for an apex predator.

And if you ask me, he looks like a bit of a badass as well.

[narrator] This ancient alpha may not be a classic beauty,

but it's not shedding any tears.

The battlefield can be ugly

and the competitors can be too.

They're fowl.

The assaults are unsightly.

But through it all,

they roll with the punches.

Warts and all.