All language subtitles for Africa.S01E05.1080p.BluRay.x265-KONTRAST

AFRICA

ATTENBOROUGH: North Africa.

High in Morocco's Atlas Mountains,

Barbary macaques shiver
in the icy cedars.

(CHATTERS)

The ancestors of these monkeys
fled here from a disaster

that overwhelmed their homeland.

Now, trapped in this
isolated corner of Africa,

there's no going back
to the land farther south.

Even in this snowy refuge,

there's a reminder
of what drove them here.

The unbridled power of the African sun.

Under its intense gaze,
the snow can't last for long.

Meltwater should bring life
to the lowlands.

Hundreds of torrents cascade southwards.

But each is flowing towards extinction.

Just 200 miles south of the mountains,

the rivers are vaporised.

Life has been burnt off the land.

This was the apocalypse
from which the Barbary macaques fled,

the sudden and unstoppable advance

of the greatest desert on the planet.

SAHARA

The Sahara transformed North Africa.

Today, it covers an area
the size of the United States,

one-third of the entire
African continent.

This is one of the hottest
places on Earth.

The merciless sun,

a colossal 15-million-degree
nuclear reactor,

blasted life
from the surface of the land.

It still wreaks havoc.

A faint breath of wind
can be the beginning of disaster.

(RUMBLING)

Nomads tell
of entire villages being engulfed,

camel trains disappearing,

and people buried alive
inside their tents.

(RUMBLING)

A sandstorm can be
a thousand miles across.

It seems miraculous that anything
can survive such devastation.

The Saharan apocalypse
wiped out many creatures,

but today, some still cling on

in the lands around the margins
of the great desert.

It's very dry here.

Some years, the rains fail entirely.

A lone Grevy's zebra.

He weighs close to half a tonne,

and can go for three days
without drinking.

Like the macaques, his forebears
were refugees from the advancing Sahara.

(RUMBLING)

The land is scrubby and dry.

(GRUNTING)

(NEIGHING)

But this stallion
has claimed it as his own.

He's been waiting months for visitors.

Female visitors.

If they like his territory,
they might stay a while.

It's his first chance to mate
for a very long time.

(GRUNTING)

Hardly a success.

Perhaps his visitors are looking
for a more impressive partner.

There's another setback.

The females were being followed.

A posse of young males -
every one a rival.

It's time to separate the men
from the boys.

(WHINNYING)

One by one, the stallion sees them off.

The females had ringside seats.

And his prowess has not gone un-noted.

Machismo gives way to tenderness.

Around here, you have to take
every opportunity,

be it for food, for water, or for mates.

Female Grevy's are a fickle bunch.

The herd have decided to move on.

All of them.

The stallion may never see them again.

But there's a chance that one
is now carrying his foal.

In this harsh land,
that must count as a triumph.

The sun's power cannot, however,
reach far underground.

Below, in stark contrast,
conditions are stable and tolerable.

And home to one of the planet's
strangest mammals.

Meet the naked mole rats.

These sabre-toothed sausages
wouldn't last a day in the desert.

Special filming tunnels allow us to see

how well adapted they are
to the subterranean life.

They can run equally well
in both directions,

so tight space is no problem.

They have lost their fur.

And most bizarrely,
they live in social colonies,

much like termites or ants.

After time spent digging,
the workers come together to relax.

But one here is very different
from all the rest.

Their queen,

twice as heavy as her subjects,

and not afraid to throw
her weight around.

She is the mother of every
worker in the colony,

and exists in a near-continuous
state of pregnancy.

Even now, two dozen babies
are pulsating within her swollen belly.

Just occasionally,
one of her brood is raised differently,

a daughter becomes a princess.

Until now, this youngster's
enjoyed a lazy, privileged life.

But not for much longer.

She has a destiny to fulfil.

The surface is a place where
no naked mole rat can survive for long.

But a princess will risk everything
to search for a partner.

The quest is urgent.

There's an enticing smell in the air.

A seductive scent
draws her downwards, to safety.

She's sniffed out a partner.

He too is alone,

and eager to start a new colony
in his lonely burrow.

Two months later,
the princess has become a queen.

And a new tyranny begins.

Tough though they are, such refugees

living on the edges of North Africa

cannot survive
in the heart of the Sahara.

And yet here, in southern Nigeria,

there are creatures preparing to journey

right across the centre
of that great desert.

Barn swallows.

(CHIRPING)

They've spent the winter
roosting in a forest of elephant grass.

But now, it is time for them to leave.

All two million of them.

They're tiny, each weighing the same
as a couple of one-pound coins,

yet the journey
to their breeding grounds in Europe

is over 3,000 miles long.

Ahead of them lies a vast death trap.

The Sahara is too large to go around.

The swallows have no choice
but to meet it head-on.

It will take one of nature's
greatest feats of navigation

to cross this lifeless wasteland.

A wilderness that stretches
not just to the horizon,

but almost beyond imagination.

It's an immense blank space on the map.

In spite of the Sahara's reputation,

less than one-fifth of it is sand.

The rest is stone and wind-scoured rock.

The sun not only bakes the land,

it warps its appearance.

The super-heated air, rising
upward from the desert surface,

distorts the distant scene.

A reflection of the sky
shimmers on the sands,

a mirage.

The sun is an illusionist.

To thirsty travellers,
a mirage can resemble a lake

which agonisingly recedes
as it's approached.

And swaying camels coming to the rescue

transform into dry, spiny acacia trees.

To cross this confused,
shimmering landscape,

many swallows will need to find
real water amongst the mirages.

Even in the Sahara,
rain does sometimes fall

and that is sufficient
for plants to survive,

providing they have
the right adaptations.

Rising from the sand,
a dried-out ball of twigs.

In strong winds, it can travel.

This plant may have been dead
for 100 years.

Yet its name suggests
that all is not lost,

for this is a resurrection plant.

Around here, rain might only
fall once or twice a year.

But if you're searching for decades,
that might be enough.

Dead limbs absorb water
and unfurl in a matter of minutes.

But the resurrection plant
needs one more miracle.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

Rain must fall on its branches

before they dry out and close up again.

Within hours, shoots emerge.

In just a few weeks,

they flower and develop seeds
of their own.

Then, before they can grow any larger,

the sun kills them.

But their seeds live on,
ready for when the rains return,

even if that is a century from now.

North Africa wasn't always so brutal.

Scattered across the Sahara
are glimpses of life

before the apocalypse
swept over the land.

In the north, a petrified forest,
trees turned to stone.

Remains from a far distant,
wetter past.

White sediments in the heart
of the Sahara are the dried-out remains

of what was once
the world's largest lake.

In the east, ruined cities
hark back to a time of plenty.

And here, deep inside Libya,
is Messak Settafet.

Carved here are hundreds
of images of animals,

all drawn from life.

Ghosts from a greener time.

Remarkably, a remnant
of this old North Africa survives.

Bou-Hedma in Tunisia
is sustained by mountain rains.

It's a relic of the savannah
that once carpeted North Africa.

The vast grassland vanished

when a shift in the Earth's orbit
drove the rains south,

and in perhaps
only a matter of centuries,

the Sahara Desert
overwhelmed North Africa.

The evidence suggests this took place
around 6,000 years ago.

In evolutionary terms,
that's no time at all.

And life has had little chance
to adapt to this new world.

Only a few tough specialists

can cope with life amongst the dunes.

Camels are sometimes called
ships of the desert.

But, like the swallows,
they're really only visitors here.

These ships can certainly
cross the Sahara,

but even they can't make their home
in the harshest places.

Left to wander the desert by themselves,
camels would not survive.

They depend on their human navigators
to find oases and wells.

Saharan folklore
is full of tales of caravans

that missed a well
by a few hundred metres and disappeared.

This is the White Desert, in Egypt.

The landscape is littered
with giant chalk pillars,

carved by innumerable sandstorms.

This glaring white oven is lethally hot.

Food here is almost non-existent.

But there's a rare gift
from a passing camel.

The smell has lured dung beetles
from miles around.

For them, this is manna from heaven.

One dung ball could provide enough food

to last this female beetle
the rest of her life.

But she has a problem.

To keep it fresh,
she must bury it in moist ground.

And that's not easy to find.

The temperature
has already risen 10 degrees.

This lizard avoids the roasting sand.

Only 30 centimetres above the surface,
it's significantly cooler.

The reverse-pushing technique
is certainly the fastest way

to keep the ball rolling.

But it does have one drawback.

You can't see where you're going.

Disaster!

Stuck between two dunes.

The dung ball is twice her weight,

but the urge to keep pushing
is inextinguishable.

Now, it's 41 degrees Celsius.

Soon, she'll be baked alive.

Her survival instinct, in the end,
overrides her love for dung.

(WINGS FLAPPING)

Much of the Sahara is uninhabitable,

but there are rare places where
there is some possibility of survival.

Places where, by strange chance,
there is water.

Waw an-Namus is an extinct volcano.

From space, it's a remote,
black scar on the Libyan Sahara.

Yet there are other colours here,
colours rarely seen on the desert floor.

Blue and green.

Rain fell thousands of years ago
when the Sahara was green

and percolated deep into the ground.

And here water from this vast,
ancient reservoir rises to the surface.

These pools offer another glimpse
of the Sahara's past.

Wherever there's water in North Africa,

living relics from this wetter time
have a chance to cling on.

This oasis is fed
by a hot volcanic spring.

Slightly away from the
stream of near-boiling water,

it's cooler and fish can live.

These are Tilapia.

Hatchlings stick close to their mother.

There are other dangers here
beside the scalding water.

Particularly at night.

The crocodiles are stealthy.

And the Tilapia
are almost blind in the darkness.

In panic, they all leap
to escape the hunter's approach.

But this female can't abandon her brood.

The crocodiles won't be thwarted.
They, too, can leap.

With first light, the crocodiles
lose the element of surprise,

and the battle is over for now.

The mother fish has survived,
but where are her young?

All present and correct.

They spent the whole night
sheltering in her mouth.

The contest will be repeated at sunset.

There is nowhere else to go.

Oases are always sought
by desert travellers

but not all are as they seem.

This is the great Ubari Sand Sea,

in the heart of the Sahara.

These swallows have travelled
1,500 miles since they left Nigeria.

Their superb powers of navigation
will eventually guide them to Europe,

but now they,
and other thirsty migrants,

need to find a speck of blue
amidst this ocean of sand.

(CHIRPING)

And here it is,

Umm al-Maa.

Here, too, ancient groundwater
wells up to the surface.

(CHIRPING)

But the birds need to be careful,

for the sun has played a terrible trick.

This oasis is poisonous.

Intense evaporation
over thousands of years

has left the water saltier than the sea.

As if to underline the horror,

the place is infested
by vast swarms of flies.

(BUZZING)

But this plague is the birds' salvation.

The flies are filled with freshwater,
filtered from the brine.

So, like a desert wanderer
squeezing a drink from a cactus,

the birds get all the water they need
from the flies' bodies.

More and more migrants join in.

Wagtails.

(SQUAWKING)

This is the birds' only stopover.

It gives them enough fuel
to escape from the Sahara and Africa.

Away from an oasis, it seems remarkable
that anything can live at all.

The temperature of the sands
can exceed 70 degrees Celsius.

There's not the slightest trace of water
left at the surface.

And when that happens,
the Sahara itself cries out.

(CRACKING AND HUMMING)

Billions of sliding grains
generate a hum

that echoes
across miles of empty desert.

These are the Sahara's
legendary singing dunes.

(HUMMING)

Over time, these avalanches add up.

If you watch the dunes for long enough,
something remarkable is revealed.

One and a half years
flash past in a matter of seconds.

On this timescale,
the dunes are like a stormy sea.

An unstoppable tsunami of sand.

In this immense,
ever-shifting landscape,

it's easy to see how
a lost traveller could succumb

to what's been called
the Sahara's only endemic disease -

madness.

Can anything survive
the North African desert

when the sun is at its fiercest?

It's approaching midday.

A fringe-toed lizard is hungry.

He's on a stakeout.

Flashy scales reflect
some of the sun's rays.

Nevertheless,
the heat is almost unbearable.

His prey hasn't left home all day.

The lizard is the last animal
still out on the dunes.

But even he can't take it any more.

To survive longer,
you'd need a spacesuit.

And in a way,
that's what these insects have.

Silver ants' armoured skin
reflects light.

They can tolerate temperatures
that would kill any other land animal.

Even so, they can only survive for
less than 10 minutes in the midday sun.

Time is precious.

The ants race to find food
as soon as their predators go to ground.

They can't afford to waste
a second getting lost,

so they spin
to take a bearing from the sun.

They log every change of direction,
every footstep

in order to know exactly where they are
and where their nest lies.

Only four minutes to spare and
they've found a victim of heat stroke.

A meal.

But it's going to take
a monumental effort to get it home.

Three minutes to go and they're
nearing their maximum temperature,

an astounding 53 degrees Celsius.

But there are already casualties.

One minute left,
and they're not going to make it.

Something has to change.

The silver ant is the hardiest
of all desert inhabitants.

Even so, it can only survive outside
in the middle of the day

for a matter of minutes.

Now, the desert belongs
to the sun alone.

The sun has scorched life
from the Sahara.

And yet the vast desert it created
is a source of life half a world away.

The advancing Sahara
vaporised the world's largest lake,

leaving behind the silvery remains
of countless microscopic algae.

In winter, the wind carries away
700,000 tonnes

of this mineral-rich dust every day.

It blows from here
all the way to South America,

where, astonishingly,
it fertilises the Amazon Rainforest.

A striking demonstration
of the reach of this mighty continent.

Throughout its long history,

Africa has influenced the entire planet.

It was the cradle of
a remarkable array of land animals

that spread across the globe.

And, of course,
it was the ancestral home of all of us.

AFRICA
EYE TO EYE

ATTENBOROUGH: This is the tale
of two of the Africa team's

most challenging desert expeditions.

(ENGINE REVVING)

One focused on a minuscule creature
with an incredible turn of speed.

The other on a subject so slow,
to film it in action would take years.

(CLANGING)

In both cases, the Sahara
would push crews to the limit

in pursuit of the perfect shot.

In Tunisia, the mission is to
capture footage of moving sand dunes,

something that's never been tried
like this before.

WRIGHT: The problem is that
because the dunes move so slowly,

we're going to have to leave
cameras here for about 20 months,

and that just means there's
a huge potential for things to go wrong.

ATTENBOROUGH: And with filmmaking,
if something can go wrong,

it usually will.

Two local shepherds, Amur and Nasser,

have volunteered
to tend the equipment full-time.

The camera tower will be the tallest
structure for as far as the eye can see.

And there are three other cameras
at lower angles.

All this toil will yield
surprisingly scant results.

WRIGHT: They've programmed the cameras
to take one photo every day,

that's only 365 photographs a year.

Which, when you run it at normal speed,
just over 14 seconds.

I think it's taken longer
to explain what's going to happen

than the end result will actually be.

ATTENBOROUGH: The cameras are left to
the mercy of the sun, wind and sand.

In the meantime, crews are shooting
all across North Africa.

In Egypt, the challenge
is to get into the world

of the most heat-tolerant
desert animal -

the silver ant.

They're really small,
they're really fast.

Like, you're not too sure
if you've seen an ant.

ATTENBOROUGH: The crew have three weeks
to gather the footage they need.

SLOSS: We're going to try
a tracking shot on this ant nest.

Moving forward towards it,

as the ants pour out of the hole
in their millions.

ATTENBOROUGH: Not only
are these insects super-fast,

they also keep antisocial hours.

BARTLAM: The thing is,
we need to be out here

in the middle of the day
to film these ants.

They don't do what they do
when it's nice and cool

at 7:00, 8:00 in the morning.

SLOSS: I can't remember
ever being in a place

where the wind was so relentless
and the temperatures were so high.

ATTENBOROUGH: The insufferable heat
is not the only problem.

Dangers are everywhere.

(BARTLAM SCREAMING)

There's a really fat scorpion,
it's really big!

One, two, three...

(MAN SPEAKING IN LOCAL DIALECT)

This might kill.

- BARTLAM: Yeah?
- Yeah.

It's big and they have
a lot of poison in his dart thing.

- SLOSS: What, that thing there?
- (BOTH SCREAMING)

BARTLAM: Oh, my god!

HAWASH: Don't touch it!

ATTENBOROUGH:
The scorpion will be released

far, far away from the camp,
in a shady spot.

No such luck for the team.
They're back to work in the midday sun.

This is... This is too much.

This is crazy! This is crazy!

ATTENBOROUGH: Indeed.

The heat seems to have given Kat
and Warwick a touch of Saharan madness.

SLOSS: The plan is to do an experiment,

to find out how
fast these little ants can run.

BARTLAM: So we're going to lay this
along the floor,

and hopefully an ant will
run alongside it,

and we can film it at high speed.

And from that, calculate their...
their speed,

and perhaps try and relate it
to how fast that would be for a human.

Like me.

ATTENBOROUGH:
Silver ants are expert navigators,

using the angle of the sun
to calculate their position.

But for our team, even basic
mental tasks are becoming a challenge.

SLOSS: Count a second.

See one running and then count a second,
see how far it gets.

It's quite difficult
to count a second, isn't it?

No, it's "one".

"One", yeah!

BARTLAM: There he goes.

He's gone 10 centimetres
in four seconds,

but we're running
at 500 frames a second,

which is 20 times normal time.

So, in fact, he's covered
those 10 centimetres in...

We know that he does
half a metre in one second.

Half a metre per second, yep.

- 50 centimetres in one second, roughly.
- Yeah, yeah.

So, how many body lengths is that?

He's maybe doing
five body lengths a second

if he's two metres tall, like I am.

BARTLAM: Are you?

Yeah. That's how much more
than a normal man I am.

ATTENBOROUGH: Eventually, the duo decide
that if the silver ants were our size,

they'd be doing 280 miles an hour.

They're one of the fastest sprinters
in the animal kingdom.

No wonder we've been
struggling to film them.

It does explain a few things.

Ant-letics!

Knowing the exact speed of the ants
is all well and good,

but there's still a great deal of work
to be done before the shoot finishes.

However, in Tunisia,
there's no shortage of time,

and hopefully no news is good news
as far as Amur and Nasser are concerned.

The final week in Egypt, and the crew
seem to be adapting to life in the oven.

Practice is making perfect,
and the sequence is coming together.

SLOSS: I think we've got
some lovely shots.

Every single shot's
been really hard-earned.

ATTENBOROUGH:
But getting down in the ants' world

is now taking its toll on the kit.

It's running to stand still,

the business of blowing dust
off these things.

(SPRAYING)

BARTLAM: Oh, no!

It's got dust in it!

(CRUNCHING)

Ooh, crunch.

SLOSS: I think these ants
are stunning-looking.

Near-impossible to film, I think,
because of the speed they had.

But, you know, I've come to love them
over the days and weeks.

ATTENBOROUGH:
With the sequence in the bag,

Warwick wants the
final traditional sunset shot.

It's the best time of day
to film sunsets, in the evening.

That's experience that tells me that,

I've been doing this for years.
You learn these things.

Thanks to Warwick's experience,
including sunsets, he and Kat

have captured the extraordinary life
of the speedy silver ant.

Over a year later, in Tunisia,

it's time to take down
the sand dune cameras.

Bonjour!

- Nasser.
- Amur.

Hi. Hello again.

WRIGHT: So how's it been,
has it been good?

It's okay, but two days ago,
we have a little bit, small problem.

After surviving 600 days in the desert,

the small problem is that
the cameras have been vandalised.

I'm really hot and bothered now,
it's 40 degrees,

and someone's smashed the cameras.

Not been a good
start to the day, to be honest.

ATTENBOROUGH:
There's no doubt the dunes have moved.

But the question is
whether the equipment has survived.

That is amazing.
The camera's still here.

I guess maybe it just took them so long
to get through the toughened plastic,

that they felt they had
made so much noise

that they were worried
about the guards coming,

because they only sleep
a couple of hundred metres away.

After almost two years of waiting,
it's the moment of truth.

We're going to find out,
to find out whether or not

the cameras
have actually recorded anything.

It's just hugely stressful because
it's never been done before.

ATTENBOROUGH: The footage is
a surreal window into a secret world,

the private life of a sand dune.

(INDISTINCT TALKING)

The Africa team
struggled under the burning sun

and driving winds
that are hallmarks of the Sahara.

They went home with an
enormous admiration for the creatures

that spend their entire lives battling
to survive in this brutal desert world.