Original subtitles

Cities...

..the fastest-growing habitat on the planet.

A land of opportunity...

..for animals of all shapes...

..and sizes.

This unnatural world...

..presents unique challenges.

But for those able to adapt...

..and take advantage of the riches on offer...

..the urban jungle is quickly becoming the new wild.

SIREN BLARES

MOBILE PHONE BEEPS

The daily routine.

Wake up,

get up...

..get to work.

Over half a billion people across the world

commute into cities every day...

..in search of their pot of gold.

But they're not alone.

The world's wildlife is following suit.

Be it by land...

..underground...

..or by air.

..animals are travelling into the world's cities...

..seeking their own fortune.

TANNOY: Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.

They are becoming wild commuters.

This female African penguin is guarding a nest...

..in the most surprising of places.

A back garden in South Africa's second-biggest city.

The African penguin population has crashed,

dropping by 80% in the last 50 years...

..due to food shortage, pollution and habitat destruction.

But this female and others like her

have found temporary sanctuary in the city.

The hustle and bustle helps keep predators away.

The female has spent the day guarding the nest

while her partner's been away fishing.

Her wait, though, is almost over.

He has come ashore on the nearby beach...

..but now he must find his way back to her.

PENGUIN CALLS

He's not alone.

Other penguins have also arrived on the beach...

..and are getting a lot of unwanted attention.

Keen to get back to their mates...

..the group, known as a waddle, continue their journey.

Penguins are more used to hopping over boulders than steps...

..but the same skills seem to apply.

They stick together for safety.

In the ocean, they're at risk from great white sharks.

But crossing the city,

they face something potentially even more dangerous.

ENGINE STARTS

Cars.

The penguins have hit rush hour.

The only way back to the nest is on the city's roads and pavements.

CAR HORN BEEPS

Exposed to the hectic streets, they become disoriented...

..and the group scatters.

others take cover in the drains...

PENGUIN CALLS

..whilst a few lose their way completely.

The waddle has broken down...

..and, worst of all, they still need to find their partners.

African penguins are monogamous.

The lifelong bond between the female and the male is unbreakable.

CAR HORN BEEPS

And he'll do whatever it takes to find his way back to her.

He just needs to bide his time.

And as night descends...

..he makes his move.

And, along with the rest of the waddle, breaks cover.

With eyesight adapted to see in the dark depths of the ocean...

..they quickly find their way...

..and regroup.

But their black and white aquatic camouflage can work against them.

CAR HORN BEEPS

Up to 30 penguins die each year on the roads.

City living can be dangerous.

In a single fishing trip,

African penguins can travel up to 60 miles.

And in just a few metres, the male and the rest of the group

will be back with their partners.

PENGUINS CHIRP

After a long day apart,

the couple are finally reunited.

Soon there'll be another mouth to feed -

a precious addition to this endangered population.

Then, their commute between city and sea,

will become even more important.

PENGUIN CHIRPS

These African penguins have found that Cape Town provides

a vital element that's missing from their wild lives.

A safe place to nest.

Whilst also giving them relatively easy access

to their fishing grounds.

The best of both worlds.

Which is what all commuters strive for.

Across the globe, other animals are also finding the city can offer

opportunities that are harder to come by in the natural world.

And in the barren Negev desert in the heart of Israel...

..there's an animal who is focused on just one thing.

The need to breed.

This young three-year-old male ibex was left behind when the rest

of his herd made their daily commute into the nearest city.

Ibex are mountain experts.

And their specially adapted hooves

and fine sense of balance

enable them to negotiate the urban landscape with ease.

They've come to Mitzpe Ramon for an easy meal.

Its human residents have irrigated the land...

..and created a green oasis.

This adolescent male ibex has extra motivation for his journey today.

The breeding season is very short for ibex.

Each female is only in season for one day a year.

So there's no time to waste if he's to have any chance of mating.

Mitzpe Ramon is a sharp contrast

to the serenity of the surrounding desert.

But with twice the normal amount of testosterone in his blood...

..he has a one-track mind...

..and won't be distracted.

His arrival seems to have piqued the interest of the females.

He singles out females in season

using a sense organ in the roof of his mouth.

DOG BARKS

His first advances are not met with much enthusiasm.

Nor his second.

Or third.

What's more, he's not the only male that's made the trip into town.

There are already bigger...

..stronger...

..more experienced bucks here...

..with years more practice in the art of seduction.

This tongue waggle,

part of his courtship display...

..apparently makes him irresistible.

Though, ultimately, the females will be the judge of that.

Undeterred, the young male keeps trying his luck.

His behaviour has not gone unnoticed and won't be tolerated.

Fully grown male ibex have the biggest horns of their kind.

Evolved to pack a mighty punch.

Half the larger male's weight...

..and with substantially smaller horns...

..the younger male concedes defeat.

His attempt to mate has been foiled by one of his own.

It's an important lesson for him on his road to maturity.

CAR ALARM

And while the victor lets off some excess steam...

..the pretender returns to the desert alone.

The next day, the young male is back.

And this time he's just concentrating on bulking up.

Maybe next year he'll be a contender.

The urban world is full of food...

..and, while some commuters seek out what we grow and nurture,

others are more interested in what we throw away.

Like many cities, this busy ski resort in Colorado

is a hotbed of fast food.

And as night falls...

..a group of very hungry animals

enter Aspen in search of leftovers.

Black bears.

Every evening in autumn, they wander in from the surrounding hills...

..on the hunt for an easy meal.

Most Aspen residents keep their rubbish secure.

But the bears quickly find the bins that have been forgotten.

When winter arrives, they'll begin a six-month hibernation...

..during which they'll eat nothing,

so they need to pile on the pounds now.

To have any chance of surviving winter,

they must eat more than 20,000 calories a day.

With a sense of smell 100 times more sensitive than ours...

..no wasted food goes undiscovered.

SIREN

Come daybreak,

the destruction caused by the bears' night raids is clear to see.

RADIO: Four, four, four.

We're taking a report of a bear wandering in the backyard...

Charlie Martin is the Aspen police force's wildlife officer

and the first port of call for bear disturbances.

Bears have done a lot of damage over the years.

They like to get into cars. They're pretty clever,

and they've learned how to open the door handle on a vehicle.

It will rip the door panels off, the interior.

It will leave a present, usually, in there.

It's very unpleasant!

Their criminal streak doesn't end there.

In Aspen, they're responsible for more house break-ins

than human burglars.

RADIO: In the backyard.

Can you respond, please?

In fact, wherever they can in North America,

black bears are using their wild skillset

to turn their dextrous paws to almost anything.

PIANO CLANGS

LAUGHTER

In the search for food, no door is left unopened.

Aargh!

Oh, my...!

CAR HORN BEEPS Come on, bear, move!

Oh, my God!

It can be upsetting for the people involved,

but the black bears are simply following their noses.

For them, it has been a very successful commute.

With the arrival of winter,

they're well fed and ready for hibernation.

The bears rely on sheer audacity...

..but for the majority of commuters, it's about playing by the rules...

..and working hard to get what they need from the city.

Here in England's capital,

over three million people commute to work each day.

Busy people with busy lives.

But there's one very important Londoner

who can truly say that she is the busiest of them all.

A queen buff-tailed bumblebee.

Weighing just half a gram.

It's February, and she's emerging from a six-month hibernation.

To make the most of what London has to offer,

she must raise her own army of inner-city commuters.

To do so, she'll need to find a base.

London is not an easy place to find a home,

but, luckily, there are still a few hidden gems fit for a queen.

Tucked away, dry, and well insulated...

..with plenty of space for a growing family.

This will do nicely.

As the rhythm of daily life continues

on London's busy streets...

..the queen stays at home...

..laying eggs that hatch into grubs...

..and then emerge as worker bees.

This is the queen's army

and it's tasked with a very important mission.

To find food.

On the face of it, a seemingly impossible job

in the urban world.

But like most cities, hidden away behind London's concrete walls,

office blocks and homes,

there's a treasure trove of food.

Gardens.

London has over three million of them.

They make up nearly a quarter of the city.

BIRDS CHIRP

Many bursting with flowers full of sugar-rich nectar -

just what the bumblebees need.

And all the workers have to do now...

..is find them.

Bumblebees can travel as far as seven miles a day

looking for food.

That's the equivalent of a human circumnavigating the globe ten times

just to get to the shops and back.

If they don't manage to feed every 40 minutes,

they risk starvation.

The key to the bumblebee' success

lies in their ability to navigate the urban world.

Like London's legendary cab-drivers, they use landmarks

to build up a mental map of their surroundings.

And, using the sun to get their bearings,

they can easily find their way to the best flower spots...

..and the most direct route to and from them.

BUMBLEBEE BUZZES

The industrious army work day in, day out...

..and with a worker bee able to carry its own body weight

in nectar and pollen back to the nest...

..the colony goes from strength to strength.

In just three months, the queen and her tireless workers

have harvested everything they need from London's gardens.

With the bountiful food available...

..and their extraordinary ability to find their way around...

..bumblebees, who have lost much of their wild habitat,

are now thriving in urban areas.

Navigation lies at the heart of every successful commute.

And there is one animal above all others

that truly has it mastered.

Even in one of the most complex cities in the world.

In Morocco, Fez, an epicentre of trade,

is a maze of nearly identical alleys...

..where GPS cannot penetrate.

For many travellers, it's easy to get lost here.

But there's one animal who can navigate this labyrinth with ease.

Pigeons.

Amongst the best urban navigators in the animal kingdom.

Their brain processes visual information three times faster

than a human can.

These highly intelligent birds can also orientate themselves

using their sense of smell...

..detecting slight chemical changes in the wind

from hundreds of miles away.

And with an internal sat nav system

tuned to the Earth's magnetic field...

..they're able to fly for thousands of miles with pinpoint accuracy.

These navigational superpowers

enable this group of pigeons here in Fez

to pick out one very specific rooftop

as a place to rest their wings and feed.

Here they know that they'll be safe.

It's a house owned by Adil Bendali,

a pigeon fancier since he was a young boy.

Adil looks after the pigeons that land on his roof

seven days a week...

..52 weeks a year.

He hasn't taken a holiday in 12 years.

But this is not a one-way relationship.

This is Fez, after all.

A place built on trade.

The pigeons must pay their way.

And Adil has a very specific trade in mind.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

He knows that there's something that pigeons produce here in Fez

that's deemed a precious commodity.

Droppings.

A key ingredient to the city's age-old leather tanning industry.

The ammonia in the droppings softens the leather

and gives the tannery a truly characteristic smell.

This technique has been used here for over a thousand years.

The supple leather it produces is the reason that merchants

persist in finding their way through Fez's maze of streets.

And also the reason why its inhabitants

have developed such a strong bond with these urban navigators.

But not all inner-city commuters

boast such a positive relationship with humans.

PIGEON COOS

Some that are feared rather than loved

have been forced underground.

With over five million people trying to get to work every day,

rush-hour in Thailand's capital is notoriously bad.

Some people here lose, on average, a month every year to commuting...

..and as the daily grind in Bangkok continues aboveground...

..a wild commuter shunned from society

has to make its journey...

..in the shadows.

Driven beneath the streets by its bad reputation,

born out of folk tales passed down from generation to generation.

Although attitudes have begun to change...

..the creature maintains a low profile.

The sewers are the perfect place to hide.

Even for a water monitor.

Only by filming under controlled conditions

can we see what underground life entails.

This giant lizard has a colossal appetite...

..and it's constantly on the search for food.

Being banished to the sewers has its advantages.

They're a maze of secret passageways...

..that crisscross Bangkok.

And as chaos reigns above...

..water monitors travel these hidden highways with ease.

By far the most popular destination

for over 100 regulars is here.

The city zoo.

Not an obvious place for a wild animal to enter voluntarily.

But the zoo welcomes them, and it is believed

to have the highest density of wild water monitors

in all of Thailand.

They're heading to one location...

..at a very specific time.

Lunchtime.

Water monitors can grow over two metres long

and weigh over 50kg.

And after a long journey,

hunger gets the better of these giant reptiles.

And frustrations begin to boil over.

HISSING

Meanwhile, inside the zoo restaurant,

friends Garn and Ju help out in the kitchen.

Their main chore is taking out the rubbish.

And they've got an ingenious solution

to recycle their food waste.

Water monitors are scavengers...

..and will eat almost anything.

For Garn and Ju, it makes working in a restaurant much more enjoyable.

Normally, water monitors are shy and secretive.

An encounter like this is unusual.

The water monitors have found their piece of paradise in Bangkok.

A place where they are welcomed.

And they return to the sewers with full stomachs.

Whilst most wild commuters travel in our cities,

some do the opposite -

from the city to the wild.

And for them, the stakes couldn't be higher.

Here in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies

is a place locked in the depths of winter.

At this time of year, Calgary is a refuge to over 10,000 mallards,

sheltering from the blistering cold.

The heat generated by people and industry

has kept the local waterways open and the ducks warm.

But what's lacking is enough food.

Each day, the ducks head out of town...

..to find something to eat.

In the surrounding countryside, temperatures plummet to minus-30.

QUACKING

Flying here burns 12 times more energy than resting...

..draining their reserves.

They land on a farm to feed on the spilled grain

beneath the snow.

FRENZIED QUACKING

This forgotten food is a life-saver.

The hungry ducks waste no time.

They're being watched.

QUACKING

It's a risk they take every day, but they have no choice.

If they stayed in Calgary, they'd starve to death.

The ducks are safe as long as they stay together

and hold the line.

But, exhausted from the journey, some can't keep their eyes open.

It has not gone unnoticed.

A prairie falcon won't turn down an opportunity like this.

FRENZIED QUACKING

Spooked by the attack, the ducks make a break for home.

This is what most of the predators have been waiting for.

Weighed down with their crops full of food, the ducks are much slower.

Gyrfalcons and bald eagles begin their aerial bombardment.

Escaping from the grip of one

can lead straight into the talons of another.

Going it alone is a gamble...

..but no duck will be safe until it reaches the shelter of Calgary.

Six times the duck's size and able to fly at 100mph,

the bald eagle is a formidable hunter.

It's a miraculous escape.

The large majority of the flock make it back to their sanctuary

in the city.

QUACKING

But tomorrow...

they'll have to run the gauntlet

all over again.

Across the world, people have welcomed wild commuters.

And many, like the ducks, have become familiar friends.

But as the urban world grows, we're coming into contact

with more unexpected animals

and making unlikely alliances.

Here in St Lucia, South Africa,

an agreement has been struck

with the most surprising animal of all.

One of the biggest and most dangerous on the continent.

After dark, when the streets begin to empty...

..the beasts arrive.

RADIO BEEPS

The night-time commuters are...

..hippos.

the best way to see what they're up to

is with a thermal camera.

Each night, they travel in from the nearby river.

They're after just one thing.

Grass.

A hippo can eat up to 50kg in a single sitting.

They can only pull it out with their lips,

so they prefer short grass,

which is easier for them to get hold of.

offer the perfect grazing,

especially for the young and old, who can't travel far.

So whole families head into town to dine out.

Which means, each night,

St Lucia's residents share their front lawns

with multiple one-tonne animals.

Having an animal this deadly this close

must be hard to tolerate.

But, miraculously, there has been little conflict.

Rather than force the hippos to change their behaviour...

..the people of St Lucia have changed theirs.

They've learned to give the hippos the respect and space they need

during their night-time raids.

CAR HORN BEEPS

And today, both sides are reaping the rewards.

The town has flourished

as tourists take advantage of this unique situation.

And the hippos, able to feast in peace,

leave with full stomachs.

HIPPOS GRUNT

The urban world has created opportunities

that are too good to ignore for some of the world's wildlife.

BEAR GRUNTS

Many animals have been displaced from their natural habitat

and are now using their wild skillset in the city

to help fulfil their needs.

It may just be the beginning of a new and very modern migration.

Commuting into cities can be a risky business for the world's wildlife.

PENGUINS SQUAWK

But during filming, the crew witnessed the work

of some extraordinary people...

..who help protect these animals.

Some of North America's black bears are not making life easy

for themselves.

In Lake Tahoe, they're giving up the commuting lifestyle

and moving in...

..under people's homes.

This is creating conflict with the residents.

Toogee Sielsch works for an organisation called the Bear League.

If there's a squatter under your house,

they're the people to call.

So, as I come on scene, and I've kind of assessed

the whole neighbourhood,

I find out where the crawl space entrance is.

Sometimes I can't see more than a foot in front of me.

That's an unnerving feeling.

These enclosed spaces are a perfect substitute for the bears' wild dens.

But they offer Toogee little chance of an easy escape.

10,000 miles away in Cape Town,

other wildlife experts face a different aggressive commuter.

SQUAWKING

This is the Penguin Patrol.

Their job is to stop endangered African penguins nesting in places

that would expose their chicks to the dangers of the city.

Oh, there is a nest here.

Hold on!

I'm tickling you.

Sometimes they're too late, and the pair have laid an egg.

Whilst the adults are carefully returned to the beach

in the hope that they will find a more suitable place to nest...

..the precious eggs are taken in to be hand-reared

at a specialist sea bird rescue centre.

Romy Klusener heads up the admissions department.

This is the 20th egg we've received this season.

Last year was a pretty crazy season for us.

We had two days where we received 40 eggs.

It was just absolute mayhem,

so your incubators are just chock-a-block full of eggs,

and then they just start hatching.

Once the eggs start hatching, obviously it starts filling up

in our chick room and we can have up to 40 chicks

crying and having to feed them, so it does get crazy up here.

Each chick must be monitored for 16 hours a day.

They are hand-fed

and even given their own teddy bear for company.

When the chicks have grown to over 1.5kg,

they're moved to the rehab centre.

They are now eating up to ten whole fish a day,

with the centre feeding them up to 800 kilos of fish a week.

African penguins are one of the fastest declining

of the world's 17 penguin species.

Scientists believe that climate change and the shortage of fish

are two of the main reasons behind the decline.

It requires a huge amount of dedication

to try and stem the tide.

After three months, the chicks join older birds

ready for release.

There's one last swim, a medical checkup and a final meal.

Now, they're ready to return to the wild.

The centre has raised and released over 7,000 chicks in recent years.

An astonishing 10% of the current wild population.

Back in Aspen, Toogee has located the bear.

It's now a case of safely moving it on.

The quickest and, in the long-term, kindest way to push the bear out

is with loud noises.

LOUD EXPLOSIONS

Once we get them out, our goal is to use aversion techniques

to deter them from wanting to come back.

We'll fire off a couple, two or three paintball rounds,

in its rump, to just let it know it doesn't belong here.

Black bears have an extremely long and good memory...

LOUD POPPING

..especially when it comes to things that are painful to them.

It's an excellent deterrent.

Go on! Go on now! Go on now!

Go on now! Go on now!

Go on now!

They'll maybe feel uncomfortable

and maybe feel a little bit of non-lethal pain.

Hey, now, hey!

They remember, "Ooh, I had a bad experience there.

"I don't want to be back there."

People think it's mean, but it's not.

What we're doing is we're keeping those bears alive.

The less interaction black bears can have with humans,

the better chance those bears have in surviving.

Anything I can do to help humans co-exist

without having to kill bears for no reason, I'm willing to do.

It takes some heroic individuals

to help wildlife find their place in this new habitat.

But with people like Toogee...

..and the army of penguin protectors looking out for them...

..there is hope that we can successfully co-exist

with these wild commuters.

Next time, there's conflict in the city...

..as animals are pushed out of land that was once theirs

to the edge of city life,

and find themselves fighting for their rightful place

in the newest habitat on Earth.

LOUD ROAR

These are the wild outcasts.