All language subtitles for Big Cats S01E03

Cats.

One family...

..40 different faces.

They captivate us,
like no other animal.

But surprisingly little is known
about these remarkable predators.

Right now, across the planet,

passionate people
are devoting themselves

to learning more about cats...

Oh, here we go,
we're downloading collar 7-5-0.

..going to extraordinary lengths
to get closer than ever before...

Holy mackerel.

He's a loose cannon.

..making new discoveries...

There you go. There we go.
Good job, Ginny.

..that reveal the intimate secrets
of their lives.

There it is, just in front of us.

Oh, that's very special.

At a time when all cats face
an uncertain future...

If we get complacent,
we could see tigers go extinct.

..this is an amazing age of
discovery...

..that's revolutionising...

There! ..how we view the cats.

Cheetahs are the world's
fastest land animal.

It's said they can accelerate faster
than a Ferrari.

But no-one knows for sure
what they're really capable of.

Professor Alan Wilson has spent
the last five years trying to find
out.

Cheetahs are amazing. They're so
much faster than anything else.

We've got an animal that has got
four times the acceleration

of Usain Bolt and more
than twice the top speed.

How can they not be
fascinating to study?

Alan wants to find the cheetahs'
top speed when it really counts -

during a hunt.

He's developed hi-tech collars
to record the cheetahs' speed,
position

and G-force while they're hunting.

The cheetahs soon disappear -

they cover hundreds of miles
in search of their prey.

That makes getting any information
back from the collars a real
challenge.

Alan's solution?

He's built his own plane... from
scratch...

..learnt how to fly it

and then filled it to the brim
with the latest technology.

We have a tracking antenna
on the wing.

We have a three-dimensional laser
scanner. We have a video camera on a
gimbal.

That's a missile guidance system.

OK, let's go find some cheetah.

Coming into the air is just such
a revolution for wildlife research.

OK, cheetahs on the left wing tip.

The cheetahs' collars record details
of their movements

300 times a second.

As the plane flies over, it locks on
to each collar and downloads the
data.

There we go, we're downloading
collar 7-5-0.

Each of those files represents one
hunt.

After recording over 500 hunts,

Alan clocked a cheetah's top speed
of 58mph.

Impressive.

But what surprised him was that most
hunts were much slower,

only half their potential top speed.

It turns out, for a cheetah,
hunting is not all about the sprint.

So what are they relying on
to catch their dinner?

To investigate,
Alan has enlisted three
volunteers...

..and a rag on a string.

These hand-reared cheetah love
chasing a moving lure...

..replicating how cheetahs behave
when hunting.

Prey animals don't run
in a straight line for long.

To follow their prey, cheetahs must
also weave and change direction.

This manoeuvring inevitably
slows them down...

..but it's also where
their real strength lies.

The accelerations and decelerations,

the G-forces they're pulling
in the turns, are very high.

The force going through their legs
would be enough to break a human leg
bone.

The lure's just taken the corner
and the cheetah's banking,

and see how it's using its tail
here,

which is helping control the roll
of its body

and helping stabilise it,
and it slowed down to turn,

then it's accelerating again
out of shot towards the lure.

Rather than speed,

the key to the cheetahs'
hunting success...

..is their agility.

We started believing that
cheetahs are the elite sprinter

and that was their main attribute.

What we've seen is that they're
gymnasts -

they can accelerate, they can
manoeuvre, they can turn. And that
is

what they're good at. Almost the
speed is a by-product of all that
athleticism.

So they are remarkable athletes

but we shouldn't think of them
as just a speed merchant,

there's much more to their
repertoire than that.

Having challenged our idea
of how cheetahs hunt,

Alan's now turning his attention
to where they hunt.

It's long been thought that open
grassland is their prime habitat

but even that may not be true.

What we're seeing is they're
actually even more successful in
trees,

in dense scrub and even in farmland.

And this makes sense.

Extraordinary manoeuvrability offers
a huge advantage when twisting and
turning

through a maze of trees and shrubs.

Here, cheetahs can more than match
their prey.

Even with the most familiar cats...

..there's still so much to
discover.

Lions.

Supreme hunters.

The strongest cat.

Could they also be the cleverest big
cat?

Dr Natalia Borrego certainly thinks
so,

and is on a mission to prove it...

..although it's not the easiest
thing to test in any cat,

let alone a lion.

Her theory is all down to the fact
that lions live together in prides.

So, cats are all solitary and
effectively live on their own,

except for lions -
they live in prides

and are very social. And we think
of other social species -

elephants, dolphins,
spotted hyenas, chimpanzees -

they're all very intelligent,

so, in theory, lions should be
the smartest of the cats.

The idea that social animals are
more intelligent is well established

but has never been proved for lions.

Cats are notoriously uncooperative.

What possible IQ test
could you set a lion?

Natalia's travelled to South Africa

for the chance to test
a slightly unusual pride.

Kevin Richardson has an
unconventional approach to working
with lions.

For ten years, he's lived alongside
these rescued animals...

..becoming part of the pride.

Kevin can act as a go-between
to the lions...

..giving Natalia a unique chance
to run her experiments.

So here looks good.

Natalia has designed a puzzle
for the cats to solve.

Mind your fingers. Yeah.

The lion must work out
how to open a door,

then reach its head inside
to get a reward.

Good.

There's nothing like this in
nature...

..so to Ginny, the lion,
it's a Rubik's cube.

And... Yeah.

If the lions come, you just pop it
down. I just pop it back down.

Ginny.

Here.

Looka.

First, she must figure out how
to pull the door with her paw.

Clever!

Aw, you're so clever.

You are so clever, my silly.
Oh, but it slams, eh?

What did it do?
I think she's more interested

in the box now than the food.

Here. Here.

Next, she needs to learn to stand
back...

There you go... and allow
the door to swing open...

Get your head out the way.

Get your head out the way.

There we go... before, finally,

she can reach her head
inside. Well done.

That's not bad. I mean,
that's... No, that's good.

Clever. One more time?

Yeah. Two more times?

I think a couple more times.
Couple more times.

There, see, she got it. Ah.

It's taken Ginny 20 minutes
to figure out...

Good job, Ginny... but now she's
cracked it. There we go.

Yeah, she's getting her
head out of the way now.

There we go. One more time.
OK, OK, cool.

There you go. Easy now she's got it.

Well done.
That deserves a round of applause.

Next comes the crucial part of the
test.

Kevin has brought the lions
into an enclosure

to allow pride mate Libby
to watch Ginny's efforts.

The ability to learn by
watching others

is considered a real sign of
intelligence.

It would put lions in the company
of the brainboxes of the natural
world.

Good. Yeah, you slam that door.
That's it, stay open. Good girl.

No, there she goes.
She can see what she's doing.

Yeah. Yeah, I think she's got it

and it's time to let Libby out.

If lions can learn from each other,

Libby should solve the puzzle in
seconds.

If not... Let's see what she does.

..it's going to take her
another 20 minutes.

Now she goes to the right side.

Oh, wow!
There, I think... I don't think

you can get any clearer than that.
No, that was very good.

That was amazing.
Yeah, here we go, my girl.

Here, here, here, here.
Good job, Libby.

It's the very first time anyone has
shown that lions can learn from each
other.

She knows that that's the one there.

Yeah. Yeah.

Natalia has tested leopards and
tigers.

Lions outperform them both.

It looks like Natalia's right...
Now she doesn't even bother.

..lions are the smartest big cat.

So the experiments
went really well, much better

than expected, and it really did
show that lions can learn socially
from each other.

Their intelligence
and ability to learn from each other

allows lions to hunt like no other
cat.

No cat is easy to study.

At least lions are relatively easy
to find.

But most cats are so elusive...

..secretive...

..and well camouflaged...

..that they're rarely seen,
let alone studied.

Learning more about these cats takes
people whose dedication knows no
bounds.

Someone like Dr Andrew Hearn.

Deep in the forests of Borneo,

a chance encounter set him off
on his life's mission.

I was part of an expedition team to
an uncharted area of Indonesian
Borneo.

One morning, I went along a trail
just to go and sit down and relax

and see what wildlife I could see.

And I was sat there quietly

and a small little red cat
walked out of the side

of the forest, walked across the
trail,

paused about 20 metres in front of
me.

I grabbed my notebook, started to
sketch it, but I had no idea what it
was.

It was only when I returned back
to the camp later that day,

spoke to some of the Indonesian
staff

and said, "Do you know this...
Do you know this cat?"

So it was only then that I learned
that this was this, um, the Borneo
bay cat,

and it quickly became apparent that
nothing was known about this animal.

The bay cat is one of the world's
least known cats...

..and Andrew has devoted every year
since to finding out anything about
them.

But the chance of him seeing another
one would be like winning the
lottery, twice!

So how do you study something
you can't see?

Camera traps.

Combining a sensitive motion sensor
with a high-resolution camera,

Andrew and his team deploy dozens of
these through the forest...

..and spend months trekking
through the jungle checking them.

Back at base, there are thousands
of hours of footage to plough
through.

Most contain no cats whatsoever...

..and, when cats do show up,
they may not be a bay cat...

but still.

Oh, clouded leopard. Fantastic.

Oh, look at that, having a little
yawn, and you can see

how exceptionally long canines
these cats have.

In proportion to their skull size,
they're the largest of any other
cat.

Ooh, so that is a marbled cat.

Now, these guys, I mean, we know
nothing about these cats,

other than they probably spend much
of their time up in the trees.

So as they walk along, they hold
this exceptionally long tail

almost horizontally

and that probably gives them balance
while moving through the canopy.

Ah, the leopard cat.

So this is really quite rare for us
to record this guy.

After scrolling through countless
videos, Andrew finally filmed a bay
cat...

..almost.

So this is the first-ever video
of the bay cat in the world.

It's not the finest video, it's not
the, er, the most exciting

but to us that was just spectacular.

We were absolutely blown away
when this thing

appeared on the camera traps
in front of us.

This is the fruit of 12 years'
labour...

..yet to this day only two videos
of wild bay cats exist...

..Andrew's,

and this one, more recently
captured.

No wonder we know
so little about these cats...

..and now it's a race against time.

Borneo has one of the highest rates
of deforestation in the world.

To protect some space for the bay
cat,

Andrew wants to find out
what kind of forest they need.

He has managed to capture
photographs which help shed some
light.

In - what is it? - 12-odd years,
we've only got something like 60
photos.

They're so rare, they're so hard
to come by.

Each photograph of the bay cat
is worth its weight in gold.

It helps to piece together the
ecology and the conservation needs
of these cats.

Much of the forest clearance in
Borneo is to make space for palm oil
plantations.

While some cats can survive in these
plantations, bay cats disappear.

When the forest changes to palm oil,

they no longer seem to use those
areas,

so this shows us that palm oil
really is one of the greatest
threats

to these cats on Borneo.

For the bay cat to survive,
some forest must be protected.

Andrew's determined to uncover
whatever else he can

about the mysterious bay cat...

..even if it takes another 12 years.

Camera traps are revolutionising

our understanding
of the entire cat family.

Deploying them in the remotest
corners of the planet for months at
a time

allows a unique insight
into the private life of cats.

In China, two cats that wouldn't
normally cross paths -

a leopard and a snow leopard - are
filmed on the same camera just days
apart.

In Costa Rica,
a margay fights an angry possum.

And in the dunes
of the Western Sahara...

..camera traps record the first-ever
shots of wild sand cat kittens.

One pioneering study has taken the
use of camera traps to another
level.

Mountain lions,
also known as cougars or pumas,

famed for leading lonely, solitary
lives.

Camera traps are now challenging
what we know about this American
icon.

She's here.

It all started with Dr Mark
Elbroch's passion for these
charismatic cats.

Here she is, running across.
Look at the size of the footprint.

I live mountain lions.

I track them, I watch videos of
them,

I go to sleep at night
and I dream about mountain lions.

This guy's a... He's a loose cannon.

This is the part where you try
not to get bit.

In the Teton mountains of Wyoming,

Mark and his team want to learn more
about mountain lion hunting

and feeding behaviour.

Using GPS collars to track the
animals, they identify cat hot
spots.

..Quite a bit, which is good. Yeah.

So we should get in there
and set some cameras.

Sounds good.

Mark expected an insight
into the solitary life of lone
cats...

..but the more he watched,

the more he began to realise
something else was going on.

Here comes a nine-year-old
resident female,

and she comes round and she turns

and here comes a six-year-old
female.

She's doing mild hissing
and, in the beginning we thought,

"Gosh, all that hissing, it's the...
the pre-runner to violence,

"it's super aggressive."

No, hissing seems pretty normal,

now that we've seen it over and over
and over again. So what happened
next?

They spent two days together
and this is what they did.

They shared a meal.

It blew me away.

That wasn't his only surprising
discovery.

It's thought that males are normally
aggressive towards females,

even capable of killing them, but
the cameras show that's not true
either.

Every time we've seen a male
approach a female, outside
courtship,

this is exactly what they do -
they slink in.

Notice how low he's holding his body
to the ground,

his ears are to the side
and almost sagging.

They minimise their profile,
they try to look smaller.

It is completely non-aggressive.

He clearly just wants to share a
meal

and you can see, as he comes in,
there's no hissing, there's nothing.

She just watches and it's the kitten
that does all the hissing.

There they are, massive resident
adult male feeding on the carcass...

..three-month-old kitten and mother
falling asleep in the background.

Rather than always being aggressive,

males become positively meek
when they want to share a meal.

After analysing 13 years of data
and thousands of videos,

Mark has discovered these social
interactions follow a pattern.

Mountain lions remember each other

and they're much more likely
to share their dinner

with a cat that has been generous
with them in the past.

We're beginning to describe a
species that has some sort of social
system,

that is interacting with a frequency
that challenges this idea

that they are solitary animals,

and it's just opening our eyes

and completely turning everything
on its head

on what we thought were
the social lives of mountain lions.

Cats never fail to surprise us.

Covering 8,000 hectares...

..and employing 20,000 people...

..Secunda CTL is the biggest
industrial complex in Africa.

An unlikely place for a cat...

..but ecologist Daan Loock made
an amazing discovery here.

It all started with reports of
strange creatures prowling the site
after dark.

There's... there's some eyes there.

I just can't make out what it is.

Hopefully, it crosses here

but I don't think so.

There's a lot of thickets
just to our left-hand side.

I think it will... There it is!

Just in front of us! There it is!

Oh, that's very special.

The strange creature is a serval.

That's something you won't see every
day.

You know, these elusive cats
are so difficult to see

and we're so privileged to see this.

There it goes.
I'm very excited, I must say.

Having covered the site
in camera traps,

to Daan's surprise, these cats
were popping up everywhere.

The average serval population is 10
to 15 animals per 100 square
kilometres.

Our serval population is 76 animals
per 100 square kilometres.

That's phenomenal. It's very, very
high.

That's six times more
than the most pristine wilderness.

Servals are not merely surviving
here - this is the densest
population known.

Well, the next step after
discovering this population

was the need to understand
what's so special about this place.

Why are there so many serval here?

Servals are found across Africa

and specialise in hunting rodents
and small birds.

They have the biggest ears of any
cat to help pinpoint their prey.

And with spring-like legs,
they pounce over three metres.

They're normally found in much lower
numbers and need large territories.

Daan set out to discover
why there are so many here.

A specialist team of vets carefully
capture and anaesthetise a male.

Ya, I must say it's very nice. You
know, we've captured about 30, 30 to
40 animals

and it's every time
very exciting to see them up close.

It's a unique opportunity to learn
as much as possible about such a
rarely seen cat.

What's the weight here, Mike?

13.88, so he's... Spot-on.

..he's about spot-on, yeah,
for a big male.

Each serval is fitted with a collar,
allowing Daan to track their
movements.

It's helping him build up a picture
of the cats' lives.

This map is a map of the total study
area

and each of these dots indicates
a GPS position

of some of the serval
that's been collared in the past.

This just goes to show how many
serval are on site.

Most importantly, Daan's map reveals
the servals are concentrated

in particular areas around water.

Ponds and streams
used to cool the heavy industry

create the perfect habitat for
rodents...

..abundant food for the servals.

Another reason for their success
is the lack of other big predators
here.

You know, normally, the main causes
of death of serval

would be other predators like lion
and hyena, perhaps some leopard
also.

On this site, there is no
competition, they are the apex
predators.

As apex predators with no
competition, the servals have run
riot.

All across the planet,
cats are adapting to urban habitats.

In response, people often need to
learn how to live alongside cats.

Mumbai, India...

..one of the world's largest
cities, home to over 20 million
people.

Mumbai is also home...

..to the world's highest density
of leopards.

In the dead of night, they creep
into the city from the surrounding
forests.

Krishna Tiwari grew up in Mumbai.

He's now dedicated his life to
studying the city's urban leopards.

He saw a leopard the day before
yesterday

and, when the leopard saw him, he
just ran away to the other side of
the wall.

The story is the same all across the
city.

People encounter leopards
on a regular basis.

She came out at around 8.30 to wash
clothes here and, when she put up a
torch,

she saw a leopard sitting on the
rocks and as soon as, you know,

there was light on the leopard,
he just got up, and she was so
afraid

that, you know, she came back
to the house and called her husband.

The outcome of these encounters
isn't always so peaceful.

After all, the leopards
are coming into the city to hunt.

Livestock are abundant and
unprotected.

Stealth is the leopard's
most effective weapon.

Dogs often provide an early
warning...

..but drawing attention from a
leopard isn't a good idea.

Dogs are also on the menu.

And, sadly, it doesn't stop there.

From 1990 to 2013, 176 people were
attacked by leopards in Mumbai.

In just one month during 2004,
ten people were killed.

Something had to be done.

Krishna and the authorities
took a bold approach.

Pioneering an education programme,

Krishna wanted to teach people how
to live safely alongside leopards.

Simple measures like staying in
groups at night, locking up
livestock

and not running from leopards

made a huge difference.

20,000 people have attended the
meetings.

The awareness programme
has been a great success

as the last four years
have seen no leopard attacks

and I think it's a good
and long-term solution

to reduce the human-leopard
conflicts in Mumbai.

Unfortunately, educating the local
dogs has proved trickier.

They provide a vital early warning
but are still being taken.

Raj has lost three dogs
to leopard attacks.

He then hit on an idea
which might help protect his current
pet.

He thinks that the dog, the leopard
will think that it is also a
leopard...

..even, you know, it's being
protected by other dogs, so I think
it's a good idea.

The jury's still out
on whether this even works...

..and, anyway, what self-respecting
dog wants to be dressed up as a cat?

He's certainly not convinced.

Krishna's mission to spread
tolerance is working...

..and Mumbai's leopard population
is thriving...

..but it's a rare example of people
accepting their presence

and making space for cats.

Elsewhere, it's a very different
story.

Nearly half of all wild cats
are threatened with extinction.

As top predators,
they need a lot of food and space...

..and, with an ever-growing
human population,

competition for that space is
rising.

In the last 20 years, leopards have
been wiped out from 40% of their
range.

Cheetahs have become extinct
in 25 countries.

Not even lions are spared. Numbers
have fallen by nearly half in two
decades.

The king of beasts could go extinct
in the wild.

The driving passion people feel for
cats is now their greatest hope for
survival...

Holy mackerel.

..especially for the animal that's
long been the face of cat
conservation.

Dr Krithi Karanth's love of tigers
started at a very young age.

I first saw a tiger
when I was two years old

with my father and my grandfather
in Nagarhole National Park.

I was amazed and in awe.

There is nothing like seeing a tiger
in the wild.

Years on, and now a world-renowned
tiger conservationist,

Krithi's just as enthralled.

There are no words that can really
capture the emotion of seeing a
tiger.

Every single time I've seen a tiger
in the wild,

I've been either left speechless
or giggling silly or crying.

I mean, it's a range of emotions,
but you never forget.

To me, tigers are truly one of the
most spectacular cats on the planet.

But like so many of the cats,
survival of the tiger is on a knife
edge.

We see images and stories
about tigers all the time -

could give us the impression that
they're not endangered but they
absolutely are.

They're one of the most threatened
big cats in the world today.

Over the last century,
95% of wild tigers have vanished.

There are now more tigers in
captivity in the United States alone
than in the wild.

It is impossible for me to imagine
a world without wild tigers...

..but, if we get complacent,
we could see tigers go extinct.

Sorry.

I couldn't...
I couldn't imagine a world without
tigers.

Krithi's spent her life raising
awareness and funding to save the
tiger.

She's set up a project that helps
villagers get compensation

when tigers attack their livestock.

It's helping ease some of the
conflict with local people.

Here in India, the greatest
challenge

is giving tigers the space
they so desperately need.

One solution is to help villagers
who currently live within the
national parks

to relocate.

Krithi is part of a team

that assist those who choose to make
a new home beyond the park
boundaries.

Once you move people out,
the vegetation comes back,

the prey numbers rebound
and then tiger numbers come back,

so ecological recovery takes time
but I think nature knows how to heal
itself.

There's been a lot of time, money
and effort but the tide may be
turning.

After a long time,
we're seeing wild tigers come back,

populations stabilise
and recover in many tiger reserves.

It shows that we can change
the future for cats

if there is the will to protect
them.

Maasai warriors now study
and conserve the lions they once
hunted.

Huge safe havens are being created
for Scottish wildcats,

the UK's only native cat.

Scientists brave freezing
conditions...

It's working.

..to help the endangered Siberian
tiger.

And one pioneering project

is attempting to rescue a cat
from the very edge of extinction.

Just a century ago,
thousands of Iberian lynx

roamed the ancient woodlands of
Spain and Portugal.

A combination of habitat loss,
hunting and lack of prey

caused their numbers to collapse.

By 2002, fewer than 100 were left.

The Iberian lynx was declared
the rarest cat on the planet.

Today, an international team of
scientists and conservationists

are working to bring these cats
back from the brink.

The team began an intensive
breeding programme

on a scale never attempted before.

Vicky Ascensio is a vet
dedicated to the project.

She works at the newest
of the breeding centres.

Spread across Spain and Portugal,
these multimillion-pound facilities

are built to meet a lynx's every
need...

..to ensure they can produce as
many cubs as possible

for release back into the wild.

It's also designed
so Vicky can keep a close eye

on each and every precious cub.

In total, we have 116 cameras.

We try to see the animals 24 hours.

This hands-off approach is vital
so the cubs never meet a human.

They are all day very quiet, very
calm

and they don't see that we are
always looking at them.

It's very important for us,
especially when we have cubs.

The Iberian lynx has become
a species in intensive care.

The breeding centres are just one
piece of the jigsaw.

The team are also working hard
to improve the natural habitat

so young lynx can be released
into ideal conditions.

Today, Vicky is running
some crucial health checks.

One-year-old cubs Navio and Noa
are scheduled for release.

We are checking
that all the animal is healthy

and also we take some samples

to see that he has not any
infectious diseases or something
like that.

Our goal always is to release the
animals.

It's our most important goal.

The cubs are ready.

A release is big news around here.

Crowds gather to catch a glimpse
of this iconic Spanish cat.

This is a very special moment for me
because it's an animal

that was born in the centre and
now you are giving him the freedom.

It's very emotional for us.

Navio and Noa are given their
freedom, running wild for the first
time.

This ambitious project has become
one of the most successful
reintroductions

on the planet - nearly 500 cats once
again roam these ancient woodlands.

The more we learn about cats,
the more they surprise and amaze us.

Only by understanding their needs
can we help safeguard their future.

There's a lot of work to do
but across the globe

people are putting their heart and
soul into finding answers

and making sure the future
always has a place...

..for the cats...

..big...

..and small.