Original subtitles

[gasps].

[Liz Bonnin] I can't believe what I'm seeing.

Look at you.

Good morning.

Welcome to the world.

These tiny little meerkat pups

are just three weeks old.

They're emerging into the world for the very first time

and like many animals all around the world,

their survival relies on teamwork.

[squeaking]

I'm Liz Bonnin.

As a wildlife biologist, I spent the last 15 years

exploring the natural world.

Now, I'm delving even deeper to discover the secrets behind

the most extraordinary animal behaviors.

All around the world, animals work together in

astonishing ways to survive.

Look at these guys, all together, in synchrony.

It's just amazing.

Nature is far more ingenious

than we could ever have imagined.

I'm in South Africa's Kalahari desert

where science is shedding new light

on the extraordinary social lives of meerkats.

To keep everyone safe out here, the whole family,

up to 50 individuals, need to act as one

and for that, communication is key.

[squeaking]

Do you hear those calls?

Those little peeps.

They're not even opening their mouths to make them.

They're sunning calls.

It's thought that they have a calming effect and that

they're used to maintain and strengthen social bonds.

[squeaking]

They're actually quite well mannered because

they take it in turns.

So, one meerkat will hold off making their call until

the previous one has finished.

Away from the burrow, communication becomes

even more important.

It can mean the difference between life and death.

Meerkats are on the menu for many predators

from eagles to jackals

and they're most vulnerable when digging for food.

Meerkats are omnivores, but mostly,

they will eat all sorts of insects.

To dig them out, they're often found with their faces

deep in the sand and with just their tails sticking out.

It's a very effective foraging strategy, but it can be a

precarious one when you can't see what's going on around you.

So, while most of the gang dig,

a few individuals take turns to keep watch.

They're known as sentinels and at just one foot tall,

they go to great lengths to get a better view.

Oh. Oh.

Okay. Okay.

So, this little individual has just taken up sentinel duty

and they do seek out the highest vantage point,

which on this occasion, is me.

And what this sentinel will now do is

[laughs]

constantly scan the horizon and the skies

to make sure the rest of the group is safe.

It's quite a big responsibility on

this little fella's shoulders.

[laughs]

It's the sentinel's job to warn the family

of any potential threats

and they do it in extraordinary detail.

[squeaking]

A single or double squeak means the coast is clear,

carry on digging.

[squeaking]

Triple squeaks say, "No sign of danger, but I'm getting a

bad feeling about this."

[squeaking]

Escalating to what's known as the wheek call.

Something's wrong. Be on alert.

This sophisticated communication gets even more

remarkable when danger is spotted.

If they encounter a cape cobra,

they use a recruitment call

mobilizing the gang to mob the snake

[growling]

[hissing]

and it doesn't end there.

Meerkats have a whole roster of alarm calls for different

types of predators and circumstances.

Professor Marta Manser has spent decades deciphering the

meerkat's complex language to unravel its secrets.

-If you watch them and you listen,

they are talking to each other all the time.

What are these different call types?

Meaning, what's the function of them, and that has kept me

busy now for almost 30 years.

[Liz Bonnin] Marta designed a series of intriguing

experiments to determine what each call means.

-We are going to play back alarm calls and

see how they cope, response to this.

-Exciting. Can I help you? -Absolutely.

[Liz Bonnin] First, we're playing a recording of a

ground predator alarm.

The call made if a jackal is spotted.

It's a specific call that should result in an obvious

response from the gang.

[squeaking]

Look at them. Look at them all.

[Marta Manser] They are coming.

[Liz Bonnin] Wow. That is amazing.

The meerkats immediately stand up on their hind legs

to locate the threat.

[Marta Manser] They all gathered together.

If there is a ground predator around, they would like to see

where the predator is and then they make a decision,

should we move away or what should we do?

-They very quickly cottoned on there wasn't a threat

and back to foraging.

-Exactly.

[Liz Bonnin] But is there a different response when they

hear an aerial predator alarm call, if an eagle is spotted?

-Let's play, then.

[squeaking]

-Bolting, bolting, bolting.

[squeaking]

They all came out of nowhere and bolted into that bolt hole.

The meerkats clearly recognized this different call,

telling them to rush to the nearest bolt hole,

an underground shelter providing safety from aerial attacks.

-They have a absolutely amazing spacial memory.

In their territory, they probably have 1,000,

even up to 2,000 bolt holes depending on the territory size

and they know exactly where the closest is.

-That is extraordinary.

Really amazing to see how quickly they move.

Thanks to Marta's fascinating research, we now know that

Meerkats have over 30 different calls.

It's an ingenious language that helps this tight-knit team

to keep everyone safe

including the very newest additions to the family.

[squeaking]

Social animals team up for all sorts of different reasons.

Across sub-Saharan Africa,

one species of insect works together

in a way so sophisticated,

it was once thought to be unique to humans.

[Liz Bonnin] The Matabele ant.

This intrepid female is part of a 2,000 strong colony.

She's a scout.

Her job is to find food for her huge family

and she's on the hunt for termites.

With oversized jaws, termites are no easy meal.

She can't take them on alone,

but help is on the way.

It's an all-female army

following a chemical trail left by the scout.

When the troops reach a critical mass, they charge.

The ants need to deliver their powerful sting,

while avoiding the termites deadly jaws.

These miniature battles can last up to 20 minutes.

Today, the ants outnumber their opposition.

Victorious, they carry termites back to the nest to

feed the rest of the colony,

but these clashes take their toll.

You might think injured ants would be left for dead,

but amazingly, the colony comes to the rescue.

Like combat medics,

they carry their patients up to 150 feet back to the nest.

As if that wasn't impressive enough,

what takes place inside the nest

is even more astonishing.

Filmed in extraordinary detail,

it's recently been discovered

that the ants perform first aid on their wounded.

They delicately hold the injured limbs with their mouth parts

and apply antimicrobial proteins to the wounds.

Incredibly, injured ants are 13 times more likely

to survive if they receive this meticulous medical care.

Ants are the only animals beside humans known to

carry out first aid on each other.

Teamwork at its best.

But, believe it or not, some animals work together

before they're even born.

I'm on Mexico's Pacific coast where the latest science is

revealing the secret behind

teamwork taking place beneath my feet.

About six weeks ago,

a whopping 100,000 female olive ridley turtles

hauled themselves ashore on this magnificent beach

to lay their eggs and over the next few days,

all those eggs are going to start to hatch and the

baby turtles will head for the sea.

This hatchling is only just emerging into the sunlight.

She's one of about 100 that all hatched in the same nest

deep beneath the sand.

Just two inches long,

it's taken each of them about three days to

dig their way to the surface.

Look at just how perfect they are and already,

there's a little trail being blazed towards the sea.

One of the most extraordinary things about this is that they

all hatch at the same time

and then they all emerge out of the nest in unison,

in synchrony and it is just the

most thrilling thing to witness.

The first hatchling starts an 80 foot scramble to the shore

and she has to be quick,

running the gauntlet past hundreds of hungry birds.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

Not all her nest mates will make it,

[squawking]

but by scurrying down all at the same time,

they overwhelm the birds with sheer numbers.

It's a survival strategy known as predator swamping,

allowing the vast majority to make it to the ocean.

That's our lead turtle.

It's made it to the sea

and then all the others are not far behind.

By hatching in synchrony, there's safety in numbers,

but how do they coordinate this mass emergence?

Turtle expert, Doctor Gabriel Jorgewich-Cohen

believes it comes down to vocalizations going on

inside the nest before the turtles have even hatched.

Of all the species on the planet, we don't necessarily

think of turtles as animals who make sounds, do we?

-You would be amazed.

They make a lot of different sounds.

-Do they?

-Some species make up to 30 different sounds.

-Wow. That's incredible.

-Yes, it is. It's more than many birds.

[Liz Bonnin] At this conservation center,

turtle eggs are incubated away from predators and poachers

who take advantage of their abundance.

With nests carefully protected,

this nursery is the perfect place for Gabriel

to set up his experiment.

[Gabriel Jorgewich-Cohen] So, we are gonna take a look at

this nest here, see if you can listen to anything.

[Liz Bonnin] We are carefully burying highly sensitive

microphones in the nest.

If the unhatched turtles start making sounds

inside their eggs...

-This is yours.

[Liz Bonnin] ...we'll hear them in more detail than ever before.

Now, all we have to do is wait.

Further north in Mexico,

another extraordinary act of teamwork

has only just been discovered.

[Liz Bonnin] The rivers of Mexico's Baños del Azufre

conceal a deadly secret.

Volcanic springs make these waters toxic to all but the

hardiest species of fish.

Meet the sulphur mollies.

They're found nowhere else on Earth.

With so little oxygen in the water, these fish are forced

to spend most of their lives at the surface

so they can breathe.

Easy pickings for predators,

or so you might think.

A male kingfisher, specialist dive bomber.

With 300 fish per square foot, surely, he can't miss.

But mollies have a dazzling way of working together

to fend off aerial threats.

A shimmering wave appears wherever he flies.

It makes locking on to a single fish

extremely difficult.

But how do they create this mesmerizing display?

For the first time, super slow motion cameras reveal

the secret to the mollies teamwork.

Individually, each fish flicks its tail

to create a single splash,

then the next and the next.

They can react within just five milliseconds of their

nearest neighbor,

together, creating a sparkling ripple

on the water's surface.

You could call it the original Mexican wave.

It's a superbly effective way of putting off the most

determined of birds.

This brilliant teamwork helps to keep the entire shoal safe

in these deadly waters.

Back on the Pacific Coast,

something is stirring inside the turtle nest.

Did you hear that?

-Yeah. That's it.

[chirping]

That's it.

-I'm getting emotional.

-This one sounds a bit like a dolphin

don't you think?

Yeah.

-There was also a beep, like a tweet.

-Uh-huh.

-Like, almost like a tweet.

-Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

[chirping]

-That's bonkers.

-Exactly.

-And to think that this is a,

it's an embryo inside a shell.

[chirping]

Making little noises to its nest mates-- nest mates.

-One of the ideas is that they are using these sounds

to synchronize hatch.

So, all of them come out of the, the egg together.

-So, it's a bit of a rallying call.

-That's the idea, yeah.

[Liz Bonnin] But there's something even more surprising

going on inside the eggs.

The speed at which turtle embryos develop is determined

by their position in the nest.

Eggs near the surface and in the center are warmer than

those at the bottom, so they develop faster.

It's thought that these are the first turtles to call

and when the embryos growing more slowly hear these sounds,

their heart rate and metabolism increase,

speeding up their development.

This allows them to catch up with their nest mates,

so that they are all ready to hatch at the same time.

Animals working together before they're even born

is truly astonishing,

but for me, the most brilliant act of teamwork

is when nature and people work together.

I'm heading back to the shoreline of the specially

protected beach to join a team of conservationists

releasing hatchlings from the turtle nursery.

We need to let the hatchlings make the final scramble

to the sea themselves.

It's thought this allows them to align their internal

compasses with the Earth's magnetic field.

In 13 years' time, the females will use this to navigate

back to this very beach to lay eggs of their own.

I'm rooting for them with every cell in my body

to succeed because, honestly,

it is not easy for turtle hatchlings.

I have been blown away by what this species is capable of.

The teamwork that's involved,

the coordination, the synchrony.

I am genuinely awe-struck.