Africa (2013): Season 1, Episode 1 - Kalahari - full transcript
Deserts, like southern Africa's Kalahari and Namib, are strange and by definition are particularly dangerous and demanding environments, requiring elaborate adaptations. Some are behavioral, like tricks to steal food or even lay eggs in live hosts. other are anatomical. All the more precious is the rare water, so drinking pools are crucial for carnivores and preys. Astonishingly, vast quantities are trapped in huge cave systems underground, where aquatic life is scarce due to little food and light dripping in.
A wonderful world at it's very
best now on BBC1 and in stunning
high definition on BBC1 HD.
David Attenborough begins a
breath taking new series
exploring the vast natural
wonders of Africa.
Africa.
The world's greatest wilderness.
The only place on Earth to see
the full majesty of nature.
There's so much more here than
we ever imagined.
I'm standing where the equator
cuts right across the middle
of the continent.
To the north of me,
there's an immense desert
the size of the United States
of America.
To the west, a vast rainforest
the size of India.
And behind me,
for thousands of miles,
the most fertile
savannahs in the world.
From the roof of Africa...
..to the deepest jungle.
Rarely seen places,
and untold stories.
There's nowhere in the world where
wildlife puts on a greater show.
This is the last place on Earth
where you can come eye to eye
with the greatest animals that
walk our planet.
This is Africa.
Our journey starts in the far
south west,
in the oldest and strangest
corner of the continent.
Here, the thirsty land is covered
with thousands upon
thousands of circles.
We still don't know their origins.
Poisonous plants, foraging insects
and even magnetism have all been
suggested, but each ruled out.
The circles don't move,
and their shape never varies.
They're unchanging, much like
this part of Africa itself.
Ancient and arid,
it almost never rains on this land,
yet there is water here,
hidden away.
To survive here, life must use
every trick in the book.
Episode 1: Kalahari
Original Air Date: January 2nd, 2013
Winter. Dawn temperatures can fall
well below freezing.
And that's a problem
for this drongo.
It's too cold for his normal prey,
flying insects.
But he has a plan. The drongo is
the Kalahari's greatest trickster.
And these are his victims.
A family of meerkats,
desert specialists.
After warming up in the morning sun,
the meerkats begin
their search for breakfast.
The drongo can now begin his tricks.
But he must first win
the confidence of his victims.
He spots an eagle on the hunt,
and sounds a warning.
One that sends the meerkats
gratefully scurrying to safety.
Danger over.
And now, he has their trust.
He sounds another warning.
But this time, it's a false alarm.
Thank you very much!
The meerkats fell for it.
This all seems too easy.
He tries the same trick again.
But the meerkats aren't stupid...
they'll only fall for it once.
The juicy scorpion won't be for him.
Then, suddenly,
the sound of a sentry's warning.
No meerkat can ignore that.
Sentries never lie.
But the sentry sees no danger.
Guess who?
Of course, it's the drongo.
He's learnt to mimic the meerkats'
own warning call.
And now, he can enjoy his prize.
A gang of meerkats,
outsmarted by a bird.
The drongo is only deceitful
in the hardest winter months.
For the rest of the year,
he provides honest protection.
So, in the long run, the meerkat
family profit as well as the drongo.
It's a much harder life,
if you haven't yet learned
the tricks of your trade.
This young leopard
is just a year old,
and at a critical point in his life.
His mother has battled to
raise her two cubs,
but finding enough food for them
is now beyond her.
From today, he'll have to
fend for himself.
Kalahari means
"land of great thirst".
Prey is scarce.
Of all the leopards in Africa,
these have to be the most
resourceful.
A big warthog.
Potential prey,
but armed and dangerous.
His mother tried to tackle one,
but it nearly killed her.
He spots something more promising.
A steenbok, that's more like it.
He won't strike unless he can get
to within just four metres,
and without making
the slightest sound.
A jackal barks an alarm.
But the steenbok still has no idea
it's being stalked.
The nearer he gets,
the quieter he must be.
He's blown it.
A good opportunity like that
won't come around very often.
Hungry and thirsty,
he heads back home,
and spots a kill stashed in a tree,
almost certainly by his own mother.
And, like any teenager, he thinks
nothing of raiding her larder.
Booby trapped.
It's not really his day, is it?
Some young leopards grow up to be
brilliant opportunists.
But even they find life hard
here in the Kalahari.
These bizarre little birds
are baby ostriches.
They're just a few days old.
In time, they'll become superb
desert survivors.
But in the Kalahari,
these early days are perilous.
Like leopards and meerkats,
adult ostriches can extract
all the moisture
they require from their food.
The chicks, however,
won't survive much more than
another day without water.
But there's none in sight.
How can their parents conjure up
water out here?
The youngsters follow their parents,
as they head out onto
a featureless wasteland.
It seems like a suicidal journey.
The Etosha salt pan.
Here, water is more often
a mirage than reality.
It's now well over 40 degrees
centigrade.
Their father shades his chicks
from the midday sun.
Another mirage?
No. The ostrich family
is not alone out here.
Surrounded by miles
of sun-baked mud,
sweet, fresh water wells up
from deep below ground...
like a miracle.
Although the ostrich parents have
guided their chicks to water,
there's still a problem... traffic.
Heavy traffic.
These tiny, fragile birds could
easily be trampled under foot.
The water is tantalisingly close.
Where prey gathers,
predators are never far behind.
The brawling lions have unwittingly
done the young ostriches a favour.
The waterhole is now clear.
Sometimes, you need
a bit of luck in life.
Their first-ever drink...
and just in time.
Their father's done his job.
A black rhinoceros, the Kalahari's
most cantankerous resident.
They don't like company,
and they certainly don't like
sharing a waterhole with lions.
Fortunately...
for everyone else, that is...
they only visit twice a week.
The Kalahari is the black rhino's
last stronghold.
And here, under the cover
of darkness,
at one secret
and very special waterhole,
rhino abandon their normally
solitary life,
and come from miles around
to meet under the stars.
Using the latest starlight camera,
we can reveal for the first time
the rhino's true character.
This young female seems nervous.
She senses other rhinos close by.
A mother appears from the shadows
with her calf.
Tentatively, they greet one another.
They may be ill-tempered by day,
but now they become gentle
and affectionate.
More and more arrive.
We had no idea that rhinos
met to socialise
and build friendships like this.
The young female has an admirer.
But she doesn't seem keen on him.
She's excited about something.
Or someone.
Here comes a really big male.
This time,
she's much more welcoming.
Who would have thought that
rhino could be so flirtatious?
The first male
tries to come between them.
Somehow or other, he's got a pair
of antelope horns stuck on his nose.
It looks as if she's been won over
by his eccentric style.
He leads her off,
away from the party.
He may have style...
but he's turning out to be
something of a disappointment.
A girl can only put up with so much.
The only way she can get rid of him
is to pretend she's asleep.
To see so many rhino in one place
is a revelation.
And that's the power water has
here... the power to bring together
the greatest gathering of rhinos
anywhere on Earth.
Spitzkoppe.
An ancient volcano,
that towers above a plateau
that is two billion years old.
This land has remained unchanged
for longer than any other part
of Africa.
Animals here have had a long time
to find inventive solutions
to the challenge of finding water.
Out on the open plains, life must
await the chance arrival of rain.
When it does fall,
it has an extraordinary effect.
Each sporadic downpour
may only last minutes,
but it can bring life,
and in spectacular numbers.
Red-billed quelea.
They're the most numerous
bird in the world.
In all, more than a billion
live here in the Kalahari.
No-one knows quite how,
but they seem to have an
extraordinary ability to locate
the fall of rain, and then instantly
exploit the bonanza that follows.
These nomads now have just
five weeks to find food,
build a nest and raise a brood.
But they're not alone.
The rains
have also created a plague.
These are armoured ground crickets.
Giant insects, with voracious
appetites... for meat.
With the quelea parents
away feeding,
their chicks are defenceless.
The adults return.
But the cricket fights back.
Squirting its own foul-tasting
blood into their eyes.
The cricket is still alive,
but the stench of its blood
attracts the attention of others.
Now, it is the target.
These crickets become cannibals.
All too soon, the bonanza
brought by the rain is over,
and the quelea head off in search
of the next rare downpour.
The Kalahari is scarred by rivers
that have long since run dry,
the water claimed
by the thirsty land.
But it's not gone far.
Deep below lies a secret,
one that was discovered
only 25 years ago.
Humid air rushing to the surface
gives this place its name,
Dragon's Breath Cave.
The shaft descends for 60 metres,
until it meets...
water.
Here, there is a massive chamber,
big enough to swallow three
jumbo jets, nose to tail,
filled with cool, fresh water.
The world's largest
underground lake.
This is fossil water.
It's been trapped here,
undisturbed, for thousands,
if not millions, of years.
We have no idea how deep
the lake is.
Divers have been down to 100 metres,
and still there's no sign
of the bottom.
Remarkably, Dragon's Breath
is part of a vast cave system
that extends beneath the Kalahari
for thousands of miles.
Even here, in this lonely cave,
there is life.
Golden catfish,
only found in this one cave.
They're the rarest and most
isolated fish in the world.
Life down here is as challenging
as it is in the desert above.
There's no food,
except the debris that occasionally
falls onto the surface.
And these catfish are totally blind.
The only world they know is
the one they sense through touch.
A blind fish living
in perpetual darkness,
deep beneath one of the most
arid regions of Africa.
Such cruel irony. So much water
hidden away out of reach.
Along the western edge of the
Kalahari, the land becomes so dry,
it seems impossible that any
life could survive here.
The Namib.
A million square miles of sand
exquisitely sculpted by the wind.
This is the oldest
desert in the world.
Respite comes from fog rolling in
from the Atlantic ocean.
It condenses into a few
precious drops.
Just enough to sustain life.
A pompilid wasp is
searching the dunes.
She's not looking for a drink, but
for somewhere moist to lay her egg.
How will she pull off
a trick like that?
The entrance to a burrow.
That's worth investigating.
She may be tiny,
but once she decides to dig,
she can shift extraordinary
quantities of sand.
She's unearthed this spider
for a grisly purpose.
It's so dry, the only place
with enough moisture for her egg
is within the body of
another living thing.
First, she must paralyse her victim.
But then, the spider plays
its trump card.
The aptly-named golden wheel spider
can cartwheel fast enough
to escape its gruesome fate.
For the wasp, her near
impossible search goes on.
If it's hard enough for a tiny wasp
to survive here in the Namib,
how is it possible for a giant?
A desert giraffe.
It's difficult to imagine how
such a huge animal
can live in a place with
so little water.
This old male is at the very
limit of his endurance.
The land may be bone dry,
but there are signs that water
once flowed here.
The Hoanib, one of Namibia's rivers.
A river of sand.
The trees that line these
sand rivers send roots down
over 30 metres to tap water that
lies deep beneath the river bed.
These trees are
the giraffe's salvation,
even if he has to stretch to
his very tallest to get a mouthful.
Even on tip-toe, he still needs
a half-metre-long tongue
to reach the leaves
he so badly needs.
He's ruled this stretch
of the Hoanib for over a decade,
and this prime territory is
attracting females.
He waits confidently for her.
But they've got company.
A young male.
The old bull won't tolerate a rival.
Pushing and shoving,
they size each other up.
The young rival seems to think
he has a chance and attacks.
The first few blows usually
settle things in such battles,
but here, the stakes are high.
To lose means exile in the desert.
Neither will back down.
As the fight intensifies,
they change tactics.
The young male aims for the rump.
The old bull
targets his rival's legs.
The old bull is down.
Is this the end of his reign?
He knows a knockout blow is coming.
But the old bull ducks...
..and strikes a blow
to his rival's underbelly.
Out for the count.
The old bull is victorious.
But only just.
The sand river remains his to rule.
It's a river that is about
to be transformed.
Under clear blue skies,
water floods down the Hoanib.
The welcome consequence of rain
that fell hundreds of miles away.
The water may only flow
for a matter of hours.
But this miraculous flood
is enough to provide
a lifeline for the trees and the
giraffes of the Hoanib River.
It's what makes this place
worth fighting for.
Here, fossil lakes,
secret waterholes, desert fog
and ephemeral rivers like this
provide just enough water
for life to get by,
no matter how tough it gets.
It's hard to find more inventive
solutions to staying alive
than in this,
the most ancient corner of Africa.
For four years, the Africa team
searched the continent
for new and surprising stories.
Not only of strange
and unfamiliar creatures,
but also of some we think we know.
Veteran wildlife cameraman
Martyn Colbeck took on the challenge
of shedding new light on the life
of Namibia's desert giraffe.
I jumped at the opportunity
of working with an animal that
I hadn't really spent much
time with.
Straight away, they proved
to be quite an eye-opener.
They're very bizarre
looking animals.
We just kept looking at them
from different angles
and they looked even weirder.
The combination of the sort of
weird close ups, the beautiful
landscape that they're in.
They're amusing...
I got really attached
to them, actually.
Overlying all this,
we were always waiting for a fight.
But to see a full-blooded fight
is very rare.
So, the only way that
we were going to see it
is if we stuck at it, day after day,
every day for 30 days.
We were lucky enough that we
found a male guarding a female.
And out of nowhere,
this male came round the corner.
And almost immediately
faced up to our male.
Absolutely no warning that this
was going to happen,
so it was complete
pandemonium in the car.
But luckily I got the camera up
and running in time to actually
capture this fight, and it all came
down to one minute in real time.
When I filmed it,
you don't see it in slow motion.
And you just have to
go with the flow.
You're not experiencing the fight,
you're just basically framing it
and capturing it.
So it was only afterwards, when
we looked at it in slow motion,
that you could really understand
how ferocious it was.
You can see the impact on the skin.
You can see the ripples going
through the flesh.
But it was the final blows
that delivered the real surprise.
It was like one of those
chimneys falling down.
At the last moment,
the head just went clunk!
And we thought it was dead.
We thought this thing was dead.
And it lay there for,
it must have been three minutes.
Eventually, this thing suddenly
got up, the one that was
lying down, and the two of them were
then standing, and then the one that
had been knocked over completely
then just said, "I've had enough.
Okay, okay, you won and I'm off".
I, I think it's very unlikely
I'm going to see
anything like that again.
I think that's a
once-in-a-life-timer. I really do.
It won't be easy to look at
giraffes in the same way again.
On the other side of the desert,
another of Africa's
great animal icons
was attracting
the attention of the team
as they staked out
a secret waterhole.
They hoped to reveal
a very different side
to the personality of
the black rhinoceros.
The team have heard that at night
rhinos behave a little strangely.
A specially-built starlight camera
would allow the team
to pierce the darkness.
It's amazing. That's filming
something we can't even see.
Yeah, and if you look
out there now...
Yeah, it's just black, isn't it?
But through this,
it looks as sharp as day.
Rhinos are notoriously anti-social,
yet here they come to revel
in each other's company.
This is amazing.
This is such intimate behaviour,
which you can only see
filming them at night like this.
It's incredible.
But it wasn't just cameras that
would show a new side to rhinos.
By concealing tiny radio
microphones around the waterhole,
the crew hoped to eavesdrop
on the night's activity.
And what they heard was astonishing.
They're really talkative.
They really are having a good chat.
These guys are far more
communicative than elephants, even.
They're just going on and on,
chatting away.
It's a beautiful,
crystal clear night,
so we've got beautiful starry shots.
Loads of amazing noise.
Puffing and huffing.
So it's about two in the morning.
There's only one rhino left up there.
The rest of the them
have gone to bed,
but he's decided to lie down
right on top of the radio mic.
The crew prepared for one more night
at the waterhole
under the full moon.
It seems that they're
not really here for the water,
but more to socialise.
A bit like going out
for the evening.
He's got some kudu horns on his
face, draped over his nose!
Is it all on camera, too?
These images have a particular
poignancy in a world where
rhino horn is worth more
than its weight in gold.
Poaching is going through
a really bad time right now
in Southern Africa.
If you averaged it out,
a rhino has been killed every day
for the last year.
That's really serious poaching.
It's a huge concern that what we saw
and filmed just won't happen again.
Ever.
It's only now that technology
has revealed a new side
to the rhino's personality.
The black rhinoceros is
a symbol of the African bush.
But it seems that this creature
has been long misunderstood.
For the Africa team,
revealing giraffes
and rhinos in this new light
was just the beginning.
Africa may be a continent
we think we know,
but it's still full of surprises.
Next week, I'll be here on
the great savannahs of East Africa.
This is an ever changing land with
a turbulent past and present.
Where animals must gamble
with their lives.
Bounded by mighty mountains
and steaming swamps,
this land is the most prolific
wildlife haven on Earth.
A land worth fighting for.
Sync and corrections by n17t01
best now on BBC1 and in stunning
high definition on BBC1 HD.
David Attenborough begins a
breath taking new series
exploring the vast natural
wonders of Africa.
Africa.
The world's greatest wilderness.
The only place on Earth to see
the full majesty of nature.
There's so much more here than
we ever imagined.
I'm standing where the equator
cuts right across the middle
of the continent.
To the north of me,
there's an immense desert
the size of the United States
of America.
To the west, a vast rainforest
the size of India.
And behind me,
for thousands of miles,
the most fertile
savannahs in the world.
From the roof of Africa...
..to the deepest jungle.
Rarely seen places,
and untold stories.
There's nowhere in the world where
wildlife puts on a greater show.
This is the last place on Earth
where you can come eye to eye
with the greatest animals that
walk our planet.
This is Africa.
Our journey starts in the far
south west,
in the oldest and strangest
corner of the continent.
Here, the thirsty land is covered
with thousands upon
thousands of circles.
We still don't know their origins.
Poisonous plants, foraging insects
and even magnetism have all been
suggested, but each ruled out.
The circles don't move,
and their shape never varies.
They're unchanging, much like
this part of Africa itself.
Ancient and arid,
it almost never rains on this land,
yet there is water here,
hidden away.
To survive here, life must use
every trick in the book.
Episode 1: Kalahari
Original Air Date: January 2nd, 2013
Winter. Dawn temperatures can fall
well below freezing.
And that's a problem
for this drongo.
It's too cold for his normal prey,
flying insects.
But he has a plan. The drongo is
the Kalahari's greatest trickster.
And these are his victims.
A family of meerkats,
desert specialists.
After warming up in the morning sun,
the meerkats begin
their search for breakfast.
The drongo can now begin his tricks.
But he must first win
the confidence of his victims.
He spots an eagle on the hunt,
and sounds a warning.
One that sends the meerkats
gratefully scurrying to safety.
Danger over.
And now, he has their trust.
He sounds another warning.
But this time, it's a false alarm.
Thank you very much!
The meerkats fell for it.
This all seems too easy.
He tries the same trick again.
But the meerkats aren't stupid...
they'll only fall for it once.
The juicy scorpion won't be for him.
Then, suddenly,
the sound of a sentry's warning.
No meerkat can ignore that.
Sentries never lie.
But the sentry sees no danger.
Guess who?
Of course, it's the drongo.
He's learnt to mimic the meerkats'
own warning call.
And now, he can enjoy his prize.
A gang of meerkats,
outsmarted by a bird.
The drongo is only deceitful
in the hardest winter months.
For the rest of the year,
he provides honest protection.
So, in the long run, the meerkat
family profit as well as the drongo.
It's a much harder life,
if you haven't yet learned
the tricks of your trade.
This young leopard
is just a year old,
and at a critical point in his life.
His mother has battled to
raise her two cubs,
but finding enough food for them
is now beyond her.
From today, he'll have to
fend for himself.
Kalahari means
"land of great thirst".
Prey is scarce.
Of all the leopards in Africa,
these have to be the most
resourceful.
A big warthog.
Potential prey,
but armed and dangerous.
His mother tried to tackle one,
but it nearly killed her.
He spots something more promising.
A steenbok, that's more like it.
He won't strike unless he can get
to within just four metres,
and without making
the slightest sound.
A jackal barks an alarm.
But the steenbok still has no idea
it's being stalked.
The nearer he gets,
the quieter he must be.
He's blown it.
A good opportunity like that
won't come around very often.
Hungry and thirsty,
he heads back home,
and spots a kill stashed in a tree,
almost certainly by his own mother.
And, like any teenager, he thinks
nothing of raiding her larder.
Booby trapped.
It's not really his day, is it?
Some young leopards grow up to be
brilliant opportunists.
But even they find life hard
here in the Kalahari.
These bizarre little birds
are baby ostriches.
They're just a few days old.
In time, they'll become superb
desert survivors.
But in the Kalahari,
these early days are perilous.
Like leopards and meerkats,
adult ostriches can extract
all the moisture
they require from their food.
The chicks, however,
won't survive much more than
another day without water.
But there's none in sight.
How can their parents conjure up
water out here?
The youngsters follow their parents,
as they head out onto
a featureless wasteland.
It seems like a suicidal journey.
The Etosha salt pan.
Here, water is more often
a mirage than reality.
It's now well over 40 degrees
centigrade.
Their father shades his chicks
from the midday sun.
Another mirage?
No. The ostrich family
is not alone out here.
Surrounded by miles
of sun-baked mud,
sweet, fresh water wells up
from deep below ground...
like a miracle.
Although the ostrich parents have
guided their chicks to water,
there's still a problem... traffic.
Heavy traffic.
These tiny, fragile birds could
easily be trampled under foot.
The water is tantalisingly close.
Where prey gathers,
predators are never far behind.
The brawling lions have unwittingly
done the young ostriches a favour.
The waterhole is now clear.
Sometimes, you need
a bit of luck in life.
Their first-ever drink...
and just in time.
Their father's done his job.
A black rhinoceros, the Kalahari's
most cantankerous resident.
They don't like company,
and they certainly don't like
sharing a waterhole with lions.
Fortunately...
for everyone else, that is...
they only visit twice a week.
The Kalahari is the black rhino's
last stronghold.
And here, under the cover
of darkness,
at one secret
and very special waterhole,
rhino abandon their normally
solitary life,
and come from miles around
to meet under the stars.
Using the latest starlight camera,
we can reveal for the first time
the rhino's true character.
This young female seems nervous.
She senses other rhinos close by.
A mother appears from the shadows
with her calf.
Tentatively, they greet one another.
They may be ill-tempered by day,
but now they become gentle
and affectionate.
More and more arrive.
We had no idea that rhinos
met to socialise
and build friendships like this.
The young female has an admirer.
But she doesn't seem keen on him.
She's excited about something.
Or someone.
Here comes a really big male.
This time,
she's much more welcoming.
Who would have thought that
rhino could be so flirtatious?
The first male
tries to come between them.
Somehow or other, he's got a pair
of antelope horns stuck on his nose.
It looks as if she's been won over
by his eccentric style.
He leads her off,
away from the party.
He may have style...
but he's turning out to be
something of a disappointment.
A girl can only put up with so much.
The only way she can get rid of him
is to pretend she's asleep.
To see so many rhino in one place
is a revelation.
And that's the power water has
here... the power to bring together
the greatest gathering of rhinos
anywhere on Earth.
Spitzkoppe.
An ancient volcano,
that towers above a plateau
that is two billion years old.
This land has remained unchanged
for longer than any other part
of Africa.
Animals here have had a long time
to find inventive solutions
to the challenge of finding water.
Out on the open plains, life must
await the chance arrival of rain.
When it does fall,
it has an extraordinary effect.
Each sporadic downpour
may only last minutes,
but it can bring life,
and in spectacular numbers.
Red-billed quelea.
They're the most numerous
bird in the world.
In all, more than a billion
live here in the Kalahari.
No-one knows quite how,
but they seem to have an
extraordinary ability to locate
the fall of rain, and then instantly
exploit the bonanza that follows.
These nomads now have just
five weeks to find food,
build a nest and raise a brood.
But they're not alone.
The rains
have also created a plague.
These are armoured ground crickets.
Giant insects, with voracious
appetites... for meat.
With the quelea parents
away feeding,
their chicks are defenceless.
The adults return.
But the cricket fights back.
Squirting its own foul-tasting
blood into their eyes.
The cricket is still alive,
but the stench of its blood
attracts the attention of others.
Now, it is the target.
These crickets become cannibals.
All too soon, the bonanza
brought by the rain is over,
and the quelea head off in search
of the next rare downpour.
The Kalahari is scarred by rivers
that have long since run dry,
the water claimed
by the thirsty land.
But it's not gone far.
Deep below lies a secret,
one that was discovered
only 25 years ago.
Humid air rushing to the surface
gives this place its name,
Dragon's Breath Cave.
The shaft descends for 60 metres,
until it meets...
water.
Here, there is a massive chamber,
big enough to swallow three
jumbo jets, nose to tail,
filled with cool, fresh water.
The world's largest
underground lake.
This is fossil water.
It's been trapped here,
undisturbed, for thousands,
if not millions, of years.
We have no idea how deep
the lake is.
Divers have been down to 100 metres,
and still there's no sign
of the bottom.
Remarkably, Dragon's Breath
is part of a vast cave system
that extends beneath the Kalahari
for thousands of miles.
Even here, in this lonely cave,
there is life.
Golden catfish,
only found in this one cave.
They're the rarest and most
isolated fish in the world.
Life down here is as challenging
as it is in the desert above.
There's no food,
except the debris that occasionally
falls onto the surface.
And these catfish are totally blind.
The only world they know is
the one they sense through touch.
A blind fish living
in perpetual darkness,
deep beneath one of the most
arid regions of Africa.
Such cruel irony. So much water
hidden away out of reach.
Along the western edge of the
Kalahari, the land becomes so dry,
it seems impossible that any
life could survive here.
The Namib.
A million square miles of sand
exquisitely sculpted by the wind.
This is the oldest
desert in the world.
Respite comes from fog rolling in
from the Atlantic ocean.
It condenses into a few
precious drops.
Just enough to sustain life.
A pompilid wasp is
searching the dunes.
She's not looking for a drink, but
for somewhere moist to lay her egg.
How will she pull off
a trick like that?
The entrance to a burrow.
That's worth investigating.
She may be tiny,
but once she decides to dig,
she can shift extraordinary
quantities of sand.
She's unearthed this spider
for a grisly purpose.
It's so dry, the only place
with enough moisture for her egg
is within the body of
another living thing.
First, she must paralyse her victim.
But then, the spider plays
its trump card.
The aptly-named golden wheel spider
can cartwheel fast enough
to escape its gruesome fate.
For the wasp, her near
impossible search goes on.
If it's hard enough for a tiny wasp
to survive here in the Namib,
how is it possible for a giant?
A desert giraffe.
It's difficult to imagine how
such a huge animal
can live in a place with
so little water.
This old male is at the very
limit of his endurance.
The land may be bone dry,
but there are signs that water
once flowed here.
The Hoanib, one of Namibia's rivers.
A river of sand.
The trees that line these
sand rivers send roots down
over 30 metres to tap water that
lies deep beneath the river bed.
These trees are
the giraffe's salvation,
even if he has to stretch to
his very tallest to get a mouthful.
Even on tip-toe, he still needs
a half-metre-long tongue
to reach the leaves
he so badly needs.
He's ruled this stretch
of the Hoanib for over a decade,
and this prime territory is
attracting females.
He waits confidently for her.
But they've got company.
A young male.
The old bull won't tolerate a rival.
Pushing and shoving,
they size each other up.
The young rival seems to think
he has a chance and attacks.
The first few blows usually
settle things in such battles,
but here, the stakes are high.
To lose means exile in the desert.
Neither will back down.
As the fight intensifies,
they change tactics.
The young male aims for the rump.
The old bull
targets his rival's legs.
The old bull is down.
Is this the end of his reign?
He knows a knockout blow is coming.
But the old bull ducks...
..and strikes a blow
to his rival's underbelly.
Out for the count.
The old bull is victorious.
But only just.
The sand river remains his to rule.
It's a river that is about
to be transformed.
Under clear blue skies,
water floods down the Hoanib.
The welcome consequence of rain
that fell hundreds of miles away.
The water may only flow
for a matter of hours.
But this miraculous flood
is enough to provide
a lifeline for the trees and the
giraffes of the Hoanib River.
It's what makes this place
worth fighting for.
Here, fossil lakes,
secret waterholes, desert fog
and ephemeral rivers like this
provide just enough water
for life to get by,
no matter how tough it gets.
It's hard to find more inventive
solutions to staying alive
than in this,
the most ancient corner of Africa.
For four years, the Africa team
searched the continent
for new and surprising stories.
Not only of strange
and unfamiliar creatures,
but also of some we think we know.
Veteran wildlife cameraman
Martyn Colbeck took on the challenge
of shedding new light on the life
of Namibia's desert giraffe.
I jumped at the opportunity
of working with an animal that
I hadn't really spent much
time with.
Straight away, they proved
to be quite an eye-opener.
They're very bizarre
looking animals.
We just kept looking at them
from different angles
and they looked even weirder.
The combination of the sort of
weird close ups, the beautiful
landscape that they're in.
They're amusing...
I got really attached
to them, actually.
Overlying all this,
we were always waiting for a fight.
But to see a full-blooded fight
is very rare.
So, the only way that
we were going to see it
is if we stuck at it, day after day,
every day for 30 days.
We were lucky enough that we
found a male guarding a female.
And out of nowhere,
this male came round the corner.
And almost immediately
faced up to our male.
Absolutely no warning that this
was going to happen,
so it was complete
pandemonium in the car.
But luckily I got the camera up
and running in time to actually
capture this fight, and it all came
down to one minute in real time.
When I filmed it,
you don't see it in slow motion.
And you just have to
go with the flow.
You're not experiencing the fight,
you're just basically framing it
and capturing it.
So it was only afterwards, when
we looked at it in slow motion,
that you could really understand
how ferocious it was.
You can see the impact on the skin.
You can see the ripples going
through the flesh.
But it was the final blows
that delivered the real surprise.
It was like one of those
chimneys falling down.
At the last moment,
the head just went clunk!
And we thought it was dead.
We thought this thing was dead.
And it lay there for,
it must have been three minutes.
Eventually, this thing suddenly
got up, the one that was
lying down, and the two of them were
then standing, and then the one that
had been knocked over completely
then just said, "I've had enough.
Okay, okay, you won and I'm off".
I, I think it's very unlikely
I'm going to see
anything like that again.
I think that's a
once-in-a-life-timer. I really do.
It won't be easy to look at
giraffes in the same way again.
On the other side of the desert,
another of Africa's
great animal icons
was attracting
the attention of the team
as they staked out
a secret waterhole.
They hoped to reveal
a very different side
to the personality of
the black rhinoceros.
The team have heard that at night
rhinos behave a little strangely.
A specially-built starlight camera
would allow the team
to pierce the darkness.
It's amazing. That's filming
something we can't even see.
Yeah, and if you look
out there now...
Yeah, it's just black, isn't it?
But through this,
it looks as sharp as day.
Rhinos are notoriously anti-social,
yet here they come to revel
in each other's company.
This is amazing.
This is such intimate behaviour,
which you can only see
filming them at night like this.
It's incredible.
But it wasn't just cameras that
would show a new side to rhinos.
By concealing tiny radio
microphones around the waterhole,
the crew hoped to eavesdrop
on the night's activity.
And what they heard was astonishing.
They're really talkative.
They really are having a good chat.
These guys are far more
communicative than elephants, even.
They're just going on and on,
chatting away.
It's a beautiful,
crystal clear night,
so we've got beautiful starry shots.
Loads of amazing noise.
Puffing and huffing.
So it's about two in the morning.
There's only one rhino left up there.
The rest of the them
have gone to bed,
but he's decided to lie down
right on top of the radio mic.
The crew prepared for one more night
at the waterhole
under the full moon.
It seems that they're
not really here for the water,
but more to socialise.
A bit like going out
for the evening.
He's got some kudu horns on his
face, draped over his nose!
Is it all on camera, too?
These images have a particular
poignancy in a world where
rhino horn is worth more
than its weight in gold.
Poaching is going through
a really bad time right now
in Southern Africa.
If you averaged it out,
a rhino has been killed every day
for the last year.
That's really serious poaching.
It's a huge concern that what we saw
and filmed just won't happen again.
Ever.
It's only now that technology
has revealed a new side
to the rhino's personality.
The black rhinoceros is
a symbol of the African bush.
But it seems that this creature
has been long misunderstood.
For the Africa team,
revealing giraffes
and rhinos in this new light
was just the beginning.
Africa may be a continent
we think we know,
but it's still full of surprises.
Next week, I'll be here on
the great savannahs of East Africa.
This is an ever changing land with
a turbulent past and present.
Where animals must gamble
with their lives.
Bounded by mighty mountains
and steaming swamps,
this land is the most prolific
wildlife haven on Earth.
A land worth fighting for.
Sync and corrections by n17t01