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Apex Predators vs Prey | Herbivores and Carnivores | FULL EPISODE | Wildlife Documentary — Transcript

by Nature's Moments · 16,946 words · 3,012 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:01This paradise has no way out.
0:10This wall is holding life prisoner.
0:18The safest place here is also the
0:21deadliest.
0:29No one leaves [music] this fortress.
0:39The wall meant to protect is the wall
0:41that kills.
0:52Before the sun touches the crater rim,
0:56fog fills the bowl white and still as a
1:00bottomless lake.
1:08Beneath that fog lies a complete
1:12kingdom.
1:13Grasslands, marshes, herds [music]
1:16so vast that nothing needs to travel any
1:19farther.
1:29Seen from the rim, this place looks like
1:32a paradise carefully fenced in. But this
1:35paradise has no gate.
1:44A male lion walks alone. His pace is
1:49slow. The slow of an animal that has
1:51measured this distance [music] far too
1:53many times.
2:02A loser anywhere else still has
2:04somewhere to go into exile. What about a
2:06loser here when the door out [music] has
2:08never existed?
2:16Today's story is about nature's greatest
2:18walls and about the price every [music]
2:21resident behind them must pay.
2:26[music]
2:31Every wall charges a toll [music] in
2:33both directions and the price is always
2:37paid at the door.
2:47>> [music]
2:48>> So, is a perfect fortress, a paradise,
2:51or a prison? Hold on to that question
2:54because [music] at the end of this
2:56story, one species will step willingly
2:59in behind a wall.
3:17The fog has not lifted before movement
3:20stirs by the marsh. A wilderbeast calf
3:23drifts half a step from its mother and
3:25the hyena is already there.
3:49A gray shape charges straight into the
3:52gap between mother and car. A gap only a
3:54few faces wide.
4:04The wilderbeast mother wheels around
4:06head low. Horns driving straight in. The
4:09hunter is [music] knocked off its line
4:11and rolls into the grass.
4:23The hyena's playbook needs two. One to
4:27pull the mother away, one to close on
4:29the calf. A lone hunter is never enough
4:32against a wilderbeast mother.
4:43The hunter stands breathing in the fog.
4:45[music] The opening hunt ends
4:47empty-handed. The wind belongs to a
4:49mother.
5:01That loser will hunt again before
5:04sunset. But to understand why no one
5:06leaves this place hunter or prey, we
5:09have [music] to go back to the wall
5:10itself.
5:202 million years ago, this was an
5:22enormous volcano, possibly once over
5:2616,400
5:28ft high on a par with Kilimanjaro today.
5:40Then the magma chamber beneath it slowly
5:43[music] emptied. The entire summit
5:45collapsed straight into the earth like a
5:48dome with [music] its scaffolding pulled
5:50out.
5:58What remained [music] is called
6:00Enorangoro.
6:02The largest intact unflooded [music]
6:04volcanic calera on Earth. A sealed bowl
6:08inside a ring of rock.
6:17The crater floor is flat as a stage and
6:21the horizon of that stage is not sky. It
6:25is stone.
6:34Permanent springs pour down from the
6:36rim, feeding freshwater marshes and
6:38keeping the grass green almost year
6:40round.
6:48>> [music]
6:48>> At the center lies a silver soda lake.
6:52Its water is salty and alkaline. It
6:54grows no grass, but in return, it
6:56supplies the minerals that young grass
6:59lacks.
7:03[music]
7:08Food has no season. Water never runs
7:11dry. Everything a grazing animal needs
7:14for an entire lifetime fits inside a
7:16diameter of just over 10 miles. [music]
7:27A self supplying, self-sufficient
7:30fortress. But remember this, the very
7:34wall that feeds [music] them will also
7:36kill in a way no one sees coming.
7:48>> [music]
7:48>> About 25,000 large hoofed animals live
7:52permanently on the crater floor.
7:55Wilderbeast, [music] zebra, African
7:58buffalo, gazelle,
8:06wilderbeast are the most numerous, then
8:09zebra. That number has barely changed
8:12for decades. No one new arrives and no
8:15one leaves.
8:24About 100 miles to the northwest [music]
8:27on the Serengeti plains, their relatives
8:30must march a thousand miles every year
8:32to [music] chase the rains.
8:40Not here. [music] In the wet season, up
8:44to 20% of the wilderbeast and around
8:48half the zebra climb to the rim for a
8:50change of air in the dry season. They
8:53all come back.
9:01No thousandmile march, no deep rivers
9:05full of crocodiles. The wall has paid on
9:08behalf of its residents the price of
9:11every long journey.
9:16[music]
9:20And where the prey does not leave, the
9:23hunters stay, too. Spotted hyena clans
9:26divide the crater floor completely.
9:28Borders handed down from one generation
9:31to the next.
9:40Scientists have followed those eight
9:42clans almost every day for nearly 30
9:45years. Every animal with a file of its
9:48own.
9:56And that stack of files tells a story
9:59that runs completely against the
10:01stereotype.
10:03It begins beside a carcass and a king
10:06eating in a hurry.
10:17Midm morning, a wilderbeast carcass lies
10:20on a patch of short grass. Beside it,
10:23the male lion eats faster than usual, as
10:26if counting down the clock.
10:34Because the sound of a meal has
10:36traveled, gray shapes appear at the edge
10:39of the grass, thicker by the minute. The
10:42ark closes in around the carcass, one
10:45probing step at a time.
10:51At those numbers, hyenas are more than
10:54capable of driving a group of lionesses
10:57off a kill. Surround, press, then take
11:00it. They do exactly that all across the
11:03savannah.
11:08But beside this [music] carcass is a
11:09male. He rises to full height, turns to
11:13face the ark, and steps forward. One
11:16single step without hesitation.
11:29Yet pride cannot make up for a brutal
11:32imbalance. The whole clan is swarming in
11:36a frenzy.
11:47At the very moment the line between life
11:50and death draws close, a familiar shape
11:53comes charging in.
12:03The board flips completely.
12:35Nearly 30 years of records. Write down
12:38one single result with an adult male at
12:42the carcass. The lions win no matter how
12:45many hyenas there are.
12:48[laughter]
12:53At Sabuti in Botswana, researchers even
12:56measured the threshold. It takes 4 to
12:59one before hyenas can push lionesses off
13:02a kill and only when no male is present.
13:12The files record something even more
13:14counterintuitive.
13:16In this crater, lions steal from hyenas
13:19more often than the other way round. The
13:22animal branded a scavenger hunts most of
13:25its own meals.
13:32King today. But it is that very word
13:35today that the wall is quietly repricing
13:39once every [music] season.
13:47On the open savannah, a male who loses
13:50his pride will wander dozens of miles
13:52looking for empty land to start over or
13:55to disappear in.
14:03Inside a bowl just over 10 miles across,
14:06there is no empty land. Every inch of
14:09grass has an owner. The fallen have
14:12nowhere to be exiled to.
14:21And so old age never leaves this place.
14:24It accumulates right in front of those
14:26who are still young.
14:34The most towering proof stands in the
14:37Lai forest. Old bull elephants, tusks
14:40almost brushing the grass. The crater
14:43floor holds almost nothing but adult
14:45males.
14:52At times up to 70 bulls are present at
14:55once. Yet almost no family herd lives
14:59here permanently.
15:01Why that is? No one has been able to
15:03prove
15:13out by the mud wallows. Old bull buffalo
15:17drift in as well. Pushed out of the herd
15:20by the younger males. They live alone or
15:23in small groups of a few. Their
15:30[music]
15:31nickname, dagger boy, mudboy. The dried
15:35mud blocks parasites. As for the temper,
15:38[music] the whole crater knows it
15:40cornered. They turn and fight.
15:48This wall pulls in humans, too.
15:51>> [music]
15:51>> Every season, hundreds of thousands of
15:54visitors pour up to the crater rim,
15:56while the number of vehicles allowed
15:58down onto the floor [music] has to be
16:00capped by the day.
16:11From the viewpoints on the rim, an
16:13entire kingdom fits into a single field
16:16of view, something few wild places on
16:19Earth can still offer.
16:24Living behind the wall is therefore
16:27easier than almost anywhere else. But
16:30easier to survive has never meant easier
16:33to bear.
16:40Here the defeated stay on to watch their
16:43replacement. Prey grow old among the
16:46same herd. Hunters grow old inside the
16:49same territory.
16:51[music]
16:56No one is allowed to disappear
17:04in a kingdom like this. The most
17:06important question is not who is
17:09strongest. It is who is aging slowest.
17:20For the zebra herd [music] beside the
17:22soda lake, that is not philosophy. It is
17:25a roll call held almost [music] every
17:28single day.
17:35The ones calling the role are the Gray
17:38Clans, and they almost never read it
17:40wrong.
17:51Afternoon light slants low, the zebra
17:54are scattered across the grass, and at
17:56the far corner of the eye, gray shapes
17:59are quietly forming up.
18:07The spotted hyenas are in no hurry. They
18:10push the zebra herd for one short burst
18:13only to read each running stride.
18:22One floor shows itself immediately. With
18:26every stride, the gap between it and the
18:29herd grows longer. To a hunter, that is
18:33a death sentence.
18:52The chase erupts. Gray shapes cutting
18:55across the terrain, peeling the trailing
18:58animal cleanly out of the herd.
19:03A single striped body in the open grass
19:06with no ranks left to hide behind. The
19:10circle closes.
19:21The hunt ends in success. The whole
19:24family gathers around the prize and the
19:27meal begins.
19:56There is no malice in it, only a clock
19:59that was read correctly.
20:02Behind the wall, old age cannot be
20:04hidden. It is seen every single day.
20:13That clock does not only run inside the
20:16herds of prey. It runs inside the mouths
20:19of the hunters, too.
20:28Look closely at a lion. The pink nose
20:32darkens with black speckles.
20:35Over the years, once more than half the
20:37nose has turned black. The animal is
20:40past its fifth year.
20:48Inside the mouth, time keeps a closer
20:51record. Teeth yellow, then [music] wear,
20:54then crack, then break. By around age
20:5810, most wild lions [music] carry badly
21:01damaged teeth.
21:09The canines are the tools that hold
21:12large prey in the deciding seconds. A
21:15broken canine, the killing tool, is
21:17gone. A worn jaw every meal takes twice
21:20as long and fills less.
21:30Measurements out on the savannah say it
21:32plainly. Hunting in a group, lions
21:35succeed about 30% of the time. Hunting
21:38alone in daylight only 17 to 19%.
21:44[music]
21:49Only darkness evens the math back out
21:52after nightfall. A lone hunter does
21:55nearly as well as a coordinated group.
21:58The knight is old age's last ally.
22:08Except that [music] knight cannot fix
22:10teeth. A king who loses his pride at 10
22:15carries in [music] his mouth a set of
22:17tools already worn near the end of its
22:20[music] design life.
22:28Hunger therefore always catches up
22:30first. Not an enemy, not a wound, but a
22:33run of missed hunts coming closer and
22:35closer together. [music]
22:44In the crater, former kings do not
22:46disappear. They drift out to the margins
22:48where the grass is shorter, the prey
22:51harder, and no one else wants to
22:53compete.
22:59Kings do not die here. Kings wear down.
23:09And if you need proof that this law
23:12applies even to a species with no
23:14enemies, the proof is chewing grass
23:17unhurried in the Larai forest.
23:27Elephants do not lose their teeth the
23:30way lions do. Elephants lose their teeth
23:33on a schedule, a calendar printed into
23:35the jaw from the day they are born.
23:44Six sets of mers for an entire lifetime
23:47arriving one after another like a
23:49conveyor belt. The one in front wears
23:51out. The one behind pushes up to take
23:54its place.
24:02The sixth set, the last one, comes up at
24:05around age 30 and must grind grass for
24:09more than 30 years more. By about
24:11[music] age 65, the conveyor belt stops
24:14for good.
24:25There is no seventh set. When the jaw is
24:28worn out, hunger begins in the middle of
24:31an ocean of grass that the jaw can no
24:33longer grind.
24:41That is why the very old elephants make
24:44their way back to the swamps where the
24:46waterlogged grass is softest. They feed
24:49there and in the end they lie down
24:51there.
24:56[music]
25:03The margins on that side are home to two
25:06old male lions. Time can be read on each
25:09of them in the way they lie, in the rise
25:12to their feet that is a little slower
25:14every day.
25:21They once led a coalition, once had a
25:23pride of their own. One bad season and
25:26all of it changed hands. What remains?
25:30Experience and a margin no one is
25:32competing for.
25:40Hunger forces them into a process of
25:42elimination as cold and precise as
25:45accounting.
25:51Thompson's gazelle. Too fast.
26:01Zebra. Their backward kick [music] has
26:03been recorded shattering a lion's jaw
26:06and breaking its teeth.
26:15Newborn calves. Around 80% of calves are
26:18born within a few weeks. A hunter
26:20[music] drowning in choices. And every
26:23small target comes with a mother. Like
26:26the lesson of that early morning.
26:36Cross off all of those lines [music] and
26:39the spreadsheet leaves exactly one name.
26:42Dagger boy.
26:50horns thick as slabs of stone and the
26:54habit of an African buffalo when
26:56cornered stand and fight rather than
26:58run. But this one is old too. Slower
27:02too, alone too.
27:13An old hunter can only still hunt old
27:15prey. The wall has just arranged [music]
27:17a final fair to the point of cruelty.
27:27Late afternoon, the wind turns. The
27:30buffalo stands deep in the mud.
27:39One lion steps straight into its line of
27:43sight. That one is not there to hunt.
27:45That one is the bait.
27:49[music]
27:52[snorts]
27:52The buffalo lowers its horns, turning
27:55toward the threat in front of it.
27:59And at that same moment, the second one
28:02charges in.
28:04[music]
28:16The biggest meal of the season begins.
28:36The smell of blood needs no strong wind
28:39to travel. Before a full day has passed,
28:42golden shapes appear from the north. A
28:45whole pride of lionesses [music] and
28:47males in their prime.
28:56The old ones stand up on the buffalo
28:58carcass. [music] The same calculation
29:00runs through both heads. The calculation
29:02they themselves stood on the other side
29:04of many years ago.
29:12No fight takes place with worn down
29:15teeth. A wound right now costs more than
29:19any meal.
29:28The meal changes hands to the young
29:30pride, something they did not have to
29:33hunt. The two old ones withdraw to the
29:35edge of the grass, leaving the prize
29:38behind them. The confrontation ends
29:40without a single drop of blood.
29:55If you had to choose, stay in a fortress
29:57that is full but has no way out or cross
30:00the wall toward a hungry freedom, leave
30:03your choice in the comments and hit
30:05subscribe with nature moments.
30:13But hunger is not the greatest danger to
30:16the lion bloodline here. The two old
30:18ones carry in their blood a heavier
30:20problem, one that began with a plague of
30:23flies.
30:25[music]
30:32In 1962, after the drought came the
30:35flooding rain and biting flies bred into
30:38a plague across the crater floor. Lions
30:42were covered in festering soores,
30:44flattened with exhaustion, unable to
30:46hunt at all.
30:54A [music] population of 75 to 100
30:58collapsed to about a dozen. The records
31:01that year counted nine females and
31:04exactly one male.
31:10>> [music]
31:13>> Every lion in the crater today descends
31:15from 15 founders and the wall filters
31:19out new blood. Across 48 years, only one
31:23male from outside made it in and left
31:26descendants
31:34[music]
31:36on the family tree. The branches keep
31:38folding back into each other. Inbreeding
31:42here runs about 1.6 times higher than in
31:46populations outside the wall.
31:56Genetic modeling says the population
31:58needs 1 to five new breeding males every
32:01decade. What it actually received in
32:04half a century, exactly one. While the
32:07grassland has never run out of prey,
32:17the fortress once supported
32:20120 lions. For 30 years now, the
32:24population has hovered around 50 to 60.
32:27[music] Wellfed, surrounded by prey, and
32:30short of exactly one thing, blood from
32:33the other side of the wall.
32:40On some morning, another lion shape
32:43moves along the foot of the rock face
32:46along exactly the kind of slope that was
32:48once tried. This time there is no
32:51attempt.
32:53Some doors exist only in memory.
33:02[music]
33:03And at the other end of the planet, one
33:05species has seen a wall even more
33:07absolute than [music] this and then done
33:10the opposite of every instinct. Walked
33:12in on its own.
33:29That place lies on the edge of the wed
33:31sea. Antarctica, an ice bay named Atka.
33:34Seen from space, the only sign of life
33:37is dark streaks of droppings on the
33:39white.
33:46Thanks to those very stains, humans have
33:49found dozens of penguin cities, many of
33:52which no one has ever [music] set foot
33:53in.
34:01In March, as the South sinks into the
34:04winter night, the sea around the
34:06continent freezes solid [music]
34:07advancing miles every day. The door to
34:10the ocean is closing.
34:17[music]
34:20As every other creature retreats north,
34:23[music] the emperor penguins go the
34:25opposite way, marching 30 to 75 m deep
34:28into the ice.
34:36They are the only bird on Earth that
34:39lays its eggs in the middle of the
34:40Antarctic winter. Not the [music] only
34:43penguin, the only bird.
34:52Winter here is a war. Night [music]
34:55lasting months. Ice feet thick, cold
34:58reaching 58° F. That wall [music] closes
35:02every door to predators.
35:12No hunter follows them in there. The
35:14entry [music] price is too high and only
35:17one species is rich enough to pay it in
35:20fat, in feathers [music] and in hunger
35:38[music]
35:42before a long journey without food. The
35:44emperors have to load up completely. But
35:47below the ice edge, the gatekeeper is
35:50already waiting.
35:57The leopard seal, a giant killer up to
36:0012 ft long, patrols patiently right at
36:03[music] the doorway.
36:15An emperor dives into the water and a
36:18dark shadow from under the ice
36:20immediately follows.
36:32The chase spirals. The prey changes
36:35direction, but the hunter keeps cutting
36:38the angle, closing the gap. Drag drops
36:42sharply, and the penguin's body shoots
36:44away three times faster.
36:53The emperor bursts out of the water to
36:55safety, leaving the hunter in empty
36:58water below. The chase closes. The prey
37:01escapes. The door still has its guard.
37:19Scientists analyzing the footage have
37:21proposed an explanation. That layer of
37:24bubbles lubricates the flow around the
37:27body like [music] a drag reducing coat.
37:30For the bird, that is a ticket out.
37:40That gatekeeper is formidable, but it is
37:43not the greatest danger of this breeding
37:45season. The greatest danger has no
37:48teeth, no face, and it is waiting deeper
37:51in the dark.
37:57>> [music]
38:00>> The column leaves the water's edge,
38:02linked into a black line, stretching out
38:05of sight across the white. Ahead lie
38:09days of walking, sometimes waddling,
38:12sometimes sliding on their bellies.
38:22The destination is a stretch of ice
38:24locked fast to the shore, sheltered from
38:27the wind behind the ice cliffs, solid
38:30enough not to break under an entire city
38:32of birds through the whole winter.
38:36[music]
38:41There, in the deepening cold, they do
38:44the second contradictory thing of the
38:46year. pair up and sing duets that
38:49identify them among thousands of voices.
39:00In early winter, the female lays exactly
39:03one egg, weighing about 1 lb, only
39:06around 2.3% of the mother's body weight.
39:09An entire year wrapped up in that.
39:19That egg cannot touch the ice for long.
39:22Exposed for more than about 2 minutes in
39:24the winter wind, the embryo inside will
39:27die.
39:35In Africa, [music] the old king's clock
39:38sits in his mouth. Here the father's
39:42clock sits in his fat and it has started
39:44counting down.
39:53That count is brutal. 65 to 75 days of
39:57incubation through the winter night.
39:59About 115 days of fasting in total. The
40:03body burns 40 to 45% of itself.
40:13>> [music]
40:13>> A male enters winter at around 84 lb. On
40:17the day he sees the sun again, about 50
40:20are left. [music]
40:21Every day that passes, the wall takes
40:24another slice of fat. That is the rent.
40:34His armor lets him pay slowly. layers of
40:37feathers interlocked against the wind. A
40:40fat layer over 1 in thick. Nasal
40:43passages that hold back about 80% of the
40:45heat from every breath out.
40:51[music]
40:54Then the wall strikes for real. A storm
40:57in the middle of the winter night. Air
40:59at -58°
41:01F gusts over 100 m an hour. With the
41:06wind counted in, the skin feels below
41:09Mus 76° F.
41:20No burrow, no nest, not an inch of
41:23shelter. Thousands of males do the only
41:26thing left. packed themselves into a
41:28solid round mass at the tightest point.
41:3110 bodies crowded into a square 3 ft on
41:34a side.
41:43Inside that mass, thermal magic happens.
41:46The core climbs past 68° F, at times
41:50measured up to 99.5°
41:52F, while the windward edge sits numb at
41:5540° F.
42:01And that round mass does not stand
42:04still. Every 30 to 60 seconds, a
42:08thousand birds shuffle 2 to 4 in in
42:11unison, a wave running through the
42:13crowd.
42:18Each of those small waves rotates the
42:20shift for the whole city. Those taking
42:23the wind at the edge drift slowly into
42:25the warm core. Those at the core drift
42:29out, a living wall running itself with
42:32no one giving orders.
42:39The recorded result, standing inside the
42:42huddle, each bird lowers its energy burn
42:45by about 25%.
42:48The saving that decides whether it
42:50survives all 115 days of fasting. The
42:55storm passes. The city is still
42:58standing.
43:17In mid July, in the deepest part of the
43:20winter night, [music] the eggs begin to
43:22crack. The new life weighs a mere 11 oz.
43:26Born behind the wall on its father's
43:29feet.
43:38It [music] cannot keep itself warm yet.
43:40Its entire world, for now, [music] is a
43:44warm fold of skin between its father's
43:46feet and the sound of the wind outside.
43:52[music]
43:59And as if on a timer, the females
44:01return, carrying food from the sea. Many
44:05of those returns land exactly on the
44:08days the eggs hatch. [music]
44:16[music]
44:17Now it is the exhausted father's turn to
44:20set out for the sea to pay back 115
44:23[music] days of fasting. The door now is
44:27where the whole family takes turns
44:29[music] passing through.
44:39From here, [music] life becomes a
44:41shuttle run. The father returns and the
44:44mother leaves. The mother returns and
44:47[music] the father leaves. Each trip
44:49dozens of miles. Each belly full of food
44:52[music] traded for many days away from
44:55the chick.
45:01[music]
45:04The chicks grow fast and at about 45 to
45:0850 days old, they do what every child
45:10must. Leave their parents' feet and join
45:14the nursery, the crash.
45:24That is the species gamble. A nursery
45:28with no adults guarding it, traded for
45:30double the rations. The wall still
45:33stands guard for them, but only while
45:35winter is still here.
45:43Then the light returns to the south. The
45:46sun touches the horizon. The days grow
45:49longer and the wall begins to show its
45:51first cracks.
45:59Spring opens the door for life. But a
46:01door once open does not check anyone's
46:04papers. The first shapes appear in the
46:07sky. Hunters with wings.
46:13To them, ice cliffs do not exist. The
46:17wall could stop feet, it has never
46:20stopped wings.
46:27A giant petrol. It glides low over the
46:31crash, reading the crowd exactly the way
46:34a hyena reads a zebra herd.
46:45The targets are the chicks separated
46:46from the group standing a few steps
46:48apart is invitation enough.
46:55The dive comes fast and low straight
46:58into that gap. The young do exactly what
47:02instinct taught them. Crowd in, press
47:06tight.
47:07The hunter banks [music] back and forth
47:09looking for a gap.
47:14The nearest large [music] bird moves in,
47:17blocking the way, and the petrol veers
47:19off, swinging out in a [music] wide
47:21circle.
47:29There is no catch that day, but the
47:31threat is confirmed. This wall has a
47:34hole shaped like a pair of wings. And it
47:36will be back.
47:46Even so, the ledger of spring records a
47:49sober truth. The biggest killer of
47:52chicks is not the petrol, not any hooked
47:56beak. It is hunger and cold.
48:03>> [music]
48:11[music]
48:29>> The southern Summer arrives by
48:31subtraction. Every week, the water's
48:34edge eats a few more miles of ice. The
48:37door that was once 50 mi away is now
48:40walking toward the city.
48:51For the chicks, that is a graduation
48:54clock. They are about 5 months old, only
48:57about half the weight of an adult. Their
49:00gray down still half molted.
49:11The gray down falls away, revealing the
49:14first black and white armor. The real
49:17diving suit. [music]
49:18Not finished yet, but time waits for no
49:21plumage.
49:26because their food has never been on the
49:28ice. Every meal until now has [music]
49:31walked dozens of miles to get here, and
49:33that supply line is about to stop.
49:40The parents return trips grow rarer.
49:43Then one day, they do not come back. Not
49:45a tragedy, but a design. Their season is
49:48done.
49:53No one teaches them to swim. No one
49:55escorts them. The only route toward the
49:58next meal is to walk to the ice edge
50:00themselves where the ocean [music]
50:02begins.
50:05The crowd edges forward. The first ones
50:08look down 50 ft of sucking wind. Waves
50:12beating at the foot of the cliff.
50:17Not one of them has ever swam. Not one
50:20[music] has ever fallen. And beneath
50:22that water, last winter's gatekeeper is
50:26still on [music] patrol.
50:32The first chick leans past the edge. One
50:35second of flailing, then the small body
50:37drops straight down 50 ft through the
50:39wall of wind, punching into the sea in a
50:42burst of white foam.
50:52The sea goes still for a beat. Then the
50:54small head comes up bewildered and
50:57unharmed. It is in the ocean.
51:03That signal sets off the whole crowd.
51:06One by one, then wave by wave. Gray
51:10bodies launch over the cliff edge. A
51:13rain of chicks falling into the open
51:15sea.
51:19Then from a distance, a dark streak cuts
51:22through the waves toward them. One chick
51:25breaks from the group, wobbling among
51:27the swells. The dark streak changes
51:29course, closes in for a beat,
51:34then loses the trail in the scattering
51:36crowd.
51:39When the surface settles, the young are
51:42already far away. The first crossing of
51:45their lives closes safely, and the
51:48northern horizon opens up ahead.
51:57Not everyone is that lucky. The ledger
52:00at the ice edge has never been clean.
52:02But that year, hundreds of gray coats
52:05paid the toll at the door, and the sea
52:07took them in.
52:18The story should have closed there one
52:20more generation through the door intact.
52:22But at another fortress on this same
52:24sea, the door slammed shut ahead of
52:27schedule.
52:37That fortress is called Hali Bay, the
52:39second largest emperor city in the
52:42world. 14,000 to 25,000 pairs, 5 to 9%
52:48of the entire species.
52:59In October 2016, the ice there broke up
53:02early before the young had grown
53:04waterproof feathers. Thousands, possibly
53:07up to 10,000 chicks, went down with
53:09their own floor.
53:19The next year, the same script. The year
53:23after that, the same again. Three
53:26breeding seasons almost entirely lost
53:29and the species second largest city all
53:32but abandoned.
53:4235 mi to the south, the Dorson lamp
53:45colony suddenly grew more than 10fold.
53:48The hali birds had moved house. This
53:50species knows how to save itself while
53:53there is still somewhere to move to.
54:04But the satellite maps have less and
54:07less empty space. In November 2022, the
54:10Bellingshousen Sea lost all of its ice.
54:13Four of the five emperor cities in that
54:16region were left with nothing, and more
54:18than 9,000 chicks did not make it.
54:30Now place the two walls side by side.
54:34Enoro's wall of stone has stood for 2
54:37million years. It imprisons [music]
54:39its residents in abundance and charges
54:42its toll in old age and in bloodline.
54:52Antarctica's wall of ice has to be
54:54rebuilt every year. It shelters those
54:56who walk into it willingly and charges
54:59its toll in hunger. And now it is
55:02melting.
55:12Two clocks are still ticking at the two
55:14ends of the planet. The worn teeth of a
55:17king, the emptied fat of a father, the
55:20same count, the same creditor.
55:32And the opening question has [music] its
55:34answer. Is a perfect fortress a paradise
55:40or a prison? It is both [music] paradise
55:42and prison depending on which side of
55:45the door the creature is standing.
55:56On some morning [music] at the foot of
55:58the rockface, another lion shape moves
56:01along the old route. And those who are
56:04young [music] today will walk that same
56:05road. In the end, the wall is very
56:08patient.
56:12[music]
56:17If this story of two kingdoms behind the
56:19wall was worth an hour of your time, hit
56:22subscribe to Nature Moments. Turn on the
56:24bell and tell us which wall haunts you
56:27more.
56:30[music]
56:34And if you want to step on [music] into
56:36another kingdom, one more video is
56:38waiting on the screen. See you on the
56:41other side of the door.
56:52The wall does not need to know whether
56:54the one standing before it is a king or
56:56a prisoner. It only charges the toll at
57:00the door.
57:10Dawn over southern Africa.
57:16[music]
57:17The first light falls on a sea of silver
57:20grass where every blade is sheathed in
57:23frost as thin as glass.
57:27[music]
57:31In the bed of a dry river, a pride of
57:34lions lies [music] pressed together.
57:42Their breath rises in [music] slow
57:44columns of smoke through the biting air.
57:50[music]
57:53This is Africa.
57:59the Kalahari in mid-inter. [music]
58:07On some nights, the temperature drops to
58:0912° [music] F, and the kings of a hot
58:12continent live like exiles.
58:17[music]
58:22The opening hand is dealt, [music] the
58:24crown or the sword horns, which side
58:26wins.
58:29>> [music]
58:43>> In the Kalahari, a hunting party is
58:45often cruy thin. A single pair of
58:48workers for the whole engagement. No
58:51numbers to press the prey.
59:00Every contest begins short-handed where
59:04individual skill and every mistake can
59:06decide everything.
59:12[music]
59:16They lower their bodies, creeping
59:18through the dry grass, closing step by
59:21step, [music] while the gems keeps its
59:23head down. Heat. Heat.
59:38[music]
1:00:10Suddenly the sand explodes.
1:00:19The lioness [music] launches herself
1:00:21like an arrow, tearing the stillness
1:00:23open.
1:00:32[music]
1:00:35In the blinding dust, a close quarters
1:00:38struggle breaks out as the lion tries to
1:00:42wrestle the gems down.
1:00:48But the gems box surges back up,
1:00:50throwing its entire body weight into the
1:00:53fight.
1:00:59Instead of running on, it stops, lowers
1:01:02[music] its head, and levels a pair of
1:01:05swordlike horns nearly 4 ft long
1:01:08straight at the predator.
1:01:16Those horns can and more than [music]
1:01:18once have badly wounded a lion, even
1:01:22finished one off.
1:01:33With a team of only two sisters, an
1:01:36injury now could become a sentence
1:01:38hanging over the whole harsh, dry
1:01:41season.
1:01:50The hunters check themselves as the gems
1:01:52box turns. With every movement they
1:01:54make, the horn tips always aimed
1:01:56straight at the target.
1:02:04In the end, the queens accept defeat and
1:02:07turn away into the sea of dry grass.
1:02:12[music]
1:02:23The price of letting go is counted in
1:02:25effort. An average of 7.3 miles of
1:02:28marching each night for the next chance
1:02:31to ease the hunger.
1:02:40For a pride down to two hunters, a
1:02:43failure is not just one lost meal. It is
1:02:46one more night the family has to wait.
1:02:50[music]
1:03:05The defeated lions return to the dry
1:03:08riverbed.
1:03:13But the thing that matters most is not
1:03:15the hunger. It is that they do not have
1:03:17to endure it alone.
1:03:23Through the freezing desert night, the
1:03:25whole clan lies pressed together,
1:03:28generations stacked on one another into
1:03:30an oasis of heat.
1:03:50For a century, the belief held that
1:03:52lions live in prides in order to hunt
1:03:55more efficiently.
1:04:15Yet decades of scientific data from the
1:04:18Serengeti have overturned that.
1:04:28The hunting success rate of groups of 3
1:04:30to six is barely higher than that of
1:04:32solitary individuals.
1:04:42So what does the pride exist for?
1:04:53The answer lies in a double insurance
1:04:58contract.
1:05:06First, the pride defends territory. The
1:05:09roar carrying along the border does not
1:05:12serve the hunt. It is a declaration of
1:05:14sovereignty against intruders.
1:05:23Second, the pride defends the nursery
1:05:26against strange males that come to kill
1:05:29the cubs.
1:05:36The numbers do not lie. A group of only
1:05:38one or two females faces a 20% risk of
1:05:41losing the pride outright each year,
1:05:44while large groups can hold for decades.
1:05:52This contract even makes room for
1:05:54misfortune. An injured female still eats
1:05:57from the shared kill.
1:06:05One individual's failure is carried by
1:06:08the whole clan.
1:06:14Every contract, however, has a fee.
1:06:24In the desert, the fee is paid in meat.
1:06:27Every kill has to be divided among more
1:06:30stomachs.
1:06:35It is prey density, not the lions, that
1:06:39writes this schedule of fees.
1:06:45In the semi- desert Kalahari, where life
1:06:48clings along the dry beds of the orb and
1:06:51the Nosob, the terms are being worn down
1:06:54by the harshness.
1:06:59[music]
1:07:01Because prey is scarce, prides are
1:07:04forced to shrink, averaging only 2.4
1:07:07adult females.
1:07:16To compensate, their territory has to
1:07:19stretch across 565
1:07:21square miles, 7 to 20 times larger than
1:07:25a Serengeti prides.
1:07:34Among the red sand, water is a luxury.
1:07:37Lions have to learn to go a week without
1:07:39drinking, ringing every drop from the
1:07:42blood of prey or from wild summer
1:07:44melons.
1:07:51Smaller prides, wider land, vanishing
1:07:55water.
1:08:00The pride contract still holds, but the
1:08:04fee has been pushed to the limit of what
1:08:06the species can bear.
1:08:11[music]
1:08:22To survive, every night hunt has to be
1:08:26run like a precise military campaign.
1:08:37At Ettosha, researchers found that each
1:08:39lioness carries a fixed role. The ones
1:08:43on the wings drive the prey. The one in
1:08:45the center takes the role of the
1:08:47ambusher.
1:08:55That disciplined coordination is the
1:08:58only hope the survival contract will not
1:09:00be torn up in the middle of an enormous
1:09:03desert.
1:09:12A moonless night over the Nosub
1:09:14riverbed.
1:09:24Low black shapes gliding over sand,
1:09:27giving off the last of its warmth.
1:09:43The shapes begin to split the formation.
1:09:46Two wings swing quietly wide to either
1:09:50flank.
1:09:58The center animal lies flat right on the
1:10:01running line, waiting for the moment to
1:10:03trigger.
1:10:09The trap is strung from terrain,
1:10:12darkness, and patience.
1:10:29>> [music]
1:10:35>> One lion suddenly charges.
1:11:10A shape goes down amid the scatter of
1:11:13hooves.
1:11:15[music]
1:11:26The knight swallows the rest of the
1:11:29battle.
1:11:35Enough meat to feed the whole clan for
1:11:37days.
1:11:43After the win, the whole clan eats its
1:11:46fill, including the members who never
1:11:49threw a single pounce.
1:11:55Nights like that are a festival.
1:12:03The everyday calendar here is far
1:12:05harsher, and the king's menu says
1:12:08everything.
1:12:12By mass of meat, large antelopes still
1:12:16feed the pride.
1:12:22But counted by number of hunts, the
1:12:24number one prey of the Kalahari lion is
1:12:28the porcupine.
1:12:35About 32% of kills here target that
1:12:39quillcovered rodent. And every such meal
1:12:42is a gamble. One quill driven deep can
1:12:46fester into a sentence of crippling.
1:12:58A lion circles a bristling ball of
1:13:01spines, [music]
1:13:01waiting for the moment its opponent
1:13:03loosens the guard on its belly.
1:13:13The scene is almost comic if the price
1:13:16were not so severe.
1:13:23A Kalahari lion makes around 50 kills a
1:13:26year, more than lions anywhere else in
1:13:29Africa.
1:13:32[music]
1:13:35Not because this land is rich,
1:13:41because the prey is all small,
1:13:45[music]
1:13:47small meals,
1:13:51[music]
1:13:52long marches,
1:13:56blood [music] instead of water.
1:14:01The pride contract in the Kalahari is
1:14:04being squeezed clause by clause by the
1:14:08poverty of the land.
1:14:13And what if the land were poorer still?
1:14:20Right here in this same Africa,
1:14:22something already lives on that answer
1:14:24alone.
1:14:39When darkness settles over the dunes, a
1:14:42shaggy dark brown creature leaves its
1:14:46den. [music] The brown hyena, the rarest
1:14:49hyena in the world.
1:14:56It hunts with no one.
1:15:03It forages entirely alone, following the
1:15:06scent of death across 22 m a night,
1:15:09[music] then returns at first light to
1:15:12sleep in a shared den with its family.
1:15:17[music]
1:15:22One night that scent leads it to the
1:15:25greatest treasure in the Kalahari. The
1:15:28carcass of a large kill the lions have
1:15:30not finished.
1:15:36But the hosts are still there.
1:15:42A maed shadow lifts its head from the
1:15:44carcass.
1:15:49The scavenger halts at the edge of the
1:15:51dark.
1:15:55It does not attack and it does not
1:15:58[music] run.
1:16:03It backs off and waits.
1:16:10The hours pass one by one.
1:16:14[music]
1:16:17One lone stomach proves more patient
1:16:20than any army.
1:16:28When the lions finish and move off, the
1:16:31one that waited steps into the light.
1:16:37Skin, bone, scraps of leftover meat, a
1:16:41discarded feast, enough to feed
1:16:43something that never has to share.
1:16:48Not one pounce,
1:16:51[music]
1:16:52not one wound.
1:16:56When the king's shadow is fully gone,
1:16:59the danger has passed. The solitary
1:17:02solution has just been tested on the
1:17:04ground of the King of Prides.
1:17:09Its price is nights of marching without
1:17:11a teammate and a permanent station at
1:17:13the edge of the dark.
1:17:18But it lives with no pride and no crown.
1:17:32The lion pride and the lone scavenger.
1:17:35Two solutions living on the same page of
1:17:38land.
1:17:43Because the Kalahari is poor but not yet
1:17:46so poor that only one solution is
1:17:49allowed to live.
1:17:56There is a place on Earth that has
1:17:58already run that experiment not for one
1:18:01season but for thousands of years.
1:18:07On the other side of the hemisphere, a
1:18:09single forest stretches across [music]
1:18:12nearly 11 of Russia's time zones.
1:18:17The people of that land call it by one
1:18:20short word, tiger.
1:18:24And on the eastern edge of that forest,
1:18:27in the Cote Alin Mountains falling
1:18:29[music] toward the Pacific, there is a
1:18:31king who has never known the concept
1:18:34[music] of a pride.
1:18:45The tiger is vast enough to swallow the
1:18:47Kalahari like a grain of sand. But what
1:18:50decides a hunter's fate here is not
1:18:53[music] the cold.
1:18:59It is the emptiness between the prey.
1:19:08per square mile in Cot Alin. The meat
1:19:11budget is a fraction of the African
1:19:13savas and researchers have set this
1:19:16kingdom a floor.
1:19:23Roughly 1,100
1:19:25lb of prey per square mile.
1:19:33that forces a hunter to travel farther
1:19:36for every chance.
1:19:43On a frozen river, a line of large paw
1:19:47prints runs off into the forest.
1:19:55only one set, the Amore Tiger.
1:20:04A male may need close to 400 square
1:20:07miles just to gather enough hunting
1:20:09chances for himself.
1:20:15Sharing that land with one more adult
1:20:18means sharing chances that are already
1:20:21far too few.
1:20:26So living alone here is not a symbol of
1:20:30power.
1:20:32[music]
1:20:34It is a way of reducing the number of
1:20:36mouths on land too poor to feed them.
1:20:43And the price of that strategy shows up
1:20:46the moment a hunt fails.
1:20:52On fresh snow, the tracks of wild boar
1:20:56are still sharpedged.
1:21:05The king stops in the middle of the
1:21:07frozen river.
1:21:15Ahead in a thin stand of birch, a
1:21:18sounder of wild boar is rooting through
1:21:20the snow for food.
1:21:25[crying]
1:21:28He leaves the highway and sinks into the
1:21:31shadow of the trees.
1:21:43Every footfall is set down like a chess
1:21:45piece. That entire mass of muscle drifts
1:21:48forward without a sound.
1:21:59The distance closes tree by tree.
1:22:07The nearest boar is still head down and
1:22:10has not looked up once.
1:22:14[music]
1:22:24Then a faint crack.
1:22:32Thin ice splinters under one hind foot.
1:22:41The whole stand of forest detonates.
1:22:54The sound of bolts throwing up white
1:22:57snow. They're squealing, tearing the
1:22:59night open.
1:23:19The pounce is launched and touches only
1:23:22air.
1:23:33A few seconds and it is all over.
1:23:43The king stands alone in the empty
1:23:45forest, breathing out long ribbons of
1:23:48white smoke.
1:24:04>> [music]
1:24:06>> The bill is printed on the spot here. It
1:24:10takes an average of 8.3 days for a tiger
1:24:13to bring down one large prey animal.
1:24:15[music]
1:24:19Every miss pushes him deeper toward that
1:24:21number.
1:24:26The boar are safe now. Out of reach,
1:24:29deep in the forest.
1:24:33In the Kalahari, a defeat is shared out
1:24:36across the whole pride. Here, the loser
1:24:40carries all of it alone before a winter
1:24:43bank [music] that never lends.
1:24:53So when [music] he wins, the king does
1:24:55not eat like a starving animal.
1:25:01[music] He eats like a chief accountant.
1:25:06At the carcass, [music] the tiger stays
1:25:09on guard for 2 to 7 days, eating 17 to
1:25:1320 lb of meat a day. burying the
1:25:16remainder in snow, the freezer of the
1:25:18old forest.
1:25:27His menu has one name at the absolute
1:25:29top, wild boar. 42% of the diet in Cot
1:25:34Alin. [music]
1:25:39Under the canopy, sounders of boar
1:25:41[music] plow up the snow for fallen pine
1:25:43nuts. the largest store of energy
1:25:45carrying them through winter. [music]
1:25:51The king's supply chain therefore hangs
1:25:54in the treetops. In a year when the
1:25:56forest fails [music] to seed, the boar
1:25:59collapse and the hunger climbs back up
1:26:01to the top of the pyramid.
1:26:06A king can win every [music] battle and
1:26:09still lose to a harvest.
1:26:13>> [music]
1:26:15>> That is the bare underside of the
1:26:18solitary crown.
1:26:24The inevitable question [music] breaks
1:26:26out. If the solitary price is that
1:26:28expensive, why does nothing here form a
1:26:31pack? [music]
1:26:36The truth is
1:26:38something does [music]
1:26:51in this very forest. The oldest pack
1:26:54sound of the north still rises.
1:27:00A thin howl lifts from the mountainside.
1:27:05[music]
1:27:08Then two, then five voices braided
1:27:11together, carrying nearly six miles
1:27:14through forest and up to 10 m over open
1:27:18ground.
1:27:21Wolves.
1:27:26The last ones still daring to try the
1:27:29answer of numbers in the middle of a
1:27:32kingdom built on the answer of one.
1:27:34[music]
1:27:38And right here, science has to correct a
1:27:41large myth. A wolfpack is not an army
1:27:44with an alpha ruling by force.
1:27:51The idea of the alpha wolf was born in
1:27:54captive enclosures [music] that threw
1:27:56strangers together.
1:28:02The very scientist [music] who
1:28:03popularized it, L. David Mech, later
1:28:06publicly retracted [music] it.
1:28:13A wild wolfpack is simply a family. The
1:28:17parent pair leading the single file
1:28:19across [music] the snow. The offspring
1:28:21following behind.
1:28:27The one in [music] front never had to
1:28:29win a fight for the throne. It is
1:28:32apparent.
1:28:35[music]
1:28:37Across Russia, there are now at least
1:28:4040,000 wolves.
1:28:43[music]
1:28:47In the prey poor regions of the north, a
1:28:50family of 6 to [music] 10 has to spread
1:28:52itself across a territory of more than
1:28:54385
1:28:56square miles.
1:29:00[music] The ice underfoot cannot stop
1:29:03them. The blood vessels in a wolf's foot
1:29:06[music] exchange heat in countercurren,
1:29:11[music]
1:29:16keeping the pads just warm enough, able
1:29:18to hold at -22°
1:29:21F [music] for hours.
1:29:27[music]
1:29:34At night, the whole family sleeps right
1:29:37on the snow, noses buried under their
1:29:40tails.
1:29:46For wolves, frost has never been the
1:29:49enemy. [music]
1:29:59The enemy is the division of rations.
1:30:03>> [music]
1:30:11[music]
1:30:15>> Every howl carries its [music] own
1:30:18signature. From the voice alone,
1:30:21researchers identify individuals
1:30:23correctly 80 to 100% of the time.
1:30:30>> [music]
1:30:32>> The family hears and knows who is
1:30:35calling. [music]
1:30:40And yet every home has a door.
1:30:46At any given moment, 5 to 20% of wolves
1:30:50leave the pack to look for empty land
1:30:53and a [music] mate.
1:30:58Most of those who break away die before
1:31:00they ever start a family of [music]
1:31:02their own.
1:31:06The lesson of the north is brutal and
1:31:08[music] simple. Leaving the family is
1:31:11very nearly the same as dying.
1:31:17For wolves, numbers are not a choice.
1:31:20They are a life raft.
1:31:25That [music] raft, of course, has to be
1:31:27inflated with meat.
1:31:31And on the tiger's meat budget, the
1:31:33largest target is also the most
1:31:35dangerous one, [music] the moose.
1:31:40From Isle Royale on Lake Superior, home
1:31:43to the longest running wolf and moose
1:31:45study in the world, comes a number that
1:31:48tilts every assumption. Packs of up to
1:31:5015 bring down fewer than eight out of
1:31:53every [music] hundred moose they close
1:31:55on.
1:31:58More than nine in 10 hunts fail on
1:32:01probability alone.
1:32:04[music]
1:32:06The pack knows that and still has to
1:32:09walk into the fight. [music]
1:32:15>> [music]
1:32:26>> In a frozen marsh, a wolf family catches
1:32:28up with a lone moose.
1:32:39The moose does not run.
1:32:53The gray shapes fan out into an arc.
1:33:05It backs into a thicket, lowers its
1:33:07antlers, and stands still.
1:33:18This is exactly the move Isle Royale
1:33:21documented. The moose that run are the
1:33:24ones that get taken down.
1:33:34The ones that stand usually live.
1:33:43>> [music]
1:33:43>> The wolves circle, taking turns,
1:33:46fainting from both sides.
1:33:49[music]
1:33:55[music]
1:33:57A front hoof comes down, throwing up
1:34:00snow. One clean hit is enough to end the
1:34:04winter of any wolf.
1:34:17Minute after minute, the probing ring
1:34:19finds no gap.
1:34:28The moose is still standing.
1:34:45The antlers are still low.
1:34:56The fortress does not open its gate.
1:35:22Then with no fanfare, the besieures turn
1:35:26away, dissolving one by one into the
1:35:29pines.
1:35:42The hunt ends the way most hunts end
1:35:46with no blood.
1:36:02But look closely at what just [music]
1:36:04happened. The whole family came away
1:36:07with nothing. And no one died. No one
1:36:11broke a bone. No one had to pay 8.3 days
1:36:15of hunger alone.
1:36:17[music]
1:36:20That is the real miracle of numbers.
1:36:23[music] A pack is not a machine that
1:36:25guarantees a meal.
1:36:30It is a machine that absorbs failure.
1:36:37[music] A machine that good. And yet in
1:36:40Cot Alin, the howling has thinned out
1:36:43year after year.
1:36:47[music] Why?
1:36:51Listen to the forest with an
1:36:53investigator's ears.
1:36:56>> [music]
1:36:58>> on the snow. There are tiger tracks
1:37:00along the rivers.
1:37:04There are deer tracks, [music] boar
1:37:06tracks everywhere,
1:37:10[music]
1:37:11and wolf tracks, almost none.
1:37:19[music]
1:37:20In the 1930s and 42 seconds, when tigers
1:37:24were hunted to near extinction, wolves
1:37:27exploded across the region. [music]
1:37:33[music]
1:37:35Then tigers were protected and came
1:37:37back, and the wolf population collapsed,
1:37:41following the king's footsteps down.
1:37:46Today, where tigers are most numerous,
1:37:49researchers [music]
1:37:50have to use a rare phrase. Wolves are
1:37:53nearly functionally absent, still
1:37:55present, but with no role left in the
1:37:58ecosystem. [music]
1:38:03Local people on the eastern slope of Cot
1:38:06Alin hold on to one striking detail.
1:38:10Before 1930,
1:38:12they had no memory of wolves at all.
1:38:17>> [music]
1:38:19>> No one filmed those purges.
1:38:23[music]
1:38:26The evidence is only a subtraction
1:38:29written on snow. Where tiger tracks
1:38:32thicken, wolf tracks [music] disappear.
1:38:39The absence is the confirmation. [music]
1:38:41At the far end of hunger, numbers lose
1:38:44to a crown.
1:38:49The king does not need to win every
1:38:51battle only to make his rival [music]
1:38:54not dare to exist.
1:39:00Wolf [music] families still howl in
1:39:01valleys where no tiger walks.
1:39:08But the border of that howling is drawn
1:39:11by the king now by the very mechanism of
1:39:14exclusion that erased wolves from the
1:39:16eastern slope for almost a century.
1:39:24The story seems settled. [music]
1:39:26The solitary king reigns and numbers
1:39:30give ground.
1:39:35>> [music]
1:39:36>> But the wolf army is not the biggest
1:39:38threat at the king's table
1:39:41[music]
1:39:45because under the tiger [music] canopy
1:39:47there are others. No pack, no crown.
1:39:51[music]
1:39:55One of them weighs a bare 31 lb [music]
1:39:58and dares to tax the tables of both
1:40:00kingdoms.
1:40:20The first appears under the moon. A low,
1:40:24heavy body, dark brown fur, a rolling
1:40:27tireless gate.
1:40:34The wolverine, the most stubborn animal
1:40:37in the north.
1:40:43An adult male weighs only 24 to 40 lb.
1:40:54But inside that small body is a toolkit
1:40:57designed for exactly one trade. Cracking
1:41:01safes.
1:41:06A skull massive for its frame. Molers
1:41:10rotated nearly 90° built to cut frozen
1:41:14meat and break bone from carcasses hard
1:41:17as stone.
1:41:23Its nose reads what nothing else can
1:41:25read. The scent of a carcass lying more
1:41:28than 6 ft under the snow.
1:41:35It does not hibernate.
1:41:40All through the cold season, it patrols
1:41:427 to 13 m a day, walking straight
1:41:46through the very season that drove bears
1:41:48into hiding and forced wolves to huddle.
1:41:56[music] And it has one invention that
1:41:58made scientists reach for the word bank,
1:42:02a meat bank.
1:42:06[music]
1:42:08In Scandinavia, where the species is
1:42:10best studied, tracking collars on 38
1:42:14individuals recorded 303 food caches.
1:42:21[music]
1:42:23The strategy is as clear as bookkeeping.
1:42:26Carry meat an average of 0.7 miles from
1:42:29the carcass. Split one kill into six
1:42:32safes hidden in snow, rock crevices,
1:42:35bog.
1:42:37>> [music]
1:42:41>> Others eat their fill then starve.
1:42:45[music]
1:42:48This one makes deposits.
1:42:50[music]
1:42:55The owner of that fur runs a more
1:42:58formidable technology still calculated
1:43:01recklessness. [music]
1:43:05Because every bank needs defending.
1:43:09[music]
1:43:10And in the tiger, every safe has someone
1:43:14else who wants it open.
1:43:17[music]
1:43:35In a forest clearing, a wolverine feeds
1:43:38on the carcass of a deer. A rare
1:43:40windfall in a hungry season.
1:43:55>> [music]
1:43:57>> Then the gray shapes appear between the
1:43:59trunks.
1:44:09[music]
1:44:10Wolves, most likely the ones that
1:44:12brought this deer down, have come back
1:44:14to claim the table.
1:44:21>> [music]
1:44:24>> The arithmetic here is onesided to the
1:44:27point of cruelty. Each wolf is several
1:44:30times larger than the animal standing on
1:44:32the carcass.
1:44:41And wolves kill wolverines. This has
1:44:44been documented more than once.
1:44:53And yet the small one does not run.
1:45:03It raises every hair, lowers its head,
1:45:06and growls a low, guttural sound out of
1:45:10all proportion to its body.
1:45:17A bluff charge. Straight in. Hard stop.
1:45:21Strike and retreat.
1:45:30The robber is betting that no wolf wants
1:45:33to trade an eye for a meal it could find
1:45:35somewhere [music] else.
1:45:41And then the wolves turn away, [music]
1:45:44leaving the prize behind.
1:45:50This round, the safe wins. [music]
1:46:02Do not canonize the winner. Wolves and
1:46:05bears still kill wolverines when the
1:46:07chance is good.
1:46:14But the third solution to the equation
1:46:16has come clear. No pack, no crown,
1:46:20living by taxing both.
1:46:27But that 31-lb robber is not the biggest
1:46:30danger at the king's table.
1:46:37The biggest danger is asleep quite
1:46:40literally under that snow.
1:46:54The Usuri brown bear. The one machine of
1:46:58muscle in the tiger that makes a tiger
1:47:00recalculate.
1:47:04Its way of handling winter is a solution
1:47:07no big cat has. Leaving the equation
1:47:10entirely.
1:47:155 to 6 months of hibernation. The heart
1:47:18rate falling from 40 to eight beats a
1:47:21minute.
1:47:25Deep in a snow den, a female even gives
1:47:28birth in the middle of that long sleep.
1:47:33While the whole forest fights over every
1:47:36fraction of energy, it is simply absent.
1:47:49And for the other half of the year, that
1:47:52machine walks out of the den while early
1:47:55spring snow still fills the trails,
1:47:58carrying 6 months of accumulated hunger
1:48:01and a strategy that took researchers by
1:48:03surprise.
1:48:08Two decades of field records in Sikot
1:48:10Alen counted 64 such cases. Bears coming
1:48:14to exploit tiger kills.
1:48:18Not by accident.
1:48:22Some bears deliberately follow tiger
1:48:25tracks through the snow, like reading a
1:48:28map that leads straight to a meal.
1:48:33They hunt the king himself, not to kill
1:48:36him, but to tax his results.
1:48:39[music]
1:48:41For a lion, a thief at the carcass is
1:48:43only a nuisance. Behind the king stands
1:48:46the whole pride.
1:48:50For a tiger, every fight over a carcass
1:48:53is single combat. No reinforcements, no
1:48:57one else to bandage the wound.
1:49:02The scientists notebooks hold one
1:49:04chilling table across 45 recorded life
1:49:08or death encounters between tigers and
1:49:10brown bears. The bear [music] died 51%
1:49:13of the time, but the tiger died 27%.
1:49:29A carcass buried under the snow. The
1:49:32store of food the king has set aside for
1:49:35the days ahead.
1:49:54on the white ground. Bare tracks are
1:49:57heading straight toward it.
1:50:16The giant catches the scent of food and
1:50:19begins taking its share.
1:50:38Every mouthful swallowed is one more day
1:50:42of another animal's survival taken away.
1:51:04Then the forest falls silent.
1:51:13The king has come back.
1:51:30Two rulers of the tiger face each other
1:51:33beside the churned up snow. The Amura
1:51:36tiger and the Usuri bear, both fixed on
1:51:39a single source of life.
1:51:52Neither side holds an absolute
1:51:54advantage. And a wound here can cost an
1:51:57entire winter.
1:52:04No pride and no kin is coming to help.
1:52:17Each must decide alone whether the trade
1:52:21is worth it.
1:52:27The king strikes first. The
1:52:30confrontation erupts at once across the
1:52:32white snow.
1:52:57The bear fights back, but under the
1:53:00tiger's pressure, [music]
1:53:01it starts to give ground.
1:53:14Only a few steps, but enough to tip the
1:53:18balance completely. [music]
1:53:32The bear turns toward the deep forest,
1:53:34[music]
1:53:35leaving the carcass to the winner.
1:53:41The king keeps his store of food. at
1:53:43least this time.
1:53:51But in a tiger winter, a meal taken by
1:53:54force always comes with a price.
1:54:00Thin wash of gold across the East
1:54:02African grassland.
1:54:10Night falls over the Serengeti.
1:54:17The plane cools under a full moon and a
1:54:21million dry stems catch the light like a
1:54:24silver sea.
1:54:30Out on that sea, a herd of zebra grazes
1:54:34with heads down unhurried as though the
1:54:38grassland belonged to them alone.
1:54:46A little further out, a wilderbeast
1:54:49turns one ear into the wind, then lowers
1:54:51its head again.
1:54:59The moon climbs, pouring light over
1:55:02every back, every stripe, every blade of
1:55:06grass.
1:55:13The whole plane lies exposed without a
1:55:16single patch of dark.
1:55:23Under a full moon, nothing can hide.
1:55:32This is the story of the largest empire
1:55:34any land predator has ever built and of
1:55:37the place where it stopped.
1:55:45Lions once ruled across three continents
1:55:48from Britain to Alaska, from Greece to
1:55:50India.
1:55:56Today they hold barely 7% [music] of
1:55:58that map.
1:56:05Did the other 93% fall [music] to
1:56:08something stronger or to something that
1:56:10never hunted at all?
1:56:18The border of that empire will come into
1:56:20full view in this story.
1:56:25>> [music]
1:56:26>> There is a fortress of horn that slams
1:56:29shut in the face of Asia's largest cat.
1:56:37There is an army that whistles, hunting
1:56:40in near total darkness without ever
1:56:42needing to see one another.
1:56:45[music]
1:56:49There is a cat carrying the last saber
1:56:52teeth of the modern world stopped by a
1:56:54radio station in the treetops.
1:57:00[music]
1:57:02And there are two kings locked around
1:57:06each other until both are dead, neither
1:57:09willing to let go.
1:57:16All of it happens in a place a lion has
1:57:19never set foot.
1:57:25Where nothing can see anything else.
1:57:28Does power [music] belong to the
1:57:30strongest or to whoever can wait?
1:57:37This is where the wild states the rules
1:57:40in its own words. Before
1:57:47crossing that border, it is worth
1:57:49watching the empire work on its own
1:57:52ground.
1:58:03And it begins on a night of bright
1:58:06moonlight.
1:58:12A group of lionesses rises from where
1:58:14they have been lying.
1:58:21They fan out in silence, some swinging
1:58:24wide around the flanks of the zebra
1:58:26herd, others pressing flat to the ground
1:58:28in the center.
1:58:34The distance closes
1:58:37step by step.
1:58:44Tonight, one variable is missing from
1:58:47the equation.
1:58:53Under the full moon, the hunter's shadow
1:58:56lies sharp on the silvered grass,
1:58:59running several paces ahead of her.
1:59:06A striped head comes up and the herd
1:59:09detonates.
1:59:14Pale gold bodies surge forward, but the
1:59:17sprint has been launched from too far
1:59:19out.
1:59:25The lunge closes on nothing but air.
1:59:33The prey gets clean away and the [music]
1:59:35hunt ends with nothing.
1:59:42Tonight the whole pride will lie down
1:59:45hungry.
1:59:51Bad luck or a room?
2:00:02Tracking records kept since 1978 answer
2:00:05plainly. Serenetti lions feed best on
2:00:09moonless nights.
2:00:15And it repeats month after month in time
2:00:19with the sky.
2:00:25For the two weeks after each full moon,
2:00:28moonrise slips later and later, handing
2:00:31the early night back to darkness,
2:00:38and the ambushes start working again.
2:00:47Light decides the meal, long before
2:00:50muscle does.
2:00:56The king of the savannah still answers
2:00:58to a switch in the sky.
2:01:04Light is terrain
2:01:11and terrain writes the law of power.
2:01:20Hold on to that test.
2:01:26Because there is a world where the sun
2:01:28never reaches the ground.
2:01:36This is a journey to the place where the
2:01:38Lion Empire ends the rainforests of
2:01:42Southeast Asia.
2:01:52>> [music]
2:01:54>> To understand why that empire stopped,
2:01:57the machine that carried it so far has
2:02:00to be opened up first. [music]
2:02:06That machine runs on exactly three
2:02:09things.
2:02:12[music]
2:02:14The first is formation.
2:02:20>> [music]
2:02:22>> In Etoia, Namibia, researchers once
2:02:24logged 486 group hunts by lions they
2:02:29could tell apart one by one.
2:02:36Each lioness kept to a preferred
2:02:38station, a wing to start the rush, a
2:02:41center to cut off the escape, and the
2:02:43hunts succeeded most often when the
2:02:45majority stood [music] where they
2:02:47belonged.
2:02:53That formation only works where there is
2:02:55space and sight.
2:03:01The second is numbers.
2:03:08[music]
2:03:09At Savuti in Botswana, prides without
2:03:13males lost close to a fifth of their
2:03:16food [music] to spotted hyenas, while
2:03:18prides at full strength lost almost
2:03:21none. [music]
2:03:28Where every eye on the plane can find a
2:03:30carcass, a meal needs a garrison.
2:03:38[music] Those numbers can even be
2:03:40counted from a distance. In playback
2:03:43experiments across 21 prides, [music]
2:03:45lionesses tallied the unfamiliar roars
2:03:48and advanced only when their own side
2:03:51was larger.
2:03:53[music]
2:03:57The third is land.
2:04:02[music]
2:04:0538 years of watching 46 prides in the
2:04:08Serengeti [music] pointed to one
2:04:10conclusion. Living in a pride is above
2:04:13[music] all a technology for holding
2:04:16ground and the best territories sit near
2:04:19river confluences. [music]
2:04:26Sight, [music]
2:04:27numbers, land.
2:04:34Three pillars [music] that lifted the
2:04:36lion onto the throne of a continent.
2:04:43Remember all three because before long
2:04:46all three will be switched off at once.
2:04:54First though, the machine has one
2:04:56component that no rule book records.
2:05:06[music]
2:05:10Half a continent from the Serengeti, on
2:05:13the dry riverbed of the Hoenib in
2:05:15northwestern Namibia, there are two
2:05:18orphaned sisters,
2:05:25young lionesses
2:05:27with no mother, no pride, and no one to
2:05:30teach them to hunt. [music]
2:05:37[music] In early August, they brought
2:05:40down a young giraffe, the first large
2:05:42prey of their lives, and mostly a matter
2:05:45of luck.
2:05:51The calf had wandered too far from its
2:05:53mother, and two hungry hunters [music]
2:05:55pounced at the right moment.
2:06:03Except that hunting giraffe is [music]
2:06:05not instinct.
2:06:11It is a learned tradition held by
2:06:14particular prides knowledge that nobody
2:06:18had passed to these two.
2:06:23[music]
2:06:2614 days later they came back with
2:06:28company.
2:06:32[music]
2:06:40The new hunting ground lay about 2 mi
2:06:42from the old one.
2:06:50This time the target was a fullgrown
2:06:52female giraffe and a single kick from
2:06:55her is enough to end any hunt.
2:07:03The stalk lasted almost the whole
2:07:05afternoon.
2:07:11One pale gold body pressed low to the
2:07:14ground following a seam of sunburnt
2:07:17grass.
2:07:23On the opposite side, the dry grass
2:07:26stirred once, then stood still for a
2:07:29long time.
2:07:35The giraffe stretched up to strip leaves
2:07:37from an acacia crown. Unaware that two
2:07:40shadows had closed in from either side,
2:07:48the grass erupted and dust swallowed the
2:07:52clearing.
2:07:58Inside that dust, there was only the
2:08:00sound of hooves hammering the ground,
2:08:02thinning with every second.
2:08:09The hunt was over, and the [music] meal
2:08:11lasted 7 days.
2:08:17>> [music]
2:08:19>> No one had taught them that.
2:08:25The first time was luck.
2:08:33The second time was a trade.
2:08:41Orphans had reinvented an ancestral
2:08:44tradition on their own, and knowledge
2:08:47turns out to be a form of power too
2:08:49inherited through culture.
2:08:57This is no rarity at the continental
2:08:59scale. In Krugerg, South Africa, ranger
2:09:03records list hundreds of giraffe in the
2:09:06lion diet. adults among them.
2:09:14Formation, numbers, land, knowledge.
2:09:24Four pillars that once carried the lion
2:09:27far beyond Africa.
2:09:34The empire once stretched from Greece
2:09:36through Mesopotamia and Persia all the
2:09:40way to India.
2:09:47Its lineage reached wider still. The
2:09:50cave lion, an ice age sister species,
2:09:53ranged from Britain to Alaska.
2:10:01In 1944, on the bank of the Karun River,
2:10:05the body of a lioness was found.
2:10:14She was the last wild lion of half an
2:10:16empire, and no one realized it until
2:10:20years afterward.
2:10:27There was no battle here.
2:10:34Only a map contracting a little each
2:10:36year until 93% of it was gone.
2:10:45The answer appears [music] when two maps
2:10:47are laid over each other. The Lion
2:10:49Empire matches the spread of grassland
2:10:51almost exactly.
2:10:58Across roughly 5 million square miles of
2:11:02African savannah, the lion was the law.
2:11:07[music]
2:11:11Yet in the middle of that map, there is
2:11:13an enormous hole [music]
2:11:15at the heart of the continent, the
2:11:17rainforest block of the Congo basin.
2:11:25It is the one African region the empire
2:11:28never annexed.
2:11:41At Ozala in Congo, nature has laid out a
2:11:45cruel experiment.
2:11:52In the middle of an ocean of forest lie
2:11:55open islands of grass, and on those
2:11:58islands there were lions.
2:12:06Survey teams followed their tracks for
2:12:08years and the [music] result was always
2:12:11the same.
2:12:18The lions clung to the grass islands and
2:12:21never moved into the forest.
2:12:28Standing at the edge of the grass,
2:12:30[music] they looked into a green wall
2:12:32100 ft high and turned back.
2:12:40[music] Every wet season, the forest
2:12:43advanced a little. [music]
2:12:50Every year, the grass islands narrowed a
2:12:53little.
2:12:58Not one battle took place.
2:13:02[music]
2:13:07By the most [music] recent surveys,
2:13:10camera traps at Ozala were recording no
2:13:12lions at all.
2:13:20The finding confirms the harshest thing
2:13:23of all. The empire lost this province to
2:13:26no rival, but to terrain itself.
2:13:40And the hole in the Congo only widens.
2:13:49The same test repeats at the other end
2:13:51of the world. Gentler but no less clear.
2:14:00At Gear in India, Asiatic lions live in
2:14:04dry deciduous forest and their society
2:14:07shrinks.
2:14:14A gear pride averages only about two
2:14:16adult females against four to six in
2:14:20Africa.
2:14:25The reason is on the menu. The main prey
2:14:28at gear is the chital deer around 110
2:14:33which a single lioness can bring down on
2:14:35her own so a large alliance stops
2:14:38paying.
2:14:45The denser the forest, the smaller the
2:14:48empire becomes.
2:15:00Meanwhile, the closed forest has had an
2:15:03emperor of its own for a very long time.
2:15:12>> [music]
2:15:12>> The tiger lineage split from the lion
2:15:15lineage three and a half million years
2:15:17ago and it took an entirely different
2:15:19road.
2:15:26Now step across that border into
2:15:30Southeast Asia.
2:15:32[music]
2:15:38Past the forest edge, [music]
2:15:39the light goes out within three paces.
2:15:48The canopy closes and [music] sight dies
2:15:51on the spot.
2:15:58Light is terrain
2:16:05and terrain writes the law of power.
2:16:15In this permanent shade, the law of the
2:16:18open plane is rewritten from the first
2:16:21line.
2:16:31>> [music]
2:16:32>> 3% of the Earth's land surface and one
2:16:35mammal species in five lives. Here
2:16:39[music]
2:16:43in the Danam Valley on Borneo, one
2:16:46diptoro [music]
2:16:47cararp tree reaches more than 330 ft.
2:16:54>> [music]
2:16:56>> This is not a forest. It is a vertical
2:16:59city. Each floor with its own climate,
2:17:02its own residence, [music] its own laws.
2:17:10[music]
2:17:11And the founding law is carved at the
2:17:14gate. No sight lines.
2:17:20>> [music]
2:17:22>> Prey no longer stands in herds on open
2:17:25ground. It scatters and much of it lives
2:17:28high above.
2:17:35No sight, no numbers, no pursuit.
2:17:44The three pillars [music] of the old
2:17:46empire fail at the same moment.
2:17:54Who then can rule a place like this?
2:17:57[music]
2:18:03The answer is not on Borneo. This island
2:18:06has never [music] had it.
2:18:13It [music] lies back on the mainland.
2:18:15And there the answer walks alone in
2:18:18silence.
2:18:30The Indo-Chinese tiger, the relative
2:18:32that parted from the lion line 3 and a
2:18:34half million years ago.
2:18:42It kept the size of an emperor and threw
2:18:45away the entire court.
2:18:53No pride, no coalition, no formation.
2:19:02Numbers are traded for a coat of
2:19:04invisibility. gold and black [music]
2:19:07stripes that tear the outline of a body
2:19:09apart in dappled light.
2:19:13[music]
2:19:18In closed forest, power does [music] not
2:19:20display itself. It disappears.
2:19:28The forest throne, though, comes at a
2:19:31price. [music]
2:19:37At Hay Kakang in Thailand, a breeding
2:19:41tigress needs a home range of around 27
2:19:44square miles, four times what her
2:19:46counterparts hold in India's national
2:19:48parks.
2:19:55For a tiger, hunger is a death sentence.
2:20:03Today that sentence draws one to a
2:20:06grassy clearing at the forest edge where
2:20:09a herd of gar is feeding.
2:20:16There are calves in the herd.
2:20:25The hunter flattens behind a bush low as
2:20:28a streak of sunlight.
2:20:35Ahead stands the largest wild cattle on
2:20:38the planet. 6 ft at the shoulder, a ton
2:20:41in weight.
2:20:48One step,
2:20:54then another.
2:21:01Then the old lead cow lifts her head and
2:21:03a shrill whistling snort cuts across the
2:21:06clearing.
2:21:12The herd scatters.
2:21:20A gower goes down beneath the fangs and
2:21:22claws of the hunter.
2:21:29At H caring, close to four in 10 of the
2:21:33gower taken by tigers are calves under a
2:21:36year old. And the adults that do fall
2:21:39average nearly 1,500 lb.
2:21:48In the old empire, numbers were the
2:21:52hunter's weapon. Here
2:21:59numbers change sides. They become the
2:22:01shield of the hunted.
2:22:14What happens then when something carries
2:22:17the pack into the dark anyway?
2:22:24In this forest, one species has solved
2:22:28the problem the lion abandoned.
2:22:36The doll, the red dog of the east. Each
2:22:38animal weighing only 33 to 44 lb.
2:22:48Fewer than about 2,000 breeding adults
2:22:52remain on the entire planet. Rarer than
2:22:55tigers.
2:23:02Their secret sits in the ear, not the
2:23:04eye. The pack coordinates with high,
2:23:07thin whistles that thread through dense
2:23:10leaves. [music]
2:23:16Their society runs backward too at a
2:23:19carcass the pups eat first.
2:23:27A small disciplined army that rations
2:23:30from the bottom up.
2:23:33[music]
2:23:36Today that army goes to work.
2:23:50The first light of day has not yet
2:23:52reached the ground.
2:23:58The pack threads through the forest in
2:24:00single file and the rust red bodies
2:24:03dissolve into the leaves.
2:24:11From here the hunt [music] is no longer
2:24:14something to watch. It is something to
2:24:16listen to.
2:24:22A whistle rises on the left and another
2:24:25answers off to the front.
2:24:32Inside that ring of sound stands a
2:24:35sambar deer.
2:24:41The forest has gone unusually quiet.
2:24:50The whistles keep changing position,
2:24:53converging on one direction.
2:25:01The deer cannot see its enemy, but its
2:25:04legs have already chosen a route
2:25:07downhill toward water.
2:25:14Beneath the canopy, the water breaks
2:25:17open.
2:25:23The hunt closes without a single line of
2:25:26sight. The prey now belongs to the pack.
2:25:35That method is not improvised. At Kerar
2:25:38in India, doss have been recorded
2:25:40deliberately driving sambar into the
2:25:42lake.
2:25:48And in central India, more than 60% of
2:25:52the biomass in their diet is sambar.
2:26:02Lions need to see one another to hold a
2:26:05formation.
2:26:11Dolls only need to hear one another.
2:26:19The same invention the pack rewritten
2:26:22for a world without sight.
2:26:29The closed forest then carries two
2:26:32hunting powers, a solitary emperor and
2:26:35an army of whistles.
2:26:41The ledger between them kept in the
2:26:44forests of India tilts heavily one way.
2:26:52Tigers have killed dolls on five
2:26:54recorded occasions and taken the pack's
2:26:57kill on 23.
2:27:04In the other direction, no modern case
2:27:07has ever been confirmed. The Red Pack
2:27:10bringing down the lord of the forest is
2:27:12a colonial legend, nothing more.
2:27:20At Ha Khang, camera traps reveal a
2:27:24subtler arrangement.
2:27:26Rather than dividing the map, the two
2:27:29species divide [music] the clock.
2:27:31[snorts]
2:27:36In some places, that division is no
2:27:38longer needed. Eastern Cambodia lost its
2:27:42tigers [music] in 2007, and its leopards
2:27:45vanished after them.
2:27:52In that [music] emptied forest, the dole
2:27:55became the last survivor of an entire
2:27:58court.
2:28:03The ground, even so, is only the lowest
2:28:07floor.
2:28:17Above it, where trunks pass 160 ft,
2:28:21there is another hunter,
2:28:28the clouded leopard.
2:28:31[music]
2:28:35Its upper canines take up nearly a
2:28:38quarter of the length of its skull, the
2:28:40largest proportion of any living cat.
2:28:44[music]
2:28:48It has been called the last saber-tooth
2:28:51still walking the modern world.
2:28:58Its hind ankle joints rotate almost a
2:29:01full turn. It climbs down vertical
2:29:04trunks head first.
2:29:11All that engineering serves one trade.
2:29:14Hunting where prey [music] sleeps on
2:29:17branches no heavier body can reach.
2:29:24But the canopy was waiting with an
2:29:26invention the grassland has never known.
2:29:34A radio network.
2:29:40Early in the morning, a modeled shape
2:29:43moves along a horizontal branch [music]
2:29:45into the territory of a Gibbon family.
2:29:52Below it lies 130 ft of open air.
2:30:01[music] Above it, black bodies are still
2:30:03asleep in the forks of the trees.
2:30:07[music]
2:30:11Then the canopy explodes into sound.
2:30:18The alarm song erupts and passes from
2:30:21crown to crown faster than anybody could
2:30:24travel.
2:30:29For an ambush hunter, being named is
2:30:33ruin.
2:30:38The modeled shape lies still on the
2:30:41branch for a long while, waiting for the
2:30:43singing to die [music] down.
2:30:50It does not, and the cat withdraws by
2:30:53day. The radio network [music] wins
2:30:55outright.
2:31:01That network has been measured.
2:31:08At Cao Yai in Thailand, predator models
2:31:11drew alarm songs from gibbons eight
2:31:14times out of eight for a clouded leopard
2:31:16[music] and nine out of nine for a
2:31:18tiger.
2:31:24For a python model, only three out of
2:31:27nine for an eagle. Not once.
2:31:36This station is tuned to a single
2:31:39channel, Big Cats.
2:31:45Even so, at Wei Kanguk in Sumatra, there
2:31:49is one chilling exception.
2:31:56A young seaang was taken by a clouded
2:31:59leopard right beside its sleeping tree
2:32:02at first light.
2:32:09Dawn the one moment when the station has
2:32:12not yet gone on air.
2:32:18The hunter could not break the station.
2:32:21It learned the station's dead hour.
2:32:28The owners of those songs are sireangs,
2:32:31the largest of the gibbons.
2:32:37A throat sack inflates to the size of
2:32:39the head itself, carrying a territorial
2:32:42duet more than a mile and a half through
2:32:44the canopy.
2:32:50At nightfall they sleep sitting upright
2:32:52in high forks. No nest and no sound
2:33:08in the dark. Silence is the last line of
2:33:12defense.
2:33:18And the largest witness to that fear is
2:33:22the orangutang.
2:33:29On Sumatra, where tigers remain, this
2:33:32great ape almost never comes down to the
2:33:35ground.
2:33:41On Borneo, where there are [music] no
2:33:43tigers, that figure is a hund times
2:33:46higher.
2:33:52[music] There, flanged males stroll
2:33:54across the forest floor without concern,
2:33:56and some sleep [music] on it.
2:34:03One genus, two rules for living,
2:34:06separated [music] by a single invisible
2:34:08hunter.
2:34:13[music] No tiger has to be seen for an
2:34:15orangutang to change its entire way of
2:34:18life.
2:34:24Fear writes law all by itself.
2:34:32If this world of darkness is pulling you
2:34:34in the way it pulled us, [music]
2:34:36hit subscribe. The journey goes deeper
2:34:38still.
2:34:44Because everything told so far has still
2:34:47depended on eyes.
2:34:54Below the ground floor lies [music] one
2:34:56more level where light has never existed
2:34:59and eyes begin to be decoration.
2:35:06Hunger down there does not walk on four
2:35:08legs.
2:35:13It slides.
2:35:19Yet whatever slides through that
2:35:22darkness is still not the final power of
2:35:25this forest.
2:35:36In that darkness, a sound sometimes
2:35:38rises that does not belong to a snake.
2:35:43>> [snorts]
2:35:45>> A low growl around 600 hertz the
2:35:49register of an actual big cat.
2:35:56It comes from the king cobra, the
2:35:58longest venomous snake on earth with a
2:36:01record measurement of nearly 19 ft.
2:36:08Cornered, it raises a third of its body.
2:36:11A large one meets a standing adult eye
2:36:14to eye and it can advance in that
2:36:16posture.
2:36:22Its scientific name means snake eater.
2:36:30In a world without light, the throne is
2:36:32contested under exactly that law. Snake
2:36:36eats snake.
2:36:43Singapore 2025.
2:36:46A king cobra struck a reticulated
2:36:49python, then released its grip and drew
2:36:52back to weight.
2:36:55[music]
2:36:59This is chess, not wrestling. Neurotoxin
2:37:02shuts down the junctions between nerve
2:37:04and muscle one by one. And swallowing
2:37:06the animal whole took about 6 hours.
2:37:14A king swallows a king and the throne of
2:37:18the dark floor goes to whoever can
2:37:21[snorts] wait.
2:37:26But king swallowing king is still not
2:37:29the final move on this board.
2:37:36If the strike is not fast enough, the
2:37:39python has time to answer.
2:37:45[snorts]
2:37:46The reticulated python is the longest
2:37:49snake on the planet.
2:37:55In early 2026,
2:37:57a wild individual in Indonesia measured
2:38:00nearly 24 ft.
2:38:07>> [music]
2:38:07>> It reads the world in body heat through
2:38:09a row of pits along the lips effective
2:38:12within about 3 ft of the snout.
2:38:19In absolute night, 3 ft is enough.
2:38:27Its weapon is not venom but the coil.
2:38:34And the real mechanism of the coil is
2:38:37not suffocation.
2:38:42The coil halts the blood. The prey blood
2:38:45pressure collapses within seconds. The
2:38:48heart loses its supply and death can
2:38:51arrive in about a minute.
2:38:57Venom can afford to wait.
2:39:03The coil breaks time.
2:39:09The two systems never had to be ranked
2:39:11against each other until they met.
2:39:20The forest registers nothing unusual.
2:39:27Leaves go on falling over the two bodies
2:39:30and the ants arrive before the next
2:39:32dawn.
2:39:37Within a few weeks, both will be soil,
2:39:40and not one [music] creature here will
2:39:42know that two thrones have just fallen
2:39:44empty at once.
2:39:50That is the price of power on the lowest
2:39:54floor. Both sides lose and the forest
2:39:57takes both back.
2:40:04And that ending [music] exposes the
2:40:06largest truth in the whole story.
2:40:13In this world, no animal truly sits on
2:40:16[music] the throne.
2:40:22The throne belongs to the forest itself.
2:40:25[music]
2:40:30It rules through a power no dynasty has
2:40:34ever held. The power to issue food.
2:40:42Diptookarp [music] forests can hold
2:40:44their breath for years on end. No
2:40:46flowers, no fruit, whatever the stomachs
2:40:49below may need.
2:40:59Then a dry spell with unusually cold
2:41:02nights, often around an El Nino cycle,
2:41:06pulls the trigger.
2:41:11Billions of seeds come down at once.
2:41:18The seed eaters can gorge themselves and
2:41:20still not finish them. And the surplus
2:41:23germinates the treere's tactic of
2:41:25feeding the enemy into surrender.
2:41:31Bearded pigs on Borneo have migrated in
2:41:34their thousands, crossing rivers and
2:41:36mountains, following the calendar the
2:41:39trees set.
2:41:44on the savannah. No king ever controlled
2:41:48the food economy beneath him.
2:41:59Here the forest holds the whistle for
2:42:02everyone
2:42:08and every throne needs a gardener.
2:42:15This one weighs several tons and hunts
2:42:18nothing at all. The Asian elephant
2:42:24measured at Cao Yai in Thailand. Seeds
2:42:28that passed through elephant guts
2:42:30germinated more strongly than those from
2:42:32any other fruit eater in the same study.
2:42:40Wild durian is the evidence. A large,
2:42:43heavily scented fruit built for enormous
2:42:46mouths to swallow whole and carry far.
2:42:55Elephant trails cut through dense forest
2:42:57become transport routes for everything
2:43:00else. And the animal that hunts nobody
2:43:02turns out to be the one that builds the
2:43:04arena. [music]
2:43:10An elephant carries a calf for 18 to 22
2:43:13months, the longest pregnancy of any
2:43:16mammal.
2:43:21And it stakes everything on one
2:43:24condition, that the forest stays [music]
2:43:27whole.
2:43:37But venom coils and fortresses of horn
2:43:41are not the greatest danger in this
2:43:44forest.
2:43:49The greatest [music] danger walks on two
2:43:51legs.
2:43:56It begins with a bicycle brake cable
2:43:58tied between two trunks at knee height.
2:44:01>> [music]
2:44:05>> Across the protected areas of eastern
2:44:07Indochina, an estimated 12 million wire
2:44:11snares are waiting like that.
2:44:17A snare does not distinguish between a
2:44:20tiger, a sambar, and a dole.
2:44:25[music]
2:44:27The prey herds vanish first and the
2:44:30hunters follow.
2:44:34[music]
2:44:36Vietnam recorded its last wild tiger in
2:44:391997.
2:44:45Cambodia [music]
2:44:472007.
2:44:53Laos. The last of them disappeared after
2:44:562013.
2:44:58[music]
2:45:02What remains is a forest, still green,
2:45:06still tall, [music] with nothing moving
2:45:08beneath the canopy.
2:45:12[music] Neither body of law contains a
2:45:15clause against the two-legged.
2:45:20[music]
2:45:21And that same two-legged species is now
2:45:25attempting the opposite.
2:45:35At two ends of the map, two curves have
2:45:38begun to turn.
2:45:44Why caring Thailand? The survey season
2:45:47ending in 2023.
2:45:5394 individual tigers walked past camera
2:45:57traps in a single season. In 2007, the
2:46:02figure was under 40,
2:46:0816 years. And the population more than
2:46:11doubled as the sambar and wild cattle
2:46:13rebuilt beneath them doubled, too.
2:46:20There is no miracle here. Only prey
2:46:23returned and snares removed.
2:46:30>> Thailand became the first country in
2:46:32Southeast Asia to bend the tiger's
2:46:35extinction curve back the other way.
2:46:42And in Gujarat, India, the 2025
2:46:47census found that close to 44% of
2:46:51Asiatic lions now live outside protected
2:46:55forest.
2:47:01The BA sanctuary recorded 17 the first
2:47:04lions [music] to set foot there since
2:47:061879.
2:47:13An empire is learning again how to widen
2:47:17its map [music] and this time with
2:47:19people standing on the same side.
2:47:27Looking back over the whole journey,
2:47:29there is one thing no one has said
2:47:32outright. [music]
2:47:37The lion never lost to an animal in
2:47:39Southeast Asia.
2:47:45Not to the tiger, not to the snakes, not
2:47:48[music] in any battle.
2:47:54It lost to a kind [music] of terrain.
2:48:01Power was never in muscle or [music] in
2:48:04claws, but in what the ground and the
2:48:06sky allow in each place.
2:48:13[music] The empire of the open plane
2:48:15runs on sight.
2:48:21The kingdom of darkness [music] runs on
2:48:23camouflage, sound, venom, and patience.
2:48:32And every law in this story, camouflage,
2:48:35whistles, fortresses, venom, coils,
2:48:40depends on one condition, that the
2:48:43forest remains unbroken.
2:48:50Southeast Asia is losing an average of
2:48:53about 8 million acres of forest a year,
2:48:57the fastest rate of forest loss in the
2:48:59world.
2:49:04Every acre that comes down erases
2:49:06another line of the law.
2:49:13An empire does not end where a stronger
2:49:16enemy stands, but where the rules
2:49:19change.
2:49:24Light is terrain,
2:49:31and terrain writes the law of power.
2:49:37The sun climbs over the horizon, red as
2:49:40a wound, still bleeding across the skin
2:49:43of the sky.
2:49:52The grasslands still hold a trace of
2:49:55green from the last rains of the season.
2:50:03Threaded through that green bands of
2:50:06gold are slowly spreading
2:50:15and from the south a sound begins to
2:50:18arrive on the wind.
2:50:25Not a roar, not a bird.
2:50:33It is the sound of millions of hooves
2:50:35moving forward.
2:50:40The great migration has reached the
2:50:43Masai Mara.
2:50:49This is the single greatest event in the
2:50:52animal world on land.
2:50:58A million and a half [music] wilderbeast
2:51:01and hundreds of thousands of zebra move
2:51:04in one vast circle through Tanzania and
2:51:08Kenya. [music]
2:51:15Following the rain, following the grass,
2:51:18following something no map can draw. Yet
2:51:21every animal in the herd knows.
2:51:29Seen from above, the migration looks
2:51:32like a single creature breathing,
2:51:40contracting, then swelling, flowing
2:51:43around thicket, splitting through
2:51:45shallow gullies, then closing again into
2:51:47a current. Nothing can stop.
2:51:53And at any point along that current,
2:51:56something is waiting.
2:52:33At the heart of this migration is the
2:52:36wilderbeast.
2:52:46The wilderbeast does not migrate out of
2:52:49courage. It migrates because standing
2:52:52still is more dangerous.
2:53:01>> [music]
2:53:04>> An adult can weigh up to 550 lbs and run
2:53:08at 50 m an hour, [music] but its real
2:53:11strength lies elsewhere.
2:53:18[music]
2:53:23It lies in numbers.
2:53:31>> [music]
2:53:38>> When a million and a half move together,
2:53:40the chance of any single individual
2:53:43being taken in any given hour falls to
2:53:46almost nothing.
2:53:56>> [music]
2:53:58>> Ecologists call this the dilution of
2:54:01risk. A strategy that rests not on
2:54:04individual strength, but on becoming
2:54:06part of something too large to be hunted
2:54:09efficiently.
2:54:13[music]
2:54:20This animal did not evolve to fight
2:54:22better or run faster.
2:54:32[music]
2:54:33It evolved never to stand alone.
2:54:40>> [music]
2:54:48[music]
2:54:49>> But the wilderbeast does not travel
2:54:51alone.
2:54:56[music]
2:55:02Alongside the herds move the zebra, and
2:55:06the bond between the two species runs
2:55:08far deeper than it appears.
2:55:12[laughter]
2:55:20[music]
2:55:20Zebra crop the tallest, coarsest grass,
2:55:24the kind a wilderbeast's gut cannot
2:55:26process well. [music]
2:55:37Behind them, the soft young growth below
2:55:40is exposed. Exactly [music] the grass
2:55:43the wilderbeast needs.
2:55:53[laughter]
2:55:54It is a kind of unwitting farming. Two
2:55:58species preparing the pasture for one
2:56:00another with no intention at all.
2:56:13Together, the warning systems of the two
2:56:16species are almost impossible to beat.
2:56:25>> [music]
2:56:29>> Zebra have excellent color vision,
2:56:32catching movement from far off.
2:56:39>> [music]
2:56:44>> Wilderbeast have an especially sharp
2:56:47sense of smell and hearing, [laughter]
2:56:49picking up a predator's scent from more
2:56:51than 500 yd downwind.
2:56:58[laughter]
2:57:01But even the most complete system has a
2:57:03gap.
2:57:09And the hunters of this plane have spent
2:57:12their whole lives learning where those
2:57:14gaps are.
2:57:44The sharpest line between life and death
2:57:47does not lie on land.
2:57:56Today that gap lies at the Mara River.
2:58:04To carry on north, the migration must
2:58:07cross this river.
2:58:15And beneath the murky red brown water,
2:58:19Nile crocodiles have been waiting for
2:58:22weeks.
2:58:28This is Africa's largest reptile. A
2:58:32mature male can reach 20 ft and weigh
2:58:35more than 1,500 lb.
2:58:43It can go a full year without eating.
2:58:45Its metabolism so slow that a single
2:58:48large meal fuels the whole body for
2:58:51months.
2:58:57that lets [music] it wait with a
2:58:58patience no other predator can match.
2:59:06Stock. Okay. Lying motionless beneath
2:59:09the fast water. [music] It is disguised
2:59:11as a drifting log showing only its cold
2:59:14eyes and two nostrils.
2:59:23Along the rim of its jaws lie thousands
2:59:26of hypers sensitive sense organs able to
2:59:30detect the faintest ripple on the
2:59:32surface.
2:59:40It does not need to see clearly. It only
2:59:43needs to feel its prey stepping into
2:59:46range.
2:59:56As the wilderbeast begin to enter the
3:00:00water, the crocodiles do not move.
3:00:15They only slide quietly toward the main
3:00:18current. Not a ripple, not a sign.
3:00:42>> [music]
3:00:45>> The strike comes without warning.
3:00:52The surface erupts in a fraction of a
3:00:54second.
3:01:03A large [music] Nile crocodile can bite
3:01:06down with several thousand lbs of force
3:01:08per square in. Among the most powerful
3:01:11bites ever measured in a living animal.
3:01:22A cry of panic is dragged under into
3:01:26water swirling red.
3:01:38But around that spot, the herd swims on,
3:01:42not stopping, unable to stop.
3:01:54Like a river that cannot stop flowing
3:01:56for a single stone.
3:02:07Fearsome as it is, the crocodile does
3:02:10not decide how the river itself works.
3:02:17that belongs to another animal.
3:02:23[music] The hippopotamus.
3:02:30A bull's territory is measured not in
3:02:34acres of grassland, but in the length of
3:02:37a stretch of river.
3:02:40[music]
3:02:43a few hundred yards of water and he will
3:02:46hold that same stretch for years on end.
3:02:54His lower canines reach 20 in, never
3:02:58stop growing, and sharpen themselves
3:03:02each time the jaws close.
3:03:10But most disputes between hippos are not
3:03:13settled with those teeth.
3:03:20They are settled with sound.
3:03:28A hippo's call travels through air and
3:03:30water at the same moment. One signal,
3:03:34two elements, two different audiences at
3:03:37once.
3:03:41[music]
3:03:43[groaning]
3:03:46In 2022, researchers found that hippos
3:03:49recognize the calls of their neighbors
3:03:51and tell them apart from the calls of
3:03:54strangers.
3:04:01Each stretch of river is a community
3:04:04that knows exactly who belongs to it and
3:04:07who does not.
3:04:15And in holding its place, the hippo
3:04:18leaves a mark no other animal can leave.
3:04:23[music]
3:04:28>> [music]
3:04:36>> Night [music]
3:04:37after night, the same group climbs the
3:04:40bank along the same path. And year after
3:04:44year, their weight carves the riverbank
3:04:46into deep channels.
3:04:57Those channels guide rainwater back into
3:05:00the river and become the way down to the
3:05:03water for many animals too weak to cut a
3:05:06path through the steep bank [music]
3:05:07themselves.
3:05:12[music]
3:05:19The hippo hunts nothing and is hunted by
3:05:22almost nothing. Yet the shape of the
3:05:25river the migration must cross is in
3:05:28large part its own work.
3:05:33[music]
3:05:36The proof of that untouchable status is
3:05:39clearest after dark.
3:05:48As the sun sets, a hippo quietly leaves
3:05:51the water.
3:06:05Three tons of flesh amling across open
3:06:09ground is the ultimate temptation for a
3:06:12pride of lions watching nearby.
3:06:21But temptation always comes at a steep
3:06:25price.
3:06:31Without a trace of fear, the hippo
3:06:33slowly turns.
3:06:42The lions understand at once.
3:06:53They turn away and leave, surrendering
3:06:56the darkness to the true king of the
3:06:59river.
3:07:06On the northern edge, where the
3:07:08migration has not yet passed, another
3:07:11story [music] is being written.
3:07:16[music]
3:07:20A story that needs neither speed nor
3:07:24endurance.
3:07:28[music]
3:07:32The African lion is the only big cat in
3:07:35the world that lives in an organized
3:07:37group.
3:07:42And that group is built around its
3:07:44females.
3:07:51Every female in a pride is related. Born
3:07:54there and staying there for almost all
3:07:56of her life.
3:08:02>> [music]
3:08:04>> They give birth at the same time, nurse
3:08:07one another's cubs, and carry out nearly
3:08:10all of the hunting.
3:08:20Hunting as a pride, their success rate
3:08:22reaches 30 to 40%, double that of
3:08:26hunting alone.
3:08:35The males take a different road. At
3:08:38around 3 years old, they are driven out
3:08:41of the pride.
3:08:45[music]
3:08:49And even when they win a pride of their
3:08:52own, they usually hold that place for
3:08:54only two to three years.
3:09:02What endures in a pride is not the
3:09:04males, but the line of females that has
3:09:07held this same ground across many
3:09:10generations.
3:09:22But today the pride is not aiming at the
3:09:25migration.
3:09:33It is aiming at what stayed behind.
3:09:44An animal that takes no part in the
3:09:47migration.
3:10:00The Cape Buffalo takes no part in the
3:10:02great migration.
3:10:12It stays because the Masai Mara still
3:10:15offers enough grass and water to sustain
3:10:19the whole herd.
3:10:27The buffalo is the most dangerous prey a
3:10:30lion regularly faces.
3:10:40A mature bull weighs up to 1,900 lb, and
3:10:44the hard shield of bone across its skull
3:10:48can throw a lion clear with a single
3:10:51headon charge
3:11:03since first night. The pride has been
3:11:06shadowing the herd in silence.
3:11:13When the moment comes, they work
3:11:15together to cut one individual away from
3:11:18the herd.
3:11:34The attack is sudden and savage.
3:11:46The buffalo fights back hard, but in the
3:11:49end it falls to the combined strength of
3:11:52the pride
3:11:58on this plane.
3:12:01No meal comes for free.
3:12:11The lions stand around their kill,
3:12:13breathing heavily after a hunt full of
3:12:15risk.
3:12:27At the edge of an acacia grove, a
3:12:30giraffe stands taller than everything
3:12:32around it.
3:12:43At 18 ft to the top of its head, it is
3:12:47the tallest living creature on Earth.
3:12:59From that height, it can see the lions
3:13:02feeding half a mile away.
3:13:14The buffalo have scattered toward the
3:13:16shade of the trees, leaving an empty
3:13:18space in the middle of the plane.
3:13:27And the migration still flows on like a
3:13:31river [music] that never stops.
3:13:40Its height does more than reach leaves
3:13:43no other animal can touch.
3:13:52It is also the finest early warning
3:13:55system [music] on the plane.
3:14:04But that height is not free.
3:14:10To pump blood up to a brain that sits
3:14:13nearly 6 ft above the [music] heart, a
3:14:16giraffe's heart must generate a blood
3:14:18pressure twice that of any other mammal.
3:14:31In the veins [music] of its neck are
3:14:32one-way valves, and the skin of its legs
3:14:35is bound as tight.
3:14:50And each time it bends down to drink, a
3:14:53fine mesh of blood vessels beneath the
3:14:56base of the skull holds the flow back so
3:14:58it does not faint.
3:15:07This entire body is a system built for
3:15:10one purpose to withstand its own height.
3:15:24In return, that size is a passport
3:15:28across the whole of this plane.
3:15:37No sensible predator attacks a healthy,
3:15:40full grown giraffe while easier options
3:15:44remain.
3:15:52Sometimes the best way to survive is to
3:15:55become something not worth the attempt.
3:16:08Evening falls on the Masai Mara.
3:16:21The last light of day turns the swaying
3:16:25grass to gold in the soft wind.
3:16:38The migration still flows, never
3:16:41stopping, never looking back.
3:16:53The lions rest, eyes closed, but ears
3:16:57still [music] listening.
3:17:08Down in the Mara River, the hippos begin
3:17:11to [music] leave the water, heading out
3:17:14onto the grass to feed through the
3:17:16night.
3:17:28The giraffe still stands there looking
3:17:31down over the whole plane in the fading
3:17:34light.
3:17:44This is the Masai Mara in late July. A
3:17:48land where each animal is doing the one
3:17:50thing that is its own to do.
3:18:03Every day without pause.
3:18:19But the grasslands are not the only
3:18:21place where nature writes its rules of
3:18:23survival.
3:18:35On the other side of the hemisphere, an
3:18:38immense mountain range running down the
3:18:41South American continent has created a
3:18:43wholly different world.
3:18:56The Andes run the length of South
3:18:58America's western edge, more than
3:19:00[music] 4,300
3:19:02m, the longest mountain range on land
3:19:05anywhere on the planet.
3:19:20It crosses seven countries, rising
3:19:23[music] into a wall of rock and ice that
3:19:25divides the continent in two.
3:19:39What sets the Andes apart is not its
3:19:42[music] height, but the way life
3:19:44arranges itself in layers by altitude.
3:19:57Climb a few thousand ft and the climate
3:20:01changes and a different world of living
3:20:03things takes its [music] place.
3:20:16It is that change that has produced one
3:20:18of the most diverse ecosystems on the
3:20:21planet.
3:20:32This story begins in the middle of the
3:20:34range on a cold grassland with the
3:20:37animal at the top of its food chain.
3:20:51The Puna grassland stretches from around
3:20:5310,500
3:20:55to 15,700
3:20:57ft.
3:21:12The grass is low, tough, and slow
3:21:15growing. And the air here holds only
3:21:17about half the oxygen found at sea
3:21:20level. [music]
3:21:32Where calories are this scarce, a
3:21:35predator is the most expensive thing of
3:21:38all.
3:21:46And yet the puna still supports a big
3:21:48cat. The puma, the most widely
3:21:51distributed cat in the Americas.
3:21:58[music]
3:22:09It weighs from 120 to 220 lb. Long in
3:22:13the body, powerful in the hind legs.
3:22:20>> [music]
3:22:26[music]
3:22:30>> The pummer holds a curious record. It
3:22:33has more names than any other animal on
3:22:35the continent. Cougar, mountain lion,
3:22:39catamount, panther.
3:22:52In English alone, this cat has more than
3:22:5540 different names.
3:23:08Its range runs from the Yukon in Canada
3:23:12down to the far south of Patagonia
3:23:15through forest, desert, and ice.
3:23:29Despite the name mountain lion, [music]
3:23:32the pummer is not one of the true big
3:23:35cats.
3:23:46>> [music]
3:23:48>> genetically. It is closer to the
3:23:50domestic cat than to the tiger or the
3:23:53leopard.
3:23:57[music]
3:24:06It lives alone, a male holding a
3:24:08territory of around 80 square miles and
3:24:11outside the mating season, tolerating
3:24:14almost no other male within it.
3:24:29The puma is most active at dusk and
3:24:32before dawn, the hours when the light is
3:24:35just weak [music] enough to erase the
3:24:36outline of its body.
3:24:50Behind its retina lies a reflective
3:24:53layer, the topum, turning every scrap of
3:24:56remaining light into an advantage.
3:25:08[music] In that half light, it reads
3:25:11every movement on the ground long before
3:25:14its prey can see it.
3:25:28As evening comes, the wind shifts,
3:25:32blowing down from the ice fields into
3:25:35the valley.
3:25:42The pummer lowers its body, becoming a
3:25:48in this harsh land, most hunts end in
3:25:51failure. But this time, one small lapse
3:25:55has delivered a stunning victory.
3:26:16But the guanakaco is not prey easily
3:26:19brought down.
3:26:30on this barren grassland. They are among
3:26:33the toughest survivors of all.
3:26:45Massive in build. At a weight that can
3:26:48reach 310 lb, a grown guanako is half
3:26:53again to twice the weight of the hunter
3:26:55stalking it.
3:27:07To keep this vast biological engine
3:27:10running in a land so short of calories,
3:27:13nature has given them a flexible split
3:27:16upper lip.
3:27:28This unusual feature lets the guano pick
3:27:31carefully at the hardest, shortest,
3:27:34lowest growing grasses. Food that other
3:27:37grazers are forced to leave behind.
3:27:50They can even ring the last drop of
3:27:52moisture from bone dry plants, [music]
3:27:54going for weeks on end without drinking.
3:28:05Their defensive weapon lies in the build
3:28:08of the body itself.
3:28:21The long raised neck is [music] wrapped
3:28:23in skin as thick as armor, ready to
3:28:26blunt a killing bite from an enemy.
3:28:41Their weathered coat is thick and holds
3:28:43heat well. Enough to withstand the four
3:28:46below zero cold of Andian knights.
3:29:05But the Guanako's real strength lies in
3:29:07the discipline of the herd.
3:29:42There are always centuries standing on
3:29:45the rocks, not feeding, patiently
3:29:47keeping watch.
3:29:55>> [laughter]
3:29:56>> One alarm call and the whole herd flees
3:30:00at once.
3:30:42Pummer and Guanako have shared this land
3:30:45for hundreds of thousands of years.
3:30:54long enough to build an endless race of
3:30:58survival between them.
3:31:09Hardship shapes the weariness of the
3:31:11prey and that weariness in turn keeps
3:31:14sharpening the instincts of the killer.
3:31:27Overhead, where the air is already too
3:31:30thin for most winged things, a dark
3:31:33shape has been circling for hours. The
3:31:36Andian condor.
3:31:49It has a wingspan of nearly 11 ft and
3:31:52weighs up to 33 lb. The heaviest bird of
3:31:56prey alive on the planet.
3:32:09At that weight, flapping continuously is
3:32:12all but impossible.
3:32:23And so it barely flaps at all.
3:32:36Trackers fitted to wild birds show the
3:32:39Andian condor beats its wings only about
3:32:421% of its flight time. One bird flew for
3:32:46more than 5 hours without a single flap.
3:32:58It flies by reading the air, rising in
3:33:02columns of warm air, lifting off the
3:33:04cliffs, then gliding on a long descent
3:33:06to the next.
3:33:17In this way, it patrols hundreds of
3:33:19miles a day at almost no cost.
3:33:29From that height, its eyes search not
3:33:32for the carcass, but for other birds
3:33:34coming down to it.
3:33:43When it sees them converging on a single
3:33:46point, it folds its wings and drops.
3:34:03Its head and neck are almost bare, so
3:34:05the part that plunges deep into a
3:34:07carcass does not become a nest for
3:34:10bacteria.
3:34:23Its hooked beak can tear through the
3:34:26thickest hide which no smaller bird
3:34:28could open.
3:34:45But not every creature of the high
3:34:47country lives among rock and cliff.
3:34:57In mountain hollows with no drainage,
3:34:59melt water has gathered over thousands
3:35:02of years, forming salt lakes up among
3:35:05the clouds.
3:35:15This is one of the harshest environments
3:35:18in the Andes.
3:35:28Lying at around 14,000 ft, [music] the
3:35:31water here is bitterly salty, highly
3:35:34alkaline, laced in places [music] with
3:35:36toxic minerals, and skinned with thin
3:35:39ice at night.
3:35:49[music]
3:35:50Very few living things can endure it.
3:36:02And yet the surface of the lake still
3:36:05glows a faint pink.
3:36:16These are Andian flamingos, the rarest
3:36:19flamingos in the world.
3:36:30It is bound for life to these high salt
3:36:33lakes where the greatest [music] threat
3:36:35is not claws but the level of the water.
3:36:48It is the only flamingo with yellow legs
3:36:51rather than the pink or gray of its land
3:36:54relatives.
3:37:04That small detail sets it apart from
3:37:08every other flamingo.
3:37:20What keeps it here is a food almost
3:37:22nothing else will touch. Datoms, tiny
3:37:26single-sellled organisms drifting in the
3:37:29salt water.
3:37:39Its beak [music] is a filtering machine.
3:37:52Inside lie rows of horny plates [music]
3:37:54packed like the teeth of a comb, fine
3:37:57enough to hold back the datoms while
3:37:59pushing water and mud out.
3:38:10It feeds with its head turned upside
3:38:13down, sweeping the beak back [music] and
3:38:15forth through the shallows, filtering
3:38:18out the tiniest nutrients from water
3:38:20that looks to the eye like nothing but
3:38:23merc.
3:38:32>> [music]
3:38:34>> It is the pigment in those algae and
3:38:36small crustations that dyes its feathers
3:38:40pink.
3:38:49A chick is not born pink. [music]
3:38:51It turns pink through the very food it
3:38:53eats all its life.
3:39:02But that life is a fragile one.
3:39:07[music]
3:39:12The Andian flamingo breeds slowly,
3:39:14[music] and when the lakes's water level
3:39:16shifts through drought or mining, an
3:39:18entire season's breeding can be lost.
3:39:36Leaving the high lakes behind, following
3:39:39the damp eastern slope, the Andes begin
3:39:42to fall away into a wholly different
3:39:44world.
3:39:54Cloud closes in, humidity rises, and the
3:39:58trees return.
3:40:08This is the [music] Andian cloud forest.
3:40:21slopes [music] drowned in mist for
3:40:22almost the whole year. The trees clothed
3:40:25in moss, orchids, and wild bromeilads.
3:40:39After the emptiness [music] of the high
3:40:41country, this place is packed with life.
3:40:55Hidden within that endless forest is the
3:40:58only bear on the entire South American
3:41:01continent, the spectacled bear.
3:41:17It is also the last surviving descendant
3:41:21of an old line of short-faced bears.
3:41:36Its name comes from the pale markings
3:41:39that ring the eyes and muzzle like a
3:41:42pair of spectacles.
3:41:52This pattern is unique. No two
3:41:54individuals ever quite the same.
3:42:05Unlike the familiar image of a bear,
3:42:08this animal eats very little meat.
3:42:20Most of its diet is plants, fruit, young
3:42:24shoots, and above all the soft core of
3:42:27the wild bromeilad.
3:42:34[music]
3:42:37In search of its favorite food, the
3:42:40spectacled bear has evolved into a
3:42:42superb climber.
3:42:50It can climb to the very tops of tall
3:42:53trees to gather fruit and even bends
3:42:56branches into hanging beds where it lies
3:42:59to eat and rest for days at a time.
3:43:08It is that fruit eating habit that has
3:43:11made the spectacle bear the diligent
3:43:13gardener of the cloud forest.
3:43:22Seeds travel with it across the slopes,
3:43:24then are sewn back into the forest soil
3:43:27[music] through its gut.
3:43:34Many of the trees here depend on it
3:43:37entirely to spread and survive.
3:43:45For all its importance, the spectacled
3:43:47bear lives a deeply secretive life,
3:43:50thinly spread and rarely seen.
3:43:59Sadly, the cloud forest is shrinking
3:44:01year by year under human clearance,
3:44:03leaving these old gardeners ever harder
3:44:06pressed to find somewhere quiet and safe
3:44:08enough to survive.
3:44:15The Andes are not one mountain range.
3:44:18They are many worlds stacked upon one
3:44:21another, and the borders between them
3:44:23lie not on any map, but in altitude.
3:44:40Climb a few thousand ft and the pressure
3:44:43[music] drops. The temperature shifts
3:44:47and the rules that govern life are
3:44:49rewritten from the start.
3:44:53[music]
3:45:04A coat thick enough to keep warm at one
3:45:06level becomes a useless burden at the
3:45:09next.
3:45:20Speed enough to escape down low is
3:45:23worthless [music] on a vertical cliff.
3:45:33And so almost every living thing here is
3:45:36locked [music] into a single band of
3:45:38altitude.
3:45:46Not because they [music] choose to stay,
3:45:48but because their bodies work properly
3:45:51only within that range.
3:45:57[music]
3:46:01Only a very few have learned [music] to
3:46:02move through many layers.
3:46:12And for [music] that reason, they become
3:46:14the only things able to link worlds that
3:46:17would otherwise [music] never touch.
3:46:22[music]
3:46:30As the first rays of sunlight pierce the
3:46:33Serengeti mist, the savannah does not
3:46:36awaken. It merely changes shift.
3:46:4612,000 square miles of grassland
3:46:49transform from cold gray to blazing gold
3:46:52in under 15 minutes.
3:47:02And in that brief moment of dawn, three
3:47:05empires begin to stir.
3:47:08[music]
3:47:14Three species, one savannah, all
3:47:18competing for the same source of life.
3:47:24[music]
3:47:28Yet three entirely different survival
3:47:30strategies, and each carries a price no
3:47:33one willingly pays.
3:47:36[music]
3:47:43[music]
3:47:45Welcome to Nature's Moments, where we
3:47:48explore the most extraordinary stories
3:47:51of the natural world.
3:47:59In the sunbleleached grass, chest high
3:48:01and swaying, a solitary lioness creeps
3:48:04forward in silence.
3:48:12She lowers her center of gravity, belly
3:48:15to the earth, ears flattened.
3:48:23Her tory coat dissolves completely into
3:48:26the surrounding landscape.
3:48:32[music]
3:48:35Amber eyes lock onto a wilderbeast
3:48:38grazing barely 40 yard away. [music]
3:48:47The male lion possesses the mane, the
3:48:50roar that carries 5 miles, the 650 PSI
3:48:55bite force.
3:48:57[music]
3:49:00Yet the lioness is the pride's true
3:49:04hunter.
3:49:08Without darkness for concealment,
3:49:11hunting beneath the open sun, a lion
3:49:14relies on a different weapon, stealth.
3:49:23Across the vast grassland, she is
3:49:26virtually invisible until the prey
3:49:29realizes it is already too late.
3:49:37Without pride mates to orchestrate an
3:49:40encirclement, she must stake everything
3:49:42on patience.
3:49:49Each footfall lands without a sound,
3:49:52closing the distance with lethal
3:49:54precision.
3:50:04100 ft, the threshold of survival.
3:50:1570% of the muscle fibers in a lion's
3:50:18legs are fast twitch, explosive to 50
3:50:21mph, yet sustainable for only about 600
3:50:25ft before exhaustion sets in.
3:50:36The lioness launches.
3:50:46[groaning]
3:50:56Jaws clamp down on the neck of a
3:50:58wilderbeast weighing 300 lb.
3:51:05[groaning]
3:51:08Not a killing bite, a suffocating grip.
3:51:126 to 10 minutes of relentless
3:51:14constriction.
3:51:23A lion does not kill with fangs. [music]
3:51:26A lion kills with patience.
3:51:39Yet the stark truth remains. Only two or
3:51:43three of every 10 hunts succeed.
3:51:56Seven failures, each one an
3:51:59irretrievable expenditure of energy. But
3:52:02a lion need not be perfect. She need
3:52:05only be more patient than her hunger.
3:52:18Less than half a mile away, through
3:52:21shimmering waves of heat rising from the
3:52:24baked earth, countless cunning eyes fix
3:52:27upon her.
3:52:37No fear in those gazes, only
3:52:41calculation.
3:52:53A laugh rings out. No, that is no laugh.
3:52:57It is a rallying cry. Crocuter. Croer,
3:53:00the spotted hyena.
3:53:16Most people dismiss hyenas as mere
3:53:20scavengers.
3:53:21They could not be more wrong.
3:53:3570% of a spotted hyena's diet comes from
3:53:38its own kills. Their hunt success rate
3:53:42reaches 60%, double that of any lion.
3:53:59But plunder always costs less than
3:54:03pursuit.
3:54:15And this morning that exhausted lioness
3:54:19has laid bare a perfect feast under the
3:54:22African sun.
3:54:32The clan moves not in a sprint but at a
3:54:36sustained grinding pace.
3:54:42[music]
3:54:4835 m per hour maintained mile after
3:54:52mile.
3:55:01An oversized heart, cavernous lungs, and
3:55:05long legs concealed beneath that
3:55:07deceptively ungainainely frame.
3:55:18Spotted hyenas live in clans of
3:55:21staggering scale, larger than any big
3:55:24cat society on the planet.
3:55:34[music]
3:55:35And that society operates under absolute
3:55:38matriarchy.
3:55:48Females weigh up to 140 lb, outmassing
3:55:52the males.
3:56:03The lowest ranking female still outranks
3:56:05the most dominant male.
3:56:15Males here are little more than lodggers
3:56:18in their own home.
3:56:25Yet the hyena's most fearsome weapon is
3:56:28not clan discipline. It is the jaw.
3:56:401100 psi, nearly double that of a lion.
3:56:44Enough to splinter the thigh bone of a
3:56:46buffalo.
3:56:56Hyenas waste nothing. Flesh, bone, hide,
3:57:00hooves, teeth. Their stomachs dissolve
3:57:03everything except hair and horn.
3:57:19[music]

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