BBC Africa E01 Kalahari
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:30Africa, the world's greatest wilderness.
00:54The only place on earth to see the full majesty of nature.
01:14There's so much more here than we ever imagined.
01:19I'm standing where the equator cuts right across the middle of the continent.
01:26To the north of me, there's an immense desert the size of the United States of America.
01:31To the west, a vast rainforest the size of India.
01:35And behind me, for thousands of miles, the most fertile savannahs in the world.
01:49From the roof of Africa to the deepest jungle.
02:00Unforeseen places and untold stories.
02:06There's nowhere in the world where wildlife puts on a greater show.
02:28It's the last place on earth where you can come eye to eye with the greatest animals
02:33that walk our planet.
02:43This is Africa.
02:57Our journey starts in the far southwest in the oldest and strangest corner of the continent.
03:17Here, the thirsty land is covered with thousands upon thousands of circles.
03:28We still don't know their origins.
03:31Poisonous plants, foraging insects, and even magnetism have all been suggested, but each
03:38ruled out.
03:49The circles don't move, and their shape never varies.
03:53They're unchanging, much like this part of Africa itself.
04:03Wet and arid, it almost never rains on this land, yet there is water here, hidden away.
04:19To survive here, life must use every trick in the book.
04:33Winter.
04:40Dawn temperatures can fall well below freezing.
04:47And that's a problem for this drongo.
04:50It's too cold for his normal prey, flying insects.
04:57But he has a plan.
04:59The drongo is the Kalahari's greatest trickster.
05:08And these are his victims.
05:12A family of meerkats, desert specialists.
05:21After warming up in the morning sun, the meerkats begin their search for breakfast.
05:29The drongo can now begin his tricks.
05:32But he must first win the confidence of his victims.
05:41He spots an eagle on the hunt, and sounds a warning.
05:46One that sends the meerkats gratefully scurrying to safety.
05:57They're over.
06:02And now he has their trust.
06:07He sounds another warning.
06:10But this time, it's a false alarm.
06:21Thank you very much.
06:28The meerkats fell for it.
06:38This all seems too easy.
06:40He tries the same trick again.
06:53But the meerkats aren't stupid, they'll only fall for it once.
07:06The juicy scorpion won't be for him.
07:13Then suddenly, the sound of a sentry's warning.
07:18No meerkat can ignore that.
07:21Sentries never lie.
07:23But the sentry sees no danger.
07:30Guess who?
07:40Of course, it's the drongo.
07:43He's learned to mimic the meerkats' own warning call.
07:49And now he can enjoy his prize.
07:54A gang of meerkats, outsmarted by a bird.
08:04The drongo is only deceitful in the hardest winter months.
08:09For the rest of the year, he provides honest protection.
08:14So in the long run, the meerkat family profit as well as the drongo.
08:27It's a much harder life if you haven't yet learned the tricks of your trade.
08:45This young leopard is just a year old and at a critical point in his life.
09:14His mother has battled to raise her two cubs, but finding enough food for them is now beyond
09:21her.
09:26From today, he'll have to fend for himself.
09:39Kalahari means land of great thirst.
09:47Prey is scarce.
09:49Of all the leopards in Africa, these have to be the most resourceful.
10:01A big warthog, potential prey, but armed and dangerous.
10:11His mother tried to tackle one, but it nearly killed her.
10:32He spots something more promising, a steenbok.
10:51That's more like it.
10:59He won't strike unless he can get to within just four meters, and without making the slightest
11:05sound.
11:13A jackal barks an alarm, but the steenbok still has no idea it's being stalked.
11:28The nearer he gets, the quieter he must be.
11:59He's blown it.
12:13A good opportunity like that won't come around very often.
12:38Hungry and thirsty, he heads back home, and spots a kill stashed in a tree, almost certainly
12:46by his own mother.
12:49And like any teenager, he thinks nothing of raiding her larder.
13:05Booby-trapped.
13:36It's not really his day, is it?
13:54Some young leopards grow up to be brilliant opportunists, but even they find life hard
14:00here in the Kalahari.
14:07These bizarre little birds are baby ostriches.
14:16They're just a few days old.
14:22In time, they'll become superb desert survivors.
14:30But in the Kalahari, these early days are perilous.
14:35Like leopards and meerkats, adult ostriches can extract all the moisture they require
14:41from their food.
14:43The chicks, however, won't survive much more than another day without water.
14:50But there's none in sight.
14:52How can their parents conjure up water out here?
15:12The youngsters follow their parents as they head out onto a featureless wasteland.
15:23It seems like a suicidal journey.
15:39The Tosha salt pan.
15:42Here, water is more often a mirage than reality.
15:51It's now well over 40 degrees centigrade.
15:56Their father shades his chicks from the midday sun.
16:08Another mirage?
16:14No, the ostrich family is not alone out here.
16:27Surrounded by miles of sun-baked mud, sweet, fresh water wells up from deep below ground.
16:37Like a miracle.
17:00Although the ostrich parents have guided their chicks to water, there's still a problem.
17:05Traffic.
17:08Heavy traffic.
17:14These tiny, fragile birds could easily be trampled underfoot.
17:21The water is tantalizingly close.
17:32Where prey gathers, predators are never far behind.
18:01The brawling lions have unwittingly done this.
18:30The lions have unwittingly done the young ostriches a favor.
18:34The water hole is now clear.
18:39Sometimes you need a bit of luck in life.
19:00Their first ever drink, and just in time.
19:11Their father's done his job.
19:29A black rhinoceros, the Kalahari's most cantankerous resident.
19:38They don't like company, and they certainly don't like sharing a water hole with lions.
19:46Fortunately, for everyone else that is, they only visit twice a week.
20:03The Kalahari is the black rhino's last stronghold.
20:11And here, under the cover of darkness, at one secret and very special water hole, rhino abandon their normally solitary life and come for miles around to meet under the stars.
20:29Using the latest starlight camera, we can reveal for the first time the rhino's true character.
20:42This young female seems nervous.
20:45She senses other rhinos close by.
20:50A mother appears from the shadows with her calf.
21:04Tentatively, they greet one another.
21:11They may be ill-tempered by day, but now they become gentle and affectionate.
21:25More and more arrive.
21:36We had no idea that rhinos met to socialize and build friendships like this.
22:07The young female has an admirer.
22:16But she doesn't seem keen on him.
22:24She's excited about something.
22:28Or someone.
22:35Here comes a really big male.
22:43This time, she's much more welcoming.
23:02Who would have thought that rhino could be so flirtatious?
23:08The first male tries to come between them.
23:11Somehow or other, he's got a pair of antelope horns stuck on his nose.
23:21It looks as if she's been run over by his eccentric style.
23:29He leads her off, away from the party.
23:52He may have style, but he's turning out to be something of a disappointment.
24:13A girl can only put up with so much.
24:21The only way she can get rid of him is to pretend she's asleep.
24:30To see so many rhino in one place is a revelation.
24:35And that's the power water has here.
24:37The power to bring together the greatest gathering of rhinos anywhere on Earth.
25:03Spitzkörper.
25:07An ancient volcano that towers above a plateau that is two billion years old.
25:16This land has remained unchanged for longer than any other part of Africa.
25:25Animals here have had a long time to find inventive solutions to the challenge of finding water.
25:56Out on the open plains, life must await the chance arrival of rain.
26:07When it does fall, it has an extraordinary effect.
26:14Each sporadic downpour may only last minutes, but it can bring life.
26:19And in spectacular numbers.
26:31Red-billed quina.
26:39They're the most numerous bird in the world.
26:41In all, more than a billion live here in the Kalahari.
26:46No one knows quite how, but they seem to have an extraordinary ability to locate the fall of rain
26:51and then instantly exploit the bonanza that follows.
27:13These nomads now have just five weeks to find food, build a nest, and raise a brood.
27:30But they're not alone.
27:35The rains have also created a plague.
27:50These are armored ground crickets, giant insects with voracious appetites for meat.
28:06With the quila parents away feeding, their chicks are defenseless.
28:36The adults return.
29:02But the cricket fights back, squirting its own foul-tasting blood into their eyes.
29:30The cricket is still alive, but the stench of its blood attracts the attention of others.
29:57The cricket is the target.
30:01These crickets become cannibals.
30:20Soon, the bonanza brought by the rain is over, and the quila head off in search of the next rare downpour.
30:46The Kalahari is scarred by rivers that have long since run dry, the water claimed by the thirsty land.
31:07But it's not gone far.
31:12Deep below lies a secret, one that was discovered only 25 years ago.
31:35Humid air rushing to the surface gives this place its name, Dragon's Breath Cave.
31:50The shaft descends for 60 meters until it meets water.
32:02Here, there is a massive chamber big enough to swallow three jumbo jets nose to tail, filled with cool, fresh water.
32:13The world's largest underground lake.
32:26This is fossil water.
32:31It's been trapped here undisturbed for thousands, if not millions of years.
32:43We have no idea how deep the lake is.
32:46Divers have been down to 100 meters, and still there's no sign of the bottom.
32:57Remarkably, Dragon's Breath is part of a vast cave system that extends beneath the Kalahari for thousands of miles.
33:11Even here, in this lonely cave, there is life.
33:24Golden catfish, only found in this one cave.
33:30They're the rarest and most isolated fish in the world.
33:38Life down here is as challenging as it is in the desert above.
33:44There's no food, except the debris that occasionally falls onto the surface.
33:53And these catfish are totally blind.
33:57The only world they know is the one they sense through touch.
34:06A blind fish living in perpetual darkness, deep beneath one of the most arid regions of Africa.
34:22Such cruel irony. So much water, hidden away, out of reach.
34:34Along the western edge of the Kalahari, the land becomes so dry, it seems impossible that any life could survive here.
34:59The Namib. A million square miles of sand, exquisitely sculpted by the wind.
35:10This is the oldest desert in the world.
35:22The sunlight comes from fog rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean.
35:29It condenses into a few precious drops.
35:35Just enough to sustain life.
35:46Little wasp is searching the dunes.
35:54She's not looking for a drink, but for somewhere moist to lay her egg.
36:02How will she pull off a trick like that?
36:12The entrance to a burrow. That's worth investigating.
36:23She may be tiny, but once she decides to dig, she can shift extraordinary quantities of sand.
36:47She's unearthed this spider for a grisly purpose.
36:55It's so dry, the only place with enough moisture for her egg is within the body of another living thing.
37:06First, she must paralyze her victim.
37:13But then, the spider plays its trump card.
37:34The aptly named golden wheel spider can cartwheel fast enough to escape its gruesome fate.
37:53For the wasp, her near-impossible search goes on.
38:21It's hard enough for a tiny wasp to survive here in the Namib.
38:25How is it possible for a giant?
38:38A desert giraffe.
38:42It's difficult to imagine how such a huge animal can live in a place with so little water.
38:55This old male is at the very limit of his endurance.
39:12The land may be bone dry, but there are signs that water once flowed here.
39:24The Hoanib, one of Namibia's rivers.
39:31A river of sand.
39:46The trees that line these sand rivers send roots down over 30 meters to tap water that lies deep beneath the riverbed.
39:58These trees are the giraffe's salvation, even if he has to stretch to his very tallest to get a mouthful.
40:12Even on tiptoe, he still needs a half-meter-long tongue to reach the leaves he so badly needs.
40:39He's ruled the stretch of the Hoanib for over a decade, and this prime territory is attracting females.
40:58He waits confidently for her.
41:11But they've got company.
41:41The old bull won't tolerate a rival.
42:07Clashing and shoving, they size each other up.
42:16The young rival seems to think he has a chance, and attacks.
42:33Few blows usually settle things in such battles, but here the stakes are high.
42:46To lose means exile in the desert.
42:53Neither will back down.
43:00As the fight intensifies, they change tactics.
43:04The young male aims for the rump.
43:30But he's outnumbered.
43:45The old bull is down.
44:11Is this the end of his reign?
44:19He knows a knockout blow is coming.
44:36But the old bull ducks...
44:43And strikes a blow to his rival's underbelly.
45:14Out for the count.
45:36The old bull is victorious.
45:42But only just.
45:52The sand river remains his to rule.
46:18It's a river that is about to be transformed.
46:27Under clear blue skies, water floods down the Hoaniv.
46:37The welcome consequence of rain that fell hundreds of miles away.
46:56The water may only flow for a matter of hours.
47:02But this miraculous flood is enough to provide a lifeline for the trees and the giraffes of the Hoaniv River.
47:17It's what makes this place worth fighting for.
47:39Here, fossil lakes, secret waterholes, desert fog, and ephemeral rivers like this provide just enough water for life to get by, no matter how tough it gets.
47:56You can't find more inventive solutions to staying alive than in this, the most ancient corner of Africa.
48:27For four years, the Africa team searched the continent for new and surprising stories.
48:33Not only of strange and unfamiliar creatures, but also some we think we know.
48:41Veteran wildlife cameraman Martin Colbeck took on the challenge of shedding new light on the life of Namibia's desert giraffe.
48:55I jumped at the opportunity of working with an animal that I hadn't really spent much time with.
49:00Straight away, they proved to be quite an eye-opener.
49:03They're very bizarre-looking animals.
49:06We just kept looking at them from different angles, and they looked even weirder.
49:13The combination of the sort of weird close-ups, the beautiful landscape that they're in, they're amusing.
49:21I got really attached to them, actually.
49:28Overlying all this, we were always waiting for a fight.
49:32But to see a full-blooded fight is very rare.
49:36So the only way that we were going to see it is if we stuck at it day after day, every day, for 30 days.
49:45We were lucky enough that we found a male guarding a female.
49:53And out of nowhere, this male came around the corner.
50:02And almost immediately faced up to our male.
50:08Absolutely no warning that this was going to happen.
50:11So it was complete pandemonium in the car.
50:14But luckily, I got the camera up and running in time to actually capture this fight.
50:19And it all came down to one minute in real time.
50:27When I filmed it, you don't see it in slow motion.
50:31And you just have to go with the flow.
50:35You're not experiencing the fight. You're just basically framing it and capturing it.
50:40So it was only afterwards, when we looked at it in slow motion, that you could really understand how ferocious it was.
50:52You can see the impact on the skin. You can see the ripples going through the flesh.
50:58But it was the final blows that delivered the real surprise.
51:02It was like one of those chimneys falling down.
51:08The last moment, the head just went clunk.
51:28And we thought it was dead.
51:33We thought this thing was dead.
51:37And it lay there for, it must have been three minutes.
51:41Eventually, this thing suddenly got up.
51:44The one that was lying down.
51:46And the two of them were then standing.
51:48And then the one that had been knocked over completely, then just said,
51:53I've had enough. OK, OK, you won. And I'm off.
52:02I think it's very unlikely I'm going to see anything like that again.
52:06I think that's a once in a lifetime. I really do.
52:12It won't be easy to look at giraffes in the same way again.
52:22On the other side of the desert, another of Africa's great animal icons
52:27was attracting the attention of the team
52:29as they staked out a secret water hole.
52:37They hoped to reveal a very different side
52:40to the personality of the black rhinoceros.
52:46The team have heard that at night, rhinos behave a little strangely.
52:53WHINNYING
53:04A specially built starlight camera
53:07would allow the team to pierce the darkness.
53:15It's amazing. That's filming something we can't even see.
53:19Yeah, well, if you look out there now...
53:21Yeah, it's just black, isn't it?
53:23But through this, it looks as sharp as day.
53:26Rhinos are notoriously antisocial.
53:29Yet here, they come to revel in each other's company.
53:35This is amazing.
53:39This is such intimate behaviour which you can only see
53:44filming them at night like this. It's incredible.
53:49WHINNYING
53:54But it wasn't just cameras that would show a new side to rhinos.
54:00By concealing tiny radio microphones around the water hole,
54:04the crew hoped to eavesdrop on the night's activity.
54:10WHINNYING
54:18WHINNYING
54:23And what they heard was astonishing.
54:30They're really talkative.
54:33They're really not having a good chat.
54:39These guys are far more communicative than elephants, even.
54:44It's just going on and on, chatting on.
54:50WHINNYING
54:52It's a beautiful, crystal-clear night, so we've got beautiful starry shots,
54:56loads of amazing noise, puffing and huffing.
55:06So, it's about two in the morning. Only one rhino left up there.
55:10The rest have gone to bed, but he's decided to lie down
55:13right on top of the radio mic.
55:28The crew prepared for one more night at the water hole under the full moon.
55:41It seems that they're not really here for the water, but more to socialise.
55:47A bit like going out for the evening.
55:54He's got some kudu horns on his face, draped over his nose.
55:58WHINNYING
56:00That's all on camera, too.
56:03WHINNYING
56:06These images have a particular poignancy
56:09in a world where a rhino horn is worth more than its weight in gold.
56:15Poaching is going through a really bad time right now.
56:18In southern Africa, if you averaged it out,
56:21a rhino has been killed every day for the last year.
56:27That's really serious poaching.
56:30It's a huge concern that what we saw on film
56:34just won't happen again, ever.
56:39It's only now that technology has revealed a new side
56:43to the rhino's personality.
56:52The black rhinoceros is a symbol of the African bush.
56:56But it seems that this creature has been long misunderstood.
57:04For the Africa team,
57:06revealing giraffes and rhinos in this new light was just the beginning.
57:12Africa may be a continent we think we know,
57:16but it's still full of surprises.
57:27To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:30To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:33To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:36To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:39To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:42To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:45To learn more, visit aclu.org
57:48To learn more, visit aclu.org