"On February 14, 1939, the massive hull of au unfinished German warship slid into the water at Hamburg." "For the Nazi party, it was a day to celebrate the country's resurgent military power... a moment to be savored by the Fuhrer himself." "Two years later, the ship was finally ready for action." "When she left port in the spring of 1941," "She was widely regarded as the most elegant and the most dangerous battleship ever built." "She would never return." "Her name was the Bismarck, and she was about to become a legend." "Summer, 1988." "A converted trawler named Starella leaves Spain, bound for the North Atlantic... where the Bismarck sank nearly half a century ago." "The story of what happened to the battleship during her brief moment on the world's stage has captured the imagination of almost everyone who's heard it including Bob Ballard, the man who found the Titanic." "Now he's looking for the Bismarck." "Come around... one, five, three." "One, five, three." "I knew the story of the Bismarck, as a child." "It was an elegant ship, a warship." "It was very much like the Titanic, in the sense it was on a maiden voyage." "It had such a short life and a very exciting and violent life." "I mean, it was alive for less than two weeks at sea." "It's an exciting story." "To find it gives you the opportunity to retell it to a new generation of people." "Even before the search begins, Ballard is feeling the pressure." "Well, if I don't find it, I'll be disappointed, obviously." "So will a lot of other people." "But, it was sort of interesting on this one." "When I did the Titanic, on one believed I would find it." "Now, on one believes I won't find the Bismarck." "And I don't..." "I think I preferred when they didn't think I would find it." "If the Bismarck is as elusive today as she was half a century ago," "Ballard has his work cut out for him." "Nineteen forty one." "Monday, May 19th." "The Bismarck leaves German waters on her first mission" "What her commanders hope will be a three-month reign of terror on British shipping in the North Atlantic." "She is a monumental weapon a sixth of a-mile long, displacing 53,666 tons." "Her 15-inch guns are aimed with the help of stereoscopic range finders and can hurl a one-ton shell 26 miles with ease." "Her crew of over 2,666 men has been hand-picked for duty on a ship rumored to be unsinkable." "Many are 18 or 19 years old, about to see combat for the first time." "The Bismarck is like a huge cat waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey." "But first she must prowl into enemy territory without being seen." "Two days out of port the Starella approaches the Bismarck's last known position, ,66 miles west of France." "Because no one knows exactly where she sank, the search could cover nearly a hundred square miles." "As far as the location of where the Bismarck was lost, we have four separate positions." "One was by the Dorsetshire, which was the ship that dogged the Bismarck and then actually dealt the final blow when it torpedoed it from both sides." "It gives its position over here in the eastern search area." "Then there's the position of one of the destroyers which was over in the western area." "A published report also puts it in the same area." "Then we have a secret document that puts it even yet in a fourth area." "Ballard is a pioneer in the use of sophisticated technology to explore the deep sea." "Over." "This is bridge... three, four, zero, now." "All right." "Let's put it in." "take over the control." "Okay, bridge... one, eight, five, three" "These transponders will sink to the seabed and begin to emit powerful acoustic signals, allowing Ballard to pinpoint his position on the surface." "Sonar provides his first glimpse of the terrain lying three miles beneath the ship." "I should pick up bottom right here." "Got a helluva long ways to go." "Looks pretty gruesome... real gruesome." "I don't know." "The worst is looking like it's with us." "It's horrible topography." "Huge mountains." "Solid rock." "Hand to hand combat." "Where we dropped the first transponder it was nice and flat, but the second transponder went in near a mountain and trying to get go the third we're in solid mountains," "which is just, you know, horrible." "Ballard is worried that the rugged topography below will make it dangerous to maneuver Argo, an underwater sled carrying video cameras, lights, and sonar equipment." "Argo is designed to photograph the bottom while skimming just above the pitch dark seabed..." "at the end of miles of cable." "Our biggest fear is losing the vehicle because that's the biggest fear you've got." "Hanging up on a cliff and cutting your cable and then losing it." "I've come close before." "I don't want to do that again." "Ballard decides to avoid the mountains and focus his search on the flat mud plains to the west." "For the men who operate Argo like Ballard's son," "Todd the long watch is just beginning." "Nineteen forty one." "Tuesday, May 26th." "The Bismarck steams north and west through Danish waters." "With her is a heavy cruiser, the Prinz Eugen." "For the men aboard the Bismarck, the times couldn't be better." "The war is Europe is nearly two years old, and Germany still hasn't suffered a significant military defeat." "Hitler's troops occupy most of Europe." "The German Luftwaffe is carrying out bombing raids against Britain, which stands alone against the Nazi advance." "Only England and her legendary sea power stand between Germany and victory." "But even the Royal Navy has never done battle with a ship quite like the Bismarck." "And the idea was that the Bismarck would break out into the Atlantic with the cruiser Prince Eugen." "And she would spend a three-months cruise going up and down the Atlantic sinking all the ships bringing from America the food, the petrol, the ammunition, that was keeping us going, keeping the war going." "Although the United States won't enter the war for another six months, supply convoys from America are already being hit hard by the German navy." "If the Bismarck had cut out onto the Atlantic sea routes, she could have done an enormous amount of damage." "I think that if she had done that, she could've altered the course of the war." "So it was very, very critical." "She had to be sunk." "But first, she has to be found." "As far as British intelligence knows, the Bismarck is still safely in German waters, finishing her sea trials." "In fact, she is already making her escape from the confined waters of the Baltic." "The German plan is simple, bold... and risky." "First they hope to slip through the narrow waters off Sweden and Norway and break through to the North sea." "If the Bismarck hasn't been detected, it should be no problem to sail into the Atlantic-perhaps through the Denmark Strait." "But the Bismarck is detected." "On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, a British Spitfire snaps this photograph, showing the Bismarck nestled in a Norwegian Fjord." "The report that Bismarck is trying to break out is confirmed." "Now all the Royal Navy has to do is catch her." "Summer, 1988." "Aboard the Starella, only two days have passed since the hunt for Bismarck began, and already Ballard believes he's picked up the scent." "Argo is sending back images of a debris trail left by a sinking ship." "That trail should lead Ballard to the wreck." "Coming in." "Come up, Todd... 26 meters." "Something was buried here." "There's something right there." "Going down, down..." "Keep going..." "Down..." "On the down swing, on the down." "Now." "Bang!" "The sinking should have been up in here." "I mean that's the best guess." "And that's where we're headed." "So we're gonna head up there, but stay visual and try to stay in debris... sort of smell our way up." "For the next three days," "Ballard follows the meandering trail of wood and metal." "On the fourth day, Argo finds something larger." "Got a good object coming." "Look at the brightness of that sucker." "Wow, it's awesome." "Whatever it is, it's a big thing." "Hold on this altitude." "Woah, what's this?" "Look at this!" "This is what we've come for." "Look at that strike." "There's some hull section right here." "All right, down, down, to about seven meters." "Yeah." "Kuhboom." "What Ballard has found is an impact crater where some large object appears to lie buried." "But what kind of object?" "You can see the debris trail." "Very light stuff getting bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, splat." "So I think it went down to the bottom and went right in." "I'm pretty confident that it's the Bismarck." "We have total coverage of the area and I think as we produce our data and process it our case will get stronger, not weaker." "Believing that he has found the Bismarck," "Ballard has Argo hoisted from the water and the Starella turns for home." "What we gotta do now is to go home and take a closer look at the photographs and see if we can spot something that says:" ""Yes, this is the Bismarck," or "No, it's not"." "The photographs give Ballard the definitive answer he's been looking for but not the one he wanted." "And then there was a teak rudder." "I mean, a brand new, beautifully preserved teak rudder." "Now, I know that Bismarck was hit in the rudder." "Maybe that's teak rudder." "But obviously it wasn't the Bismarck." "And that image was sort of like a stake in your heart." "I mean I just looked at that and there was no way" "I could rationalize around that." "It was clearly, belonged to a sailing ship." "Instead of the Bismarck," "Ballard has stumbled upon the wreck of a 19th century schooner." "Round one to the Bismarck." "Fifty years ago, the Bismarck was proving to be just as elusive to the Royal Navy." "On Friday, May 23rd, the battleship is spotted by a patrolling" "British cruiser as she prepares to pass through the narrow strait between Greenland and Iceland." "Two hundred and fifty miles away, the British warships Prince of Wales and Hood are alerted." "They begin steering a course to intercept Bismarck before she reaches open water." "Leading the attack will be the largest ship in the British fleet." "Now the hold was the epitome of everything that was marvelous about the Royal Navy before the war." "She was a wonderful ship." "She was built during the First World War  unfortunately, she had very poor armor, very lightly covered armor on her decks." "And she shouldn't have been there unarmored as she was." "Now the Hood was a name all of us knew and hated." "Our commanders tried to scare us with the name when we were on maneuvers." "In every exercise, they'd say:" ""Our ship is in a battle with the battleship Hood"." "Saturday morning, May 24th." "The two titans spot each other." "At a distance of about 14 miles, the Hood opens fire." "Bismarck responds with a series of salvos." "One of Bismarck's shells penetrates the Hood's thinly armored decks and ignites her aft powder magazines." "The resulting firestorm rips the Hood in half." "All I saw was a gigantic sheet of flame which shot around the front of the compass platform." "And the ship started to list to starboard." "We were all thrown off our feet." "There was no order given to abandon ship." "It wasn't necessary." "And the news spread immediately." "It was passed on to every body in the ship, However deep." "Somewhere posted inside the ship." "It was jubilation, but almost undescribable." "And it was difficult to get the men really back to their stations because of all that elation..." "I managed to get on one of these ropes and I turned and looked round again and she'd gone." "And there was a fire on the water where she'd been." "And I'd say the water was about five inches thick with oil." "And again, I panicked." "I turned and swam away again as fast as I could." "And when I looked round again the fire had gone out." "And over on the other side were the other two." "There was no one else that came up." "Just the three of us." "In less than ten minutes of battle, the Hood is gone." "Only three men from a crew of 1,466 survive." "When this news was received in England it was received with the greatest shock." "It was as much of a shock to us in England as Pearl Harbor was to America." "We couldn't believe that a ship which epitomized the Royal Navy in all our successes in the past could end, within a few minutes, could end her life." "And people said, well, what next?" "I mean if the Bismarck can sink the Hood in six minutes, what else can she do?" "Summer, 1989." "A year after coming up empty-handed," "Ballard prepares to renew his search aboard the Star Hercules." "Well, we learned a lot last year, mostly where the Bismarck wasn't." "We've got a better ship, a better winch system and we can finally take on the mountains." "It was just too dangerous last year." "I'm not too excited about going into the mountains even now," "But I've run out of choices." "This is the one of the reported positions here," "Another one here, and then here." "So the new search area for this year is roughly six miles east-west by five miles." "Now the transponders, Kathy, are where right now?" "We've got A here..." "A there." "B out here..." "Yeah." "And C up here." "So running throughout this area is a tremendous wall that we have to worry about." "In fact, this shows the wall and it's fairly dramatic." "It rises a thousand feet from here all the way up to the top." "So we have to worry about coming in and crashing into that wall." "The winch we have is very powerful and it's capable of breaking the cable." "If you get it up and you get it trapped think of it as a 26-pund trout on a 5-pound test line." "Do not try to reel it in because the trout will just break that five-pound test line and the winch will just break the cable." "So pay it out give it line." "It takes Argo over two hours to reach the ocean floor, three miles down." "Its only connection to the surface ship is a length of cable, less than an inch thick." "Once in position, Argo can search the bottom for days" "But first it must drop through realms of unimaginable darkness under the full weight of the sea." "Although the sled performs flawlessly, the first week ends without" "Ballard finding any trace of the Bismarck." "Well, the good news is the area we were o terrified of last year to the east isn't so bad." "The bad news is we haven't found it." "We've covered over 46 miles now along the bottom in an area of 36 square miles" "and we haven't picked up any other than mud and rocks." "I mean it's an interesting geologic feature, but that's not why I'm here." "You guys are really milking this one, huh?" "Why don't you guys find this thing?" "Nothing yet." "Todd?" "See anything?" "Naw." "Nothing..." "You almost want to throw a trash over just to have something to look at." "Anything that's more fruitful than this." "This is boring." "A little mud watching." "I don't think the world realizes that most of the planet is mud." "And I think I've looked at more mud than anyone else." "Yeah, I think that's the worst part of any search is just the boredom." "And hours and hours and hours of mud." "And that's what I'm worried about is fatigue setting in and people just going right by it and not seeing it." "The watch is maintained day and night by shifts that change every four hours." "So far, there's been nothing of interest to report." "Ready for some mud crawling?" "Good." "Well, we saw nothing?" "Right." "You want to be 266 meters south South of that position." "Program 12?" "Program 12." "I'll relieve you." "I'm relieved." "Thank you." "Have fun." "The area we're searching is quickly exceeding the size of the area we searched for the Titanic." "So they were really evidently very busy shooting at one another and not very busy at being navigators." "Because the positions that have been issued so far, there's nothing there." "Saturday, May 24th, 1941." "One hour after sinking the Hood, the Bismarck's commanders decide to return the ship to occupied France to repair damage suffered in the battle." "But Bismarck is being shadowed by three British warships, while another battle group moves into position for an ambush." "Aboard the Bismarck the officers decide the time is ripe to lose their pursuers." "And then came this dramatic event in the middle of the night when the captain of the Bismarck put the wheel hard to starboard and did a tremendous loop right out to the west and right back, crossed his own track," "crossed the track of the Prince of Whales and the cruisers that were following him and disappeared." "Bismarck's maneuver takes the British completely by surprise." "While they search a hundred miles to the north, the Bismarck sails closer and closer to safety." "Thirty one hours pass as the distance between Bismarck and the ships frantically looking for her widens." "Then, on Monday morning, there is a sudden change in the fortunes of war." "A Catalina flying boat, cruising just below the low-hanging clouds, spots a dull black shape on the choppy seas." "It is the Bismarck." "She is less than a day's sail from the protection of" "Luftwaffe bombers stationed in France." "Most of the British ships are well to the northwest, while others lie south all too far away to catch up." "Only one ship has a chance to slow the Bismarck down before she reaches port the aircraft carrier Ark Royal." "But the Ark Royal is less than an ideal weapon to pit against the Bismarck." "Her aging Swordfish torpedo planes have wings made of fabric, an attack speed of less than a hundred miles an hour, and carry only one torpedo apiece." "Yet they are the only weapon the British have left." "If the Swordfish can't slow the Bismarck down, she'll be in friendly waters by morning." "With night closing in, the tiny Swordfish race across the darkening skies." "At 8:53 PM they spot the Bismarck, and attack." "They came in the evening, in the twilight." "The sea was rough when we opened fire." "We shot and shot, but what good did it do?" "We fired so much our gun barrels had to be cooled down." "One of the Swordfish torpedoes hits Bismarck amidships, causing minor damage." "But another strikes the battleship in the only place she is vulnerable her rudders." "Bismarck's steering gear jams." "Now she can only move in one direction northwest directly toward the onrushing British fleet." "We couldn't understand it when we got a signal from the Ark Royal and the chef who was saying:" ""Course of Bismarck is due north", when up to that point it had been due south, or at least southeast." "And we thought: "They made a mistake"." "It's very easy when you see a ship in the distance, in the haze awfully uncertain whether it's going from left to right or right to left." "And we thought:" ""Oh, they made a mistake." "Silly ol' thing." "They should know better than that"." "And when it was repeated two or three times, we suddenly realize that the Bismarck had been delivered into our hands." "Summer, 1989." "the Star Hercules has been criss-crossing the seabed for over 266 hours without finding a trace of wreckage." "On the ninth day of the hunt, that begins to change." "This whole area is like someone really disrupted it" "We're just getting little snippets." "There's some little stuff." "Forward, Oops, look at that." "Look at that right there." "Forward." "That's obviously man-made." "No doubt about that." "Light stuff." "What did that one off to the right look like, on the?" "It wasn't..." "Yeah, but it could be an impact crater" "Could be." "We came in on the debris about 17 hours ago and we found a big section of wreckage" "And we got burnt last year and we don't want to repeat that." "We want a definitive, you know, Bismarck, okay?" "We're not getting that and it's frustrating." "It takes hours and hours and hours." "And I haven't slept for 17 hours and I'm getting tired." "The trail of clues on the ocean floor is tantalizingly human..." "A boot... a lantern... torn from a sinking ship." "But was it the Bismarck?" "G' morning." "G' morning." "Just junk... ready?" "Fire." "Each hour brings new discoveries, and a renewed sense that they're closing in on the quarry." "There's a circles." "Go down." "Yet nothing they have found can positively be linked to the Bismarck until just before midnight, when Argo passes over what appears to be part of a turret that once housed Bismarck's 15 inch guns." "There, back up." "No, no... reverse it." "Back, back, back." "Right there!" "All right." "Now!" "that's it." "You got it..." "No, they did not have those on 18th century sailing ships..." "it's decisive." "Ballard knows he's getting closer." "But he's not there yet." "We haven't found the ship." "I don't think it was buried." "I don't think it slid down that hill." "I don't think it's there." "I think it's somewhere else, but nearby." "Here's more debris coming up." "And it's that debris the debris trail is going to lead us to the ship." "We just have to pick up the scent again." "Tuesday, May 27th, between midnight and dawn." "Over a dozen British warships close on the crippled Bismarck, waiting for first light to deliver the final blow." "They know their quarry is wounded, but no one can guess how badly." "At about midnight, or shortly after, the conclusion had to be drawn:" "It was impossible to do useful repair." "And was just giving up at next morning after we waited." "We ate our meals at our guns." "There was no more warm food just bread with something on it," "And once we had boiled potatoes." "And we stayed at our guns the whole time." "And this was perhaps the most difficult, the most dreadful part of the entire operation, as far as I remember:" "The certainty you could not escape anymore." "You couldn't do anything." "And you could probably not do anything equal up to the battle that would be shaping up next morning." "It was like sentence of death." "Tuesday, May 27th." "Two hors after sunrise, the Rodney and King George finally spot the Bismarck emerging from a rain squall." "Battle stations are called." "At 8:47 am the British warships open fire." "The only thing that struck me when the battle started was all the color contrasts." "The Bismarck was black." "The British ships were grey." "The seas were green with the wind creaming the tops, creamy tops." "There was the brown of the cordite when the guns fired on both sides;" "there was the brown puffs of cordite smoke." "Then there was the flash, the orange flash of the guns." "And then these enormous shells splashes-high as houses, white as shrouds." "And it was majestic." "It was a majestic scene." "It was an awesome scene." "And I can see it today as clearly as I saw it then." "For one full hour the relentless British salvos continue." "She'd had a lot of damage on the forecastle forward the right side." "And every time she plunged in the sea the plates on her port bow, extending over a large area, were red hot as she came out." "And then when she went into the sea there was a cloud of steam." "What I saw made me sick." "There were mountains of dead people in pieces." "There was one crazy man still at his gun still firing." "Ammunition was exploding." "The entire upper deck was on fire." "It looked like a heap of rubble." "The beauty of the ship was gone." "Then eventually we saw men trickling down, running down the quarter deck and then jumping into the sea because it was all over." "It was finished." "It was a dreadful light, you know." "No sailor likes to see another ship sunk even if it's an enemy." "This piece of film, showing the Bismarck burning on the far horizon, is the last view of the battleship before she began to sink." "I thought about what to do." "I was no longer needed." "What good is antiaircraft in a sea battle?" "And we were almost out of ammunition." "So I left with some others and we drifted away from the Bismarck on a life boat." "The admiral decided the only way to sink her was to torpedo." "So we went in close and fired our torpedoes." "And then we watched her sink." "Thursday, June 8th, 1989." "A rainy, overcast morning very much like Bismarck's last hours at sea." "And once we've established that, we're gonna turn around, come back west of that line..." "Looks like we have a big target coming up on the port side, about 45 meters out." "Closing on the target it's about 36 meters ahead." "All right!" "Still closing." "Staying strong..." "lot of debris port starboard." "This is a strong one guys." "This could be it." "This is incredible." "Gun decks right across the bridge." "Look at that baby!" "Our ship was at the very spot that the Bismarck must have been." "With all of the rounds coming, the total chaos, confusion, splashes, the impacting, rounds, explosions going off," "A fire burning just the tremendous carnage that took place." "And then to realize that the ship sank and then there were all these people in the water around you." "You can almost see them swimming in this churning sea full of oil and relate to that." "How awful that would be." "We swam for a little while, just to keep moving so we wouldn't freeze." "The water was about 16 degrees Celsius." "And it was so difficult to swim in the oil that had assembled on the surface of the ocean from the sanked ship." "It penetrated our faces and ears." "It was terrible." "It made everything most difficult." "We were ordered to go and rescue them in the ship I was in." "So we came up slowly to them and tried to pull them up the ship's side on ropes." "I remember a story that spread right away on the Dorsetshire." "A British seaman saw a German sailor who had no arms trying to swim." "So he climbed down into the sea and fastened a rope around the man's body." "I reached one of the ropes to help them pull this survivor up and then we noticed that he had both his arms shot off and was holding the rope with his teeth." "And he fell off just as we got him to the upper deck." "And I went over the side to tie a bowline around him." "So I did that." "Then I lost him." "For those of us on the Dorsetshire, the name Joe Brooks means something." "Our government should give that man a medal for humaneness." "In the days following the discovery of the Bismarck," "Argo maneuvers slowly around the half-buried hull, trying to determine the extent of the damage." "Well, I think any time you retell a story, particularly World War II people aren't from it." "I mean, the futileness of it, the stupidity of it." "The wastefulness of it." "I think we need to be reminded of that." "And I think one needs to be reminded of all that happened during World War II." "I think it's very critical that people reflect back so we don't repeat these things." "All right." "All right, Martin, sequence through." "Okay... stop." "What's that?" "It's a swastika." "Look at it." "Is it a swastika?" "..." "A cross." "No, that's not a cross..." "It's a swastika." "Part of it is covered up by the sediment and the other part is chopped off." "All right, down look." "Now the ship that Hitler called" ""this majestic giant of the sea" can only be glimpsed in fragments." "A ghostly section of the bow with decks of polished teak." "Bismarck's 15-inch guns, once held in place by their own weight fell free when she rolled underwater." "Only empty holes remain." "Across one of the four turret holes, a crane lies toppled." "Much of the forward superstructure was destroyed." "But the open bridge and conning tower still remain." "A moment's glory..." "then 56 years of darkness." "We've got it all." "I mean, the whole ship is here." "We're missing, it looks like, all the big turrets." "But almost all the other armament is present on the ship." "We're only missing the big guns..." "Although the four main turrets are gone," "Bismarck's smaller guns remain in place, as if still menacing the sea." "That's gone." "I'm sure the stack's gone" "this gun is lost... little anti-aircraft guns... zoom down." "There's an anti-aircraft gun." "See him?" "That guy's pointed..." "The fact that the ship is in one piece seems to confirm" "German reports that it was scuttled, though the issue is still being debated." "I'm sure that it was a combination of scuttling and all the damage it took." "I just find it difficult to understand why they're so concerned about it and I guess it boils down to pride:" "Germans wanting to be proud that the British couldn't sink it, and the British wanting to be proud that they could." "I'm just shocked that there's hardly that much apparent damage other than the loss of those four turrets, the loss of some of the superstructure." "I thought it was going to be an awful sight and it's strangely... sitting upright and proud." "The Bismarck survivors have been in the water over an hour when the British crusier Dorsetshire arrives to pull them from the sea." "The rescue effort has hardly begun when the Dorsetshire's captain gets a report that a German U-boat has been spotted." "In an action that remains controversial to this day, he orders a retreat." "The question runs through my head all the time:" "Why did Captain Martin stop the rescuer while so many hundreds of men were still in the water?" "I can only interpret it as an act of revenge for what happened to the Hood, which sank with all her crew except for the three men who were rescued." "Hardly had I been taken underneath on board the Dorsetshire that I felt, by the vibrations of the ship, that she had gone with utmost speed." "And I had been one of the last to be rescued without ever having a notion of it so far." "It was a terrible thing." "The water around Dorsetshire's stern foamed and bubbled with the sudden exertion of the screws." "Slowly, then faster, the ship moved ahead." "Bismarck survivors who were almost on board were bundled over the guard rails onto the deck." "Those halfway up the ropes found themselves trailing the stern, hung on as long as they could against the forward movement of the ship, dropped off one by one." "Others in the water clawed frantically at the paintwork as the sides slipped by." "In Dorsetshire they heard the thin cries of hundreds of Germans who had come within an inch of rescue, had believed that their long ordeal was at last over;" "cries that the British sailors no less than survivors already on board would always remember." "From the water Bismarck's men watched appalled as the cruiser's grey side swept past them, believed then the tales they'd heard about the British not caring much about survivors were true after all, presently found themselves alone in the sunshine on the empty tossing sea." "And during the day as they floated about the Atlantic with only lifebelts between them and eternity, the cold came to their testicles and hands and feet and heads." "And one by one they lost consciousness" "And one by one they died." "One of the German sailors rescued by the Dorsetshire died the following day, and is buried at sea." "The chaplain was there with some British crew members and we stood across from them face to face, just staring at each other not sure what was happening." "Then we heard a military signal, and then I realized it was a funeral for my friend." "One of us borrowed h harmonica and played: "I once had a Camarade"." "The British had tears in their eyes, just like us." "He had stood next to me, he had marched by my side." "It is sometimes difficult" "to be reminded all the time." "It's hard to explain." "On one hand you're glad you survived," "but then you are pulled back into the past again." "It's inevitable that all great ships in the sea will be found some day." "I think the key thing is how do we treat it." "I mean, what's our reaction to it?" "Do we treat it respectfully?" "Do we not touch it, not disturb it?" "Do it with respect?" "To me the Bismarck's the war grave." "The chase and sinking of the Bismarck was without doubt one of the great sea epics of all time." "And it was because of the changing fortunes of either side." "It was this great, vast, huge monster come out of its lair." "And then in a flash it sinks the big British monster, disappears." "We look for it, we can't find it." "A little tiny airplane suddenly finds it, reports where it is." "Another little, tiny airplane sends a torpedo which cripples it." "And then the big British ships can come up and sink it." "It's an extraordinary story." "And it's full of heroism." "And it's full of heroism." "And it's full of pride on both sides." "I mean, these were wonderful ships and the impersonality of it all." "You see, we all fired at each other without seeing the enemy." "We never saw the enemy at all." "The only time I ever saw the enemy was when this little trickle of men ran down in the Bismarck's quarter deck and jumped into the sea." "Apart from that I could've been firing or we could've been we weren't firing ourselves, but the British could've been firing at castles." "A sea battle is a very impersonal thing." "It won't happen again." "No like that." "Behind every exciting film image is a cameraman." "Behind his camera he is unseen and forgotten by viewers but dangerously exposed to his subjects:" "animals the could easily maul or kill him," "cataclysms of nature that could swallow him up" "tumultuous human combat pulling him closer and closer to the epicenter of violence." "Sometime with only the camera between himself and mortal danger," "other times separated from danger by the flimsiest of protection," "but always driven to shed protection, to get out of the cage and push even closer." "Stretching the limits, pioneering in places where the limits are unknown, stretching luck and boldness ntil limits are found and exceeded." "The cameraman is David Breashears, shooting a climb on an ice face in New Hampshire." "Action." "Just watch your left leg on my" "To do it right, Breashears must climb as well or better than the climber." "Keep going." "While the climber thinks about climbing," "Breashears thinks about climbing and shooting about camera position, angles, focus and changing light." "About storytelling, lenses, equipment." "He thinks ahead and climbs ahead." "Breashears is one of the top mountaineering cameramen." "He's been on six Mt." "Everest climbs, twice getting to the summit with his camera." "The job is never over." "You don't crawl into your sleeping bag at night and just go to sleep." "There's always some fooling around with equipment," "loading a magazine for the next day, being more prepared than the other people have to be, and also getting up earlier to get that extra shot, to be in position when they begin their ascent or when they leave camp." "It doesn't matter if you're cold;" "it doesn't matter if you're tired;" "It doesn't matter if you're hungry;" "you just do it." "By the 1926s, cameraman were traveling to exotic and faraway places to film wildlife and adventure, and one of the most spectacular locations was Africa." "Americans at home had never seen such images as these." "They were thrilled by them." "This was the golden age of photographic exploration." "Carl Akeley as an extraordinary figure of the times:" "an American taxidermist who went to Africa to collect his own specimens." "Trying to shoot a leopard, he only wounded it;" "it counter-attacked, and he managed to kill it with his bare hands." "Akeley's insistence on recording accurate details for his taxidermy led him to photography, and his frustration in filming fast-moving African scenes led him to invent a better camera for action photography." "The distinctive rounded Akeley camera revolutionized nature photography and was also used to film newsreels, combat in World War I and Hollywood movies." "In Africa Akeley joined forces at times with the celebrity filmmaking couple" "Martin and Osa Johnson." "As filmmaker the Johnsons were less interested in documentation than sensational entertainment." "They raced about Africa elaborate photo safaris, seeking thrills and narrow escapes, heightening their adventures when necessary with deceptive film editing or staging," "Occasionally lapsing into antics that, seen today, seem like satire of a very bygone era." "The Johnsons were a glamorous pair." "Martin was an all-American guy from a small town in Kansas who started out as a cook for Jack London." "Osa was a singer who'd never been anywhere until Martin carried her off to a life summed up in the title of her autobiography," "'I Married Adventure'." "In the water, crocodiles are especially wicked." "They would pounce upon the unfortunate victims of a capsized boat like a pack of wolves." "If a person were to fall into the water here, he would not last one minute." "We begin to feel uneasy lest one might charge the boat and this surly monster does, almost upsetting us!" "For all their showmanship, the Johnsons are recognized today as intrepid and talented filmmakers." "They developed film in the field and overcame a vast array of logistical difficulties and personal hardships." "Their movies, even with moments that now seem silly, were remarkable achievements." "It must have been incredible to go there with primitive cameras," "Primitive transportation, and how they actually got any material out of it, out of Africa at all, was a miracle." "Wolfgang Bayer, who's photographed wildlife in all sorts of conditions, all over the world." "Of all the animal that I filmed," "I must say the primates are probably the most enjoying enjoyable ones" "They are so much like us." "Like the orangutans:" "we had to climb 15 ft." "tall trees in Borneo in order to go up in their environment." "Everything else before has been filmed from the ground up." "We wanted to go back and we brought mountain-climbing gear, and we went up into the trees and all of a sudden we were face to face with orangutans." "then they came over and they climbed up and down our rope." "They were right above us;" "they peed on us, you know." "I'm looking up there, and what are you gonna do?" "You hang, you're totally helpless and some orangutan decides to pee on you." "All you can do is just keep your head low and hope he doesn't do it too long." "And we'll be hanging up 15 ft." "On the ropes which actually came up over our branch and we would tie the rope off down at the bottom on a different tree," "And we'll be filming upthere" "And we looked down all of a sudden there's an orangutan trying to untie our rope on the very bottom, and it's not a very good feeling." "We of course had to try to shout and throw things down and then get down as fast as we can to chase'em away." "Looking through a camera when filming wildlife or anything that could be potentially dangerous," "It puts a barrier between you." "It's almost like watching television, and you don't realize that danger could be just feet away from you." "I was filming and I got in the middle of a fight and I just was an innocent bystander." "But a female came by at full speed and she just grabbed my hand and bit me." "And drew quite a lot of blood." "The only weapon I had along was my camera," "Which is a, you know, $56,666 piece of equipment." "But in a case like this I used it and started on hit the chimps over the head with my camera and get out back in the water where I was supposed to be." "Chasing animals over the years I've been bitten, scratched, attacked and uh, other-wise mutilated by coyotes, cougars, leopards, jaguars, baboons, chimpanzees, and of course numerous little creatures." "Lucking nothing really poisonous." "Nature and the animals give me so much enjoyment that, what the hell, a few bites and a few diseases and a few injuries here and there are not gonna kill me." "You go out on these films and you're with very professional people who really stay out of trouble, and of course part of the fun for an audience is too see how people handle trouble." "Filming an Alaska's Yukon River," "Jim Lipscomb came up against a conflict familiar to action cameramen:" "things were too safe." "The Yukon raftsmen navigated smoothly post all perils, and Lipscomb was filming an uneventful trip." "But then they came to Five Fingers Rapids, and suddenly they were losing control." "It was sort of a funny, perverse pleasure as I realized as the raft was swinging out, swinging out..." "I could line up the shore behindit and I could see they weren't, they weren't gonna miss it." "Looking pretty bad, boy." "So I realized, oh boy, these guys are into it at last." "They've really got themselves in trouble and I'm so glad." "And then I thought, but I'm with'em!" "And the 16-ton raft stopped with the loudest noise" "I think I've ever hard in my life." "And we knew we had it and we had it with three cameras going." "So it made a marvelous scene in the film." "Jim Lipscomb has made films about people and about animals." "He says people are more treacherous." "But it was the animals he photographed for "Polar Bear Alert"" "that taught him a personal lesson about fear." "It began with his own brave insistence on getting closer to the bears." "When he decided against filming as planned from the safety of a vehicle called a tundra buggy his guide stared getting anxious." "And so I said to the guide," ""We're gonna have to get outside of that tundra buggy in order to film." "And he said," "Well, I can't let you outside the tundra buggy if the polar bear is closer than,6 to 86 feet," "Because they're very unpredictable animals." "You don't know what they're gonna do, and they can get to you in three bounds and then look you over." "And by the time they get finished looking you over, you're gonna be dead." "And I don't want any National Geographic photographer dead in my tundra buggy." "So we said, okay, we'll build a cage." "Yes, please, lots." "I didn't think when I got out there in the cage that I was going to feel any particular feel or that I was in any risk." "And I thought I was going to be very calm." "But then when that big bear walkup to the cage," "Something happened in my mind that was an entirely different kind of experience, and I think it's the first time" "I've ever identified it in my life." "I felt fear." "Oh, boy." "Oh, boy." "I was breathing hard and I was trying not to tremble because I wanted to hold that camera still." "The polar came right up and licked the lens." "He wanted to see what this thing tasted like." "And I felt what it must be, an atavistic fear I think, that there was in," "Inborn, and through centuries, through eons of evolution into the human species:" "This is not the place to be!" "You gotta get out of here!" "This thing, this thing is gonna get you." "And I, I was just atremble with the sense of fear of that," "That thing, knowing all the time that I was presumably safe." "There's tremendous charge of adrenalin and excitement coming through to you." "And you're, yeah, you're thrilled to be there, uh, and to be experiencing it." "I don't know that it's addicting, because in retrospect after you think about it, you think, well, that was a high" "I maybe just don't need anymore°" "I don't need that one again, you know." "In 1914 motion picture photography reached into a new realm." "underwater." "John Williamson, a cartoonist and photographer for a Virginia newspaper," "Had a showman's ingenuity and a father who'd built a 36-foot flexible steel tube designed for underwater salvage work." "Williamson climbed down into the tube." "Through the window of an observation chamber he called a "photosphere", he took still photos in 1913 and, in the next year, the first moving pictures ever taken underwater." "Only one year later," "Williamson made the first theatrical movie produced underwater." "These scenes are from his version of" "Jules Verne's 26,666 Leagues Under the Sea." "Audiences were fascinated by these images." "Others were fascinated by the Williamson" ""photosphere" itself." "The eminent Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, visited in 1922 and spent a half-hour peering through the underwater window." "Williamson emphasized the safety and dryness of the device by taking his wife and baby daughter below." "He filmed them gazing at sea life including divers hired to swim before his cameras." "Shooting in the Bahamas, he lured sharks into the picture the sharks attracted by the scent of chunks of horsemeat dangled in the water over the photosphere." "What remained to be done, of course, was filming by a cameraman who swam freely underwater." "An Austrian zoologist, Dr. Hans Hass, was among the first to try to connect diving and photography." "Dr. Hass experimented with many different cameras and housings, some of which leaked disastrously." "But this was true pioneering:" "equipment was devised from scratch," "Mostly hand made, improvised with little sophistication in diving technology and near-total ignorance of undersea dangers." "How would sharks react to a diver taking their picture?" "The only way to find out was to take the plunge." "In 1939 Dr. Hass filmed underwater scenes that enthralled audiences and fired the imagination of future divers." "When Hass first went in the water with his little wind-up sixteen millimeter camera and started to press, you know, six, eight-foot, ten-foot sharks in the Mediterranean, no one had ever done it before." "So he was not only using new techniques and worried about the bends and an embolism, and this and that, but he was also the first to ever engage those animals." "So today we know that most of them are approachable, but those guys, those early people-Hass," "Cousteau hadn't clue that that was gonna be the case." "Very bold first efforts." "Very exciting." "Al Giddings has shot countless ocean documentaries and the underwater segments of features including James Bond movies and "The Deep"." "Doing so, he's amassed a vast library of underwater footage." "But he's best known for his work with great white sharks," "Shooting them at first from inside a protective cage... later going outside the cage." "The first time in the cages most of us dropped to the bottom of the cage, hands and knees and sort of cowered for a time," "Because these 3,666-pound eating machines were pounding the bars and pushing the cages around." "Today, um, I know that if you maintain good eye contact, you're fairly aggressive, and on the bottom, you can get out of the cage," "And I have, and, and really fend a two-or three thousand-pound great white away." "The first time out of the cage was certainly a ticklish experience." "And I went out six or eight feet and kept the cage at my back, and the first animal that came near I lunged forward a bit, not totally convinced that he was gonna move off." "But it worked, and I continued to move further and further away from the cages," "And eventually, the last time we were in Australia," "I had five whites circling the cages and me, and I was thirty, forty feet away, with animals swimming between me and the cages." "You always have apprehension, but driven a bit by the hum of that camera and the spectacle, you take a calculated risk." "Giddings has taken his chances not only with the ocean's most fearsome creatures but also with its most formidable places:" "Like the hypnotically beautiful but perilous waters beneath the thick ice at the North and South poles." "Diving the North Pole, and for that matter, Antarctica," "I think represents the toughest diving that I've done anywhere in the world." "Surface conditions north and south,6, 76 below zero, water temperature 28.5, a canopy of ice over your head in most cases, 8, 9 feet thick." "Antarctic diving is very, very, very tough tough on the gear, tough on the people." "You're still concerned about bends." "You're still concerned about all the problems of shooting and making images but, again," "You're going through a hole that's 36 inches in diameter, 46 inches in diameter, and you've got a limited air supply." "And you're on the bottom perhaps 46 minutes and you've got, you know," "You're gonna run out of gas and you've gotta find that exit hole." "If you are in trouble or you're confused as to where you entered, that you wanna go deeper, if you surface under the ice and you're trying to see the exit point and you're just under the canopy, of course," "You can't see anything." "So, you know, in most cases if you have an emergency you're off to the surface." "In this case if you have an emergency it's usually deeper to get a quick vantage point on where the exit hole is and out." "Arctic diving is also some of the most beautiful diving that I've done." "It's really a fairyland of sorts." "You have to be gutsy and you have to be motivated." "The best ones are driven." "They want to excel." "They want to come back with images the likes of which no one's ever seen before." "The camera goes to war!" "Each day it records the courage and heroism of our troops in battle." "But rarely do you see the camera, and the men behind it, who risk those same dangers to send back their stories and pictures." "This is "Cameramen At War", made during World War II but with an admiring salute to the filmmakers of World War I." "In the last war they set up their cameras" ",6 yards from the German front line." "The man in the tin hat and bow tie is D.W. Griffith, responsible for that silent epic." "The Birth of a Nation." "The get-up may look a bit odd now, but they thrill the audiences of their day with the first shots of a tank going into action." "In World War Il, top filmmakers including John Ford, John Huston," "William Wyler and Frank Capra produced war documentaries working in Hollywood with battle footage shot by military and civilian cameramen." "Meet Jack Ramsen of Movietone." "His assignment is a daylight raid over occupied Europe." "His main care is his camera." "It's carefully and accurately fitted to the door of a Flying fortress." "It's covered with an electric blanket to prevent the motor freezing up." "Every precaution is taken to insure you're seeing good pictures" "If the cameraman gets back." "All set now except for his oxygen mask and heavy gloves not easy to work in but necessary at these terrific heights if he's to get pictures like-Bombs gone!" "Caravan's Jim Wright in another Fortress takes up where the bomber leader leaves off over an Italian cove, pattern bombing it for enemy submarines." "Wouldn't you think his fingers would tremble with excitement?" "The pictures are steady as a rock!" "The amphibious invasion of the Pacific island of Tarawa in 1943, one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps." "A documentary film about the battle shot by Marine combat cameramen later won an Academy Award." "This is the Army-Navy Screen Magazine cutting room, where combat film taken by Army," "Navy and Marine cameramen comes in from battlefronts all over the world." "The Marine staff sergeant with the expert medal is 22-year-old Norman Hatch from Boston, Massachusetts." "Sgt. Hatch went in with the first wave in the landing at Tarawa, armed with a pistol and a hand camera, and brought back a filmed record of the fighting at that island... you know that's the best frame of combat film" "I've ever seen." "Hey, that's okay!" "And when an Army man says that to a Marine, brother he means it." "Oh, they're just luck." "Today, Norm Hatch has vivid memories of hitting the beach at Tarawa with other Marine cameramen who had no idea what a fierce battle they were walking into." "They didn't know they'd have the extraordinary opportunity of seeing the enemy from so close that both sides in the fighting would be shown in the same frames of film." "They didn't know that, despite their training, combat photography was something they'd have to learn as they went along." "When we went in on Tarawa, the only experience that anybody had in the Marine Corps doing a war story on film was Guadalcanal, and that was almost nothing at all." "And so, consequently, when we got ready to go, it was sort of like an improve situation, you know, everybody makes it up on his own." "My thoughts were basically that if those guys can go out there and fight and do a good job fighting, we had to go out there and do a good job in photography." "We had the exit covered with machine guns and rifle fire." "The Japs kept coming out trying to knock out the machine guns." "There's one of them." "That sniper's got a bead on another." "There's a squad of them!" "A lot of good guys from the outfit weren't there anymore." "I'm glad I got these pictures, because when you remember the roaches you've been fighting and the things they represented," "And when you saw the flag go up and remembered the freedom that flag stood for, you knew you were in on a good thing." "Vietnam a different war and a different breed of cameraman." "Cameraman Norman Lloyd, on assignment for CBS News, filmed and recorded these scenes when Bravo Company moved into a large Communist bunker complex six miles north of the Vietnamese border." "The main enemy fore had apparently pulled out, but a rear guard element was left behind to slow down the American advance." "Norman Lloyd, from Australia, was a school dropout, a kangaroo hunter, a bar fighter, a loner." "He went to Vietnam on his own, replaced a CBS cameraman who was missing in action, and stayed four years." "He won two Emmys and made a reputation for courage verging on craziness." "General Westmoreland was making a tour, and there was a firebase that was in deep trouble, and, uh, and I really wanted to get in to that firebase." "It was, but it was, they were in terrible shape in there, and I wanted to get in and I," "I walked up to him and I said," ""General, I want to get into that firebase"." "And I said the name of the firebase and he said to me, and then he said" ""son, you don't want to go there"" "Then I say "Yes, I do, sir"" "He said, "No you don't"." "And that firebase was overrun like, uh, you know, the next day or so, it, it, but, uh, but I really," "I really wanted to get in there but, uh, I went as high as I could to try." "There was a lot of competition between the three net works for "bang, bang" footage." "It was very important to get "bang, bang" footage." "It was action, it was what they really wanted." "The pressure coming from New York, there was a lot of pressure on people," "On correspondent, uh, on crews, if someone wasn't getting the story, and, and, and this led to deaths, where uh, where people would, would so silly things because of the pressure on them." "And they'd go out, and they'd get killed, and this definitely happened, and, and and other people were killed with them because of the pressure." "Norman Lloyd's countryman, Neil Davis, reported and filmed combat is southeast Asis for 11 years." "He was a legend among Vietnam cameramen a master at covering combat." "I would always try and go to the extreme front line, because that's where the best film is." "You can't get the spontaneity of action if you're not there." "You can't get it if you're 166 meters behind the soldiers trying to get it with a telephoto lens you don't see the faces," "The expressions on their faces." "You don't see the compassion that they may show for their wounded comrades or their enemy, for that matter." "I wanted to show all those things, and the only way to show them was being in the front line." "The real front life." "And the idea is for a news cameraman to get the film and keep it rolling, no matter what happens." "When Saigon fell, Neil Davis was there filming the panicked attempt to escape the bloodbath expected when the North Vietnamese recaptured the city." "Most camera crews departed in the helicopters lifting off from the U.S. Embassy helicopters that were later dumped into the sea to make room on aircraft carrier flight decks." "Neil Davis chose not to escape." "He stayed behind, awaiting the conquering army and making some of the most powerful images of the Vietnam war." "I didn't believe that there was a great danger as long as" "I survived the first few minutes of the Communist occupation," "Where it's always very dicey, where there might be flare-ups and fighting immediately." "Most people had left the streets." "The civilian population had gone inside their houses and waited." "I decided the presidential place was the place to be." "And I went there alone and waited for them." "And, I thought, I wasn't gonna miss this end to the story." "I had a moment's hesitation as the tank was approaching, and the tank column was approaching, because they fired a few times to let people know they were about," "I think, and crashed through that gate." "And a man with a weapon raced toward me, screaming in Vietnamese, "Stop, stop, stop!"" "Then I kept filming, and he got quite close, and I rehearsed my bit before, which was in Vietnamese," ""Welcome to Saigon, comrade." "I've been waiting to film the liberation"." "And I had qualms about that;" "I had it all right." "And he said, "You're American"." "I said, "No, I'm not, I promise I'm not." "I'm an Australian and I've been waiting for you"." "So he hesitated, and then some troops were coming out and surrendering from the palace, and he hesitated, then dismissed me and ran past." "And I was able to then start filming again." "In 1985" "Neil Davis was shooting a coup in the streets of Bangkok a tame event compared to the heavy combat he'd survived so many times." "But on this day, an exploding tank shell hit Davis and his crew." "His camera, dropped on the pavement, was still rolling as he was dragged away." "But he was dead, and his soundman died a few hours later." "Neil Davis was a guy that really had seen it all." "And it was just a shame." "Everybody misses him, but if it had of been in a firefight somewhere and, uh, you know, he would have liked it better," "I'm sure, instead of some dinky goddamn coup, you know, that meant nothing." "After you see so many people get killed, after you see so many civilians get killed, after you see so many children get killed, you go a little insane, and I used to drink all the time." "I thought of suicide a lot," "uh, the, uh, the only, the only reason that I, I really um, didn't, uh, do it, was uh," "I really didn't want to hurt my mother, you know." "If I had the opportunity to be a Vietnam cameraman again," "I would do it because I know what effect it had on the world." "It's taken years for me to, to get myself back together." "But, uh, but I'd do it again because I know that people have got to see what war is, and, and, what means, and the futility of it." "Mount Everest a symbol of towering, irresistible challenge." "Its grandeur has always inspired awe and noble effort, but Everest is also a killer." "Over 86 climbers have died on it." "Many more have come down broken and defeated." "The summit was first reached in 1953 and then by a second expedition, before an American team tried it in 19,3." "This team 19 men had a dual objective:" "to reach the summit but also to film it," "To create a documentary that would become the first National Geographic Television Special." "The climbers were punished by Everest's devastating weather." "Temperatures 26 below zero, winds blowing at more than ,6 miles an hour." "The altitude and cold induced nausea and headaches." "Climbing was hard labor." "Thinking was hard, operating the camera, even remembering the camera, was hard." "And then things got worse." "The expedition's professional cinematographer, Dan Doody, was stricken with a nearly fatal blood clot." "His climb was over, but lying in his tent he taught a crash course in mountain cinematography to a pair of climbers who now got the job as moviemakers." "Lute Jerstad, who till then had never worked a film camera, remembers." "So we thought he was gonna die, and he thought he was gonna die." "So Doody got out scraps of paper, and got Barry Corbet and I by the neck and began to diagram," "I think it was 18 different shots, and was teaching us how to become cin, cinematographers." "So we'd take these little cameras without film in them and we'd go outside and shoot and then we'd come back in and tell him what we did and he'd critique it for us." "On May 1st climber Jim Whitaker and the Sherpa Gombu reached the summit planting an American flag but taking only a few snapshots." "Lute Jerstad, with the movie camera, and his climbing partner, professional still photographer Barry bishop, were still a long way from the top." "Climbing is scarcely the word for what they're doing now." "They're barely creeping." "Five breaths to a step and then a rest" "Then more steps." "More breaths." "Bodies aching." "Minds numb." "Even with the flow of oxygen they can barely breathe." "They can barely move their leaden feet." "But still they do move." "You become so single-minded, the rest of the world is just gone." "Nothing, nothing matters any more." "I am going to get there if I have to crawl." "So you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and breathing as well as you can and trying to stay as warm as you can°" "On the morning of May 22nd they launch the final push, as alone as two humanbeings can be" "on the face of the earth." "And then, before them is a sight to lift the heart and bring tears to the eyes." "After three weeks" "Jim Whitaker's maypole still stands fast, with Old Glory streaming in the winds of space." "These are the first moving pictures ever taken from the summit of Everes." "Lute Jerstad has his camera propped on the head of his ice axe." "And the blur at the bottom is his furry glove." "Now a blast of wind strikes." "The earth quakes:" "Lute almost falls, then steadies himself." "He completes his panorama." "They have won their victory." "They're filled with a great surge of joy... and gratitude." "We probably spent 45 minutes to an hour on top, and all that was taken up by filming, really." "And filming that long, certainly you pay a price for it." "And Barry's price was that he lost parts of both little fingers and his fourth finger." "And then in the bivouacthat night, as a result of that, he lost all 16 of his toes and," "And part of his foot bone in both feet" "And we finally were flown back to Washington sometime at the end of July." "I guess, that year to get medals and awards and things." "And part of this was to go to the Geographic, and they were gonna show some raw footage." "And I walked into this room not really paying a lot of attention to it and looking at the great pictures that had been taken, and all of a sudden on the screen came my summit footage." "and I started to cry." "I couldn't believe it had come out." "And then I remembered what it looked like." "But I couldn't, I hadn't remembered what it" "looked like until I saw that, and it's because of that single-minded attitude of, you know, get this job done, forget everything else, and then you can turn around and go home." "Twenty years later" "David Breashears reached the summit and beamed a television picture to a satellite station for broadcast a week later on an American network." "Twenty-five years later 1988 pictures from the summit were seen live on TV around the world." "Thus the dream of Capt. John Noel was fully realized" "Captain Noel who carried the first movie cameras on" "Everest in the unsuccessful British expeditions of the early 1926s." "His film continues to amaze mountaineering cameramen not only for its clarity and coverage but also his pioneering ordeal." "He lugged heavy equipment." "He developed the film himself, on the spot, working in a mountainside tent, filtering glacier water, burning yak dung to provide heat to warm his chemicals." "He worked on his own, getting little cooperation from other climbers who resented his presence, regarding his camera as a vulgar intrusion on the purity of their sportsmanship." "And yet his film preserved the memory of the climb and made a legend of its tragic climax climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine struggling to within,66 feet of the summit before disappearing forever," "Noel and the others watching through telescopes, then waiting anxiously as a search party led by N.E. Odell went up." "Crossed blankets in the snow was the visual signal to those below that there was no hope, for Mallory and Irvine were gone, a signal first seen through Captain Noel's long lens." "The emotion of that moment,4 years ago is still keenly felt by Captain Noel." "Hi is 98 years old." "The top of the North Col was a shelf of ice, and Odell, when he'd made the search and determined after two days and two nights that the men were dead, just lost, he went and he found their tent," "and he found these pieces of oxygen cylinder, and he came back and he gave a message by signal." "We had no wireless telephone in those days;" "they weren't known." "He put a signal out of crossed blankets." "And the photograph I got, the best photograph I made in my life, was a circle made by the, this high-powered lens at one-and-a-half-miles range showing the crossed blankets and showing the men walking away." "And people asked me, "What do you see?"" "I couldn't tell;" "I was overcome." "I couldn't tell them, but you'll get the signal." "The crossed blankets meant Mallory and Irvine were dead." "That is clearly shown." "Almost 36 years passed before men reached the top of Everest, almost 46 years till" "Lute Jerstad fulfilled Captain Noel's dream of moving pictures from the summit." "Captain Noel, filming a heroic quest on a great mountain, was one of the first of his kind." "As the era of the action film cameraman was just beginning, he embodied explore and adventurous spirit and made lasting contribution to the tradition of cameramen who dared." "It is night in the African bush where the familiar becomes mysterious and the unfamiliar is strange indeed." "It is the time and place where lions come into their own... and man does not willingly venture." "In this dark realm they reign supreme;" "they are the kings;" "They are the Lions of the African Night." "A day in the bushveld of southern Africa draws to a close and a pride of 30 lions that has dozed and slept through the long, hot day lazes on." "This pride is unusually large two or three times larger than most, and for small cubs life in such a pride can be hard." "When food is scarce, competition at kills is fierce, and it's the little cubs that always suffer." "The males that sired these cubs have deserted their big family to form a new pride elsewhere with younger lionesses." "Now, all the adults in this pride are females." "They rest on, waiting for the day to cool, for lions are seldom active when it is hot and like most prides, this one hunts mainly at night." "They'll hardly stir until the sun has set." "As the day winds down, young baboons cavort in a last burst of play." "The sounds of day merge through the evening into those of an African night" "A hyena sniffs the night as the clan set out on their hunt." "A toktokkie beetle taps out the signal that will find him a mate." "And from somewhere close by comes an answer." "Each hole, cut to the same pear-shaped pattern, serves the same remarkable purpose of magnifying the sound made by the slender tree cricket that shapes them." "To advertise for a mate, the male cricket has developed a system comparable to a loudspeaker where a vibrating membrane his wings is surrounded by a baffle." "The leaf is the cricket's soundboard, and the sound produced is magnified in intensity as much as three times." "But simply tapping on the ground seems to work well enough for the toktokkie beetles." "In their first hunt of the night the lions have failed to make a kill." "They have panicked and scattered a mixed herd of zebra and wildebeest, which are still vulnerable as they try to regroup." "The lions have approached their prey on a broad front and are now spread out at intervals through the bush listening." "When hunting at night, lions rely almost entirely on their acute hearing" "They move noiselessly through the darkness, stopping frequently to stand motionless listening for the slightest sounds of their prey" "Although the lions may not see any better at night than their prey, the deep shadows provide more cover for stalking." "The herd has picked up the scent." "Lions pay no heed to wind direction." "They're not aware that the wind will carry their scent to the quarry." "And, like most hunts, this one ends in failure." "With so many mouths to feed, a pride like this one has to hunts every night." "To survive, each year they will have to kill about 250 animals the size of a wildebeest." "From crevices, burrows, and holes animals that have slept through the day are emerging." "These night apes will feed until daybreak on tree resin and insects moving with prodigious leaps through the trees." "Hippos, having slept and rested in the river all day, emerge now to feed." "At night they graze on grasses and sedges along the river's edge." "But sometimes when food is scarce, they will lumber several miles inland to find enough to eat." "By dawn each will have consumed about 80 pounds of forage." "From his burrow entrance a porcupine tests the safety of the night before he leads his family out to feed" "The tiny pups, only a few weeks old, will accompany their parents along regular trails in their search for the bulbs, roots, and bark on which they live." "The lions have trapped a warthog in its burrow." "It's a prize they cannot resist, and they will dig until they unearth it." "Fierce and frantic, the warthog in its burrow lunges with its sharp tusks as the digging lions." "But with such odds against it, the outcome is inevitable." "But only a lucky few get a meal from such small prey." "The others search the ground for scraps." "A hungry lioness returns to the demolished burrow for a last hopeful search before the pride moves on." "A black roach digs the hole where she'll place the package of eggs she carries attached to her abdomen." "The only maternal care she gives her progeny is now as she carefully conceals their position disguising the site with pebbles and vegetation." "Parental care is more developed in this large centipede." "The female carries her young about with her." "While she devours a grasshopper, her offspring life packed securely against her body, held in place by her many legs." "Other centipedes protect and tend their young in burrows under stones." "But in addition, this species can carry hers." "She holds them high above the ground and walks on her remaining legs." "Centipedes too have predators, and this tiny snake is a specialist, feeding on them almost exclusively." "Holding on grimly, the snake appears unaffected by the many bites it receives from the centipede." "The snake's venom takes effect and the centipede is overcome." "The little snake is able to swallow centipedes almost twice the diameter of its own body." "It always seems to start with the head" "One of the cubs has an injured leg and lags behind the behind the pride." "The pride does not wait for her and she struggles to keep up." "A civet is more at home on the ground, but a dead tree is a handy refuge when 30 lions pass by." "Now he can resume his nightly search for fruits, insects, and the smaller animals he preys on." "When the cub catches up with the others, she must endure the rough bullying that young lions inflict on one another especially on those with any disability" "There is usually a little comfort to be had from one of the adults." "Besides, cubs are remarkably resilient the have to be and this one will soon recover to torment in turn some other poor cub" "Unless driven by hunger, the hunt proceeds at a leisurely pace." "At intervals through the night the pride will stop to rest and sometimes even to sleep soundly for a few hours." "Supreme masters of relaxed living, lions are seldom on their feet for more than four or five hours 24." "These are the tiny tracks made by the larvae of ant lions." "It is only at night that these small insects wander about, moving backwards, in search of places to dig their traps." "The head of the ant-lion larva is dominated by large hollow jaws through which it sucks the juices of its prey." "In a patch of fine, soft sand the ant lion digs in and begins to excavate the unique trap which it will catch its prey usually ants." "But it could well be any small insect." "Turning in ever decreasing circles, the ant lion uses its head and jaws as a shovel to throw the sand and small pebbles out of the steep-sided pit that it digs." "The trap is ready." "The ant lion buries itself in the bottom with only its jaws exposed and waits." "The ant struggles free from the ant lion's jaws." "But the ant lion has another strategy that makes escape almost impossible." "It throws up a steady shower of sand that dislodges the ant from the steep sides of the trap and brings it once again within reach of the great jaws." "Now, held securely, the ant is dragged below the sand to be devoured." "Roars in the night can mean danger for the pride." "These come from a group of males that have been trying to take over the pride and its territory for some months." "But the intruders are shunned by the pride, for males tend to kill cubs they have not sired, and they always appropriate and prey killed within their hearing." "So the pride departs in another direction and won't relax or resume the hunt until out of range of the big males." "Dawn finds them safe and asleep, several miles from the troubles of the night." "Most nights the pride will walk about five miles, but when foiled in their hunt or to avoid other lions, they may cover twice that distance." "The unpredictable wrath of this bull elephant takes the lions by surprise." "There is no point contesting the matter and the pride moves on to find a more hospitable place." "A male ostrich sits tight on his nest despite the steady approach of a herd of buffalo." "If he deserts now, the buffalo might well trample and scatter the eggs." "But the approach of a herd of lions is too much for the buffalo... and the ostrich also abandons his clutch." "These eggs are a novelty for the lions" "In the excitement of the first rush on the net, one or two eggs were smashed and the contents fought over." "But now the lions are puzzled and unable to open the others." "There's more fun for a cub in the futile stalk and chase of the female ostrich who had just returned to the awful scene at her nest." "The remaining eggs are lion-proof and the pride wanders away to seek shade where they will sleep through the rest of the day." "By late afternoon it is overcast and cool enough for the lions to stir, and the younger ones have found a tree to play on." "But tree climbing is not something they're very good at." "Lions have an edge when stalking prey distracted by the chaos of a storm." "This time they have killed a young zebra." "But even the lions are unnerved by the fierceness of this storm." "The rain unearths a rainfrog." "Most of the year they are inactive and remain buried underground." "They emerge only when the earth is soaked." "The storm has damaged the tunnels of termites, exposing the workers and making them easy prey for the quick tongue of the rainfrog." "During the rainy season temporary ponds are formed throughout the bushveld." "About 20 different kinds of frogs will breed at night in this pond." "Not only frogs are attracted to the pond." "This marbled tree snake waits for a meal to come within range." "Most of the frogs will deposit their eggs in the water, but there are exceptions." "These golden leaf-folding frogs are placing a row of eggs along a blade of grass." "With their hind legs they fold the blade to form a cylinder in which the eggs will develop." "By far the most numerous predators at this pond are the spiders." "They wait motionless at the water's edge." "When the frog has been subdued, the spider carries it out of the water to be consumed." "In a tree over the pond a pair of foam frogs are making their nest." "With their hind legs they whip up the foam in which their young will spend the first five days of their lives." "The female provides the mucus together with her eggs, while the male on her back adds his sperm to the mix." "Soon the foam hardens on the outside to a meringue-like crust." "From other nests made five nights previously tiny tadpoles are slipping out and dropping into the pond below where they'll complete their development." "It is common for more than one pair of frogs to make a nest together, but this group is extraordinary." "About 40 frogs are contributing to this nest which, when completed, will contain about 3,000 eggs." "The pride has come upon a foraging porcupine, which the adults have left to the inexperienced younger lions." "The porcupine has been wounded, but not badly, and there is much fight still left in it as the cubs are finding out." "To succeed they will have to insert a paw under the porcupine and bowl it over to expose its unprotected belly." "But they're not finding this easy and frequently get stuck with quills." "The encounter eventually becomes a lesson in restraint." "With more time the cubs may have succeeded, but the adults have moved on and the cubs leave to catch up." "A scorpion clears the sand from its burrow before settling in the entrance to ambush passing prey." "Millipedes are often eaten by scorpions, but this millipede has an escape technique that makes it almost uncatchable by any scorpion." "When molested, it flips onto its back and, snakelike, slithers out of range." "A charge on a wildebeest herd is imminent and the younger lions listen for the outcome." "For the small cubs this is the ultimate test of their ability to survive." "Only by displaying a fierce will to take its share can a cub get enough to eat." "And it is now, when the abdomen of the wildebeest is torn open and the choicest portions become available, that the competition is keenest." "By the end of such a meal most of the pride will have at least some small injury." "But they scarcely seem to notice their wounds, which soon heal." "Eventually the carcass is dismembered and the adults and larger cubs have taken their spoils into the surrounding bushes to gnaw on in peace." "The younger cubs now have easier access to the remains of the carcass, which they attack with a will." "And even the lame cub has managed to get a share." "Hyenas and jackals that would snatch a meal from smaller prides find this group too formidable." "They will keep their distance until it's all over." "The lions that have finished eating groom one another licking away the blood from each other and probably renewing bonds that were battered during the frenzy of eating." "For it is only at kills that harmony within the pride breaks down." "There is no hierarchy in a lion pride all are equal, and the members compete only at kills." "In harmony again and replete for a little while, the pride moves on to find a shady place to spend the day." "By nightfall this large family will be hungry." "Impelled once more on their everlasting search for food," "They will resume again their journey through the African night." "Two American scientists," "Delia and Mark Owens, have lived dream many people share but few ever realize, the opportunity to explore wildest Africa." "Alone in the vast Kalahari Desert in Botswana, they studied brown hyenas and lions." "They made unique discoveries about both species and their prey, which helped them develop an overall plan for the conservation needs of the Kalahari." "Unavoidably, they often lived with danger." "Get to the back." "Get to the back." "After seven years in the Kalahari," "Delia and Mark returned home to continue their studies for graduate degrees at the University of California at Davis, where they organized their research for publication." "...keep a lot of different skulls." "Yeah." "They also wrote a best-selling book, CRY OF THE kalahari," "About their experiences, a book that brought them into conflict with powerful political forces." "When the book was excerpted in LIFE magazine and condensed in READER'S DIEST," "Delia and Mark became instant celebrities." "They were welcomed as returning heroes in Delia's hometown of Thomasville, Georgia." "Thank you for coming by." "Hello." "Thanks for coming by." "Good to see you." "Thank you." "What's this one about?" "Well, it's about what it was like to live in isolation for seven years and then come back to this." "Now their lives are tied to conservation and the research it requires." "After four years in the United State, they returned to the Kalahari and a National Geographic film crew went with them." "Their fortunes over the next year illuminate the painful choices that face conservationists in Africa today." "When Delia and Mark Owens first entered the bush in 1974." "They began with only the packs on their backs." "That'll do it." "Later, as the scope of their research expanded, the Frankfurt Zoological Society provided them with full financial support and an airplane for radio tracking." "We've got pins here." "We can slip the door off easily." "Oh, really?" "No more nails?" "No more nails." "A brand new prop." "I mean it's virtually a new airplane." "Now they pick up their vehicles in Johannesburg." "South Africa." "It's 766miles to the Kalahari." "Delia has to drive it without Mark." "...you don't have any gauges until that switch is on." "Okay?" "All right." "Yep." "Drive safely." "Have a good trip." "I'll see you up there." "Bye, bye, love." "Remember, I'll be flying out the track if you're not up there by Friday night." "Right." "Okay." "Friday night." "It's seen 11 years since the Owenses first made the trip to Botswana." "There, in a 33,666-squara-mile wilderness the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in a place called Deception Valley," "Delia and Mark first began their seven years study." "Mark's flight will take four hours." "Delia's drive will take four days." "Leaving the last settlements behind," "Delia runs all day on a track she and Mark cleared when they first entered the Kalahari." "It was almost exactly 11 years ago that we came down this track for the first time ever." "And we wanted to find a wilderness that had not been affected in any way by man a free, open place that was like all of Africa used to be." "We wanted to identify the conservation problems that it had and then be able to make recommendations of how it should be saved." "During their last years in the game reserve, a severe drought began." "Mark knows that the animals in the Kalahari have continued to suffer in their absence." "My mixed feelings are, I think, come from knowing the Kalahari," "Ioving the Kalahari as we love the Kalahari, and knowing it as we know it, and yet understanding that it has severs problem in terms of threats to its survival." "And we're coming back to see what we can do to ensure that future generations come to love the area and its wildlife the way we love it." "The Owenses made their camp on an ancient, dry riverbed." "Slight depressions support islands of trees that offer protection from the searing sun and wind." "Oh, great!" "Success." "There's Deception Valley." "Does it ever need rain." "First time we came here it was covered with springbok and gemsbok and beautiful green grass." "Many scientists yearn to do research in Africa." "But only a miniscule few ever succeed in raising the necessary funds." "To get started 11 years ago, Delia and Mark auctioned off all their possessions and flew to Africa with just $,666." "Their early research won the respect of their peers and a first grant from the National Geographic Society." "Other grants then helped them conduct the most important studies of hyenas and lions ever undertaken in the Kalahari." "At the same time, their role as conservationists led to conflicts with the Botswana government conflicts that would eventually threaten their scientific careers." "As Delia nears their former tree-island camp, she wonders it has been destroyed by storm or fire." "How you doing?" "You made it huh?" "Yeah." "I did too." "How you doing?" "I got stuck in the mud." "Did you really?" "It wasn't that bad a thing." "You would have gotten right out, but it took me three tries." "Guess what I have." "What?" "A complete stereophonic sound system." "For calling the lions?" "To call the lions." "Well, that will be fun." "We can play that tonight..." "I also have a male and female mating." "Mating." "That's..." "Well, well, well." "I wondered how I'd mind the dust and the grime and everything, but it looks bloody beautiful, doesn't it?" "Oh, it looks great." "It looks great." "It really does." "I mean how could you have a better kitchen?" "Oh, I tell you." "With great relief they find their camp still intact." "They can begin their work immediately." "The dry season is beginning, and as grasses on the riverbed have started to wither, antelope will disperse and lions will follow making it much harder for Delia and Mark to find them." "I was saying that after the initial reaction, it feels great to get back." "But then you look out." "It really looks so bleak." "I was just..." "We've got to start looking for lions right away and hyenas." "Yeah, because the lions are going to be here and gone." "I mean, very quickly." "Yeah." "A last storm sweeps the dry river and distant shrub-covered dunes." "Dawn brings the zoologists a welcome sound." "Mark will try to locate the lion from the air as Delia pursues him on the ground." "It's amazing that even year after year the same lions use the same trees to lie up in, and even new lions that take over from old lions use the same trees again." "Mark, do you see him?" "Negative, love." "Mark searches a tree island where he knows from previous experience" "Kalahari lions are likely to lie up in the shade for the day." "Did you see him?" "It looks thick from the ground, but up there, I don't know." "I may be wrong but I think that may be what the springbok were running from when we were up there trying to find him." "I think he came out on the opposite side of the island... outfoxed us." "We'll have to take another drive up there." "Tracking the lion takes them far from camp, so they spend the night near their last sighting." "I love this Swiss army knife." "You can't open it unless you split it." "Here, you want me to do it?" "Yeah, you open it." "Which one?" "This one?" "That one..." "The woman's a genius." "Brute force." "Mark is up before dawn." "He and Delia reason that male lions in the vicinity may feel challenged by the sound of another lion and come to investigate." "I don't believe this." "There's a bloody lion out here." "It's actually worked." "We ought to sit down and make very little commotion because he's looking at us." "Yeah, we know we don't want to frighten him away, now that he's here." "Yeah, let's just sit down and not move." "Male lions roar to establish claim to a pride and sometimes fight to the death to defend territory." "This lion searches for the intruder." "Now Delia and Mark will try to get close enough to dart him and collar him with a radio transmitter." "Then he can be tracked systematically to determine his range size, social contacts, and prey selection." "The lion has left the river plain." "They follow his tracks called spoor." "We're coming to the point where he went in, so we should see his spoor pretty quickly." "It was up here." "He may still be in there." "Mark has seen him, Mark has seen him." "I should have marked the spot where we lost him." "I didn't think of it." "We had him all that way." "For half the night" "Delia and Mark try to get close enough to the lion to dart him." "For three days the lion eludes them." "The crust on the sand is bunched up ahead of the foot." "So the foot was falling quite quickly." "So you can see he was a little bit concerned about us still." "He's here somewhere." "He's got to be here somewhere." "I wish I could find his spoor." "I just got to keep going." "I think maybe..." "If we can get to that clearing and get set up, maybe we can attract him into it." "I don't know what good it will do though." "I mean, he has to come up..." "he has to be approachable." "Well, if we get a dart in him, at least we can track him." "Yeah." "Frustrated in their pursuit, they try to attract him right up to the truck." "Ignoring Delia and Mark, the lion trots by," "looking for his supposed rival." "Finally he realizes that the roars are coming from the vehicle." "The lion focuses on Mark." "Head on, he presents an almost impossible target for a dart shot." "In the twenty minute before the drug takes effect, the lion wanders off." "Mark follows his tracks to find him." "When lions are immobilized, the stop blinking." "Salve keeps their eyes from drying out" "We'll have to use a bigger bolt." "Delia and Mark whisper to avoid upsetting other lions in the area." "Keep your eyes peeled." "We've got company here somewhere." "They're bound to come over here and have a look." "Yeah, but he's fine." "I'm going to go get the shotgun out here, Delia." "Okay." "Or you could get the dart gun." "Delia, look at the hyena." "Boy, feel the muscles in his neck." "Tooth eruption and wear help the Owenses determine a lion's age." "He doesn't look like an old lion." "It will be interesting to compare this measurement with the one we took just a second ago." "Look at the size of that paw." "I can put both my hands together and you can't see them underneath." "Mark, there's a lion right here." "Get to the car." "I'm going to back off." "If she comes in, I'll dart her." "She's probably going to find the male." "I think she has the male's scent." "Knowing that the pride will soon break up," "Mark darts other lions to keep track of as many as possible." "Collaring each lion takes several hours." "As the night wears on," "Delia and Mark become giddy with fatigue." "You've been wanting to hit me in the nose all day." "You finally got here." "Mark, try to act like a sophisticated scientist!" "We have three lions darted." "Another pride." "One adult male and two young females, so it was worth it." "Nights like this bring Delia and Mark deep satisfaction." "Using radio collars to maintain contact, they will spend many other long nights recording observations." "They plot lion movements from radio data." "Through such painstaking work, they have discovered that, unlike lions observed elsewhere, prides in the Kalahari disband in the dry season, and individual lions range over as much as" "1,566 square miles in search of food." "Their movements present a conservation problem:" "Hunters and ranchers shoot many of the lions in the Owenses study group when they wander outside the reserve." "The Kalahari is so dry that most of the time carnivores must obtain all their moisture from prey." "The prey, in turn, get their moisture mainly from melons, leaves, and grasses." "Mark, look at..." "If we sit tight, maybe she'll come in." "They circle a carcass several times because they can't afford to make a mistake that the lions are still close by, because lions often kill brown hyenas in a situation like this." "This is such a rare opportunity." "I mean most people living in Botswana have never even seen a brown hyena." "They're so rare and they're also so secretive and shy that usually they run off when they see a truck." "For the size that they are, their jaws are incredibly powerful." "Yeah." "We've actually seen them pick up a 56 pound chunk of meat and bone and walk three of four-miles with it before taking it back to the communal den as they often do." "The Owenses were the first to discover that brown hyenas have a very complex social structure." "At the communal den related hyenas share in the feeding of the young and even adopt each other's orphans." "When we first began our study of brown hyenas in 1974, the odd sighting suggested that they were solitary scavengers." "Yet they lived in a clan as a group and we couldn't understand why they were social." "And then one night we followed a female moving one of her cubs from her small den into a huge communal den." "It provides a haven for the cubs and releases the mothers from the duty of protection." "They move from one of these large dens to the other, and we don't know which one of these dens they are using at the moment." "There are no fresh bones in this." "So often a zoologist's hops are disappointed." "The den is empty." "To anybody else this just looks like three big holes in the ground." "But to us this is just so many..." "represents so many memories and discoveries and hard nights of watching empty holes and exciting nights of watching hyenas" "This place means so much to us." "It may take weeks to discover the clan's new den, but research continuity is crucial." "It took the Owenses four years to discover that clan members share a communal den" "That observation opened doors of understanding to previously inexplicable hyena behavior." "From time to time Delia and Mark fly 166 miles to Maun, a town of native huts and tourist lodges." "Here they can pick up research correspondence and send off manuscripts for publication." "This is the Crocodile Farm." "Water is so precious in the Kalahari that they always arrive weighed down by dirty laundry." "Maun Office Services is their contact with the outside world." "It receives and stores mail for people who live far out in the bush." "I found it." "I've given it to him." "Whenever you get a minute, we've just come to pick up our mail." "Okay." "Behind you is a box with the word "Owens" on it." "And a big box after it." "And that's all yours." "What was the date on that?" "Oh, her Look." "These are all our telegrams." "Oh, golly." "Okay, wait a minute." "Hey, Tony." "You want to come and join us?" "Why don't you join us?" "I've got something in the oven." "Now this is a birthday card from my mother." "I know it." "Yep, and it's fat." "What?" "It's fat?" "It's fat." "She usually sends vitamin pills." "Why is she sending fat?" "Oh, look." "Pictures of home." "That's fantastic." "Oh, that's great." "Cut off as they are for months at a time, these bundles of mail are precious links with home." "Through letters they share in their families' triumphs and despairs." "Back at camp again, Delia and Mark are on the prowl, still hoping to find some of the lions they studied four years earlier." "The cubs seem to sense that something is wrong." "Delia and Mark have darted an old lioness." "They can tell by the tag in her ear that she is one of the lions they studied before." "The lion's whisker pattern will tell them more." "Here's one of our old friends." "There's just a shard of an ear tag left, just a pin with a little bit of color on either side right here." "Mark, do you know who this is?" "This is Happy." "Happy?" "This is Happy." "Darted first April 9th, 1978." "I can't believe it." "What a story behind her." "One reason we called her Happy is because we recorded her with more males than any other female." "She'd from one male to the other." "I can't believe it." "She's a beauty." "Oh, you old bag, you." "Finding Happy is an important link to their early research." "She helps them learn how prides in the Kalahari form and break apart." "Her presence in the same area demonstrates just how crucial the riverbed habitat is to the lions' survival." "Roger, ready to copy." "To Mark Owens, a telex from..." "Back at camp, Mark gets a call from his radio contact in Maun." "Okay." "Well, we've got a problem." "We received a telex message by radio yesterday that immigration in the capital has rejected our request for a residence permit, which, of course, we need to carry on our research here." "So we're going to fly off to Gaborone and try to see what the problem is and try to sort it out." "It's obviously most disturbing." "Before returning to the Kalahari, Delia and Mark had talked to government officials and had been assured all was in order." "Delia and Mark would not return to the Kalahari." "The Botswana government would expel them from the country." "The trees at their camp had sheltered them from desert winds and shaded them from the lethal sun of summer." "While they lived here, they made important scientific discoveries and developed plans that they hoped could save wildlife in the Kalahari for future generations" "As soon as we entered the office, he said," "You have until 5 o'clock to get out of the country." "And I said, Well, what about our camp?" "And he said, If you're here after 5 o'clock, the law will take its course." "We just feel like we've been thrown out of our home." "And it was like somebody had died." "It was really, honestly, like someone very close to us had died and we were mourning that death." "A few days later, friends of Delia and Mark fly into the camp to pick up their research data and vehicles." "I believe this is a tragedy for Botswana." "I can't imagine that any good could come out of people like" "Mark and Delia being restrained." "They're so dedicated and they have the interest of the country and the people so much at heart." "The Botswana government refused to give the" "Owenses any reason for their expulsion, but almost certainly it concerned their protests over a massive die-off of wildebeest in the Kalahari." "In 1979 at the beginning of a long drought in Botswana," "Mark had discovered thousands of wildebeest migrating northward." "In long drought periods these antelope must have access to water to survive." "Instinct, perhaps, tells them there are perennial sources of water to the north." "But now herds of cattle are grazed in the same area." "Disregarding the impact on wildlife, the Botswana government has built fences because some veterinarians believe that wildebeest can infect cattle with foot-and-mouth disease." "The wildebeest were cut off." "As they traveled north, their natural route was blocked." "Thousands died on the fences." "Following the scent of water, those with enough strength pushed on around the end of the fences into an area made desolate from overgrazing by villagers cattle." "By the time the wildebeest did reach water, many were too exhausted to continue." "Survivors had to trek 56 miles each day between the water and woodlands where they could graze and escape harassment from poachers." "Day after day hundreds more died." "Although wildebeest have not been shown to transmit foot-and-mouth disease to cattle, villagers were told that they must not let the wildebeest mix with their herds." "Since 1979 more than 266,666 wildebeest have died." "Only 36,666 remain." "Horrified by the disaster," "Delia and Mark alerted the Botswana government." "When little was done, they wrote articles and a book reporting this wildlife disaster." "For a year Delia and Mark tried to gain reentry." "Although the government would eventually offer to readmit them, the Owenses would decide that, in the face of bureaucratic hostility, they could no longer be effective conservationists in Botswana." "We came to Africa to find a chunk of what Africa always used to be a wilderness that was untouched, a wilderness that we could protect by conducting basic research and devising a conservation program." "Besides losing the science, we've now lost what was our home and what was our reason for working." "And we wanted so badly to conserve this area." "I just hope it won't now be lost." "I can't think of anything else that has affected me as much personally as the loss of the Kalahari has, and I just hope that..." "I hope the world won't let it pass." "Delia and Mark are determined to continue their efforts to conserve wildlife in Africa." "They ask themselves where they can be most effective." "Okay." "Search for a new study site." "It's fairly depressing as to how many countries are off limits to us for a variety of reasons." "Mozambique has a civil war going on, so we can't go to Mozambique." "And similarly South-West Africa/Namibia in the north is torn with civil strife." "We've been warned not to go to Zaire because of some populations over here that are still attacking people." "There are supposed to be still cannibals there." "So we basically are limited to south-central Africa, and the country that seems to offer the most promise is Zambia." "Delia and Mark set out on a five-day journey to" "Botswana's neighbor to the north." "Zambia's largest national park, Kafue, is 176 miles long." "They begin their quest at Ngoma, a tourist and game-scout camp." "There they will discover wildlife problems common across Africa." "Delia and mark learn about the park from chief game warden, Ray Mwenifumbo." "They are looking for a research site that needs conservation and where animals are undisturbed by human contact." "What's the poaching pressure like?" "Poaching and the human encroachment these are the two major problems" "I'm having right now." "Of course, these are not very big problems as far as I'm concerned." "I think I'm handicapped more my being handicapped without enough transport, enough funds to operate, you know." "I'm running... this park is 2,466 square kilometers, almost the size of Scotland." "And I've got one vehicle myself and my senior ranger there has got one vehicle." "For me..." "You've got two vehicles for the whole park?" "For the whole park." "Now, for me to drive from here to come and see my other staff here, it takes more than a month." "Right now I have only about 81 wildlife scouts to mind this area." "That's just peanuts." "You' ve got how many?" "Eighty-one." "Eighty-one." "For the entire park." "Definitely the staff need not less than 366 scouts to manage, strictly speaking, this vast area." "Zambia is committed to protecting its wildlife, but faces severe economic problems." "The population is doubling every 26 years." "As land is cleared, wildlife habitats are wiped out." "Commercial poaching destroys animals that could be a renewable resource on a continent starved for protein." "Many conservationists believe that African wildlife can be saved only if people who live near the parks benefit from them in tangible ways." "Ray Mwenifumbo suggests that the Owenses visit a village nearby to learn what the villagers think." "Boys watch from a respectful distance as Delia and Mark meet Chief Shezongo." "At this point we are very naive about your problems." "How do you think we could help?" "We want to see practical things that people near a park at least see the need for these animals" "We would like to see that the local population is taken into account" "Yes, we get benefits on national level but the ordinary person like me doesn't see what shares we have." "In particular the people who are next to the wildlife, the district should benefit much." "Not as it is at the moment." "Have you spoken to the government about this?" "Not at all." "At present they are only interested in looking after the tourists, but not the local people." "We are isolated." "We are nothing to them." "The Owenses know that the government of Zambia is beginning to share tourist and hunting revenues with villagers." "But this important reform has yet to be initiated here." "This is this lion." "He's the one whose leg was broken here." "Yes." "Pictures in their book help Mark and the villagers establish common ground and understanding." "You see we could get very close to them" "They would walk up to us." "Is this the same lion?" "This is this cub, Bimbo." "He is two years old now." "And he walked up and nearly smelled my face here." "Were they tame, the lions?" "No, no." "They were wild lions." "But these lions would come into camp and they'd sit at the campfire." "Wild lions." "Hard to believe." "Maybe the lions of Botswana are different from ours here?" "No, these lions have never been hunted you see°" "That's the difference." "Those lions in Botswana can be very mean if they're hunted." "Oh, yes." "Yeah." "Delia and Mark are perhaps the first Americans ever to visit Shezongo village, reason enough for a celebration." "The dancing goes on for hours." "For seven years in the Kalahari Delia and Mark lived isolated lives, at home with animals but far from people." "This moving evening is an exciting first for them." "Deep within the wilderness on the Kafue River there is an especially lush area, unvisited in recent years because bridges and roads are out." "They make this area their goal." "Along the way they find seas of grass, but curiously the vegetation seems untouched by grazing animals." "The few antelope they do see run as the Land Cruiser approaches." "This is like and Eden with nothing here." "With everything gone." "And You know, I just more or less have come to the conclusion as we were driving down this last stretch here that it's got to be poaching." "Everything we've seen has been wild." "I know." "We've only seen a few animals and they have run away from us." "And there's grass to be eaten and there are no animals to eat it." "Then, a chance encounter with a volunteer game scout, Tony Middleton." "But still I kept thinking, we both kept thinking, there must be more;" "there should be more animals." "There should be more." "Even now there should be more." "And on the elephant I promise you, here you would drive and you'd see two or three hundred in an afternoon elephant." "Three years ago." "Is that right?" "Yeah." "Three years ago?" "Three years ago." "Three years ago the northern half of the park was really heavily poached for ivory and the elephant actually moved down into this particular area." "Now they're going for the lesser animals because it's now meat." "We've got the commercial meat, but poaching's hand in hand with the ivory poaching." "Are the poachers coming in with trucks" "No, it's all by foot." "But you see, you get two or three guys come into an area like this and they'll set up a camp, hide somewhere." "And then they will just shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot." "And they will cut up the meat or cut out the ivory." "And then once a week, once every fortnight, you will get 16, 12, 15 chaps coming from the villages on the other side with bicycles." "Quick movement, load it up, and off they go." "Unless something drastic is done on a national scale, we are not going to have any wildlife left in this country in ten years." "Still hoping to find an area free of poaching," "Delia and Mark plunge ever deeper into the wilderness toward the river." "Oh, oh." "Their route is often blocked by streams." "We shouldn't have to go far west before we cut north." "But you know I think what we're going to have to do decide go maybe a few kilometers because pretty soon this is not going to be worth it." "We have to decide... if we gonna go west" "Well, we have to get away from these rocks and and these kopjes our here before we can do anything in a straight line, so." "But we can't go back now." "We've got to go on." "Okay." "Mark, I don't think you can get through that way." "Trust me." "Mark!" "Forging on toward their river goal," "Delia and Mark face one difficulty after the other." "Do you see anything, Mark?" "What?" "Do you see anything?" "No." "So what do you think we did wrong?" "Well, the only thing I can think of is that we stayed left and we should have" "I mean we branched right when we should have stayed left." "Because this track hasn't matched the one that's on the chart at all." "It can take all day to drive around some small streams." "In four days they travel just 56 miles" "See that little cut in the bank there?" "I wonder if there's any hope there." "A tourist camp burned out by poachers, abandoned now because it cannot be protected." "It doesn't look like the camp was even that old." "I mean the mud daub and so forth doesn't look like it had been done very long ago." "This is heavy duty stuff, you know." "This could be us." "Yeah." "If we have a camp here, we have to have an armed guard at our camp." "And at the airplane and at the boats and at the vehicles." "The sight of the burned-out camp is sobering." "A poacher's tracks add a sense of present danger." "Mark, just don't follow those spoor, okay?" "Just come on back because I'm worried that they probably have guns and you're in there alone." "Over." "Yeah, I'm following them right down the damn stream bed, right up the stream bed." "Deeply discouraged, but too far into the wilderness to turn back," "Delia and Mark push on to the river." "They had hoped this might be their next home." "Oh, wow!" "It's beautiful." "Oh, man." "Look at it." "Oh, God." "Wow, what a spot." "What the hell is that thing?" "We've made it to the river, but look at this." "It's either for drying fish or for drying meat." "I don't see any fish bones." "It's a meat-drying rack." "It's poaching." "I can smell the meat on it." "I mean this is just about the most discouraging place" "I've seen in a long time." "The whole bloody park is being sterilized by it." "Really." "At least they can't use it again anyway." "We should burn this." "They need to know that somebody was here." "We need to put a warning." "At least they'll have to go to more trouble the next time they want to dry the meat." "Their frustration and anger mount as they discover more and more evidence of slaughter." "In some areas elephant skulls litter the ground." "You can stand in this spot and you can see four to five dead elephants." "I think it's despicable;" "I think it's appalling;" "I think it's a tragic commentary on the state of world conservation that his sort of thing can go on." "And I just keep wondering when the world is going to wake up and really take some action." "Mark's frustration is fueled by the knowledge that in just 12 years one hundred thousand elephants in the Luangwa Valley have been killed." "They are being destroyed for their ivory, which is carved into trinkets, coffee table decorations, and works of art." "The fashion that leads people to buy ivory, collect it, and wear it contributes to the destruction of these magnificent creatures." "Distressed by what they have seen, Delia and Mark search further." "They have been told that North Luangwa National Park is still an untouched wilderness." "They make a flying reconnaissance." "That's beautiful river!" "Yeah, a beautiful river." "We can work this habitat, too." "Especially along the river channels it looks quite open." "It looks very possible in terms of moving around with the truck, and I think I'll be able to spot from the airplane quite well, too." "It's fantastic country." "Yeah." "This place is full of animals." "Full of what?" "Full of animals." "Yeah." "Look for lions." "People have said this is the Cinderella park of Zambia." "I believe it." "It needs work." "They don't know how many animals there are." "It needs quantitative work." "Did you tell them we saw lions?" "We saw lions three females with three little cubs and wild dogs." "What have I got?" "Soot on my nose?" "Only one track leads down the escarpment into the Rift Valley" "Delia will drive it alone." "Mark flies down with the airplane, and when he lands, is greeted by a forlorn sight." "My forlorn little Boo." "Oh, I'm so glad you're not hurt." "I don't know what happened, Mark." "Listen, I couldn't have done it better myself." "I think it's beautiful." "See, the trailer's in line." "It was perfect." "And then it just took off on its own." "So I climbed out of there in a hurry." "I believe." "You came out lie a jack-in-the-box." "You can check the gear oil..." "Yeah, I can grease the drive train, check the springs." "I'm sorry." "I think I'll have a Perrier water with lime and ice, and shrimp cocktail served on half a avocado." "And then what shall we have?" "Cheesecake with cherries on top?" "There she goes!" "What a difference as they travel this track." "These animals have not yet learned to fear man." "But North Luangwa Park, for lack of manpower and resources, is virtually defenseless." "It could go the way of Kafue in just a few years unless Zambia, together with the international community, commits greater resources to its protection." "Paradise for Delia and Mark is a place where the lions are unconcerned by their presence." "Never see a desert lion up this time of day moving around." "She's really used to us now, Mark." "She's just ignoring us." "Look at the puku across the river." "This place excites me." "Yeah." "It really does." "It's good to be watching lions again." "I think maybe we've found a home." "Yeah." "Here is a place where two research scientists could dedicated ten years of their lives and hope to make a difference." "I want to get in the water." "All right, come on." "Watch and all." "There's more water here than we saw in seven years in the Kalahari." "I think we should get some soap..." "If we can't be happy here, I don't think there's a place left in Africa." "Well, this is great." "You could at least take your boots off." "Can you imagine living next to water?" "And without people?" "And a lot of game." "Oh, man!" "You know the thing is about this place is that there's a lot here to work with, You Know." "It's a place where you can sort of put your heart and be happy for years." "Delia and Mark Owens started out 13 years with a passion for wildlife, with extraordinary pluck, and with the hope that they could make contribution to the preservation of a precious heritage." "They stood up for conservation and heavy personal and professional price." "The was been hard, the future is uncertain, but still they hold steadfast to their dream." "Deep within the jungles of southern India, there lives a legendary king respected and feared by all." "He is swift and strong and deadly." "He is the largest venomous snake in the world." "But until now his life has been a mystery." "This is the story of a monarch and his remarkable travels through a fragile kingdom." "It is early on a cool morning when the king of snakes embarks on a journey." "His is an ancient forest alive with creatures great and small." "Like the king cobra himself many hover precariously close to extinction." "But on this morning the jungle pulses with the sounds of insects and birds." "A great Indian hornbill delicately feeds his family hidden in their nest below." "Through this jungle book world the king roams great distances." "Though his movements are quiet those around always take notice for crossing the king cobra's path could cost them their lives." "Despite the uproar his presence causes his world is mostly silent." "He only hears the deepest of rumblings" "He has picked up the heavy footfalls of a nearby elephant." "Even the mighty pachyderm steers clear of this serpent, for just one bite may bring death." "But the king would strike such a beast only in self-defense, for he feeds solely on snakes." "Still, the langurs are cautious." "Today, the king is not interested even in snakes." "He is searching for something else, something very important." "His eyesight is better than most serpents' but he sees without color and only registers objects when they move." "He smells the air with his tongue." "So acute is this sense, he can use it to find water." "And that's exactly what he's looking for." "Today, water is critical for the king is about to shed his skin." "He needs extra fluid to help separate his old coat from his new." "It is an uncomfortable time for the king cobra, a new skin is developing beneath his outer scales." "He must find a place to hide until it is time to shed." "The king is unaccustomed to his fragile condition." "It is an uncertain time." "At last he discovers a burrow." "And none of the forest's creatures wants to share quarters with the king." "For the next ten days, he will stay here." "Irritable and tense, he's sensitive to any movement nearby." "Even the harmless wanderings of a turtle unsettle the king." "For his eyes have become cloudy from a secretion which helps separate his skins." "Half blind and vulnerable, he is always ready to strike." "At last his eyes begin to clear a sign his new skin has finished growing." "The king is back but must still shed his old scales." "His spent skin is tight and itchy." "As he scrapes and rubs to relieve the discomfort, his outer scales begin to peel." "It is a remarkable transformation even his fangs, teeth, and the tips of his tongue will be replaced again and again during the course of his life." "When the skin over his eyes lifts away he is given new windows through which to view his world." "At 12 feet long and still growing, the snake must endure shedding four or five times a year." "His discarded skin makes a perfect meal for the smaller creatures of his realm." "In this kingdom, nothing is wasted." "After ten days without eating, the king is hungry." "A tree offers a good vantage point for spotting prey." "For his size, the king cobra is an agile climber." "Now he waits and watches." "A movement in the tree reveals another hungry creature... a young hornbill." "Its father has spotted something." "The king cobra watches the hunt unfold" "A vine snake ribbons across a nearby branch." "Much smaller than the cobra, this nimble hunter is no match for the hornbill." "The little snake looks as fierce as he can." "But it is only a brave display." "His venom is mild." "The young hornbill gets the prize." "And the king will wait for bigger meals." "Below on the forest floor a rat snake is on the hunt." "It is one of India's largest non-venomous snakes." "Quick and voracious, it will take any small mammal." "From his perch the king spots the movement below." "It is just what he's been waiting for." "Silently, the king cobra joins in the hunt." "The rat snake follows a scent." "Its sensitive tongue has led it to prey." "The king cobra is on their trail." "As the rat snake prepares to attack, the king closes in." "In a flash, the rat escapes." "And now, the hunter becomes the hunted" "Against the hooded death, even a seven-foot snake hasn't a chance." "The rat snake puffs up its throat and lowers its tongue in threat, but it is a futile gesture." "One strike delivers venom and a crushing grip." "The rat snake returns the attack but it's already doomed." "Within minutes the giant cobra's venom takes effect, paralyzing the prey." "The heart stops pumping, the lungs stop breathing," "and the victim suffocates." "The king cobra can easily devour this large snake." "His backward-facing teeth help guide the victim down his throat." "Digestion has already begun, for the king's venom helps dissolve the rat snake from the inside out." "Still, the king cobra will linger over this meal." "And for the days it takes to absorb his prey, he'll have no need to hunt." "But yet the king is restless." "It is now the dry season the time to find a mate." "A new, intoxicating scent fills the air." "Some of the rain forest's trees have dropped their leaves and begun to fruit." "It is a joyous season for langurs." "Across the forest the jackfruits are ripening." "Their sweet, pungent odor beckons." "It's an irresistible lure to creatures both small" "and great" "To reach the succulent flesh within the 26-pound fruit, the prickly skin must first be peeled." "It's a messy job for even the most adept of elephants." "She leaves a veritable banquet in her wake." "This is a season when king cobras roam widely through the forest." "But today the king's subjects are distracted by the fruit." "They take only passing notice of his presence." "The king still seeks a mate." "And it's in this fruiting season that he's most likely to find one." "But it's not a female he encounters." "It's a rival... a formidable male." "A potent threat, he must be driven away." "Each is capable of killing the other with a single bite." "A strange duel begins an encounter rarely witnessed and never before filmed." "Rather than a fight to the death, the battle has evolved into a ritualized dance." "To win, one snake must force the other's head to the ground." "At last, there is a victor." "It's the intruder." "The king has been dethroned." "Driven from his domain, he must seek another." "But the rain forests of southern India are a finite land." "As people press in, less and less remains for the king cobra." "Our king has no choice but to leave the jungle." "Fortunately for the king cobra..." "water is no barrier." "He is a gifted swimmer." "But what lies ahead for the king?" "As the forest is cleared, its creatures more and more frequently cross the border into a strange new realm... the realm of civilization." "But surprisingly, a tea plantation is a welcome sight to the exiled king." "Here there is thick vegetation and an abundance of rat snakes." "But this is no haven." "For when king cobras and people cross paths there is bound to be trouble." "Just one glimpse of the legendary king can cause panic and shut down a plantation for weeks." "This cultivated land is not as rich as the king cobra's old domain, but still, he makes himself at home here." "Yet he must be evicted if work is to resume at the plantation." "And even the king is no match for humans who are determined and armed." "Fortunately for the king, a special sort of hunter has been called in." "His weapons are simply a stick and a sack to the amazement of his audience." "In this part of India, people know to call Rom Whitaker whenever a king cobra is on the loose." "An American expatriate raised in India" "Whitaker has studied these snakes for over 26 years." "I'll leave the bag here." "You take that path." "Okay." "Careful, huh?" "Yeah." "I've been fascinated with king cobras all my life." "Anyone who likes snakes knows that this is the super snake, the snake of all snakes." "As I get to know it better, it gets more and more amazing." "Finding a king cobra in a tea estate isn't very easy." "I spent 26 days tracking one down." "The bushes here are so thick that I have to get down on my hands and knees to see where the snake's gone." "It's a dangerous proposition even for Whitaker." "After several snakebites, he is now allergic to antivenin." "The next bite could kill him." "He's coming." "I'm moving up ahead." "Okay." "With the serpent cornered, the challenge now is to complete the capture without a terrible accident." "The king cobra too is fragile." "The stick could easily hurt him." "He's big, he's really big." "Back, back, back, back, back, behind, behind, behind." "I don't want to pull, man." "I've been catching king cobras for quite a few years." "And I've evolved a system which is quite gentle to the snake." "When the serpent is trapped, he tries to escape, lunging toward what appears to be a dark hole." "He's gonna go in." "He's gonna go in." "Open the bag." "Okay, good." "Watch it, he's gonna go in." "He's gonna go in." "Watch out." "Okay, twist, man." "This is one hell of a snake." "Whitaker is not just a hunter." "He's a leading expert on king cobras and each capture is a precious chance to learn more about this elusive species." "To take detailed notes on the snake" "Whitaker has to remove him from the bag, which is just as dangerous as getting him in." "But he must be removed to obtain a sample of his venom." "The amount of venom this serpent can inject through his fangs is astounding one bite can deliver enough to kill 166 people." "The procedure doesn't harm the snake." "His venom is simply saliva with a deadly twist." "Good venom sample." "Okay, shall we release him?" "Yeah." "The king cobra can produce an unlimited supply." "One, two, three." "Few people are actually bitten by king cobras, for they are reclusive serpents whose home is deep in the forest." "And this is where Whitaker makes his release far from tea estates and people." "After his encounter with the human race, the king cobra seeks refuge." "A patchwork of woods and open grassland, this new home has all he needs shelter and food." "But there will also be other king cobras." "And now he is the newcomer." "Cautiously, he slides through the undergrowth." "He senses something up ahead a snake." "Is it food?" "His tongue picks up a telltale scent." "It's another king cobra, but this time a female." "The king may have found his queen." "She stands on guard." "She may be ready to mate, but her bite is deadly." "So he moves slowly." "He tries to entice her." "But his gentle overtures are rebuffed." "Abandoning the subtle approach, he becomes bolder." "Perhaps this will excite her." "With the female slow to respond, the king's advances turn more urgent." "Finally, she begins to show interest sliding her long, sinuous body against his." "At last, with their tails entwined they mate." "It's a lengthy affair this limbless embrace may last as long as three hours." "When the male withdraws his crimson penis, the union is over." "The two will go their separate ways, but the king has passed on his legacy." "It is April, the season of serpentine unions and approaching rains." "Clouds signal a difficult time ahead." "With eggs developing inside her, the female cobra needs to feed more frequently now." "In only 46 days, she'll lay her clutch, just before the monsoon breaks." "Rising humidity brings forth a new generation of creatures." "A hammerhead slug feels its way across the earth." "The female seems to be moving more slowly as her eggs continue to grow." "And her journey will become more uncomfortable yet... for the moisture has triggered sinister stirrings on the forest floor." "Leeches... the bloodsuckers of the rain forest come forth by the thousands." "For the past six months, they have been dormant in the soil." "Now they are hungry for blood any blood." "From the moment they emerge, leeches hone in on virtually any animal that moves." "Once aboard the serpent, they make for the vulnerable gaps between her scales." "At this time of year, hardly an animal in the jungle is spared this plague." "As daylight fades, there is at least some comfort." "With twilight, the jungle becomes cooler." "In the brief dusk of the tropics, one world prepares to sleep while another awakens." "A multitude of tiny legs carries a millipede through the darkness." "Beneath a jackfruit tree, a porcupine makes an evening meal of fallen fruit." "On this moonlit night, the female king cobra searches for a place to lay her eggs." "Their survival depends on her choice." "Temperature and humidity must be just right if the eggs are to hatch." "She sizes up a stand of bamboo." "Her rustling startles the porcupine." "Then something remarkable happens." "She begins to gather bamboo leaves with great sweeps of her body." "She starts to build a nest." "It is an extraordinary feat for a limbless animal to build a nest, and the female king cobra is the only snake that does so." "It is an exhausting task." "As she toils, a slender loris in the branches above begins his slow, nocturnal search for food." "He takes only passing notice of the stirrings below." "The king cobra will continue to gather leaves for hours before she is ready to lay." "The loris is suddenly more attentive the rustling below has stopped." "It is well after midnight and the cobra is laying her eggs." "The eggs will slowly whiten as their coating dries." "It will take the mother much of the night to layher clutch of leathery eggs" "Meanwhile, her upstairs neighbor has spotted a sleeping lizard." "It's a lucky night for the loris." "With 18 eggs laid, the mother cobra buries them beneath another layer of leaves." "Here she will rest, as the Indian sun warms the forest again." "The cobra's maternal duties are far from over." "For the next two months, she will guard her nest from predators like the mongoose." "This plucky little hunter will try his luck with anything that looks edible." "In a scene from Kipling's Jungle Book it is the cobra against the infamous mongoose." "The mongoose is a notorious egg thief and one of the few creatures willing to challenge a king cobra head on." "The persistent little mongoose angers the mother cobra." "Towering three feet above him she has no need to strike." "She has made her message quite clear." "On this humid, summer day, others in the forest search for nests." "Finding king cobra nests in the wild is really difficult." "So I've been offering rewards." "But still, in 26 years, I've seen only four." "People think that a king cobra on her nest is the most dangerous creature on earth." "But what surprises me is that they're actually shy and retiring." "All I have to do is gently prod the nest and off she goes." "But I know she'll stick around just to see what's going on." "This is a great chance for me to learn more about this wonderful reptile." "Let's checkout the condition of these eggs." "Even with the mother guarding them some of the eggs won't survive." "Ah, here's a rotten one." "In this nest there are 18 eggs and a few of them will never hatch." "God, there are leeches here too." "I'll chuck the rotten one away." "You better get them off your hands before they start..." "Ah, they've never bothered me." "Thirty point nine." "Not bad." "Pretty constant." "Let's close up." "When the researchers have finished their task, they replace the eggs and rebuild the mother's carefully constructed nest." "Only after they've gone will the mother return." "Then she will resume her watch for another month." "A protective mother king cobra is just one of many challenges for scientists working in the rain forest." "I've been wandering in these forests for decades, and although we do keep an eye open for elephants," "I've never been attacked by anything except the little creatures mites, ticks, leeches." "Look at these suckers." "Well, as gory as it looks, it really doesn't hurt very much." "Oh, that's a fat one." "Look at that." "The fish are eating them." "Pulling them off does feel a bit weird" "And of course, you go on bleeding for hours." "But they don't really seem to do you any harm." "Soon leeches will be the least of anyone's worries for it is July and at last the monsoon arrives in earnest." "Sweeping in from the Indian ocean, it will bring as much as 36 feet of rain in a single season." "The lashing rain will test the king cobra's nest." "The deluge may last for weeks." "Though the nest is battered it served its purpose the female and her eggs have weathered the storm." "After two months the mother's long vigil is over." "Instinct tells her to abandon the nest before her infants emerge for she is a snake-eater by nature." "Within the nest, her eggs are stirring with life." "Their mother glides off to hunt her first meal in months." "Her babies will now have to fend for themselves." "With a tiny sharp tooth the first one tears open its shell." "One by one the others follow." "Soon the nest glistens with a dozen miniature king cobras complete with venom and tiny fangs." "For the first 24 hours the hatchlings remain near their eggs as they absorb their nutritious yolks and take in the world for the first time." "At last they start to explore their nest." "The pencil-thin babies are just 15 inches long, but already they act like their parents." "Quick to respond to movement they spar with each other." "Then, instinctively most leave the nest and climb into the bamboo above for safety." "But one youngster lingers below." "Instead of leaving the dangerous forest floor, this hatchling is drawn to the water for a drink." "It will be a costly mistake." "A crocodile is watching." "Beneath the other more cautious hatchlings, the mongoose returns to the abandoned nest." "He's rummaging for leftovers." "He devours a king cobra that never hatched." "In just a week, one of the hatchlings sheds his skin for the first time." "He will shed every month for his first year, since baby king cobras grow quickly." "Now the hungry hatchling must search for his first kill." "He spots his prey a little olive water snake." "At this age, the baby king cobra can barely make enough venom to kill a tiny creature like this." "But his hunting form is already impeccable." "He spreads his ribs and makes a perfect little hood." "With his first successful kill, the little cobra is well on his way to becoming the next king." "In ten years, he may grow to 15 feet." "But only with luck." "For the forests of southern India are shrinking." "In such a changing world the hatchling's prospects are unsure." "What will become of the little king?" "Will he be banished to the realm of legends, remembered only in a storybook?" "For today, at least, this mighty monarch rules the fragile forest." "For he is king." "In the wild heart of Venezuela, earth and water merge to create a landscape like no other one that has bred many a legendary appetite." "But for the early explorers who ventured into this savage place, no creature loomed larger or more terrifying than South America's giant serpent." "Trophy hunters spun tales of 166-foot monsters, intent on human flesh" "and for centuries this astonishing creature has been obscured by legends as tangled and dense as the swamps it inhabits." "But now a barefoot biologist is taking on the anaconda." "His mission: to snatch its secrets from the murk of myth and terror, giving us our first glimpse into the hidden life of the largest snake on earth." "Big snake." "Big snake." "In the first scarlet rays of morning a primeval world awakens." "Birds by the tens of thousands respond to the siren call of the llanos flooded savannas that cover one-third of Venezuela." "Months of drenching rains have waterlogged these plains, creating a soggy Serengeti as vast and pristine as its African counterpart." "But the dry season has begun, and herds of capybaras now begin to follow the receding water." "These giant rodents the world's largest can weigh up to 146 pounds." "Soon this lush place will be a parched plain... so the creatures of the llanos eat while the eating is good." "But their idyll of peace and plenty is about to be interrupted." "Curled in the water hyacinth is 13 feet of starving serpent:" "a giant female anaconda." "She has not eaten for months... and has her lidless eyes on a suitably giant meal." "Oblivious to her presence, the capybara family plays." "Dull eyed but sharp tongued, the snake tastes the air for the scent of her rodent prey." "The season lends urgency to her hunger" "It's time for her to mate and only well-fed snakes breed successfully." "Once pregnant she won't eat again until after the babies are born seven months later So she'd better eat well now." "At her strike, the llanos takes flight" "But for one capybara, it's too late." "Anacondas kill with power, not poison." "Locked in the snake's deadly coils, the capybara is being squeezed so tight it cannot breathe... so tight, in fact, that it's blood can't circulate." "Her elastic jaws stretched impossibly wide, she now begins the ponderous business of swallowing her victim head first." "She has paid a price for this meal" "She bears the bite marks of the capybara's final struggle." "There may be other snakes in the world that are as long as the anaconda, but none can match it for sheer bulk." "Her body was a foot thick before she ate the capybara." "Six hours later, the last of the rodent has disappeared into the snake." "Her post-meal proportions are chilling to the human eye." "She's actually quite vulnerable now." "But fortunately for her, the only creature audacious enough to tangle with a full-grown female anaconda is on the trail of another snake." "Slogging through the hyacinth is biologist Jesus Rivas." "Since 1992, he's headed up the very first attempt to study anacondas in the wild a study funded in part by National Geographic." "Before the study began, scientists knew virtually nothing about the biology of this shy and dangerous creature." "Okay, you want me to hold..." "Wildlife biologist Renee Owens joined Jesus in his slippery pursuit in 199,." "The husband and wife team have caught and catalogued almost 866 of these giant snakes." "Many are given names:" "This one they call Godzilla." "Are you losing your grip?" "In a second I will." "Oh, you won't." "Hold it tight." "This is an animal that is the absolute master of the swamp, the custom-made animal for this place." "catch and kill animals much stronger and much tougher than people." "Oh, it's a big mama." "Come here and get a better grip." "Come here." "To work on a dangerous animal like this... potentially, at least, very dangerous, you have to have complete trust in each other or you just can't do it, because you can't go in and be worrying about... what could go wrong and how you could be hurt." "Godzilla." "We are having a ball, aren't we?" "What I want to do is to get to know what the anaconda is all about... we're going to study where they live, what they eat, when they breed, what temperature they prefer, what vegetation they like... to put on the snake shoes and wear them." "Wait, wait, wait." "Jesus and Renee want to observe the females during breeding." "To do so, they must get radio transmitters into as many snakes as possible in the next few weeks." "The force feeding may look brutal but it's little more than an annoyance to a snake large enough to swallow a small person." "I need you to hold the head now, Renee." "Below my hands." "Wait, wait." "Okay, got her." "Ah, don't worry." "Oh, you want to kiss me, don't you?" "I'm not your lover." "I'm trying to keep the female from getting away." "And I have to do that any way I can." "They're slippery, there's no traction, there's nothing to grab onto..." "I'll pretty much kneel on the body of the female..." "I think it went down far enough cause it's the only way" "I have to keep her in one place." "It is thrilling and dangerous work." "But perhaps this female will lead them to the heart of a great mystery the remarkable love life of the anaconda." "Godzilla." "Jesus's living laboratory is an enormous patchwork of llanos, thanks to three Venezuelan cattle ranches that play host to the anaconda study." "With so much ground to cover the best way for Jesus to keep tabs on his radio-tagged snakes is from the air." "Conspicuous in the hyacinth below is the giant female that ate the capybara a snake Jesus has named Diega." "Warmth from the sun speeds up Diega's digestive process... bloating her with gasses and keeping her afloat." "Jesus will keep an eye on her and return to collect her when she's gotten back her girlish figure." "With the serpent sleeping off her meal, this part of Eden seems impossibly idyllic." "But not all of the capybara's companions in the llanos are as harmless as the snowy egret." "For this is the land of the caiman," "South America's infamous alligator cousin." "For a reptile of this size, there is no more sumptuous meal than the giant rodent." "The scent of blood in the water draws a crowd of fearsome scavengers from below" "Red piranha gather hoping for leftovers." "But today the hungry caiman will disappoint." "He's not about to let even a careless mouthful escape his jaws." "Twice a day now the anaconda patrol makes the rounds, with spotters on the roof Renee behind the wheel, and her dog, Chukka an apprentice snake hunter himself riding shotgun." "It's been a red-letter day four snakes already captured and one to go." "They've come for Diega who's been digesting her capybara supper for more than two weeks." "Jesus prefers to do his snake-hunting barefoot it's the best way to feel the slippery skin of an anaconda under the hyacinth." "But in waters that contain piranha, stingrays, electric eels and caiman, he's taking a considerable risk." "When anaconda-hunting, there's safety in numbers and colleague John Thorbjarnarson sometimes joins in." "When you go out, never by yourself because these animals are big and they are predators and you are potential prey." "Two of my assistants have been attacked by anaconda." "Chukka, look, snake, Chukka." "A protesting Diega is removed from her refuge." "Fortunately, she's still sluggish from her meal and would rather escape than attack." "Wow!" "It's beautiful." "Look at those colors." "Diega is not nearly as taken with Jesus as he is with her." "Renee puts an old sock over the snake's massive head to keep the teeth at bay." "Stay!" "Stay!" "Be good." "This is like mud wrestling." "Previous catches of the day are getting restless in the truck." "It's time to steer a course for home." "With their home doubling as their laboratory, living with snakes has become a way of life for Renee and Jesus." "I think we can do the female first." "It's eight hundred and forty-three, right?" "8-4-3." "Once inside, they begin processing the snakes." "What number is this?" "Eight hundred and what?" "Jesus marks each snake with a number." "Renee sketches their tail markings the anaconda version of a fingerprint." "It's easier than wrestling snakes in the wild, but it has its drawbacks too." "Living with snakes basically is that it stinks." "Literally, it just smells really bad." "They have this musk that smells if you're not really an expert it smells just like an animal that's been rotting for about five days." "And there are times when we have in the house anywhere from three to 26 to 25 bags of snakes sitting around the house with four drums full of big snakes, so basically, yeah, it stinks." "Diega measures about 13 feet long a giant snake, but by no means the largest." "No one knows how long an anaconda can get." "The 156-foot monsters described in Brazilian news accounts are biologically impossible." "Even the largest trophy skins don't approach that." "But Jesus's most conservative estimate still boggles the mind." "This is an animal that can grow real close to 36 feet." "The weight of an animal of that kind is something like 1,266 pounds." "We're talking about more than a boar more than a normal cow." "Now catalogued and fitted with a transmitter," "Diega is returned to the llanos." "Guess about here." "Alright." "Renee and Jesus bid her a temporary farewell, hoping that she will successfully mate." "We'll keep in touch." "Yup, we'll be back." "You bet we'll keep in touch." "As the dry season progresses the heat intensifies and wildlife traffic jams worsen in the remaining waterways." "Capybara herds are forced to congregate in shrinking pools." "And tempers run short among dominant males with harems to guard." "At the water's edge a newborn gets a maternal once-over." "But the mother is still in labor there are more on the way." "The impending birth has attracted vultures." "But they'll play an unexpected role here." "Unlikely midwives, they strip the newborn of its protein-rich placenta, and squabble over it leaving the baby free to take its first labored breaths." "The newborns could use a few minutes to get their bearings, but the llanos offers no grace periods." "They've been noticed by a dominant male nearby." "And his interest may not be benign." "This newborn may be the offspring of the dominant male or that of an upstart rival." "Scientists have yet to determine what force now drives him to act." "In a rarely seen display of violence he passes sentence on the newborns and appoints himself executioner." "No death goes unnoticed on the llanos." "Spectacled caiman bide their time." "Instantly, the vultures shed their midwife ways for a more familiar role." "Then the caimans lurch ashore for their share." "An underwater cleanup crew will get the rest." "Piranhas, drawn as always to a scene of carnage, work their grisly magic." "Minutes later, all that remains of the young capybara are the bones." "In a place where some lifetimes are measured in minutes, a lucky survivor clings to its mother." "He may have no more to fear from his own kind." "But the capybara's enemies on the llanos are many." "It's late afternoon in the Venezuelan savanna." "Everywhere, anacondas are on the move, taking advantage of cooler temperatures to keep up with the receding waters." "Jesus and Renee savor these last few weeks in the llanos." "Soon the rains will come, making fieldwork virtually impossible." "Work in the llanos is really a unique experience." "You can see the shape of the earth like an ocean of savannah around you." "You have the feeling that those animals that are out there were there before Columbus arrived to America." "I feel like this is where I belong." "Skimmers grab a last meal as dusk descends." "The evening slant of light signals rush hour in the llanos, as the birds head home to roost, further darkening the sky with their numbers." "On a riverbank a jaguar finds his last minutes of daytime rest plagued by flies." "The big cat needs to rouse himself soon and find a meal." "Morning finds a massive female anaconda" "looking for an escape from the rising sun." "The drying river bed exposes muddy crevices among the roots cool, damp caves where a snake might wait out the last weeks of the dry season." "But the best laid plans of anacondas are no match for Jesus and his uncanny knack for uncovering snake haunts." "This is the domain of an anaconda named Marion... an old friend with a notoriously bad temper." "I think there's a snake here, guys." "Yup, a big one, too." "Big, like Marion big?" "Probably, Marion, big, yeah." "If it's Marion, she'll come straight for me." "She hates me." "Uh oh, she's Marion." "She already snapped at the pole." "She snapped at the pole already." "Renee will never forget her introduction to Marion." "Yeah, when Marion bit me it was kind of a surprise, because I'd seen Jesus get bit by snakes all the time." "He might not admit that, but he gets bit a lot." "It goes with the territory." "I thought Well, it can't hurt that much, because it happens all the time." "He doesn't say much." "And she bit me, and yeah it hurt like hell." "That's a huge head just full of muscle it's just pure muscle." "And she got the smallest part of my body, and yeah, there's no denying it." "It hurts a lot." "Alright" "Big snake, big snake." "Marion has always made her contributions to science reluctantly." "Jesus is convinced she remembers each capture... and gets more dangerous with each encounter." "Alright." "Alright." "It's her." "Marion is quite capable of killing a human being." "If I let her wrap around me, I'm history." "I'm gone." "I'd need at least two more, three more people to unwrap her because once she makes the loop, she is absolutely impossible to undo." "You can't just stick your hands between the loops and loosen her up." "It's much too tight." "So even if I have people helping me they need to know what they're doing, because otherwise it's very hard to it's a very strong animal." "And also the teeth are shaped like needles pushing backwards." "First the mouth holds and then if the animal gets to make a loop around the prey, it doesn't matter what kind of prey it is, it's dead." "Anacondas can and do take prey the size of humans, and many a person's disappearance on the llanos has been blamed on the giant snakes." "Though no human deaths have been confirmed, members of the anaconda team have been stalked and attacked." "So, yeah, having been bitten sometimes yet doing the right thing" "I've managed to have all my fingers and toes so far." "Over the years" "Jesus has recaptured some of his snakes several times." "He's come to like and respect them as individuals, but understands that the feelings aren't mutual." "Each time I catch them each time I find them," "I learn something new about them." "And I get attached to them." "I get to understand even their personalities, makes me really happy when we find an old friend." "But I don't think they're quite as happy to see me as I am to see them." "No, let go, let go." "Give me room." "Trying to defend herself this old friend has sunk her fangs into Jesus' hand." "Okay, open the mouth now." "Ready?" "Yeah." "Alright, push your finger forward if you can." "Because her teeth curve backwards, he must fight off the instinct to pull away, which would only do more damage." "Instead, he must push his hand deeper into her mouth to free his skewered finger." "Alright, back a little bit." "No, it's caught..." "Yeah..." "Need a stick." "Alright..." "A stick, yeah." "Long on power and short on stamina the anaconda relents after a few minutes." "It's loosening up now." "Okay, okay." "We got it, we got it." "Okay." "After six years of snake encounters" "Jesus still marvels at the range of temperaments among his favorite creatures." "Anaconda have a very interesting personality." "Some animals are normally oblivious and we have caught them several times and we know they are tame animals." "Some of them are absolute bitches." "They're really..." "they get to be really mean." "As the heat of the dry season continues to intensify, the reptilian residents of the llanos bask along disappearing streams." "Capybaras hunker down in what water remains." "For the yellow-headed caracara the capybaras are an obliging, moveable feast of ticks." "The floodplain that lured many piranhas away from their home rivers is now evaporating rapidly trapping many." "Stranded and suffocating the once fear some killer is helpless." "No one knows exactly why caimans gape but they might as well be grinning in anticipation." "The crocodilians move in and put an end to the piranha's suffering." "But when the rains come again, the carnivorous fish will have their day." "It's now late May six months since the Venezuelan savanna has seen a drop of rain." "But a season of calamity for fish is a season of plenty for birds." "Dozens deep at the water's edge birds wait their turn at the buffet." "Each species has perfected its own feeding technique." "Little distracts the voracious birds from the feast, but an uninvited guest is about to get their attention." "It's Diega, in search of a nice quiet shallow for mating." "Her arrival seems to elicit more curiosity than fear, despite the fact that anacondas regularly eat birds." "It's almost as if they know that the snake is an ambush hunter... and won't waste her energy striking at prey that can see her coming." "Indignant orinoco geese announce that this is no place for an amorous anaconda." "And the stilts escort her off the property." "Diega retreats, but with an anaconda's characteristic lack of haste... leaving this place to the birds." "Eventually, Diega finds a suitable place to await her gentlemen callers." "It's likely that the female anaconda sends out come hither chemicals, or pheromones, so that the males can locate her using their tongues as sexual divining rods." "Male anacondas are much smaller than the females." "But with these giant snakes small is a relative term." "He arrives to find the mating party in full swing, but he's undeterred." "Several males have already wrapped themselves around Diega." "It may look like her dance card is full, but sometimes a female will accommodate up to a dozen males in a breeding ball a phenomenon Jesus is now trying to understand." "Breeding balls are made of one female and several males and the question is whether one male gets to mate or several of them do it." "Is it the largest male?" "Is it the smallest?" "Is it the one that gets their first?" "Is it the one that tickles her better?" "The "tickling" is done with the male's mating spur, the last vestige of his lizard ancestor's hind leg." "After mating, the male leaves a sperm plug in the female, but Jesus believes rival males may be able to squeeze it out of her." "The key question whether females are impregnated by one male or many can only be answered if the snakes breed successfully." "Following her radio signals," "Jesus and Renee are thrilled to find Diega has become the belle of the ball." "What comes next will test their snake-handling skills to the limit." "Not only is gathering information of snakes not easy, but it is basically a race against time." "Once the dry season hits we're out there every day trying to find as many snakes as we can process°" "Once we find breeding balls it's not like catching one snake." "Suddenly you have three four up to 12 snakes to deal with at one catch." "So, that's a lot of work to do." "Back at the ranch, it's the males' turn to do their bit for science." "Jesus takes blood samples for DNA testing." "Eventually, he'll compare their DNA to that of the offspring to find out who fathered whom that is, if all goes well, and Diega has babies in the fall." "But that's far from certain." "She hasn't given birth in the four years Jesus has followed her." "And she's up against the worst dry season in years." "There's no telling when the rains will arrive." "The inland sea has become a mere patchwork of puddles." "Heat and crowding are already taking a toll on the capybaras." "The caracaran once a welcome parasite remover, has become a torment the weakened capybara has little energy to fight off." "The bird feeds with impunity on the rodent's wounds, which were inflicted by rivals." "Nearby, an opportunistic predator lurks." "Known as the cougar or mountain lion farther north in the Americas, the puma finds easy and abundant prey on the llanos." "These are especially hard times for Diega." "Now pregnant she must choose her waterholes well." "Some will disappear altogether in the deepening dry." "And she won't survive for long if she is exposed on the parching surface." "Just seven degrees north of the equator, with the summer solstice approaching the llanos evaporates." "Scarlet ibises keep a close eye on their sometime nemesis." "In waterholes turned sucking mud, capybaras wallow and catfish struggle to breathe." "With her water supply running dangerously low," "Diega must now make an excruciating pilgrimage through the muck in search of shelter." "But the conditions only worsen, and the next day finds Diega in the shelterof last resort under the baking mud itself." "Here she will wait for the rains..." "which show no sign of arriving soon." "Some pregnant females lie exposed on the surface, where temperatures can reach a deadly 136 degrees." "Many will not make it till the rains come, and their broods will die with them a fate shared by many on the scorched llanos." "On the parched plains of Venezuela, the horizon rumbles with the promise of rain." "The scientists have left the flooded llanos to the capybaras, not yet knowing if Diega or their other pregnant anacondas survived." "Not until the rains begin to let up can a worried Jesus take to the air in search of his snakes." "When I go to find Diega after the dry season," "I wonder if she had made it." "This dry season was so hard and so hot that there was a good chance she dried out." "But Diega has made it, surviving both the drought and her seven-month fast." "She's claimed a bit of high ground to await the birth of her babies... only then will she eat again." "There will be other reptile births this season as well." "All around, young caimans make their debut on the llanos." "The baby crocodilians emerge from their eggs snub nosed and chirping." "Almost immediately, they set forth under the watchful eye of their mother." "They are exposed and vulnerable on land, and waste no time making for the relative safety of the water." "There, they congregate where their mother can keep an eye on them." "Within hours of their birth, they're pouncing after their first insect meals." "By night, Diega prepares to usher her own family into the world." "Unlike the caiman and most other reptiles, she gives birth to live young." "Diega has about 46 babies representing about a third of her body weight." "She also expels a dozen orange spheres eggs that never developed." "The starving mother eats some of her eggs." "These will help sustain her until she's ready to hunt again." "She'll also eat stillborns hastily backing off if she gnaws a live one by mistake." "Anacondas do not care for their young." "Diega's babies are now on their own." "Within minutes, the first of the newborns moves off, ready to take its chances in the llanos." "Perhaps half of Diega's offspring will survive." "Even as the neighboring rainforests disappear, the anaconda continues to thrive in these flooded lowlands." "This morning, the caimans find a free breakfast on the riverbanks" "Diega's remaining stillborns which are greedily snapped up." "Some of her living offspring lie low in the hyacinth doing their best not to attract unwanted attention." "It's time this newborn snake went in search of its first meal." "In fact, a baby caiman might do nicely" "But to hunt is to risk becoming the hunted." "Usually, stealth and camouflage render the anaconda invisible to the piranha." "Like a root adrift in a current, the baby makes its way through the hyacinth." "On rare occasions, though, an inexperienced youngster blunders into more open waters." "Another baby grabs this opportunity to beat a hasty retreat." "But the llanos has not begun to exhaust its supply of unpleasant surprises." "Like most cats the ocelot's not a big fan of water." "But he'll suffer a dunking in the interests of an anaconda lunch." "Long before they're full-grown" "Diega's brood will be decimated." "Those babies have a tough life in front." "They have a lot of predators." "As much as the big ones have almost no predators, it is completely the opposite in babies." "Nearly every animal can take them." "While Jesus gets acquainted with this year's crop of anacondas, they get their first taste of him." "With each new generation," "Jesus is one step closer to understanding the mysteries of anaconda reproduction." "Like their parents these babies will be numbered, catalogued, and DNA tested." "Then he will return them to the llanos with a mixture of trepidation and envy" "When I let them go I'm jealous I cannot glide so graceful in the swamp as they do and then spend their life there." "And I have this sense of, you know, the kids go to college that all the parents have." "They're out on their own and I hope they do well." "Though science is beginning to lift the veil of terror that surrounds the anaconda, many of the giant snake's greatest secrets remain unknown." "In the continuing search for answers," "Jesus and Renee will have to probe deeper into the recesses of South America's jungles," "and there's just no telling what they'll find." "I have no doubt that the giant of giants of anacondas is out there." "Whether we'll find it is a whole other question." "I've thought a lot about what to do if we find this animal that is too big for me to catch but is too big for me to let go." "I don't know what I will do." "It will be some tough fight." "And I don't know who's gonna win."