"DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:" "The very centre of Africa." "And the centre of two million square miles of dense tropical rain forest." "At first glance it seems deserted and eerily still, not an easy place to live." "But, in fact, there is a greater concentration of animals here, than anywhere else in Africa." "And in this world they must grab every opportunity." "Competition is intense and unrelenting." "Even the forest itself fights its corner with spines and poisonous sap." "Here, every living thing must fight for its space." "Such beauty." "But the flower is self-serving, enticing animals into an unwitting alliance." "Stingless bees." "They have to work hard." "The forest flowers make them do so by rationing their nectar, forcing each bee to visit, and so pollinate, at least a thousand blooms each day." "(BUZZING)" "For the bees, it's worth the effort." "They need the nectar to make honey which they store in pots." "It's so precious, they keep it hidden beneath the bark of a tree." "But their secret is out." "(CHIMPANZEE SHRIEKING)" "Nothing is safe in this forest." "Chimpanzees love honey." "She seems oblivious to danger." "A fall from up here could be fatal." "But she does need a bigger stick." "Only a chimp has the ability to break into a stingless bees' nest, as well hidden as this." "Chimps are extremely intelligent, but none is born with the skill to use a tool." "Youngsters, like this one, must learn by watching." "She uses special tools, one after another, to get all the honey she can, and in a few minutes she destroys what took the bees years to build." "In the rain forest, nothing is safe." "Here in the Congo, there can be as many as 500 trees crammed into every acre." "In the battle for space, some will rise to over 60 metres high, in just a few decades." "In a valley like this, there could be close on 1,000 different species of tree." "Up here, the crowns barely touch." "Each tree seems to respect its neighbour's space." "When they germinate down on the forest ﬂoor, young trees and plants are less restrained." "But every new generation fights it out, in battles we can see by accelerating time." "They must get light if they are to survive, and they squeeze, crush and even slash one another in order to reach it." "Despite the thick canopy above, some sunlight does filter through, and allows a few low-light specialists to bloom near the forest ﬂoor." "Down here there are animals too that seek out the sunlight." "The forest's largest predator." "A female rock python." "Her body is five metres long, weighs 100 kilos, and has 4,000 muscles that she uses to crush the life out of her victims." "But right now, her need is not for food." "It's for warmth." "She finds a rare patch where a shaft of sunlight strikes the ground, and she begins to bask." "She's cold-blooded." "So this is the only way she can raise the temperature of her body." "But now she's becoming very warm indeed, more than 10 degrees hotter than usual." "Al' 40 degrees Centigrade she's in danger of killing herself." "just in time, she moves off." "She disappears below ground." "(HISSING)" "This is her nest, and it's full of giant eggs." "It's critical for the eggs' development that they stay above 30 degrees." "Here in this special filming burrow, she gently wraps her super-heated body around the eggs, passing on to them the warmth of the sun." "She has done this every day for three months." "The repeated heat stress on her body is so great it could be lethal." "And at the very least, it will take three years for her to recover from incubating this one clutch of eggs." "Her parchment-shelled eggs carry the pressed imprint of her scales." "An indication of the strength of her embrace." "At last, her efforts are rewarded." "But the babies can't stay here." "They must leave their sanctuary and find food, in the tangled world above." "They're over 60 centimetres long, already big enough to be a threat to the smaller inhabitants of the forest." "But, they are themselves vulnerable." "Particularly to other snakes." "But this one is their mother." "Unusually for snakes, her maternal instincts continue for days after her eggs hatch." "Even so, the forest is such a dangerous place, that only one in a hundred of her youngsters is likely to reach adulthood." "just occasionally, the competition eases." "A tree suddenly produces fruit." "(CHIMPANZEES GIBBERING)" "It's a magnet for the creatures of the canopy, and they, in turn, as they feed, create a bonanza for those on the ground below." "A mob of red river hogs." "They have travelled over two miles through the thick undergrowth, to get to this fall of fruit." "But in the African forest, little comes for free." "This feast is a bribe." "The hogs will carry the seeds in their stomachs and deposit them far from the parent tree." "Night falls." "But one living community, which is neither animal nor plant, continues its never-ending work in the darkness." "This ground is alive with fungi, that digest all the litter discarded by the forest." "Some rare fungi do so with enzymes that are luminous." "The local people call them 'Chimpanzee fire.'" "Without the fungi, the dead vegetation would pile so high the living trees would be submerged." "Dawn." "And a new day reveals just how much control the jungle has over its own environment." "The forests of the Congo are the lungs of Africa." "As they use the sunlight to build their tissues, so they release oxygen and water vapour into the air." "Each hectare of forest produces as vapour almost 190,000 liters of water a year." "So much that it creates its own weather." "Clouds blanket the forest, driving up the humidity and temperature." "A storm is brewing." "The Congo might be the richest part of Africa, but it's also the most violent." "(WIND WHOOSHING)" "(THUNDERCLAPS)" "Each year, as many as a hundred million lightning bolts strike the forest." "That's more than anywhere else in the world." "And with the lightning comes the rain." "Up to 95% of the rain that falls here is generated by the forest itself." "With the deluge will come change to the animals and to the forest." "It's certainly perfect weather for frogs." "The big storm is the cue for the most important climb of this frog's life." "It's a male in search of a mate." "But if he is to find one, he has to get to the top." "He needs to keep his wits about him, for the rain also brings out hunters." "Easy does it." "The top at last," "(FROGS CROAKING) but he's late to the party." "(CROAKING)" "The higher a male sits, the further his voice will carry." "So the top slots are worth fighting for." "And he's won." "He has the top place." "So now it's time to sing." "(LOUD CROAKING)" "And a white-bellied female responds." "They join together to mate." "The loser will have to wait for the next storm, before he sings again." "She lays her eggs on a blade of a long leaf." "And he, using his back legs, folds it over, and glues its two edges together, shutting the eggs inside." "This sealed nest is the safest place these leaf-folding frogs can find, to protect their precious brood." "Within days, the eggs are developing." "The timing is perfect." "The rain washes away the glue and the tadpoles slip out of the leaves into the growing puddles below." "The rainy season reaches its peak and the ground has been transformed." "The forest is flooded." "It's a new world." "Fish swim in from the swollen streams, exploiting this newly-created space, snapping up the drowning insects." "This is a butterflyfish." "A Congo bichir." "The hunter becomes the hunted." "The butterflyfish is too quick and leaps out of danger." "The floods gradually drain back into the established waterways that run through the forest like blood vessels." "These is so much water ﬂowing through the forest that even little rivulets can carve out the soil around an ancient boulder." "This is the home of one forest creature, that has lived here in the Congo for 44 million years." "Picathartes." "These birds mate for life, and the male reaffirms the bond by displaying to the female." "They're building a mud nest on the underside of the boulder's overhang, where it'll be protected from the rain." "The female takes the lead." "The male doesn't seem quite so skilful." "Oh dear." "Luckily she can put things right." "Now she's collecting the soft furnishings." "He's brought some too, but he still can't get it right." "In the end, the female seems satisfied with the finish and just in time." "It might look as if he has been banished into the rain, but in fact they're a great team." "They share the incubation." "Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, for the next three weeks." "In due course, there are mouths to feed, and now the male must prove his worth." "Worms are a good start and he's doing well." "But the chicks are insatiable." "Fortunately, other things are on the menu." "He might be a poor nest builder, but he is redeeming himself now." "Domestic bliss!" "Rocky overhangs are the only place where picathartes will build their nest." "So they owe their home to the stream, that revealed the flank of the giant boulder." "This stream and countless others like it, merge to form the great rivers of Central Africa." "(BIRDS CHIRPING)" "More than 450 billion liters of rainwater, travelling down thousands of rivers, are heading west." "The waters pick up speed as the rivers spill over the edge of the central plateau and create giant cascades of white water." "The Kongou forces its way through the wildest, most untouched forest in the whole of Africa." "The Congo River system drains an area the size of India, carrying the waters westwards towards the Atlantic." "But before it reaches the coast, the rivers broaden, forcing back the forest." "And here, for the first time, there is space." "Wide, flat and safe." "(CHIRPING)" "These stretches of sand attract visitors from the coast." "Skimmers, searching for somewhere safe to settle." "(CHIRPING)" "The lower mandible of their beaks is greatly elongated." "They slice it through the surface of the water at 10 metres a second." "If and when it hits a tiny fish, it'll snap shut." "But why come up river to these open sand flats?" "(CHIRPING)" " This is the answer." "But this nursery will not exist for long." "Four weeks from now it'll be under 10 metres of water." "If by then these chicks can't fly," " they will drown." " (CHIRPING)" "The problem for young skimmers is that when they hatch the lower part of their beaks is the same size as the upper." "While they wait for it to grow, they do their best to learn the skimming technique." "(THUNDER RUMBLING)" "Open spaces may be safe, but they give no protection against the driving rain." "These storms are a warning that the skimmers must soon leave." "The river is already rising." "This year, the chicks get away in time." "It's not just water that has the power to clear a way through the forest." "There are animals that could do that too." "They have created a network of pathways that criss-cross the lowland forest and run for thousands of miles in all directions." "These path-makers are surprisingly stealthy." "But as night falls there's a chance of catching a glimpse of them." "(ELEPHANTS TRUMPETING)" "(RUSTLING)" "Forest elephants are very social creatures, but in dense jungle it's hard for them to find one another." "These elephants are lucky." "Here in the Congo there is one special place where they can meet and mingle." "A place that the elephants have created for themselves." "And this is it." "(TRUMPETING)" "Dzanga Bai, the legendary "village of elephants"." "As well as being a place where they can enjoy one another's company, this great clearing satisfies another craving." "For salts." "(TRUMPETING)" "The salts lie deep under the mud." "So the elephants have got to mine for them, which they do with high pressure water jets from their trunks." "(WATER BUBBLING)" "(ELEPHANTS TRUMPETING)" "The precious salts and the chance to socialise bring in elephants from far and wide." "If an elephant is in the mood to mate, this is the place to be." "(TRUMPETING)" "This young bull is in a state of musth, a kind of sexual fury." "(TRUMPETING)" "(TRUMPETING)" "He is so pumped up by hormones and the excitements of the crowd that he seems to have taken leave of his senses." "(TRUMPETING)" "(TRUMPETING)" "But will throwing his weight about impress the females?" "(TRUMPETING)" "The cows only become fertile once every two years." "So opportunities to encounter one at the right time are not common." "This could well be the first chance this young male has had." "(TRUMPETING)" " He's lucky." "And there are no older bulls around to put him in his place." "just for a moment, he is king of the Bai." "(TRUMPETING)" " But his rule doesn't last for long." " (TRUMPETING)" "Enter another lusty bull." " (TRUMPETING)" " And a much bigger one." "(TRUMPETING)" "But the young bull is still charged up with testosterone." "Bold or foolish, he's going into battle." "He never really had a chance." "(TRUMPETING)" "(TRUMPETING)" "Dzanha Bai is a huge clearing, but it's still just a speck in this vast expanse of green." "Elephants might fell trees and carve pathways, but nothing natural can hold back this forest forever." "Nothing but the Atlantic Ocean." "Loango beach, on Africa's west coast, one of the last truly wild places where the Congo jungle meets the sea." "Here the forest gives way to sand, surf, and fresh sea air." "The cool breezes and warm sunlight entice creatures out of the dark forest." "(LOWING)" " Forest buffalo appear first." " ( LO WI N G)" "And here in the surf, there are hippos." "(SNORTING)" "Spray blows in from the sea, making the grass salty." "So, here elephants can get their tasty salt without having to dig for it." "This mother with her tiny baby can feel the sun on her back." "Here it's safe for her little one." "They are free to eat in peace." "The bulls have all the room they need, so there is less risk of a fight." "(CHIRPING)" "Everyone, from gorillas to forest hogs, ventures out to relax on the beach." "(SNORTING)" "But the forest creatures can't stay out here forever." "Despite everything, the intense competition, the threats, the darkness, they need their forest, just as their forest needs them." "(TRUMPETING)" "The Congo rainforest, a four-day journey to the heart of Africa." "Once the plane leaves you're on your own." "This expedition planned to film two of the Congo's best-kept secrets." "But to even find them the crew would have to work very hard indeed." "You might as well be on a different planet coming to a place like this." "Planet Congo." "JAMES ALDRED:" "Mysterious." "Difficult." "Complex." "Challenging." "You know, everything's trying to bite you." " Suck your blood." " (BUZZING)" "It's like being tickled by a million feathers at the same time." "(SIGHS)" "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "The insects might be torture, but that's the least of their worries." "The only way to get deep into the jungle is to follow these trails." "Trails made by dangerous forest elephants." "ALDRED'." "Well, the first thing you need to know about the forest elephants is you don't want to meet one." "'Cause running away can elicit a charge and it could be exactly the wrong thing to do." "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "Our team are completely dependent on their B 'aka guides for safety." "(WHISPERS IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)" "(WHISPERS IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)" "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "But it's these same forest elephants that james has come to film and just to make the challenge harder he's here to film them in the dark." "Nobody knows exactly what they get up to at night." "They haven't been filmed like this before." "(ELEPHANT TRUMPETING)" "I couldn't rig this place if the B'aka weren't here." "Watching my back, really." "James needs to operate the remote cameras from somewhere out of the elephants' reach." "(WHIZZING)" "A tree platform seems like the best option." "(SPEAKING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)" "Apparently, they have very big elephants round here." "They want us to put it a bit higher so I think I'll do what they say." "But no one wants to stay out at night and help james with the filming." "(SPEAKING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)" "(SPEAKING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)" "(SPEAKING IN NATIVE LANGUAGE)" "So james will be alone until morning." "If anything goes wrong, he's on his own." "If they really wanted to, they could push these trees over." "I can't imagine that's going to be an issue." "As james settled down for the night, he's got no idea of the trouble that's coming his way." "(ANIMAL ROARING)" "What's going on?" "Twenty miles away Mark MacEwan is also up in the middle of the night." "The animal he's after is proving impossible to find." "Uh'.!" "So, we get up in the darkness and we walk through the jungle at night, hoping to hear the sound of cracking branches or leaves moving up in the trees." "ATTENBOROUGH"." "That means chimpanzees are stirring in the treetops and Mark is here to film chimps hunting for honey." "There's one chimp in particular he needs to find, a teenager with a very sweet tooth, known to go further in the pursuit of the bees' nest than any other." "I've spent six days walking probably the equivalent of a half marathon every day in 100 percent humidity and about 95 degrees in the shade." "And we just can't find our chimpanzee." "(BEES BUZZING)" "ATTENBOROUGH"." "Time is ticking away and Mark is running out of filming days." "MARK MACEWAN"." "At the moment I just need some good luck." "We've come an awfully long way to get this sequence." "We've got probably 70 to 72 days left." "But it's hard work at the moment." "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "All Mark can do is persevere and hope for a break." "But not all the forest creatures are so shy." "Perched high in his tree, james Aldred is waiting patiently for the elephants to come in." "(ELEPHANTS SNORTING)" "At last the elephants are here." "But they're behaving strangely." "(ELEPHANTS GRUNTING)" "(WHISPERS) He knows something's not quite right." "(TRUMPETING)" "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "The elephants seem agitated." "(SHUFFLING OF LEAVES)" "(TWIGS BREAKING)" "ALDRED:" "They just want to get rid of you." "ATTENBOROUGH"." "One begins to thump the tree with its head." "james has no option but to weather the attack." "(CRACKING)" "ALDRED'." "They lean forward and keep head-butting, keep head-butting, keep head-butting." "(RUSTLING)" "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "Suddenly the cameras cut out." "And james is left in complete darkness." "After three weeks searching," "Mark has lost nearly two stone in weight but he hasn't given up." "He can't afford to put down his camera for a second." "Suddenly, the guide spots the honey hunter." "This is it." "(WHISPERS) Where is she?" " She's inside the tree." "Just for some honey, she's risking her life." "It's amazing." "Well, I think, I just couldn't stop smiling for several days after filming that." "The relief was just unbelievable." "Back at the camera platform, james has had a long night." "For over four hours the elephant tried to shake him out of the tree." "Got down this morning when the B'aka came to collect me." "Went to look at the camera and he'd pulled it out of the tree and he'd chewed through the power cable." "He must have gotten a bit of a shock." "I mean only 12 volts." "But serves him right, quite honestly." "But at least we got a shot of him before he trashed the camera." "(LAUGHS) Silver lining." "ATFEN BOROUGH:" "Despite this bumpy start, the elephants soon got used to james and james got used to the elephants." "Filming here was never going to be easy." "But we were soon able to reveal the night life of forest elephants like never before." "(TRUMPETING)" "DAVID ATFEN BOROUGH:" "The Cape of Good Hope, on Africa's southerly tip." "Here, two great seas meet." "One, the warm Indian Ocean, the other, the chilly Atlantic." "And as they mingle, so they create a billowing cloak that drapes the summit of Table Mountain." "Spectacular though this is, the mountain's cloudy covering is only a hint of the profound influence that these two very different oceans have on the fortunes of life here." "(WAVES CRASHING)" "And not just here at the Cape, but across the length and breadth of southern Africa." "Two thousand miles north from the Cape, beneath this sandy beach, new life is stirring." "(SCURRYING)" "Hundreds of baby green turtles emerge like a torrent from the safety of their nest." "Each one, just seven centimetres long, must make a 100-metre sprint down the beach." "From the moment they hatch, they're driven by an instinctive urge to run to the sea." "Few creatures start life with the odds for success so heavily stacked against them." "Yellow-billed kites." "Pied crows." "(SQUAWKING)" "But so many of these hatchlings appear together that predators can't catch them all." "Last out, this baby might seem doomed." "But struggling out late could just give her a chance." "(CROWS CAWING)" "The crows seem insatiable." "Even those that reach the sea aren't safe." "This female has to make a dash for it." "She's still in danger, and not just from above." "A ghost crab may be smaller than the hatchling, but it has the strength to drag her into its lair." "Not this time." "At last, the sea." "(WAVES LAPPING)" "She has to catch a breath if she's not to drown." "But the pounding waves make it desperately difficult." "(WAVES CRASHING)" "Beyond the surf, calmer water." "But even here, the hatchling is not out of danger." "She dives." "just in time." "Only one hatchling in a thousand will survive to adulthood." "But if she does, she may live for 80 years." "For now, the ocean is there to be explored." "As the hatchling disappears into the deep blue, she swims into the waters of one the planet's most powerful currents, the Agulhas." "The Agulhas sweeps south towards the Cape, transporting 100 billion gallons of warm water every day." "These tropical seas are so warm, they evaporate on an enormous scale." "Water vapour rises until, at altitude, it cools and condenses into clouds." "As the clouds drift inland, they bring rain to one of the least explored corners of our planet, the mountains of Mozambique." "(THUNDER RUMBLING)" "This the wettest place in southern Africa." "Decades of civil war have kept travellers away from this little-known land." "It was satellite mapping that revealed the full extent of the forest that grows here." "So now it's known to outsiders as the Google rainforest." "(BIRDS CHIRPING)" "It could also be called the butterfly forest." "After the rains, butterflies have emerged together in huge numbers." "As soon as their wings dry out, they will take to the air." "Their goal, to find a mate." "But how?" "There may be thousands close by, but the foliage is so thick it's difficult for them to find each other." "(BIRDS TWITTERING)" "They have a remarkable solution." "They follow rivers upstream and travel to higher ground." "The journey can take hours of determined flying." "Eventually they emerge into the only open space there is." "The treeless peak of Mount Mabu." "Up here, free from the confines of the forest, they hold a butterfly ball." "Now, the butterflies have all the space they need for their aerobatic courtship." "The male's strategy is simple, fly higher and faster than the competition and just maybe you'll win a virgin female." "This spectacular gathering, unseen by outsiders until now, happens for just half an hour each morning and for just a few weeks in the year." "Once mated, the females descend back to the rainforest to lay their eggs." "A forest that only exists because of moisture rising from the warm Agulhas current hundreds of miles away in the Indian Ocean." "The rainwater now ﬂows southwards from Mozambique's highest peaks to the lowlands of the eastern Cape." "And where the land flattens, rivers slow, creating a vast swamp 50 miles across." "This is Gorongosa." "Here, all kinds of creatures come to catch fish." "(WATER BUBBLING)" "(SQUAWKING)" "Whiskered catfish work as a team." "They take a gulp of air at the surface and then belch it out underwater to create a net of bubbles," "and that traps little fish." "There are fish for everyone." "And each species has its own technique for catching them." "(SQUAWKING)" "It's all very well having a big beak but you've still got to know how to use it." "This young pelican has a lot to learn, and not long to do so." "(SQUAWKING)" "Maybe, like the catfish, teamwork is the answer." "It's certainly working for the ﬂock, and this pelican seems to be getting the hang of it." "But surely it can't swallow that catfish." "Trying to was a mistake." "(CROWS CAWING)" "The rainwater, briefly held in Gorongosa's swamp, has now been enriched with silt and sand." "All down this coast, sediment-laden rivers, the Zambezi, the Limpopo, the Save, drain back to the sea," "and there they meet the Agulhas Current." "And what happens to all that sand?" "Over the millennia, the Agulhas has worked it into a complex underwater landscape." "This vast sand sculpture is the Bazaruto Archipelago, the oldest of its kind in the world." "It may look like paradise but living here is not easy." "(WAVES ROARING)" "For 100,000 years the Agulhas Current has battered these submerged dunes with underwater sandstorms." "But, where the water is deep enough to escape these storms, nutrients carried from Africa's interior fuel an explosion of life." "A rare oceanic hunter rules here." "Giant kingfish." "As big as a man and, weight for weight, one of the most powerful fish in the sea." "Despite their size, they're extraordinarily agile when hunting." "Normally, kingfish are solitary, but for just a few weeks each year, they gather at places like Bazaruto and prepare for an extraordinary journey," "one that will take them far inland." "The Mtentu River." "The king of the kingfish leads them upstream." "As they travel further into freshwater, they seem to change from aggressive hunters into dedicated pilgrims." "Now, many miles from their natural home, and in response to an unknown cue, they stop and begin to circle." "Other marine fish that migrate upriver usually do so in order to breed, but there's no evidence that these kingfish spawn up here." "Neither do they hunt." "So, what are they doing?" "In truth, the purpose of this strange behaviour is still unknown." "Within a few weeks, they will retrace their journey back to the ocean." "The lives of kingfish, like those of turtles, and butterflies, and pelicans, are influenced by the Agulhas Current." "But that influence can only reach so far." "And this is why." "The Drakensberg mountains." "Here, local people say that the vultures soar so high they can see into the future." "These sheer cliffs, rising to over 3, 000 metres, hold back the advancing rain clouds, and as a result, the land beyond them is starved of water." "This is the greatest expanse of sand in the world, a seemingly endless desert that is the vast, parched centre of Southern Africa." "Thousands of miles to the west, where this desert meets the Atlantic Ocean, another current prevails." "But the Benguela Current, surging up the west side of Africa, has a very different character." "(SEALS BARKING)" "It's extremely cold, full of nutrients, and it's thronged with life." "A great white shark." "They can raise their body temperature to 10 degrees above that of the surrounding sea." "But doing so requires an enormous amount of high-grade fuel." "So this is a great bonanza for them." "The body of a dead whale." "The carcass will draw in every great white for miles around." "And here, off Cape Town, that means a lot of sharks." "Instead of feeding in a frenzy, these sharks have rather refined table manners." "They swim side by side to get the measure of each other, then each takes its turn." "This female is the biggest so she eats first." "The next only feeds when she gives way." "The waters of the Benguela are so rich, they support more great white sharks than any other seas on the planet." "(WAVES CRASHING)" "And they are so cold, they attract some surprising creatures to these African shores." "(PENGUINS WARBLING)" "Penguins." "African penguins." "This female is returning to relieve her partner." "Of course, there's no ice here, but these rocks can be almost as slippery." "(WARBLING CONTINUES)" "But there are more serious obstacles than the slippery rocks awaiting them." "It's his turn to feed, so he leaves her to look after their eggs." "Now, she must tackle a problem faced by no other kind of penguin." "For the next 10 days, she must protect her eggs from the African sun." "A dense coat of feathers that keeps her warm in cold seas now stiﬂes her." "On these exposed rocks, she must shade her eggs instead of keeping them warm." "Everything here seems the wrong way round." "For some, the soaring temperature is too much." "A neighbour deserts his nest." "His egg will not survive." "He's not the only one to give up." "Some years, not a single chick is reared." "Penguins are adapted to withstand temperatures of 40 degrees below zero, not 40 degrees above." "(PENGUIN CHICK PEEPING)" "Now, at the hottest part of the day, the very worst time, her chicks are hatching." "just when they need her most, she's reaching the limit of her endurance." "After 10 days of intensive fishing, the chick's father comes back to take his turn at the nest." "But will he be too late?" "(CHICKS PEEPING)" "(FEMALE PENGUIN BLEATING)" "He greets his young for the very first time." "(CHICK PEEPING)" "The coolness of the Benguela Current brought the penguins here." "But that very coolness is a great disadvantage because it generates little rain." "It can, however, produce moisture in a different form." "(RUMBLING)" "A thick blanket of fog rolls in from the sea and condenses on this thirsty land." "And each year, the desert bursts into life with a dazzling display." "Water is so scarce that this show will not last long, so plants compete to attract their pollinators with colour." "Here in Namaqualand, a 600-mile strip of coastal desert becomes carpeted with blooms." "The morning sun opens a Namaqua Daisy, and reveals a male monkey beetle asleep inside." "Nights here are so cold, that monkey beetles shelter within the closed up petals of the daisies." "The habit brings benefits to both sides." "The beetle is kept warm and the flower gets pollinated." "But now the beetle has urgent business." "He must find a mate." "(WINGS WHIRRING)" "As he searches, he hops from bloom to bloom, pollinating each in turn." "At last, he spots a potential mate." "A golden princess." "But here comes trouble." "A rival." "There's no time for introductions." "But he's been too slow." "The rivals immediately begin to brawl." "The female will only mate inside the daisy, so they wrestle for possession." "They're so engrossed in fighting they've pushed her off." "The challenger is ejected." "The winner wastes no time before getting back to business." "At last." "Now there will be a new generation of monkey beetles to pollinate these Namaqualand flowers." "For most of the year, this land is desperately dry, but just occasionally, brief, violent storms sweep in from the cold ocean." "(THUNDER RUMBLING)" "Springbok have been roaming this desert for many months, searching for one of these rare and highly-localised downpours." "(THUNDER RUMBLING)" "The grass is sprouting." "And that is worth celebrating." "If you're a springbok that means pronking." "We still don't know exactly why they do this." "The simplest answer is that they're dancing for joy." "Africa's most southerly tip." "This is where the two great ocean currents, the warm Agulhas and the cold Benguela, crash into one another." "And this collision, in itself, draws in life in abundance." "(DOLPHINS CHATTERING)" "A super-pod of hunting dolphins, 5,000 strong." "(DOLPHINS WHISTLING)" "And shadowing them," "Africa's biggest predator," "a Bryde's whale." "This female is 15 metres long and weighs more than a whole family of elephants." "The dolphins are in pursuit of sardines." "Millions of them!" "But these cold-water fish are heading towards an impenetrable barrier of warm water that they will not cross, the Agulhas Current." "(DOLPHINS WHISTLING)" "They're trapped." "And that gives the whale her chance." "But the sardines are so speedy that the whale only catches a few with each pass." "More and more hunters arrive." "(BIRDS HONKING)" "The whale needs the other hunters, to push the fish upwards, forcing them against the surface." "Now they have nowhere to escape." "With each lumbering turn, she loses precious time, time that favours the more nimble." "The Bryde's whale probably knows that this opportunity will last less than five minutes." "And with the last few lunges, she finally cashes in." "The forces that triggered this great event have also shaped the fortunes of life far beyond this particular battleground." "Without these currents, southern Africa would be a desert." "But combined, the very different powers of the Agulhas and the Benguela have transformed the Cape into a land where life can ﬂourish." "The Comoros Islands off Africa's east coast, are a haven for green turtles." "Every year, a million turtles hatch on these beaches, but the chances of any one of them surviving is tiny." "(CAWING)" "(WAVES RUMBLING)" "The Africa team came here to try and capture the dramatic first few minutes in the lives of these baby turtles." "It was to be both a technical and surprisingly emotional challenge." "FLAY:" "It's only when you get down on the eye level of the baby turtle that you realise what an enormous journey it's got to make down the beach." "And it really is quite epic." "PEARSON:" "That's fine." "Oh, yeah, that's lovely." "It's using all these complicated, heavy bits of equipment, which hopefully will enable us to get into the world of a turtle which is just a few inches long." "As they break out of all the soft sand, they hit the hard sand and that's where the real sprint takes place." "They must be desperate to hit that water because you can see, the sea's just over the horizon." "We were following them all the way down and you do kind of get involved with them and cheering them on." "FLAY:" "Okay, slow down a bit, slow down." "And then suddenly all these crows come flocking in and start picking them off and you just think that's just so unfair." "PEARSON:" "Lots more coming in." "There's loads coming in now." "FLAY:" "And you've got to feel for them." "You know, it's really quite upsetting, particularly when you're looking through the camera and I'm just filling a frame with a turtle running down the beach, then suddenly from nowhere a beak comes in and that's it." "That turtle is no more." "ATTENBOROUGH"." "The turtles that escape the perils of the beach still have to face pounding surf." "But at last, they're in their element." "More than can be said for the crew." "PEARSON:" "They're faster than you, aren't they?" "MILLER:" "Yep." "It's a bit embarrassing." "MILLER:" "Beaten by something that's less than a day old. (ALL LAUGHING)" "When we saw hatchlings getting off the beach and you see them going in the white water you think they'd just get obliterated." "They just punch through the water, they do get flung around but then they just right themselves, keep on swimming, and they're ahead of you coming out the back of the wave and it's amazing." "MILLER:" "You're seeing all these baby turtles getting picked off left, right and centre, but they just keep going." "They are just so resilient." "(WAVES ROLLING)" "And that made what happened next so distressing." "A particularly high spring tide ﬂooded the beach." "Any baby turtles still in their nests would be lucky to survive." " WOMAN:" "See it bubbling out as well." " PEARSON:" "Yeah." "KEVIN:" "Well, it means that basically anything below that line is going to be gone." "Let's hope and pray it's not, but..." "As you say, we don't know." "Let's wait and see." "All across the world, turtles are in decline." "Their eggs are stolen, the adults are hunted for their flesh, and they drown in fishing nets." "But here in the Comoros, they have friends." "PEARSON:" "It's amazing here in Itsamia." "It's just a really heartening story of how the local people are doing everything they can to protect, sort of, what they think of as their turtles." "And some of the baby turtles have survived the flood tide." "(SPEAKING FRENCH)" "YOUNG BOY:" "The whole village comes to help the hatchlings." "But the most important effort is to protect the adults from outsiders who would hunt them for their meat." "FLAY:" "They've taken it upon themselves to really police the beaches around here and make sure that poaching is kept to a minimum." "The selfless protection these people provide means that this is one of the few places in the world where turtle numbers are actually increasing." "And remarkably, here in Itsamia, the population has, in fact, doubled in the last decade." "As the shoot was coming to the end, cameraman Kevin Flay noticed that some of the turtles that made it through the surf, faced one last danger." "I'm getting shots of a kite which is flying down and taking turtles off the water surface." "That was a part of the story we had to tell." "The aim is for us to be underwater looking straight up as this happens and that's actually really quite hard." "WOMAN:" "Okay." "Three." "Two, one." "Undeterred, the crew got into position." "There we go, the kite's up." "MILLER:" "You can't see where you're going because my head's glued to this viewfinder so I'm banging into rocks and things like that." "I'm really just trying to keep the turtle in shot." "MILLER:" "Something came in then?" "She came in and swooped down over the water's surface." "And you could see the kite from underwater?" "I could see it." "I could see the shape." "PEARSON:" "In frame and you were running?" "MILLER:" "Yeah." "PEARSON:" "Didn't take the turtle." "MILLER:" "Didn't take the turtle." "PEARSON:" "That's the best of both worlds, because we got our lovely underwater shot of a kite and the turtle gets away!" "This lucky hatchling isn't the only one." "With the help of the village of Itsamia, thousands more have a chance to make it to the open ocean." "PEARSON:" "It's only really local populations that can actually support and sustain this conservation work." "If it comes from the roots upwards then it's got a chance of success." "FLAY:" "I think it's amazing, I really do, the fact that they do this and we should see it more often around the world." "It's hard not to admire these extraordinary little creatures as they battle against such odds." "This baby turtle won't touch land again until she returns to the very same island to lay her own eggs." "With luck, she'll find the beach is still protected by the people of Itsamia."