These bizarre little birds are baby ostriches.
They're just a few days old.
In time, they'll become superb desert survivors.
But in the Kalahari, these early days are perilous.
Like leopards and meerkats, adult ostriches can extract all the moisture they require from their food.
The chicks, however, won't survive much more than another day without water.
But there's none in sight.
How can their parents conjure up water out here?
The youngsters follow their parents as they head out onto a featureless wasteland.
It seems like a suicidal journey. the Etosha salt pan.
Here, water is more often a mirage than reality.
It's now well over 40 degrees centigrade.
Their father shades his chicks from the midday sun.
Another mirage?
No, the ostrich family is not alone out here.
Surrounded by the vast expanse of sun-baked mud, sweet fresh water wells up from deep below ground like a miracle.
Deep below lies a secret.
One that was discovered only 25 years ago.
Humid air rushing to the surface gives this place its name, Dragon's Breath Cave.
The shaft descends for 60 meters until it meets...
Here there is a massive chamber big enough to swallow three jumbo jets, nose to tail filled with cool, fresh water.
The world's largest underground lake.
This is fossil water.
It's been trapped here undisturbed for thousands, if not millions, of years.
We have no idea how deep the lake is.
Divers have been down to 100 meters, and still there's no sign of the bottom.
Remarkably, dragon's breath is part of a vast cave system that extends beneath the Kalahari for thousands of kilometers.
Even here, in this lonely cave, Golden catfish, only found in this one cave.
They're the rarest and most isolated fish in the world.
Life down here is as challenging as it is in the desert above.
There's no food, except the debris that occasionally falls onto the surface.
And these catfish are totally blind.
The only world they know is the one they sense through touch.
A blind fish living in perpetual darkness, deep beneath one of the most arid regions of Africa.
The old bull won't tolerate a rival.
Pushing and shoving, they size each other up.
The young rival seems to think he has a chance and attacks.
The first few blows usually settle things in such battles, but here the stakes are high.
To lose means exile in the desert.
Neither will back down.
As the fight intensifies, they change tactics.
The young male aims for the rump.
The old bull targets his rival's legs.
The old bull is down.
Is this the end of his reign?
He knows a knockout blow is coming.
But the old bull ducks... and strikes a blow to his rival's underbelly.
Out for the count.
The old bull is victorious.
But only just.
This agama lizard has spotted an opportunity.
Only one thing attracts more flies than the wildebeest.
Lions are famously bad-tempered.
They could swat the lizard like the flies he's hoping to ambush.
Poor her.
Maybe...
To be within striking distance, he's got to hold his nerve.
Got one.
Now he's getting his eye in.
But this might be a bit ambitious.
It may take courage to hunt on the back of a lion.
But it takes sense to know when to run away.
The wildebeest won't stay for long, and when they leave, most of the flies will follow.
Thank you.
Among the steaming geysers of Lake Bergoria, over a million lesser flamingos bathe and feed in the caustic water.
They gather whenever the algae bloom.
These huge numbers create one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth.
Almost all the world's lesser flamingos live on this chain of lakes, moving from one lake to another as the amount of algae in each changes.
All along the lake shore, volcanic vents are a reminder of the forces that continue to change this land.
And a streak of color on the horizon signals that relief for the parched plains is on its way.
A crowned eagle has been desperately waiting for what she hopes the rain will bring food for her hungry chick.
Nesting here has been her biggest gamble.
Her chick's life depends on the arrival of creatures from the far rainforests of the Congo.
Her wait will soon be over.
The largest mammal migration in Africa is on the move.
Ten million fruit bats are drawn to this tiny forest on the edge of the eastern savannah.
The bats flock here to gorge themselves on fruit.
It's what the crowned eagle and her chick have been waiting for.
But they're not alone.
Other eagles have flown in from miles around fish eaters, marshal eaters, and they're all after the bats.
The gamble the crowned eagle took months ago by nesting here has paid off.
She is the only eagle to actually nest in this forest, the only one who took the risk to breed here well before the trees came into fruit and the bats flooded in.
She only breeds once every two years, so her timing must be perfect.
In a few months, the bats will leave.
But her gamble means her chick will have the best possible start in life.
But their secret is out.
Nothing is safe in this forest.
Chimpanzees love hunting.
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 bee's 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 rainforest, nothing is safe.
Top at last.
But he's late to the party.
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.
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 rain washes away the glue and the tadpoles slip out of the leaves into the growing puddles below.
The precious salt and the chance to socialize bring in elephants from far and wide.
If an elephant is in the mood to mate, this is the place to be.
This young bull is in a state of musth.
A kind of sexual fury is so pumped up by hormones and the excitements of the crowd that he seems to have taken leave of his senses.
But will throwing his weight about impress the females?
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.
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.
But his rule doesn't last for long.
Enter another lusty bull.
And a much bigger one.
But the young bull is still charged up with testosterone.
Bold or foolish, he's going into battle.
Come on.
He never really had a chance.
Few creatures start life with the odds for success so heavily stacked against them.
Yellow-billed kites.
Pied crows.
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.
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.
She has to catch her breath if she's not to drown, but the pounding waves make it desperately difficult.
Beyond the surf, calmer water.
But even here, the hatchling is not out of danger.
She dives... just in time.
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.
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.
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 around.
For some, the soaring temperature is too much.
A neighbor 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.
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?
He greets his young for the very first time.
A lone Grevy's zebra.
He weighs close to half a ton and could go for three days without drinking.
Like the macaques, his forebears were refugees from the advancing Sahara.
The land is scrubby and dry.
But this stallion has claimed it as his own.
He's been waiting months for visitors. female visitors.
If they like his territory, they might stay a while.
It's his first chance to mate for a very long time.
Hardly a success.
Perhaps his visitors are looking for a more impressive partner.
There's another setback.
The females were being followed.
A posse of young males.
Everyone a rival.
It's time to separate the men from the boys.
One by one, the stallion sees them off.
The females had ringside seats.
And his prowess has not gone unnoted.
Machismo gives way to Tentenus.
This oasis is fed by a hot volcanic spring.
Slightly away from the stream of near-boiling water, it's cooler and fish can live.
These are tilapia.
Hatchlings stick close to their mother.
There are other dangers here beside the scalding water.
Particularly at night.
And the tilapia are almost blind in the darkness.
In panic, they all leap to escape the hunter's approach.
But this female can't abandon her brood.
The crocodiles won't be thwarted.
They too can leap.
With first light, the crocodiles lose the element of surprise, and the battle is over for now.
The mother fish has survived, but where are her young?
All present and correct.
They spent the whole night sheltering in her mouth.
The contest will be repeated at sunset.
There is nowhere else to go.
It's approaching midday.
A fringe-toed lizard is hungry.
He's on a stakeout.
Flashy scales reflect some of the sun's rays.
Nevertheless, the heat is almost unbearable.
His prey hasn't left home all day.
The lizard is the last animal still out on the dunes.
But even he can't take it anymore.
To survive longer, you'd need a space suit.
And in a way, that's what these insects have.
Silver ants' armored skin reflects light.
They can tolerate temperatures that would kill any other land animal.
Even so, they can only survive for less than 10 minutes in the midday sun.
Time is precious.
The ants race to find food as soon as their predators go to ground.
They can't afford to waste a second getting lost.
So they spin to take a bearing from the sun.
They log every change of direction, every footstep, in order to know exactly where they are and where their nest lies.
Only four minutes to spare, and they found a victim of heat stroke.
A meal. but it's going to take a monumental effort to get it home.
Three minutes to go and they're nearing their maximum temperature, an astounding 53 degrees Celsius.
But there are already casualties.
One minute left and they're not going to make it.
Something has to change.
