Original subtitles

Sauraha, Nepal.

This rhino is not lost.

He is on his way to find food.

To get it, he must travel through a new and alien world.

This rhino in his lifetime

has seen more changes than any of his previous generations.

Across the globe,

animals of all kinds are now contending

with one newly dominant species...

...us.

Like so many wild creatures, he's had to learn

how to live in the human world.

Some animals

have changed their behaviour

to make the most out of living amongst us.

These long-tailed macaques live in Bali.

They have developed new interests

brought by human visitors.

Every morning, the troop heads for a building

in the centre of their territory.

Uluwatu Temple.

Tourists come here every day - in crowds.

So the temple grounds are full of opportunities...

...if you know where to look.

There is a constant supply of hats...

...and sunglasses.

And if you've mastered the element of surprise...

...it's easy to get them.

But this harvest is not for eating.

It's for bargaining.

Seems like a fair trade.

But there are greater rewards to be had

for those who know how to get them.

And this old male appears to be doing...

...very well.

He and the other elders in this troop

have both experience and knowledge.

They've been working the temple for over ten years,

and now concentrate on the big stuff...

...things that human beings just can't do without.

No-one wants to walk home with just one shoe.

And these old boys can't wait

to get their hands on the latest tech.

They've worked out that we simply can't survive

without our phones...

...or our wallets.

The older males understand

something the youngsters have yet to learn...

...the art of the deal.

A banana?

How dare you!

A bar of chocolate?

That's better.

The real skill is in the negotiations.

The macaques are playing us at our own game.

They demand...

...whatever they want.

Humanity has spread to every corner of the globe.

We have become a force of nature.

We have altered 80% of the land's surface.

Eight billion people now live on this planet...

...and we are changing the world around us

at such speed...

...that, for animals, the challenge is to keep up.

New York City.

Ants.

This particular species is thought to have arrived here

with the first European settlers.

They are now known as pavement ants

because they live almost exclusively in our towns and cities.

And they're thriving because of junk food.

And here on Broadway Avenue,

there's a lot of it.

This is what every pavement ant desires.

And to get it...

...the ants use the city's thousands of miles

of underground tunnels.

This scout is closing in on its target.

But the animals with which they share the pavement

are 40 million times their weight...

...so it's best to stay in the cracks.

Jackpot!

A meat mountain.

This is too big a job for just one ant.

This worker is female,

as they are in all ant colonies,

and she leaves a trail of pheromones to mark a path.

She communicates with every sister she meets

as she returns to the nest,

and news on the street spreads fast.

This ultra-processed meat

is very different from their original food.

But their digestive system is the key to their success.

It's able to keep up with the way

humans constantly change their diet.

Nowadays, the vast majority of what they eat

comes from human food.

On Broadway alone,

pavement ants eat the equivalent

of a staggering 60,000 hot dogs every year.

The calories in a single hot dog

could fuel the growth

of the entire ant colony for a month...

...if only they can get it back to the nest.

But this slow work makes them vulnerable.

They aren't the only ones partial to fast food.

It's a race to get their prize home.

There may be losses...

...but the colony as a whole will now thrive.

In fact, pavement ants are so successful here

that they outnumber human New Yorkers 1,000 to 1.

But success in the human world can be harder to achieve

if your reputation precedes you.

Here in India,

this cobra is heading directly for a village.

It has detected the scent of prey.

Nearly two metres long,

it has enough venom in a single bite

to kill ten people.

Snake bites are responsible

for nearly 60,000 deaths a year

in India alone.

They travel so silently

that their presence is often undetected.

And when they are hunting...

...there is no place they won't go.

A toad.

Each tip of its forked tongue

collects chemical signals from the prey

and helps to reveal its position.

But up close...

...the snake relies on movement

to precisely locate its prey.

The toad must pick its moment to escape.

Every time it touches the ground...

...the toad leaves behind a scent.

It can hide...

...but the trail will lead the snake to it.

These cobras don't just hunt here.

They live here.

They have found a home where the Hindu villagers revere them

and consider them to be demigods.

Remarkably, scientists believe that this tolerance

has led to a change in the snakes' behaviour.

They move more slowly

and are less likely to strike if disturbed.

One of the most feared animals on the planet

has found a place where they are accepted

and can coexist with human beings.

But for many animals living in the human world,

it pays to keep a low profile.

Here in Melbourne, Australia,

one creature has perfected the art of camouflage.

A frogmouth chick.

Its father helps to hide it during the day.

They are nocturnal birds,

and as day turns to night,

its parents come out of the shadows

to reap the rewards of urban living.

The city lights create

excellent conditions for hunting.

Every night in the city

is as bright as when there is a full moon.

So city frogmouths often...

...have their mouths full.

He's growing fast, and today he just won't sit still.

And now he has revealed his presence.

The first rule of frogmouth behaviour is

don't move in the day.

But this is the one time in a frogmouth's life

when the urge to fly simply cannot be suppressed.

But he's not ready to leave home just yet.

Come night-time...

...he's hungry again.

He is wide awake...

...and wants to take off where he left off.

But he's getting unwanted attention,

and this time his parent is not nearby to protect him.

Humans bring pets,

and cats in Australia kill a million birds a day.

His first proper flight.

But unless he can find a safe place to roost,

he is still in peril.

Made it.

But if he is to survive in the city, like the adults,

he'll have to learn how to blend in.

Some animals are so bold

that they don't even try to hide.

To see a large predator in the built-up world is a rare sight.

And here in Lake Tahoe, in North America,

these black bears are particularly big...

...and they're heading right to the centre of town.

Winter is approaching,

and these bears need to put on as much weight as possible

before the snow arrives.

This is a great place to gorge.

It's now bear country.

Why struggle for a meal...

...when you can cross the street...

...for a takeaway?

There's so much food here

that some of the bears are 50% heavier

than their country cousins.

But why stop here?

Some bears just want to dine in.

A lucky few are able to get an easy meal from the human world.

But when WE venture to the natural world in search of food...

...the harvest is on a different scale.

In just four decades,

fishing reduced fish populations by half...

...and created great problems for the ocean predators

that once had such food to themselves.

Off the coast of Vancouver Island,

humpback whales inhabit waters

where herring have been overfished.

Humpbacks, however, are renowned for their ingenuity.

12 years ago, an adult male called Conger

adopted a totally new way of feeding.

When the density of fish in the water is low,

and birds are diving to catch them...

...the humpback opens its mouth

and creates a space that the fish mistake for shelter.

The fish swim in...

...and the trap is closed.

Conger was the first humpback whale to be seen doing this.

Now 30 whales in the area use this same technique.

The population of humpbacks here is growing,

and you might think that this would

reduce fish stocks even more,

but something surprising is thought to be happening.

These tiny phytoplankton are the basis of the food chain

and need a vital ingredient to grow.

Iron.

Whale faeces are rich in iron...

...and great whales produce it in enormous quantities...

...so the phytoplankton flourishes, and herring feed on it.

Whale faeces, in fact,

are helping to restore the whole ecosystem.

The herring attract seabirds,

diving birds attack them from beneath,

and gulls and shearwaters dive on them from above.

Even bald eagles benefit from this rich feast.

Astonishingly, even though Conger and all the other whales

are feasting on fish,

their role in fertilising the ocean is so influential

that herring numbers here are actually predicted to increase.

And the role they play in rejuvenating the environment...

...is having an even greater impact on the human world.

The flourishing plankton also collects carbon

from the atmosphere, just as trees do...

...so much so that each great whale

has the same impact as a forest of 30,000 trees.

Our great whales were once hunted...

...and if they return to their pre-whaling numbers,

it's estimated that this would be equivalent to planting

over 30 billion trees.

Whales are now being recognised as benefiting humanity.

But for most large animals,

competition with humans brings conflict.

This six-tonne African bull elephant is in his prime.

To stand the best chance of winning fights for females,

he needs to be big.

He can smell highly nutritious food is near.

But crossing the boundary to reach it

is a dangerous journey.

He must wait for the cover of darkness.

These Kenyan farmers are preparing for the night ahead.

They have had to guard their crops every night

for the last two months.

With only two days until harvest,

this is a critical time.

In a single night,

a bull elephant can destroy the entire crops

produced by ten farmers.

But he's taking a huge risk.

He's twice the height of a man...

...and he won't back down easily.

This human-wildlife conflict happens night after night.

And each year, it takes the lives

of up to 200 elephants and 20 people in Kenya alone.

This standoff is potentially lethal.

The farmers have had to call for help

from a team of highly experienced rangers.

Although they're armed,

their task is to drive the elephant out of the field

without harming it.

But the bull is determined...

...to hold ground.

The rangers will have to get closer...

...on foot.

The rangers have to resort...

...to firecrackers.

The bull is driven from this field...

...and retreats deep into the bush.

Fortunately for this bull,

the battle has been resolved peacefully.

And efforts like these are seeing fewer elephants killed,

and their population in Kenya is starting to rise again.

But conflict with wildlife

is now occurring on a far greater scale

as a consequence

of the way we are changing the world's climate.

Some arid regions

are now experiencing unusually high rainfall.

And that is good for growing crops

here in northeastern Africa.

But it's also the perfect conditions

for one particular insect.

Desert locusts.

They're normally solitary creatures,

but emerging from the sand in great numbers

triggers a dramatic physical change.

They turn a vivid yellow

and become highly social.

Together, they are an unstoppable army.

On foot, they can cover a mile a day.

But they can only go so far in this way.

They need to find height.

Up here, they begin their final transformation.

Normally, it takes an individual insect

at least a month to become a winged adult...

...but in their social form, their development speeds up.

Now all they need is for their wings to harden.

Once airborne, they can travel 60 miles in a day.

Swarms merge and they become a plague.

This one contains billions of individuals,

and eats as much in a day

as the entire population of Germany.

Today in northeastern Africa,

as a consequence of climate change...

...devastating surges of locusts

are becoming more frequent.

Two worlds are colliding.

Unintentionally, humanity has created exactly the conditions

that cause this species to explode in numbers.

But another group of animals has seen

an even more dramatic rise

as a consequence of OUR actions.

We have increased the numbers of a few species

almost astronomically.

By weight,

70% of the world's birds are now chickens

or other domesticated fowl.

We rear 70 billion farm animals each year...

...and every one of them needs feeding.

Producing the food

for such numbers of domesticated animals

is having a profound impact on the natural world.

The Amazon rainforest -

twice the size of India.

It's so rich,

it contains one in every ten species on the planet.

And it's home to this sloth and her ten-month-old baby.

He was born into an environment

virtually untouched by humanity.

But now human beings are claiming even this space.

Year after year, we clear over two million hectares

of the Amazon forest -

an area the size of Wales.

And we use nearly all of it

to make more space for cattle...

...and to grow soya to feed our livestock.

Today, habitat destruction is the biggest problem

we have created for wildlife around the world.

This porcupine has survived the fire...

...and is being rescued.

It's being relocated to pristine forests.

This will be its new home.

Only a fortunate few animals

are being given such a second chance.

A healthy natural world is not only vital for wildlife...

...but for our own very existence.

Somehow we must find ways to redress the balance.

Currently, the vast majority of agricultural land,

more than 75%,

is used to raise livestock,

and this is very inefficient.

There are solutions.

One is considering what we eat.

If we shift away from eating meat and dairy

and move towards a plant-based diet,

then the sun's energy goes directly into growing our food.

And because that's so much more efficient,

we could still produce enough to feed us,

but do so using a quarter of the land.

This could free up an area the size of the United States,

China, the European Union and Australia combined...

...space that could then be given back to nature.

And human innovations may be able

to do even more for wildlife.

High-tech farms now grow plants vertically,

yielding up to 350 times the food grown in the same area.

This is one of many solutions we already have,

and others are surely on the horizon.

To find ways to protect all life on Earth

means reimagining how we live on this planet in the future.

Human ingenuity,

our extraordinary ability to find solutions,

gives me hope that we can.

It will be the major challenge

for this generation and the next.

To film the impact

that fires are having on the Amazon,

the Planet Earth III team

joined a local volunteer fire brigade.

The fire brigade are responding to a patch

of primary rainforest that is burning.

It's been burning for two days now.

It's difficult to know what we're going to see.

The fires are mainly lit illegally...

...to clear space for cattle.

Battling fires is dangerous work.

But the firefighters face them every day.

For the wildlife film crew,

this is a totally new experience.

And these fires can be unpredictable.

Neil, don't spend long in there.

Oh!

With the ground team retreating,

the safest way to carry on filming is with the drone.

Have we lost the drone? I think Abi has seen it.

Abi is on her way.

Can you confirm you're on your way to the drone, Abi?

The drone is damaged beyond repair.

Don't worry about it. I mean it.

Don't worry about it. It's absolutely fine.

It's not OK. It is. It's OK.

It's equipment. We've got a spare.

The main thing is, we're all safe. No-one's hurt.

The team regroup...

...and decide to move away from the heart of the fire

to its fringes

to look for animals caught up in the flames.

There's been reports of a monkey in the trees, so...

Ah!

The problem is, there's fires all the way along here,

as well as all along here, so...

It's hard to know what all this wildlife is going to do

when their home is burnt up like this.

I don't know what it's like for these rainforest animals

to be experiencing a fire.

It's horrific for me, so...

...I don't know what it is for them.

The fires burn into the night.

The following day,

the crew accompany the firefighters

in the search for animals in the aftermath.

Oh, my God, there are flames all inside of it.

Little termite...

Oh, my God!

Remarkably, some animals have survived.

Clearing land for farming

is not a problem unique to the Amazon.

Agriculture now takes up half of the habitable land

on the planet.

To produce food with less impact on the natural world

requires new approaches.

And that led the wildlife film crew to a farm

in a warehouse.

We're in the middle of the city!

I can't believe so much food

being grown in such a small space!

Here in Los Angeles, 6,000 miles from the Amazon,

this farm is part of a burgeoning food revolution.

This is the most productive farm in the world,

and it's our goal to reduce the amount of land and resources

necessary to grow down to the bare minimum.

It took a while to understand that, for nature,

agricultural use of land

was the primary, like, destructive behaviour of humanity.

As we expand this means of growing,

I'm very hopeful that this approach can ultimately

give a lot of land back to nature

and allow that biodiversity to re-establish and flourish.

Not only does this farm use less space...

...but it also uses 90% less water,

no pesticides,

and cuts food miles.

It does feel like a really good start.

Ideas like this can reduce our footprint on the planet,

giving the natural world a chance to bounce back.

Next time,

the heroes on the frontline saving wildlife.

They're exploring remote jungles...

...working undercover to catch criminals...

...and leading endangered creatures to safety.

Habitat Explorer brings animals and their habitats to life.

Explore this free interactive and make origami animals.

Go to...

...and follow the links to the Open University.

Or to order a free printed version, visit the website

or call the number on the screen.