Original subtitles

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Imagine a world

where temperatures rise to 50 degrees Centigrade,

where there's no escape from sun, wind and dust.

Imagine a world with almost no food or water.

These are the conditions in one-third of the lands of our planet.

To live here

demands the most extraordinary survival strategies.

This is the oldest desert in the world.

The Namib in southwest Africa.

It's been dry for 55 million years.

Life here for a hunter is as hard as it gets.

A pride of lions,

one of the very few

that endures this desert's scorching temperatures

and lack of water.

Hunting here presents special problems.

A herd of oryx,

the only prey within 30 kilometres.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

Out here, there is no cover for an ambush.

It will have to be a straight chase.

They have failed,

and each failed hunt brings the lions closer to starvation.

To find enough to eat,

the pride continually searches an area the size of Switzerland.

Three days and 150 kilometres later,

and still, no kill.

(CRICKETS CHIRPING)

These are desperate times.

(CROW CAWING)

A dry riverbed on the edge of their territory.

The only animals here are giraffe.

But these one-tonne giants could kill a lion

with a single kick.

Lions seldom tackle such formidable prey.

But this pride can't go on much longer

- without food. - (PANTING)

(BIRD SQUAWKING)

The whole pride must work together as a team,

if they're to succeed.

Two lionesses lead the chase.

Others race to cut off possible escape routes.

The giraffe has the speed and stamina to outrun the pride.

But it's being chased into a trap.

Up ahead, the lead female waits.

It's now up to her.

(LIONESS GROWLS)

Most lion hunts end in failure.

But no lions fail more often than those that live in the desert.

Once again,

the pride must continue their search.

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

It does sometimes rain in the desert.

Here in the American West,

storms can strike with devastating force.

After 10 months of drought, millions of tonnes of water

are dumped on the land in under an hour.

(WIND WHISTLING)

Over millions of years,

sand and gravel carried by the rampaging floods

have carved channels through the solid rock.

Salt canyons, 50 metres deep.

In some places, these canyons have widened

until the land between them is sculpted into table lands and isolated pinnacles,

some of the most dramatic landscapes on the planet.

The rain may be long gone,

but there is water here,

- (BIRD SQUAWKING) - (CRICKETS CHIRPING)

locked away within the tissues of specialist desert plants.

Cacti are unique to American deserts.

They all hoard water, storing it in swollen stems,

and protecting it behind a barricade of spines.

They're so successful that they dominate these deserts.

But this forest of spikes

can cause problems for the animals that live here.

A Harris hawk.

It has developed special techniques for hunting amongst the cacti.

Ground squirrels.

Prey.

(SQUIRRELS SQUEAKING)

At the first sign of danger, they bolt for the safety of the thorns.

But the hawks have a tactic to flush them out.

These are the only birds of prey that hunt in packs.

Flying in formation,

they try to drive their quarry into the open.

But this squirrel is staying put.

So now the hawks continue the hunt

on foot.

They're closing in from all sides.

Soon, all escape routes are cut off.

The squirrel is trapped.

(SCREECHING)

The spines that cover almost every plant in this desert

can provide protection and shelter for many animals.

So, why should these spikes be hung with corpses?

What kind of creature could be responsible

for creating such a gruesome scene?

There's a mysterious killer at work in this desert.

It's a butcher bird.

This little song bird uses the spines as a butcher uses his hook,

to hold its prey as it dismembers it.

(SQUAWKING)

(CHEEPING)

And with chicks to feed, he also uses the spines as a larder.

He's been stocking it for weeks.

Hanging his prey out of the reach of scavengers on the ground

ensures that his newly-hatched young will never go hungry.

An ingenious solution

to making the good times last in the desert,

if a little macabre.

(CHEEPING)

(BUTCHER BIRD SQUAWKS)

Some deserts are so arid,

they appear totally devoid of all vegetation.

Yet even these landscapes

can be transformed

in a matter of days.

The deserts of Peru are amongst the driest in the world.

But just add a little water,

and plants that have lain dormant for months

will burst into life.

(BIRDS SINGING)

(BEES BUZZING)

And when a desert suddenly turns green,

even the most seemingly desolate

can become a land of opportunity.

No creature exploits the greening of a desert more quickly,

or more dramatically,

than a locust.

Madagascar's arid southwest

has received its highest rainfall in years.

Now, an army is on the march,

attracted by the smell of newly-sprouting grass.

Locusts are normally solitary creatures,

but when food becomes suddenly plentiful,

they come together into an unstoppable force

that devours everything in its path.

But this devastation is about to get a lot worse.

The locusts now transform into winged adults.

And with conditions as good as this,

they do so three times faster than normal.

Now, they are at their most voracious.

And with wings, they can take to the skies.

Once airborne, the locusts can travel over 100 kilometres a day

in their search for new feeding grounds.

A super-swarm of this scale may only appear once in a decade.

This one extends over 500 square kilometres

and contains several billion individuals.

Between them, they will devour 40,000 tonnes of food in a day.

(LOCUSTS BUZZING)

Nothing can strip a land of its vegetation with such speed

and thoroughness as a plague of locusts.

When the food eventually runs out, the whole army will die.

But not before it's devastated the land.

With no plants to bind them,

thin soils soon turn to dust and blow away.

Now, these barren lands are left to the mercy of the elements.

Scorched by the sun and scoured by windblown sand,

desert rock is shaped into strange, otherworldly landscapes.

These rocky deserts may have a beguiling beauty,

but when they become this barren, very little life can endure.

For many animals,

the only way to survive the most hostile times

is to keep moving.

In the Kalahari,

brief rains have given way to the dry season.

Food and water are becoming increasingly scarce.

For these zebra, it's time to leave.

(HUFFING)

They are setting off on the longest over-land migration

made by any mammal in Africa,

marching towards the scent of distant rains.

As drought intensifies,

desert-living elephants must also undertake long journeys

in search of water.

(GRUNTING)

(ELEPHANT TRUMPETING)

The older females can remember where, even in times of extreme drought,

there may still be water,

and sometimes lead the herd

to a waterhole they may not have visited for decades.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

(ZEBRAS GRUNTING)

These zebra are almost at the end of their journey.

This is what they've been heading for.

A rare waterhole.

In deserts, most waterholes are short-lived.

They appear after rains,

but then vanish almost as quickly as they came.

(ELEPHANT RUMBLING)

(ELEPHANT SNORTS)

Animals have come here from many kilometres around.

(ZEBRAS WHINNYING)

Yet, this can be a dangerous place in which to linger.

A hundred kilometres away, in the heart of the desert,

sandgrouse chicks are hatching.

It's safer for them to be here.

(CHICK CHEEPING)

But being so distant from water is a gamble.

With only their mother to shield them from the sun,

if they get nothing to drink,

they will be dead within hours.

Their only hope is their father.

(SQUAWKING)

Every morning, he makes the 200-kilometre round trip

to get water for the family.

(SQUAWKS)

Grouse from all over the desert visit this oasis,

arriving together in large flocks.

And that is important.

There's safety in numbers.

(CHIRPING)

(ZEBRA GRUNTS)

The male snatches a drink,

but he also needs to collect water for his chicks.

Using specially-adapted breast feathers,

he can soak up water like a sponge.

But it takes time,

and he is in danger.

(CHIRPING)

Goshawk.

(CHIRPING)

Sandgrouse here are their main prey.

Again and again,

the male sandgrouse risk their lives

in order to collect water for their chicks.

This is why sandgrouse nest so far from waterholes.

At last,

he's soaked up as much as he can.

Carrying a quarter of his bodyweight in water,

he can now set off on the long journey home.

(CHEEPING)

He's back, and just in time.

He can give the chicks their first-ever drink.

But he will have to undertake this perilous journey

every day for the next two months,

until his chicks

can finally make the flight to the waterhole for themselves.

It's July in the deserts of Nevada

in the western United States.

The hottest time of the year.

(SNORTS)

Bands of wild horses, mustang,

are converging on one of the last remaining waterholes around.

(SNORTS)

Now, water not only offers them the chance to drink.

It can also bring power.

If a stallion can control access to water,

he will have secured mating rights to the entire herd.

(NEIGHS)

So stallions try to dominate these pools,

fighting off rivals who venture too close.

(STALLIONS NEIGHING)

A stranger.

He's travelled 15 kilometres to be here

because the pools where he's come from have already dried up.

With him come his females.

If he can't provide them with water,

they will leave him for the white stallion

who already dominates this pool.

So he will have to fight.

(STALLIONS GRUNTING)

(STALLIONS NEIGHING)

There is everything to lose.

A broken leg or a shattered jaw would mean a slow and painful death.

(STALLIONS NEIGHING)

A missed kick,

and it's all over.

The new arrival has won.

And his prize is more than just a chance to drink.

He has provided for his herd, and in the process,

stolen his rival's females.

The white stallion's rule is over.

(SNORTS)

Desert life is not only shaped by the scarcity of water,

but also by the relentless power

of the sun.

The highest temperatures on Earth have all been recorded in its deserts.

Changes in the climate

mean temperatures here are rising more than the global average.

And as deserts heat up,

they are also expanding.

Every year,

a further 130,000 square kilometres of grass and farmland

are turning into barren stretches of dust and rock.

In the heat of the day,

surface temperatures can reach a scorching 70 degrees,

far too hot to handle for most.

But not for this shovel-snouted lizard.

Raising its feet off the ground in turn

enables each to briefly cool.

But even this dancing desert specialist

can't stand the heat for long.

One option is to find shade.

Dune grass, the only vegetation here, provides virtually none.

But just beneath the surface of the sand,

it is several degrees cooler.

Avoiding the extreme heat imposes a rhythm on desert life.

And many animals here choose the simplest option of all,

staying hidden all day

and only venturing out in the cool of the night.

As darkness falls,

animals appear from seemingly nowhere.

And among them, inevitably,

are hunters.

(SNIFFING)

One of the most voracious nocturnal predators

is also one of the hardest to see.

This mysterious creature

hardly ever appears on the surface of the dunes.

But there are signs on the sand that can give it away.

It lives only here,

where the sand grains are so perfectly dry and polished

that they flow almost like water.

It's no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball.

A golden mole.

It's totally blind,

but there's nothing to see underground anyway.

Instead, it has superb hearing.

Its entire head acts as an amplifier

that picks up vibrations through the sand.

So, to locate prey on the surface of the dune,

it has, paradoxically, to thrust its face into the dune.

(SNIFFING)

Termites.

Not easy to catch when you're blind.

Far better to go into stealth mode.

Once below the sand,

it can detect the slightest movement,

allowing it to strike with pinpoint accuracy.

Well, most of the time.

It can travel two-thirds of a mile a night in search of its dinner.

And right now, it has just detected its main course.

Little wonder it's sometimes called "the shark of the dunes".

Food can be so scarce in the desert

that even at night, animals can't afford to be choosy

about what they eat.

Israel's Negev Desert.

Otonycteris, the desert long-eared bat,

is on the hunt.

Most bats catch flying insects on the wing.

But there are so few of these in the desert

that this bat must do things differently.

It has to hunt on the ground.

(BAT SCREECHING)

But what really sets it apart

is what it's hunting.

A deathstalker scorpion.

The venom of this species is potent enough to kill a human.

Tackling it seems madness for a bat weighing just 15 grams.

In the pitch black,

both predator and prey are effectively blind.

But the scorpion has one advantage,

he can sense the approach of the bat through vibrations in the sand.

Otonycteris must rely entirely on its hearing.

If the scorpion doesn't move, it won't know it's there.

The battle is on.

Armed with crushing pincers and a sting loaded with venom,

this scorpion is a dangerous opponent.

A direct strike on the head.

Is it all over?

Not for this bat.

Otonycteris clearly has some immunity to the venom,

but repeated stings must still be extraordinarily painful.

And if the bat is not to go hungry,

it must catch another three scorpions before sunrise.

Desert animals have developed remarkable strategies

to make the most of the rare opportunities

that come their way.

Although some deserts may not see rain for several years,

most will hold a little water in one form or another.

The trick is simply knowing how to reach it.

Dawn in the dunes of the Namib,

and something magical is happening.

Moist air lying over the neighbouring Atlantic

is cooled and blown inland,

forming fog banks that shroud the desert in mist.

This precious moisture

lies tantalisingly out of reach at the top of the dunes,

and it won't last long.

It will be burnt off by the sun just hours after it rises.

Darkling beetles race to the top of the dunes

to reach the fog before it vanishes.

Some of the Namib's dunes are 300 metres high,

the tallest in the world.

For a beetle no larger than a thumbnail,

this is the equivalent of us climbing a dune

twice the height of Everest.

But even more impressive

is what it does next.

Standing perfectly still, facing into the wind,

the beetle does a headstand.

Fog begins to condense on its body.

Microscopic bumps on its wing cases

direct the water to grooves that channel it towards the mouth.

Before returning down the slip face,

it will drink 40% of its body weight.

This little beetle

has learned how to conjure water out of the air

in one of the driest places on Earth.

And it's not alone on the top of the dunes.

Web-footed geckos use a similar trick.

Surely, few animals go to greater lengths to get a drink.

Unfortunately, Namaqua chameleons know that on foggy mornings,

the beetles coming down the dunes are juicier than those going up.

The diversity of life

that thrives in a world almost totally devoid of water

is truly remarkable.

Success in the desert

depends on an extraordinary variety of survival strategies

that have evolved over millions of years.

But our planet is changing.

The world's deserts are growing bigger, hotter and drier,

and they're doing so faster than ever before.

How life will cope here in the future

remains to be seen.

Next time, we journey to the world's Great Plains.

Where spectacular gatherings of wildlife

cope with extreme change.

And surprising creatures survive

in unexpected ways.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)