Africa's wild places brim with danger.
In this land of giants,
the continent's smaller creatures have their work cut out for them,
relying on skill, specialized weaponry, and tenacity.
This is no place for weaklings.
These are Africa's deadliest.
Surviving here is a daily battle.
A challenge this ferocious, lone warrior rises to.
The honey badger, officially known as the most fearless animal on Earth.
Twelve kilograms of short-fused dynamite.
Right now, Africa's fiercest creature is more interested in snacks,
than threats lurking in the bush.
His sensitive nose tells him X marks the spot.
One of the best diggers in the business,
his four-centimeter claws quickly uncover one of his favorite foods--
rodent.
Even well-fed honey badgers constantly search for food.
A whistling rat, usually protected by its network of tunnels,
finds itself in the crosshairs.
His wolverine claws trap the rat inside the burrow
while his hind paws dig another entrance.
Game over for the whistling rat.
The honey badger is at ease here. A small creature with an oversized attitude,
the honey badger just assumes he's at the top of the food chain.
So he pays little attention to potential danger. And there's plenty of it.
A pack of wild dogs, Africa's most effective predators.
With an 80% success rate, they're natural-born killers,
and they outnumber him four to one.
But the bad-tempered badger takes the challenge.
For an animal that bullies lions off their kill and wrangles black mambas,
this is business as usual.
He teaches this pack who's top dog.
While the lone honey badger's feisty disposition helps save his skin,
other less-aggressive creatures get by with a little help from their friends.
Meerkats may be small, but they're deadly when they need to be.
These mascots of the Kalahari Desert
earned their title not just from their cartoonish good looks
but because they have what it takes to make it out here.
At daybreak, the troop spreads out in search of prey.
With their speedy metabolisms,
they can lose up to 10% of their body mass during the night.
They need to make up for it, fast.
While their superb sense of smell guides them,
two-centimeter front claws unearth any buried treasure.
They're mostly after grubs, beetles, and other invertebrates.
A single meerkat can excavate 50 times its body weight in sand
and dig 400 holes in just half a day.
As the meerkat mob scans the ground like minesweepers...
sentries scan for signs of danger.
They can see up to 4.8 kilometers, and can even look into direct sunlight.
A good thing, too, because predators can come from anywhere.
Especially from above.
The sentries sound the alarm, and the mob scurries for shelter.
A martial eagle.
Constant vigilance keeps the pack alive in this deadly land.
Once the danger passes, the all-clear sounds.
Meerkats have no body fat reserves, so they must constantly forage for food.
But danger lurks around every corner. Even their meals fight back.
Scorpions come girded for battle.
But a hard exoskeleton, sharp pincers, and a venomous stinger
are not enough to deter a hungry meerkat.
No need to worry about the venom. The meerkat's partially immune.
Unfortunately, that's not true of all venom.
With the foraging party in full swing,
most of the meerkats have buried their heads in the sand.
The Cape cobra smells opportunity.
One bite would be fatal to the meerkat.
At the last moment, the sentry spots the danger.
A lone meerkat doesn't stand much chance against a dangerous snake.
But meerkats are never alone.
The cobra finds itself surrounded by a dozen jaws with needle-sharp teeth.
They're fast enough to avoid a snake's lightning strike.
The tables turn.
They'd kill and eat the snake, given the chance.
It's lucky to escape alive.
In this perilous environment,
meerkats thrive in their desert home by cooperating.
Together, these little creatures
can handle anything the desert throws at them.
While the meerkat family uses teamwork and dramatic intimidation tactics,
other creatures take a more subtle approach.
Southern Africa's Bushveld is home to a sleek, secretive assassin.
While leopards are known as the stealthy nighttime killers,
they share the dark with an even more elusive relative.
The African wildcat.
Her species is thought to have given rise to domestic cats.
While her modern relatives live a pampered life, she clings to her wild ways.
Her food doesn't come in a bowl, and she'll eat whatever she can find.
Even termites.
She's fast enough to pluck them right out of the air.
Focused on dinner, she's forgetting the cardinal rule-- constant vigilance.
And unlike her city slicker cousins, she's not the biggest cat in town--
lions are.
Lions wouldn't hesitate to kill a fellow feline.
The African wildcat's only option is keeping out of their way.
Her small size, speed, and agility help her stay under the radar.
While the lions devour their dinner, she needs to find her own main course--
rodent.
While she does most of her hunting at night, she'll make exceptions.
With the start of the rainy season, puddles are where the action is.
But a meager frog isn't enough to tempt her into the water.
A fat, juicy quail is more her style.
It's a reluctant flyer, preferring to lie low and stay hidden.
Landing close by was a mistake.
The start of summer in Africa's Bushveld region
brings a welcome change to the parched landscape.
The rain-soaked catchments fill streams and rivers,
and the landscape flushes brilliant green once more.
In the heat, Africa's heavyweights spend the days lazing in the shade.
But for some of the smaller creatures, it's all systems go.
Small pools of water trap hundreds of little fish.
For specialist fishermen, it's a buffet of easy prey.
Danger can rain down like missiles.
Pied kingfishers are the largest birds that can hover,
keeping their heads still as they scan the water for movement.
The pied kingfisher's eyes compensate for light refraction off the water,
keeping their aim true.
They club any live victims to death before swallowing them headfirst.
They can catch two fish in a single dive
and gulp down half their own body weight every day.
Along the riverbanks, there's another secretive hunter
that punches above its weight class-- the tiny fishing spider.
Short, velvety, water-repellent hairs cover its body.
Fine hairs on its legs pick up vibrations of prey.
They use surface tension to stand or run on the water.
She's locked onto a group of tadpoles.
A near miss.
The tadpole dives to a safer depth. But the spider's not done.
She waits until the tadpole is close to the surface and back in striking range.
Once her powerful front mandibles get a good grip,
her deadly venom cocktail goes to work...
turning her prey into a smoothie from the inside.
Spiders may rank high on the "eek" factor,
but the temperate rainforests and savannas of Central and West Africa
host an equally creepy creature--
a serpent with a terrifyingly sophisticated hunting technique.
The royal python. At 1.2 meters, she may be the smallest python in Africa,
but don't underestimate her.
Legend goes that the bravest of African kings
once coiled these elegant snakes around their wrists and necks as living jewelry.
She smells rodent, until the trail dies at the water.
But thanks to a secret sense, the hunt has just begun.
Adult royal pythons mainly eat warm-blooded animals.
A series of pits below her nostrils track her prey like a heat-seeking missile.
The scurrying mouse has the advantage of speed,
but it has to see the danger coming first.
At about 12 kilometers per hour, the mouse is fast,
but the python's strike is faster.
Africa's reptilian reign of terror doesn't end with stealthy snakes.
This next predator looks positively prehistoric.
The rock monitor lizard.
He has excellent eyesight and a forked tongue that smells in stereo
as he sweeps the savanna for signs of prey.
This diminutive dragon, usually under a meter long, has a giant appetite.
His strong front claws and powerful limbs make him an excellent climber.
In the leaf litter below a fallen log, he smells dinner.
His claws become shovels, as his tongue tells him he's getting warmer.
Playing hide-and-seek with a rock monitor is a deadly game.
The spotted bush snake makes a break for it.
Too late.
The monitor's teeth may be small, but his jaws are vise-like.
The spotted bush snake goes down whole, even before it's stopped moving.
While the daily battles of Africa's creatures play out on a grand scale,
one little animal often goes unnoticed.
Ants make up about 25% of all animal biomass on Earth.
This colony of army ants is on the march.
A chemical trail keeps the battalion in formation.
But one soldier has strayed from the path and straight into a minefield.
This is the hunting ground of an antlion,
a venomous killer that specializes in ants.
To catch them, it uses cunning and simple physics.
Its body acts like an earthmover.
It takes about 15 minutes for this master engineer to excavate the perfect pit.
The trap is set.
The ant's fall into the sand trap triggers the antlion's jaws to snap shut.
The struggling ant causes a sand avalanche.
While the ant struggles, the antlion's paralyzing venom goes to work
as it drags his victim below the surface.
In the dark, it sucks out the ant's liquefied insides,
then discards the empty exoskeleton before resetting its trap.
In the heart of the Kalahari Desert lies Botswana's Okavango Delta.
A vast watery oasis.
15,000 square kilometers of swamp
crisscrossed by a network of channels, dotted with lush islands.
It's home to some of Africa's largest predators
and also some of the smallest.
From the protection of an abandoned termite mound,
a banded mongoose colony emerges from a good night's rest.
They may be small and cuddly-looking, but don't be fooled.
They're superb little hunters. And as a troop, they're a powerful force.
A few of the older females have recently given birth.
They often synchronize their breeding, and the entire troop raises the pups.
The 3-week-old pups still rely on milk,
but now they embark on their first adventure
away from the den for a foraging lesson.
They must learn their place in the predator hierarchy.
Out here, life's a constant game of eat or be eaten.
The whole troop keeps watch as they explore their world.
The adults show the curious youngsters what's edible
and what's too tough to crack.
Their next lesson? Getting along with the nosy neighbors.
African elephants, the largest mammals to walk the Earth,
could squash a mongoose, if it wanted.
A loud warning finally ends the game of chicken.
But one straggling pup is about to find other trouble.
A water monitor, Africa's largest lizard, with a voracious appetite.
Luckily, an adult intervenes before the monitor can make his move.
His cover blown, he won't dare tackle the entire troop.
These little guys always have each other's backs.
With the pups safely accounted for, the troop resumes its search for food.
Mongooses, attuned to their surroundings,
even recognize the alarm calls of other creatures.
The squawk of the spurfowl sends the troop into high alert.
Danger is close, even if they can't see it yet.
The kite dive-bombs their bolt-hole, hoping to flush out a panicked youngster.
Another lesson for the pups-- heed all warning calls.
Being a bite-sized predator, it's best to know when to hide,
when to flee, and when to fight.
A snouted cobra.
Its potent neurotoxic venom would easily kill a mongoose.
Time to evacuate the pups,
while the rest of the troop deals with the threat head-on.
Here's where they earn their stripes.
The mongoose are tactically brilliant and equipped for the kill,
with two-centimeter claws and 36 razor-sharp teeth, adapted for crushing.
They're also agile enough to evade the fastest strikes.
The snake came looking for food. Instead, it's now in a fight for its life.
Now it retreats to find an easier meal.
While banded mongooses face the world together,
the caracal prefers to go solo.
This youngster developed a taste for meat after just four weeks.
He still relies on Mother to catch his food--
a concept he can't quite seem to grasp yet.
For now, a mouse is out of his league.
A tortoise is more his speed, but there's no way in.
A year passes, and the young caracal has gone from kitten to killer.
The time for cat-and-mouse games are over.
His survival depends on his hunting prowess.
20 muscles move his ears independently to pinpoint potential prey.
Score one for the quail.
The caracal spots his next target, a dove, completely unaware.
The caracal can bolt at 80 kilometers per hour and jump up to three meters,
to literally pluck a bird from the sky.
In Africa's southwest lies the world's oldest desert.
The Namib, beautiful, temperamental, and deadly.
Rising 700 meters from the desert floor,
these monoliths are the remains of ancient, extinct volcanoes.
Below, a rock monitor is on the hunt.
In the desert, overexertion can be as deadly as the scorching sun.
Rock monitors usually hide in the heat of day. But a lizard's got to eat.
The wind changes, carrying a tempting scent.
Now he must be deadly silent.
A mouse emerges to search for grain blown by the hot desert wind.
It's too distracted to monitor the lizard.
The desert offers no second chances.
While many larger African mammals can't handle the heat here,
268 species of reptile call Namibia home.
This is one of the deadliest -- the horned adder,
perfectly camouflaged, perfectly lethal.
Two of the Namib's deadliest go head-to-head.
The slow-moving snake relies on camouflage to avoid enemies.
That won't work on this giant lizard.
Nor will its venom.
Despite the desert's enormity, most of the inhabitants are small.
Able to withstand immense temperature changes,
scorpions thrive in even the most hostile parts of the Namib.
This scuttling parabuthus, only a few centimeters long,
has a potent weapon-- a stinger loaded with venom.
He's normally a night stalker, so he retreats to the shade until dark,
which is his time to shine.
The cricket succumbs quickly.
But out here, catching a meal and keeping a meal are two different things.
His cousin, a muscle-bound burrowing scorpion,
has traded venom strength for brute strength.
Even with his massive pincers, the larger scorpion has a tough time
separating the little fighter from his hard-earned meal.
Like a forklift truck, he scoops up the little guy and the cricket,
and carries them away.
The heavyweight then unceremoniously dumps his tiny opponent and steals his meal.
He can only suck up liquid, so he mashes the cricket,
bathing it in enzymes that dissolve its insides.
The smaller scorpion's not done, so the big fellow flees with his meal
rather than go another round with the venomous featherweight.
Sometimes, it is not the size of the animal in the fight,
but rather the size of the fight in the animal, that makes it Africa's deadliest.