(THEME MUSIC BEGINS)
BENEDICT: Enter a world just beyond your perception.
A world of extraordinary animals,
with hidden powers,
and super senses.
If you think you know nature...
think again.
(THEME MUSIC ENDS)
(BIRD CAWS)
BENEDICT: To survive in extremes,
you have to push the limits.
In the Italian Alps,
a towering dam
as high as the Golden Gate Bridge.
It holds a hidden treasure...
salt.
Pouring from its wall.
It's so rare up here,
ibex risk everything to reach it.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
Scaling these near-vertical walls calls on incredible climbing skills.
These natural-born mountaineers make it look like a walk in the park.
But imagine what it's like for a kid.
(BLEATS)
BENEDICT: Going up there
for the very first time.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDICT: He has no choice but to follow his mother.
A fall would mean certain death.
(ROCKS CLATTER)
But step by step,
he discovers he has an amazing grip.
The higher he goes,
the more vertical the face.
Now, his survival depends on his innate superpower.
Soft, rubbery soles mold around even the tiniest ridges.
Locking them inside the hard edge of the hoof.
He balances.
Every step on a knife edge.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDICT: It's exhausting work for one so young.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(BLEATS)
BENEDICT: Just in time, his mother notices.
(BLEATS)
BENEDICT: She gives him a chance to recharge.
A 5-minute power nap.
(CAWS)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDCIT: 150 feet up,
finally, he reaches his goal.
(TRIUMPHANT MUSIC PLAYING)
BENEDICT: Twenty percent of concrete contains salt and water
seeping through the dam brings it to the surface.
It may not look like much, but this mineral lick is crucial
for the kid to grow up strong.
Muscles and nerves replenished,
his epic ascent is complete.
Death-defying missions like this are a vital part of many animals' lives,
and we're only just discovering the wondrous ways in which they succeed.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDICT: The dunes of northeast Brazil.
An area larger than Los Angeles.
Scorched by the fierce equatorial sun.
Many who try to cross
-never make it. -(WIND HOWLS)
BENEDICT: But there are opportunities...
you just need to find them.
After five months in suspended animation,
without food or water,
a Brazilian slider,
a normally aquatic turtle, emerges.
Something has awakened her.
Her acute sense of smell has detected a change in the humidity,
her only hope of survival
is water.
But to reach it,
she must attempt the impossible.
Traveling for days
across sunbaked sands.
Every moment exposed
means hydration lost.
And as the wind picks up,
she loses the scent of water....
So, which way now?
In this hostile landscape,
she'll soon dry up.
But the sun that threatens to cook her
is also her guiding light.
Using its position as a compass,
she keeps on her course.
She's almost there...
Just in time.
When the rains arrive,
a magical transformation begins.
In most dunes, water quickly drains through the sand....
But here, a layer of solid rock beneath
blocks the water's path,
allowing thousands of pools to form.
(SERENE MUSIC PLAYING)
BENEDICT: Just one last obstacle.
Now, it's downhill all the way.
Time to do what a slider does best.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDICT: A crystal-clear oasis.
These ephemeral pools bring food.
And the chance to meet a mate...
before the water vanishes and the scorched desert returns.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDICT: Incredible journeys are happening across the planet.
But they're often overlooked.
-The city of London. -(CITY SOUNDS)
BENEDICT: A confusing man-made maze.
But hidden away behind its walls,
there are animals
who've learned to navigate this urban jungle.
This buff-tailed bumblebee is about to embark on a royal mission...
to find food for the queen's larvae
and secure the future of the colony.
Easier said than done.
(BUZZES)
BENEDICT: Confusing concrete corridors could be hard to navigate.
But not for her.
Like a London cab driver,
she's got the knowledge.
(MUFFLED CHATTER)
BENEDICT: She knows the landmarks to build a mental map of the streets.
Though some things in this city never stay put.
But it takes more than a little traffic to stop this busy bee.
She travels up to seven miles on her daily commute in search of nectar.
-(BUZZES) -(BIRDS CHIRPING)
BENEDICT: And this is where she finds it:
one of three million gardens that make up a quarter of the city.
And it's in full bloom.
(BUZZES)
BENEDICT: Thousands of lenses in her eyes detect the shape and color
of nectar-rich flowers.
And ultraviolet vision,
reveals secret patterns in the petals.
But another bee's already been here.
So, to target untapped plants,
she tunes into an invisible force.
As bees fly, they gain a positive charge from the atmosphere,
but flowers
are negatively charged.
So, when a positive bee visits a negative flower,
it briefly alters the electric field.
(ELECTRICITY ZAPPING)
BENEDICT: Hairs on her legs detect these changes.
Ensuring she strikes gold every time.
But her journey has just begun.
(BUZZES)
BENEDICT: She's called a worker bee for a reason.
She'll visit up to 5,000 flowers a day.
Then, remembering every twist and turn,
she carries her own body weight in pollen
and nectar, all the way back to the nest.
A royal delivery for queen and colony.
While many animals undertake a testing daily commute,
others embark on epic migrations
that take months to complete.
Winter is coming.
Days are getting shorter.
Food is running out.
Bad news for a young humpback whale.
He arrived in Antarctica with his mother,
but now he's left all alone in this vast ocean.
And soon he must embark
on one of the longest migrations of any mammal.
Swimming 80 miles a day to reach warm waters further north.
But how to navigate 3,000 miles through a featureless ocean,
with strong currents that could push him off-course?
To stay on-track,
he tunes into a mysterious planetary phenomenon.
As charged particles from the sun hit the Earth's atmosphere,
they illuminate the southern skies...
but there's more to this heavenly display than meets the eye.
The Aurora Australis reveals Earth's magnetic field,
an invisible force scientists believe whales can sense
using magnetic particles in their brains.
(BELLOWS)
BENEDICT: This internal compass keeps the humpback on course,
accurate to one degree.
But it leads him out into the open ocean where the fish and crustaceans he eats
are hard to find.
It's been weeks since he last ate.
But then...
(DISTANT WHALE CALL)
...he hears something.
(DISTANT WHALE CALL)
BENEDICT: Using his body like a giant microphone,
sound vibrations rush through his skeleton,
straight to his head.
The welcome calls of other whales, hundreds of miles away.
He homes in on a growing barrage of sound.
Finally, five weeks after leaving Antarctica,
he joins hundreds with other whales for a monster feast.
One of the largest humpback gatherings on the planets,
there are hundreds of them.
This annual assembly has only recently been discovered.
(WHALES CALLING)
BENEDICT: Three miles off the coast of Africa,
strong currents create an upwelling
of nutrients and an explosion of life.
In a single mouthful,
he swallows thousands of fish and shrimp,
150,000 calories,
that's the equivalent of 600 chocolate bars.
Once fully fed,
he must leave his friends
and head off alone
to complete his epic journey north.
(BELLOWS)
BENEDICT: There are animals with the power to travel right across the globe,
but the most intrepid of all is a creature you'd never expect.
The British countryside...
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
...home to a baby cupboard spider,
no bigger than a pinhead.
She's got about 200 brothers and sisters.
And her siblings have some truly appalling table manners.
These spiderlings
are cannibals.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING)
BENEDICT: This is one family meal you don't want to hang around for.
Better get away as fast
and as far as she can.
The trouble is
her siblings have the same plan.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BENEDICT: And she just ran out of road.
But when it comes to great escapes,
this spider has an extraordinary skill.
(ELECTRICITY ZAPS)
BENEDICT: She fires out negatively charged silk thread
into the positively charged atmosphere.
Opposites forces attract,
pulling her up,
up
and away.
Heading high,
riding the wind,
even cruising the jet stream,
she can travel for thousands of miles.
By ballooning,
they've colonized every corner of the Earth.
At the mercy of the wind,
she has no control over where she touches down.
But weighing less than a grain of sand,
she doesn't even break the surface.
She just deploys her magical silk once more,
and kitesurfs to safety.
A new place she can call home.
One animal's journey is all about timing.
Waiting for the planets to align
so it can transcend from one world
to another.
A three-foot-long epaulette shark
may not seem the most adventurous traveler....
He rarely even strays far from his patch of reef.
But on some special nights,
heavenly bodies turn his world upside down.
At full moon,
a spring tide pulls billions of gallons of water off the reef,
stranding creatures
in a maze of tidal pools.
Or worse.
Left high and dry,
a fish out of water soon suffocates.
Unless...
it's a super fish.
A walking shark.
And he's not just saving his skin,
he's on the prowl.
Heading towards rich hunting pools
full of prey trapped by the tide.
Forcing a jet of water through his muscular gills,
he hoovers up his cornered victims.
But he's caught in a race against time.
Oxygen levels in the pool are falling fast.
Pretty soon, he'll run out of energy.
With an hour till the tide returns,
he's close to death.
But these extreme conditions trigger an extraordinary physiological response.
Slowing his breathing,
reducing his heart rate,
even shutting down part of his brain.
He enters
a self-induced coma....
One last breath,
and he can survive for an hour.
But after that,
his time is up.
Finally, the tide turns,
immersing him in oxygen-rich waters.
A miraculous resurrection.
Perhaps the most impossible journeys of all
are made by those who can't even move.
The secret to how plants spread
is seeds.
All the ingredients for new life,
packed and ready to go.
Some have evolved explosive mechanisms...
(EXPLODES)
...others harness the wind.
But one cunning plant
simply makes someone else do all the legwork.
A female dung beetle on the African plains.
There's only one thing that will make her go to extraordinary lengths:
(STOMACH GRUMBLES)
the sweet scent of antelope droppings.
Perfect food for her young.
Using her antennae,
she selects the juiciest morsel.
It smells like it,
it looks like it,
it even rolls like it.
But this poop is an imposter.
It's so convincingly like the real thing;
she's prepared to fight for it.
Victorious, she heads off to stash her prize away
from the competition.
But she's been duped.
She thinks she's hiding it,
but really she's planting it.
She's nothing more than a vehicle
in the incredible adventure
of the cunning elephant reed.
One animal traveler takes the journey of a lifetime,
just to get back to where it started.
This nymph
has been hanging out in a Hungarian riverbed.
For the last three years,
she's been building strength
for an incredible journey.
When the water temperature is just right,
she departs one world
to enter another.
It's a magical transformation.
A mayfly is born.
-And not just one... -(CHIRPING)
...thousands emerge every minute.
(CHIRPING)
BENEDICT: Though many are eaten by predators,
there is safety in numbers.
But numbers soon become her greatest challenge.
She's mobbed by an army of male suitors.
Weighed down with 8,000 fertilized eggs,
she needs to lay soon.
This is the best place for her young to grow
but if she laid here,
the current would carry her eggs away.
She has to make it further upstream.
Her polarized vision picks up light reflecting off the river.
A shimmering path leading to her final destination.
In just a few hours, she travels six miles.
(WINGS FLUTTERING)
BENEDICT: Close to death, she reaches the same stretch of river
where her life began.
The perfect place to lay
so her eggs can drift downstream
and hatch in exactly the same spot
where she grew up.
As her life ends,
others begin.
Now, her offspring start their own voyage
all the way back to where it began.
When starting a new journey,
sometimes it's the first step
that's the most terrifying of all.
After 20 hours trying to break free...
(CRACKS)
...a guillemot chick's first view of the world is this...
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
BENEDICT: 1,000 feet up.
It's like peering off the top of the Empire State Building.
But why be born in such a dangerous place?
This Icelandic cliff is inaccessible to most predators.
A safe haven to grow up in.
But in just three weeks,
it will be time to leave the nest.
And this chick will face a life-or-death decision.
Her bond with her parents is already strong.
It started long before she even hatched.
Responding to her first gentle calls,
-her parents talked to her... -(BIRD SQUAWKS)
...inside the egg.
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
-(MUFFLED SQUAWK) -These early conversations
ensured the newborn already recognizes and trusts Mom and Dad.
(SQUAWKING)
BENEDICT: Her parents work tirelessly to feed her up
in preparation for the journey ahead.
But as the weeks pass,
it gets harder to satisfy her growing appetite.
(SQUAWKS)
BENEDICT: And now this clifftop home that protected her
has been discovered...
by ravens.
(SQUAWKING)
BENEDICT: Predators kill up to 70 percent of chicks
and parents are almost defenseless against the threat.
This time, the chick gets lucky.
But she needs to leave before the ravens return.
The problem is,
without adult feathers,
she can't fly.
Her father encourages her to jump.
(SQUAWKING)
It's a vertical drop of more than one-hundred stories....
Trusting him completely,
the chick takes a leap of faith....
(SQUAWKS)
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
The chicks flapping seems futile.
But it's just enough to slow her down
and steer her away from the jagged rocks.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
Her downy feathers soften the landing.
This seemingly impossible journey is vital to her survival.
(CHIRPING)
BENEDICT: Now out at sea, Dad can lead her to food.
She will face many more obstacles,
but with extraordinary bravery,
she can make it through.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
BENEDICT: When animals can tap into remarkable senses
and supernatural skills...
crossing the globe,
even moving between worlds
to find a mate,
safety
and food,
they become truly unstoppable.
If you think you know nature,
think again.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
(THEME MUSIC ENDS)