(DOG BARKS)
(SHEEP BLEAT)
Meat, mammals' muscles, is the most energy-packed food there is.
Human beings have set aside great areas of the countryside
just in order to produce it - in this case, mutton.
There is other meat to be had here, too -
rabbits.
We sometimes eat these as well,
but today rabbits are more in danger from another hunter...
a stoat.
It's tiny - less than a foot long.
Nonetheless, it's a skilled and determined killer.
Its fangs, stabbed into the rabbit's neck, have crushed its skull.
The rabbit weighs ten times as much as the stoat,
but the stoat prefers to eat in privacy.
Those daggers at the front of the jaw killed the rabbit.
Triangular blades further back, like secateurs,
help the stoat cut meat from bone.
Those two kinds of teeth are the hallmark of all meat-eaters,
small and large.
There are two great tribes of carnivores.
There are the cats...
and there are the dogs.
Both are skilled in the art of stalking.
And both have a lethal pounce.
The serval is so athletic it can sometimes bring down birds.
It's one of the smallest of the cats. And this is the biggest.
The Siberian tiger - ten feet long from nose to tail.
The earliest fossils of meat-eating mammals, about 50 million years old,
have been found in North America.
They lived in trees, hunting birds.
One of their descendants, the marten, still does.
Its claws are long, but they can be partly retracted, keeping them sharp,
and they give it a superb grip.
But other prey sometimes tempts it down from the trees.
And it's on the ground that most meat-eaters today go hunting.
Dogs, descendants of those tree dwellers, soon spread round the world,
and as they did, so their bodies changed to suit their new homes.
This is the Sahara. The dog that lives here is the smallest of the foxes -
the fennec.
Its huge ears help avoid overheating.
Here, moisture is very precious. The fennec doesn't waste it on sweat.
Instead, it cools its blood by circulating it through capillaries
close to the surface of its immense ears, which act like car radiators.
But its enormous ears also detect the tiniest sounds,
even faint scrabblings in the sand.
The larva of a beetle is full of juice, just what the fennec needs,
for it's seldom able to drink.
The desert viper is small, as snakes go, but it's bigger than the beetle.
It's also much more dangerous.
First, those poison fangs must be put out of action.
The venom will only kill if it gets into the bloodstream.
Providing the fennec has no cut in its mouth, the poison will do no harm.
Dogs in a cold climate have a different shape.
Long ears would get frostbitten, so the arctic fox has very short ones.
Its fur is long. An underlayer keeps it warm even in the worst weather.
It's also white - good camouflage.
In summer, it changes its coat to a thinner, darker one.
Summer is breeding time, and this pair's cubs are already half-grown.
There's no shortage of food at this time of year. In fact, there's a glut.
Seabirds are nesting on the cliffs in thousands.
The guillemots, high up on their ledges, are mostly beyond the foxes' reach.
But the foxes know the chicks can't stay perched up there for ever.
They have to fly down to the sea.
But this is their first flight, and the sea is a long way away.
Some don't get that far.
(CHICK SCREECHES)
Food for the cubs.
And still they come.
There's far more food than the foxes can eat.
There's sometimes even more than they can carry.
But these good times won't last for ever.
So now the arctic fox does what many dogs do, it buries the surplus.
In this cold climate, the meat will stay tolerably fresh for months.
Birds are not the only sea-going animals that come to land to breed
and assemble in great numbers.
On the south-western shores of Africa, in Namibia,
are huge breeding colonies of sea mammals.
(QUIETLY) You might think that these fur seals
would be particularly sensitive to danger that comes from the sea.
But in fact they're most easily alarmed if you approach from the land.
And since I don't want to scare them, I have to move with great care.
Their pups are just up here.
And they still haven't seen me.
These little pups are only a day or maybe two days old.
It's so hot, their mothers have gone to sea to cool off,
so their babies are now unprotected.
But I'd better retreat before someone raises the alarm.
From here, I've got a splendid view of almost the entire colony.
So if attackers come from the land, they'll come down there.
All I have to do now is wait.
It's a brown hyena.
Hyenas, most of the time, feed on carrion,
but they will certainly take a defenceless seal pup.
(PUP MEWS)
The carcass will be shared with the family.
All dogs communicate by smell, but none more eloquently than hyenas.
Their scent comes from a pouch beneath the tail
and proclaims who they are and how they are.
They also use scent to post notices around their territory.
An individual will put one up every quarter of a mile or so.
This is one of their message posts.
The smear at the top there
comes from the anal gland of one of the hyena family.
And that smell fades very rapidly.
It's a message to other members of the group
saying, ''I was here half an hour ago or quarter of an hour ago,
''so there's no point in searching this patch for food.''
But beneath it there's a second one,
which was milky white when it was first pasted on.
Its smell is long-lasting
and is intended as a message to other clans of hyenas
saying, ''Keep out. This land is ours.''
So their noses enable hyenas to divide up the desert between their clans
and so ensure that no source of food is neglected.
These dogs crop their territory in a very different way,
racing along paths in the undergrowth.
They live in the rain-drenched forests of the Amazon
and run in strict order, the females in front, headed by the most senior,
the males following obediently behind.
They prefer wet country around the banks of the numerous rivers,
but they're not common anywhere.
These are the most mysterious, the least known of all dogs,
the South-American bush dog.
The leading females sprinkle their scent as high as they can.
The males do no more than cock a leg.
Their bodies are well adapted to their environment.
Their short legs make it easy to run through the undergrowth,
and skin between their toes helps them swim.
They're the only dogs with webbed feet.
The rodents whose paths through the bush they use are also their prey.
But they'll pounce on water-living creatures as well if they find them.
The trouble with that is that very few water-living animals have any scent.
So when these dogs hunt, they have to use their eyes as much as their noses.
If you want to look for things under water, you have to get your face wet.
The pack may accept rules about their running order,
but at meal times it's a free-for-all.
(GROWLING AND YELPING)
The Amazonian forest may appear full of food,
but meat here is hard to come by.
Not so on the open plains of Africa.
Here, there is more meat than anywhere else in the world.
Not surprisingly, there are dogs here, too -
hunting dogs.
But wildebeest are big animals.
To bring one down, these dogs have to hunt together as a team,
sometimes as many as 50 of them.
They're the most successful of all hunters.
Once they've selected a victim, they work together to bring it down.
They have only their teeth to get a grip on their prey.
They don't have swivelling wrists that give a sideways grip
and their claws are not retractile, so they're blunted after running.
They kill in silence.
Too much noise would attract lions, who are big enough to drive them off.
That's why they bolt down as much meat as they can, as quickly as possible.
Bellies full, they return to the pups and females waiting at the dens,
which may be several miles away.
The pups can hardly wait.
They beg for food by frantically licking the mouths of the adults.
The pups are offspring of the senior pair, the alpha male and female.
Normally, no others will breed,
so the returning hunters are either the pups' uncles and aunts,
or brothers or sisters.
They squabble among themselves, as youngsters do.
But they give food to one another,
as they will throughout their lives.
The adults share domestic duties,
the young females helping their mother to look after her latest litter of pups.
(DRIVER CALLS TO DOGS)
So dogs, by and large, are sociable animals,
a fact that people who live here in the north of North America
have taken advantage of since early times,
training them to pull their sledges as a team.
And up here, too, lives the biggest of all the dog family,
and it too lives in packs.
If animals are to work in a team,
they need to communicate with one another.
Sometimes, it's possible for you to communicate with them.
(HE HOWLS)
(WOLF HOWLS)
(CHORUS OF HOWLING)
(HOWLS ECHO)
Wolves howl to warn neighbouring packs to keep their distance.
But they also do so to reunite their own pack
if it's scattered after a long hunt.
As they assemble again, they visibly delight in one another's company.
This pack, like the African hunting dogs, is ruled by an alpha pair,
who are the only ones to breed.
There's also a hierarchy among the rest, one for males, one for females.
This is reinforced daily by mouth-licking, crawling and mounting.
These rituals become particularly intense just before the pack hunts.
It's a bonding session that reminds each hunter of its place in the team,
invaluable in the struggle to come.
And off they go.
Those distant dots are their targets.
Elk, the North American equivalent of the European red deer.
Snowdrifts will make the chase difficult.
A wolf's pads are particularly broad,
but in really deep snow, the elks' long legs give them the advantage.
In such country as this, there's little chance of surprising them,
so the chase is likely to be a long and exhausting one.
One of the stags is flagging and the pack have separated it from the herd.
Another sprints past close by and confuses things.
Most of the wolves stick to their original quarry.
They have, after all, been harrying it for some time and it may be tiring.
But it's got away.
Another wolf is chasing the stag that ran by earlier.
But that escapes too.
Only one in ten wolf hunts is successful.
The weather worsens.
It's over a week since the wolves fed. They're getting desperate.
They have no alternative but to continue to follow the herd.
Now they have a real chance.
A female has become isolated and is close to the end of her strength.
She can go no further.
Even now, two wolves are not strong enough to bring her down.
But then the rest of the pack arrive. Now she has no chance.
The herd moves on.
The herds of North America are rivalled in size by those in Africa.
It's in the old world that the other great group of hunters first appeared.
This is the original home of the cats.
There's no problem in finding who dominates these hunting grounds.
Lions.
With all this meat within a few hundred yards, they're taking no notice whatsoever.
The fact of the matter is, most lions do most of their hunting at night.
The daytime is a bad time.
It's very hot. It's near midday
and the lions have found a nice cool place to rest.
And during the day, it's so bright that their prey sees them coming.
Hunting is then very difficult.
Much better to hunt during the darkness of the night.
Their eyes are more sensitive than ours,
but neither they nor I can see these lights.
They're infrared and visible only to our special cameras.
Lions hardly ever roar during the day.
It's very much a night-time thing.
And now, in the darkness, there are a number of them roaring just here.
There are two, I know, within three or four yards of where I am now,
and there's a third perhaps 20 yards over there, though it's difficult to tell
because it's pitch black except for just a faint moonlight.
The three belong to the same pride and they're communicating,
telling one another where they are.
(MUFFLED ROARS)
(ROARING CONTINUES)
Those are not aggressive roars.
They are communication roars.
But they're quite enough to chill the blood
in the blackness of the night...
especially when you know that the mouths making them are within yards
but you can't see them!
A hunt is beginning.
The shine in their eyes comes from our infrared lights
reflected by a membrane at the back of their eyes.
That, and pupils that open far wider than ours,
enables them to see eight times better at night than we can.
The big male is going too.
The cubs are bringing up the rear.
The slightest noise could stampede the zebras.
(ZEBRA BRAYS)
The lioness's jaws are clamped in the zebra's throat, throttling it.
Now there is food for all, so much that there is very little squabbling.
Dawn, and the pride are still lounging around with full bellies.
The zebra know that, for the moment at least, there's no danger.
Considering how powerful and aggressive lions can be,
life within the pride is remarkably peaceful and harmonious.
Just as they hunt together, so they also help in bringing up the young.
A nursing mother will allow cubs belonging to others to take her milk.
The lionesses in a pride are nearly always sisters,
but even so, such co-operation and tolerance is remarkable
and very unusual indeed among cats.
Most cats are solitaries, living and hunting by themselves.
These are the cubs of a single mother, a cheetah.
She has a heavy responsibility.
Neither her sisters nor the cubs' father help in bringing them up.
Finding food for them and for herself is not easy.
She moves off.
And they follow.
But they're likely to be more of a hindrance than a help.
Impala are grazing nearby.
They move away as she approaches, but don't panic.
Unless a cheetah is within 30 yards, they can outrun her.
She knows that too, and won't waste her energy.
She won't charge unless she gets really close.
The cubs seem to realise an attack is imminent and settle down to watch.
Is she close enough?
They're beginning to drift away.
She starts to sprint.
Now she's running flat out,
bounding so fast her feet are off the ground for almost half the time.
She's almost flying.
The race is over. The slowest will not compete again.
Cheetahs are the fastest thing on four legs. Their backbones are so supple,
their hind legs can reach forward on either side of the front.
She's so slim and agile, she can rival a gazelle in dodging and swerving.
Unusually, another has come to share her prize.
It's probably from last year's litter. She wouldn't tolerate anyone else.
Her slim, athletic build is now a liability.
Heavier animals could push her off her kill,
so she and her cubs eat fast.
All big cats are widely distributed, but one is particularly adaptable.
It lives in tropical rainforests from the Congo to Vietnam,
in deserts from Algeria to Iran, and here in the rocky hills of northern India.
Prey is scarce here. The most abundant are the domestic animals
that those other great meat-eaters, human beings, keep to consume.
(GOATS BLEAT)
The villagers know that this cat usually hunts at night,
so every evening, they drive the goats into this thorn-walled enclosure
to keep them safe.
Even a big cat won't be able to cross this.
It's now absolutely dark
and all I have to help me is a torch.
Beyond its beam there is absolute blackness.
So I feel pretty vulnerable,
because this big cat can move at night in total darkness.
It could be anywhere. But we do have infrared cameras in this village,
so if it does come, we'll see it.
And this thatched hut is our technical operations control centre!
We have three cameras in the village, each with its own monitor,
so whichever way the raider comes, we should see it.
I can scan each of them.
There it is, a silent, moving shadow.
It's a leopard.
A female, moving down the main path through the village.
That's our hut.
She's just beyond the curtain, within a few yards of me.
But I'm not what she's looking for.
She's leaving. The flock has survived without loss for another night.
Of all the big cats, the leopard is perhaps the most accomplished stalker
and the one least seen.
In Africa, it hunts gazelles.
Each paw is placed with the utmost care.
(GAZELLE SQUEALS)
No dog can equal the stealth with which cats can stalk,
nor the swift efficiency with which they dispatch their victims.
I'm in the frozen north,
and this is the trail of the biggest of the cats, the tiger -
and the biggest of the tigers, a Siberian tiger,
surely the most formidable hunter of all.
Until human beings devised weapons for themselves,
this was the most powerful killer on Earth, the top predator.
Few creatures could escape it. Nothing could threaten it.
But that has now changed.
Hunting animals need hunting grounds.
That, inevitably, brings them in conflict with humanity.
Once there were tigers all over Asia,
from Sumatra and Bali in the south, India in the west,
up to Siberia in the north.
But, sadly, over much of those areas, the tiger has disappeared.
And even this one is in captivity.
Big cats like the same sort of meat as human beings,
as well as eating human beings,
so it's scarcely surprising the two don't co-exist very easily.
But once these magnificent meat-eaters were the lords of the land...
..the ultimate in lethal grace and beauty.