One challenge faces almost all animals on Earth -
the need to find a partner.
It's a drama that is played out in every corner of the planet.
For some, it's conducted on an immense scale.
Others need to put on a show.
And for many, it involves
intense, even lethal, battles.
This series will reveal the extraordinary strategies
that animals employ to succeed in the mating game.
Those that win will have a stake in the greatest competition of all -
the creation of a new generation.
Namibia, in the South West Africa.
An ancient landscape that has shaped the mating game of its residents.
Ostriches.
The rules of their mating game
have been refined and elaborated
over some 60 million years
and are now very well established.
During their breeding season, each flock is dominated by a single male.
His territory, and the females that come with it, is a hard one asset.
So his leadership is only challenged
by the brave or the foolhardy.
This young male is low in the flock's pecking order.
He's spent five years preparing for this moment,
and now he needs to breed.
The resident females seem interested.
He starts to show off.
And their attention encourages him.
But the current leader does not tolerate competition.
CHIRPING
HISSING
The kick of an ostrich is powerful enough to kill a lion.
HISSING
And the young male is risking an end to his breeding season
before it's even started.
In a matter of moments,
the young challenger has been cast out of his flock.
It's a disastrous start to his campaign.
But it comes with a valuable lesson.
Out here, in the open, the mating game is exposed for all to see.
The young male now faces a major challenge.
There are not many ostriches on these dry planes
and females are hard to come by.
It could take him several months to find one.
He does, however, have a way of bringing them to him.
LOW BOOMING
He inflates a sack in his throat
and produces a boom that carries for miles.
And it attracts unaccompanied females.
BOOMING CONTINUES
INSECTS HUM
BIRDSONG
But that is the easy bit.
Female ostriches are very choosy.
With the largest eyes of any land-living animal,
they assess his every detail.
The pinkness of his shins.
The shininess of his black feathers.
Both indicate his sexual quality.
But he has yet to pass a crucial test.
HIGH-PITCHED HOOTING
The females lead him on a chase, testing his stamina.
And they can run at speeds of 40mph.
All he has to do is to keep up.
One of the females slows.
And once again, he tries to win her over.
But, again, she seems indifferent.
Now, he has only one trick left.
At last, he seems to be getting some attention.
She flicks her wings - a sign that she is impressed.
So, with little to lose,
cautiously, he performs his final trick.
It's not perfect...
..but he gives the performance of his life.
FEMALE HOOTS
With that achieved, he will now go on and mate
with several more females before the season is over.
Provided, that is, he can maintain their interest.
He now has a final task.
He must take every female with whom he mates this season
to his chosen nest site.
And there, incubate all their eggs for the next two months.
Only if they hatch will he know
that he has truly succeeded in his mating game.
BIRDSONG
Where grass grows abundantly,
mating, for many, is rather more competitive.
SNORT!
SNORTING
This zebra stallion has spent several years
assembling a group of females - his harem.
And he'll do anything he can to retain them all.
Some of his mares are already pregnant,
and he leads them on the never-ending search for food.
Every March, they come here, to the Serengeti.
One of the most extensive natural grasslands left on Earth.
Such rich grazing attracts herds 30,000 strong.
His family has good reason to join this huge assembly.
There is safety in numbers,
and predators here are awaiting them.
Hyenas.
Small harems are the most at risk.
LOW GIGGLING
LOW GROWLING
The herds will provide the safety that the stallion needs.
And right now, his family is particularly vulnerable.
Here, his newborn foals can get a good start in life.
Soon after birth, their mothers become ready to mate again.
But being in a big herd causes a problem for the stallion.
SNORTING
Bachelor males are quick to detect
the scent of a newly-receptive mare.
And they will try to separate one from the rest of its harem,
whether she is willing or not.
SNORTING
SNORT!
If a stallion doesn't drive off the bachelors,
his group will be broken up in a matter of minutes.
ANXIOUS BRAYING
But if he's going to keep his family together, he will have to fight.
LOUD WHINNY
HIGH-PITCHED BRAYING
LOUD SNORT
A well-placed bite to the bottom is enough to see off weaker rivals.
LOUD WHINNY
But with challenges coming from all sides,
he's in danger of losing control.
FRENETIC BRAYING
LOUD WHINNY
Pushed to his very limits, he must now use greater violence.
SNORTING AND WHINNYING
ANXIOUS BRAYING
LOUD WHINNY
BREATHLESS BRAYING
Victory.
His family is still together, for now.
But his right to breed isn't guaranteed.
His females will still have the deciding say on that matter.
FAST-PACED BRAYING
Competition between males for a mate
is common throughout the natural world.
But females may also play a deciding part in the mating game.
One such is so efficient at doing that
that her species has become one of the most successful
of any on the planet.
Here, on the grasslands of Africa,
their castles of clay are a familiar sight.
Each one is ruled by an extraordinary, all-powerful queen.
Her domain can stretch for many miles underground
and is maintained by armies of her subjects,
most of whom implicitly obey her instructions
but never even meet her.
Everything in this community is under her control.
She can live for 50 years, longer than any other insect in the world.
Meet the termite queen.
Her devoted partner, the king,
has been at her side throughout her life.
He mates with her frequently, but his role is limited to that.
It is his gigantic queen who dominates the colony.
Her bloated body contains huge ovaries which produce eggs nonstop.
She lays one every three seconds,
24 hours a day, for 25 years.
A productivity unmatched in the natural world.
All in the colony are her offspring,
and all are dependent on her success.
They clean her tirelessly and keep her well fed.
Some remove the eggs and store them.
A seemingly never-ending job.
In her lifetime, she will produce
over a quarter of a billion offspring.
As each egg emerges, it's taken away to another chamber.
Here, the workers toil to create the perfect conditions
for their development.
Some chambers serve as gardens.
Here, the workers cultivate balls of white fungus
with which to feed the queen.
But not all young termites remain equal.
Their future will be determined by the queen.
In response to the needs of the moment,
she will produce chemical instructions that determine
the role each of her offspring will play in the community.
And once a year, she changes the behaviour of the entire colony.
THUNDERCLAP
As the rainy season approaches,
she orders her workers to open new gateways
in the outside walls of their castle.
They are preparing the most important and dramatic happening
in their year.
Exactly why the rains trigger this event is still unknown,
but it will not begin without them.
HOOTING AND BIRDSONG
What happens next occurs on only a few days in a year.
But the future of her entire kingdom depends on it.
As a consequence of a chemical signal from her,
some of her subjects have developed wings.
Each of these winged termites is a potential queen or king.
And one morning, at first light,
they emerge in millions.
Attempting to get as far away as possible
and start their own community.
But their journey is beset by danger.
Such a multitude of edible insects does not go unnoticed.
Emerging in these vast numbers is part of termite strategy.
The loss of a few thousand individuals amongst millions
is insignificant.
Eventually, even the greediest predators
will have had as much as they can eat.
The surviving termites, males and females, find partners,
shed their wings
and each partnership then digs a new colony together.
So if things go well,
more clay castles will appear on the African plains.
A lifelong partnership between male and female
can certainly lead to great rewards.
But, in fact, such a simple strategy is rare.
Delaying finding a mate until one reaches one's physical prime
is a more common tactic,
but it does have its problems.
These are the meadows of southern Australia.
Here, sheer physical size can make a significant difference.
Male grey kangaroos battle for access to the females.
The biggest nearly always wins.
As a result, the males have become very big indeed.
At 2.5 metres tall,
they are more than twice the size of the females.
These battles are nearly always won by the biggest male.
But it will be the female who will decide
exactly when he will be allowed to claim his reward.
A female can conceive at any time,
so there is no rush as far as she is concerned.
But a male kangaroo has to fight whenever he's challenged,
so he is keen to mate just as soon as he can.
LOW GRUNTING
The longer the delay, the greater the chance
that another male will displace him.
Rival males show off to make clear how very big they are.
So the victor keeps her close by him
while he still has the upper hand.
She, however, continues to explore her options.
No matter what the victor does to impress her...
..she is still reluctant to commit.
Things are taking a little longer than he might like.
After days of unsuccessful courting,
she leads him to the edge of the meadow.
And here, there are others
who keep an eye on what is happening.
Less physically-impressive males lurk out of view,
waiting for a female to lose her suitor.
They just need a distraction.
Another large male enters the competition.
He's just as big as the first one,
so if he is to win the female, he'll have to fight.
And while both of them are preoccupied by battle...
..she looks elsewhere.
This smaller male, out in the open,
would stand little chance of winning a mate.
But while the big boys battle, she's willing to accept him.
Sneak mating, like this,
accounts for only a small proportion of kangaroo pregnancies.
But in a grassland dominated by a few particularly large males,
sneaky strategies ensure
the genetic diversity of the next generation.
BIRDSONG
Hiding your intentions out in the open plains is often difficult.
But if you live in the tangle of vegetation on the grassland floor...
..it's possible to use rather different tactics.
A male nursery web spider.
He's hunting.
He actively stalks his prey.
And the grass provides him with excellent cover.
But he's not going to eat this catch himself.
Instead, he's going to give it to someone he has not yet met.
First, he carefully gift-wraps his capture.
Presentation is going to be very important.
Once satisfied with the appearance of his parcel,
he starts searching for someone to give it to.
Lines of silk amongst the grass stems are a promising lead.
And there are signals coming from the other end.
A female nursery web spider.
It seems promising.
But he must be careful.
She is, after all, a killer, just as he is.
And she seems quite hungry.
She accepts his gift...
..and begins to eat it.
For a first meeting, things seem to be going very well.
Well enough, anyway, to make his hair stand on end.
While she is busy eating,
he gets ready for action.
He starts to transfer his sperm to her
using a specialised sack on his foreleg.
Both sides seem content.
She gets a meal, he gets to mate.
But the exchange amongst spiders isn't always so equal.
A male nursery web spider
will attempt to mate with as many females as he can.
His biggest problem is finding enough food to satisfy them all.
Most spider hunts, like the hunts of most predators,
end in failure.
So this male spider cheats.
He starts by picking up someone else's leftovers,
a dead fly.
Providing it's well wrapped, she might never know.
There's only one way to find out if it's acceptable.
Amazingly, it works.
Encouraged by this success, he does something exceptionally devious.
He wraps up a flower.
It's not even food.
Such extreme deception is rare.
And it doesn't always work.
This male, however, seems to have mastered the trick.
And now his success is limited
only by the number of gifts that he can collect.
With a strategy that is clearly effective,
he tries almost anything that looks remotely suitable.
Not all nursery web spiders can pull off this trick.
But for those that can, the prize is worth the effort.
Or in this case, the lack of it.
Deception is a risky strategy,
especially out in the open, where it can more easily be detected.
BIRDSONG AND CHIRRUPING
So some males work together to put on a show.
In northern Finland, groups of male ruffs
gather on communal display grounds known as leks.
They rely on their spectacular neck feathers to impress a partner.
But fine feathers by themselves are not enough.
Empty leks, like empty dance floors,
rarely entice the opposite sex.
The more males there are, the more attractive they will be.
So the locals accept visiting males.
The visitors have a distinct white ruff,
and they travel between leks looking for the best mating opportunities.
So with both visitors and locals here,
this lek has become very conspicuous.
The males advertise the richness of the choice on offer
by leaping into the air.
It gives them a good chance of being seen by females flying overhead.
A flock of females descends for a closer look.
The males' strategy is clearly working.
And now they start to show off their extravagant ruffs.
The females now have plenty of males to choose from.
But any attempt by the white-necked visitors
to do more than display
is quickly dealt with by the lek owners.
SQUAWKING
With only a few females on the lek,
the locals soon squabble amongst themselves.
Some do find a mate...
..as do some of the visitors.
But many do nothing but fight.
Unobtrusively, however, something else is going on.
Meet a faeder.
A male ruff wearing the plumage of a female.
The only known example of crossdressing in the bird world.
The faeder avoids competition
since all the other males think he's a female.
So while the other males continue to fight it out,
the faeder moves in.
Only 1% of the male population are faeders.
But it proves that in gatherings where male display is important,
there is still room for a different approach.
Assembling in really large herds,
like those that appear on the open savannahs of Kenya,
can seriously complicate the mating game.
They attract the greatest concentration of predators in the world.
LOW GIGGLING
LOW GROWLING
PANTING
LOW ROARING
Here, you have to keep your eyes peeled.
FAINT SNORTING
And this young male topi is doing just that.
INSECTS HUM
His excellent eyesight enables him to spot approaching predators.
HE SNORTS
And his alarm calls warn others of the dangers lurking in the grass.
HE SNORTS
SQUAWKING
INSECTS HUM
But a sentry also wants to mate.
So eventually, he abandons his post
and follows the other males to the traditional display grounds.
Now, with no-one to give warning of predators,
the journey is becoming dangerous.
SNORTING
On arrival, the young male's problems become evident.
The females tend to look for males in the centre of the display ground,
so that is the place to be.
GRUNTING
But he has to battle with rivals even before he gets there.
The stakes in the mating game now get even higher.
Females arrive in a group.
A female topi is fertile for only one single day in the whole year.
So it's vital that he makes a good impression right now.
He tries a ritualised trot
that demonstrates his physical fitness.
But the females seem to take no notice.
He needs to do something else.
He tries driving his horns into the ground as others are doing.
The effect is certainly eye-catching.
But will it make any difference?
HE GRUNTS
Still no takers.
But now, he's attracting the wrong sort of attention.
His final tactic is less obvious.
He actually exploits the presence of predators.
As a female comes into view, he snorts a predator alarm call.
HE SNORTS
It stops the female in her tracks.
It's a false alarm, but it delays her just long enough
to give him a chance.
HE GRUNTS
And that is all he needs.
His success...gives him a fresh swagger.
HE GRUNTS CONTENTEDLY
But in mating with so many females,
he exposes himself to danger.
Since arriving a few weeks earlier,
he has barely stopped to eat or drink.
His mating exertions have left him exhausted.
With few males acting as sentries,
this is neither the time nor the place to drop your guard.
Even an exhausted topi is more than a match for a single adult cheetah.
But there are two.
And now three.
Such is the desire to breed
that some on this grassland
pay for the chance to do so with their lives.
But those who manage to complete the act of mating
will have left a legacy within the herd.
The mating game begins with finding a partner.
For many, the act of mating brings it to an end.
But for some, that isn't the whole story.
After 40 days of incubation,
ostrich parents have to take on their final responsibilities.
Chicks, just a few days old.
The timing of their parents' mating couldn't have been better.
Rain has brought plenty of food to the arid grasslands,
and that is what the chicks must have
if they are to survive and grow.
So the responsibilities of these adults
are still, by no means, over.
Winning the mating game can have its consequences.
CHIRRUPING
And for some, they can be the greatest challenge of all.
To film The Mating Game,
crews travelled across the world
to gain an intimate understanding of animals and their habitats.
Oh, my God, there's a baby cayman in its mouth!
Over two and half years, teams worked alongside wildlife experts,
often going to extreme lengths to capture the behaviours on camera.
It's unbelievable what's happening here in this forest!
What they uncovered was beautiful and surprising,
and revealed the true complexity
of the strategies that animals employ to win the mating game.
One of their greatest challenges
involved predicting when ostriches will begin their breeding
in the desert grasslands of Namibia.
It's a behaviour that cameraman Martyn Colbeck
has spent years trying to understand.
I'm pretty excited.
I just want them to get on with their mating game.
HE LAUGHS
Martyn's experiences tell him in this part of the world,
ostriches have to time their breeding to perfection.
We think that the breeding is just about to kick off,
but what hasn't happened yet is that the ostriches
haven't split up and dispersed to look for nest sites.
And that's when the males start to do their territorial chasing
and displaying to each other.
The birds must begin their breeding in advance of the annual rain.
It's a gamble that ensures that there will be enough food
for their chicks when they eventually hatch.
It means that the film team must also second-guess
the timing of their trip.
As with many places in the world these days,
the weather patterns here in Namibia are so unpredictable.
It's had drought for five years.
And you can look around and it's really, really dry
and really, really barren.
And there's a slight worry within the camp that,
you know, with this drought and with this unpredictable weather,
that there's just no real trigger, as it were,
for the ostriches to do their thing.
The more they search, the greater the sense of unease
at the lack of activity.
WHIRRING
Aerial reconnaissance by the team
uncovers further evidence that this landscape is under duress.
Quiver trees have evolved to cope with long periods without rain,
but even they have succumbed to the drought.
I can imagine what this place must have looked like 15, 20 years ago.
It's upsetting. I'm actually really upset.
You know, you come here thinking,
"Oh, wow, amazing quiver tree forest",
and you get here and you just see this devastation.
I'm upset.
I'm really, really, like, as in truly upset.
Like you said, these trees are older than us.
You know, trees are older than you,
myself and Gert combined,
and they're just lying here, dead.
Just done for.
It's a bad situation to be in.
As the weeks pass, there's still no sign of the rain
the ostriches so desperately need.
They should be establishing their territories.
They should be digging their nests.
The males should be fighting.
But they're not.
In the year that Martyn was here,
Namibia experienced the worst drought in 90 years.
In these conditions, the ostriches seemed to sense
that any attempt at breeding would end in failure.
The team left empty-handed.
The following year, The Mating Game returned with a new team
and renewed hope that the rains might eventually arrive.
And what they encountered from the start
took them by complete surprise.
With this much foreplay on display,
it's clear that the ostriches are in a very different mood.
In the far distance, we just saw a male
definitely doing what we want it to do.
So we're just now going as fast as we can over here,
hoping they're going to keep going.
He's twisting, he's twisting, he's twisting!
Oh, my gosh, she's twisting!
Yeah, that's a good angle. He's running.
OK, let's go ahead with this one.
With the males now violently competing for females,
their mating game has literally kick-started.
Oh, God, amazing to see! Just incredible!
I know. Is a round of high fives appropriate?
Jeez! Yeah.
Well done. Nice job.
Jeez! Thank goodness for that!
How long was that?
Anyway, it's not that long, it's just the intensity of it, isn't it?
More surprising, with still no rain
but clouds building on the horizon,
the ostriches begin to launch into their finale.
Ooh, y-yes! Yes!
Nope, she's...
Yes!
Well done, Steve!
So it's all going ahead
and we were trying to work out why that is, what's the difference?
Because there's still been no rain at all. Been a few clouds.
But we've just seen that the forecast for next Monday,
that's a week away, there's rain forecast.
So, you know, maybe they somehow know that.
I don't know how they do that, but maybe they know
that it's going to be a good rain year.
In the coming weeks, after five years of waiting,
something remarkable happened.
The desert plains received a much-needed downpour.
It seems the ostriches got their timing right after all.
Next time, the largest of all habitats - oceans.
Where life first invented the mating game.
And where the challenge of simply finding a mate
sparks some of the greatest battles on Earth.