These feet tell a story.
One of hardship and courage...
of survival and of secrets shared.
They belong to a lone bull...
...in what might be the toughest place
on Earth to be an elephant...
Namibia's Namib Desert.
Climate change has made the extreme conditions even worse.
The dry seasons are drier...
...punctuated by ever more unpredictable rainstorms.
Only 150 desert elephants remain.
But they are resilient...
with a deep knowledge of their world...
passed down through generations.
Desert elephants are as tough as the landscape.
Perched on the southwestern edge of Africa...
the Namib Desert is a land of extremes.
Temperatures here can exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit...
with an average of less than three inches of rainfall a year...
that come in bursts that scar the earth with massive flash floods.
Somehow, these elephants are eking out a living in a landscape
that anyone else would think is lifeless.
Conservationist Dr. Paula Kahumbu has spent her career
studying the elephants of Africa's lush savanna grasslands.
But she's never laid eyes on a desert elephant.
She wants to find out how these remarkable animals
manage to survive in this unforgiving place.
African savanna elephants and desert elephants are the same species.
But if you took a savanna elephant and brought it here, it wouldn't survive.
I wanna know how these desert elephants manage to live here.
To find one of the constantly roaming elephant herds,
Paula has turned to tracker Hendrick Munembome...
- Oh, yeah. - Wow.
...and his 25 years of studying the desert elephant.
Yeah, I think some walked here as well.
So it's possible we will find them today.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my gosh.
This is amazing.
There's two here.
Oh, my God. Wait. There's, oh, a big family here.
These are the desert elephants we've been looking for.
There's a family.
I've been watching elephants my whole life,
and I've never seen elephants like these.
They may be the same species as savanna elephants,
but you can immediately see the differences.
Their legs have less fat on them, so they look taller,
and their skin is looser.
It's incredibly tough for an elephant here.
Food and water are both scarce. And it's only getting worse.
In the Namib Desert,
climate change has brought with it a five-year drought.
Everything depends on their ability to get from one waterhole to the next.
There's no time to stop, to investigate, to explore, to play.
It's just survive.
Survive means keep going, keep going.
It's the middle of the seven-month dry season...
when daily temperatures are regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
But even in these conditions, life finds a way.
Just minutes old, but the odds are already stacked against her.
It's been eight years since any desert elephant
has survived its first six months in this valley.
She will learn everything from her all female family.
The challenges start right now.
Standing up.
The reassuring touch of her mother's trunk.
Their bond is already strong.
Elephants are pregnant for 22 months...
longer than any other mammal.
She's ready to go.
Almost.
With food and water being so scarce,
she'll suckle for six years, two more than any other African elephant.
While the rest of her family stands watch...
captured here for the first time, her mom takes an after-birth shower.
Births are so rare. The placenta is an object of curiosity.
The others try to bury it...
as the smell could ring like a dinner bell to nearby predators.
One day, she may become a matriarch
and lead her own family of females, just like her grandmother.
But for now, she just needs to sleep.
She'll enjoy the protection of this herd throughout her life.
Her male relatives won't share that same benefit.
Around the age of 14,
males leave their families and begin a never-ending journey of survival.
Almost 55,000 square miles of the Namib Desert
can be a lonely place.
For four decades, he's walked up to 50 miles a day...
the equivalent of three times around the world
by his 40th birthday...
in a continual search for food, water, and females.
What keeps him alive is his incredible memory.
His brain is like an atlas of the desert
filled with details about where to find exactly what he needs.
This river is dry, but the bull isn't here for water...
just a good meal.
The challenge is getting down to it.
These crumbling sandbanks could be a problem.
But not for a sand surfing pro.
This desert snack bar may not look that appetizing...
but the portions are generous.
On his daily menu, a quarter of a ton of leaves and bark.
He's eaten here before and knows each tree offers something different.
Ana tree seed pods full of protein.
They're the desert equivalent of a peanut butter sandwich.
He won't knock down the trees like savanna elephants.
By simply pruning them,
he ensures this precious food source will still be here next year.
The moisture from the leaves is just enough to survive a few more days.
But he still needs to find water.
First, he has another appetite to serve.
It's time to find love.
The bull's mate just happens to be the matriarch
of another desert elephant family in Namibia.
Thirteen elephants strong.
And it's most successful.
She's raised four calves of her own.
An exhausting task.
Her mate, the old bull, is a regular visitor.
He's fathered some of her offspring.
At times, the bull can seem like a real family man...
and he can be affectionate with the kids.
But the real reason for dropping by?
To reignite an old flame.
As the only male of breeding age in the area,
he has an unrivaled opportunity.
Nothing breaks the ice...
like a tasty gift.
A touch of affection.
But she's not interested.
The drought presents breeding females
with an extra challenge...
finding the water it takes to produce enough milk
to feed a thirsty young calf.
Without milk, calves die.
It's one of the reasons
why desert elephants are on the brink of extinction.
The old bull visits,
but ultimately, they go their separate ways.
Everyone has to keep moving.
It's something our newborn and her mother are about to learn...
the hard way.
She's overslept.
Her inexperienced young mom didn't wake her.
The rest of the family, led by their matriarch,
had to keep searching for water.
Only one aunt has stayed behind.
The first lesson in desert survival is keep moving.
With their urgent need for food and water, the herd's matriarch couldn't wait.
But without her family's protection, the calf is hugely vulnerable.
Guided by the fast-fading scent trail of the herd,
the three set off in pursuit.
The midday heat is brutal...
and their pace...
relentless...
especially for such little legs.
Mom tries to signal the rest of the family with a contact call.
The hours of relentless chase are taking their toll.
But then the mom's hypersensitive hearing
picks up something in the wind.
A sandstorm is coming.
Her calls for help...
are lost in the wind.
She has to keep pushing them...
into the storm.
Ahead, unable to see clearly...
the rest of the herd has been forced to slow down.
As the wind quiets...
...the mom's cries for help finally reach the rest of her family.
Together again.
It may only be her second day of life...
but the baby has already learned lessons that will stay with her forever.
She's learned to keep going no matter what.
She's learned there's strength in numbers...
and she's learned that family is her fortress.
With its dunes rolling endlessly to the ocean...
Africa's Namib Desert is the oldest and one of the driest on Earth.
The quest for water means covering huge distances.
For the solitary bull,
it's like walking from Alaska to Florida every year.
Every pit stop for water is a lifesaver.
His astounding memory has stored the location of all of them.
The problem? The nearest is 50 miles away.
His desert-adapted feet, wider than other elephants,
make it easier to move over the sand.
He only sleeps two hours a day.
But not often at night.
The cooler temperature is too valuable for rest.
Before dawn, he'll cover 40 more miles.
As he draws tantalizingly close, he can even smell it...
with the keenest sense of smell in the animal kingdom.
A true oasis.
He has to make the most of this opportunity...
sucking up over half a gallon a second...
and drinking up to 60 gallons at a time.
It could be four days before he drinks again.
Some of the Namib Desert never sees rain.
The rivers flow for just two weeks every year.
The supermom and her herd
know that the desert can be dangerously unpredictable.
In the mountains to the east...
an ominous rumble.
She can feel it.
In her trunk, 400,000 nerve endings sense something in the air.
The sensitive pads on her feet
pick up a distant rumble 150 miles from here.
In the desert, rain is a precious gift...
but not when it falls on ground like this, baked rock-hard by the sun.
A flash flood.
The biggest in decades.
The supermom knows from experience
that this riverbed is no place to be right now.
It's time to get the herd to higher ground fast.
A wall of water, 13 feet high in places, is heading their way.
She got them out just in time.
The water that moments ago was life-threatening...
has now become life sustaining.
Fifty miles further down the valley,
for the newborn and her family,
the rain comes as a welcome relief.
At first, the mud seems to confuse her.
But not for long.
When she's older, the calf will remember this place...
and that a good coating of mud isn't just cooling. It's desert sunscreen.
The elephants drink as much as they can...
however they can.
It'll be six months before our little calf learns to use
the 40,000 muscles that control her trunk.
Eventually, it'll be as familiar to her as an arm is to us.
But for now, it's one step at a time.
Eighty miles away,
the lone bull is coming to the end of his current journey.
He's found himself enough food and water for now.
But something else compels him to walk to the desert's western edge...
known as Namibia's Skeleton Coast...
named after the shipwrecks along its beaches...
and the remains of the whales and seals those ships once hunted.
The bull has come here for precious minerals...
...crystallized from evaporated seawater
on the shoreline's vegetation.
Elephants crave the sodium and other minerals in sea salt...
and will eat anything that has it.
But it's a fleeting pleasure.
All his instincts tell him to keep moving,
just as they repeatedly tell him to return to his mate and her herd...
in hopes of creating a new generation.
Six months on,
our supermom continues to lead her herd on their migrations through the desert.
And there's hope.
Not only is a young female in the family pregnant...
but our young calf has become the first desert elephant
in eight years to survive in this valley beyond her first six months.
A momentous achievement...
not just for her family...
for their entire kind.
But their story isn't over.
As challenges mount,
their tough lives are set to become even tougher.
These desert elephants are survivors.
They've been able to carve out a living in a place where life seems impossible.
I wanted to find out how these amazing elephants have succeeded.
It's because they've adapted their behavior.
They've learned the secrets of the desert.
They rely on each other.
They listen to their elders,
and they pass on knowledge from generation to generation.
And this is why these elephants endure.
They've become as much a part of the desert as the shifting sands.