(THEME MUSIC)
(ROARS)
NARRATOR: The Arctic Circle is a truly remarkable place.
It encompasses parts of the US, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Iceland,
Greenland and Norway.
But the ocean is its most significant feature -
roughly 14 million square kilometres of ice-laden sea.
Winter temperatures here can drop below minus 50 degrees Celsius
and the wind can whip itself into a frenzy -
double the speed of a hurricane.
Weighing in at around 680 kilos,
the top predator in this extreme landscape is the polar bear.
They are renowned for keeping to themselves
but in some places, polar bears and people
have developed a mutually dependent relationship.
Just on the outskirts of the town of Churchill in Canada,
polar bears come to scavenge for food.
Locals have taken advantage of their presence
and made it possible for animal lovers
to have a close and yet safe encounter with this polar powerhouse.
Polar bears are perfectly put together for a life on ice.
They have a layer of fat, or blubber,
that insulates their bodies from the bitterly cold air and water.
That thick coat of fur extends to the soles of their feet,
keeping out the cold and aiding traction.
Each hair is translucent
but the polar bear's pelt appears to be white
because it reflects light.
It's great for camouflage
but beneath all that fur, the polar bear's skin is black,
allowing the animal to more effectively absorb heat from the sun.
Polar bears are powerful swimmers.
One bear fitted with a tracking device
was recorded swimming continuously for over nine days
and in that time covered nearly 700km.
Scientists studying polar bears
have figured out a way to isolate their DNA
and that of their last meal
from the footprints they leave in the snow.
Polar bears spend around half their lives hunting
but before they're old enough to fend for themselves,
male cubs appear to spend a great deal of time play-wrestling.
Most polar bears are twins, so most have a playmate from birth.
Through this instinctive behaviour,
they learn important skills they will need later in life
when the time comes to compete with other males
for the right to mate with the females.
These fights can be aggressive, lasting several hours
and invariably leave both challengers scarred for life.
As adults, polar bears are generally solitary creatures
but as cubs, they tend to stick together,
even after they've left their mother's side,
mock-fighting and hunting until it's time to go their separate ways.
The polar bear is the largest of all the Arctic animals on land.
Second in line is the musk ox,
a huge bovine beast that is relatively easy to encounter
on the Arctic tundra.
They are well adapted
to withstanding the bitterly cold winds and temperature,
with strong hooves to dig through the snow for food
and not one but two coats to keep them warm through the winter.
Their diet is strictly vegetarian -
mosses, roots and lichens through the winter,
Arctic flowers and grasses during summer.
Iceland is widely known as 'the land of ice and fire'.
It is an extremely remote yet inhabited part of the Arctic
that harbours huge glaciers and active volcanoes
in equal measure.
There are crystal-clear rivers...
barren highlands...
soaring fjords...
and along the coastline, precipitous cliffs
that provide an extreme home base
for two of the Arctic's most interesting birds -
the rather comical-looking puffin and its key predator, the skua.
Skuas can snatch puffins mid-flight
but they are much easier to catch when they're stationary.
(CHIRPS)
Puffins spend most of their time at sea resting on the waves
when they're not flying or diving to catch fish.
But when it's time to breed, they need to find land.
Cape Ingolfshofdi,
an isolated headland on the south coast of Iceland,
is a favourite nesting site, protected by a nature reserve
where bird enthusiasts are able to encounter puffins at close range.
Males dig burrows into the cliffside with their beaks.
Both parents take turns to incubate the single egg the female lays
and will share the care of their offspring once it hatches.
Easily identified by their colourful beaks,
puffins are often referred to as sea parrots...
and despite their relatively small wings,
they are impressive in the air.
Flapping their wings 400 times a minute,
they can reach speeds up to 88km per hour.
Most seabirds can only catch one fish at a time
but puffins have lots of small spines on their upper palates
that allow them to hold onto as many as a dozen,
an efficient strategy when parents need to bring food
back to their nests to feed their pufflings.
Remarkably, every year,
the same couples return to nest in the same location.
Scientists are still not certain
how they manage to find their home ground so precisely
but some suggest they may be using the earth's magnetic field
or even stars to navigate.
On the other side of the Arctic Circle,
long before Europeans arrived in North America,
wild dogs roamed through this vast wilderness untethered.
To this day, they form the genetic base for the modern Alaskan husky,
the tireless sled dogs of the great north.
They are a domestic animal
but so integral to human survival in this part of the world
it would be remiss not to include them in the world's greatest.
Alaskan huskies were developed by dogsled racers, or mushers,
from different bloodlines of native Inuit dogs.
They love to run and they love haul -
two sought-after traits
that generations of breeding have perfected.
(DOGS BARK)
The ultimate challenge for the dogs and their mushers is the Iditarod,
a gruelling 1,500km race from Anchorage to Nome.
(DOGS BARK)
Each competing team has between 12 and 16 dogs
that are rotated throughout the course to prevent fatigue.
Vets give the competing dogs the once-over
at each and every checkpoint to ensure they are up for the challenge.
The dogs are well cared for by their mushers
and seeing the relationships they've developed with their masters
is heartening.
(DOGS BARK)
Dogsledding is not only a great way
to connect to these beautiful animals,
it's also a practical way to get around the wilds of Alaska,
clearly a part of the US blessed by Mother Nature.
At the opposite end of the extreme landscape spectrum,
where the Pacific and Indian Oceans converge,
bitter cold is traded for relentless heat and humidity.
This is a landscape born of fire.
Home to more than 120 active volcanoes,
the Indonesian archipelago
is almost constantly threatened by earthquakes and tsunamis.
Eruptions can be catastrophic
but they lay the foundations for new life to take hold.
Beneath the sea, where the world is perpetually dark,
hydrothermal vents provide an extreme habitat
for a strange array of creatures...
shrimp and fish that appear to thrive on the mineral-rich hot water
escaping from deep inside the earth.
Other animals living in the extreme ocean depths here include crabs...
holothurians...
and the world's deepest living super-predator, the bathysaurus,
or lizard fish.
In this dark and lonely world,
it has evolved an unusual reproductive mechanism -
the ability to copulate with any member of its own species,
for all are equipped with both male and female sex organs.
A land-based animal here in Indonesia
with an equally unusual way to reproduce is the komodo dragon.
Their hostile habitat
means that individual dragons are extremely isolated,
so lone females have evolved the ability to reproduce asexually.
Komodo dragons are the heaviest monitor lizards in the world
and they have been around for at least 4 million years.
Fossils suggest they originally came from Australia
and moved westward when sea levels were low.
Fully grown adults can be 3m long and weigh over 150 kilos.
They use that forked tongue just like a snake
to taste the promise of prey in the air.
Dragons will often lie in wait for their prey.
They have excellent camouflage and a great deal of patience
but powered by their massive, muscular tails and legs,
they can launch an attack with surprising speed.
Sharp claws and teeth make short work of prey.
If by some miracle a dragon's intended meal escapes,
it won't be for long,
for the lower jaw of this incredible killing machine
is packed with lethal venom
that finds its way into the dragon's saliva and its victim's bloodstream.
These animals are extreme eaters.
One dragon can eat 80% of its body weight in a single sitting.
Its jaws and throat can stretch to accommodate enormous chunks of food.
Almost nothing goes to waste.
Bones, hides and even hooves will disappear down that massive throat.
(INSECTS BUZZ)
Of the 69 species of monitor lizards in the world,
Australia is home to 28.
The perentie is the island continent's largest,
second only in size to the komodo dragon.
They're 2.5m long, impressively fast and show remarkable endurance.
They can run on their hind legs and reach speeds of 40km per hour.
They live close to rocky hills and outcrops,
using those sabre-like claws to dig burrows in the hard earth.
Perenties and their close relatives, the Rosenberg's goanna,
do not lay their eggs in their burrows.
They prefer to take advantage of these perfect incubation chambers
built by termites.
The vents and tunnels termites create
to keep the temperature and humidity of their homes constant
provide the perfect conditions for perentie eggs to incubate.
An added bonus - when the young hatch,
there's a quick meal available on the doorstep.
As adults, these enormous monitor lizards have an extreme diet,
for they specialise in catching and eating venomous snakes.
When the situation calls for a showdown,
perenties can outpace and outsmart a king brown,
one of the deadliest snakes in Australia.
Another extreme Australian animal with a deadly diet
is the Portia spider.
It preys on other spiders, including the poisonous redback,
a close relative of the notorious black widow spider in the US.
Despite its diminutive stature,
the Portia spider is a ruthless assassin,
readily taking down prey larger than itself.
Stealth is the name of the game in this extreme arachnid's world...
and if it takes hours or even days to sneak up on a potential meal,
so be it.
The Portia spider is said to be
the most intelligent spider on the planet,
deliberately stalking and even plotting how best to affect a kill.
And if that method doesn't work,
it will cleverly switch to a different strategy.
In another hot, dry landscape thousands of kilometres away,
there are yet more animals appearing to defy the odds,
living in hostile terrain.
The Namib Desert Park in Namibia, near the south-western tip of Africa,
occupies an area larger than Switzerland.
And while it lacks the high mountains
that define the topography of that particular nation,
it is home to some of the world's highest sand dunes.
The tiny grains of sand that make up the dunes
in the centre of the world's oldest desert
are said to be over 5 million years old.
For all its apparent hostility, this otherworldly landscape...
surrounding the Sossusvlei salt and claypan,
provides an unlikely habitat for some truly resilient animals,
including ostrich and the superbly adapted gemsbok, or oryx.
While they will drink water if the opportunity presents itself,
they do not depend on it to survive.
They can go for months on end without it.
The roots and tubers and wild melons they eat when grass is sparse
provide all the water they require.
Their physiology and behaviour
is geared to minimise the loss of body moisture.
They do not urinate very often
and when they do, the flow is as thick as honey.
And as counterintuitive as it sounds,
they stop sweating when desert temperatures soar.
In any lesser animal, this would be lethal
but the gemsbok copes with its body temperature
rising to a dangerous level by panting rapidly,
cooling the blood in its nasal veins before it reaches its brain.
Gemsbok live in herds of between ten and 40 animals
and in Namibia, their population is thought to be around 373,000.
In other arid parts of South Africa,
they are hunted for their spectacular horns
but here in the Namib Desert Park,
the only humans seeking to fix them in their sights are photographers.
(THUNDER CRACKS)
Extreme weather is almost par for the course in Australia.
Heatwaves, cold snaps, dry spells and floods ravage the landscape.
In the desert,
the temperature regularly soars over 48 degrees Celsius...
and in the alps,
in the dead of winter, it can drop to a numbing minus eight.
But one animal thriving in both environments
is the wild horse, or brumby.
They are relatively recent arrivals in Australia
but nonetheless have become integral to the nation's cultural identity.
They descend from horses
that were shipped in with the first European colonists
and carthorses used during the gold rush.
Their ancestors were ridden by bushrangers and troopers,
by stockmen, explorers and pioneers.
There is even one wild herd of brumbies
whose forebears carried soldiers gallantly through both World Wars.
Numbering close to a million,
these majestic steeds provide an enduring tangible link
to the nation's wild colonial past.
For 150 years,
these brumbies have been roaming free in the high country,
alternately surviving the vagaries of summer bushfires
and winter's bitter blizzards.
They hold their own in arid Australia too.
But the prize for enduring all that harsh environment has to offer
goes to another non-native animal, the camel.
Camels were introduced here in the 1840s
from India, Arabia and Afghanistan
to assist the colonists in their exploration of Australia's inland.
But when motorised transport found its way into the outback
and the camels were no longer needed,
thousands were released into the wild.
With no natural predators, they flourished.
They now form the largest herd of camels on Earth,
with their numbers nudging a million.
The dromedary, or one-humped camel,
is native to the Middle East and Horn of Africa,
where it's been domesticated for 3,500 years.
Bedouin tribes have traditionally used camels for transport and trade.
The camel's ability to travel hundreds of kilometres without water
is well documented.
Unlike most four-legged animals,
they move both legs on one side of their body at the same time,
giving their gait a rolling motion not dissimilar to that of a boat,
which is one reason why they are often referred to
as 'the ships of the desert'.
Big, thick foot pads help them withstand the hot, shifting sands
or rocky terrain typical in most of the world's desert regions.
They have a third transparent eyelid
and two rows of eyelashes to protect their eyes
and can close their nostrils to stop sand from getting in
when the wind is whipping it into a frenzy.
Their lips are big and tough and impervious to the prickly vegetation
that typically grows in a desert.
And they don't need to sweat
until their body temperature reaches 41 degrees Celsius,
effectively conserving any fluids they consume
for long periods of time.
When they do drink, they do so with gusto,
soaking up water like a sponge,
downing 135 litres in 13 minutes flat.
Contrary to an age-old belief,
camels do not store water in their humps,
their reservoirs of fatty tissue
a source of water and energy when these resources are scarce.
As that fat depletes, a camel's hump can become quite floppy,
a sure sign it's losing condition.
Most animals living in the snow have a tough time during winter,
enduring snowstorms and a scarcity of nutritious food.
But the Japanese macaques on the Shimokita Peninsula
on the island of Honshu
have learnt how to ride out the winter in relative comfort.
It's a clear case of monkey see, monkey do,
for the ancestors of these macaques
are thought to have mimicked human behaviour
in taking to the hot springs
for a measure of respite from the chills of winter.
The pool rules seem to vary from day to day and from group to group.
Sometimes you'll see a sedate gathering of monkeys
calmly taking to the water like wise old monks.
And at other times, well, it's all a little less ordered and serene.
Japanese macaques need to have a broad taste in food
in order to survive here.
They will eat almost anything they can find,
including over 200 different fruits and seeds, insects
and even sometimes soil.
But it's their taste in bathing activities
that sets them apart from all the other extreme animals on Earth.
Animals can survive in all manner of extreme environments -
in intense heat, in severe cold and in complete darkness.
Caves all over the planet harbour creatures
that have evolved to survive in a lightless world.
Longfin eels rely on their sense of smell to find food
and bats find their way in and out of their cavernous daytime roosts
using echolocation.
It's a tough call, choosing the world's most extreme animal
taking advantage of the protections such subterranean habitats afford.
But as far as encounters go, few hold a candle to the glow-worm.
These bizarre lifeforms only exist in the Southern Hemisphere
and one of the most amazing places to witness them in all their glory
is Waitomo Caves in the North Island of New Zealand.
The ways into this exquisite cave system are adventures in themselves,
floating through some of the larger caverns
on an inflated car tyre inner tube
or employing the more traditional techniques
used by professional cavers.
Either way, the glow-worm displays are worth the effort.
When millions of these animals get together,
the result is truly out of this world -
an ethereal galaxy of glow-worms.
Glow-worms are not actually worms, rather they are maggots,
the larval stage of a small fly.
The larvae live like this for about six to nine months,
before transforming into adults that, lacking mouths and stomachs,
will only live for three days.
Their sole purpose as adults is to reproduce before they die.
The life of a young glow-worm, however, is all about eating
and this is one big cooperative trap.
Each light is a single larva.
A chemical reaction in the larva's faeces causes the bioluminescence.
The skin of the larva is translucent,
so the light shines through from inside the animal's intestine.
Thousands of lights together attract thousands of insects,
such as these cave-dwelling moths.
Each glow-worm dangles a long, sticky thread that acts like a fishing line.
When insects are drawn to the lights, they become entangled and trapped.
It's bad news for the bugs
but manna from heaven for the glow-worm.
Good things are happening at Coles.
Outback Australia is a harsh and unforgiving environment...
full of small creatures that have adapted well to its alien vagaries...
to the spiky spinifex and endless gibber plains
that don't exactly give off a very welcoming vibe.
It's the driest inhabited continent in the world,
with two-thirds of the mainland classified as arid, or semi-arid.
And much of it is prime habitat for the beady-eyed and scaly-skinned.
Australia harbours more reptiles than any other country on Earth -
over 900 native species, including many of the world's deadliest snakes.
This is the inland taipan, the most potent snake in the world.
If it were to strike a rat,
it would inject a venom 40,000 times more lethal than necessary -
the ultimate overkill.
The prey dies very quickly, with little resistance,
so the risk of injury to the taipan is minimised.
The taipan can live where almost no other animals can,
hiding in cracks and crevices.
They can survive with no plant cover whatsoever.
And they have a clever desert adaptation.
They change colour according to the season,
from a light cream to reflect heat during the summer
to a dark brown for absorbing heat in the winter.
The largest of all of Australia's venomous snakes is the mulga snake,
or king brown.
King browns compete successfully with other desert snakes
by choosing a different food source.
While most snakes prey on small mammals,
king browns specialise in eating other reptiles -
snakes, lizards and even their own flesh and blood.
When attacking, they bite down hard,
chewing to inject more and more venom.
The king brown wins the international prize
for having the highest venom output of any snake in the world.
While most snakes will escape rather than risk an attack,
there's one species that prefers to sit motionless
when it hears someone coming.
The death adder.
Like all snakes, they're not interested in us as prey
but unwary bushwalkers may get bitten by accidentally standing on one.
These snakes have the longest fangs in the world.
They are ambush predators, so their camouflage is excellent.
Death adders are easy to identify.
They are short and squat,
with striking markings and a triangular head.
The end of their tail tapers quickly and is a different colour,
which the death adder uses as a lure.
Mimicking the movement of a worm, the adder attracts prey
by wriggling its tail until curiosity draws potential prey close enough
to strike.
Despite its appearance, this is also the fastest snake in Australia.
One of the most fearsome-looking
yet harmless reptiles in the Australian desert
is the thorny devil.
It is small but extreme,
particularly when it comes to what it eats and how it drinks.
Thorny devils are only around 20cm long
and they dine exclusively on ants.
Their thorny skin is a deterrent to many potential predators
but more incredibly, helps a devil to drink.
They can stand in a puddle of water and channel the liquid uphill
into their mouths via the grooves between their scales.
This clever gravity-defying adaptation
allows thorny devils to rehydrate
without taking their eyes off the skies,
where aerial predators are hunting for a meal.
Another tactic they use to avoid being eaten is to look like a leaf,
rocking back and forth as if it were blowing in the breeze.
The thorny devil also has a bony mass, or false head,
on top of its real one.
If threatened, the devil tucks its real head between its legs
so the fake head is exposed,
making the lizard look bigger and thus more difficult to swallow.
In doing so, the clever thorny devil has the chance to live another day
in this extremely hostile environment,
keeping ant populations in check.
When it comes to aerial predation,
the Andean condor is in a league of its own.
Nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon,
Colca is in the heart of the Andes in Peru.
Waters cascading down the mountains
have carved this incredible chasm in the earth.
It is an extreme environment
and the domain of one truly remarkable vulture.
Andean condors have a wingspan that can reach 3m from tip to tip.
With a top weight of over 15 kilos,
this is the largest flying bird in the world.
Despite their heavy bodies, condors seem to fly almost without effort,
barely flapping their wings.
Each bird is being carried by the strong air currents
generated by the deep canyon and surrounding rocks.
Condors are gliders rather than flyers.
They are expert at finding rising columns of air
to carry them through the mountains.
Tiny movements of their primary feathers
adjust the condor's climb and direction.
Condors have excellent eyesight, ever on the lookout for signs of a meal.
They're not well equipped to do their own killing,
for they lack the lethal talons of eagles and hawks
that can bring down prey in a split second.
Instead, they must scavenge for animals that are already dead.
Condors are very clean animals.
They're often preening their feathers.
And that bald head has evolved so they can dig deep into carcasses
without getting covered in rotting meat.
The steep sides of Colca Canyon are ideal nesting sites
and perfect launchpads for these extremely oversized birds.
Despite their grace in the air,
condors find it very hard to take off from the ground,
so this terrain that seems so inhospitable to us
is the perfect home for this truly awe-inspiring bird.
The Southern Ocean surrounds the driest continent on the planet.
It's also the windiest.
Dense, freezing air rolls down the mountains
at speeds of over 300km an hour.
Antarctica is a place of immense beauty and mystery
that's almost completely blanketed in permanent ice.
And some of this ice is almost two miles thick
and, of course, it's extraordinarily cold.
The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was minus 89.2 degrees
at Vostok in the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Even without the ice, the continent of Antarctica is big,
much larger than Australia, with mountains over 5,000m high.
Very few animals can survive here.
To do so, they have had to evolve
some extremely specialised physiologies and behaviours.
Seals, whales and penguins all have personal insulation
in the form of thick, fat layers known as blubber.
The supreme example of Antarctic adaptation
is a flightless bird weighing 40 kilos -
the regal-looking emperor penguin.
This is the only land animal on Earth
that breeds during the Antarctic winter.
It has special nasal chambers that recover heat lost through breathing
and even its blood vessels recycle heat
by aligning themselves close together.
But the most amazing feature of this stoic bird
is its wonderful social behaviour.
Emperor penguins are famous for their enormous huddles,
sometimes as big as 200,000 individuals.
Amazingly, the temperature close to the centre of these groups
can be a balmy 24 degrees Celsius.
Fortunately, for the penguins on the outside,
the entire group is constantly moving.
In this way, every penguin enduring the icy winds
will eventually cycle into the middle.
This behaviour is made all the more remarkable
by the fact that each animal is balancing an egg on its feet.
If the eggs make prolonged contact with the ice,
the chick inside will freeze to death.
There are six species of seal living in these waters
and all of them are large carnivores.
The most feared is designed for underwater speed
and has lethally long canine teeth -
the leopard seal.
These animals are huge,
with females reaching 3.5m in length and weighing 500 kilos.
Leopard seals live and travel alone.
They eat penguins and other seals, as well as fish and squid
and they've been known to hunt humans.
Apart from the lethal cold,
the leopard seal is the greatest danger to people
living or travelling through Antarctica.
The Weddell seal is almost the same size as the leopard
but it has a small head, small mouth and a placid nature.
The biggest and most well-known colonies of seals down here
are either elephant seals or Antarctic fur seals.
Both societies consist of a harem of females
and one very aggressive dominant male.
Unlike Northern Hemisphere seals,
all Antarctic species have no natural predators on land
and appear as curious about us as we are of them.
Extreme animals often live in extreme environments...
places that appear to be anything but conducive to life.
Many of their behaviours and adaptations defy belief...
and the way they cope with living life on the edge
inspires our respect and sense of wonder.
(HORSE NEIGHS)
Whether they live at the top or the bottom of the world
or somewhere in between those geographic extremes...
they have clearly earned their place
among the greatest animals readily encountered in the world.
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