JANE: Tonight we're going to take you on a trip around the world,
an adventure the likes of which you've never experienced before.
Live and in real time.
We'll take you to exotic places
to show you man and woman-eating bull sharks.
Take this as a warning.
Tonight, some animals will be dining
and others will be dinner.
Monkey business in a city in Northern India.
Pursuing the elusive ocelot in the middle of South America.
Cheering for the weaver ants in Australia
to finish building their winter home.
Up close to the ferocious hyenas in Africa.
We've assembled the dream team of award-winning cinematographers.
Africa expert Bob Poole.
The world's number one shark cameraman,
Andy Casagrande.
She's filmed lions for over two decades, Sophie Darlington.
National Geographic Society explorer, Sandesh Kadur.
And 20 years leading expeditions around the world, Steve Winter.
Fifty-seven state of the art cameras, 28 locations,
and 17 countries on six continents.
Tonight, expect the unexpected on Earth Live.
In a way only National Geographic can,
tonight we invite you to celebrate
the truly astonishing diversity of life on this planet.
Fact is, we're just one species on Earth
but we share it with up to ten million other species.
And for once, it's not about us.
It's all about them.
So for the next two hours, we will enter their worlds
to better understand the home we all share,
and I'm your host, Jane Lynch.
So happy to share the honors with the man who's been to over 100 countries.
Who's bet-- Who's bet-- better to lead our expedition
than The Amazing Race's amazing Phil Keoghan?
PHIL: Jane, I'm really excited to be here with you tonight.
We are live in New York. This is our headquarters.
And we are live all over the world
with wild animals in their natural habitats.
And what we're doing, it's unprecedented and it's so exciting.
JANE: Yes, and for the first time, we're going to be up close and personal
with some extraordinary creatures.
Speaking of which, extraordinary creatures,
we're joined with our resident expert on all creatures
with four legs, six legs, wings, fins, tails,
our zoologist, Chris Packham.
CHRIS: Jane, thank you very much, indeed.
And thank you both for this invitation to cross the Atlantic
and join in this live TV safari.
Tonight is going to be a great night
because tonight the animals take over the Earth.
And that's just how it should be.
LYNCH (off screen): I love it.
Now, a word about how this is going to work tonight.
-PHIL: Yeah. -JANE: We don't know
how this is going to work tonight.
It's never been tried before on this scale.
And because we're live, be prepared for interruptions,
because at any moment, we could switch to the action in another location.
PHIL: And you know what's so cool?
We can go anywhere in the world just like that.
And so right out of the gate, we're gonna travel
8,000 miles across the South Pacific
to the beautiful waters surrounding Fiji,
and here we're gonna meet
some of the most feared animals on the planet.
Sharks.
In Fiji's waters, one stands out in striking fear
into the hearts of swimmers, divers, and fishermen.
The ancient killing machine, the bull shark.
Pound for pound, they bite with more force than a great white,
more than twice the force needed to crush a human skull.
The bull shark can take its terror where others can't,
into fresh water estuaries and rivers in pursuit of its prey.
What happens when unprotected,
we go face to face with the bull shark?
Ooh! That bull shark, they are so scary,
but we're gonna get close with them right now.
Andy Casagrande is 80 feet below the surface.
(rebreather hissing)
ANDY (off screen): What's up, New York City?
We're here in Fiji 80 feet down on this incredible reef,
and we're surrounded by thousands and thousands of fish,
and in amongst these fish, we got lots of sharks.
But not just any sharks. We've got bull sharks.
These sharks are known to be some of the most highly aggressive,
unpredictable predators on the planet
and to me, they're some of my favorites.
PHIL: You know what's so cool is that
-we can be live here, Jane... -JANE: Yeah, mm-hmm.
PHIL: ...and we can just cross.
That is live in Fiji.
I mean, it takes months and years to make documentary films
about wildlife, and we are doing it live.
JANE: And he's not wearing any protection, either...
PHIL: No protection with those big bull sharks.
Yeah, so, Andy, you just hang on there,
and we'll get back to you and the bull sharks soon.
JANE: Yes, and, Phil, I understand you have some experience feeding sharks.
-Tell us the story. -PHIL: Well, I have fed some sharks...
-JANE: Mm-hmm. -PHIL: ...and a few years ago,
I decided to renew my vows with my wife underwater
-and guess who turned up? -JANE: Some sharks.
-PHIL: Some sharks turned up. -JANE: Uninvited.
PHIL: Uninvited sharks.
-JANE: Yeah, that's amazing. -PHIL: Yeah.
PHIL: We are gonna go to Kenya now, and our guide is Sophie Darlington.
Sophie's been tracking and filming big cats
for nearly 30 years.
JANE: Now, everything can change in a second.
So we'll be monitoring, uh, this wonderful area of the country,
but let's go to Sophie now.
SOPHIE (off screen): This is... (chuckles)
You can't help. It's amazing. We have just found these.
It's the first time they've ever been seen
as far as we know by anyone.
Um, this mum, we followed a mom back,
and she's suckling them and they are...
...beyond cute.
They're just... They're, they're bullying her.
They're biting her to pieces. (chuckles)
There is something about lion cubs, uh,
it just makes my heart melt.
I think anybody. How could you not melt at that?
Think they're about three, four weeks old.
So they're just getting, like, mobile.
Except they're not trampolining now.
(chuckles)
So I'm not gonna say it. 'Cause they're suckling away.
Look at them. She's been away for, I don't know,
she's been away for a couple of hours,
and they're so happy to see her
and they'll just trample all over her,
just using her as a big bouncy castle.
It's the first time anyone's seen these cubs,
and it's such a treat.
I cannot tell you. So few a time,
you really rarely get to see them,
um, and to see them right now is such a privilege.
I can't-- Oh. It's just beautiful.
Back to you, studio.
Ooh, off you go.
JANE: That is delicious. That was so sweet.
And, of course, we'll be keeping tabs on Sophie in the Maasai.
We'll have live camera feeds, and we'll take you back there,
uh, the moment something happens.
PHIL: You know what? I think we should go live back here to the United States
to the US Pacific Northwest
and the high desert near Malheur County, Oregon.
It's right on the Idaho border.
It's late afternoon, and it is feeding time
for a hungry feathered hunter, a hunter.
JANE: We have Widow. She's a 13-year-old golden eagle
and today she is outfitted with a live broadcast camera...
-PHIL: Look at that. -JANE: ...a transmitter, GPS.
Chris, does carrying this equipment hurt the bird?
-It's minuscule, right? It's small. -CHRIS: No, it, it doesn't, Jane.
These are robust, large birds that weigh many pounds,
and the equipment that we've given her this afternoon
just weighs a few ounces.
But it's well worth her carrying this equipment.
It gives us an eagle's eye view of Oregon.
And also, the GPS tracking device that she's got there
will tell us a lot about the way she hunts.
We'll learn more about their behavior.
And in many parts of the world, these birds need conserving
and that we can only conserve them
-if we know a lot about them. -PHIL (off screen): I love that.
We've got a live point of view on top of Widow there, flying
Unbelievable.
JANE: Well, we'll be back with Widow
when she's, uh, reached cruising altitude.
But now, we're gonna go live to Brazil,
the Pantanal Conservation Area,
the world's largest tropical wetland,
smack in the middle of South America.
PHIL: And that's where we're gonna find Steve Winter.
He's spent his career photographing big cats
all over the world, including the elusive ocelot.
They're very difficult to find in the world.
STEVE (off screen): Oh, you know, it's one of the most unique experiences
in my 20-plus years working with big cats.
I can't believe that we're actually seeing this live on camera,
because I've hardly ever seen it in 20 years,
and she's just there.
I mean, to see that beautiful face, those stripes coming out of her eyes.
And look at the camouflage.
I mean, she's got the rosettes and spots that make her unique.
They're like our fingerprint, no two are alike.
And, you know, the moonlight camera gives us
the opportunity to see this perfectly.
I can film all the action in pure color.
It's incredible, bar none.
Look at her.
Just like a gymnast.
I mean, many cats are powerful, but she is graceful.
So we're back to the studio. This is great.
All right, we'll see you soon. We're gonna keep filming.
There she goes.
PHIL: You Just got to love new technology.
I mean, that is moonlight, and we can see.
We have 58 cameras, they're scattered all over the world,
and here's what we're seeing from a few of them.
CHRIS: Okay, let's jump around the world.
Remarkable opportunity here.
In Pennsylvania, a couple of white-tailed deer out in the woods.
You can see they're growing their new antlers there at the moment.
Fantastic view this evening of these animals.
Let's jump to Poland. All the way across in Europe.
To the primal forest, the Białowieża Forest there,
and these are red deer.
Their antlers have already grown much larger, as you can see.
And here in Romania, brown bears.
And they have come in to a site here
to find some food that's been put out for them.
What an extraordinary opportunity to leapfrog about,
looking at these animals which otherwise are so difficult to see.
Well, apart from this one, because this is a little wood mouse.
It's in England.
And I've got to tell you guys that I share my house with these.
I live in an old thatch in the middle of the forest,
and I got these guys scampering around on the roof above me.
Massive ears, massive eyes.
They're nocturnal animals and very common throughout Europe.
JANE: Well, that's wonderful, because we're going from England
now back to Fiji, known for gorgeous beaches,
romantic getaways, and sharks.
PHIL: And Andy Casagrande, who is still underwater with the sharks.
Let's go back there now.
ANDY (off screen): Well, these sharks are getting really amped up here.
I got my local Fiji boy here feeding these guys,
and these bull sharks are incredible.
You guys might think this is crazy.
We got no tanks, no chain mail,
essentially no protection,
but I would argue you guys are in more danger in New York City
than I am down here with these sharks.
JANE: Well, the good news is, those sharks went for the fish and not for Andy.
And hopefully they're not saving him for dessert.
PHIL: Did you hear what he said?
BOTH: We are in more danger here in New York City.
-JANE: Uh, I don't know about that. -PHIL: Well, oh, wow.
Chris, I'm, i-it's a little controversial feeding sharks by hand, right?
I mean, there's some people who disagree with that.
CHRIS: Yeah, it is. I mean, what we don't want to do
is for the sharks to associate humans with food
because they might then think of humans as food.
But, at the same time, Phil, as you know, ecotourism is really important,
and one of the things we're trying to do
is redress the reputation of these animals.
They're feared across the world,
but they're intrinsically important in our marine ecosystems.
The world, frankly, can't live without sharks,
and these sorts of encounters spread the word that they're good news.
JANE: You've got , you've got something in your hand.
CHRIS: Yeah, I have got to show you guys this.
Look. This is what the bull sharks are armed with.
-JANE: Holy cow. -CHRIS: This is what
Andy is mixing himself up with.
This would come from a shark about the same size
as those that we see swimming around there.
These are the jaws, and look at the teeth, Jane.
These at the bottom here are like little pegs.
They're for gripping hold of the slippery fish that they catch,
and they then grip them with a force
of 1,349 pounds of pressure.
The top ones, look, Phil, are serrated
because once they've them in their grip,
they shake them vigorously to cut the fish up
so they can swallow them.
-PHIL: And a lot of new teeth coming in. -CHRIS: Yeah, I mean, look at this.
You see, they've always got a full set of teeth.
Folded up behind are perhaps four or five more.
So when one breaks out, within a few days,
the next one will fold forward.
Rest assured that when a shark attacks,
it's always got a full set of sharp teeth.
JANE: Oh, that's amazing.
Well, while we are taking you around the world,
we want to know what you're thinking, too.
Reach out to us with your comments and your questions
on social media using the hashtag #EarthLive.
PHIL: Yeah, we're gonna be heading back to Eddy,
Andy Casagrande.
He has a limited amount of air.
Uh, with some, he's with some very hungry sharks.
JANE: And we are watching lions across the Maasai Mara.
Which one of them will go in for the kill?
-Look. There's three right now. -PHIL: Beautiful.
And how about this?
20 million inhabitants of this cave
explode out in an incredible bat stampede.
You're watching Earth Live.
JANE: Well, it's nighttime in Kenya's Maasai Mara
seen in this stunning image of an elephant on a thermal camera.
Watch him for a little bit.
Just gorgeous.
(chuckling) Oh!
-PHIL: Oh, hello. -JANE: Hello.
-(Phil chuckles) -JANE: My goodness.
Welcome back to Earth Live
an unprecedented live global TV event.
We're broadcasting from New York City,
but our 58 remote cameras are at 25 locations
on six continents across 12 time zones,
bringing you incredible animal encounters live.
-Right, Phil? -PHIL: Yeah, I love it.
And we're gonna go right back to Fiji.
Andy Casagrande is down there.
We don't want him to run out of air.
And he's still surrounded by the bull sharks.
ANDY (off screen): Yeah, these sharks are getting super amped up here.
The entire ocean has just exploded in this massive ball
of energy and excitement, and it's just incredible.
I've been super lucky to film sharks all over the world
for the past two decades.
And I got to say, this is one of the sharkiest dives you can do
and one of the most beautiful places to film.
But at the same time, I also got to say
these spectacles are becoming increasingly rare.
Sharks are under heavy pressure by overfishing and shark finning.
And in my opinion, a world without sharks
is not a world worth living in.
We really need to rethink the shark, protect these animals.
They're the protectors of our oceans,
and we literally need to save sharks.
PHIL: Andy, the images that we're seeing are extraordinary.
Are you scared right now? They're so big.
ANDY: You know, I've been doing this for so long,
I'm not scared. These guys are not the enemy.
Sharks are the protectors of the ocean, and we need to respect them.
And to be honest, I'm more scared of people than sharks,
because they're way more dangerous.
PHIL: Aw, thank you so much, Andy,
and please get to the surface before you run out of air
and thank you for absolutely spectacular images.
JANE: Thank you for the, to the sharks, too.
-PHIL: Yeah, we should thank them, right? -JANE: Yeah, just wonderful.
Well, it's a perfect day for Earth Live, and let me tell you why.
Summer brings more direct sunlight in the northern hemisphere,
which means solar energy
and consequently a huge increase in available food.
These conditions trigger behaviors in many species.
For example, in New York,
the summer heat makes many human species leave the city
and migrate to the beach in Mexico.
Female free-tailed bats fly north to Texas to give birth.
And for more about bats,
Chris Packham takes us inside the beast.
CHRIS: Just look at this dizzying display here.
It feels like I'm in the core of the bat-nado.
And what about this fascinating species? What about some stats?
Well, firstly, how big are they? They're five inches in length.
And how much they weigh? They weigh in at about half an ounce.
Now, if each bat at Bracken Cave
ate their own bodyweight in a single night,
they would consume more than 250 tons of flying insects.
They can live up to 11 years,
and they can also reach a maximum flying altitude
of 10,000 feet.
They'll also go for a long way for a good meal.
We think that these bats that are emerging from Bracken tonight
might complete a 100-mile round trip
to source all of their flying insect prey.
The world population of the species,
in the region of 100 million bats.
So that's one Mexican free-tailed bat
for every 70 humans on Earth, and this makes them
one of the most numerous mammals on the planet.
And finally, they have a remarkable top speed
of 100 miles an hour.
That outstrips even the swiftest of the birds
in powered level flight.
100 miles an hour.
Jane, Phil, I bet you didn't think that bats could fly that fast.
PHIL (off screen): No, I had no idea.
And, uh, these bats,
they're coming out of a cave right now
and we've captured them as they were coming out of the cave
just a few moments ago.
And we are talking about millions of bats
coming out of a cave, the Bracken Cave.
Uh, these... this cave is down in San Antonio.
And how extraordinary for us to be able to see this, Chris,
right now as these bats are coming out to feed.
CHRIS: Yeah, these are probably the young ones.
The females came here in the spring, as you said, Jane.
They've given birth, and over the last few weeks,
the youngsters have been growing to the point that they can fly,
and normally the first bats to emerge early in the evening
are these juvenile bats.
And they're swirling around here
in the entrance to the cave.
Let's just have a listen. Let's see if we can hear them.
(bats squeaking)
CHRIS: It's just like a soft wind blowing through the trees.
PHIL: And they're missing each other, Chris.
-That's what I love about this-- -JANE: They're not flying into each other.
PHIL: And my understanding is they, they come out in waves
so it, it's not like they can all come out together.
They come out in waves, and then it takes what,
-a couple of hours? -CHRIS: Yeah, couple of hours
for them to all come out.
But you're right. They're not bumping into one another.
There were thousands if not hundreds of thousands
of these animals active in the air.
They're using echolocation.
They make high-pitched chips with their voice
which bounce off the things in the environment,
in this case, other bats, come back to their ears,
and give them a complete picture of where they're flying.
And as you can see, accidents are very infrequent.
JANE: Well, from Texas to Ethiopia.
(chuckles) We've been monitoring movement
in the ancient holy city of Harar, in eastern Ethiopia,
just a hop, skip and a jump, well, a 7,108-mile jump
from New York City.
PHIL: You might not know this, but Ethiopia is home
to 70 percent of Africa's tallest mountains
and also an extremely aggressive predator.
Hyenas, the notorious villains of the African plains.
They'll battle a lion for a kill...
...and cheat a cheetah out of the dinner.
(hyenas yipping)
PHIL: With a spine-chilling cackle
and one of the strongest bites of any land mammal,
these fierce predator scavengers
crunch bones, hooves, and even horns.
But what happens when they come into contact with people?
Well, Bob Poole is a world-renowned wildlife cinematographer,
and clearly you can see right now he has got some company.
BOB (off screen): Ah! This is absolutely nuts.
You know, I'm surrounded by hyenas.
Maybe 30, 40 hyenas,
and I got to tell you, it is pitch black out here.
Without this moonlight camera, I wouldn't be able to see anything.
But actually, I'm not alone.
This is Abbas right here, and he's a hyena man.
You know, he comes from a generation of hyena men,
and that's because the city here behind me, Harar,
has an ancient tradition with hyenas.
In fact, they believe that hyenas ward off evil spirits.
I don't know, though. For me, this all seems a bit nuts,
because I grew up in Kenya,
and you wouldn't think about getting out on foot in the dark
surrounded by hyenas for anything.
It's just absolutely crazy.
I can't believe it. I mean, when you look at these animals,
look at the size of the jaws right there on this guy.
On-- it's probably a female, actually.
You know, the females are the-- and the muscles,
The females are the big ones, but wow.
I-- just crazy.
I think this is sketchy.
What do you think, New York?
PHIL (chuckles): I think it's very, very sketchy.
Uh, I mean, to be that close to those animals,
if you can hear me, Bob,
can you tell me what it is they eat when they're not being fed like this?
BOB (off screen): (chuckles) You know, we think of hyenas
as being scavengers, but the fact is they're very formidable predators.
You know, like I said, look at the size of those, of those muscles
in the shoulder and the jaw right there.
Imagine a bunch of those things working together.
They can pull down really big prey.
I sure wouldn't want to be taken apart by one of these guys
-or a pack of them. -PHIL: So powerful.
BOB: So, when you come back to me, I'm gonna be with a wide-angle lens.
I want to get up close and personal with these animals
and, uh, see what it's like to have to take a hold of this opportunity
to get some shots I've never had a chance to before.
-PHIL: Well, thank you so much, Bob, -BOB: Back to New York.
PHIL: And, uh, this is quite extraordinary.
This is something that they've been doing for hundreds of years.
It's a tradition and where these men,
these hyena men get so close and actually feed them.
And I just want to remind you, you would not be seeing anything
if we were just using a regular camera.
That is moonlight
that is giving us those images with a special camera.
We're gonna check right back with Bob a little bit later on.
Jane has actually left me.
She's run away. She's gone to the Matrix room,
which is Earth Live's command center.
-Jane? -JANE (off screen): Yep.
Right here in mission control. Look at all the hub of activity.
We have 50 live camera feeds in here
from 25 locations, six continents.
screens live from every location.
This is James. James is calling the shots here.
Tell us, what, what-- tell the folks at home what's going on.
-What are you guys doing in here? -JAMES: Uh, well, organized chaos.
JANE: Yes.
JAMES: Uh, we're talking to all our teams in the field.
We've got people all around the planet, from Alaska to India.
We're monitoring all the feeds,
and as soon as we see some action, we're gonna let you know next--
JANE: You'll throw it to us. Everybody's got their laptops.
Uh, Vivia here has the ocelots.
Bill with the sharks with his laptop.
This guy's on Facebook. Shame on you.
This is all live, and the images are so clear.
Now, this show could not have been done before,
because the technology simply didn't exist.
Back to you, Phil.
PHIL: What a team! All right.
Are you ready to meet two new animals?
Cosmopolitan monkeys dining out in the city
and whales that travel across an ocean to get a good meal.
This is Earth Live.
JANE: Welcome back to Earth Live, everybody.
What we're looking at is a thermal camera photographing lions,
and it looks like we might be in the beginning of a hunt.
CHRIS: This is the plains of Africa, and we have a lioness out here,
very definitely stalking potential prey.
You can see that she's creeping forward.
She has now gone down onto the ground.
It's a slow process.
She's got to be careful.
She doesn't want to spook whatever the prey is.
And if we're panning around now,
we should be able to see what she's looking at.
Yes, here we've got it.
There's a bunch of wildebeests here.
PHIL: And they have no idea that she's there?
-CHRIS: No. It's grooming itself. -JANE: Completely unaware.
CHRIS: It's clearly not alerted to the fact
that there's a lion anywhere near.
But she's quite a way off at the moment.
JANE: And she's by herself, too, Chris. They usual-- They do--
CHRIS: Well, we can only see the one lion here, Jane.
There could be others in the pride skirting around,
because they will hunt cooperatively.
But she's gonna need to get a lot closer than this
to stand a chance of catching one of those animals.
PHIL: I love listening to the night of Africa.
JANE: Yeah.
CHRIS: Look at that. You can feel the tension.
Jane, Phil, the tension.
-PHIL: Intense. -JANE: And-- Yeah, it is.
And look at the, look at the, the camera.
It, it captures the body heat of the animal.
And so where she's whiter, it's where she's warmer.
CHRIS: This, this is the ultimate game.
This is the game of life and death.
JANE: Look at her eyes. Look at that stare.
PHIL: And do you know what their success rate is, Chris,
in terms of every time they hunt?
CHRIS: Yeah, if they're hunting on their own,
it's not particularly good.
It's between five and nineteen percent of hunts result in a kill.
If they're hunting in pairs, it improves slightly,
but they need to move into a group to hunt really effectively.
Then it can raise to 30 percent.
But look here,
how carefully she's paying attention to these animals.
All of her focus is strained,
her hearing, her smell, her sight.
-PHIL: Her life depends on it. -CHRIS: Absolutely.
JANE: And we have a full moon tonight, so this is not optimal for the lions.
It, it kind of lights up the area a little more.
Uh, then, then, they--
CHRIS: No, you're, you're absolutely right.
I mean, it's perfect for us to be able to see them,
but it's bad news for them
because their prey can see the lion,
and that's why she's being so careful in, in this hunt.
-JANE: But it is dark out there. -CHRIS: Yes, it's pitch black.
As you say, this is our thermal camera.
PHIL: Chris, how long would she sit here waiting to, to attack?
CHRIS: Well, frankly, as long as it takes.
She's got to at least half this distance to be in with any chance.
They can only run fast for a very short distance.
-JANE: Oh. -CHRIS: But look.
MAN :Ten minutes.
CHRIS: As soon as she makes a move, if there's any more progress,
we'll cut back to this.
Fingers crossed for the lioness.
PHIL: All right, we'll keep, keep an eye out.
I'm, I'm almost, you know, uh, hesitant to leave
but, but I think we should go somewhere else right now.
Let's go way north.
Let's go nearly 3,000 miles across Canada from New York City
to America's last frontier.
This is, of course, Alaska,
to see some awe-inspiring animals
who have traveled from far away.
In the Gulf of the Alaska,
a perfect storm of melting glacier ice
and long daylight hours
produce an explosion of phytoplankton,
the green plant-like microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain.
The incredible plankton bloom is so big you can see it from space.
The plankton nourishes sea life great and small.
It calls to the humpback whales.
Thousands of them will make the 3,000-mile journey
from Hawaii to join in the feeding frenzy.
A humpback will eat up to one and a half tons
of fish and crustaceans a day
to generate the blubber that sustains them throughout the year.
A big appetite for a huge mammal,
the humpback whale.
Well, we have been monitoring the weather over Frederick Sound in Alaska,
and, you know, Jane, it is a live show.
PHIL: So we just, you know, we're hoping the weather is gonna be good
and maybe, I think if we have a look at the satellite map.
You said you always wanted to do the weather on TV?
JANE (off screen): Yeah, I always wanted to be a weather girl.
So looks like we have rain and we have some winds coming in from the South,
nine, ten miles per hour.
If it gets up to 13, we might not be able to launch this drone
that we're gonna tell the folks about.
PHIL (off screen): Right. I understand that we did have
one drone that got up in the air.
Another one couldn't get up in the air.
So, uh, here, look, we do have a live shot right now.
Um, and we are looking at a drone that is looking back
where we're going to hopefully take off a, a drone,
have a drone take off.
And we are going to try to spot some humpback whales.
Uh, Ian Kerr from the Whale Preservation Ocean Alliance
is close by, and he's about to try to perform
a very tricky research project.
JANE: Now, Chris, what kind of information
would you get from the snot, I guess is what it is,
of the whale 'cause they're just trying to collect
some samples from the blow hole?
CHRIS: You can see Ian here, he's there spotting a whale
live at the moment.
Uh, what he wants to do, Jane,
is take this drone that you can see here
and he's putting petri dishes,
little dishes on the top of it with the Velcro.
And their ambition, and it's a big ambition,
is to fly this little gadget through the blow,
the exhalation of the whale,
when it comes back to the surface,
because then parts of it will land in those petri dishes,
they fly it back to the boat,
and there they can analyze what they recovered.
PHIL: And this is the SnotBot?
-JANE: The SnotBot. -CHRIS: It's a SnotBot.
(overlapping conversations)
PHIL: Where do we get one of those jackets, Chris,
that says "SnotBot"?
Oh, wow, look at this.
JANE: And there's another drone.
CHRIS: And there's a whale. Look.
-You saw the whale behind it there? -PHIL: Where?
-CHRIS: You see the whale behind it to the left.
PHIL: Okay.
CHRIS: And it's homing in on that whale.
PHIL: How fantastic.
So the timing of all of this, Chris, it's incredibly tough.
CHRIS: It is incredibly tough.
These animals come back to the surface
after sometimes very deep dives.
They're down for many minutes.
They've got to find the whale and then--
There's the whale there. Look to the right, Phil.
You can see the back of it, the hump of the humpback whale.
Now, hopefully, if they get the drone in exactly the right position
and it blows, they'll get some snot.
PHIL: What are our chances?
CHRIS: Well, they do have to blow when they come back to the surface.
And the blow will go up about 20 feet and about 13 miles an hour.
-Oh, they missed that one. -JANE: She didn't blow.
CHRIS: They missed that one.
PHIL: Will it come back up again, or...
CHRIS: If it's a shallow dive, it should come back up again.
PHIL: Well, that, okay, that's a great shot.
You can really get a good--
CHRIS: You can see the whale beneath the surface.
You can see the whale beneath the surface.
Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it comes.
-JANE: There it is. -PHIL: Was that a hit?
-CHRIS: Wow. -PHIL: I think it was.
CHRIS: I don't know. (chuckles)
Here we go. Here we go.
Let's see if they get-- One more go. Here's the whale.
You can see the whale on the right-hand side of the screen there.
Here it comes. There's the blow.
-PHIL: That's pretty close. -JANE: That's pretty close.
CHRIS: That's got to be snot in the can, hasn't it?
PHIL: Which is exactly what we want, right?
CHRIS (chuckling): Oh!
-PHIL: Absolutely amazing. -CHRIS: This is great stuff, isn't it?
This is great stuff. One more go. Come on.
-PHIL: Get it right in the middle. -CHRIS: Oh, yes!
(laughing) That must be it.
And, look, you can see the nostrils of the whale there,
the two nostrils and down--
PHIL: Oh!
CHRIS: That's a deep dive. That's a deep dive. If the flue comes up
PHIL: And just a quick point, Chris,
you were saying what's great about this is noninvasive.
CHRIS: It's noninvasive.
We're after material, we're collecting from the animal here.
They're getting tissue from the internal part of the whale.
They have enough there for DNA sample, hormone samples,
and also to check for pollutants, too,
and of course the whale wasn't stressed at all.
He didn't even know the drone was there.
PHIL: Wow, I got to congratulate Dr. Kerr and his team.
That was really incredible.
I want to show you an amazing map of the world,
just to give you a good overview.
If you have a look at all the blue dots,
the blue dots are where we have cameras all over the world.
Here, you can see a big shadow.
The shadow is where it's dark in the world right now.
And then this beautiful full moon
which is allowing us to do our wonderful show, Earth Live,
and that's slowly moving west.
And if you look way over here, you can see the sun is rising,
so the sun is rising here,
and so it is sunrise here in Asia right now
and in particular Thailand, which is what we want.
And as this shadow moves west,
it'll be dark in New York by the time we finish the show.
JANE: And of course, another great thing about the full moon
is that the night darkness can affect
an animal's sleep behavior and their hunting plans.
The pull of the full moon also creates extremes in coastal tides.
PHIL: Don't you love that? And if you're a monkey...
-JANE: It's a great thing. -PHIL: ...and if you live in Thailand
on one of the 1,000 islands in particular,
the Koram Island where it's morning
where that full moon is making a very extreme low tide,
well, then, the locals are very happy.
And there is a troupe of very clever monkeys there...
-JANE: Indeed. -PHIL: ...who are in heaven right now
because they have a great feed at hand.
-CHRIS: Oh, wow. -JANE: What's this, Chris?
CHRIS: Look at these. These are long-tailed macaques,
and they're out on the beach.
Now, typically, of course, we think of monkeys
as eating fruit and leaves, flowers,
but these guys are taking advantage of a protein feast
exposed by the tide.
They're after seafood,
and what they will actually do is use tools
to hack these oysters off of the rocks.
Now, this little guy has got his back to us at the moment,
but hopefully he'll turn around.
You can see it's eating some oyster.
He must have already smashed that one open.
And tool use in primates like this is extremely rare.
Of the 200 species, we've got only a handful of them
will actually use tools.
JANE: Oh, look, we have a baby, uh, suckling
while mom, uh, searches for the perfect rock.
And they say the female monkeys are better at this than the males.
Isn't that great? I love that. Yes.
CHRIS: Phil, did you see the way she just turned the rock around
to get exactly the right angle?
PHIL: I love that-- Their hands--
The hands look almost human, the dexterity of the hands.
CHRIS: And what's interesting is that if they go looking for oysters like this,
they choose the rock first.
They sift through until they get one that's the perfect weight and shape
and then they go looking for oysters.
And look at the way it's adjusting its hold.
PHIL: Yeah. It ergonomically wanted to make the rock work.
CHRIS: Yeah. Yeah. You do that, don't you, if you,
if you pick up a hammer, you adjust your grip
until you've got it, until you've got it right.
PHIL: Oh, let's go into the moment here for a second.
Oh.
CHRIS: Mission accomplished.
-It's got the oyster out. -(Jane chuckles)
CHRIS: Oh, this is extraordinary.
An opportunity to see tool use live
from Thailand.
Honestly, it doesn't get much better.
PHIL: Yeah, it doesn't. Well, let's hope it just keeps getting better and better.
We're gonna go live now to a land down under
close to my native New Zealand.
Uh, We're gonna go to the rainforest of Queensland, Australia,
where we're gonna find the smallest critters
we'll celebrate tonight.
But they are, perhaps, the most accomplished.
At about only a third of an inch long,
the weaver ant is still a surprisingly big player in the rainforest.
The tiny insects are smart.
They build amazing structures, and they're strong.
They can lift 100 times their own weight.
Now is the dry season, and these tiny architects
must race against time and the elements
to construct elaborate, life-saving fortresses in the rainforest.
JANE: Pretty amazing. We'll continue watching this fascinating activity,
of this construction project.
The workers have a few tricks
up their whatever passes for sleeves in the ant world,
including using their own larvae to glue the leaves together
like mini glue guns. Isn't that right, Chris?
CHRIS: Yeah, it is. They want to fold all of these leaves together
to protect themselves
and their eggs, their pupae, and their larvae
because it's the dry season out there at the moment,
and they don't want those to dry out.
And also, of course, they want predators not to be able to reach them.
And we're hoping that during the course of the show,
we'll be able to watch them actually building a nest out of these leaves.
PHIL: So, Chris, just give us an overview of what they're trying to do.
They want to pull the leaves together?
CHRIS: They are enormously strong.
They have got to bend all of these leaves
from their usual growth position and tie them together.
And you will see them forming little bridges.
They're on the right-hand side of the screen here.
You see those ants all hanging on?
Legs on one leaf, mandibles, jaws on the other
holding it together
whilst others go for those larvae, the little glue guns,
and then hopefully, we'll see them stitching all of these things together.
JANE: And of course, we will monitor this as they, they continue building,
uh, this beautiful home, this nest for themselves.
But right now, we have a visitor in our studio.
Chris, who do we have here?
And, uh, tell us a little bit about this fellow.
CHRIS: Phil, Jane, this is an extraordinary privilege.
This is a Linnaeus two-toed sloth.
We've got this here because you know the ocelot
-that Steve was watching? -JANE: Right.
CHRIS (off screen): This is the potential prey.
It shares that rainforest environment of South America,
and it's highly specialized.
Jane, what do you notice about the fur?
JANE: Well, the fur grows away from his belly
as opposed to... Well, you would think that the part would be in the back.
CHRIS: It's got its coat on back to front, hasn't it?
JANE : Right, right. It does. He has his coat on backwards.
CHRIS: And the reason for that is, of course, that when it rains,
it wants the rain to drain off over its back
whereas most animals want it to drain off under the belly.
-JANE (off screen): Oh, my gosh. -PHIL (off screen): Can I tell you, Chris,
this is the cleanest-looking sloth I have ever seen.
CHRIS: It is. It is a pretty smart sloth.
There's no doubt about that.
Um, in the wild, they don't look this color at all.
They look green because inside these hairs,
there are tiny, little grooves in which algae grows,
beneficial for the algae but also for the sloth
because during daytime, it makes them green,
which means they're better camouflaged from potential predators.
But, Jane, have you ever taken a garment out of your wardrobe
-and shaken out a few moths? -JANE: Yes. Indeed I have.
Complete with moth holes. You bet.
CHRIS: You see, these things are home to moths in the wild.
They have a whole fauna of these insects,
sometimes several species, up to 100 of them,
living inside their fur.
Sloth moths.
And when they finally go down to the ground to defecate,
and sloths will only do that once a month,
the moths lay their eggs in the feces,
and that's where the larvae develop.
So not only does this species live in an extraordinary ecosystem,
-it is an ecosystem itself. -JANE: It is an ecosystem!
It is a win-win for the, the creatures on him
and, and for him, as well.
-CHRIS: Indeed. -JANE: Well, that's terrific.
Now from jungle animals to social media animals.
Yes, you.
You're about to become naturalists, explorers, and television producers.
Here are three animals you've already met,
and you get to choose the one you'd like to spend a little more time with.
When we return, we'll go to the animal who gets the most votes.
So is it the macaque, hyena, or the lions?
Exercise your right to vote using the hashtag #LiveMacaque,
#LiveHyena, or #LiveLions.
And we'll be right back with more Earth Live.
JANE: Magnificent humpback whales enjoying the cool Alaska waters.
Welcome back to Earth Live, everybody.
We're here in the world headquarters in New York City
while the real stars of the show,
the amazing animals and our heroic cinematographers,
are scattered all over the world.
And we're looking at you, animals,
and we're sharing them with you, the people.
Now, before the break, we asked you to vote
for the animal you most wanted to see more of.
Talk about a tough election. A lot of mud was thrown.
Uh, there were rumors of tampering by Russian bears.
But, you know, the people have spoken.
The people of Earth Live want more lions.
Chris, where are we going?
CHRIS: Yeah, here we are. We're back to Maasai Mara in Kenya.
This is our moonlight cam.
Remember, it's completely dark there,
and what we have got is a tranquil scene.
JANE: Apparently, the lion does sleep tonight.
(laughter)
CHRIS: In fact, there's a whole pride of lions sleeping tonight here
with plenty of youngsters in amongst them.
Whether they fed last night
and they don't have to hunt tonight, I'm not sure.
If we had a better view of their bellies, you can soon tell
because they'll be quite swollen with food.
But what a superb view, Jane.
JANE: Ah, wonderful. Well, the sun is rising over Asia right now
as seen from the International Space Station.
225 miles above the Earth.
How gorgeous is that?
PHIL: And you know what's so cool, Jane?
-JANE: What's that? -PHIL: We can go from space
and we can just drop down into a city,
a city where the sun is also rising.
And there's no better place to see how animals
have learned to survive and even thrive in an urban environment
than the second most populated country on Earth.
India is a country of incredible diversity.
1.2 billion people
and more than 400 different mammals.
Ancient religions including Hinduism and Buddhism
have taught the Indian citizens to respect
and even revere their animal counterparts.
In Jodhpur, the Hanuman langur monkeys
live side by side with the people.
How do these two worlds coexist?
JANE: We're joining National Geographic Explorer
and cinematographer Sandesh Kadur live in India.
Sandesh, how's it going out there?
KADUR (off screen): Oh, it's great. It's sunrise here
in the Mandore temple gardens in Jodhpur, India.
It's already 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's getting pretty warm.
I'm here to film one really special animal.
The Hanuman langur.
I'm surrounded here not just by these amazing temples
but by these magnificent animals.
And it's, its, it's amazing because these animals,
there's over 350 of them found right here in these temple gardens,
and, uh, they have just come down
from the trees about 20 minutes ago,
and they have started to feed.
They have only got breakfast on their mind.
Lucky for them, the local people feed these monkeys,
and they have been doing it for centuries.
JANE: That's wonderful.
Now, they have adapted to the food, I'm sure,
uh, uh, of India, they, the, the,
the food that the people eat.
I'm sure that their tummies have found a way to digest it now.
KADUR: Oh, yes, absolutely. Oh, uh, normally, they used to be leaf eaters
and living up in the canopy.
But they have now adapted to a more terrestrial lifestyle.
Uh, they've learned to live alongside humans,
and they're adapted their diet to feed on fruit, bananas,
grapes, and even peanuts.
JANE: That's fantastic. And I know that they revere those monkeys.
KADUR: And I've been filming these monkeys for, for many years now.
JANE: Indeed, you have. And I know that they revere these monkeys
like they did, like they do the god Hanuman,
and it's just an amazing thing going on there in Jodhpur.
Well, we're headed back live to East Africa from India
to the plains of Kenya's Maasai Mara.
Lions are up late tonight
because the change of seasons has brought them a gift.
PHIL: It's the most famous and spectacular migration on Earth.
Right now, 1.3 million wildebeests,
200,000 zebras, and hundreds of thousands of gazelles
are fleeing the dry season in Tanzania
for the lush grazing in Kenya.
But it's not an idyllic paradise.
It's an ambush.
(cats roaring)
PHIL: For the Savannah's predators, the hunt is on,
especially for the most feared and majestic of them all...
the lion.
Extraordinary footage.
Let's go back to National Geographic super cinematographer Sophie Darlington
who is tracking a pride of lions,
and we're gonna go back and join her live.
SOPHIE (off screen): Oh, look. (laughs)
I'm now with some slightly older cubs,
and I...
I'm sorry, but that is too cute.
Look at that face. Little yawn.
So these guys, we've got seven of them.
They're about seven months older,
and they are, they're not cuter than the little ones,
but they are possibly--
because they're more mobile
and they're following mums around to the kill.
So we've got one here,
and then there's another little puddle here.
Fast asleep. And they're just heaven.
And a thing I can't get over is that it's dark out there.
I can't see anything, and yet, through this camera,
I've got lion cubs in, in color.
It's amazing.
JANE: Thank you so much, Sophie. They are sound asleep.
PHIL: I just love when we can just listen and take it all in like that.
JANE: Hear Africa in our ears.
Well, we'll be coming back to the lions
and the Maasai Mara later in the show.
Now, we didn't want to have to fly around the world
to meet these birds you're about to meet, so we just sent our cameras out,
and this is what they saw. Chris, tell us.
CHRIS: Yeah, let's do a bit of globetrotting, bird spotting.
Firstly, in Colorado.
And here we've got some ospreys.
Two youngsters in a nest with the adult there.
And the adult is doing a great job of keeping the sun off of them.
Doesn't want to get them too hot.
They can't thermoregulate,
regulate their own body temperature, at this stage,
so it's really important
that she keeps them
out of that direct sunlight.
All the way over in Hungary here.
This is the nest of a European scops owl, an insectivorous species.
You can see one of the youngsters in the nest there.
And here comes an adult, look, with a grasshopper.
And that's a perfect meal for that little chick.
Over in Romania,
we've got a family of white storks.
In the springtime, these adults would have come
all the way back from Africa.
The young are quite large now. They're gonna be fledging relatively soon.
Here's a question for you guys. How old do you think that nest is?
JANE: I, well-- I mean, did they just build it or is it something that--
-PHIL: A year? -CHRIS: That nest is 70 years old.
-JANE: No. -CHRIS: Yeah.
It's on a church, and we have been monitoring these birds for 70 years.
They add to it every year. Not the same birds, but the same nest.
-And, Phil, what about this? -PHIL: Oh, I love this.
Look, Chris, take a little moment. I've got to say hello to New Zealand,
and if I'm not mistaken, that is the beautiful albatross.
CHRIS: It is. This is royal albatross,
one of the most impressive birds in the world,
one of the largest wingspans.
This is a youngster, too.
And it's gonna be in that nest
for more than 200 days before it flies.
It's one of the longest fledging periods
of any of our birds on Earth.
PHIL (off screen): Good morning, New Zealand.
JANE: "Good morning, New Zealand," is right.
We want to thank you for all of your comments
and the questions that you have been sending in
using the hashtag #EarthLive.
First, our first question. Oh, it's for me personally.
Um, I'm a Cancer, six foot nothing, and 124 pounds soaking wet,
and that part is a lie.
Okay. And this one, Chris, I've got a question for you, my friend.
-CHRIS (off screen): Okay. -JANE: Um, Oddbee asks,
"What is the purpose of the hyena laugh?"
CHRIS: Oddbee, well, the laugh of the hyena
is something that they do when they're very excited
not surprisingly.
But if they're being chased by another hyena,
maybe they run off with some food,
then they start this cackling giggle.
And it's all about communicating with them,
and it's normally produced when they're under stress.
JANE: We are going back to that hunt in the Mara.
I guess we have some breaking activity.
-So let's go back there. -PHIL: I hope so.
Fingers crossed.
CHRIS: Here she is again then.
Still poised.
Oh! She is up.
-PHIL: Oh. -CHRIS: She's off. And she's off.
Now she's gonna be running along at about 30 miles an hour.
ALL: Oh.
-PHIL: What happened there? -CHRIS: No. I think, I think...
To be honest with you,
I think she was too far away from those wildebeest.
And the minute, of course, she knows the game is up,
the minute she knows that they have spotted her,
she'll abandon the hunt.
PHIL: And, Chris, you mentioned just how low
the percentage of the strike rate is.
They must get exhausted if they haven't eaten.
CHRIS: That's right, but, I mean, they can switch
to feeding on smaller things if they can't catch a large animal.
I mean, lions, you know, they'll take a jackrabbit type of thing,
you know, those sorts of things.
But I imagine now, given the abundance of prey
that we've got out there in the bush, that she'll try
and find a place where there's a bit more cover
where she can get closer to them.
I think, honestly, she was just a bit too far away
from those wildebeest.
PHIL: I really want to see her get,
-get a meal tonight. -JANE: That would be great.
PHIL: Um, we're gonna return live to the coast of Alaska
where the SnotBot is just seconds away
from getting into position again.
Plus, something wild is going on in Kenya.
We know that on the Maasai Mara.
We'll be there when it happens.
Why? Well, because this is Earth Live.
JANE: Welcome back to Earth Live. Look at that eagle's eye view.
That's Widow.
This unprecedented global television event
takes you to where the animals live, hunt, play,
feed, and kill.
And the closer we get to them, the more respect we have.
I'm your host, Jane Lynch,
with expedition leader Phil Keoghan
and expert Chris Packham.
We've got so much more.
We've got 50 cameras all over the world
shooting from up in the air, under the sea,
in moonlight, and no light.
This is all happening in real time live while we watch.
Now, when we left our humpback whales, Dr. Kerr had just launched the SnotBot,
and our cameras will be there when it reaches the whales.
Oh, actually, we're gonna reach another whale.
We already saw one. This will be our second.
Our second, second SnotBot.
First, Chris, take us inside those magnificent beasts.
CHRIS: Humpback whales are one of the world's biggest movers.
So exactly how far do they travel?
Well, in the course of one year, more than 11,500 miles.
That's like swimming from New York to London
more than three times.
Length wise, well, they're about 60 feet in length
and when it comes to their weight,
they weigh in at 40 tons.
That's 80,000 pounds.
They have fat layers around their bodies
six inches thick,
and it's this which allows them to have huge reserves
and facilitate those long-distance migrations.
How long do they live? They live for up to 50 years.
Female whales become sexually mature at about five years old
and could potentially, therefore, have more than 15 calves
in their lifetime.
This species is also very famous for its song.
It's loud, too. 173 decibels.
Now, only the males sing,
and their songs can be heard from 20 miles away.
Lastly, how deep do they dive?
787 feet seems to be the record,
and they can also hold their breath for 45 minutes.
Jane, Phil, 45 minutes on one breath.
Beat that.
PHIL: 45 minutes?
-That's incredible. -JANE: Yeah.
PHIL: Well, you know, Dr. Ian Kerr has been getting
some samples, DNA samples from the whales.
And the SnotBot went out, got more samples,
and is now coming back to the boat in Alaska,
so we're going to join him there in Frederick Sound in Alaska.
And here's the SnotBot coming back for a landing.
-This was just a few minutes ago. -JANE: Yes.
-MAN: Engines off. -CHRIS: Yeah.
Now, it's got a very precious cargo.
It's got that whale snot,
which are the samples that they were after.
One of the first things I imagine they're gonna be looking at
once they've sterilized these
is any signs of the animals being under stress.
We know our whale populations have greatly diminished.
In the last century alone, we lost more than 1.3 million whales
from the Antarctic region alone.
So we're trying to encourage these populations to build up again,
and they won't do so if they're stressed.
We know that reduces their immune system just as it does ours.
So this was a bit of fun and we're enjoying the SnotBot,
and it was great fun seeing it get in the plume.
But there's some very serious science
-behind this as well, guys. -PHIL (off screen): Yeah.
-Thanks for legitimizing it. -JANE: Absolutely.
PHIL: I'd just like to fly a SnotBot.
JANE: Yeah, well, it's gonna keep the whales on this planet
for a good long time if we can make sure that they're not stressed, absolutely.
Well, the sun goes down now.
It sends a signal to many animals,
including us humans.
It's time to go to sleep.
Well, for some, it may signal
the time to eat pound cake over the sink in our underwear.
But for some animals, they have a special adaptation,
nature's night vision,
that let them become more active under the cover of darkness.
Now, the lion doesn't sleep tonight, it seems.
We're gonna go live to the Maasai
where it seems everybody is up.
CHRIS: Yeah, here we are with our thermal camera.
So we're not seeing in light here.
We're seeing in heat.
The white that you see are the hotter areas,
and these are wildebeests.
And you can see that what glows most brightly
are their eyes and their mouth, those warm areas.
And whilst there might be a vast number of these animals
in this part of Africa at the moment,
it still doesn't make them easy prey for the lions.
The balance between predator and prey is always very fine.
If all the lions ate all the wildebeests,
they'd soon be extinct, and then the lions would starve.
So it's a very fine balance.
But what we are looking at here is some currently very happy wildebeests.
They're ruminating, chewing the cud.
They would have been eating grass all day.
And they're sat down in the dark, still alert, of course,
because they know that they're in danger,
but they're taking a moment to reflect
on a day of munching grass.
PHIL: It's got to be a terrible feeling lying down
knowing that out there somewhere could be a lion.
-JANE: Yeah. -CHRIS (laughing): There is always that.
Well, they look pretty cozy at the moment, don't they?
Look at that. Look at when we pull wide. All of those dots there.
It looks like the light of a city or campfires
across the hill beyond a festival,
a pop festival.
-Each of those dots is an animal. -JANE: Wow.
CHRIS: A zebra, a wildebeest, a gazelle,
or maybe a lion.
PHIL: Massive migration going on right now.
CHRIS: Yeah. Yeah, we're talking more than a million of these animals
moving to get to these fresh pastures.
Look at that.
Incredible richness of life.
-It's great, isn't it... -JANE: Mm-hmm.
CHRIS: ...when you see that there are parts of the planet
where there's still plenty of animals living out there?
-JANE: Yeah. -CHRIS: Really reassuring.
JANE: It is, isn't it?
And just listen to the sounds. Isn't that amazing?
PHIL: Love that. That's my favorite part.
JANE: Yeah. The dead of night.
-Let's listen. -(animals grunting, chattering)
JANE: Wonderful. Well from, uh, the Maasai.
Uh, we've been seeing some activity
in your home country, Chris, in southern England.
And this is live, Chris. Something you know about.
Uh, badgers.
Now, I heard a rumor that you studied badger poop
at university for about three years.
-Is that true? -CHRIS: Uh, I, I did.
Actually, i-it was, it was five years, Jane.
Every Sunday, every Thursday night,
I got my hands deep in the badger poo
to find out what they were eating.
I was interested in their ecology.
Here, we have a couple... Well, this is more than ecology.
This is breeding behavior.
JANE: Oh, that's what I thought maybe that was.
She does not look into it.
-PHIL: Really? -JANE: Can I just say?
CHRIS: Sh-she's a bigger animal.
If she didn't want any of it, she should chuck him off.
-JANE: Well, then. -PHIL: Now, this was captured earlier.
I just want to let you guys know, so...
But this is rare, isn't it, to capture something like this?
CHRIS: I've watched these animals for five years pretty constantly.
I mean, put it this way, I didn't get many girlfriends.
I was always out looking at badgers.
PHIL: Well, you spent five years studying poo, Chris.
-I mean, come on! -(laughter)
CHRIS (off screen): But it's rare to see this.
And what's interesting is that they mate in the spring and summer,
but they don't give birth until the following spring.
-Now, how do you think they manage that? -JANE (off screen): I have no idea.
-PHIL: It's some kind of trick? -CHRIS: It is.
It's a biological trick called delayed implantation.
So the fertilize the ova,
but they don't implant them in the uterus.
And the benefit of this is that they can judge
throughout the winter period how much body weight they put on,
how fit the females are going into the spring.
If they're big, healthy animals,
they'll implant more of those eggs and have larger litters.
If they have a lean winter
and they think they can't produce enough milk and rear them,
then they'll only implant a couple of them.
And it's a means of them regulating their behavior
so that they don't exhaust themselves
and also give birth to animals that simply couldn't survive.
JANE (off screen): Well, that is like a badger Planned Parenthood,
and it works for them.
All right, people of the world,
we are turning our cameras on you again.
Here are three of our animals.
Using social media, vote for your favorite animal
using the hashtags #LiveCrocodiles,
#LiveLangurs, or #LiveAnts.
And if your choice gets the most votes,
we'll take you to that animal.
And we'll be right back after this word.
JANE: Welcome back to Earth Live.
Um, we have a wolverine.
Uh, we were hoping that this would happen live.
The elusive wolverine.
The chances of finding one of these guys was quite rare,
and here we are in Finland.
Um, there's your wolverine.
-PHIL: I love that we got this, Jane. -JANE: Yeah.
PHIL: This is, this is what we wanted
because there are only around 200 of these in all of Finland,
which is about 117,000 square miles,
which is about the size of Colorado.
And, Chris, this is pretty remarkable.
CHRIS: This is remarkable, yeah.
They're one of my favorite animals.
Just look at this.
They're a member of the weasel family.
PHIL: And what a shot! Look at this shot.
-CHRIS: I know, I know. -JANE: We've been waiting for four days
to see one of these, one of these guys.
-PHIL: That's why we're so excited. -JANE: Excited that it's--
CHRIS: Related to weasels, anyway, otters, badgers,
those sorts of things.
They live in the extreme north.
You get them all the way round the top of the planet.
So they're here in Finland, you get them in Canada,
and some of the United States, too,
all the way round Russia.
But they've got very powerful jaws
for breaking open frozen carcasses in the wintertime.
In fact, one of the molars in the back of their mouth
is rotated through 90 degrees,
and it gives them the ability to smash into frozen carcasses and bones.
So a very, very powerful scavenger
and quite a powerful predator as well.
JANE: Chris, you know too much. This is just amazing.
PHIL: He knows so much, doesn't he?
JANE: A turned molar at 90 degrees.
PHIL: How would you even know that? But I--
Listen, something you said earlier, which was that
there are people that study these wolverines
and they may never ever see one.
CHRIS: They occur at incredibly low densities.
It's just like you said, Phil, you know. Only 200 in Finland.
In the southern states of America,
the southern 48 states, probably only 300.
Males, like this animal here,
have a range of 350 square miles.
Just one wolverine in 350 square miles.
But the reason they have turned up is simple.
They've got a remarkable sense of smell.
-PHIL: How remarkable? -CHRIS: Well, they've got twice the area
inside their nose that a bloodhound does,
and a bloodhound has 230 million sensory cells picking up smell.
So they they've probably got a sense of smell
which is at least twice better than a bloodhound.
PHIL: And you said they can smell food from two miles away?
CHRIS: Two miles away. And sometimes in the winter
from many feet beneath the snow,
they'll find hibernating animals there or those carcasses.
And somehow or other, they've sniffed it and turned up
and what a show they've put on.
-JANE: Oh. -(bird squawks)
PHIL: I don't want to leave the wolverine, Jane.
But, you know, the people want to know
what the winning animal is.
-JANE: Exactly. -PHIL: You'd like to know, Chris.
The winning animal is...
a crocodile!
That's what you want to see.
-CHRIS: Oh, look at that. -JANE: So what do we have here, Chris?
CHRIS: Hey, you guys, how do you feel standing there?
(light laughter)
Beneath this dinosaur relic,
I mean, this is an estuarine crocodile.
They are enormous animals.
Incredibly powerful, ambush predators.
PHIL: I'm hoping this is a remote camera, Jane,
because I don't think
you want to be that close to a saltwater crocodile.
CHRIS: Not even Andy Casagrande is gonna be in alongside this guy.
There's no doubt about that.
-JANE: Oh, wow. Just amazing. -PHIL: And very murky water.
CHRIS: Yeah. Murky water. They don't mind that.
As I say, they like to hide with just their eyes peeping out,
ready to ambush something.
JANE: Well, in, uh, in the world, the animal world,
there are two very important issues.
The first thing is to eat. You need to eat.
-PHIL: Always important. -JANE: Always important.
Number two is to avoid being eaten.
Now, if you're not born with the instinct, you have to learn,
like the way lions teach their young to hunt by example.
Here's another example.
It's monkey see, monkey do
as we return live to Koram Island in Thailand
and our macaque friends.
-Chris? -CHRIS: Yeah.
Well, as you say, it's monkey see, monkey do.
Not only are they using tools,
but they are also teaching each other
through a process called social or cultural learning.
So the young monkeys watch the other monkeys using the tools,
and they learn by observation.
We do this ourselves. How many times have you watched someone
you know, making something in the kitchen or fixing a car?
You don't make the same mistakes they do.
You go straight to the answer,
and that's what these animals do.
So again, a unique feature of primate life.
PHIL: Chris, there seems to be a lot of empty shells here.
Is that because they've literally just eaten the food away?
CHRIS: Either they have or something else has.
Yeah, they've broken them open. And look. Again, look at this.
Oh, that is amazing.
That's amazing.
PHIL: Do you think he knows he's on camera right now?
(light laughter)
-CHRIS: Oh. -JANE: Doubt it.
I'm glad he showed up, though.
CHRIS: Yeah. Whoever paid the monkey, it was money well spent.
PHIL: I'm guessing they get a few shells in their food sometimes.
CHRIS: Yeah, they don't get a clean oyster.
-No Tabasco or lemon for them. -(Jane laughs)
CHRIS: And they'll, you know, obviously filter out all of that material.
-PHIL: Big teeth. -JANE: Yeah, big teeth. Look at that.
CHRIS: Yeah. Good teeth.
And these monkeys are also very happy around water.
They like to bivouac overnight over water,
and if they're disturbed by a predator,
their tactic is to fall out of the tree into the river,
into the estuary, and swim away.
So unlike many primates,
this species is actually a very good swimmer as well.
PHIL: Wow. It's just getting better and better.
We've got to, we've got to give a shout-out to our cinematographers
who are just bringing us these incredible images.
Well, we are tracking wildlife in the Maasai Mara
with our thermal camera.
We have bats that are leaving there,
on their night rider mission right now.
And soon, millions of bats are going to fill the skies of Texas.
And then let's not forget that we're gonna be going back to Ethiopia
where man and hyena get together for a bite,
a very powerful bite.
This is Earth Live.
JANE: A few moments with our saltwater crocodile
enjoying his home in Australia's billabong.
Well, here is the view as the sun is setting
across the western United States.
The scene from the International Space Station
orbiting the Earth at over 17,000 miles per hour.
-PHIL: Ah! What a sight. -JANE: Yep.
PHIL: And the same sun is setting
on the Bracken Cave near San Antonio, Texas,
where the skies are continuing to explode with bats.
Amazing bats.
And it may look like a cloud or a storm,
but you are looking at millions of bats
that are exiting the cave.
It is a swarming bat-icane.
(Jane chuckles)
PHIL: Look at that.
Slowly making their way out.
The sun has set,
and we have our moonlight cameras.
These moonlight cameras, we would not be able to see anything
if we were using ordinary cameras,
but these moonlight cameras allow us to see.
And let's look back on something that we got a little while ago of a hawk
that's feeding on these bats coming out of the cave.
And what an amazing predator this is, Chris.
CHRIS: Yeah. Well you've got to see these bats as bat burgers.
There were so many of them there
that this is a takeaway for many predators every night.
So predatory birds like these red-tailed hawks,
Swainson hawk...
Look at that. It's just helped itself to a little bat.
PHIL: Did it just grab a bat?
CHRIS: Yeah. (chuckles)
PHIL: It was very difficult to see. It happened so fast.
CHRIS: But there were so many, and it's so predictable
they're gonna come out every night.
I mean, this is like a supermarket opening.
You pop up every night, and you get free food,
so it's bound to attract lots of predators.
We see them in the air and also on the ground.
But, guys, look at this.
This is a weather-satellite view
of the area surrounding Bracken Cave.
Now, what you're looking at there in terms of the red and the yellow are clouds.
But this here in the center is Bracken Cave.
Here are some other caves here with the bats emerging,
and look at this.
They are flying out and covering a huge area.
This is 100 miles away from the entrance to Bracken Cave.
They may not all be coming from there,
but you can see that they're in such significant numbers,
they're showing up on weather satellites.
-That's how many bats we've got out there. PHIL: 20 million.
20 million of these, Chris. It's hard to even imagine that.
CHRIS: And they're doing a brilliant job for the farmers of Texas.
They go out, and they feed on cotton bollworm,
and they save farmers in Texas around $2 million a year in pest control.
-PHIL: Love it. -JANE: That's wonderful.
Well, from bat time to monkey time.
We're returning live to Jodhpur, India,
where we left premier cinematographer Sandesh Kadur
uh, trying to cozy up to the langurs.
Sandesh.
-PHIL: Oh. -MAN: It's still too wide.
KADUR (off screen): Hey, Jane.
We're back here with the langurs in Jodhpur,
and it's so amazing just to be here and watch them.
There's never a dull moment with these guys.
They're always hopping around, jumping, playing, fighting.
Look at the young one over there.
There are so many babies here.
Back to you in New York.
CHRIS: Langur monkey here.
They're a very successful group of animals, these langurs.
They can go from sea level to high up in the mountains,
all sorts of different habitats, open frost, drier areas, too.
They adapt so well, it's not surprising that they have adapted
to living in cities.
And they've got an extraordinary digestive system.
They can eat very many toxic fruits and leaves
that other animals can't eat.
And they've got anaerobic bacteria in their guts
which break these down and break the toxins down
so they can digest them.
PHIL: Ah, they move quick.
JANE: Well, we want to check on the progress of the weaver ants.
Let's find out more about them
as Chris takes us inside the beast.
CHRIS: I love insects, but I'm rather pleased
that there were none this big roaming around out there.
But what about the ants? Let's get some stats.
Well, firstly, these little girls, and all of the workforce are female,
grow to a third of an inch in length.
Weight-wise, it's five milligrams,
which is virtually nothing, of course.
So they're small, but they're also very smart.
These weaver ants herd aphids just like farmers herd cows,
milking them for their precious honeydew.
Their colonies are absolutely massive.
Yes, half a million individual organisms,
and they charge through an environment,
building nest after nest.
What about these nests?
Well, they're made up of 300 leaves,
and they can be bigger than 20 inches across.
That's bigger than a basketball.
They might be tiny, but they're incredibly strong.
Yes, these organisms can carry 100 times their own body weight.
That's like a human being, that's like me and you
lifting up a killer whale.
What about the global population?
Try and get your head around this.
Yes, it's said, it's thought to be up to 10,000 trillion ants.
Guys, I can't imagine 10,000 trillion,
but whatever it is, it's a huge number of ants.
PHIL: That is bigger than the national debt.
JANE: Well, it's nice to know there's a bigger number out there.
I didn't even know that. That sounds like a fake number.
Just like the 90 degree turn of the tooth, it just sounds fake.
Well, let's go back to Queensland, Australia, live now
to see how our weaver ants are doing
on their rainforest view luxury condo project.
CHRIS: Yeah. Here they are, Jane.
Still very active.
And you've got to think of these things as a super organism.
Not just one, but many working for the good of all.
And they're communicating with each other the whole time.
And you can see in the center here,
some of these animals holding onto those leaves with their jaws,
holding that leaf into position
whilst hopefully, some of the others
have gone for those glue guns that you mentioned earlier, the larvae,
and they'll come back and start stitching them all together.
PHIL: Chris, this is really a wonderful shot
to be able to see what it is they're trying to achieve.
CHRIS: Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to build themselves a bit of security
from the weather, from the rain, from the sun,
and also from predators, too.
And they're quick at what they do.
You know, they will build a nest like this in, in a day.
When it dries out, all the leaves die and dry out,
they then have to move and build another nest elsewhere.
PHIL: I have a confession.
I have eaten one of these ants.
-CHRIS: You've eaten the ants? -PHIL: I, I ate them in Venezuela, yes.
They're tasty little ants.
I've got to tell you. They eat them there.
JANE: Did they taste like chicken?
PHIL: No, they tasted like little citrus snacks.
JANE: Oh, okay.
CHRIS: Do you know what? I'm glad you said that.
In some parts of Thailand,
they collect the larvae of these ants
and they charge twice as much as prime beef for them,
and people pay it.
Entomophagy, eating insects.
And they think that because of how expensive it is to farm beef,
we may all, at some stage in the future,
have to start eating a lot more insects.
What about you, Jane? Are you gonna get your teeth into those?
JANE: I haven't, but if I had to, I would.
PHIL: They get caught in your teeth.
JANE: What? Hey, listen.
Let's check in with our camera streaming live from, from Somerset,
uh, in the South of England.
And I understand we have a visitor there, unexpected.
It's in the middle of the night,
a quiet time for a variety of nocturnal mammals.
We're looking at a location where the animals come to feed.
Now, Chris, this is practically your back yard. What are we looking at?
CHRIS: Well, we're here, we're looking at European badgers.
And these are social animals.
Live together in clans of five to 10, sometimes up to 20.
Um, and these are foraging out there in the woodland.
Very much like the North American badger, of course.
And in fact, a little bit like the honey badger in Africa,
but not quite as robust.
Another animal we have seen here earlier is this.
-This is the red fox. -JANE: Oh, yeah.
CHRIS: Yeah, I, I feed these in my back yard,
but you might be feeding them in your back yard, too.
They're a very successful small carnivore,
in fact, the most successful small carnivore
that we have in the world.
-JANE: Wonderful. Well, look-- -CHRIS: Fantastic things.
JANE: Are we back at the studio?
Because we've got somebody we want you to meet.
-Look. It's Yoda. No, it's not. (laughs) -PHIL: "It's Yoda."
-JANE: How sweet. -CHRIS: Okay, so we've gone from red fox
to the smallest fox in the world.
This is an adult, fully adult fennec fox.
Just look at this.
Comes from North Africa.
Lives in desert areas.
-PHIL: Is it a baby or... -CHRIS: No. This is it.
This is fully adult. It's the smallest canid in the world
and has the largest ears in proportion to its body to any of those canids.
But, hey, Phil, look at some of the adaptations
it's got for desert lifestyle.
First, look at the bottom of its feet. What do you see?
PHIL: Very, very fluffy feet.
-CHRIS: Fluffy feet. -PHIL (off screen): Yeah.
CHRIS: So it can run across red-hot sand
without burning its toes.
PHIL: And sneak up on its prey?
CHRIS: And sneak up on its prey, which it listens for with these ears.
Very acute, of course.
Also use them for, for losing heat.
But, Jane, peer into the ear of the fennec fox.
-JANE: Very, very furry ears. -PHIL: Is that a trick?
(Jane laughs)
CHRIS: It has got very furry ears.
It's a burrowing animal.
They'll dig down to about a meter and then go 10 meters into the sand.
And if you're under the ground like that, you don't want lots of sand in your ears.
One of the unique things as well about that adaptation to desert lifestyle
is that they don't have to drink freestanding water.
They can get all of their water from their food
or, if not, if there's any condensation inside their burrow,
then they will lick the sides of the burrow to get moisture.
PHIL: So they don't need to drink?
-CHRIS: No. -JANE (off screen): Wow. That's great.
CHRIS: No drinking. Fantastic.
And I'll tell you what. It smells gorgeous.
Have a little sniff of that. Go on. It smells gorgeous.
PHIL: Actually, it really does smell good.
CHRIS: It smells lovely, doesn't it?
Oh. What a cutie.
PHIL: Do you love animals, Chris?
CHRIS: I very much love animals, Phil.
PHIL: I think we're getting that, yeah.
JANE: All right, while you're here, we have more questions
from hashtag #EarthLive.
And, Chris, here's your first one.
Trevor asks, "Do weaver ants communicate with each other
while they're building the home, and if so, how?"
CHRIS: Constantly. Constantly communicating.
And the way they communicate is using a chemical sense
that we like to think of it as a sense of smell,
but of course, they don't have noses.
And typically, they communicate by tapping their antennae together.
So they're constantly touching one another
and, and communicating with those chemicals.
JANE: Oh, that's wonderful. Well, let's go to Joy's question.
Joy asks, "How are hyenas able to eat wildebeest bones?"
CHRIS: Well, they have enormously powerful jaws.
We've been talking about the jaws of the bull shark.
1,340 pounds of pressure.
And we're gonna be looking at crocodiles obviously soon,
their bite pressure, but hyenas are right up there.
And they'll bite through to the center of the bone
to get the marrow out.
Really, really rich bone marrow. That's what they're after.
-JANE: Full of protein, right? -CHRIS: Full of protein.
Full of protein. Not to be wasted if you're a hyena.
JANE: Exactly. Well, I enjoy bone marrow at the restaurant. Quite good.
Well, thank you for all your questions and your comments.
Keep them coming using the hashtag #EarthLive.
PHIL: Well, I have a question for you.
What animal has the stronger bite?
A cackling hyena
or the killer saltwater crocodile?
We'll be right back with the answer.
This is Earth Live.
JANE (off screen): Welcome back to Earth Live, everyone,
on the best night of the year
to be looking at wildlife across the globe.
And as you can see on our beautiful wall back here,
look at all the locations where we've got our cameras.
Our cinematographers are in position.
Our live cameras are rolling,
and Phil Keoghan has something to say.
PHIL: I just came from looking at the monitors,
and apparently, we need to go back to Ethiopia for the hyenas.
We've got to get there back right now.
-JANE: Great, great. -PHIL: Bob Poole is there,
and, uh, hopefully, we are going to see something special.
(Abbas speaking foreign language, whistling)
PHIL: That is a brave man.
(Jane chuckles)
BOB: This is absolutely amazing.
I'm out here in total darkness.
You wouldn't even see this
if it wasn't for this amazing moonlight camera.
But look at these hyenas.
They're literally coming right up to me now, right up to my camera.
I've never had an opportunity to be this close to hyenas.
Look at the size of these things.
Look right there. It's just, it's just a big animal.
And what, what Abbas is doing here is, is not for fun.
This is an ancient tradition that they've done for-forever
to ward off evil spirits.
(Abbas speaking foreign language, whistling)
BOB: But for me, this is... this is just an amazing thing.
You know, I've loved hyenas all my life,
and to be able to spend time like this,
especially in such proximity with hyenas...
just an incredible thing.
-You know, I don't know... -(Abbas yelling)
BOB: ...but this has just been one of the greatest,
amazing privileges of my life
to be out like this with the hyenas.
Back to you, New York.
-PHIL: Oh, I love that. -JANE: Wonderful.
PHIL: I, I-- Jane, I don't know about you,
but boy, that would be really, really tough
to be there right now, don't you think?
JANE: I sure love hyenas, but I don't know I'd get that close.
-Sure. -PHIL: Oh, man.
JANE: Oh, my goodness.
PHIL: I think what we're gonna do is we are going to go,
and we want to share the planet with you.
You know, this is what I love about Earth Live, Jane,
is that we can just travel
around the world (snaps fingers) like that.
Normally, you've got to get on a plane, you got to take a long plane ride.
But we can go down under, we can go to Darwin, Australia.
We can go to a billabong,
-which is Aussie slang for stagnant water. -JANE: I know this.
-Stagnant-- A pool of water, of course. -PHIL: Yeah. Exactly.
And we have our cameras focused on a terrifying predator
with the most powerful jaws
ever measured in the animal kingdom.
Saltwater crocodiles.
These relics of the dinosaur era
strike fear into unsuspecting prey across the planet,
chomping their victims with lethal force.
In 2015 alone,
salties accounted for 55 recorded fatal attacks.
In Australia, these creatures lurk in the rivers and rule the billabongs
of the northern territories.
Their powerful mouths contain up to 68 strong teeth.
These modern-day giants of the reptile world can weigh
more than a ton.
How close do you want to get?
Well, we are going to get very close.
We're going live now to Northern Australia
where, Chris, apparently the crocs,
they've woken up and, and now we are going in
and we are going to measure the bite of a crocodile.
CHRIS: Yeah. This guy here has got a special tool
which will measure hopefully the bite force of these animals.
Now, he is going to actually have to behave like prey,
so going close to the edge of the water.
He is making the mistake
of treading in it with this machine.
MAN (off screen): Come on, Smaug.
CHRIS: And the crocodile, which is waiting under the water--
Oh, it's missed it. It's missed it.
-Oh! -PHIL: Oh!
-CHRIS: Go on! -JANE: Oh!
-(laughing) Oh, my gosh! -CHRIS: No.
JANE: That is a brave guy. Oh, my goodness.
PHIL: You could say brave or you c--
-JANE: O-or stupid? -PHIL: Yeah.
-I hope he's insured. -JANE: Yes.
CHRIS: What we were trying to do there is measure--
Well, there's still a chance. Let's just, let's give it one more go
to see if the croc will take this.
-JANE: And that other guy... -CHRIS: It's got to bite the rubber loop,
and on the top, there is a gauge
that will tell us how many pounds per square inch
the crocodile's jaw will close at.
MAN: Can you see him?
PHIL: And this gentleman is actually
the world's leading crocodile biologist, I understand.
CHRIS: He is. Yeah, he is.
-Now, the world record-- -PHIL: This is tricky, Chris, right,
because you've got to measure the distance.
-CHRIS: Yeah. -MAN: Hooked up on his jaw.
I couldn't get it back in in time.
CHRIS: Okay.
I'm not sure we're going to get a bite there,
but I can tell you that the world record bite
was 3,869 pounds of pressure.
That's a bone-crushing bite.
If we get this, we-we'll come back
to get a measure for this particular animal.
But we're talking about the most powerful bite on the planet.
You know, if one of them gets hold of your leg,
those teeth are gonna sink in.
It is not going to break your bone. It's gonna powder the bone in your leg.
And then it's gonna hang on
because their tongue is fused to the bottom of their mouth.
They can't chew.
So what they do to dismember their prey is the death roll.
They go back into the water and spin round and round to dismember.
I mean, I got to tell you, you don't want to get eaten by a crocodile.
PHIL: And you don't want to get too close.
-JANE: No, no. -PHIL: Yeah.
PHIL: As much as we're doing all of this--
JANE: Hopefully, it's a quick death, though.
Hopefully it's not something that lingers.
PHIL: We're gonna go back live in Oregon
or should I say high above Oregon?
-JANE: Well, you should. -PHIL: Yeah.
Widow is there, the golden eagle, also known as
the National Geographic cinematographer Widow,
and just look at the view that we're getting from--
Well, hopefully, we'll get the shot from her point of view
which is absolutely extraordinary.
Right now, she is soaring, uh, well, quite a way off the ground there.
Not exactly, exactly sure how high,
but she has this six-foot wingspan, very light body.
There's the POV. Look at that.
JANE: There's the POV. Look at that. Yes.
She's trained to fly to the lure.
This is a method of hunting called a stoop, is that right?
PHIL: Yeah. Stooping, I guess, is when they dive,
and the speed's truly extraordinary.
Almost 200 miles an hour, which, uh...
Wow. I mean, 200 miles an hour. I, I don't--
I feel like there's very few birds on Earth that go as fast as this,
and Widow is wearing an accelerometer,
and that allows scientists to see just how fast she can go.
It's awesome.
JANE: Oh, look who's coming. Speaking of awesome.
CHRIS: This is a male golden eagle.
Typically a bit smaller than the females.
Considerably smaller, actually.
But it gives us a sense of scale,
-just how big these birds are. -JANE (off screen): Yes. Yeah.
And if I'm gentle, I can get him to open his wings.
-JANE: Look at that wingspan. My goodness. -CHRIS: Yeah.
Look at that...
-Fantastic. -PHIL (off screen): Stunning.
JANE: Look at those talons, oh.
CHRIS: So it's not just a long wing.
It's a very broad wing as well.
It's about soaring, saving energy
as we have seen Widow doing there.
But as you mentioned, Phil, when they go into a stoop,
if they're chasing aerial prey, birds, stooping at those,
at least 150 miles per hour they're coming down.
PHIL: That's extraordinary.
And a couple of things I'm noticing.
-Very large eyes. -CHRIS (off screen): Yeah.
PHIL: And the beak.
But as Jane was saying, the talons or,
I was going to say claws, but the right word is talons.
-Massive. -CHRIS: Massive talons.
I mean, look at this one here.
The one at the front here, which is not the largest.
The one at the back you can't see is.
This one's over an inch and a half.
It's got obviously four on each foot.
That's like eight daggers.
When they grab their prey, they sink these in,
puncture its internal organs, suffocate it.
And the other thing is they've got tendons in their leg here
which are like ratchets.
So once they've locked onto their prey,
there's just no getting out.
-There's no getting away. -JANE: Yeah.
A very, very impressive bird and beautiful, too.
JANE: Gorgeous. Look at those eyes.
PHIL: And this is a rescue bird?
CHRIS: This is a rescue bird. You see the wing is slightly dropped on this side?
It's got a pin in it,
so this one won't be able to fly again.
It's an old bird. Twenty years old, this bird.
And of course, the benefit of having it in captivity
is that it can act as an ambassador for its kind.
In the United States, the golden eagles are doing quite well
as they are in Europe, too.
But in many other parts of the world, raptors are struggling.
So the more people that love them,
the more people will look after them.
PHIL: Chris, we love having you around
because you just know so much because believe me,
it would be a very different show if it was just Jane and I.
JANE: I know. For sure.
PHIL: The moon is lower in the sky over Kenya,
but we are going to go back.
Why? Well, it's just so beautiful there.
The Maasai Mara with the lions and other predators
and then, of course, there's the Australian weaver ants,
and they are racing against time.
We asked them to finish their home before the end of the show.
We'll see if they'll be able to do it.
This is Earth Live.
JANE: There's Widow,
soaring high above the Oregon high desert.
PHIL: We're back on Earth Live.
I think Widow's one of the better cinematographers tonight,
but we have seen some extraordinary things,
and we want to try to fit in as much as we can, Jane,
before the show ends.
JANE: The show is over, so we got to rock 'n' roll.
PHIL: What should we do right now? You want to go back to Australia?
JANE: Yeah. Let's go back to Queensland.
PHIL: Okay, Queensland, Australia, for the final episode of...
JANE: Extreme Makeover: Leaf Edition.
And check in on our industrious weaver ants.
CHRIS: They've been really busy, guys,
as you can see from this shot here.
They're drawing all of these leaves together.
And if you look carefully there. In fact, I can draw on the screen.
If you look down there in that area,
you can see some of the silk which they've produced
using their... larvae.
Just trying to see if there is any larva.
I can't see any larvae there at the moment.
Basically, they go into another nest when it's dark,
there are no predators about,
they carry the mature larvae over,
and they use these for sticking the leaves together.
They produce a silk.
Now, typically, animals produce a silk to produce the cocoon
so that they can pupate successfully.
In this species, they can't do that
because they're exhausted of all of their silk
that you can see here
before they get the chance to pupate.
So this is a special adaptation for these weavers.
PHIL: Beautiful cinematography.
JANE: Indeed.
CHRIS: And look at the little hole there on this side.
I think I can highlight that.
If you look at that area there,
you can see where they've made an entrance into their nest.
PHIL: How do they know what to do?
CHRIS: Well, they're constantly communicating
using a chemical sense.
They touch their antennae together.
I mean, ants might be small,
but they have remarkable little brains.
They will teach one another things,
so if one ant learns where there's food,
it will actually lead another ant to that food
and teach it the route from the nest to the food,
constantly waiting for it to catch up,
waiting for it to learn the direction from the sun.
They're clever little organisms, these things.
PHIL: Wow.
Well, our cameras are still live
in 17 countries on six continents.
We've seen some extraordinary things.
Have a look at this.
CHRIS: This is the Cayman Isles.
This is a boulder coral, and it's a cleaning station.
So, many of the reef fish will come here
to have parasites removed
by a species of wrasse, cleaner wrasse.
It's a win-win situation.
The visiting fish lose the parasites.
The cleaner wrasse gets food.
Here we are. This is at the bottom of the ocean.
I'm not sure how deep,
but this is from Robert Ballard's remote camera.
Extraordinary life that we see at the bottom of the seas here.
Very alien. Enormous pressure. Low temperatures.
Nothing like the sort of life you get on the surface.
In South Africa, something much more familiar to us,
much more popular.
This is the largest terrestrial animal
that we have at the moment, of course, African elephant
out there at a water hole this evening.
Beautiful sight.
And here in the United States, there's a red fox
just like the one we were watching in the UK.
As I said, the most successful small carnivore
that we have got on the planet found over a vast area
coming to this pool.
We have also seen raccoons coming to this pool as well.
A fantastic view of this lovely, little animal.
Great to be able to skip around the world
and see all these animals live in real time,
living different lives in different places,
but thankfully all prospering.
JANE: Indeed. Indeed.
-And I think we should go back to Alaska. -PHIL: Is that all right with you?
JANE: Yeah, let's do the SnotBot thing again.
PHIL: I just can't get enough of the SnotBot.
JANE: Yeah, that was successful right out of the box.
Just an amazing, amazing moment.
PHIL: This is earlier today, and there, you can see a humpback whale
coming the surface, blowing out air
through these, the two little--
Would you call them blow pipes, Chris?
CHRIS: Yeah. Its nasal openings on the top there.
-It-its blow-- -JANE: There's two of them?
CHRIS: Yeah, there are two. In some species, one.
In this species, they have two.
PHIL: And we were trying to get our SnotBot.
Well, I should say Dr. Kerr and his team
were trying to get the SnotBot to go right through that big--
What? Puff of, of watery air.
CHRIS: Yeah. Do you know what, Phil? I've been in one of these whale blows.
-It's not a pleasant experience. -(Jane chuckles)
CHRIS: It's like being showered
with a lot of greasy, boiled cabbage.
-PHIL: Doesn't sound good. -CHRIS: Stinks for the rest of the day.
But it's full of valuable material,
and what we are looking at here is a fantastic opportunity
to get, to get, um, data from these animals.
What we have also seen these humpbacks doing, though, is this.
This is called bubble netting.
So, the whales dive deep down,
and a collection of them make a spiral of bubbles
which encloses a collection of fish.
They then rise up
through the center of this spiral of bubbles,
which acts as a curtain hemming all the fish in
and take in enormous gulps of, of water.
-JANE: Ah! -CHRIS: But listen to this.
(humpback whales calling loudly)
This is sound as a weapon.
What the whale is doing here is using this in conjunction with the bubble net
to not only make a visual screen but a sonic screen
and also to disrupt an organ called the swim bladder in fish.
It's this that keeps them buoyant.
And what we think is that this unique sound
upsets them, makes them giddy, disorientates them,
and therefore makes them easier for the whales to catch.
And what's interesting is that it's only this one group
of whales off of Alaska
that produce these remarkable sounds and a beautiful sound, too.
Let's have one last listen.
(calling continues)
PHIL: Almost as nice a voice as yours, Jane.
JANE: Oh, well, thank you so much.
PHIL: You know, let's go back to Kenya
live again with Sophie Darlington and her lovely lion.
She's so passionate about these lions,
and we love to see it.
CHRIS: They have all gorged themselves on their mother's milk,
and they have fallen asleep
on her belly there in the moonshine
of the Maasai Mara.
SOPHIE (off screen): I've been filming lions for 25 years
and I've loved them for as long as I can remember.
And tonight has completely reminded me why.
I look down, and there they are.
They're so tender and beautiful,
these gorgeous little cubs that we've seen.
And lions, they go from funny to formidable
in just, like, a flick of an instant,
and it's been such a pleasure.
Thank you. Back to you in the studio.
-JANE: Aww. -CHRIS: Oh.
PHIL: I think I want to cry, Jane.
JANE: I know. That is just so beautiful.
-CHRIS: It's gorgeous. -PHIL: Oh, it really is lovely.
JANE: Oh, that.
PHIL: Could not have done that without the MoonCam.
Just wouldn't have been able to see them.
Well, you know what I think we should do?
Just get one more check-in with the wolverine in Finland
because it's so rare to see them.
So let's go back. Can we cut back to, to Finland?
CHRIS: Oh, look at that.
-PHIL: Lovely contrast, right? -CHRIS: Yeah.
JANE: And it's bright sunlight in Finland now.
-CHRIS: Yeah. -JANE: All day long, right?
CHRIS: All day long. All night long.
Doesn't get dark there at this time of year.
PHIL: What is he doing?
CHRIS: He's rooting around for food,
using that nose to find the food
that's out there in the woodland.
And you can see that very water repellent coat.
-PHIL: Guess what? -JANE: Bite test.
PHIL: They've got the bite with the crocodile in Australia.
-CHRIS: Yeah? -PHIL: Yeah. Let's check it out.
This is from earlier.
-JANE: Oh. -MAN (off screen): Get back. Get back.
PHIL: They were determined to get that bite.
-JANE: Oh, my gosh. -CHRIS: They've lost the stick.
They need to recover that with the device.
PHIL: Ugh! Okay.
Now, you mentioned how powerful the bite was?
CHRIS: Yeah. They measure it in pounds per square inch.
The record, 3,869 pounds of pressure in that jaw.
PHIL: Jane, could I pay you enough money
to stand next to a saltwater crocodile and measure the bite?
JANE: I'm so glad that they did
and that they did it for us live.
Well, this has been awe-inspiring and humbling
to get this close to all this wildlife.
Never before have I,
and I think I can speak for everybody here,
felt so connected with the animals
with whom we share this planet.
Now, we may not have seen all ten million species,
but hey, there's always next year.
Tonight, we did something I think has never been done before.
We brought you Earth live.
Thanks so much for watching.
It's been a once in a lifetime experience.
Wait. Maybe twice in a lifetime. What about next year, guys?
PHIL: I'd come ba-- I've got it in my calendar.
-JANE: Good. -CHRIS: I've had the time of my life.
-I'm happy to come back. -JANE: Well, there you have your answer.
Count me in, too. Goodnight, everybody.
-PHIL: Goodnight. -CHRIS: Goodnight. Goodnight.
Captioned by Point.360