Africa

In Africa’s ancient south west corner, two extraordinary deserts sit side by side and host some extraordinary survivors. In the Kalahari scrub lands, clever meerkats are outsmarted by a wily bird, solitary and belligerent black rhinos get together to party and giant insects stalk huge flocks of birds. Rain almost never falls in the Namib, instead it must make do with vaporous, vanishing fog. The creatures in this, the world’s oldest desert, have gone to the extremes – spiders wheel to escape and a desert giraffe fights to defend his scant resources in the greatest giraffe battle ever filmed.

East Africa is a land which is constantly changing. To survive here, creatures must be able to deal with unpredictable twists and turns – wet turning to dry, famine to feast, cold to hot – no matter how hostile and unpredictable it becomes. From dense forests, to snow capped peaks, steamy swamps to endless savannah, this unique and varied land is also a haven for life – it supports a higher density of large mammals than anywhere else on Earth.

The Congo rainforest covers the very heart of Africa, it is the most dynamic habitat on the planet. From the crowded, competitive centre of the forest to the open edge of the Atlantic ocean, this is all about carving out space in a crowded world. When darkness falls, the atmosphere changes. Using specialist technology we discover a luminescent landscape as the forest glows in the dark. Tiny Frogs battle it out using kung-fu moves then hide their precious eggs in folded blades of grass and great herds of Elephants gather at a mystery meeting place to socialise under cover of darkness.

Southern Africa is a riot of life and colour. But if it was not for two great ocean currents that sweep around and shape the continent’s Great Cape it would be a desert. To the east, the warm Agulhas current flows south, generating clouds that roll inland creating the wettest place in southern Africa. In the sea, the warm current sustains shoals of giant kingfish and creates some of the most beautiful seascapes ever seen – the Bazaruto Archipelago. To the west is the cold Benguela current. It is home to more great white sharks than any other sea on Earth.

North Africa is home to the greatest desert on Earth, the Sahara. This vast wilderness, the size of the United States, is the toughest part of the African continent. On the fringes of the Great Desert, Grevy’s Zebras battle over dwindling rivers, and weird naked mole rats avoid the heat by living a bizarre underground existence. Within the desert, camels seek out water with the help of their herders, while tiny barn swallows must go it alone and navigate across thousands of square miles of barren sand to find a solitary life-saving oasis.

Over 80 years of wildlife filmmaking, the BBC Natural History Unit has chronicled the greatest changes in a continent that the world has ever seen. With more than a billion people, Africa might now be at its tipping point, but it is also the one continent that has not lost its biggest animals – despite the fact that mankind has lived here longer than anywhere else on the planet! So, in a quest to save Africa’s most iconic species, what lessons learned from the rest of the world can we bring back to our ancestral homeland?