Africa's Giant Killers Natural World

They are the two heavyweights of the African bush,

but rarely do their worlds collide,

until now.

A young pride of seven lions is rewriting the rules of engagement,

taking the fight to their giant neighbours.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

This is no chance conflict.

Nature has played its part.

LION GROWLS

Exhausted by hunger, Africa's largest herd of elephants

are staring into the fearless eyes of a pride of lions.

This is a battle of gigantic proportions,

in the harshest of arenas.

The dawn of the giant killers has arrived.

In the Northern Kalahari Desert of Botswana,

there's a natural phenomenon

that occurs only once every two or three generations.

Seismic movements deep beneath the ground

release an immense body of water, filling an ancient river -

the Savute Channel.

The name Savute means unpredictable, as it's impossible to tell

when the waters will arrive, or when they will disappear.

The returning river empties into a dried-out marsh,

miraculously bringing it back to life.

The parched landscape becomes the stage

for one of Africa's greatest wildlife spectacles,

attracting animals from all over the Kalahari.

They arrive in all shapes and sizes.

From the most delicate...

..to the most majestic.

The marsh is ruled by five brothers.

THEY GROWL AND SNARL

But with thousands of prey animals now flooding in,

it's not long before new groups of lions follow in their wake.

The latest arrivals are a young pride of seven -

two mature lionesses, and their offspring,

three males and two females.

They're heading intently

towards the growing herds at the centre of the marsh.

The cubs are now roughly 12 months old, and like teenagers,

are rapidly developing their different characters.

The youngest female is by far the most adventurous

and the most inquisitive.

She has managed to catch a pelican.

Like any sibling's new toy,

the pelican is a source of great interest to her sister.

The young lions have another year

before leaving the safety of the pride.

They'll use this precious time to hone their hunting skills.

The mother lioness has spotted a family of warthogs.

It's irresistible for young predators, eager to learn.

As usual, the youngest lioness is first to step forward.

Her brothers, typical male lions, sit and watch.

WARTHOG SQUEALS

WARTHOG SQUEALS

WARTHOG SQUEALS

Like all cats, lions sometimes play with their prey.

CONTINUES SQUEALING

This little warthog is fearless, even in the face of death.

Adult warthogs are a much tougher proposition.

The youngest lioness is now joined by her older sister.

Lions and warthogs can reach speeds of up to 35 miles per hour.

But lions can only keep it up over a short distance,

whereas warthogs have the stamina to keep on running.

If they want a decent meal,

the young lions must learn to bring down larger prey.

Savute is home all year round

to a small population of bull elephants.

These solitary males are the largest land mammals on the planet.

The bulls have a special relationship

with one of the smallest creatures in Savute.

The Carmine Bee-eater.

As the bulls move gracefully through the marsh, they flush out

swarms of insects that are snapped up by the bee-eaters.

Elephants and lions generally tolerate each other's presence.

Lions don't normally consider an elephant as potential prey.

Their sheer size and brute strength are ample deterrents.

The elephants, for their part,

feel no threat from the lions.

For now, the elephants have the upper hand,

and the lions had better stay out of their way.

Giant herds of zebra are passing through Savute

on their annual migration south.

The zebra will remain for several weeks to have their young,

and feed on the new grasses before moving on again.

The young pride of seven have their sights locked onto their targets.

The youngest lioness leads the charge,

with her older sister in tow once again.

The zebra's weapons are their hooves.

They're enough to slow the lions down for a few vital seconds.

With the zebra now on high alert,

the young lions will need to change tactics

and learn to hunt as a team, if they are to pull down such a large meal.

Despite the lack of food,

the younger members of the pride spend much of their time playing.

But their mother must always remain vigilant,

looking out for both prey...

..and danger.

The biggest threat comes from the five brothers who rule the marsh.

When one of them approaches our pride,

the younger male lion tries to stand his ground.

GROWLING

Infanticide is common in lions.

Rival males will often try to kill the offspring of others.

After a potentially lethal stand-off,

the mother lioness and her youngest daughter intervene.

They use their feminine charms to disarm the intruder.

By being submissive, they've kept their family safe.

The two lionesses will now stay with the large males for a number of weeks...

..mating with each of them.

In a few months' time there will be a new litter or two.

For the older male cubs, that will be the cue

to go and make their own way in the world.

Savute is moving into the dry season.

As the surrounding area dries out,

all the animals are drawn into the heart of the marsh,

where some water still remains.

There's a massive influx of very thirsty elephants into Savute.

These are the breeding herds of the Kalahari -

thousands of mothers and their young,

lured in by the promise of water,

many coming to give birth.

The pressure on the wettest parts of the marsh is growing.

Even these areas are now beginning to dry out.

The Savute River that feeds them is shrinking,

returning once again to its dormant state.

And the rains are still months away.

The pride of seven remains split.

The mother lioness and her youngest daughter

are still in the company of the brothers.

They'll be back, but for now

the remaining five must go it alone.

Driven by their hunger, they take on a whole herd of Cape buffalo.

Weighing up to 700 kilos, buffalo are extremely aggressive.

The inexperienced lions over-reach themselves.

The buffalo defend as a herd against the threat,

and prove more than a match for a gang of foolhardy young lions.

The pride comes away defeated and hungry, but a little wiser.

Experience is all,

and one of the big males from the pride of five brothers

has killed a buffalo.

He will have singled out the weakest member of the herd

having probably stalked it under cover of darkness.

Our young lions still have a lot to learn.

One of the five has caught a little egret.

It's not enough for a meal,

and the young lions' frustrations are beginning to show.

The pride MUST catch bigger prey or go hungry.

BUBBLING

The dry season advances,

and the Savute River continues to drain away.

With water levels dropping, a flock of Marabou storks clean up.

These sinister-looking creatures are the vultures of the stork world

and gather in large numbers to feast on the suffocating fish.

These everyday life and death dramas

are a grim premonition of events about to unfold

on a far greater scale.

More and more breeding herds of elephant

are pouring into the marsh,

all seeking out the same pockets of water.

The sheer weight of numbers is starting to take its toll.

Each elephant must drink roughly 200 litres of water a day.

Multiply that by several thousand.

The elephants are literally sucking Savute dry, sealing their own fate.

There are no other sources of water for more than 50 miles,

a journey they are too weak to make.

Trapped between hunger and thirst,

the elephants have to roam further and further to find food,

but must always return to drink at the centre of the marsh.

As each day passes, the distances grow and the elephants grow weaker.

Temperatures are now soaring into the 40s.

The first casualty has succumbed to exhaustion.

A young mother has collapsed, and as a last resort

draws water from her stomach to cool herself down.

CALF CRIES

Her calf looks on helplessly,

confused by her mother's desperate behaviour.

The rest of the herd cannot afford to wait.

They move on, leaving the calf with her dying mother.

Without the protection of the herd, she's vulnerable.

Now back with the pride, the mother lioness senses an opportunity.

Her youngest daughter is quick to follow.

BIRDS CHITTER

CALF CRIES OUT

Some other members of the herd have witnessed the attack

and are clearly distressed.

ELEPHANTS TRUMPET

The elephants try to defend the calf.

But the lions are not giving up their prize.

In an act of brazen audacity, the youngest lioness attacks again.

ELEPHANTS TRUMPET

The balance of power in Savute is shifting.

The mother lioness has shown her cubs the way

and the young pride of seven

is getting its first taste of elephant.

The dry season tightens its grip on the marsh.

With the Savute River continuing to recede,

the elephants must battle on, until the arrival of the rains.

The elephants are stranded, hostages of the marsh,

and the lions can sense it.

Many elephants are now so malnourished and dehydrated,

they are keeling over, one after another.

Like a gigantic grey sphinx,

a bull elephant has died on his knees -

regal even in death.

The marsh that was once a paradise for all,

is now a death trap for elephants.

A male elephant has made it all the way to the river

but collapses at the end of his journey.

The rest of the herd try desperately to revive him.

But he is beyond their help.

Growing weaker, the herds must now run the same gauntlet each day.

The lions just have to sit and wait by the water's edge.

After their first easy kill,

the pride of seven now regard elephants as fair game.

They are becoming bolder and bolder.

Ignoring the weak and dying,

they are actively targeting healthy individuals.

They have managed to isolate an adolescent male

from the rest of the herd.

He is around 12 years old and will not go quietly.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

The lions are now hunting as a team,

and use their combined weight to bring down their prey.

This extraordinary behaviour has been unleashed

by a unique combination of forces -

the drying up of the river, the weakened herds,

and a tenacious pride of young lions

that has successfully challenged the normal rules of engagement.

The lions have come of age,

transformed into fully-fledged giant killers.

It's not long before the scavengers enter the battlefield.

A clan of spotted hyena devours the giant carcasses.

Into the midst of this carnage...

..a baby is born.

A male calf. But his mother's timing could not be worse.

Elephants usually give birth at the start of the rainy season,

when there is ample food and water.

But this year the rains are late.

The calf has arrived too soon,

in a time of deep crisis for the herd.

After 22 months in the womb, the baby needs to stretch its legs.

The other females in the herd are fascinated by the new arrival

and crowd round the mother.

For now, the baby is safe behind a fortress of legs and trunks.

It's a brief moment of respite for the herd,

in sharp contrast to the scenes of horror unfolding all around.

The only hope for the new baby and his herd

is for the rains to come, and free these prisoners of Savute.

DISTANT RUMBLE OF THUNDER

There is virtually no food left on the marsh,

and the remaining elephants must continue

their relentless daily march...

..passing by the lifeless shells of their own kind.

The young pride of seven has continued its killing spree.

Over a two-month period, they have brought down 15 elephants,

and gorged themselves on countless more that lay dying.

No life goes to waste in Savute.

One animal's tragedy is another's good fortune.

The White-backed Vultures are now thriving.

They and their fellow scavengers, the Marabou Storks,

will not go hungry for a long time to come.

Once they've eaten their fill, the next wave of beneficiaries arrives.

Swallows returning from Europe on their annual migration home

are welcomed with a feast.

The swallows normally bring the rains, but not this year.

Even in death, the elephants provide a final meal

for these returning travellers.

With the dry season dragging on, there are many more baby calves

trying desperately to keep up with the rest of the herd.

Separated from the others, mothers and infants roam the plains alone,

trying to hold out until the drought breaks.

Some still look strong and may yet escape from Savute,

but others will not survive much longer.

This infant is on its last legs.

His mother's milk has dried up.

The mother stays by her baby's side as he takes his last breath.

And remains there...

until the following day.

Savute has been cruel to the elephants,

but kind to the lions.

The youngest lioness from the pride of seven

has had her first litter of cubs,

almost exactly four months after mating with the large males.

Savute's lion population is thriving.

The young lioness is moving her litter to a new den.

The cubs are highly vulnerable,

and she must be constantly alert

to the threat of predators.

GROWLING

One of the cubs keeps lagging behind.

It's carried safe from harm in gentle jaws.

Cubs of this age are totally defenceless.

The biggest danger is from other lions.

LION GROWLS

But the cubs have nothing to fear.

These lions are family, from the pride of five brothers.

As the young lioness mated with all of the males,

any one of them could be the father.

So they have all come to stand guard outside the den

and act as babysitters.

For such powerful predators,

they can be surprisingly gentle.

Finally, the rains reach Savute.

Although too late for the baby elephant,

for others, they bring life.

The remaining herds have been reprieved.

They are free.

As the waterholes fill up,

they can now escape from the growing prides of lions.

Many mother elephants and their young have survived.

They will now find safer passage

as they walk south,

back into the Kalahari Basin.

The pride of seven is breaking up.

After two years of growing up in each other's company,

the young lions will now separate for ever.

The family has four new mouths to feed,

and with the large males guarding the babies,

the older male cubs are no longer welcome and must now leave.

The three head off together.

One day, they will form their own pride.

Now that the rains have come, the landscape can recover,

and all the prey animals can escape from the marsh.

In time, the elephant herds will return to full strength.

The lions have been changed utterly.

The taste for elephant won't go away.

These cubs will learn the skills from their mother

and are destined to follow in her footsteps.

Savute is already home

to the next generation...

..of giant killers.

It's taken over 18 months to document these events

in one of Africa's most remote and challenging environments.

Filming from the ground, from the air,

and in the thick of the action, has given the camera team

a unique insight into one of nature's rarest events.

Savute has an interesting history.

The river flows for a very short period, once every 40 years.

When it is flowing, it is the most incredible environment.

I knew that there is going to be a moment here in time

that is going to be absolutely incredible.

Wildlife cameraman Brad Bestelink

is fourth generation born and bred in Botswana.

He grew up in the wilderness,

and has lived there for most of his life.

The bush and the natural world, specifically in Botswana,

is sort of in my DNA,

and the more time I spend there, the more time I want to be out there.

I don't think that I could live any other life.

Brad has drawn on a lifetime's bushcraft experience

to identify and document this remarkable animal behaviour.

This pride is up from the north,

and the buffalo have been localised on the marsh

so they've come down, looking for food.

When you go into any area, the first thing you do is

start identifying the make-up of the predators in the area.

They kind of steer what goes on.

So you work out prides, territories, access routes that they use.

It's like a big puzzle that you sort of break up.

It requires a lot of time, tracking, moving.

There's a certain amount of knowledge one needs

to be able to keep up constantly.

And not just keep up with them, but learn to anticipate them.

Helping Brad locate and capture the wildlife on film

was fellow cameraman and lifelong friend Richard Uren.

Spending weeks at a time together in the most isolated areas,

they depend on each other completely,

especially when things don't go to plan.

It just so happens you're in the middle of the bush and things break.

We've, over time, learnt to deal with most of the problems ourselves.

We have to. We don't have DHL here or anything.

All right, so, some of it liquid.

-Water.

-Let's pour it in, yeah?

See what we can do.

Sometimes you have to improvise.

It's little tricks you've been taught along the way.

You've got to be fairly well equipped to cope with

different circumstances - fixing tyres, fixing cars.

You've kind of got to be all rounded to the elements

that you are going to confront

if you want to be independent and living out in the bush.

But perhaps the greatest challenge in making this film was

the emotional impact of witnessing such harrowing events.

Before this year, I'd never seen lions hunting elephants.

It's not nice to watch.

They are the most incredible animals, and to see them

in the circumstance that we find them in Savute, was very tough.

For lions to hunt and kill elephants

takes layer upon layer of circumstance to come together

to allow that little piece of behaviour to happen.

It was a case where we had a huge population of elephants,

all focused in one particular place.

And a pride of lions in a particular phase in their development,

that gave them a specific type of character.

Without all of those facets,

you wouldn't get lions actively predating elephants.

One of the ele's that we watched he really did fight for his life.

It took the lions a long time to get him down.

The day when the pride of seven broke up a herd to isolate

a fairly healthy individual in that herd and pull that down,

was really the turning point for me, in the story.

It's one of those things I'll always look back on

and say it was a turning point in my understanding of the natural world.

For Rich, one particular scene he filmed brought home

the brutal reality of nature.

To see a young, newly-born elephant like it,

struggling along dehydrated, tired, probably come a long way.

It was a very, very heart-wrenching thing to see.

We kind of knew that he wasn't going to carry on.

His legs shook and he did a bit of a handstand

and rolled over on his back.

Then, that was it. He didn't get up again.

What I saw then is that elephants definitely grieve.

Mum hung around for the whole night

and she was there the next morning when we went back to have a look.

That was harsh to see actually.

You kind of feel helpless because you can't do anything.

You... It's...it's hard.

It's not nice.

To help return normality to such a demanding shoot,

Brad's wife Andi and their two children

visit him in the bush whenever possible.

I need to be in the bush long periods of time for long hours,

and often it's more productive to get them out here.

They get the experience and I get to stay out here

and keep in touch with what's going on.

For Brad and I, it's incredibly important that our children have

experience of the bush, experience the wildlife, experience nature,

rather than just seeing it on television or having

some sort of vicarious experience of it.

It's very important for us that they immerse themselves in it.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in the bush and I think it does

give you a different perspective on life, and to be able to

bring my kids to the bush and let them experience what I have,

is probably one of the most important things that I can do.

The kids love seeing the baby animals.

That really piques their interest.

When they see these little things that they can relate to,

and they're cute and they're lovely,

they get such an idea of how things are out there.

To capture footage of the lioness and her new litter of cubs

was a crucial moment for Brad and Rich,

bringing the incredible story

of death and life in Savute full circle.

You've got these quite heart-wrenching situations

where lions are bringing down elephants.

But then the other side, you know,

they've got their young to feed, they've got themselves to feed,

you've got this whole cycle that goes on and there's these

brand-new little baby cubs which is an amazing thing to see.

The whole story and the whole project is very much part of a greater cycle.

There are too many elephants in one particular area.

The lions are killing elephants

because of that particular moment in time and they go on and breed.

The elephants then move on to different areas

and they go on and feed and continue.

That is the joy of Savute.

All these things are in waves and ebbs and flows,

and that is just the natural cycle.

This unforgiving landscape, a unique set of circumstances,

and such unforgettable animal behaviour

has pushed Brad and Rich to the limit on every level.

But it's also rewarded them, with a once-in-a-lifetime experience,

of one of Africa's most powerful dramas.

The greatest thing about making this film is it's a journey

and you get to know all the characters

and it was the personality of this one particular pride

that really drove it.

It says so much about lions and lions' capability to adapt

very specifically to an unusual circumstance.

That was the most rewarding thing for me

out of the entire filming process,

and I look at lions totally differently from now on.

LION ROARS