01x06 - Impossible Journeys

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Enter a world

just beyond your perception.

A world of extraordinary animals,

with hidden powers,

and super senses.

If you think you know nature

think again.

To survive in extremes,

you have to push the limits.

In the Italian Alps,

a towering dam

as high as the Golden Gate Bridge.

It holds a hidden treasure

salt.

Pouring from its wall.

It's so rare up here,

ibex risk everything

to reach it.

Scaling these near-vertical walls calls

on incredible climbing skills.

These natural-born mountaineers

make it look like a walk in the park.

But imagine what it's like for a kid.

Going up there

for the very first time.

He has no choice

but to follow his mother.

A fall would mean certain death.

But step by step,

he discovers

he has an amazing grip.

The higher he goes,

the more vertical the face.

Now, his survival depends

on his innate superpower.

Soft, rubbery soles mold around

even the tiniest ridges.

Locking them inside the hard edge

of the hoof.

He balances.

Every step on a knife edge.

It's exhausting work

for one so young.

Just in time,

his mother notices.

She gives him a chance

to recharge.

A 5-minute power nap.

150 feet up,

finally, he reaches his goal.

Twenty percent of concrete

contains salt and water

seeping through the dam

brings it to the surface.

It may not look like much,

but this mineral lick is crucial

for the kid to grow up strong.

Muscles and nerves replenished,

his epic ascent is complete.

Death-defying missions like this

are a vital part of many animals' lives,

and we're only just discovering

the wondrous ways in which they succeed.

The dunes of northeast Brazil.

An area larger than Los Angeles.

Scorched by the fierce equatorial sun.

Many who try to cross

never make it.

But there are opportunities

you just need to find them.

After five months in suspended animation,

without food or water,

a Brazilian slider,

a normally aquatic turtle, emerges.

Something has awakened her.

Her acute sense of smell has detected

a change in the humidity,

her only hope of survival

is water.

But to reach it,

she must attempt the impossible.

Traveling for days

across sunbaked sands.

Every moment exposed

means hydration lost.

And as the wind picks up,

she loses the scent of water

So, which way now?

In this hostile landscape,

she'll soon dry up.

But the sun that threatens

to cook her

is also her guiding light.

Using its position as a compass,

she keeps on her course.

She's almost there

Just in time.

When the rains arrive,

a magical transformation begins.

In most dunes, water quickly drains

through the sand

But here, a layer of solid rock

beneath

blocks the water's path,

allowing thousands of pools to form.

Just one last obstacle.

Now, it's downhill all the way.

Time to do what a slider does best.

A crystal-clear oasis.

These ephemeral pools bring food.

And the chance to meet a mate

before the water vanishes

and the scorched desert returns.

Incredible journeys

are happening across the planet.

But they're often overlooked.

The city of London.

A confusing man-made maze.

But hidden away behind its walls,

there are animals

who've learned to navigate

this urban jungle.

This buff-tailed bumblebee is about

to embark on a royal mission

to find food for the queen's larvae

and secure the future of the colony.

Easier said than done.

Confusing concrete corridors

could be hard to navigate.

But not for her.

Like a London cab driver,

she's got the knowledge.

She knows the landmarks to build

a mental map of the streets.

Though some things in this city

never stay put.

But it takes more than a little traffic

to stop this busy bee.

She travels up to seven miles

on her daily commute in search of nectar.

And this is where she finds it:

one of three million gardens

that make up a quarter of the city.

And it's in full bloom.

Thousands of lenses in her eyes

detect the shape and color

of nectar-rich flowers.

And ultraviolet vision,

reveals secret patterns in the petals.

But another bee's already been here.

So, to target untapped plants,

she tunes into an invisible force.

As bees fly, they gain a positive charge

from the atmosphere,

but flowers

are negatively charged.

So, when a positive bee visits

a negative flower,

it briefly alters the electric field.

Hairs on her legs

detect these changes.

Ensuring she strikes gold every time.

But her journey has just begun.

She's called a worker bee

for a reason.

She'll visit up to 5,000 flowers a day.

Then, remembering every twist and turn,

she carries her own body weight in pollen

and nectar, all the way back

to the nest.

A royal delivery for queen and colony.

While many animals undertake

a testing daily commute,

others embark on epic migrations

that take months to complete.

Winter is coming.

Days are getting shorter.

Food is running out.

Bad news for a young humpback whale.

He arrived in Antarctica with his mother,

but now he's left all alone

in this vast ocean.

And soon he must embark

on one of the longest migrations

of any mammal.

Swimming 80 miles a day

to reach warm waters further north.

But how to navigate 3,000 miles

through a featureless ocean,

with strong currents

that could push him off-course?

To stay on-track,

he tunes into

a mysterious planetary phenomenon.

As charged particles

from the sun hit the Earth's atmosphere,

they illuminate the southern skies

but there's more to this heavenly display

than meets the eye.

The Aurora Australis reveals

Earth's magnetic field,

an invisible force scientists

believe whales can sense

using magnetic particles in their brains.

This internal compass keeps

the humpback on course,

accurate to one degree.

But it leads him out into the open ocean

where the fish and crustaceans he eats

are hard to find.

It's been weeks since he last ate.

But then

he hears something.

Using his body

like a giant microphone,

sound vibrations

rush through his skeleton,

straight to his head.

The welcome calls of other whales,

hundreds of miles away.

He homes in on a growing barrage

of sound.

Finally, five weeks

after leaving Antarctica,

he joins hundreds with other whales

for a monster feast.

One of the largest humpback gatherings

on the planets,

there are hundreds of them.

This annual assembly has only

recently been discovered.

Three miles off

the coast of Africa,

strong currents create an upwelling

of nutrients and an expl*si*n of life.

In a single mouthful,

he swallows

thousands of fish and shrimp,

150,000 calories,

that's the equivalent

of 600 chocolate bars.

Once fully fed,

he must leave his friends

and head off alone

to complete his epic journey north.

There are animals with the power

to travel right across the globe,

but the most intrepid of all

is a creature you'd never expect.

The British countryside

home to a baby cupboard spider,

no bigger than a pinhead.

She's got about 200 brothers and sisters.

And her siblings have some

truly appalling table manners.

These spiderlings

are cannibals.

This is one family meal

you don't want to hang around for.

Better get away as fast

and as far as she can.

The trouble is

her siblings

have the same plan.

And she just ran out of road.

But when it comes to great escapes,

this spider has an extraordinary skill.

She fires out

negatively charged silk thread

into the positively charged atmosphere.

Opposites forces attract,

pulling her up,

up

and away.

Heading high,

riding the wind,

even cruising the jet stream,

she can travel for thousands of miles.

By ballooning,

they've colonized

every corner of the Earth.

At the mercy of the wind,

she has no control over

where she touches down.

But weighing less than a grain of sand,

she doesn't even break the surface.

She just deploys her magical silk

once more,

and kitesurfs to safety.

A new place she can call home.

One animal's journey is all about timing.

Waiting for the planets to align

so it can transcend

from one world

to another.

A three-foot-long epaulette shark

may not seem

the most adventurous traveler

He rarely even strays far

from his patch of reef.

But on some special nights,

heavenly bodies

turn his world upside down.

At full moon,

a spring tide pulls billions of gallons

of water off the reef,

stranding creatures

in a maze of tidal pools.

Or worse.

Left high and dry,

a fish out of water soon suffocates.

Unless

it's a super fish.

A walking shark.

And he's not just saving his skin,

he's on the prowl.

Heading towards rich hunting pools

full of prey trapped by the tide.

Forcing a jet of water

through his muscular gills,

he hoovers up his cornered victims.

But he's caught in a race against time.

Oxygen levels in the pool

are falling fast.

Pretty soon, he'll run out of energy.

With an hour till the tide returns,

he's close to death.

But these extreme conditions trigger

an extraordinary physiological response.

Slowing his breathing,

reducing his heart rate,

even shutting down part of his brain.

He enters

a self-induced coma

One last breath,

and he can survive for an hour.

But after that,

his time is up.

Finally, the tide turns,

immersing him

in oxygen-rich waters.

A miraculous resurrection.

Perhaps the most impossible journeys

of all

are made by those

who can't even move.

The secret to how plants spread

is seeds.

All the ingredients for new life,

packed and ready to go.

Some have evolved expl*sive mechanisms

others harness the wind.

But one cunning plant

simply makes someone else

do all the legwork.

A female dung beetle

on the African plains.

There's only one thing that will

make her go to extraordinary lengths:

the sweet scent of antelope droppings.

Perfect food for her young.

Using her antennae,

she selects the juiciest morsel.

It smells like it,

it looks like it,

it even rolls like it.

But this poop is an imposter.

It's so convincingly like the real thing;

she's prepared to fight for it.

Victorious, she heads off

to stash her prize away

from the competition.

But she's been duped.

She thinks she's hiding it,

but really she's planting it.

She's nothing more than a vehicle

in the incredible adventure

of the cunning elephant reed.

One animal traveler takes the journey

of a lifetime,

just to get back to where it started.

This nymph

has been hanging out

in a Hungarian riverbed.

For the last three years,

she's been building strength

for an incredible journey.

When the water temperature is just right,

she departs one world

to enter another.

It's a magical transformation.

A mayfly is born.

And not just one

thousands emerge every minute.

Though many are eaten by predators,

there is safety in numbers.

But numbers soon become

her greatest challenge.

She's mobbed by an army

of male suitors.

Weighed down with 8,000 fertilized eggs,

she needs to lay soon.

This is the best place for her young

to grow

but if she laid here,

the current would carry her eggs away.

She has to make it further upstream.

Her polarized vision

picks up light reflecting off the river.

A shimmering path leading

to her final destination.

In just a few hours,

she travels six miles.

Close to death, she reaches

the same stretch of river

where her life began.

The perfect place to lay

so her eggs can drift downstream

and hatch in exactly the same spot

where she grew up.

As her life ends,

others begin.

Now, her offspring start

their own voyage

all the way back

to where it began.

When starting a new journey,

sometimes it's the first step

that's the most terrifying of all.

After 20 hours trying to break free

a guillemot chick's first view

of the world is this

1,000 feet up.

It's like peering off

the top of the Empire State Building.

But why be born in such a dangerous place?

This Icelandic cliff is inaccessible

to most predators.

A safe haven to grow up in.

But in just three weeks,

it will be time to leave the nest.

And this chick will face

a life-or-death decision.

Her bond with her parents

is already strong.

It started long before she even hatched.

Responding to her first gentle calls,

her parents talked to her

inside the egg.

These early conversations

ensured the newborn already recognizes

and trusts Mom and Dad.

Her parents work tirelessly

to feed her up

in preparation

for the journey ahead.

But as the weeks pass,

it gets harder

to satisfy her growing appetite.

And now this clifftop home

that protected her

has been discovered

by ravens.

Predators k*ll

up to 70 percent of chicks

and parents are almost defenseless

against the threat.

This time, the chick gets lucky.

But she needs to leave

before the ravens return.

The problem is,

without adult feathers,

she can't fly.

Her father encourages her to jump.

It's a vertical drop

of more than one-hundred stories

Trusting him completely,

the chick takes a leap of faith

The chicks flapping seems futile.

But it's just enough to slow her down

and steer her away from the jagged rocks.

Her downy feathers soften the landing.

This seemingly impossible journey

is vital to her survival.

Now out at sea,

Dad can lead her to food.

She will face many more obstacles,

but with extraordinary bravery,

she can make it through.

When animals can tap into

remarkable senses

and supernatural skills

crossing the globe,

even moving between worlds

to find a mate,

safety

and food,

they become truly unstoppable.

If you think you know nature,

think again.