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Private Notes
This episode's focus is on Larry, an 8-month-old hanuman langur monkey who lives with his family in the middle of the ancient city of Jodhpur, the Blue City. The city is home to more than 800,000 people, but the monkeys live up on the roofs of their houses.
The monkey troop is centred on females - mothers and babies, aunts and grannies. They stay in this family their whole lives, up to 20 years. Larry's dad is the lord of the Blue City, the only adult male monkey in the troop and the father of all its youngsters. Larry will have to learn to steal food at the market and to dodge traffic and the threat of electrocution.
Another threat is a tough bachelor gang of males living outside the city. Their leader wants to take over the Blue City. Can Larry's father survive this challenge?
In this episode the focus is on Morris, a meerkat who lives in the Kalahari Desert with his mum, dad and the rest of the meerkat gang.
Mama is the leader and the only female who is allowed to breed. Dad is the top male, three years old and in his prime. The most important rule in meerkat life is 'All for one, and one for all!' However, not all meerkats are born equal. If one comes from another gang, there is a price to pay: babysitting naughty youngsters and working as a sentry.
Only by spending time with their noses in the sand can meerkats find enough buried food, but this means they are vulnerable to attack from the air. Meerkats have solved this problem with an effective surveillance system requiring someone to be on sentry duty at all times, watching for danger.
In this episode, the focus is on Chiku, a 12-week-old cheetah who lives in the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya and who has just discovered how to hide using her spots as camouflage.
The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth, capable of running up to 95 kmph. More like a racing dog than a cat, it has a slender body, long legs and a small head. Large nostrils and a big rib cage help it to take deep breaths which power its body with oxygen. It also has claws like running spikes to stop it slipping and a long bendy spine.
When she was born, Chiku was just 30cm long and weighed under 300 grams. Though she is now growing teeth and eats meat, she still suckles milk from her mother. Soon she will learn to repel uninvited diners, but there is one she is not yet ready to handle - the lion!
In this episode, the focus is on Eboo, the newest member of his elephant family. They live in the Amboseli National Park, overlooked by Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest mountain.
One day he will grow to be amongst the largest mammals on the land. Eleigh is Eboo's mum, the leader of the herd or matriarch. Eboo's dad, Swabou, is the biggest elephant in the park although he doesn't live with the females and babies. Bulls can weigh up to 5400 kg and they can stand over 4 metres tall.
The females are only slightly smaller. Eboo and his family spend up to 16 hours a day slowly eating their way through between 200 and 400 kg of food each. Not surprisingly, each elephant produces 50 kg of dung and around 2000 litres of methane gas a day!
Today's location is Etosha National Park and the focus is on Ollie, an ostrich who emerged from the largest egg in the world.
In this part of Africa, the temperature is often over 40 Celsius and Mum had to brood the eggs to keep them cool. Dad helped out too. He is an impressive 2.74 metres tall. Other mothers laid their eggs in the shared nest and one mother could end up caring for as many as 60 chicks.
Creches of chicks may get to be as big as 300. Ostrich eyeballs are bigger than their brains; they can see behind themselves without turning their heads. Their feathers do not have the little barbs that join them together, like normal flight feathers.
That is why they look so light and fluffy. But when full-grown, Ollie will run at 70 kilometres an hour and cover over 8 metres in a single stride.
In this episode, the focus is on Percy, a 10 week old polar bear living in the Canadian Arctic.
He was born during the winter in a den which was up to 40 degrees warmer than outside, where the temperature drops to minus 60 degrees Celsius and it is dark for months. Polar bears have thick coats, a 10 cm thick layer of blubber which acts like thermal underwear, and huge fur-covered paws which are like snowshoes. Polar bears are also hunters, and their paws have 20 cm long claws!
They need to eat 2 kg of fat a day -the same as eight packs of butter! Percy's mum provides lots of nourishing milk and she forages over huge areas, sometimes covering up to 25 km a day. Hunting is a tough business in this vast white landscape and only 1 in 20 hunts are successful, but if mum can find a seal pup under the ice, it would be an excellent meal.
Today's location is Kenya's Masai Mara Reserve and the focus is on Leo, an eight week old lion, one in a litter of three living in the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya.
Leo's mum has a mighty appetite. She and her sister each need to eat at least five kilograms of meat every day in order to produce enough milk for their hungry cubs. However, they are built for hunting, with a muscular physique and a top speed of 58kmph.
Most of their hunting is done at night and their night vision is also superior to that of the animals they hunt, enabling them to stalk really close without being seen. Despite this, only one in four of their hunts is successful. Each chase requires a huge outlay of energy, and if successful there's a lot of meat to be digested. Lions also spend up to 20 hours a day sleeping!
Today's focus is on Rosie, a 4 day old reindeer who lives with her family in Ivvavik National Park in Canada.
In Northern Europe, she would be called a reindeer but in North America and Canada she is a caribou which means 'one that shovels' because reindeer use their feet as snow shovels. Reindeer are travellers, always on the move.
Before this time next year, Rosie will have covered 4000 kilometres, trekking between 19 and 55 kilometres a day. And when they want to, reindeer can run at 80 kilometres per hour. Rosie is well protected from the cold but finding food is her main challenge. Lichen is the most nutritious food reindeer can get during the winter. They rely on their noses and are able to sniff it out, even when it is buried under 60 centimetres of snow!
In this episode, the focus is on Igby, a green iguana who has just hatched after spending 3 months developing inside his egg. He has been buried deep in a borrow on a small island and now it's time to enter the big wide world.
As soon as he digs himself out, he has to make his way to the safety of the jungle. It's a journey fraught with danger: he must run the gauntlet of a hungry brown basilisk, swim across the murky Black Lagoon and evade the ever-watchful eyes of the stealthy vine snake. Once he reaches the safety of the tree tops, the programme skips forward 5 years, and catches up with Igby as he tries to attract a mate.
Also in this episode, the camera hops onto a time-machine to visit some of Igby's ancestral relations, the dinosaurs.
In this episode, the focus is on eight month old Dinah, a dingo and one of Australia's wild dogs. Dingoes do things very differently from marsupials.
So how did they get to Australia? The answer is quite surprising... by boat! Dinah's home is the Central Australian outback, at the edge of the Simpson Desert, where temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius in the middle of the day.
Her life is one long hunt for food. She and her mum Sheila and her brother Dave will try to catch anything they can: goannas, thorny devils, skinks, frilled lizards, galahs, kangaroos and even camels! Surprisingly, there are more wild camels in Australia than anywhere else in the world. They were introduced here by Europeans, as were the dingoes' most important food source, rabbits.
In this episode, the focus is on Laura and Lucy, 8 week old ring-tailed lemurs from different ends of the social order.
These lemurs have a strict hierarchy. Females are very much in charge and the males rank lowest in the pecking order. Their troop of 15 made up of mostly females and their young, with just a few adult males, live is the Berenty Private Reserve in Southern Madagascar, off the East Coast of Africa.
The forest troop's territory only covers about 3 hectares which is about the size of four football pitches. Lucy's mother is the lowest-ranking female and even having a baby won't change that, but Laura's mother is the leader of the troop. In lemur society, that makes a big difference to every aspect of their lives.
In this episode, the focus is on 5 month old Charlie, a chimpanzee living in Tanzania's Gombe National Park.
He lives with his mother, his father and his brother, Chauncey, but his family are part of a wider chimpanzee community of around 50 members. Chimpanzees are the most intelligent of all non-human primates, so Charlie has a lot to learn including making and using tools for cracking palm nuts and fishing for termites.
He has to learn which foods have to be collected and which have to be hunted. Growing up in this part of Africa, he is surrounded by other animals, some of which can be great friends and playmates like young baboons, but some like the leopard are fearsome enemies. There is a lot for a young chimpanzee to learn!
In this episode, the focus is on Carla, a young capybara living with her family in the swamps and grasslands of Venezuela's Orinoco river.
The capybara is the world's largest rodent: it is the size of a sheep, barks like a dog and is happy in the water and on land. Carla spends her days grazing and swimming. Baby capybaras start swimming at just a few weeks old.
They have nostrils which seal tight, and their flipper-like webbed feet help propel them through water. Their eyes, ears and nostrils are all located on the top of their head so that they can see, hear and breathe as they swim. They also manage to remain almost invisible to predators. However, capybaras don't have much sense. A full grown capybara may weigh as much as human, but its brain is the size of a lemon!
This episode features Bert, a two-year-old beaver who lives on a section of river in the Teton Mountains of Wyoming.
Like other rodents, beavers have huge incisors that wear down at the back faster than at the front, like self-sharpening chisels. After 20 days of hard work, Bert and his mate have built their own home, a log cabin with hidden underwater entrances so they can dart in and out under the safety of the water.
Beavers are aquatic; they swim well and can stay underwater for up to 15 minutes. They have special lenses in their eyes which act like goggles, so they can swim open-eyed. Beavers have a huge effect on their environment: clearing trees, blocking rivers and building dams and lodges. Each day a busy beaver can shift 25 times its own body weight!
This episode features Bert, Gus, a three-month-old North American grizzly bear who lives with his mum and brother.
At the moment he is quite small, but one day he will be huge - a big grizzly can weigh as much as a small car! Dad is no longer around; male grizzlies don't help bringing up the babies and they live quite a solitary existence. When they are born, it is important to stay warm, so Gus and the family stayed in their den until April.
Grizzlies spend half their lives asleep. They hibernate for six months of the year in an underground den without eating or drinking anything. Bears eat everything humans eat, and more. Three quarters of their diet is fruit, berries and grasses, but they will eat pretty much anything and this helps them gain weight before winter sets in again. Eating and sleeping... a grizzly's life isn't that bad!
Today's focus is on Oscar, a six-month old-giant otter who lives with his family in Cocha Salvador, a freshwater lake in the Amazon Basin in Peru, one of the most bio-diverse areas of rainforest in the world. Amazon giant otters really are giants. At nearly two metres long from nose to tail, they are the largest of the world's otters and the most sociable, living in noisy groups of
up to 20.
Giant otters are experts at high-speed underwater pursuit. They live almost entirely on fish, and together Oscar's family eat an amazing 25 kilos of fish every day. However, the murky lake waters hide a formidable enemy: the black caiman, a South American crocodile. When there is a caiman about, Oscar learns the importance of family.
Today's focus is on Carl, a Nile crocodile who lives with his 30 brothers and sisters in Zambia's Luangwa River. It is nearly a week since Carl hatched from an egg, and he is 24cm long from his snout to the tip of his tail. For the first five weeks, his mother will provide him with loving care and protect him from predators, including other adult crocs. However, he will grow up to six metres long and could live for over 50 years.
Reptiles emerge into the world with most of the skills they need to survive, and Carl could walk and swim right away. He is cold-blooded and unable to produce heat within his body, but already he knows how to warm himself up with the sun's rays. When he's grown up, Carl will hunt much bigger animals like antelope and buffalo, but his main food will be fish.
This episode features Wally, a two-week-old warthog living on the African savannah and who is growing fast.
Like most pigs, warthogs are not noted for their good looks; but what they lack in style, they make up for in character. Wally is part of a small warthog family and has several brothers and sisters.
Having spent the first few weeks of his life in the family's underground burrow, he is just about to venture out onto the dangerous African savannah. We follow him every step of the way as he explores the great outdoors.
He'll have to watch out for big bad lions, who would happily make a meal of a warthog his size. But not all animals are dangerous and he'll be made welcome by some.
This episode features Peter, an Emperor Penguin who lives in Antarctica, the coldest place on the planet. He endures extreme sub-zero temperatures and was born in a colony of penguins on the Ross Ice Shelf where he now lives along with 25,000 other penguins, making it a very noisy place.
Emperor Penguins are the largest of the world's 17 different penguin species. Standing over a metre tall, they weigh around 30 kg. Penguins can't fly, but they can swim and Emperors dive deeper and longer than any other bird: nearly 500 meters down, for over ten minutes. During these dives they catch their food. Emperors mainly eat fish but they also eat squid and krill. Aside from the freezing conditions, penguins have few enemies apart from deadly leopard seals!
This episode features Hattie, a spotted hyena who lives on the grasslands of East Africa. With her oddly sloping back, shabby spotted coat, tatty tail and toothy grin, she will stand about 85cm at the shoulder and weigh up to 80kg when fully grown.
Spotted hyenas are skilled hunters and they are rarely alone - there are about 50 hyenas in Hattie's clan. The ranking order in hyena society is unlike that of other mammal species; males are dominated by the bigger, masculine-looking females.
Hattie's mum is clan leader and this gives Hattie a privileged position; she gets more milk than her brother and one day she will inherit her mum's position. But first she must survive long periods without milk and encounters with hungry lions while her mother is off hunting wildebeest, gazelle and zebra.
This episode features Elvis, a North American Elephant Seal who lives south of San Francisco. Elephant seals congregate onshore at rookeries, where they fight for dominance, mate, give birth and nurse their young during the winter breeding season. During this time they will go without food for three months. They'll play, sleep and shed their fur in the spring and summer moulting season.
Elvis's greatest enemy is one of the most feared predators on earth, the great white shark. For the moment, he is safe on the pupping beach. However, elephant seals feed in the water and one day soon Elvis will have to risk his life and venture into the Pacific Ocean, where the patrolling jaws will be waiting for him.
This episode features George, a giraffe who lives with his family on the wide open grasslands of the East African savannah. George is one of a herd of Masai giraffes in Kenya. He is four weeks old, still a baby, but already two metres tall. He started life with a two-metre drop, but within 15 minutes he was up on his feet. Giraffes are the tallest animal in the world and males grow up to five metres tall.
Amongst trees, they are well camouflaged and whatever the type, all giraffes love eating leaves. One giraffe can eat 34kg of leaves a day using a highly flexible tongue which is as long as a man's forearm and well suited to the job. However, having a long neck is not always easy as George finds out when he's learning to drink.
This episode features Tara, a two-year-old tiger living in India's Ranthambhore National Park in a territory that she shares with her father and mother. The tiger is the biggest of all the big cats, bigger than even its closest cousin, the lion. Unlike the lion, the tiger doesn't rely on teamwork, but always hunts alone.
Ranthambhore's tigers are spoilt for choice when it comes to food. The park has huge herds of deer and more formidable prey like giant wild cattle, buffalo and nilgai. Despite all this, tigers are only successful in one out of every 15 hunts and they are such a dangerous foe that many animals try to kill them when they are young.
Will Tara's parents be able to protect her until she is fully grown?
This episode features Tammy, a baby Thomson's Gazelle who has to be on her guard from a very young age.
On the plains of Tanzania, cheetahs, jackals and even baboons hunt young gazelles. As soon as she is born, she needs to hide to stay alive. She is not fast enough to outrun them yet, but luckily she is good at hiding, has excellent eyesight and hearing and, for the first few weeks, she'll be odourless.
Adult gazelles spend all their time eating grass and avoiding predators, but they are impressive sprinters and can even outmanoeuvre a cheetah running at full pelt. If Tammy survives, life in the herd will still be precarious as they embark on great migrations to seek out the greenest grass.
This episode features Otto, an orang-utan living in the rainforests of Sumatra with his mum and older sister. Sometimes when fig trees are fruiting he catches a glimpse of his dad, the only adult male in the area.
Orang-utans live on Borneo and Sumatra in South-east Asia and are the only great apes found outside Africa. The name orang-utan means man of the forest. They spend most of their time in the treetops of the rainforests, passing from tree-to-tree by climbing or swinging. Their strong arms stretch out longer than their bodies and allow them to move about in the rainforest canopy with ease, or to hang from branches eating fruit and leaves.
They are active during the day, and at night the females and young males sleep in nests which they build each evening, a task which taxes young Otto.
