Long Distant Lion Lovers Meet For The First Time! | Extraordinary Animals

millions of us love watching the world's wildlife behaving in strange and wonderful ways [Music] what lies at the heart of these extraordinary behaviors can science explain what's really going on now the latest research from all around the world is increasing our understanding of animal emotions relationships intelligence and communication faster than ever before [Music] we're going to be traveling the world in search of the most surprising and incredible animal stories using the very latest camera technology will reveal how and why animals do such remarkable things and will meet the scientists who dedicate their lives to understanding these extraordinary discoveries [Music] in this show we're in The Woodlands of Northwest Austria where scientists are interpreting the howl of the wolf and asking if they really deserve their big bad reputation we discovered the communication skills required to persuade a penguin raised by people to swim and in Australia we meet the conservationists using cutting-edge communication technology to try and save an iconic endangered species but first we're in Limpopo South Africa's most northern province here an incredible love story is unfolding between two very different lions soukara who lives here at the sow Conservancy and Cleopatra who used to live on the other side of the fence now they're going to meet face to face for the very first time a week ago ecologist Jason Turner organized for Cleopatra to be transferred into the reserve after years of extraordinary behavior from the nine-year-old lioness [Music] she was obsessed with wanting to join the pride of lions on on the side so she was at the fence line every day she swam across a river climbed under an electric fence in order to bond with a male the male hood caught Cleopatra's attention wasn't just any lion it was Zhu Cara one of just 12 white lions left in the wild a very rare change in their DNA causes their splendid color and it sadly meant that white lions have been hunted almost to extinction [Music] for five years Cleopatra had appeared everyday at the fence of the Cara's reserve obsessively waiting to see him lionesses generally meet with the male who's the head of their own pride normally a big dark maned male Jason who has worked with lions for 20 years has never seen a lioness go to such lengths to communicate her feelings for a male who was completely out of her reach this obsessive behavior of going up and down the fence line putting on seductive moves like you've never seen lots of tail swishing the lionesses will roll over they've got this white sort of very sexy belly that they flash at the males lionesses are arched seducers [Music] I mean seduction was invented by lionesses today we're hoping to see some unique lion behavior soukara and cleopatra are going to meet face to face for the very first time Lyonne introductions can be extremely unpredictable so Saqqara has been kept away from her in a separate enclosure to allow Cleopatra to get used to her new surroundings and bond with resident lioness swallow now the team are opening the gate to release Saqqara back into the 4,000 acre reserve biologist Patrick ie has joined Jason to see if soukara picks up Cleopatra's scent we found Saqqara listen to that so you can see he hasn't wasting any time he's doing what we expected him to do and that's the natural male response he's picking up the chemical signals the pheromones from where Cleopatra sent marked and that grimaced what he's doing is it's called Fleming he's picking up the same so he knows that she's here he knows that she's here and he looks to me like he's figuring out which way she's gone scent markings aren't the only way Lions communicate with each other on the other side of the reserve the lionesses are on the move Cleopatra's out in front picking up zoo Cara's calls this communication is a good sign but this is a love story that could end in tears like all lions zakaria and Cleopatra are powerful creatures males in particular can be extremely aggressive to outsiders so even lion expert Jason doesn't know exactly what's going to happen when zoo Cara and Cleopatra meet lines are very fiery animals that can be very aggressive of course they're fierce hunters predators and the males are incredibly territorial so bringing two adult lions together there's always going to be fireworks lioness is often have to work together to defend themselves from other lions and Jason is hoping that resident female swallow will help Cleopatra if things turn nasty when Saqqara [Music] as the Sun sets it looks like zoo car and Cleopatra could meet at night it's vital the team witnessed this first encounter because how they interact will show if they have a future together so the team are going to try to stick with zoo Cara throughout the night [Music] good pull signal on Zecora a full signal from shakarez radio collar means he's within 10 meters of the truck [Music] here comes their cups it seems he's definitely on the move and on the hunt for Cleopatra Lions have their own distinctive roars as unique as our fingertips and there's no doubt Cleopatra will be hearing these calls an hour later zoo Cara appears by the fence and he's not alone just in front of him a swallow and Cleopatra after five years zoo Cara and Cleopatra are finally face-to-face swallow hangs back this is so electric amazing that you came in for them almost but they both interesting were like no don't try and mess with us at all we mean business their encounter ends with a final scent spray from Saqqara it's one of many signs that he's receptive to Cleopatra's presence never seen anything quite like it was really exciting I thought pretty pretty shake I mean it happened all within a split of a second and you've got these two strong powerful ions Cleopatra and Sakura but no one was doing any damage it seemed exactly heated engagement but you could see more bark than bite no excessive use of violence really more just demanding respect from each other they're non-aggressive calls and lack of violence assigns that as first dates go this has been a roaring success Saqqara made a beeline for Cleopatra and in a dramatic act of loyalty Swallow rushed in to back her up together they stood their ground with Zhu Cara adopting a position behind the bush which shows his respect for newcomer Cleopatra these are all positive signs for a future relationship between them this is exactly what you've been waiting for for five years I mean I'm ecstatic I mean bungee jumping is got nothing in terms of adrenaline that I'm feeling right now phenomenal after just a week and no longer separated by a fence Saqqara and Cleopatra are spending most of their time together their phenomenal story has given us new insight into the length the lioness will go to to communicate with the males she wants [Music] back in the UK bird landing Gloucestershire is home to Britain's only breeding program for endangered king penguins here one man has been on an extraordinary mission to try and teach a penguin how to swim zoologists lucy cook is joining head keeper alistair keen with very special penguin charlotte hello Charlotte nice to meet you Charlotte had an unusual start in life she was laid as an egg last year by Frank and Lily and within 24 hours Frank had dropped and broken the egg so we had to take the egg away repair it with a little bit of superglue Wow it's not too big a crack if penguin parents drop an egg they tend to abandon it so Charlotte became allister's responsibility I like to talk to the egg because the parents would call to the check do you talk to it in a human voice or in a penguin I just talked to as I normally would like I'm talking to you now so keep going chick I'll see you soon the things like that sounds really silly I know when Birds hatched from their egg they form an immediate bond with the first living creature they see it's known as imprinting the first thing Charlotte saw wasn't her mum it was Alistair as far as she's concerned I'm moment that she's got to give me grandchildren so to speak in the next year's by six months Charlotte was fully grown with a thick coat of brown downy feathers perfectly adapted to keep her warm as she developed give me some more food and like any typical king penguin chick at 12 months Charlotte's coat molting and she started to transform into the stunning adult she is today all right Charlotte's so I think you're getting five stars as a penguin parent from what I can see yeah we got so far so good and then we hit a snag in the fact that she just would not go in the pool I know that's bet everyone would think they'd take to it really easily but she was having none of it she'd watch everyone else going for a swim she would not go despite allister's best efforts Charlotte could not be coaxed into the water [Music] what was going on in the wild it's very important that King penguin chicks avoid water while they're still wearing their brown coat of baby feathers it's warm but it's not waterproof so if it gets wet in the icy waters of the Antarctic the chicks can drown or die of hypothermia only when they get their waterproof adult plumage do they pluck up the courage to take the plunge what surprised Alistar was that although Charlotte's body was fully equipped to swim her mind was clearly saying no perhaps penguin expert professor Rory Wilson can shed light on Charlotte's strange behavior nor are you surprised by Charlotte's fear of water a bit surprised but not hugely it's a big deal if you're a penguin from being a wooly fluffy thing that lives on land and there's this terrible transition period where you have to do it's like bungee jumping so I think there's a lot of fear that so what do the parents doing in terms of encouraging them into the water they're brutal it's tough love and it's do or die the king penguin chicks they actually go through the whole winter starving they'll get the odd meal from their parents and go down to about seven kilograms really really thin and miserable it's hunger that drives young penguins to overcome their fears and into the sea to catch fish but Alistair wasn't prepared to take this tough love approach with Charlotte he'd have to find another way to get her to swim first thing we tried to do is push her in she jumped straight back out had none of that no matter how hard he tried it became clear that gentle persuasion wasn't going to work Alistair had to resort to more dramatic methods we've got a rock in the mid of the pool I took her in sat around the rock so she had to get wet to get back out after hours of intense encouragement Charlotte decided to take control of her fear the only time I've ever seen the king penguin with both feet off the ground feet wet in feet first almost the Cannonball Alistair and Charlotte had cracked it and once she was in the water Charlotte's instinct to swim kicked in four months later on thanks to Alice's coaching Charlotte loves nothing more than a dip in the pool she's getting very good now she's the first one in there those days last one out you're a proud dad yeah [Music] in the woodlands of Northwest Austria one animal spine-tingling howl has landed it with a big bad reputation here groundbreaking research into how wolves communicate is revealing that they might actually be more loyal tolerant and friendly than we ever imagined the wolf Science Center is home to 12 timber wolves the largest of all wolves in the wild they're specialized pack hunters of bison moose and elk here in order to make them tolerant to people they're hand reared for the first 5 months of their lives before becoming part of a pack this allows the team to study their behavior up close it's long been thought that the pack is held together by an aggressive alpha male and the only loyalties the other members have are to him but when researchers dr. Simon Townsend and Kurt console removed different members from the group they began to think that there was more going on within the pack dynamic okay so today we will remove Aragon and then we're going to look at the behavior of all the other wolves Romanian in the back whenever they separated a wolf oops in this case second-in-command Aragon the rest of the pack would have an extraordinary reaction [Music] scientists believe the Wolves are trying to call back they're missing pack men their howls can be heard more than four miles away and wolves can recognize the individual calls of their pack Simon analyzed the howls using what's known as a spectrogram you can see there's two house a shorter one and a longer one and you can see how they're how changes over time what this can tell us by taking measurements is we can work out what kind of information is encoded in the house and also how often specific wolves are howling and how long they're held by repeating the test many times he discovered something surprising different wolves would howl longer and louder for certain individuals it looked as if within the pack it wasn't all about the alpha male the wolves each had their own particular best friends this new study is changing our perception of how the pack works the scientists here are so convinced that we've misunderstood wolves the doctor fredericka Ranga has devised another experiment that looks at a different form of wolf communication their body language Frederika believes that because wolves have to hunt together to bring down big prey there are more tolerant species than their closest relatives domesticated dogs [Music] we basically put a bowl of food in between two animals and then leash you see who's eating and who is not this is really about testing tolerance of elderly animals share food with each other or not first up it's the dogs will marry share his food with Junior pack member he re [Music] open [Music] both dogs rushed for the ball but he re doesn't get any food and he seems to know that he shouldn't get any closer to marrow while he eats the other one doesn't even dare to get close to the food not only does Mary refuse to share but the hierarchy between the two is so ingrained GRE knows not even to try to challenge him okay every time we run the test under dog GRE is left with nothing he just gets to lick the empty plate man's best friend not quite as tolerant as we thought how will the wolves fare we've got Kasper the alpha male and junior pack member Shima if the old assumptions about wolves are true alpha-male Kasper will eat all the food and Shima will be left with nothing [Music] [Music] remarkably the wolves behave in a completely unexpected way the basically what we see here is that they do share there's a bit of grumbling in between when the other one just ignores it unlike the dogs even though Kasper is the dominant male he tolerates sharing with Shima it's really that they do communicate with each other and even if the lower ranking animals say if they don't like something and they have the right to say it this ability to share and communicate is further proof that the Wolfpack is much friendlier and less hierarchical than we previously thought [Music] scientists believe that as dogs became domesticated they learned to scavenge for food as individuals but wolves have always had to hunt together to bring down big prey they've had to be tolerant communicative and friendly to survive [Music] 10,000 miles away on the other side of the planet in the eucalyptus forests of Queensland Australia conservationists are harnessing the power of communications technology originally designed for the military they're trying to save an iconic species that us humans are putting under huge pressure the Koala deforestation isn't just wiping out animals in remote places like the Amazon it's also happening in towns and cities like this one brisbane conservationist Jars Clark is meeting a recent victim of the rapid urban expansion here in Queensland where the koala population has plummeted by 40 percent [Music] koalas like rocket are coming under threat as new roads and most recently a railway line are slicing through the ancient eucalyptus forests they live in now a team of conservationists is coming to the rescue of the small koala population that's still clinging on they have fitted over 200 koalas with sophisticated satellite trackers it's a pioneering new technique which is having a remarkable impact this technology allows the team led by Tosh Tucker to pinpoint the location of every quarter and easily find and capture individuals to monitor their health in a way they never could before right here well each one of those little blue dots is a koala that's right that is truly incredible and is it real time there's a slight lag but there's every four hours we get out of transmission it only takes a few seconds to find Gonzo's name on the map and he looks dangerously close to the road that's guns are you and hence this big highway is what we can hear over the back once we get an idea where he is I'll put his frequency in and we could pinpoint exactly where he is it makes a lot easier for using a handheld receiver the team are able to pick up Gonzo's frequency almost immediately and they set off to find him [Music] sounds like he's just in this patchy start looking out yep ah here he is my just looking at in that vine near the acacia and he's just sitting on yeah I got him from that and that Faulk there with gonzo located Tosh calls in his team the plan is to get gonzo down to check his radio collar and to give him a thorough health check in close knit koala communities diseases can quickly spread and wipe out entire groups it's vital the team can make sure every koala is in the best health possible if this population is to survive a handful of fresh leaves and Gonzo's ready for his checkup which each koala gets twice a year he's loving it yeah coming right now he's happy as Larry veterinarian dr. John hanger has been treating koalas for over 20 years back at his surgery gonzo is sedated [Music] remember once overhang [Music] first John checks Gonzo's heart sounds good next he checks gonzo sharp teeth are all present and correct then on to his all-important tracker collar so just make sure there's plenty of growing space in there because the youngsters are growing rapidly so we need to make sure that this doesn't get too tight then he takes a look at his feet the great be blistered that's not normal okay get a photo of that Gonzo's blistered foot is nothing serious but even so John will keep a record of it finally he uses an ultrasound to scan Gonzo's kidneys stomach and bowel to check he is processing all that eucalyptus properly so there's a bladder there the black structure there you can see the fermenting parts of the Bell eucalyptus is poisonous to many animals and impossible for them to digest but koalas have a special bacteria in their stomach that can break it down this movement is a sign that all is well with gonzo they really are just leaf processing machines really they certainly are he's really starting to wake up I think we should think about getting back into that forest Gonzo's been given a clean bill of health but John isn't going to return him to just any old tree until they are two years old koalas like gonzo prefer to be close to their mums and using the satellite technology again John can track down Gonzo's mum we'll just scan down here to find her name so these are all the koalas with those special collars on her name is j'adore and with a click of his mouse he has found her okay so she's hanging around here at the moment this tells us that the last upload from her collar was 5 hours ago so with a bit of luck she'll still be at that point or if she's not there hopefully she'll be fairly close but we'll be tracking her with the conventional telemetry gear as well to make sure it's really hone in on this right this technology it's incredible that access that it's given you in the information yes that's allowing us to monitor the koalas far more intensively than we could have otherwise and that means that we can intervene much more quickly if they get into trouble [Music] gonzo has just recovered from his anesthetic and a team are off to track down his mum and set him free sort of getting this the strongest signal from this area area is that her a koala well done job Gonzo's mum is spotted and he's released back to a tree nearby [Music] gonzo steps out tentatively at first but he's soon back in the swing of things off you guys it's not hanging around so far with the help of this communication technology the team have helped protect over 400 koalas the hope is that this technique could one day be rolled out across Australia to help protect the 100,000 koalas who live in the wild in British Columbia on the west coast of Canada this footage caught on camera phone shows a family of killer whales or orcas they are one of the ocean's smartest mammals and this group is behaving in a truly bizarre way [Music] crazy could these highly unusual Orca antics give us new insight into the sophisticated ways that these amazing marine mammals socialize and communicate this group had come right into the shoreline and appeared to be rubbing their bellies on the pebbles marine biologist Jackie Hill during has observed this behavior firsthand the first time I ever witnessed the behavior was actually only hearing it and not seeing it I had an underwater microphone so I could hear the whales communicating back and forth but also I could hear the rocks then over one another as you had these long skids across the smooth rocks Jackie's convinced that the orcas were deliberately rubbing their bodies along the pebbles they'll get down low and scratch every part of their bodies skidding across smooth rocks at first scientists thought that this was an extreme ochre exfoliation that the killer whales were trying to remove parasites from their skin but if this was a purely practical habit you'd expect it would be something all the orcas and these waters would do in fact researchers know it's only a few groups of orcas who behave in this way why on earth would it be that one population would be rubbing off parasites have parasites when the others wouldn't a breakthrough came from listening to the clicks and squeaks from the orcas which accompanied this belly rubbing behavior the sheer intensity of their communication suggested a surprising interpretation the sounds being made it is quite something it's the same sorts of sighted calls that they make when family groups meet up with one another so this had to be social behavior it probably feels darn good my belief is it's a whale massage it seems that taking time out for a feel-good pebble massage is fun for this family and what's even more extraordinary is that while we've known for some time that orcas communicate survival skills like how to hunt to their offspring we now have evidence that just like us they can communicate their social traditions to the next generation it's absolutely the case that this behavior is passed on from generation to generation one of the young killer whales in the footage now has her own calves and is teaching them to be true [Music] in the much warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean that surrounds the islands of the Bahamas new research is giving us fresh insight into another of the oceans predators the shark [Music] zoologists lucy cook and dr. tristan Gutteridge are off the coast of Bimini heading to a lagoon hidden in the mangrove forests it's really hidden away to get there they have to make their way down a narrow corridor in the mangroves but researchers recently discovered that young sharks were able to use this Lagoon as a safe haven to rest and feed in as they grew up the roots make it too small for large sharks to fit through this is it beautiful is here would you this unique research site is showing that instead of being the lone mindless mechanistic killers most people think of sharks could be social make friendships and even have personalities it's not long before the first inquisitive shark comes to investigate nice beautiful one come in really healthy-looking sharks in here as well the sharks here are juvenile lemon sharks short nosed and stocky adults can grow up to 3 metres long and have powerful jaws at the moment they're just patrolling around a very calm they look kind of cautious actually to be able to be honest they look more nervous of me than I am of them yeah absolutely it was long assumed that sharks who are generally loners would only communicate with each other to fight over food or mate but their behavior here is suggesting that's not the case what we found over the years is that they actually follow each other they socialize in this area so they're not just kind of randomly swimming around solitary they actually are following each other in groups and they switch groups and change groups over time and they seem to have actual kind of friends really that they prefer to associate with Wow but when researchers put food into the water to observe what happened when sharks fed there were further surprising insights into their behavior what you'll see is that some will come in sooner than others and I don't think it's purely because one is hungrier than another one it's actually one of them will probably take a greater risk than the other one so you can do that and then wiggle it that's it here's one coming in [Music] that's it this is quite a big one pretty soon they are surrounded by over a dozen sharks wait now they're really getting excited there you go they do all seem to behave in different ways towards the food some really play the tough guy boy just calm down others are a little more shy you've got same cherica's head yeah you can see some of them are less inquisitive than others some of them comes steaming in hmm and I think it's the same with lots of animals that they have these different personalities fantastic Tristan has been putting his observation that sharks might have different personalities to the test personality used to be seen as a highly developed trait only found in dogs and primates okay so how will the Sharks fare lovely to start the need to transfer the first subject into the test pen this test is designed to see if the Sharks have different personalities by seeing how they react when an unfamiliar object a stripey pole is lowered into the pen let the test begin the first shark almost immediately goes to investigate the new object wasn't scheduled I thought it went in and it came in and it went in checks before we lowered that it was circling around the edge and now it's completely changed its behavior and it's just doing sort of past buyers isn't it it's totally checking it out it's a bold shark it's a vulture it's time to test the next shark will it behave differently and show it has a different personality I'm going bold the second candidate seems determined to avoid the stripy poll altogether hugging the edge and nowhere near as much interesting you can see the difference between the two that's the cool thing to pick out Tristan and his team have repeatedly tested over 300 sharks each one consistently showed its own unique response to the object and this suggests for the first time that sharks really do have personalities so this isn't just a freak that it's bold today but it could be timid tomorrow that you believe that these are fixed personality types absolutely so if we test this shark next week it should do the same behavioral very similar we're only just beginning to understand the complexities of shark communication and interaction but the team believed that having different personality types actually helped sharks as a species to thrive [Music] they can exploit all the food sources available to them with some who pick off the easy targets and high rollers who take on the big prey [Music] for sharks it seems success isn't all about physical perfection personality plays a role too [Music] in Florida in the United States one of the world's cleverest creatures has learned how to get exactly what it wants by communicating with us in the small town of La canto Chuck and Alberta Holloway have been receiving strange deliveries we've got a ballpoint pen this is a bone a screw we don't know what this is we've got a piece of bark coins and we have this diamond chip bracelet Chuck had been putting bird food out on their driveway for almost a year when they first noticed an unfamiliar object amongst the empty peanut shells I came out to put the feed out and approximately right along in here was the toy car and how'd it get here strange it's all I can say determined to get to the bottom of the mystery Chuck set up motion-triggered cameras to monitor the scene and they soon revealed who was leaving the gifts it was the local crows scientists know that crows are smart birds and have the reasoning and problem-solving abilities of a seven-year-old child when the bird food ran out Chuck and Alberta's crows would often drop off a gift so far they've left 57 different items studies have shown that crows can recognize and remember individual human faces and Chuck believes that he might even have received gifts fetch specially for him this piece is a piece of PVC fitting and I was working on the sprinklers in the side yard so I had PVC stuff out there and all of a sudden it shows up you know like a feeling like they were watching you know this is the well you know he's doing that so maybe he'd like this thanks to the internet we know this intriguing crow behavior isn't a one-off people from all around the world have been reporting the same phenomenon this is my personal favorite crow expert dr. John with E helps to explain what's going on and this is when he dropped this thing studies have shown that crows also give each other gifts of food and shiny objects sometimes it's young crows sharing food with a more dominant individual sometimes it's between male and females that are paired but is this more than just a way of saying thank you from a young age crows learn that sharing can be rewarding the expectation as I share food now and I might you know receive something from you in the future [Music] now it seems that crows could actually be capable of entering a kind of trading relationship with humans we get the gift when the food is empty I'm looking at it that they're bartering like I'll give you this if you give us some more food it sounds like this association of if we bring something then the food comes back and they're certainly capable of that kind of learning whether this is a case of crows seeking friendship with humans or these super smart birds have learned how to manipulate us into giving them what they want science is certainly revealing that they have extraordinary powers of persuasion [Music] you

Channel: Real Wild

Views: 257,987

Rating: 4.7148108 out of 5

Keywords: nature documentary, full documentary, documentary movie, big cats, wildlife documentary, discovery channel, national geographic, natgeo wild, Nature documentaries - topic, Animals - topic, planet earth, david attenborough, Full Animal Documentary, wild animals, wild animal, award winning, meerkat manor, animals in love, extraordinary animals, bold experiements, high quality imagery, wildlife in hd, wildlife animals, two four rights, cute animals, animal documentary

Id: TD4ix_WoWec

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 17 2019