Africa's Deadliest

Teeth and claws.

Speed and cunning.

Nature provides their power.

Equipping them for the tools to survive.

With the weapons to endure.

They are the masters of their game.

They are Africa's Deadliest .

AFRICA'S DEADLIEST

Off the coast of South Africa,

a transient orca.

But she's not alone.

She's with her family, a pod.

And today, like most days, they'll swim up to a hundred miles looking for food.

They chatter in a unique dialect

that's practically gibberish to other pods.

Right now, their focus is on what lies ahead.

Their roving puts them on a collision course

with the world's largest toothed whale

surfacing for air with her calf.

The sperm whales are bigger than a school bus.

And no animal ever found has a larger brain.

But that doesn't always help.

Whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries hunted sperm whales for lamp oil.

Today, these leviathans face a more ancient foe.

The ravenous orcas are hungry enough to literally eat a whale.

Like a wolf pack,

they single one out.

Sperm whales can dive deeper than any other whale.

But not faster than the orcas.

Especially with a calf in tow.

Instead of speed, the sperm whales, the loudest animals on Earth,

blast their assailants with underwater clicks louder than a rifle shot.

The racket convinces the orcas to chase easier prey.

This miles-long oil slick is a good place to start.

Multimillions of sardines form one of the largest migrations on the planet.

Highly social common dolphins come to feast.

Chatting in high-pitch tones at hundreds of clicks per second.

Dolphins can swim almost 30 miles per hour.

Orcas, even faster.

And they're not after sardines.

Usually communicating with each other,

today, they stay silent as death

to hunt dolphins.

The huge pod of dolphins can outmaneuver the attacking orcas,

but they won't all escape.

Each orca eats about a hundred pounds of food a day.

Mammals, birds, and sharks.

The dolphins scatter, so the pirates press ahead.

Conserving their strength until they reach their next meal stop.

Crozet Island,

where half a million pairs of king penguins

aren't exactly waiting for them with open arms.

Male or female, it's good to be king.

These rulers are about as tall as a yardstick.

The world's second-largest penguins live in a mostly peaceable kingdom,

where they hobnob and choose an annual mate.

And when they're hungry, they fish.

Though today, that might not be such a good idea.

Here come the orcas.

And they're even hungrier.

Penguin Island is under siege.

The orcas have marauded across 1,500 miles of ocean so far,

confronting giant whales, agile dolphins,

and now, unsuspecting king penguins.

The birds face a choice.

They're safe as long as they're on the island.

But they need to eat.

Which means they need to fish.

The orcas need to eat, too, but they don't eat fish.

The killer whale looks like he's fumbled his catch,

but orcas sometimes play with their food.

He knows he'll get enough to eat.

The well-fed whales will swim back to the coast of Africa.

The males will split up to mate with members of other pods,

but they'll be back.

While orcas ply the wide ocean,

southern Africa's sea of grasses provide wildebeest with tender shoots.

These natural lawn mowers are crucial prey for many savanna predators.

Like this clan of spotted hyenas.

One of Africa's tightest cliques.

This young male left his birth clan, as all adult males do.

He's joining his new clan on the bottom rung of the social ladder.

So-called laughing hyenas have one of the strongest bites on the planet,

and they'll haze this newbie without mercy.

He'll rise in rank only if another member dies or leaves the clan.

Months later, he's settled in, but he still sometimes travels alone.

Despite his canine looks, he's more closely related to a cat than a dog.

And though he has a reputation as a scavenger, he's a hunter.

He's Africa's second-largest carnivore after his archrival, the lion.

Their territories overlap.

And so does their prey.

Which can make the big savanna feel a little overcrowded.

Especially if you're a wildebeest.

With a lion on the job, the hyena doesn't need his clan to bag big prey.

The lion disagrees.

The hyena, who can devour bones, fur, everything but horns,

will wait his turn...

and still find enough to eat.

A lone lion makes a kill only about one out of six tries,

so she's not in a sharing mood.

But everybody wins, except the wildebeest.

This season, there's no shortage of wildebeest on the plains.

Or big cats skilled at taking them down.

And a hyena who thinks stealing from rivals is his ticket to success.

He's about to find out it isn't.

One lone hyena saunters into the lions' den.

He's after an easy meal of fresh wildebeest.

Lions and hyenas are like rival gangs vying for turf.

A single hyena isn't an immediate threat,

but he's still the enemy.

And one hyena is one too many.

The thieving hyena sees the lions as a catering service.

But he's biting off more than he can chew.

If you taunt the kitty, you're bound to get scratched.

Sometimes violence is a last resort, but sometimes it's the whole point.

In the dense forests of Gabon, a community of chimps enjoys hanging out.

Each community has its own turf.

These chimps make bonds, break bonds, come and go from the troop.

The alpha male, the chief chimp in charge,

keeps order like a frontier sheriff.

His group can be social, kind, or alarmingly brutal.

Right now, the chief is itching for action.

He gathers some henchmen.

For reasons clear only to the chimps,

the chief feels it's time to prove his power

by staging a raid,

without any provocation.

In another part of the forest, where all is calm and peaceful,

a small family of chimps relaxes in a glade.

They groom each other to strengthen their bond.

They don't know what brings the neighboring chief

to this neck of the woods.

Until it's all too clear.

Without warning, he attacks,

forcing the family to fight for its life.

In an instant, a peaceful afternoon shatters into violence.

And just as fast as it began,

it's over.

The invaders regroup before heading home.

They leave bloodied.

Chimps spontaneously invade neighboring troops.

Apparently, to prove their dominance.

Even females aren't spared the violence.

In fact, they're often the targets.