The Hunt

The duels between hunters and hunted

are as dramatic as any event in the natural world.

The stakes could not be higher.

For both, it's a matter of life and death.

Yet, surprisingly, it's the hunters that usually fail.

To have any chance of survival,

predators must be perfectly tuned to their own hunting arenas.

Every habitat brings a different challenge.

This series will reveal, as never before,

the extraordinary range of strategies predators use to catch their prey.

But even for the most skilful,

success is never guaranteed.

A female leopard on the prowl.

Few predators instil more fear.

Yet out in the open,

she has little chance of catching anything.

To succeed, she must get within a few metres of her prey, undetected.

Her strategy is to use cover,

wearing it like a cloak of invisibility.

She's an expert in stealth.

Impala are her favourite prey.

This one is just out of her range.

She needs to get closer, within four metres.

She only has a short burst of speed.

She must stay hidden until she's in the strike zone.

But out of sight doesn't mean out of mind.

Impala have acute hearing and a superb sense of smell.

Now, the only prey she can see is right out in the open.

But leopards are the most versatile of all the big cats,

adept at finding cover in the most unpromising places.

The steep walls of the gully are now her cover for an ambush.

The male puku is close enough, but he's too big to tackle.

She needs to slip past him without being seen.

If he spots her, he'll blow her cover.

Slowly does it.

To succeed here, she needs to find prey grazing close to the edge.

Or better still, in the gully itself.

Frustration.

Success would have staved off hunger for a week.

But while there's prey around there's hope.

Peeking over the top is a risk

but it's the quickest way to find a new target.

A burst of speed of 40 mph, and it's all over in less than six seconds.

Except it isn't.

Dazed and disorientated, the impala makes a miraculous escape.

It's been the perfect stealth hunt, and she's nothing to show for it.

But then, six out of seven leopard hunts end in failure.

A leopard's hunting strategy depends on finding cover.

But how do you catch your prey

in a place where there's literally nowhere to hide?

That's the challenge facing Zambia's wild dogs.

This close-knit pack is made up of one adult female

and her 12 offspring from last year.

Unlike the solitary leopard,

wild dogs depend for their survival on teamwork.

Dogs that play together, work together.

Each morning, the pack heads out across the open plain, prospecting for prey.

Mother decides which direction they go.

The rest stay close.

They'll keep going for miles until they find the right kind of prey.

Adult zebra are too big a challenge.

And the same goes for tsessebe.

An oribi is an easier target.

But is it worth the effort,

especially on an oribi that's as fit and bouncy as this one?

Better to save their energy for something bigger...

A wildebeest.

It's what they've been looking for.

The dogs need to make the wildebeest run.

Their success will depend on wearing him down in a long chase.

While the prey's running, the dogs have the advantage.

But when the wildebeest stand their ground, the tables are turned.

Faced with a wall of horns, the pack is powerless.

But not all the wildebeest have had the courage to stop.

Now, the real contest begins.

The wildebeest are big and strong.

But the dogs have stamina.

Right now, hunters and hunted are clocking 40 mph.

The pack can keep this pace up for miles.

The wildebeest can't.

One wildebeest peels off, then another two.

The split confuses the inexperienced pack,

sending them in different directions.

The mother and one youngster continue on.

The rest of the pack stop, believing they have an easier target.

It's a mistake.

Like a beast with two heads, each but! protects the other? rear.

And the dogs can do nothing.

Ahead, the chase continues.

Another wildebeest peels off.

Now the mother has just one in her sights.

But it'll mean nothing without the help of the rest of the pack.

The situation here has reached stalemate.

The young dogs have lost valuable time.

They must try and catch up with their mother.

Back at the front, the mother is beginning to tire.

And the wildebeest knows it...

Bouncing to show he's still strong and not worth chasing.

But fresh, young legs are catching up fast.

When one dog tires,

there's always another member of the team to take up the lead.

The dogs now have the numbers to bring the wildebeest down.

Each bite risks a broken jaw,

but going for the legs is the only way to stop it.

And they must do so before it reaches the safety of the herd,

a few hundred metres ahead.

After a 20-minute chase, the bull 's energy is near spent.

This time there will be no sanctuary within the herd.

The dogs' stamina has been rewarded.

All they must do now is to bring their quarry to the ground.

Working as a pack allows wild dogs

to take on prey ten times heavier than any one of them.

But many mouths need a lot of food.

The price they pay for these numbers

is knowing they'll have to attempt the same thing again tomorrow,

and every day.

Teamwork and stamina on Africa's open plains

have proved to be a winning combination.

But in the dense and complex world of the jungle,

hunting is a never-ending game of hide and seek.

Here, it pays to sit still

and blend in.

Because you just never know who's watching.

The Parson's chameleon is an expert in the "see-and-not-be-seen" game.

It lets its eyes do all the work.

While the rest of its body moves in slow motion

so as not to scare possible targets.

The problem is that it can only see prey if it moves.

So, is this a stick insect...

Or a stick?

Aha.

Time to unleash its secret weapon.

A tongue longer than its body.

The Parson's close cousin, the Nasutum chameleon,

has the same weapon, but in miniature.

As small as a matchstick, he needs to get much closer to its prey.

But even with eyes as big as its stomach,

this isn't the meal deal he was hoping for.

In the jungle,

it's hard finding the right-sized prey, when you're a tiny predator.

Promising opportunities can quickly tum to disappointment.

Spotting any kind of prey in this dense green world is hard.

If you do find something, you want to make sure it doesn't escape.

The praying mantis has arms that can strike

ten times faster than a blink of the eye.

And it's the only insect known to see in 3D.

Perfect for judging strike distances.

But, like the chameleon,

her problem is seeing prey when it freezes.

She needs some movement to be sure it's food.

just the tiniest sign of life.

Yep, that's done it.

A lightning strike has given her the edge over her insect prey,

but it doesn't pay to be complacent.

In the jungle arms race,

only too often there's someone else with a more powerful weapon.

And there's one predator that has

perhaps the most ingenious answer of all to the jungle's challenge.

It lives along rivers, in the rainforests of Madagascar.

The insects it hunts fly down the same jungle corridors.

But there's a problem.

It's a web-building spider.

So how does it get over the river to hunt?

It's called Darwin's bark spider,

and the female has a remarkable strategy.

Like a real-life Spider-Woman,

she sprays strands of silk in one long, continuous flow.

The threads fan out like a sail

and drift on air currents blowing across the water.

Every few seconds

she crimps the strands together to stop them spreading too widely.

The breeze will do the rest,

blowing the threads into a single line, and a 25-metre bridge.

Now, she must reinforce her bridge because her web will hang from it.

But there's something bouncing the line at the other end.

Another Darwin's spider is trying to take advantage of her hard work.

She must deal with the intruder head-on.

The cut line is an inconvenience, but no more than that.

With hooks on the tips of each leg, she gathers in the thread.

It won't go to waste as she'll eat it later.

When it's all reeled in, she sprays again.

Out streams another 25-metre bridging line.

How a spider, no bigger than a thumbnail,

can produce so much silk so quickly has baffled scientists.

And it's no ordinary silk.

It's the toughest natural fibre on the planet.

Tougher than steel.

And it needs to be tough to span the wide river.

With the bridge taut and the ground anchor in place,

it's time to construct her trap.

These spiders can build the world's largest orb webs up to two metres wide.

A few hours from the first spray of bridging line,

the job is done.

Now her strategy is simple,

sit and wait.

And there's one final bout of silk production,

shrink-wrapping her food for later.

Not all rivers provide their predators with a steady supply of prey.

On the Grumeti River, in Tanzania,

lives the planet's most patient predator.