- Lions coming into the kill, yeah, Baz?
- Yeah.
- The cheetahs have finally made a successful kill.
But there’s an uninvited dinner guest.
She’s not sure.
Right now, they’re just trying to eat
as fast as they can.
Here she comes.
[♪ theme music playing]
The Serengeti, ground zero for one of nature’s biggest events.
There are just wildebeest everywhere;
they just go onto the horizon in every direction.
This is my first time in Tanzania during
the Great Migration.
This has got to be one of the natural world's
most epic spectacles.
Triggered by the rainy season,
over two million animals are on the move.
Followed by thousands of hungry predators.
I’m here to film the fastest of them all.
Now is the best time of year to film Cheetah.
They're gonna be making the most of this endless supply of
food that is just walking right through their territory.
But this doesn’t mean their lives are easy.
Globally, the cheetah population has fallen by 90%
in the last century.
I want to understand why it’s so hard for the fastest
land animal on the planet to survive.
It’s estimated only 300 cheetah live here,
and I’ve got just four weeks to find them.
I’m gonna need some help.
Expert wildlife guide Baz Kessy drives our truck.
From this vehicle, I’ll use my drone and long lens camera.
In a second vehicle are Denis Mollel and Tom Walker.
They’re the world’s best team for filming high-speed hunts
using a gyro-stabilized camera.
This herd of zebra,
they're all standing very alert and all staring sort of
towards that direction.
So, we're kind of using all of their eyes to triangulate the
position of the thing that they're looking at.
Must be over there somewhere.
[Tom] Bertie, do you copy?
[Bertie] Yeah, go ahead.
- We’ve found a mom with two...
...very small cubs on this side.
- Okay, copy that.
Well, that is very, very exciting news.
Our other car has found a mother cheetah with two very,
very small cubs.
Which is not something that you see often,
so we're gonna go check them out.
95% of cheetah cubs don’t survive to adulthood.
Their biggest threat is being killed by lions and hyenas.
Okay, I’ve got it, yeah, here’s good.
So, cheetah moms keep them hidden.
Oh, my word.
The cubs are tiny.
They’re just these little balls of fluff at the feet of mom.
I can just see the tops of them bouncing every now
and again above the height of the grass.
They are so small.
You can see their coat pattern is completely
different to moms’.
They’ve got really dark sides,
and then a grey, silvery, top.
The theory is that that coloration makes them look like
a Honey Badger.
A ferocious little animal that have big, sharp teeth,
sharp claws, and a really nasty attitude.
The thinking is if the cubs look like honey badgers,
maybe big predators’ll leave them alone.
But they’re teeny tiny, they can’t be more than a month old.
Which means that mom’s got a tough task looking after
them and feeding them,
‘cause if she wants to go and hunt,
she has to leave them by themselves.
I think she’s spotted some prey on the horizon.
Oh, there’s the gazelle, yeah.
Gazelles have a top speed of 50 miles per hour.
Cheetahs can sprint close to 70,
but they can only sustain it for a short distance.
Every time the gazelle turns, she freezes.
[Denis Mollel] This cheetah knows what she’s doing.
- She’s just trying to close that gap before she sprints.
It’s a stalking master class.
She needs to get within 30 yards undetected
to have any chance.
[♪ suspenseful music playing]
She’s gonna explode any second.
[drone propellers whirring]
[♪ suspenseful music playing]
She's faster than the drone, look at her go.
She got it, she got it!
[Baz] Okay.
[Bertie] It’s almost as big as her.
She was so patient in that stalk,
she was just closing the gap, closing the gap, and I thought,
she's gotta go, she's gotta go.
But she knows she has to get really, really close because,
although she's the world's fastest land animal,
these gazelles are still very quick.
She got within the critical distance and then stamped
on the accelerator,
and I cannot believe how fast these cheetahs are.
Today she’ll be able to make milk for her cubs.
But not all hunts are successful,
and every time she leaves them, she takes a risk.
No wonder only 5% of young cheetahs make it to adulthood.
The challenges cheetahs face in this vast landscape
don’t stop there.
To understand more,
we need to catch up to the migration.
But following in the footsteps of these cheetah
magnets has its downsides.
Oh, come on.
I suppose behind every great migration is an even
greater pile of wildebeest dung.
That is gonna stink.
After a few hours of searching,
there’s movement away from the herd.
Well, this is unreal,
we've got a group of three adult male cheetah all together.
It’s often said that lions are the only social large cat,
where adults form groups,
but that's not exactly true because male cheetahs
do form groups, and they're called coalitions.
Once fully grown, males leave their mothers;
they typically remain with their brothers,
forming a coalition.
Ha-ha, they’re trying to jump on top of each other.
Together, they can defend their territory from rival males,
and hunting as a team,
they should be able to take down bigger prey.
- Think we saw these three last year.
We followed them around a lot,
but they weren’t very good at hunting;
but they were quite young, so.
- Hopefully, they’ve had some practice.
Male cheetahs tend to have shorter lives than females.
Fights with lions and other males can be deadly.
And even their prey can be dangerous.
Tom, just as a heads up,
there’s a herd of zebra ahead of them.
Going to see that.
Three male cheetahs make a formidable group of predators,
but zebra are no easy target.
One kick could be lethal.
There’s definitely some Zebra stallions in there.
Gotta pick their target wisely.
[♪ suspenseful music playing]
Okay, they're going.
[Bertie] Here they go, here they go.
As the herd scatters,
the coalition look for a vulnerable target.
Youngsters should be an easier option.
Foal’s Mom’s blocking!
- Got it? - Don’t know.
- Well, be careful of the zebra’s kick, cheetah.
Get that to the face, and that’s lights out.
Oh, and the rest of the herd slotting in.
And the cheetah have given up.
That’s game over.
That was unreal; they all just slotted in right behind
the mom and foal.
[Baz] Yeah.
Yeah, they can use their kicks to keep the cheetah away.
- You know, this just goes to show, you know,
hunting for cheetahs is not easy,
even if you’re three big males.
You know the prey is very, very challenging,
and today the might of the zebra,
their herd defense, their kicks,
they were enough to keep the cheetah from
getting one of their babies.
An injury to one of the coalition would put all of
them in jeopardy.
Some risks just aren’t worth taking.
Life is full of tough decisions for these cats.
[thunder]
The migration might be the best time of year to film cheetahs,
but it comes with its challenges.
So, with the rains on the way,
we need to be able to film in rain or shine.
With a normal camera, if it starts raining,
you’re in big trouble, you get drops on the lens,
and you can’t film, but on Tom's camera,
he’s got a very special bit of equipment
that solves that problem.
It's called a rain spinner.
Gonna show you how it works.
So, Tom, if you can turn it on.
Okay, you ready, Tom?
Here we go.
Oh, it’s completely clear.
Ho, ho, it works so well.
Right.
My solution is a lot less high-tech.
I mean, drones, famously, aren’t very good in the rain.
They tend to fall out the sky because the electronics melt.
So, what I’ve basically spent the last couple of hours doing
is filling up all the little vents and holes with silicon,
in the hope that that makes it waterproof.
Only, I'm not gonna be chucking any water on this
‘cause I'm not sure if it's gonna work,
but fingers crossed.
The next morning,
we track down the migration along their
900-mile round trip.
And we find some new faces.
Oh wow, it looks like a mother with two big cubs.
This is very exciting because cubs of this age are
great fun to follow.
They’re really bouncy, really playful,
and most interesting to me is that this is the age they
really start to learn to hunt from mom.
They’re still slightly smaller than mom and growing out the
last traces of their silvery neck fluff.
Ha, ha, ha, morning play time.
The cubs are in full stalk mode.
Oh, they’re chasing the cattle egrets.
This playing might look like fun,
and I’m sure it is a lot of fun,
but it is all training for their high-speed chases.
In just a few months, the cubs will be expected
to make kills on their own.
[cheetah call]
Hear that?
That's mom calling the cubs.
Playtime is over.
Mom’s going to show them how it's done.
Adult zebra and wildebeest are too big for this young
family to hunt.
But there are also lots of gazelle fawns.
Small and slow, they make ideal prey for beginners.
The cubs should watch and learn how their mom selects a target.
But this cub didn’t get the memo.
Is that the cubs chasing the zebra, Baz?
[Baz] Yeah, that’s the cub.
- Oh, the cub’s chasing the zebra.
Ha, ha, chaos.
Wildebeest and Zebra flying everywhere.
The cub is regretting its decision.
Oh, the Zebra’s chasing the cub now.
Tables have turned.
Run, run, run.
Oh-ho, Zebra right behind him.
Oh, that is so good.
Maybe not the lesson mom intended,
but a lesson, nonetheless.
All that action has attracted the attention of another
species on the Serengeti.
- Seems like we've got a lot of cars on the way, Baz.
- Yeah.
- I love seeing people spend their money and their time
getting close to nature, but this,
when there's so many vehicles surrounding the
cheetah mother and cubs, can't be a good thing.
- Yeah, it’s hard for the cheetah itself because she
cannot see the prey.
[Bertie] Why do you think these cars drive so close
to the animals and so many of them at once?
- Well, I think it’s a lack of education for the
drivers or knowledge,
the park roads need to be 25 meters away from the animals,
but the tourists,
they want to do the selfie or they want to do
picture they want to do but they are using their phone.
So, it encouraged people to drive very close.
- You know, I do feel, in a way,
guilty watching this because I feel like in our shows,
we give people maybe an unrealistic expectation of
what they're gonna see and,
and how close they're going to get because we're using
incredible technology that means we will get the viewer in
a place that they could never be with, with,
with their eyes in real life.
And I understand for these,
these guides they're under so much pressure to
deliver in a short space of time,
find the animal, get close to the animal.
Tourism is a crucial source of funding
for many protected areas.
But key to watching wildlife responsibly is to put the needs
of the animals first.
- When I have my own clients or maybe I take someone on,
on safari, and I explain myself why we are not gonna go very
close to the animal,
they real understand it very easy.
[Bertie] Cubs should eat every day,
but tonight they’ll go hungry.
It’s time for the cheetahs to bed down and hide,
as lions and hyenas come out to hunt.
In the morning, we find the same mom and cubs.
Baz, is that her there?
- Yeah.
[Tom] She’s stalking, obviously it’s dark,
but yeah, she’s stalking.
[Bertie] The pressure to feed the family is pushing
her to take risks.
Well, mom and the two cubs are on the move.
They’re on the move first thing.
It’s still pretty dark,
which means there’s gonna be a lot of other bigger predators
active right now.
So, she must be hungry.
Okay, mom’s spotted something.
[♪ suspenseful music playing]
Yeah. She’s got it.
- Yeah. She’s got it. - She’s got it.
What’s really interesting is that she gave the cubs no
opportunity to practice hunting with this gazelle.
She’s killed it straight away.
‘Cause she just needs to stop this thing making any noise.
There's gonna be a lot of big predators, a lot of hyenas,
lot of lions still active, still moving around.
She's dragging the kill,
and it looks like into longer grass,
and that’ll be to make it harder to spot.
And the cubs look ravenous.
And on cue, I can hear lions.
[distant roar]
[Bertie imitates sound]
Over there somewhere.
The cubs are feeding,
but mom is constantly head up, scanning.
- I can see hyena, straight ahead there.
- You can see hyenas? - Yeah.
- Hyenas incoming, yeah. - He’s coming this way.
- I wonder if she’s seen it.
[Bertie] Hyenas are known to scavenge other predators’ kills.
Oh, it’s a big hyena.
Mom has a big problem.
[Baz] Yeah.
[Bertie] Their thousand pound per square inch bite force
means they can crush bones.
- If hyena want to get it, he gonna get it.
[Bertie] This hyena’s close.
What are you gonna do, mom?
Are you gonna fight or are you gonna run away?
Mom and the cubs all looking.
Mom’s up, mom’s up.
She’s going towards the hyena.
Go on, mom.
[♪ suspenseful music playing]
- Yeaaah!
Nice job, mom.
Yeah, these cheetahs are built for speed, not fighting,
so all she can do is kind of push and bluff the hyena away,
‘cause if they were to get into an actual scrap,
the hyena is much bigger, it’s much more powerful.
The strategy is to just to keep this hyena away,
so that the cubs can feed on the kill.
[distant hyena calls]
You can hear lots of hyenas out this way.
All cackling, all laughing
Mom’s actually very lucky;
the other hyenas they sound like they’re on a
kill of their own.
Lions that way as well.
Well, I don’t quite believe this,
Mom has successfully defended her kill from this hyena,
and she might have gotten lucky that more hyenas
didn’t come in,
but she showed some pretty amazing aggression,
to say, "Get away from my kill."
Mom was able to provide today, but soon the cubs will have to
learn to hunt for themselves.
As the day heats up, we find the male coalition,
scouting for prey.
They’ll jump from one lookout to the next until they
find a target.
Compared to the cheetah mothers,
they take a fearless approach.
But it's not without risk.
[Tom] There’s a lion under the tree,
they may bump into it.
- Copy that, thanks.
These boys look like they wanna climb this tree,
but what they don't know and we know,
is that there's a lion at the base of it.
They're about to get a big shock.
Lion’s up.
Woah.
Oh, big male.
1, 2, 3, 4 male lions.
Ho, ho, that was a bit of a shock for those cheetah,
but fortunately, the lions have not pursued.
Did you see them all just going woah!
- Yeah, I saw them spook.
- Yeah, they're like we are checking out, goodbye.
There are just 300 cheetahs here,
but over 3,000 lions.
In a fight with these bigger, stronger predators,
the cheetahs would have no chance.
The coalition’s search for food continues.
I really hope to see them succeed before our
time runs out.
Cheetahs’ lives are much harder than I thought,
even inside the protection of the Serengeti National Park.
The pressure to survive can drive cheetahs to roam
outside the protected area...
Cool spot.
...where they face other problems from human activity.
Thanks, Baz.
Hello, hello.
I meet up with Kelvin Munisi from the
Serengeti Cheetah Project.
- Oh yeah. - Always ready.
- Good morning. - Good to meet you, man.
I want to find out how his research helps
tackle these challenges.
It’s not long before we see some familiar faces.
Kelvin, this mother and cubs, this family,
is actually a family we've been following.
Do you, do you know her?
- Yes, we do know her, and she is called Adora.
- Adora? - Adora, yeah.
[Bertie] And do you know how many litters she's had
in her life?
[Kelvin] So, this is her second litter.
The first litter she had was in 2020,
and that didn’t go so well, ‘cause she lost all her cubs.
- Oh no.
- Yeah, yeah, it’s sad, and last year we actually
found her with five cubs.
- Five? - Yeah, yeah.
- So, she’s only got two now, so she,
she's lost three of her cubs this litter?
- Yes, she has lost three of her cubs.
- Oh, that's so sad.
I guess that's the reality of living in a landscape packed
full of predators that are bigger than you.
- Predators. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. She’s actually a good mom.
For a cheetah with five cubs to remain with two cubs uh,
it’s, it’s still a good mom in such a harsh environment.
[Bertie] Kelvin’s field work has two parts.
First, he maps where each cheetah is roaming,
and then, he needs to collect their DNA in the least
invasive way possible.
So, you spend a lot of time staring at cheetahs hoping that
they’re gonna do a number two?
- Yeah, yeah.
[laughs]
Yes. Yes.
- Kelvin she's, she’s squatting down there.
- Oh yeah, yes.
- Is she gonna go to the bathroom?
She’s pooping, she’s pooping.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant.
- Kelvin, usually when I’m working with scientists filming
their amazing work, I offer to help and get involved,
but I think on this occasion I’m good, it’s all you.
- You should leave it to the professional poo collectors.
- Yeah.
[laughs]
I think he's got it.
Yeah, he's got it.
I've never been so excited about locating a
wild animal's poo.
All in the name of science.
It may not be glamorous, but Kelvin’s work is critical
in monitoring cheetah territories.
[Kelvin] We are going to extract DNA,
so that we can establish how diversified is the gene pool.
This can tell us how connected the cheetah population are
from Serengeti population,
all the way to the Masai Mara population,
and also other protected areas within the
Eastern Africa landscape.
[Bertie] Mixing these groups is vital,
but it’s becoming more difficult for cheetahs to move
as humans build farms and towns in their path.
- The solution is reducing human activities on
the wildlife corridors so that we can
increase connectivity between these small populations
that we do have.
[Bertie] Kelvin hopes this information can be used to
manage land in a way that supports cheetahs.
Connecting territories and giving them the space
they need to survive.
The next morning,
we find the male coalition again.
They’re with a herd of wildebeest,
and it looks like this could be the chance to hunt
they’ve been waiting for, but they’re not the only ones.
There are the boys. There’s the wildebeest.
There’s a bunch of lions over there.
This could be chaos.
Yeah, Tom, we’ve got the boys,
they’re about 300 meters from a herd of wildebeest,
with lions nearby as well.
So, we've got this big herd of wildebeest,
and the boys are on this side of the herd.
What they don't know is that there's a pride of lions
on the other side that we passed coming here.
So, if they choose to run into that wildebeest herd,
I think they might get a really nasty surprise.
Stay down, boys, stay down.
You do not want to pick a fight with a bunch of lions.
Do you think they’ve seen them?
- No. - They’re very close
- All the wildebeest are running.
Whoa. Big boys.
Look at the size of that dude on the right.
Oh, my word, he is beautiful.
Look at his mane blowing in the wind.
Well, the cheetah boys got very lucky there.
That pride of lions has not spotted them,
and they’re heading off that way.
But they’ve lost their element of surprise;
the wildebeest herd are really spooked
‘cause of the lions.
We’ve yet to see the coalition have a successful hunt.
They can’t wait any longer.
Looking for a target.
Okay, they’ve spotted a calf.
They’re moving through the herd,
kind of looking around with their heads up.
They aren’t going fast.
They’re looking for a target,
but it’s just too dense with all the herd running together.
It's a very dangerous thing to run into.
Picking the right target at the right time is a matter
of life and death.
They’ve spotted a big wildebeest.
It's a yearling.
Ah, it's gone back into the herd,
great herd defense.
Okay, they’ve switched targets.
They’ve found another one.
- You still have it? - Yeah.
- He’s coming in front.
Still got it?
- I think he’s got it.
Well, that wildebeest put up a very good fight.
Finally, they can enjoy a well-earned meal,
but a successful hunt doesn’t always lead to a full belly.
Lions coming into the kill, yeah, Baz?
[Baz] Yeah.
[Bertie] There’s three of them and one of her.
She's not sure.
Surely, they’re not gonna fight her for it.
- If those guys they realize it’s not safe,
they will walk away.
[Bertie] So right now they’re just trying to eat as
fast as they can.
[♪ suspenseful music playing]
She takes the kill.
And that is why it is very hard to be a cheetah round here.
[Baz] Uh huh.
[Bertie] You do all that work and then a lion
steals your food.
And now these boys are gonna have to hunt all over again.
Back to square one.
The competition from bigger predators is
relentless for cheetahs.
But giving up isn’t an option.
[Tom] Bertie, do you copy?
- Yeah, go ahead.
[Tom] Clearly rain’s coming,
so we’re gonna put the rain spinner on.
- Okay, copy that.
I’ll switch to the wet drone as well.
[thunder and rainfall]
Despite the rain,
the coalition stick with the herd.
Good luck out there, little drone.
So, it’s started pouring with rain,
and the cheetahs are still hunting, so the show must go on.
They’re just marching straight into the rain.
And the drone is still flying.
The storm completely changes the dynamic between
predator and prey.
The wildebeest stand with their backs to the rain;
they aren’t looking out for the cheetahs,
and they can’t hear them either.
Okay, they’re coming up to the wildebeest.
It is pouring with rain.
Come on, drone. Hang on.
[Bertie] With the threat of lions gone too,
the odds have tipped in the coalition’s favor.
[Tom] Okay, check one, two, three.
[Bertie] Okay, front cheetah has a target.
Okay, increasing speed here, we go.
Cor, they are flying.
Wildebeest is turning around to fight.
Careful with the horns.
Back up’s arriving.
All three boys on the wildebeest.
Hang in there, drone.
They’ve brought it down.
Oh, my word!
It spun around and was trying to fight the
one off and if it,
if that male cheetah had been by itself,
I don't think it would have got it.
And all in pouring rain.
That was crazy.
The drone’s still flying,
I’m gonna bring it home before it falls out the sky.
[Baz] You should.
- It survived. Well done, wet drone.
It’s the first time a cheetah hunt has been filmed
in the rain like this.
I didn’t know if this drone could survive, but it has,
and we managed to capture some pretty
extraordinary behavior with it.
Cheetah hunting as a team, in torrential rain.
Even under the cover of the rainstorm,
taking down a wildebeest is incredibly dangerous
for these cheetahs.
I’m relieved to finally see them get a meal,
and to know they can have a few days' rest before they
have to do it all over again.
Capturing this iconic face-off between cheetahs and wildebeest
is something I’ll never forget.
As my time here comes to an end,
there’s someone I want to check in on.
We’ve got mom,
but the big question is, where are the cubs?
Come on, little cubs, please be still alive.
The cubs are here. The cubs are here.
Well, that is a very, very big relief.
The cubs have made it,
and they look very happy and healthy.
They actually look like they’ve turned into
absolute little terrors.
They’ve got so much energy now, charging around,
jumping on mom.
And they’ve grown up so much since we saw them,
you know, they’re starting to lose their
dark black sides.
I can see their little adult spots are coming through.
You know cub survival rate in cheetahs is really
not very good.
95% don’t make it to adulthood.
But these two little ones,
they’ve made it through one of the most dangerous
periods of their lives,
and they’ve got an amazing mom looking after them.
So, I’m pretty hopeful they’re gonna make it.
[♪ inspirational music playing]
I've always thought of Cheetah as being
this super-fast, untouchable, top predator.
It turns out I’ve had it all wrong.
And the threat of lions and hyenas is just relentless here.
Human activity is adding to their struggles.
While it's very easy to be impressed by the male coalition,
it's the females that I'm most in awe of.
You know, the fact that they can raise any cubs in this
landscape is a testament to the incredible
mothers we’ve followed.
I’ll never forget watching these cheetahs grow up,
learning from mom, gaining their survival skills,
so that with a little bit of luck,
they can take on whatever the Serengeti has
in store for them.