MICHELLE [off-screen]: There's a country on planet earth that's about
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the same size as the United States,
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but it has around four times as many people.
Still, its wild lands are so vast with creatures seen
nowhere else, incredible animals that survive in
some of the most extreme landscapes,
like the highest and largest mountain region in the world.
With so much ice it's known as the Third Pole.
This country is famous for grass that grows as big as trees.
And for an animal that will eat that giant grass
all day long.
These are The Hidden Kingdoms of China.
This is the fastest growing plant in the world.
Bamboo.
It can grow around a meter a day.
And some of it as tall and as thick as a tree.
China is the kingdom of Bamboo.
Ruled by a queen,
the giant panda.
This country is her native home.
She's China's national animal
and she happens to eat a lot of bamboo.
The giant panda has the tools for it.
With five claws on each paw and a padded wrist bone
that works like a thumb.
She can grip it almost like a monkey.
Big and powerful jaw muscles help her grind up the tough
stems and give her that recognizable round face.
A few million years ago,
the pandas' ancestors preferred to eat more meat.
These days they're mostly vegetarian.
Bamboo is low in nutrients, so the average bear needs to eat
a lot of it and for a long time,
around 12 hours every day.
Perhaps that's the reason for this panda mother's
big, round belly.
Or maybe it's because she just gave birth
to her very tiny panda prince.
At only two weeks old, he weighs half a kilogram.
A newborn panda is one of the smallest mammals born compared
to the size of the parent.
They're also born blind so this little one needs
his mom for everything.
For the next two years, she'll stick by his side and teach
him all that she knows until the day he's big enough to
strike out on his own.
Thousands of meters higher up, in an all-together different
type of forest there lives another very special creature.
That is also unique to China.
The golden snub-nosed monkey only lives here in the
high mountain forests of central China.
Up to 4,000 meters above sea level.
This is the world's largest high-altitude forest,
where there are more tree species than in any other
deciduous forest on earth.
It's spring!
And these monkeys are making the most of it.
This troop has five families.
Each family has one male and several females with their young.
Males that don't belong to these families hang out
together in a monkey bachelor gang.
They're an unruly bunch, but for now,
the focus is not on them.
It's on the latest addition to the family,
a brand new, baby girl.
She happens to be the first born this spring
so all the females in the family want a cuddle.
This aunty is first.
[squeaking].
Then aunty number two wants a hold.
[squeaking].
And aunty number three.
[squeaking].
Enough! It's mom time.
Meaning lunchtime.
In fact, all the monkeys want lunch.
At this time of year, they spend a quarter of
daylight hours eating the fresh, new leaves.
A good source of protein and their favorite food.
As temperatures rise, the monkeys follow the leaves
as they spring to life,
further and further up the mountain.
But eventually the trees stop growing.
And at around 5,000 meters above sea level we hit.
The great plains of China.
Part of the biggest grassland on earth,
it covers a third of the country.
For nine months of the year, it's packed with snow and ice.
But there are a couple of months when it transforms
into a hidden kingdom of plenty.
Precious time to raise a family.
And up here there's a family guy who takes the prize
for dad of the year.
The Tibetan fox is no lazy dog.
But he has no idea what lies ahead in
this fast-changing wilderness.
After a very long winter, the residents of China's
great plains are waking up.
The father fox has a family of five.
Four cubs and mother fox too.
After a month underground, they are just emerging from
their den with energy to burn.
Tibetan foxes normally only give birth to two or three cubs,
so four is a handful.
And like most baby foxes,
they're completely dependent on both parents for survival.
[yipping].
They need constant feeding.
Dad and mom take turns.
Today, father fox stays home to babysit.
And mother heads out for the hunt.
To be safe, the cubs stay close to the den.
While the other grassland creatures go about their business.
Some more edible than others.
[howling].
[yipping].
With this many cubs, someone is bound to get left out.
As the three brothers grow stronger,
their smaller sister will need some extra attention.
Beyond the grasslands, lies the wildest,
highest and largest mountain region on Earth.
This is China's mountain kingdom,
home to some of the world's most elusive animals.
Including these goofy looking creatures.
The Himalayan marmot,
sometimes known as the Tibetan snow pig.
They're in the squirrel family
but are more the size of a groundhog.
Marmots are also one of the highest living mammals in the world.
They survive the coldest eight months of the year
by sleeping in their burrows
and dropping their heart beats to just a few per minute.
But right now, they're feasting to rebuild their fat reserves.
This mountain habitat sits within an area nearly
14 times the size of Yellowstone.
A place where four seasons can pass in one day.
And after the North and South Pole,
it ranks third for ice.
Ice that eventually feeds Asia's three mightiest rivers,
the Yellow, Mekong and Yangtze.
Water for most of the billion people that live below.
Nestled in the western province of Qinghai,
this remote and extreme world is home to a sacred and
most elusive predator.
Only when she moves can we see her.
It's the ghost of the mountain kingdom.
Something rarely caught on camera.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: China is home to more snow leopards than
anywhere else on the planet.
At around 16,000 feet above sea level,
they're perfectly adapted to a world that is inaccessible to most.
Their individual territories with steep sided mountains and
exposed valleys are huge,
but this female still marks hers.
She's the apex predator all the way up here.
And when there are at best,
7,000 snow leopards left on planet earth,
it's a privileged position to be in.
This snow leopard is also a mother of this yearling cub.
She takes the time to play with him,
a mountain version of hide and seek.
Vital lessons disguised as a game.
We are lucky to witness a snow leopard family in the wild.
Many skills are needed to survive up here.
So how does a cub learn those?
Be a copycat of course.
What mom does, son does.
They're inseparable.
But there's a serious side to mountain life.
And a constant pressure to find food.
Even at the top of the food chain,
survival up here is tough.
Mother's milk is no longer enough.
She needs to hunt every ten days or so
just to keep them both alive.
But where is the prey?
Finding it is the first job, up here in the mountains.
Especially challenging as a solitary hunter.
Where one leopard's territory might be
as much as 1,000 square kilometers.
About the size of Rome.
And if she does find food, it's difficult to sneak up on
it because there just aren't enough places to hide.
These mountains help protect an opposite universe from
the cold air of the north.
Further south, there's a subtropical paradise where
animals have more than enough places to hide.
So much so, they need to up their game
to even get noticed at all.
The jungle of Yunnan.
Covering an area larger than California,
it's home to over half of the entire country's plant species.
It's a hidden kingdom that shouldn't really be there.
Deep narrow valleys funnel in warm, wet air,
making it one of the most northern jungles in the world.
A place where leaves and branches host some outlandish life forms.
With names that sound like characters plucked out of a comic book.
These little caterpillars are simply marvels of nature.
This is Chequers,
named after the geometric pattern down its back.
Shaped like a shield, this one's called,
funnily enough, the Shield.
With a prominent, nut-like lump in his middle,
this is Almond-back.
And dressed to impress, the Jester.
They may look cute but chemical weapons,
camouflage and deadly spines are all tools in the arsenal
of survival for these jungle caterpillars.
Thousands of tiny spines cover this species called
The Pin Cushion.
The pink bumps on its rear inflate and
contain even tinier pins to deter
any predator that crosses its path.
Dragonhead emerges from the egg, complete with horns,
ready to defend itself.
Reminiscent of a Chinese dragon.
The Snake Head wears a mask to hide its head.
While an airborne predator might think it's a snake,
this sneaky larva continues to feed uninterrupted.
But there's one costumed caterpillar that predators truly fear, Medusa.
Locked and loaded with a halo of stinging spines,
it's all about defense.
Each razor-sharp spike is a hollow needle connected to
a poison gland that's ready to inject a toxin
into anything unlucky enough to come too close.
Some caterpillars don't need weapons to survive.
They just sit very, very, still.
Like the Twig Caterpillar.
With legs set far apart,
it makes a characteristic hump as it walks.
Capable of remaining motionless and undetected
for days just like a twig.
Or perhaps a home-built fortress may suffice.
Inside these leaves, stuck together by her own silk,
is a female caterpillar known as the Witches Hat.
To accommodate a growing body,
this literal home maker adds to her hat, leaf by tiny leaf.
And she keeps a clean house.
After gently balancing her droppings on tiny silk threads,
she jettisons them as far as she can.
Eventually she'll turn into a wingless moth full of eggs.
But for now she'll stay in her cozy home,
until a male moth comes along to fertilize them.
All these caterpillars have the same simple goals,
to eat and not be eaten.
Stunning looks and impressive adaptations go
a long way in the jungle of Yunnan.
This rather handsome devil is the Great Hornbill.
Roughly the size of a bald eagle, he's a big bird.
He's also a loyal mate.
Although what the female hornbill does may seem to
us very strange indeed.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: This father hornbill will be the sole provider
for his family for the next four months.
But the mother hornbill is holed up
in this old tree with her chicks.
Trapped. 30 meters up.
Completely relying on him to feed her.
She had to enter the nest before laying her eggs,
and shed her flight feathers to make space for a growing brood.
Welcome to motherhood hornbill style.
It may seem extreme to us but this is the jungle and
you do what it takes to protect your babies.
Hornbills bond for life and this pair is nesting in
the same tree for the tenth year straight.
The mother's only outlet to the world is a narrow gap
within the tree hollow.
Wide enough for the male hornbill to supply food and
narrow enough to keep nest raiders out.
Like a kind of flying, candy machine,
dad returns to the nest many times a day with
a beak full of treats.
He stores the fruit in a special pouch at the base of
his neck and to pass it onto the female,
he rolls each one out to the tip of his massive beak.
It's a highly skilled and precision operation...
most of the time.
The male hornbill is under intense pressure to feed hungry mouths.
Sugary fruit alone won't be enough to sustain his young.
This father has to do some real hunting.
A tiny owl chick will make a good protein hit.
But then.
It's gone.
The meal falls all the way to the jungle floor.
He has no choice but to go out and hunt again.
While the female waits patiently with their brood.
He snatches an even bigger chick.
A prize he can't afford to lose.
It's too big for the entrance.
He crushes the bones and he tries again.
Still too big.
But he's not giving up.
That beak is not just for show.
Finally. Success.
It'll be a while before the hornbill chicks can leave
their sanctuary high up in the jungle tree.
Trees provide more than just shelter.
Clean air, food.
They are magnificent silent heroes.
And some of them are massive.
This is a Banyan tree,
300 years old and said to be the largest in all of China.
Out of its branches thousands of aerial roots
spread in all directions.
From these, others sprout and reach for the ground.
Then they thicken and form new trunks.
The crown covers an astonishing 8,000 square meters
around the size of a football field.
This Banyan tree is so big it makes its own forest.
It's also sacred.
Visitors leave red colored offerings for happiness and good luck.
Meanwhile, back in the bamboo forests of the east.
The mother panda is getting ready to introduce her baby
to the big wide world.
At just a few months old, the baby panda still drinks
his mom's milk several times a day.
But the older he gets,
the more he can explore on his own and learn about the forest.
As long as his mother is not too far away.
Turns out, there's plenty to discover in all the
different parts of the bamboo kingdom.
And so many new creatures to meet.
Like this six-legged alien predator.
At just under five centimeters long, she packs a mighty punch,
an inspiration for China's Kung Fu masters.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: This female, jeweled flower mantis is looking for flowers
because they attract her favorite prey,
flies.
Not here to chat, they're here to drink nectar.
But she's here to eat.
And she's being watched.
A smaller, male mantis creeps closer.
He's only after one thing.
And it's not the chewed-up fly.
Even though she's just eaten,
he should still tread carefully.
A big beetle joins the party.
Impressive.
But now, back to business.
He better be careful,
a female praying mantis will sometimes eat her man.
These are the baby panda's first steps to independence.
Pandas are mostly loners so these two years together
with mom are precious.
[squeaking].
He could be just one of a handful of cubs she raises
in her lifetime, so the next stage is one of the most
important for both of them.
It's a different story for the four fox cubs.
Their mother has been gone a long time and dad is left
with the job of watching them...
and feeding them.
These cubs are so dependent on their parents.
But the odds of survival are slim,
one out of five fox cubs won't make it.
[yipping].
If things get really tough, these four may form their
own hierarchy, which won't be good for the little sister.
Fall arrives in China's high mountain forests.
At similar latitudes to North America's deciduous forests,
these glorious colors look very familiar.
The new baby snub-nosed monkey is growing stronger every day.
She's six months old but still needs her mom.
Experimentation and discovery have begun for this little one.
Her first new tastes,
and her inaugural attempts at grooming.
But the best part, she's confidently mobile.
So now she spends a lot of her time playing.
It may be fun, but like for most of us mammals,
it's important too.
Playing keeps this little monkey fit and strong,
gives her good social skills and sharpens her brain too.
[squeaking].
As long as she gets the landing right.
In Chinese folklore, monkeys symbolize rebellion and mischief.
It's no wonder.
The troop's bachelor gang fits the part.
Families push out these young males before they turn three.
And boys will be boys.
They're preparing for the day when they'll fight to
win their own family.
One of the older males has already reached that point.
Aged seven, those warts on his lips show that
this bachelor is ready.
Apparently, the little lumps are attractive to females.
But he can only win the right to mate
if he can take over a family.
That means he must overthrow the father of the baby monkey.
MICHELLE: The alpha male and his family are under threat
in China's high mountain forests.
Other males may kill the babies,
if they succeed in taking over.
Simply so they can sire their own offspring.
[screaming].
The little monkey's father is an experienced fighter.
He's not as strong as he used to be,
but his harem of females has got his back.
â™ª
So, he still has the upper hand.
â™ª
The challenger is sent packing,
and father maintains his position as head of the family.
The females seem happy to keep him there.
He returns to the baby monkey's mother for comfort.
And because fall is the breeding season,
he's about to get some extra looks from the girls.
To win his affection they shower him with attention.
Female golden snub-nosed monkeys use grooming as currency,
hoping to exchange it for romance.
This one seems to be finding all the right spots.
â™ª
Until the kids get in the way.
They'll mate several times.
And fingers crossed, this female will give birth next spring.
As fall progresses in China's mountain forests,
trees continue to shed their leaves.
A strategy to save energy during the cold months ahead.
This means less food for the monkeys although they make
do with bamboo leaves and pine needles.
While all the other forest creatures get ready for winter.
Other animals take colder temperatures in stride.
They don't have a choice.
High up in the mountains
the snow leopard mother and her cub cross into
an area of steep cliffs and crumbling rocks.
Finding food here is a challenge.
But actually catching it?
That's on another level.
Literally.
Hunting in these mountains is a serious undertaking.
These blue sheep are the leopard's main target.
And just like her, they're able to disappear into the rocks.
The sheep are expert climbers on the steep cliffs,
a skill that helps them access one of their favorite foods,
the energy-rich lichen.
These high-altitude herbivores are built for the job.
Split hooves make rock-climbing easier as they
spread the animal's weight for better balance.
And rough pads under each toe give them a suction-like grip.
These sheep don't slip.
A tough target for the mother snow leopard,
but worth the trouble.
And if a sheep can climb these rocks,
then it shouldn't be any problem for a cat.
Still, practice makes perfect.
Patience too.
The blue sheep don't just eat lichen from the craggy cliffs.
They also need to graze the open slopes where they rely
on strength in numbers.
The terrain may be easier here but there are fewer places to hide.
Mom and her cub need a different hunting strategy
if they're to succeed.
The skill is in the ambush.
Playfulness morphs into hunting practice.
The cub tricks his mother but can he do it for real?
The time has come to put him to the test.
MICHELLE: A small group of blue sheep has moved away
from the main herd.
Ripe for the picking.
The mother snow leopard rolls in the dirt,
perhaps to add to her camo.
But her cub is in danger of giving her position away.
He's old enough now to know to keep down low and stay out of
the sheep's line of sight.
Mom moves in from behind with silence and stealth.
The cub holds his position.
They're in the perfect place to make a kill.
But the sheep are twitchy.
The game is up.
Bad luck this time but the cub adds to his ambush bag of
tricks for next time.
Overnight, another hunter takes down one of the sheep.
Remote cameras capture rare moments of predators and
scavengers dining on this precious meal.
A golden eagle shares the prize with a red fox.
A Tibetan fox grabs what he can.
And then, another snow leopard pair takes their share of the carcass.
50 million years ago, the grasslands that cover
China's Qinghai Tibet Plateau were an ancient sea.
But when the Himalayas were formed they were thrust up,
five kilometers high.
[thunder].
Today, melting glaciers from the surrounding mountains
create hundreds of lakes,
which nourish these great plains.
Like the mighty Donggei Cuona.
For most of the year it's covered in ice,
but during the summer it becomes a precious oasis.
Its waters help support a diversity of life.
These high grasslands echo to the courtship duet of very rare visitors.
[squawking].
Black-necked cranes.
Almost the entire world population of an estimated
11,000 nest along the shores of these great lakes during the summer.
[squawking].
It's a safe place to raise a family and there's plenty of food.
For centuries, Tibetans have revered these birds as symbols
of longevity and harmony between people and nature.
The Tibetan fox family live by the lakeshore too.
The four cubs are still waiting for their mom.
So dad has the full-time job of supplying them with snacks.
Thankfully the snacks live within easy range.
Pikas.
They're related to rabbits but are about the size of
a guinea pig and make up to 95% of the Tibetan fox diet.
They live in large, underground colonies with
hundreds of individuals.
And, like most of the vegetarians up here,
spend most of the summer grazing on the grass.
They can eat as much as half their body weight each day.
Pikas may live in underground burrows
but the foxes have got that covered.
[chirping].
[chirping, growling].
[growling].
Their extremely long canines help them hook the little
mammals from a tight spot.
Big and powerful jaw muscles make their heads
a little larger than usual.
The head also seems to hide the rest of their body when hunting in the open.
The fox makes use of the slightest contours of the land for the ambush.
This pika is grazing very close to its burrow,
too easy an escape.
So, dad needs to get within at least three meters to
have any chance of grabbing it.
[chattering].
He must catch around 20 pikas a day if he's to satisfy his large brood.
The cubs get what they need for now,
even little sis snags her share.
Dad's exhausted.
Mother fox has been gone for days.
Where could she be?
Little do they know,
tragedy has struck on China's grasslands.
The fox cubs' mom has fallen victim to Tibetan wolves.
Father fox is really on his own now.
The hidden kingdoms of China hold a whole other secret world.
At night.
No jungle ever really sleeps.
In the subtropical forests of Yunnan,
another male resident is on the prowl.
For food? Or for females?
Either way, he takes advantage of the dark to get what he wants.
This is a Slow Loris.
Also known in China as the Bee Monkey.
The world's only venomous primates have a bite that may
protect them against predators.
They also have special blood vessels in their wrists and
ankles that deliver oxygen to their muscles,
allowing them to hang onto branches for hours at a time.
The slow loris is a hunter of the night.
Forward facing eyes give him stereoscopic vision for
pinpoint depth perception.
And a reflective layer behind the retina lets him
see well in low light, essential for a nocturnal predator.
Since most insects are cold blooded,
they tend to slow down in the cool of the night.
So, they play right into the hands of the Bee Monkey.
He's more about stealth than speed.
Tonight though, he's distracted by her.
But she's not in heat right now and would rather stick
to gobbling up bugs herself.
Sorry darling not tonight.
In China's bamboo forests after dark there are other
male creatures having more luck with the girls.
But be careful what you wish for.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: Meet the Emei mustache toad.
16 sharp spines on his nose defend his breeding site,
[croaking].
a smooth flat rock.
This is where he wants multiple females to lay their eggs.
So far, he's been quite successful.
But he wants more.
And he's not the only male Emei toad playing this game.
There's a rival close by looking for his own love rock.
[croaking].
Perhaps using the rock as an amplifier,
he presses his back against it to advertise his nest with
a cacophony of croaks.
[croaking].
It's not enough though he needs more volume.
The other guy's rock looks and sounds better.
[croaking].
Time to take that rock all for himself.
It's a toad showdown.
[croaking].
But the first guy has the upper hand.
[croaking].
He pushes him out and keeps his rock.
And it doesn't go unnoticed by this gorgeous creature,
a passing female.
[croaking].
What happens next has never been filmed in the wild,
the Emei Mustache toad courtship dance.
It starts with a wave and a wink.
His goal is to have her lay her eggs next to those left by previous females.
But she takes some convincing.
A neck rub, maybe?
Back scratch?
Whatever he's doing, it works.
[croaking].
She's ready to release her eggs.
Then, she presses herself against the tiny eggs and
glues them to his carefully guarded rock.
But there's a twist.
Mother toad's job here is done.
She leaves Mr. Toad to look after their brood until they
hatch into tadpoles.
The bamboo forest at night hides many secret worlds under
the rocks and inside the bamboo.
This species is known as spiny bamboo.
It grows to twice the height of a telephone pole.
And its stems are hollow.
Some of them have tiny slits made by beetles,
born from eggs inside the bamboo that have since cut their way out.
One animal takes advantage of this real estate.
At just a couple of centimeters long,
it's one of the smallest mammals in the world.
The lesser bamboo bat.
One male shares a segment of the bamboo stem with up to 12 females and their babies.
The infants are still too young to fly,
so their parents leave them alone while they go out hunting for insects.
Specially flattened skulls help them squeeze their way
out of slits just a couple of centimeters wide.
Even though the bats hunt in short bursts,
every minute they're away leaves their babies vulnerable.
A Chinese beauty rat snake sniffs out a meal.
That tongue can sense live meat.
The snake knows the bamboo holds something good to eat.
Reptilian eyes lock in on the baby bats.
[squeaking].
But the bats know what they're doing.
The nest hole is too narrow for a snake.
Their babies are safe, for now.
At around a month old they'll leave the nest.
Let's hope the snake's still not waiting.
The queen of the bamboo forest invests a lot more time in her offspring.
At eight months old, he's still drinking her milk
but he has started to take an interest in other food.
And when we say other food, we really mean bamboo of course,
and more bamboo.
There's a lot for him to learn about bamboo.
What type and which part is best to eat.
The newer shoots are rich in nitrogen and phosphorous.
And the leaves provide calcium.
It's all good stuff.
But then, the mother panda does a fascinating thing
that may add to her cub's diet.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: Something rarely seen is underway in China's bamboo forest.
The mother panda encourages her cub to lick her lips,
which seems to make her salivate.
Then he drinks this saliva,
possibly giving his immune system a boost.
By doing this, mom gives her cub the best possible start in life
but he still has at least another year to go under her watchful eye.
With more confidence, he becomes more adventurous.
But he shouldn't stray too far.
Alone, baby pandas are vulnerable.
In some of China's forests,
there are predators like jackals and leopards.
The cub's been gone too long,
the mother panda needs to find him.
With poor eyesight,
pandas use their heightened sense of smell to locate each other.
There he is.
She's catches his scent and calls to him.
[panda bleating].
This 90-kilogram mom may look soft and cuddly,
but she's more than capable of fending off any
predator that threatens her cub.
â™ª
In the mountain kingdom, four seasons can pass in one day.
Snow even falls during summer,
and a few hours later,
temperatures can spike as much as 15 degrees.
The locals always seem to find ways to cope.
With her thick coat,
the snow leopard is certainly built for the job.
But she's not the only hardy feline that makes a living up here.
The Eurasian lynx.
About two-thirds the weight of her snow leopard cousin,
she's a well-designed mountain hunter.
The hair on the top of her ears look like antennae
but really aid in her hearing,
allowing her to tune in to the slightest movement.
Exceptional eyesight means she can spot something as small
as a mouse from 80 meters away.
But probably the hardiest creature up here is not a predator.
The yak.
Perfectly equipped for mountain life,
their lung capacity is about three times that
of regular cattle living at lower altitudes.
When the yak eat, the fermenting food generates heat.
And this, together with their thick fur, keeps them warm.
Most of the time.
They can still fall victim to the mountain's harsh conditions.
And a 350 kilogram carcass out here will not go unnoticed for long.
A Tibetan blue bear.
A cousin of the grizzly.
She catches a whiff of some yak carcasses.
But she's not the only one.
[howling].
A pack of wolves does too.
[howling].
This bear is a mother and with her cubs close by,
these Tibetan wolves are a serious threat.
She still manages to grab a piece of yak for them.
[moaning].
Thankfully, the wolves focus on the rotting meat not the baby bears.
This food will not only feed them,
but also any of their cubs that may be waiting back at the den.
More and more of the pack enter the fray.
By rubbing themselves on the carcass,
they can bring the scent of food back to the den so
the rest of the pack knows where to feed later.
[growling].
The wolves take all they need for now.
While the cleanup crew waits patiently for the scraps.
The Eurasian lynx also catches herself a meal.
A Tibetan gazelle.
But it's only half the job.
She now has to move the carcass somewhere safe.
â™ª
When the prey is nearly as large as the predator,
the challenge is on.
Dragging it up an almost vertical cliff has to be a Herculean task.
And there's always someone else, hovering.
Waiting for the opportunity of a free meal.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: From above, the ever-present,
airborne scavengers detect the lynx's kill.
Soaring on the updrafts created by steep cliffs, Lammergeyers.
With a wingspan of nearly three meters long and eyesight so strong,
they can see a dead body from seven kilometers away.
They can be on it in minutes.
And the lynx knows it.
She drags the carcass somewhere secure, she thinks.
But then?
Disaster.
The cat watches her hard-earned dinner tumble
30 meters down the steep mountain slope.
She has no other option, but to try again.
And as fast as possible before those dreaded scavengers take it.
She hauls the carcass back up for a second time.
It takes every last ounce of her energy.
But she does it.
And this time she feasts.
The mother snow leopard and her cub also score a meal.
This queen of the mountains has successfully kept her cub
alive in an extreme habitat.
In the next few months, he will be ready to go it
alone in this hidden mountain kingdom.
On China's high plains, things still look bleak for
our Tibetan fox family.
The younger sister is getting weaker and
may not survive to see winter.
The short window of summer on these grasslands gives life
but it also takes it.
Father fox is running on empty.
But something quite dramatic is about to happen
that may just change the fox family's fate.
[bleating].
Temporary visitors arrive on these high, rich pastures.
[bleating].
Tibetan herders bring their livestock here
to fatten up on the endless grass,
like their ancestors have done for thousands of years.
The grassland transforms and the fox cubs face a completely different world.
[bleating].
Their home is now swamped in sheep and yak.
[bleating].
And they're cramping dad's style.
They could make potential prey
but they're a little out of his league.
Now, every time he hunts, these strange,
woolly creatures blow his cover.
[bleating].
And the massive yak are just big bullies.
But this cunning fox has a plan.
MICHELLE [off-screen]: Father fox is patient.
He's figured out if he just waits,
the sheep will get used to him.
And then he can use them to his advantage.
Kind of like a mobile hunting blind.
The pikas grow complacent and are now missing the danger signs.
[bleating].
Tibetan foxes are intelligent and adaptable
and that makes them, hands down,
the most successful hunters on China's grasslands.
In fact, the father fox is becoming too successful.
So many pikas but only one mouth.
At last, there's more than enough food for all four cubs.
Even for the smallest of the litter.
Dad catches so many pikas, he and his cubs can bury the
leftovers in their underground pantries.
It keeps the meat cool and preserved,
a crucial supply of food as summer ends.
As the days close in and the temperature drops,
China's grasslands shut down.
Residents retreat to the shelter of their burrows.
Visitors move out to warmer climes.
The Tibetan foxes grow thick fur coats in preparation for winter.
Dad's dedication to his family means that miraculously
all of his cubs make it through.
Four more months and they will be on their own.
But for now, the grasslands vanish beneath the snow.
And as the winter temperatures in the high mountain forests
barely stay above freezing, the baby snub-nosed monkey
seeks comfort and warmth with her mother.
She's now nine months old.
These monkeys tolerate the coldest average temperatures
of any non-human primate on the planet.
And there's no escape from it.
Fortunately, their dense golden coats are designed for the cold.
It even thickens up for the winter months,
and covers their hands and feet.
And here's where those odd, snub noses come into play,
they're simply less exposed to frost bite.
These monkeys also have the most extraordinary adaptation for the winter.
Golden snub-nosed monkeys are the only monkeys in the world
known to walk upright on two legs in snow.
It keeps their hands off the cold ground.
And helps them travel faster,
reducing the time they spend in contact with the icy snow.
Our new baby reaches another milestone,
as she gets the hang of this new skill.
These monkeys could also be the source of an ancient Chinese legend.
These forests are said to be home to mysterious, wild men.
Ape-like figures with red hair,
who walk upright through the trees.
Sounds suspiciously like the golden snub-nosed monkey.
Or not.
After months pass and winter finally breaks
in the high mountain forests, the snow melts.
And these high life primates can start eating
their favorite food again.
They'll soon get back the body weight they lost.
The baby is now a year old,
but she still returns to her mother for milk and comfort.
She won't be fully weaned for another year,
when her mom gives birth again.
But they'll stay close in the family for years to come.
She also has a new little cousin.
No longer the baby, she now has someone she can teach and care for.
There's always time to monkey around in China's hidden forest kingdom.
As for the bamboo kingdom...
although not as nimble as a monkey,
the panda cub still needs to learn how to climb a tree.
Choosing the right one is half the battle.
One that will suit his size and weight.
He's going to have to learn the hard way.
[cracking, crashing].
First, he needs to find the right tree for him.
And then get a good grip.