Wild Discovery

For thousands of years, cheetahs have been admired for their sleek, streamlined physique and phenomenal speed. They are undoubtedly one of the world's most exciting big cats. Today, the cheetah is one of the most important attractions for visitors to the national parks of East Africa. With the enchanting Serengeti as a backdrop, we follow a female cheetah mother through the seasons to see how she struggles to protect and feed her cubs. This film will paint a stunning portrait of these vulnerable predators whose speed and grace is unmatched.

In a western corner of Tanzania's Serengeti, there is a paradise ruled by lions. It is called Moru and for Africa's king of cats this golden land is the ultimate inheritance. The pride is the core of lion society, consisting of female relatives and their cubs, guarded by one or more male lions. This program shows how the sisterhood copes with its neighbors, deals with male suitors, raises its cubs and tackles its prey.

This is the story of saltwater crocodiles in the Northern Territory of Australia. For more than 200 million years they have successfully hunted where land meets water. Estuarine crocodiles are the largest living reptiles - adult males are often 12-15 ft, but some grow up to 20 ft in length. The crushing power of its jaw is awesome. An adult can smash the skull of a fully grown wild boar just by flexing its jaw muscles and yet they are capable of acts of surprising delicacy. This programme will film crocodiles' courtship and nesting, learn their body language of love and aggression and follow them underwater.

Early explorers in central Africa brought back wild tales of gorillas as half-man, half-monster. We know better now. But the real lives of gorillas - and particularly lowland gorillas - remain elusive even today. To see how these tender giants really live, at peace among their families, we travel into the dark heart of the Congo Basin. It is the store of a remarkable man and his fight to protect on of the rarest animals on earth.

In the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra lives a creature local Dayak people call the "Orangutan" or "Old Man of the Forest". Orangutans are indeed one of our closest living relatives. We visit the exceptional Ganung Palung Reserve in Borneo, where we follow individual orangutans at key stages in their life to look at the trials they face and the kind of decisions they make in this taxing environment. The whole tapestry of orangutan life may be far richer than was previously thought. Like us, orangutans grow and reproduce slowly. We observe the infant and young orangutans and also observe their social structure and survival tactics.

The Kalahari Desert is home to a family of meerkats, one of the most social creatures in the animal kingdom. A type of mongoose, meerkats even share their burrows with ground squirrels. But life in the desert is extremely tough and this programme concentrates on one male meerkat. We follow him as he hunts for food, survives a drought and, after the death of his mother and sister, is even forced to find a new family of his own.

The Kamchatka Sanctuary in the Russian tundra, one of the world's best kept natural secrets, is home to the grizzly bears of the Kronotsky Reserve. This programme follows a mother and her three cubs in their yearly cycle. From their six months in hibernation under the snow, to the yearly salmon migration that draws countless bears to the river beds each spring, it is a story of survival as the young cubs learn the skills required to ultimately venture out on their own.

The annual Arctic migration of caribou is the largest of its kind in Western Alaska. The western Arctic herd has the greatest numbers of the 25 Alaskan herds, with just under 500,000 caribou. Their migration is so large that at times the whole landscape appears to be on the move. On their journey, they face hardships and dangers which will take their toll, but the majority will survive for nature dictates that the caribou will always return. This programme profiles this extraordinary migration while examining their habits and social behavior.