(wind whistling)
One and a half million years ago,
much of the Earth's land was covered by short grass steps.
It was the Pleistocene age.
(dramatic symphonic music)
Throughout this tumultuous time,
the Earth was being pummelled by repeated ice ages.
With each ice age, forests retreated, and grasslands spread.
Huge herds of prey were laid bare for a host of hunters.
The cat-like sabre-toothed Megantereon,
with its enormous fangs, lay in ambush.
Spotted hyenas and ice aged giant hyenas,
tested the herds for signs of weakness.
Top of the food chain was the dagger-toothed Homotherium,
pack-hunting killers that were rampant across the world,
from Africa to the Americas.
They were on the lookout for something big, really big.
Like a young steppe mammoth.
(dramatic drumming)
This was the age of the sabretooths.
These were the world's top land predators.
But things were changing.
New forces threatened the old order,
with skills the planet had never seen before.
(growling)
The big cats.
From this point in time, they rose to power,
ending millions of years of world domination,
by terrifying, now extinct, predators.
Every species of these sabretooths vanished,
while almost all the big cats survived.
Why them?
What's their story?
In this episode, we go back to when the big cats
were just beginning their ascent,
to discover how the cheetah became so fast,
why the elusive snow leopard takes such incredible risks,
and how the jaguar travelled to the ends of the Earth.
(dramatic drumming)
Big cats were on the rise.
Among the earliest to appear were cheetahs.
They lacked the enormous fangs of the sabretooths,
and didn't have the bone-crushing jaws of the hyenas.
But like most cats, had something the others didn't,
much more of a special kind of extra powerful muscle,
known as very fast-twitch muscle.
When this is combined with the cheetah's light-weight frame,
it can deliver record-breaking speed.
It could outrun all the other predators,
but more importantly, its prey.
As far as we can tell, cheetahs are the fastest land mammals
that have ever been.
But their gift came at a price.
They have no stamina.
Here, in Asia, during the Ice Age,
these grasslands stretched for thousands of miles
in every direction.
Prey animals roamed in their millions
over the steppes, following the best grazing.
This was the habitat the cheetah evolved to exploit.
Today, the cheetahs of Asia are practically extinct.
Luckily, in Africa, about 7,000 of these elegant wanderers
still survive.
By observing modern cheetahs, we can learn more
about how they found their place in the ancient world,
and why their existence is so fragile.
Cheetahs need open plains and, just as in the Ice Age,
here there are still elephants
that keep the plains free of trees,
removing saplings as they emerge from the grass.
The steps of the Serengeti are among the few places
left on Earth where there are wide open spaces
packed with potential prey.
And today, as in the past, there's no shortage of predators
that could easily overpower a cheetah.
And vultures still crowd the numerous kills
of the numerous predators.
Most of the grazers stay as far from cover
as they possibly can,
so they can see if trouble is coming their way.
Any sign of a lurking killer, the herds generally run,
or display their extreme fitness,
so the cheetah has a problem,
which it solves in a unique way.
Near the equator, the mid-day sun roasts the ground.
With no shade, it's 40 degrees.
Most hunters are much less active at this time of day.
The fragile cheetah uses this moment of quiet
to its advantage.
Its super-sharp daylight vision
enables it to see far off tiny details,
like a small group of gazelles grazing a kilometre away.
From this distance, the gazelle's stamina
could easily beat a cheetah.
So, this young male will need every ounce of patience
to get near enough for a strike.
He uses the heat haze as camouflage.
From the gazelle's low position,
only the upper part of the cheetah is visible.
It can often take an hour for a cheetah to get within range.
Ideally, less than 100 metres.
His super strength muscle kicks in.
In a few seconds, he accelerates
to almost 100 kilometres an hour.
The cat has covered 50 metres before the gazelle
hears its paws hitting the ground.
By the time the gazelle has reached its own full speed,
the gap is down to five metres.
In slow motion, it looks effortless,
but the cheetah is now using much of his strength
just to push through the air.
He pulls his legs tight below his body to reduce drag.
Now he is practically flying, getting lift from every bound.
But he needs to be careful,
there is a time limit on his run.
The gazelle's tiny hooves dig into the ground
to make extremely sharp turns.
The cheetah's extended claws grab hold of the earth,
to match the gazelle turn for turn.
He is burning energy at a prodigious rate,
and only has seconds left before his reserves are exhausted.
Very fast-twitch muscle delivers extra power
but only for a short time.
This is the kind of knife edge that drives evolution.
The gazelle has increased his chances
of passing on his genes,
while the cheetah will have to search for a meal
that is not quite so fast.
This mother and her almost full-grown cub
have found themselves in an area with no gazelles,
and the only prey on offer are wildebeest.
Compared to a gazelle,
wildebeest are quite slow and less agile.
This ought to be easy.
But she fails to trip her victim,
to use its own momentum to bring it down.
Luckily, her cub is here to help.
The sabretooths had weight and powerful forelimbs
to stop their prey.
The light-weight cheetah has neither.
They are working at the very limit of their abilities,
only acting together do they have any chance
of pulling the wildebeest to the ground.
While the cheetah's body weight is reduced for speed,
their typical cat-like short faces
give them a powerful bite,
strong enough to silence the victim
and to cut through skin quickly, which is just as well.
Vultures are already circling.
They can spot the tell-tale dust trail from 3,000 metres up.
The cheetahs will have to eat as fast as they can
because dropping vultures are a sign that hyenas use
to find free food,
as they were back in the Pleistocene.
As the first hyena arrives, the cheetahs move on,
having put away as much as they can.
Of all the cats, the cheetah is the only one
that is a true nomad.
As long as they stay on the move, they can survive
among much more powerful predators.
In the Pleistocene, these amazing cats could walk,
unhindered, across continents, and they did.
From the southern tip of Africa, to the Russian far-east.
But today, they have lost almost all of their range,
and in many areas, their continued existence is in doubt.
As cheetahs disappeared from Asia, their fate in Africa
is following the same trajectory.
Extensive steppe grasslands like the Serengeti
are becoming increasingly rare.
In the past, all over the world, the spread of grasslands
had favoured the running hunters, like Homotherium,
hyenas, and now, the cheetahs.
They were so successful, they evolved into two kinds,
the standard cheetah and the 90-kilo giant cheetah,
big enough to go after horses.
(neighing)
This was a dangerous place to be unless you were fully fit.
As a result, some of the prey animals moved off the plains
onto rocky country, where the runners couldn't catch them.
For a period, the mountain grazers
had the cliffs all to themselves,
and evolved into many new forms.
These were to be the bait that lured
a new predator into the mountains,
one that bore a remarkable similarity to a big cat,
that still survives here today.
The ice ages may be over,
but the rocky peaks throughout Central Asia
are some of the harshest places on Earth.
Even today, winter temperatures can drop to as low as -40.
This is the world the snow leopard inherited.
To survive in these desolate places,
snow leopards must have evolved some special abilities.
We have no evidence that the sabretooths
ever adapted to live in mountains.
The snow leopard must have been a real pioneer.
Firstly, it had to invent its own super warm fleece,
a coat so thick,
it could even cushion the cat against accidents.
It carries a huge tail, weighted with fat,
and massive, fury paws.
Adaptation to match its quarry for agility and grip.
This cat is practically the opposite of a cheetah,
retiring and extremely tough.
Yet, like the cheetah, snow leopards share the same kind of
high-power, very fast-twitch muscle,
and the same short, powerful bite.
Like the cheetah, its biggest problem
is getting close to prey.
Here, there are plenty of places for animals to hide.
And they are acutely aware of the risk of attack.
From their high vantage points,
ibex watch every move of every living thing.
A mother with her cub is clearly visible
on a distant ridge, and the cub doesn't help
by playing hide and seek with itself.
So, if a snow leopard wants to sneak up on anything,
it has to take hidden routes,
which sometimes lead to a dead end.
Incredibly, this snow leopard isn't injured.
Perhaps the ability to bounce
is a critical skill for a cliff hunter.
One mistake from a stalking cat,
and the ibex just move to the next valley.
For the snow leopards,
night is the best time to follow them,
so the prey can't see where they go.
The ibex settle down quietly, eyes and ears open.
They can't see the cat moving.
As the stars rise over the mountains, their dim light
challenges even the snow leopard's superb cat vision.
And yet he moves with ease on a near vertical cliff face.
His incredible hearing and sense of touch
help him to navigate.
He scent-marks a regular spot on the edge of his range.
Like most male cats, his territory overlaps
that of two or three females.
In some areas, male snow leopards often clock up
100 kilometres in a week,
just to keep in touch with their neighbours.
At dawn, he is in the next valley,
and finds the scent of one of his mates.
He leaves her a message.
Snow leopards have lived in the mountains
of Central Asia for so long,
they have become superbly adapted to this environment.
Their range is sometimes so vast
and so sparsely inhabited by prey,
that when there is any chance at all of catching a meal,
they need to act quickly,
without planning.
It's hard to believe, but they are both still alive.
In slow motion replay,
it's possible to get a better idea of what happened.
Incredibly, she doesn't let go of the ibex.
While the pair tumble,
the cat still has the agility and strength
to release her grip,
and grab the throat of the ibex to kill it.
Now she rolls the ibex to prevent it gaining a foothold.
She's in control again.
Was she even injured?
Here is the same cat three days later, apparently unhurt,
making her way back to her now-frozen meal,
which does suggest snow leopards are better adapted
to mountain life than we ever could imagine.
Snow leopards today inhabit most of the mountain ranges
of Central Asia.
Estimates of their total population vary from between
over 10,000 and just 2,500.
Snow leopards are so elusive and thinly spread,
we are only just learning how to study them in the wild.
But one thing is clear,
their already low numbers are shrinking.
While snow leopards themselves
didn't spread far and wide, like the cheetah,
a few of their ancestors managed to escape
their mountain refuges,
and found themselves in a completely different world.
Life among trees and forests demanded a new set of skills.
Because the ice age world
in which they lived was constantly changing,
new animals were constantly evolving.
Wolves were making an appearance.
Wild boar had just arrived here from the south.
Elephants grew longer fur.
This is the world that gave rise to a big cat
that took a very different path.
According to the fossil record,
it seems to have been in the lost forests of Europe and Asia
that this hunter first honed its skills.
This new predator was a big cat.
Bigger than any that had lived here before.
And yet it most closely resembles a species
that would eventually only be found in the tropics
on the other side of the planet.
These ancient European predators were in fact, jaguars,
super-sized, ice age jaguars,
twice as big as their snow leopard ancestors,
and that meant they could hunt bigger prey.
At 120 kilos, the ice age jaguars
equalled the fearsome Megantereon in weight.
These animals had held sway in the forests and scrublands
of Eurasia for millions of years.
(neighing)
To kill large prey, Megantereon used its enormous fangs
to stab through the soft tissue in the throat,
severing the windpipe, and avoiding biting into bone,
a big risk with such long, fragile, teeth.
Jaguars didn't have the slashing fangs,
but they did, and still do, have the most powerful bite
of all the cats, with small, strong canines,
which enabled them to hunt a wider range of prey.
Sabretooths would soon be extinct in Eurasia,
while the jaguar would spread to new continents.
Why did it survive,
while so many of its contemporaries vanished?
Some of these ancient jaguars headed east,
adapting to new prey along their journey.
Sticking to cover or forested area,
these intrepid cats traversed Central Asia.
They survived the harshness of Siberia.
At times, when the planet was at its coldest,
so much of the world's water was frozen
that sea levels dropped by as much as 120 metres,
exposing the land between Asia and the Americas,
creating a place known as Beringia.
The jaguar walked into a new world,
and eventually, arrived in the tropics.
Cooler and dryer than today,
forests clung to moist valleys.
In the Pleistocene, these places were full of giants,
huge scavengers soared over the hills.
There were enormous snakes that could crush a big cat.
And America's own sabretooth, Smilodon.
At twice the size of the Eurasian Megantereon,
(growing)
Smilodon would have towered over the jaguar.
Even so, jaguars and Smilodon coexisted here
for half a million years.
Why did the jaguar make it into the present day,
and not Smilodon?
By observing modern jaguars,
perhaps we can find the secret to their continued survival.
While the giant birds that once
patrolled these skies are missing,
their smaller relatives indicate there are still
plenty of predators here, keeping the scavengers in food.
For a big cat like the jaguar,
this remote shoreline in Costa Rica
would normally offer slim pickings.
But this beach is special.
As darkness falls, baby turtles emerge from the sand
and make their way to the ocean.
For the first time, special night vision cameras
reveal an ancient scene.
Night herons and raccoons emerge to gorge themselves.
Crocodiles join the feast.
These aren't much of a meal for a giant predator,
but at least there's plenty of them.
The jaguar has no interest in any of these.
It's waiting for something else.
As the baby turtles make for the sea,
another wave of adults are arriving to make new nests.
In the darkness, the noise her flippers make
as they slap on the hard sand is just the information
the jaguar is waiting for.
Human ears would not be able to discern
the sound above the waves,
but the jaguar's super sensitive cat hearing
picks it out clearly.
Compared to the snow leopard,
this must be the most casual big cat hunt ever.
All the jaguar needs to do to restrain his prey
is push the turtle's face into the sand,
exposing the back of its neck to the jaguar's powerful bite.
Flailing flippers are no defence.
With the arteries in the prey's neck severed,
the jaguar laps up the turtle's life-blood.
Its thirst sated, the cat will want to get its 40 kilo prize
away from the beach.
But this isn't to take it further
from the reaches of the crocodile.
Eight different jaguars have been seen on this beach
in a single night,
and these cats are not known for sharing.
Strong, stubby canines easily pierce the turtle's armour.
For sabretooths, with their giant teeth and weak jaw,
turtle wasn't on the menu.
The tough shell and boney skeleton of turtles
could easily have damaged long fragile canines.
And so, the jaguar had found a new food source,
avoiding competition with its giant enemies.
This could explain why jaguars and sabretooths
were able to live together for so long.
On the beach, more turtles are coming ashore.
This time, another jaguar is spoiled with choice.
Again, the technique is the same.
But as the jaguar starts for the forest with its prize,
it appears to change its mind.
In cats, the need to feed and the desire to kill
are not necessarily linked.
Despite the first turtle being enough of a meal,
a second is killed too.
The turtle's defence strategy
is to synchronise their nesting.
When the beach is inundated,
even jaguars with the most insatiable drive to kill
are unable to make a significant impact on the turtles.
The bounty on this beach allows the jaguars here to thrive
and fossil evidence proves turtles have been
part of their diet for hundreds of thousands of years.
When the beach is empty,
jaguars look back to the forest for their prey,
as their ancestors did.
In the dry season, many animals congregate at water holes,
but deer are agile and fast, not ideal for a stalky jaguar.
Instead, jaguars normally target the white-lipped peccary,
an echo of the wild boar they certainly hunted in Europe.
These tough animals live in large, wandering herds,
several hundreds strong,
following the rains and fruiting trees.
In the wake of each herd is often a jaguar,
and the peccaries know it.
So, they've developed an excellent early warning system,
using their canines to make this strange sound.
(teeth snapping)
As long as a jaguar stays in touch with a herd,
there will always be a chance to catch one.
And it is likely that in the Pleistocene,
the big cats followed the wandering peccaries
into South America.
By half a million years ago, the jaguar had populated
all but the coldest or driest regions,
especially rain forests,
savannas,
and swamps.
It is among these swamps that the jaguar found a world
with a completely fresh menu.
This is the Pantanal, the largest wetland on Earth.
There are still relics of the Pleistocene here.
Caiman, smaller versions of crocodiles, crowd the banks.
Giant otters still patrol the waterways.
Capybaras, the world's largest rodent.
And the biggest cats in the western hemisphere.
This is one of the very few places on Earth
where it is even possible to see wild jaguars in action.
The vultures that scavenge jaguar kills in Costa Rica,
are here in numbers too,
keeping an eye on their meal ticket.
So, something must be going right for the jaguars.
Despite the fact that there are more caiman here
than any kind of crocodile anywhere else on Earth.
There are thought to be as many as 10 million
in the Pantanal.
On the surface, it doesn't seem to be typical cat country.
Normally, jaguars are very nocturnal.
But here, they can be seen basking in the sunlight,
or patrolling their territory, or hunting.
Unlike the snow leopard, the jaguar has plenty of options,
but this habitat doesn't suit a high-speed chase.
With the approach of a big cat,
everything makes for the water, which is what you'd expect,
it's broad daylight.
Caiman, with their own set of powerful jaws and sharp teeth,
are not the kind of animal that is normally preyed upon.
As potential victims, they pose a few problems.
Firstly, once in the water,
the caiman will have far superior speed,
and would easily out swim a jaguar.
Secondly, cats usually kill their prey
with a suffocating bite to the throat.
Caiman could hold their breath for half an hour,
so that won't work.
In the jaguar's favour, the cold-blooded reptiles
need to bask in sunshine during the day,
and this is the only chance the big cats have to catch one.
However, caiman can see a jaguar coming
from a great distance,
unless the jaguar is cunning and stealthy.
A successful hunt requires planning.
The jaguar has to get very close without being seen.
It goes into the forest and moves upstream out of sight.
The jaguar emerges from the forest,
directly behind the caiman in its blind spot.
The cat slips into the water,
and swims directly to the basking reptile,
staying exactly where the caiman can't see it.
Instead of the typical big cat throat bite,
the jaguar uses crushing jaw power
to bite straight into the brain casing.
The kill is almost instantaneous.
Perhaps this explains the jaguar's
daylight loving habits here,
as Caiman spend the night in the water,
where the cats can't reach them.
Once again, the jaguar's short face and powerful bite
gave it the ability to hunt prey
the sabretooths had the wrong tools to kill.
With its ability to swim, its eat-anything attitude,
and unparalleled jaw strength,
the jaguar survived some of the most
tumultuous times in history,
but only just.
In the past, they avoided human contact whenever possible.
Today, in protected areas,
they are beginning to come out of the shadows.
To see a mum and cub playing in the open like this
was, until recently, extremely rare.
The jaguar's conquest of the Americas
made it one of the most wildly distributed cats of all time.
But its reign was not to last.
In Eurasia, the arrival of early human hunters,
possibly lions and tigers too,
put paid to the sabretooths there
and by 400,000 years ago,
the jaguar had suffered the same fate.
From genetic studies, we now know the jaguar
nearly disappeared in the Americas as well.
It was quite possibly their ability to live in a swamp
like this that enabled them to survive.
(dramatic symphonic music)