Africa.
The heart of the world.
An empire of space and light.
Stand on its southern shores and picture the land rolling north.
One continent.
So many worlds.
Africa.
From the deep mystery of the forests...
...to the improbable vastness of deserts.
...folding into in the shadow of giants...
mountains.
A continent of waterways.
Lakes as big as seas...
...the world's longest rivers.
And the immense Savannah.
...the place from which our ancestors walked out across the earth.
Africa.
A continent from which so much life has sprung.
Wild Africa.
But the continent we see today
is the culmination of 100 million years of change,
since Africa broke free from the ancient world.
And today, the same violent forces
which shaped the continent are still at work,
lifting great towers of rock high into the African sky.
This is the story of Africa's mighty mountains...
and the wildlife rising to meet their challenge.
Throughout Africa's history,
massive forces deep within the earth have torn,
crushed and buckled the landscape.
The greatest scar of all is worn by Ethiopia,
where molten lava - seeping to the surface over 70 million years
has built a huge dome of rock a thousand kilometres wide
the Roof of Africa.
Today the fires have gone out in the Ethiopian highlands.
Sun and rain - wind and ice now rip at their volcanic carcass.
Four kilometres up, welcome to cold Africa.
No ordinary baboons, these are geladas, unique to Ethiopia.
They conquered these highlands from the surrounding plains
a few million years ago...
plenty of time to acclimatise.
Protected from the cold in thick,
furry capes, geladas are rugged mountaineers,
roaming the moorlands in bands of up to 800 individuals.
Most baboons enjoy a rich diet of plants and meat,
but up here geladas have to get by on just mountain grass...
...a lot of mountain grass.
Grass is so poor in calories geladas must spend most of the day grazing...
shuffling along on their bottoms to keep warm.
Geladas are very peaceful monkeys.
In the cold it's a waste of valuable energy to quarrel.
So instead they've developed more subtle ways to signal their mood.
In gelada society,
disputes are usually settled by just pulling a face.
But each band of Geladas has up to 30 dominant males,
and tensions do sometimes boil over.
In the last million years,
Ethiopia has been much colder than it is today.
Glaciers once crowned these highlands...
carving the brittle rock into a landscape of jagged spires...
some falling 2 Kilometres to the base.
Geladas are fearless rock-climbers.
Each evening they move to the steepest cliffs for safety from predators,
like leopards.
While Gelada baboons have always lived in this region of Africa,
it's only with time that they've been able to move up in the world.
But Ethiopia hides many other unusual mountaineers...
and some have colonised these peaks from much further afield.
Walia ibex invaded Africa from Europe during recent Ice Ages,
when the two continents were joined by a vast tundra.
Today these rare goats survive only on the remotest pinnacles.
In the breeding season the cliffs echo
to the sound of males contesting dominance.
These fights can be brutal...
and occasionally to the death.
Ethiopian thick-billed ravens are quick to take advantage.
All that commotion doesn't go unnoticed.
The Lammergeyer - or bearded vulture.
A massive bird...
soaring the mountain updrafts on wings two metres across.
Despite their size, Lammergeyers don't rush in to feed.
They bide their time, letting others do the messy work.
Only when the meal is almost over, do they make their move.
Lammergeyer literally means "lamb-catcher",
but these formidable birds aren't that interested in meat.
What they prefer, are bones...
Bones as heavy as the bird itself are hauled off with ease.
The Lammergeyer knows precisely what to do with them...
bones away!
With the bone shattered, the nutritious marrow is exposed.
Chunks as big as your fist are dissolved
in stomach juices as strong as an acid bath.
Bone-breaking takes skill,
and young birds need plenty of target practice.
Many bones fall wide of the mark...
...others lack the height.
It takes a full seven years for a Lammergeyer to get it right.
Lammergeyers have colonised most of Africa's mountains
wherever they find enough food to eat
and enough wind to lift their massive frames.
Here in Ethiopia, conditions are perfect.
On the southern edge of these highlands,
towering spires give way to grassy moorlands
home to the rarest of all African predators...
Ethiopian wolves.
Like their European ancestors,
Ethiopian wolves patrol vast territories and live in tight family groups.
But otherwise they're quite different.
Small and fine-featured,
they've given up chasing large animals in packs
there isn't the prey here to do that.
Instead they hunt alone.
These grassy moorlands teem with more than a dozen types of rodent.
Ethiopian wolves have evolved to become specialist rat-catchers.
Nimble legs,
sensitive ears and a narrow muzzle are the tools of their trade.
Small grass rats make up most of the wolves' diet.
But on these mountain plateaux there's a far greater prize...
a rodent ten times bigger... ten times more nervous.
The giant mole rat.
Mole rats are afraid to leave their burrows.
Like periscopes, they scan for danger as they feed.
...sometimes with the help of watchful hill chats,
gathering insects from around the rats' dung piles.
Even so, mole rats are up against an expert.
The alarm goes off but the wolf is patient.
There's no shortage of food up here
'rat infested' hardly begins to describe a place
where there are two tonnes of rats to each square kilometre.
At the den, the pups eagerly anticipate the returning adults.
The hunters are endlessly mobbed until they cough up the goods.
This might seem like wolf paradise,
but these specialised mountain predators face an uncertain future.
The cold, alpine tundra in which their ancestors evolved
and on which these wolves now entirely depend
is ever-so-slowly vanishing.
The African climate is getting warmer...
the Ethiopian highlands steadily wearing away...
The remaining 1000 wolves are truly marooned on the Roof of Africa.
Every mountain range in Africa is its own unique and isolated world...
none more so than the Atlas mountains of Morocco,
formed as North Africa collided with Europe 65 million years ago...
Flanked on one side by the Mediterranean...
and on the other by the vast Sahara...
this crumpled range is one of the most unusual on the continent.
Shrouded in ancient forest, and cloaked in a veil of snow,
the Atlas mountains look more like the European Alps.
But living among the giant cedars are very African survivors.
...Barbary macaques.
This far north in Africa winter can be severe.
But Barbary macaques are remarkably tough animals...
...their ancestors were the only monkeys
able to cross the mighty Sahara to reach these mountains.
The secret of their success is diet.
Barbary macaques get by on the slimmest pickings.
In winter, when deep snow covers the ground,
they stay in the treetops,
relying on lichens, leaves and bark.
At the first sign of spring,
the macaques leave the canopy
to search the forest floor for fresh herbs and shoots.
With their thick, warm coats,
these snow monkeys are built for heavy weather.
Only half as high as the Ethiopian highlands,
the Atlas mountains are generally speaking
an easier place to live.
But the macaques' meagre diet has imposed its ownextraordinary discipline.
Like geladas, they can't waste energy squabbling,
so the 30 or so members in each troop invest
a lot of time in their relationships.
To protect the troop, male macaques need to be united.
So instead of fighting they'll often pass an infant between them...
rather like a football... until they all calm down.
The youngsters get an earful from both sides...
but nobody gets hurt.
Barbary macaques are extremely resilient.
They've survived here for at least 6 million years,
making the best of changing opportunities
as the North African climate has repeatedly swung
from hot to cold, wet to dry...
and back again.
But at the far end of the continent...
down among the highlands of south Africa
wildlife has been blessed with a much more stable past.
The Cape highlands are Africa's oldest mountains...
built out of the most solid rock 380 million years ago...
long before the Africa we know was even born.
For tens of millions of years the climate here has remained steady,
ruled by the oceans and their currents.
Year on year, cold winters follow dry summers.
This unique climate nurtures a dazzling variety of plants.
7000 species of heathers, sedges,
brushes and proteas make up the "fynbos"
the world's smallest, but richest, plant kingdom.
Fynbos flowers come in all shapes, smells and colours
all designed to seduce their pollinators.
These proteas hold their nectar-rich blossoms high
to attract Cape Sugarbirds.
Other proteas lie on the ground and smell of yeast...
tempting for mice.
This flower needs a bee to vibrate
at just the right frequency to release its pollen.
And this one just explodes it in the face of visitors.
But the Disa orchid is the craftiest of them all.
As the mountain pride butterfly dips for nectar
the orchid glues pollen sacs straight onto its belly.
Life on the Cape has been blessed with a unique mix of circumstance,
isolation, solid foundations and a stable, nurturing climate.
But there's a twist in this tail.
Come the end of winter, the Cape undergoes a dramatic change.
The cool, moist winds subside.
The air becomes tinder dry...
Every fifteen years or so, the mountains erupt in flames.
Summer fires are ignited by sparks from rockfalls,
by lightning or... controlled burns...
It looks fearfully destructive
but fire is actually essential to the health of the fynbos.
Fires clear away old vegetation,
releasing important minerals to the soil.
For proteas, the intense heat and smoke
are also crucial catalysts for the next generation.
Within hours of the fire passing,
million of seeds are released to the wind
to await the next winter rains.
The Cape highlands are an ancient range,
but elsewhere on the continent fires within the earth
are thrusting new peaks towards the African sky.
The Maasai call it the "Mountain Of God" OI Donyo Lengai.
Nearly 3,000 metres tall, it is a mountain in the making
an active volcano which last erupted only thirty-five years ago.
"Lengai" is one of a chain of volcanoes formed as lava pushed
through the earth's surface along the edge of the Great Rift Valley.
Clearly visible from Space,
this 6,000 kilometre trench stretches all the way
from Mozambique to the Lebanon.
And bursting from the hot, dry plains of Tanzania,
is the monarch of all African mountains
Kilimanjaro.
It's a colossus of three volcanic peaks
towering nearly 6,000 metres high...
crowned by the snow-capped summit of Kibo.
Kilimanjaro is only a million years old, but in the prime of its life.
The summit is a hostile, arctic world,
wherethe temperature can plunge to minus 20 Celsius.
The thin air carries half the oxygen of sea level.
Nothing can live here permanently.
But Africa's Rift volcanoes are not immortal.
Built of brittle lava and soft pumice,
they are very vulnerable to the elements.
Further north is a volcano three times older than Kilimanjaro... Mt. Kenya.
...To the local people it is Kirinyaga... the "Mountain of Brightness."
Time has weathered Mt. Kenya's slopes
and allowed the toughest animals and plants the chance
to conquer its alpine moorland.
Each evening cabbage groundsels bunch up against the cold...
their special leaves secreting a film of antifreeze.
Above 4,000 metres any moisture in the ground turns to ice...
heaving the soil...
making it tricky for plants to get a firm hold.
To survive, some mosses have lost their roots altogether...
and ride over the icy carpet.
On Mt. Kenya it is winter every night... and summer every day.
Here on the equator... 4 kilometres up...
the power of the tropical sun is intense.
The giant lobelia's coat of downy leaves
help protect its delicate flowers from the cold.
But this unusual plant has only conquered Mt. Kenya
with the help of scarlet-tufted malachite sunbirds...
they're high-altitude pollinators.
In exchange the sunbirds get especially-rich nectar...
crucial fuel on these chilly moorlands.
Mt. Kenya's moorlands provide little comfort for large mammals.
But highland rock hyraxes can survive among the shelter of rocky outcrops.
Though bigger and hairier than their plains-dwelling cousins,
these hyraxes can still feel the twinge of cold...
especially the newly born.
East Africa's Rift mountains are like islands in a sea of cloud.
Battered and whittled away by the elements,
their lives are very short indeed.
Mt. Kenya once stood much higher than even Kilimanjaro,
but today it is shrinking.
In another 3 million years it may even look like this
the neighbouring Aberdares range
more ghost of mountain than mountain
studded with ancient lava stumps called the "Dragon's Teeth".
A kilometre lower than Mt. Kenya,
the summit of the Aberdares is often buried among the clouds.
Rainwater - draining off its moorlands feeds many of Kenya's major rivers.
In the Aberdares,
water is the principal force carving away at the flanks of the range.
As the water flows downhill it washes important minerals from the volcanic soil.
Forest animals, like bushbuck,
can't get enough sodium and potassium in their diet,
so they need to visit special places where the salts are more concentrated.
These clearings are an important meeting ground for all sorts of animals.
Elephants are great earth-movers,
using their delicate trunks and fork-lift tusks to excavate the rich soil.
The gentle, weathered slopes of the Aberdares make them an easy climb.
Herds of elephants frequently wander up to the moorlands,
especially in the dry season, when food down below is scarce.
In the shadow of Mt. Kenya, they come to feast on heather.
Not the usual ground-dwelling shrub
but giant bushes, twice as tall as the elephants.
There's not much to tempt large predators up to this chilly moorland,
but serval cats are common.
In amongst the tussock grass,
there's plenty to catch their eye.
Catching mice requires real stealth and patience.
But in the Aberdares, there's another local delicacy...
even more challenging.
...moles.
Mountains, because of their isolation from other environments,
are places of real surprise.
Here in the Aberdares, half the servals are totally black
the product of a rare gene which has multiplied
among this confined population.
Because they have so few competitors up here,
mountain servals probably don't need the camouflage of spots,
and may benefit from the extra warmth absorbed by a black coat.
But lurking in the forests of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdares...
an even greater surprise...
...the black panther... a rarely-glimpsed version of the leopard.
Though spotted leopards are found across the continent,
their magnificent black counterparts seem
only to arise on Africa's giant Rift mountains.
Isolation can play all sorts of tricks.
On Mt. Kenya some of the pied colobus monkeys
are virtually albino...
It's evolution in action...
but it's hard to guess what if any
advantage this flamboyant white coat might
bring in a cold mountain forest.
Africa's mountains play a fundamental role
in generating new forms of life on the continent.
As they rise and fall they create temporary barriers
to the movements of animals and plants and isolate them in unique
and challenging environments...
promoting change and evolution...
Humans have always resisted the challenge of settling on Africa's mountains.
But one of our closest and most charismatic relatives
has found a home above the clouds.
Right in the heart of the continent,
sandwiched between the mountains of East Africa
and the rainforests of West Africa,
are the Virungas
a range of active volcanoes towering more than four kilometres high.
Cloaked in thick vegetation,
the lush slopes of these mountains are home to a very special creature indeed.
...the mountain gorilla.
Mountain gorillas are the largest primates in the world.
With their massive frames and thick,
dark fur they're well-built for mountain life.
These gorillas have very particular needs...
they can only live on unstable,
volcanic mountains where the regular turnover
of soil encourages the growth of rich herbs and vines.
And this is their problem...
the soils of the Virungas are so fertile
that today's mountain gorillas face a new form of isolation - agriculture.
But these terraced fields
and the Volcanic slopes on which they lie
are under two million years old...
and gorillas are ten million years old.
They were in this part of Africa long before the Virungas were even born...
Iooking for opportunities... responding to change...
colonising new and emerging highlands...
In the future the descendants of these gorillas
will certainly face many more challenges...
and not just from us...
but also from their dynamic mountain home.
The extraordinary wildlife that we see on Africa's mountains today
is the product of a living landscape...
...ever-shaping and always creating... a great, unfolding drama of life...