Wildlife expert, Jean du Plessis,
descends into one of Africa's great natural wonders.
This is really like eden.
It's hard to imagine how it can really get better.
>> The search is on for one of Africa's last great tuskers.
I am driving to an area with a huge amount of wildlife and we
are looking for a big bull elephant.
>> He encounters a unique truce between two apex predators.
The crater floor must be the ideal environment for hyenas.
>> And then he journeys to a secret waterfall.
It gets really busy around these falls,
and it just gets more and more intense.
♪
A spectacular wildlife ecosystem is not something
that happens by chance.
It develops over time, where everything in it evolves
together, influenced by the weather and shaped by the
geography of the land.
When these two elements work in harmony,
the results can be spectacular.
One of the best examples of this is in Northern Tanzania.
It has been called one of the greatest
natural wonders on earth.
This is Ngorongoro.
The Ngorongoro Highlands is a series of extinct volcanoes that
once stood as high as Mount Kilimanjaro.
A cataclysmic eruption two million years ago caused it to
collapse, creating a massive crater the size of downtown
New York City, that today is home to the highest
concentration of mammals in the world.
The volcano's outer slopes are covered by a thick montane
forest that is home to a healthy population of elephants.
Just by itself , Ngorongoro is spectacular,
but it plays a far bigger role in the ecology of the area.
To it's North, Ngorongoro's major eruption buried the
surrounding area in a thick layer of ash, creating the
Serengeti plains.
The Ngorongoro's highlands act like a barrier,
trapping the seasonal rains and turning what would otherwise be
a dry and dusty plain into a lush green ecosystem that
supports an incredible diversity of wildlife.
But where it gives so generously to it's North,
it denies on the South.
♪
This is the Great Rift Valley.
It's a massive scar caused by tectonic forces that are
splitting Africa in two.
It's home to many different animal species,
including a healthy population of elephants.
But in the dry season, the elephants all make their way
inland to Lake Manyara and Tarangire National Parks.
Both are in Ngorongoro's rain shadow.
Although the area does not get abundant rain,
the Ngorongoro Highlands offer the Southern lands water that
trickles down from the mountains.
That bit of water is a lifeline that sustains a small,
but rich and diverse ecosystem.
Wildlife expert and safari guide,
Jean du Plessis, is at Lake Manyara National Park.
The water coming down these waterfalls behind me is a result
of rain that falls up in Ngorongoro Crater highlands and
then syphoned through the ground and ends up in these streams
that all rush out into Manyara.
This is the point where this Endabash River will disappear
into the sand and continue down to the lake
as an underground river.
It's interesting to see here where the water disappears into
the sand that it's like a minefield of elephant droppings.
This clearly is the most favorable place for elephants
to come and have a morning and a late afternoon drink.
The whole time during the day we'll have different herds
coming through.
At the moment, we are in a bit of an in-between season where
there is quite a bit of water coming down the falls,
but as we are progressing into the dry season,
the point where the water disappears will become closer
and closer to the base of the waterfalls up until where we get
into the middle of September-October,
where it's extremely dry and the only thing you will have will be
a tiny trickle of water coming down the rocks and a tiny puddle
at the base of the waterfalls.
♪
>> It's now September, and well into the dry season.
The rains in the Ngorongoro highlands have stopped,
and the waterfalls have been reduced to a trickle.
♪
Lake Manyara is beginning to dry up.
Those falls become very important
to wildlife in the park.
♪
This is more than likely a small group that came in here,
early evening to drink.
There are lots of signs of tracks all over the place which
tells me that different groups of elephants came in here during
the evening.
The water here must be some of the only water remaining in this
Rift Valley system.
It gets really busy around these falls
towards sunset, where you have herds from all across this area,
meeting here.
Elephants don't generally do well of such a large
congregation of different family groups.
There's a lot of tension and stress and it just gets
more and more intense as the season gets dry.
It can create quite a stressful situation for elephants,
very loud, very sensory.
>> There are so many females drinking at the falls that it
attracts the attention of a male elephant that has come to musth,
and that adds another dynamic to an already tense situation.
(Elephant Growls)
Musth is a periodic condition that signals the elephant's
intent to mate.
Their behaviour becomes erratic, even dangerous.
♪
Their testosterone level can be as
high as 60 times normal levels.
Even the most placid male becomes
territorial and aggressive.
♪
Judging from his size, this elephant is about 40 years old.
He is big enough to do more than a bit of
damage if he's provoked.
In elephants, the musth phase doesn't make
him more attractive to females.
In fact, because of the aggression,
the mom and baby decide to leave.
It's just too dangerous to hang around.
After a bit of showboating, he realizes the females
are only interested in a drink,
so he heads down river, in search of another group.
♪
It's now October in Tanzania's Rift Valley,
and it's several months into the dry season.
Wildlife expert and safari guide Jean du Plessis
has moved on to Tarangire National Park.
Several months without rain has caused
many of the park's rivers to dry up.
This is life in the rain shadow
of the Ngorongoro Highlands.
No rain will fall now for months,
and the wildlife that lives in the area all pull in
closer to the base of the highlands,
where the few lakes and rivers are fed
by water that trickles down from above.
This river is the lifeline of Tarangire National Park and
especially now during the dry season,
when the surrounding areas are extremely dry,
it's like a magnet pulling in all sorts of animals and
especially herds of elephants into the river.
And what will generally happen would be,
in the early mornings, a family group like this would move into
the river and have a drink only to start to move out about now
into the higher lying areas where there is more shade and
cover and then come back again
later afternoon for another drink.
>> Elephants have an extremely well developed sense of smell.
They could smell sources of water that are several
miles away, and also, water that is running below ground.
Although there might be a bit of surface water on the river right
now, for most of the year, this river
actually flows subterranealy.
Elephants have evolved this great way to allow constant
access to the water by digging big holes.
I am going to just do a little dig here to see how deep the
water actually is.
(Digging Sounds)
And the deeper you go, you eventually
start to access water.
This time of year, an elephant does not need to work hard at
all, but as the season dries out,
they will have to dig bigger and bigger holes.
And then as other animals come like zebras,
the sides will fall in and it will become larger and larger,
so eventually to have quite a nice pond.
And the water is a little bit dusty now,
but in a few minutes, this water,
the dust will settle and it will be very clear.
♪
This is the baobab tree which is such an iconic feature on these
dry African landscapes, it's it's a tree that creates a lot
of debate between scientists.
Obviously, looking so enormous it must clearly be very old.
Some scientists believe that it's not that old,
where it can only about 800 years of age,
a big tree like this, whereas some others believe it's over
3,000 years old.
The challenge with baobabs is that they
haven't got any growth rings.
The tree is actually a hollow inside and very,
very fibrous and actually quite soft and generally softwood
trees would grow quite fast.
These trees form the most incredible habitat for all sorts
of animals, from insects all the way through to man and it's
commonly known that these hollow inside of baobabs have formed
houses, hides and even shops to some human communities out here
in Tarangire National Park where this is probably one of the most
common features of the park,
it's home to baboons, leopards,
they are quite commonly occupied by an owl.
The danger for these trees are when a severe drought
might hit a system that elephants
can actually completely destroy them.
If too many elephants start to feed on it and use their tusks
to break off pieces of tree, it will kill the tree.
One can clearly see here how the bark has been ripped away by
elephants and there is some tusk marks here where elephants
would come in and put their tusks in and rip out pieces
of this bark.
Almost all other trees wherein the bark is stripped completely
around the tree will die because nutrients cannot move up and
down anymore.
But baobabs are completely different where it's not
dependent on an outside bark.
These trees will continue to survive and that's a great feat
to survive in an environment full of elephants.
(Birds chirping, crickets)
>> Tarangire's main river flows from the highlands, snaking it's
way through the park, ending in a series of swamps.
I am coming up on to Silale Swamps which is one of the
largest wetland systems in this greater Tarangire ecosystem and
the last refuge for family groups of elephants during these
extreme dry seasons.
And as I am driving up on it, I can see various groups all
scattered through the swamp and as the system dries out,
those numbers of elephants will just increase.
>> Jean's trips to the swamp come to a full halt,
when he sees an irresistible baby elephant.
♪
This baby is really having a good time,
splashing around in the water.
It's interesting that none of the other elephants are in
there- he is clearly having a fantastic time.
He is rolling around and getting completely submerged.
♪
It's a really young baby, younger than a year and it's
just having an absolute ball.
This baby is younger than a year and a good way to tell age at
such a young age is that they can fit under the belly of the
mom and that's generally an indication
of being younger than a year.
This is really amazing, all around me where there's herds
of elephants everywhere, little family groups here.
There's a group of 50 right around me and then all the way
through this swamp, this tiny family groups,
just making the swamp full of elephants and the younger ones
are much more to the shoreline where it's not so deep.
But all the way into the centre of the swamp,
one can see a big male standing.
The only thing we can see of them are their ears flapping and
it's really the perfect place for an elephant to be right now.
It's a lot to eat and a lot to drink and it's very safe.
One thing about Tanzania that's just fantastic is that you've
got these endless corridors of especially animals like
elephants that can move, fairly undisturbed from areas as far as
Ngorongoro Crater coming through those montane forests into Lake
Manyara and then can follow a corridor around Lake Manyara all
the way into Tarangire.
So, in fact, an old bull could have really been born thousands
of miles from here and slowly through his lifetime made
his way across and through these different corridors to end up in
a place like this.
Looking at this swamp with 50 elephants here,
another group in the far sight and basically all the way
running North, just full of elephants,
it's hard to imagine how elephants can be endangered.
But the success of a species is really determined by their
availability of habitat during the dry season.
Of course, there is a lot of areas for these elephants to go
to when it's wet, but it's the protection of these areas that
can give them or can guarantee them survival during the dry
seasons that is very important to look after and it's these
microcosms such as Silale swamps,
the crater floor, Serengeti plains where elephants have a
safe haven to go to when conditions gets too harsh
outside of parks and a harsh can mean many things.
In this case, it's dry and no water,
but as human populations expand and it becomes harder for
elephants to find the safe refuge,
this will be where it is to future.
♪
>> To the Southern side of Ngorongoro, the dry season runs
from May through to October, when the short rains begin.
The name doesn't refer to the amount of rain,
but rather the season.
The short rain season lasts only for a few months,
and it very quickly brings an end to the dry season.
♪
All of last night, I could hear loud thunder on top of the
escarpment which clearly indicates massive amounts of
rain, and this river has a huge catchment area.
This morning there was a tiny little trickle coming down the
rocks but now it is steadily increasing to becoming huge
currents, and I expect this afternoon,
these rocks will be covered by water
coming down off the highlands.
♪
>> After the pools at the base of the river fill,
water begins to flow.
At first as a trickle in the sand.
As the water from the highlands begins
to collect in the tributaries,
the river suddenly swells,
and within an hour huge torrents of water arrive at the falls.
Before long, a group of elephants
emerges from the forest.
They have smelled the water.
They know the river is flowing.
♪
It's been a long dry season for these elephants.
For elephants, water is not only crucial for drinking,
they also need it to take care of themselves.
An elephants skin is thick,
and requires the moisture to help keep it healthy.
♪
I'm sitting in our Manyara camp and this large group of
elephants came down to drink at the river and literally minutes
before they arrived, this river flooded and a river that had no
water in this morning suddenly was full bank to bank and it was
quite interesting seeing the obvious joy in them to be
going into the water and enjoying a late afternoon drink.
♪
>> As the water flows, it rejuvenates the land, the trees,
and forest, that so many other species depend on.
♪
The Endabash River is by far the
largest river flowing into Lake Manyara.
♪
This is Lake Manyara and this is where all the water from the
highlands eventually end up in.
This is a really old lake, estimated to be
about three million years old.
It used to be at least five times the size of
what it is today.
There is no outlet out of Manyara,
making it very, very alkaline, very soda,
the perfect environment for blue green algae to live in which
becomes the food of these lesser flamingos.
Every night a female with an egg that's nesting in Lake Natron
that's about 62 miles North from here,
will fly back there to feed her chicks.
But in the morning, they will fly back to come and feed.
>> The species prime source of food is blue-green algae
that only grows in very alkaline lakes.
Flamingos have filaments that hang from their beaks,
and as they go along the water
the filaments filter out bacteria.
The bacteria is what gives
flamingos their distinct coloration.
Right now, the flamingos are quite far off into the lake.
So I'm going to try and take a canoe and
get a bit closer to them.
However, this lake is very shallow and I might have to push
the canoe quite a bit before it will float.
Let's see if we are stuck.
No, there we go.
(Paddles Canoe)
They are a little bit up to our right.
♪
Getting a little bit closer to these flamingos now.
I can see that they've been sitting here in the middle of
the lake for the whole day so their wings are stiff and
they've definitely seeing me, are starting to spread their
wings out and getting it ready to fly if they have to.
What's interesting for me that they are all in a band here,
maybe there's a soil change where you will find more
blue-green algae.
So as I am slowly drifting in, they are
looking at us into the sun.
So we might be able to get slightly closer than what we
would, being on the other side.
They are getting a little bit nervous with us coming closer.
>> These are the Lesser flamingos.
Their name refers to their size.
They're the smallest of the species,
but even still have an impressive wingspan.
♪
Back on the shores, Jean comes across another
unique natural event that is brought on by the first rains.
I'm on the shores of Lake Manyara and the sun is setting
and as the sun is going down, I can see this reflection off
millions of strands of silk.
It's really interesting what it is.
It's newly hatched spiders that's doing something called
ballooning.
So they would climb to the top of a piece of grass and just
start to release silk.
And as the silk gets longer and longer,
eventually the wind just lifts up this entire spider and blows
it away and this is how spiders get distributed all across the
world, and a spider like this might end up in a thermal,
taking it 50,000 feet into the sky and blowing it to the other
side of planet.
It's absolutely everywhere and it's astonishing that one never
sees these spiders, but all around us are millions,
this one right here.
Tiny spiders that's making their little bodies into a ball and
just kind of cruising through the sky.
>> Wildlife expert and safari guide Jean du Plisses has arrived
at the Ngorongoro crater. It's a spectacular volcanic caldera
that was created over two million years ago when
the Ngorongoro volcano erupted so violently that
it collapsed into itself forming a perfectly
symmetrical crater the size of Manhattan.
♪
Today, the crater floor is home to the highest concentration
of wildlife in Africa, including all of Africa's most
iconic animals like lion and hyena.
It's also home to a number of Africa's
last big tusked elephants.
The big tuskers are older males
drawn to the crater floor's many swamps.
There is one elephant in particular
that is of interest to Jean.
The word is that an old male with magnificent tusks
has not been seen in a while,
and there are concerns that he might have died.
This caldera is such an amazing natural environment and
especially for old bull elephants,
this is like a final retreat where they come and live their
last days.
There is one particular bull that I would love to see.
He's got the most amazing ivory, about 100 pounds a side and it's
a very rare sight these days to see these big bulls,
and especially big bulls with big ivory.
There's been talk about the last remaining large tusker dying in
the crater, but recently someone said there's still one left.
So I'm off on a mission today to try and find him.
♪
>> Africa's tusker numbers have been decimated
by sport hunters who have targeted them
specifically for trophies and by poachers
who kill elephants to supply the
illegal ivory trade.
I'm driving to an area with a huge amount of wildlife and
there are scattered bulls of elephants in between the
wildebeests and zebras and we are going a bit closer now to
see if the big bull that we are looking for
might be in between them.
♪
I'm going to have a look at this group of bulls ahead;
there's five or six over here, but quite a few more groups off
in the distance and then some scattered lone males as well.
So I'll pull up here and start to scan them a bit because the
best way to see them is to just stop and
take your time and look through it.
♪
There is a lot of bulls down here with some seriously large
ivory, but it's not the one we're looking for.
That elephant we are after have ivory that's almost touching the
ground, and he is struggling to walk.
He needs to keep his head up.
It's extremely rare to see elephants like that and he likes
to hang out in the swamps.
So we're going to have to continue and look a bit more.
However, these one have impressive ivory as well.
♪
The Ngorongoro crater gives us a glimpse into what
parts of Africa must have looked like 100 years ago or more.
It is largely remained cutoff and secluded from human
advancement that has decimated wildlife
across much of the continent.
Jean is heading to an area where
small rivers feed several swamps.
It's a place he knows he's guaranteed to find old bulls.
I'm at one of the major waterholes in the crater and we
found a great old bull elephant in it, and
this is a great example of why elephants make the crater almost
like a retirement home.
Elephants have six set of molar teeth through their life and
they gradually use those up as they grow old and when they are
between 55 and 60, they've generally
used up all of their teeth.
So it's very hard for them to live out in the forests and feed
on things like bark and twigs and stuff.
So they need to come down to places with swamps and soft
grass and the crater floor is perfect for that,
with quite a few of these little swamps.
Yeah, this guy is having a good old time,
feeding on some of this water lettuce.
It's sad though that this is where elephants
start to decline.
Feeding on greenery like this does not
sustain these huge bodies.
So elephants slowly decline from here and that's where the term,
elephant graveyards, come from because generally elephants
would die in swampy areas like this.
This morning, we've already seen a huge amount of male elephants
on the floor and I think that number is increasing the whole
time as these males on the rim, of course,
that's getting older.
♪
>> Ngorongoro has resisted attempts to change it.
At the turn of the century, German settlers
tried to colonize the area and cultivate the crater floor.
They tried to clear the area of all its wildlife,
but it was a loosing battle and they gave up and moved out.
Ironically, it was because of sport hunting that the
area ultimately won its conservation status.
It became a protected area in the 1920's,
as part of the Serengeti Game Reserve.
Now its healthy population of animals
living their natural lives is bringing in tourists.
Some feel that tourists coming through in vehicles
is an environmental problem in the making.
Who said the crater is overrun and spoiled?
Anything that is overrun with this animals -
Here, on this plain in front of me must be
30,000 animals of 15 different species.
Quite an incredible site; there's very few places in the
world where one can witness something like this.
>> Night is starting to fall.
Aside from the Park Rangers,
no one is allowed on the crater floor.
So Jean will make his way back up
to spend the night at Lemala camp on the crater rim.
♪
Wildlife expert and safari guide Jean du Plisses
is in the Ngorongoro crater where he is searching
for one of the last great tusker elephants.
Tuskers are elephants with enormous ivory
and they have been in steady decline in Africa
because of sport hunting and illegal poaching for ivory.
He is searching for one particular male.
A legendary old and rare elephant with tusks so huge,
it has difficulty lifting its head when walking.
The elephant has not been seen in some time
and no one knows if it has moved away from the crater floor
or if the great tusker has died.
It's day 2 for Jean's search and he is out early.
Ngorongoro has a high population of elephants
but they are usually found in the montane forest above.
There's a breeding herd of elephants on the crater floor
and this is extremely unique and 20 years of working and being on
the crater floor, I've never seen females and calves right
here on the bottom of the floor, sometimes on the edges of the
forests, but to see them on the floor is almost unheard of.
They are very nervous; they are running from side to side and
any vehicle starting up and any new noise obviously scares them
and they change direction.
It's not an uncommon thing to see elephants on open plains
like on the Serengeti, but that would be a
matriarch that knows the area.
She's been there many times and her confidence trickles down to
the rest of the herd, making them all feel confident.
This is completely the opposite, where they are all nervous,
they all have their trunks up the whole time,
smelling, trying to take in new scents.
This matriarch has never been here.
This is going to be a tough day for them and I hope they
eventually find their way to the West of the crater where there's
a nice forest of fever trees.
So at the moment, they're still out on the plains.
They've calmed down a little bit and
I think they are also really tired.
>> Jean will keep an eye on this group.
Hopefully, they will find their way out.
Jean decides to move to higher ground
where he has a better vantage point,
and can scout for the tusker.
On his way, he comes across a pride of lions.
Like most animals in the crater,
there is unique behaviour here among predators.
An average lion prides home range in the Serengeti
is comparable to a large urban city
but that's not possible here in the
confined area of the Ngorongoro.
There have been as many as six prides
at one time within the crater.
And by the look of these two,
they will add to those numbers.
It seems like there's two mating pairs in this pride of
lions it's interesting looking at this pride here,
I am not seeing any cubs.
So it is possible that a takeover
happened here fairly recently.
Basically when males take over a pride of females,
they would do something quite rare in the animal kingdom.
It's called infanticide.
It's killing all the cubs that do not belong to them and by
doing that they ensure they will mate with these females and
raise their own litter.
The females that would have lost their cubs will then go into
estrus all at the same time, about three
months after the takeover.
So the males will mate with them.
So generally all the cubs inside a pride will be the same age.
Unlike the Serengeti, where lion territories and
territorial males change often shaking up the gene pool,
the crater population has remained static
which has led to problems at times.
Inbreeding has weakened the genetics of the population.
Lions have an interesting hierarchy.
The females do a lot of the hunting and raise the cubs.
Once the cubs are born, it's the males job
to keep the prides intact by defending against
roaming or nomadic males.
If the dominant males lose or are killed,
the nomadic males take over the pride
and kill all of the cubs.
So mother nature has come up with a unique solution.
Quite hard for females to conceive, reason being is that
so many males might come through and try and mate with them.
Sometimes this pride of males will be with another pride of
females that they are dominant over and if a female here is an
estrus and there is a nomadic male that comes through,
he can get quite aggressive and they will actually mate with
him, but they will not fall pregnant.
So when the actual dominant males mate with them,
they need to do that and mate about every 20 minutes for five
days.
It's estimated that there's about 1,500 copulations for
every cub that reach one-year-old.
The number of predators an area can support is
directly related to the amount of available prey.
Unlike the Serengeti, where much the prey species
migrates through a predators territory for a short period,
in the crater, the populations are resident
and fluctuate very little.
That makes for a more stable food source.
Because of the high number of animals,
the crater floor can support a large variety of carnivores.
There's a really nice pack of hyenas over there.
The crater floor must be the ideal environment for hyenas and
it's actually one of the most productive hyena
environments in Africa.
It's actually a misconception that hyenas are
these massive scavengers.
Here on the crater floor, they would hunt at least 70% of their
food themselves.
Strange enough, lions will scavenge quite a bit and quite
often one would find lions chasing hyenas off kills that
they've made.
The way these hyenas will hunt would be by basically running
something tired.
They've got such amazing stamina.
It's that construction of tall front limbs and short back ones.
They've got a very economic gait and they can go for hours and
they would find a wildebeest and stick behind it for hours until
that wildebeest can't move anymore, and then kill it.
Looking at the number of hyenas versus lions we've seen over the
last couple of days, it's kind of clear to me that the hyenas
are winning this race right now.
It's a really nice group of hyenas here
with a lot of young pups.
These pups are different sizes and ages, and there's two
females, it's probably from the two of them.
Within a hyena clan, there is a lot of jealousy and competition
because of the hierarchy.
The pups of the dominant female or the alpha female will always
be under attack by lower ranking hyenas and their pups.
Hyenas also have extremely rich milk so that enables a mother to
go off on hunt, feed, and potentially stay up there for a
night or two before she will come back and feed her cubs and
the cubs will survive just on the milk that they drank before.
This female off here to my right is a little bit bloody,
she might have been in the fight,
or they might have made a kill last night.
♪
>> Wildlife expert and safari guide Jean du Plessis
is in the spectacular Ngorongoro crater.
He's searching for an old tusker elephant
that some fear may have died.
He's an important animal, one of the last few
remaining big tusked elephants that remain in Africa.
While Jean has been looking for the elephant, he has come across
two of the most prominent predators on the crater floor.
As Jean's watching the hyena, several of the animals
with blood on their fur head off into the distance.
This can only mean one thing.
The hyena are feeding on a kill.
This is one the coolest sightings
I've seen in many years.
It seems like what happened with these two male lions
must have chased the buffalo,
didn't quite kill it, and it went for refuge
in the water and died there.
Then these hyenas must have seen what was going on and now they
are literally diving under the water,
completely submerged to take mouths full of meat.
These two male lions are just laying on the edge and are
basically looking at their food, going for the hyenas.
Lions and hyenas - normally the two species battle over
food and often steals each others kills,
but Jean finds the two species showing
an unusual tolerance for one another.
♪
While Jean has been focusing on the situation
between the lions and hyenas, something incredible happens...
♪
This huge elephant we've been looking for the last couple of
days just walked by through the scene.
I mean when in your life have you seen something like this
where you have these hyenas in water,
two male lions, and the biggest elephant in the crater and
probably in Africa walk right through this picture,
it's incredible.
♪
Got the most amazing tusks, this must be one of the largest
elephants remaining in Africa and especially the size of
his tusks, they are well over 120 pounds each
and perfect symmetry.
It's very, very rare to see an elephant like this and there
must really only be a handful left in Africa and this is one
of the last of a kind.
The gene of big tuskers are getting less and less and it's
going to be many years before elephants like this are out in
the wild again.
The crater is just such a perfect environment and place
for these old males to survive and get old,
all around the edge of the rim or observation points where
rangers are looking into the crater and making sure that no
poaching happens and it's kind of been like this since the
early 1900s, and poaching has been really,
really under control here on the crater floor,
allowing huge elephants like this to become old
and massive like this.
♪
This old elephant may be the last of a dying species.
For decades, elephants with large tusks have
been killed for their ivory.
Scientists believe that with the big tusk gene being eradicated,
elephants are now being born with smaller and smaller tusks,
and it's possible that one day we may see elephants
with no tusks at all.
♪
For now, though the Ngorongoro Crater for more than
two million years ago remains a refuge for the old tuskers
and their offspring, its geology has made a barrier that has
allowed animal species to survive and thrive giving
us a glimpse of what Africa may have looked like if
human populations had not moved in and demanded greater
and greater resources putting its own survival ahead
of these truly magnificent species.
♪