is a study in contrasts.
Remote islands,
busy cities...
..and when it comes to animal combat,
the weapons of war must adapt.
You've got a mouth packed full of teeth.
(SCREECHING)
There's stomping, there's jumping,
there's very strong,
aggressive pulling.
(SCREECHING)
They don't have teeth, but they have
these really, really strong beaks.
If you look at the injuries
that come out of these fights,
they are BRUTAL.
Things get pretty hardcore,
pretty quickly.
It's crazy.
Every day, everywhere,
our planet is a battle ground.
(NEIGHING, GRUNTING)
Turf wars... (BELLOWING)
..food fights...
..and mating mayhem
..rage on...
..as animals outwit
and outmanoeuvre their own kind...
..in Battle of the Alphas.
(ROARING)
Southeast Asia.
Made up of 11 different countries,
stretching from the Indochina Peninsula
to the edge of Indonesia.
There, on four rugged islands,
an ancient survivor,
fights a prehistoric war.
Enter the dragon.
(STOMPING)
Komodo dragons are the largest lizard on Earth,
and they are,
in my opinion,
superior and phenomenal
in so many ways.
They're one of the only lizards that stalks their prey.
and actually, maybe a little bit horrifically,
they've been known to stalk...
..small children.
Komodos have roamed the Earth
for four million years.
(HISSING)
No ordinary creature will oppose them.
Komodo dragons are...
..one of those few creatures
that TRULY are fearless.
Realistically, the only thing
that could take down a Komodo dragon
is probably another Komodo dragon.
Even their own babies
have to hide from these monsters.
They're not safe on the ground.
They're barely safer in the trees.
However, the trees are...
..where they take refuge from the adults.
If they don't take refuge from the adults,
including their parents,
they will almost undoubtedly be eaten.
Ferocious as they are,
these three-metre-long apex warriors
don't flash their weapons.
(HISSING)
It looks like it doesn't eat anything tougher than mush.
But it does.
When it comes to the business end of a Komodo dragon,
you've got a mouth packed full of teeth.
Up to 60 teeth
that are hidden by their gums.
But as soon as they come to bite,
those gums are shredded,
and the teeth come to the fore.
A vicious bite is bad enough,
but Komodos add some secret sauce.
For a really, really long time,
people believed that the mouth of a Komodo dragon
harboured all these really, really dangerous bacteria,
and that a bite
essentially infected you with this bacteria.
That's not true.
Komodo dragons are venomous.
(RATTLING)
Snakes are venomous too, of course.
They inject venom using hollow fangs.
Not these bulldozers.
The only way they can get the venom into the wound
is by mashing, tearing,
ripping and mulching the flesh.
Basically, masticating the venom
into their bloodstream.
One of the biggest, I guess we could say "benefits"
is that it contains anticoagulants.
So, when a Komodo dragon actually bites a prey item,
whatever it might be,
it bleeds out slowly,
and the Komodo dragon, essentially,
just follows it around
until it dies.
So, it's pretty brutal.
Today, this brute has caught the whiff of opportunity.
The scent not of prey,
but of a female.
Komodo males can zero in on reproductive females
by detecting special hormones in her faeces.
It's an island-wide “come hither."
An invitation to the big fight.
(HISSING)
Komodo dragons,
if a brawl were to break out,
it's almost always over mates.
The female will pretty much
just mate with the one that wins the brawl
because pretty much that's what's going to tell the female
this is the strongest male,
this is the toughest male,
this is the male whose genes
I want to have passed down to my offspring.
The defender kicks off
with a bout of sabre rattling...
..Komodo style.
Loud hissing,
head shakes,
and a whip of the tail.
(HISSING)
They know that if it really does come to blows,
it could end up with one of them dead.
So they'll hiss at each other.
That's a great way again of saying,
"Look, I'm big, I'm healthy,
"I can make a loud noise.
"Don't try it."
But the challenger won't back down.
At the start, all looks calm.
And then suddenly, that explosion of energy
as they realize,
"Oh, it's on!"
It's no-holds-barred as they push on,
and up for the main event.
(GROWLING)
Things get pretty hardcore,
pretty quickly.
They lock arms, they get into that grip,
and they are pushing super hard.
It's the first to fall is gonna fail.
In some cases, they can actually push each other
to the extent that one Komodo dragon
might be balancing on its tail alone.
So the tail is almost like a fifth limb.
But that tail is able to support the weight
of an entire Komodo dragon.
They've got all that strength, all that power.
They have got tearing claws,
that could easily lacerate
most other creatures.
And they will wrestle,
like, old-school style.
The difference, I would say,
between when pro wrestlers fight
and these two giant male Komodos fight,
is Komodos have 60 razor-sharp teeth
that they will use to bite their opponents.
And, remember that deadly venom?
Straight away, you might think that fighting
mouth-to-mouth with a Komodo dragon
is gonna be suicide for one or the other.
But Science has recently discovered
that they have a very interesting protein
in their bloodstream
that helps to nullify
the effects of the venom.
So, a Komodo dragon
cannot kill its rival
with its venom.
I'm not sure if the claws
or the teeth are more prominent,
when it comes to who's going to win the fight.
They're both definitely...
..incredibly sharp.
After all the biting,
clawing, and shoving,
one Komodo declares he's had enough.
And the champion claims his reward.
(HISSING)
Courtship for Komodo dragons
is very much like their lives.
It is swift, and it is brutal.
There's no Barry White
playing in the background here, OK?
Once a male Komodo
has the attention of a female,
which is merely designated
by the fact she doesn't just run away,
as far as courtship goes,
is it can be some nuzzling,
a little bit of scratching...
They will quickly mate,
and then pretty much part ways
to never really care about each other ever again.
Komodos are fighters,
not lovers.
That's the way of the dragon.
(SHRIEKING)
(ROARING)
Meanwhile, up a tree in Thailand,
there's a tiny contender
famous for its high-altitude throw-down.
Meet the Japanese rhinoceros beetle,
a brawler that makes its gigantic namesake...
..look tame.
The Japanese rhinoceros beetle is amazing.
It has a long horn
that extends from its face,
that gives it its name.
Alright, so if you're standing up,
and you put your hand, you know,
on your chest, right about here,
that's about two-thirds of your height.
Imagine a stick that long
coming out of your forehead.
That's what rhinoceros beetles have.
It's huge!
And it's used for one thing,
which is for fighting other males.
Only the male rhino beetle
has this enormous horn.
The longer it is,
the better he can duel for the ultimate prize:
a mate.
This is a kind of beetle that eats sap.
So, they go to a branch
in a place where the sap is available,
and they set up shop,
because that's where the females are gonna go to eat,
and that's where the mating's gonna happen.
Sooner or later,
a female will arrive,
hungry for sap.
But other males will also come running,
his challengers for the cage match.
What's so fun about rhinoceros beetles as a group
is that they have all kinds of different fighting methods.
Some of them pinch,
some of them scoop,
but the Japanese rhinoceros beetle
is a pitchfork method.
Right? They get their horn under the other one
and throw it.
And that horn in that species
is built exactly for that task.
First up, a little guy.
No problem there.
But the night is young.
At one sap site,
multiple fights can happen in a night.
You might have one male starting off
as the owner of that territory,
and he might be usurped,
and then that male might be usurped.
Battle number two.
It's jousting meets tug-of-war for the win.
It's easy to underestimate the intelligence of a beetle.
That's fair, but...
..a lot of thinking goes into these fights.
I mean, the male has to suss out how big they are,
how big that opponent is,
and come up with a probability of winning.
They start off
by facing each other off,
and sizing each other up.
If they decide to fight,
then they start to engage.
They will kind of tussle and punch each other.
The next opponent is a worthy challenger.
He works to manoeuvre his horn
into just the right position.
They kind of bash them together,
but one of the things that we often see them do
is use their horns to try to get under the other beetle,
and flip them over,
and often they're trying to flip them off the branch.
Hooks on the ends of the defender's feet
help him hang on.
Easy does it!
In the pitch of battle,
the best thing that males can do is just...
..avoid being thrown themselves.
They use their legs
to grasp onto the branch really tightly,
and if another male catches them on the side,
then they can be punctured,
so they try to
face each other head-on.
When a rhino beetle falls off that branch,
they can get seriously damaged.
I mean, they could break the horn,
and if they break the horn, they're not gonna mate this year.
I mean, they're done.
That raises the question:
if they can get hurt in a fall...
..why don't they just fly?
Well, it's not the horn that weighs them down.
People used to think that, but no.
It turns out
the horn's pretty light.
It doesn't really interfere with flight.
If you cut it off or leave it on,
it doesn't really affect flight very much at all.
They hold it in a special way when they're flying,
it's not very heavy.
But these mammoth flyers
still find it hard to start their engines mid-fall.
They are big, heavy beetles.
So, when the rhinoceros beetles are flung off the branch,
sometimes they can't open their wings fast enough
to fly away and avoid falling to the ground.
Ultimately, it comes down to that shovel.
If that horn gets under your belly,
if it gets under your legs and starts lifting you up,
you can hold on as tight as you want,
but in all likelihood, you're done.
An attack from behind
catches a fourth Rhino off guard.
These battles are quite vicious.
The horns are actually quite sharp.
It can rip the side of the body,
it can damage the wings.
Like a gladiator arena in ancient Rome.
I mean, it's not just one fight then everybody goes home.
A male might end up having, like,
a dozen fights in a single night.
It's crazy.
But the defending champion
shows his grit.
There's no evidence that females prefer
a male with a large horn.
It's just that the fights
all come down to that horn.
And once the fights are done,
whichever male remains is the one
that gets to mate with the females.
It's a victory as sweet as sap.
Not bad for one night's work!
(ROARING, SCREECHING)
While rhino beetles
battle it out in the forests...
Macaques hone their skills
as gritty street fighters.
These animals are aggressive fighters.
They're biting, they're swiping,
they're lunging.
(CHITTERING)
(SQUEALING)
They charge each other, they bite each other,
they use their hands to rip hair.
It can be very, very intense.
Fourteen species of these hot-tempered primates
live in Southeast Asia.
Some, like these urban marauders,
have left the forest behind. (SCREECHING)
The mean streets are their arena.
If you go to a city where there are macaques,
you'll find them, like, on the walls,
you'll find them on the roofs.
They're sneaking around,
they're stealing from stores.
They're like a vicious gang
that is hugely successful.
This gang is no democracy.
Everyone has a place in the pecking order,
whether they like it...
(SCREECHING)
..or not.
It doesn't take much for a fight to start.
So, they might be fighting over territory,
they might be fighting over food,
they might be fighting over
the way they look at each other.
It's hard to know,
but aggression is a huge part of life
for these animals.
The root of that aggression
is simple.
Fight to keep what you've got
and fight to get more of what you want...
..whatever it is.
What I love about macaques
is you have to respect them, right?
They are who they are, no matter what.
(CHITTERING)
They're all relaxing, everybody's fine,
and then all of a sudden one of them is like,
"Wait a second, we're macaques, I gotta fight somebody."
(SHRIEKING)
Male and female macaques
climb different social ladders,
with top mammas born to rule.
Macaques tend to be female dominance hierarchies
where you have an alpha female,
and then she kind of runs the family group.
Female macaques do not have to
fight their way into their rank.
They're born at the top,
or born subordinate,
and that means if the queen gives birth,
her offspring are automatically
at the top of the society.
But for the females on the lower rungs,
life is walking on eggshells,
and making frenemies
is a survival skill.
It's definitely good to be at the higher ranks
of a macaque society.
They have better access to food,
they're better protected
by the rest of the crew,
and for the lower-ranking females,
it's more strategic for them
to not fight with their higher-ranking members
so that they can stay protected as well.
One way to avoid fights
is to groom the other macaques.
Say, "Hey, I'm your buddy. Let me give you a little massage.
"Let me get those parasites out of your fur."
It's a way to stop them from killing you.
And so, when you look at who's grooming who,
it's always grooming up.
It's always grooming towards the ones
that could beat you up.
Grooming can be...
..quite strategic.
It's almost like sucking up.
As tricky as it is for females,
males walk an even shakier tightrope.
From the moment they reach puberty,
life is a series of squabbles,
skirmishes,
and wars.
In terms of male macaques in the troop,
it's a temporary position.
Males get to be part of the troop when they're babies
but by the time they're two or three years old,
they're kicked out, they have to figure it out on their own.
They have to break into a new troop...
..usually by fighting.
So the reigning alpha male
always has a target on his back.
Sooner or later,
some young upstart
will come gunning for a better life.
Fights are just
so hardwired into macaques,
that competition within the species,
that battle to be alpha,
is so big for them
that they can't let it go.
At stake for the defending champ?
Everything.
Including his mate,
and membership in the troup.
(CHITTERING)
One thing that these animals have is speed.
They are very fast on the ground,
they're very fast at climbing,
so there's a lot of chasing
that happens early on in the fight.
Things move quickly
from chase to schoolyard brawl.
Macaques are all fury,
no finesse.
(SCREECHING)
There's stomping, there's jumping,
there's very strong
aggressive pulling.
Those hands and those feet
can grab onto the flesh
and pull on it very hard.
If you look at the injuries that come out of these fights,
they are BRUTAL.
But ultimately, what it comes down to
is those big old teeth.
This challenger has no shot.
He can't land a bite.
So, he goes in for a hug.
Instant damage control.
That's the thing about macaques.
As quick as they come to blows,
they forgive and forget
just as fast.
But don't worry,
they'll be fighting again
in no time.
(ROARING)
From the urban battlefield
to the warm ocean waters
of the South China Sea.
Green Sea Turtles
are swimming in from all directions.
Green sea turtles
spend their time travelling
well, any ocean.
They go wherever they want to,
travelling the ocean current.
It's a beautiful life.
But today, these male turtles
are less surfer dude,
more combat marine.
And the reason?
Well, there's something in the water.
Females will release hormones
into the water.
And these hormones
attract mates,
attract males.
The female's plan?
Attract a mate near the beach
where she was born,
and where she'll return
to lay her own eggs.
And the reason she does that is because she knows,
"Oh, I was hatched here,
"this is a good nesting site."
There aren't predators
that are gonna eat all of the eggs,
when they're still buried,
or predate on the little hatchlings
when they hatch from the shells.
And so, a good nesting site is really key.
For this female,
that means a peaceful beach
on the coast of Malaysia.
But first, she has to mate.
And that requires
a bizarre battle at sea.
If she remains horizontal,
then it means she's receptive.
But if he tries to mount her,
and she's not keen,
she turns vertical in the water,
and the poor guy just slips straight off.
Seems like she likes him.
But does she like him,
him,
him, AND him?!
Once the female releases her hormones,
the males come swimming,
and so, they will swim
up to 4,000 kilometres
to get to that female.
So, it's pretty dramatic
just from the get-go.
Give the female her credit,
she wants to mate
with as many males as possible.
But she wants the good ones.
She wants those fit lads.
She doesn't want any stragglers
fathering her young.
So, after she's got a pack
of potential suitors around her,
she puts them through their paces.
The first male
is still clinging tightly
to the female's shell.
Any other male who wants a shot
will have to pry him off.
He can hang on for hours,
clinging, white-knuckled,
or white-flippered, to her back
as other potential males come in
and start to test his resolve.
These two, or three, or more males
that are not on the female's back,
are going to start biting the male
who's on her back
and trying to get him off
so that they can mate
with the female.
He's gonna hold on for dear life.
He's gonna hold on
for about 24 hours,
but in some really extreme cases,
up to 119 hours,
which is... absurd!
It is absurd to think that an animal could ever mate
for longer than a day,
let alone 119 hours.
Green sea turtles
have a tough one-and-a-half metre carapace,
that acts like body armour.
But it doesn't cover his flippers.
Now, you might be thinking,
green sea turtles don't look like they have teeth,
and they DON'T have teeth,
but they have these really, really strong beaks.
With those razor-sharp beaks,
beaks that are like underwater scythes
that are capable of chewing through jellyfish
and cropping seagrass,
they start biting at the nearest,
tenderest parts they can reach.
That's his tail,
the back end of his flippers,
even his genital opening.
It cannot be nice.
And so, it really becomes a test of endurance.
Can he hang on to the female long enough
to fertilize all of her eggs?
This is no fair fight.
These guys are
piling on the pressure.
We end up actually having
this pancake effect,
I guess you could call it,
with the female, and then a male,
and then maybe another male,
and in some cases,
a third male here.
You get males attaching to other males,
you get males trying to force underneath.
The whole thing is a real,
real mosh pit of...
..well, sex.
The sex-obsessed males
aren't concerned that,
at the bottom of this melee,
the female is in trouble.
She needs to get to the surface
to breathe.
Green sea turtles
can remain underwater
for about four hours.
That's if they're just,
you know, relaxed,
swimming gracefully,
nothing is going wrong.
But if you have this, like,
brawl of male sea turtles
all on top of her back,
she needs air a lot more frequently
than four hours at a time.
Sometimes this...
..pile of love,
and goodness, and amour,
can end badly,
and a female can be so mobbed
by potential suitors
that she'll actually drown.
Desperate for a breath,
she turns and flips
to shake off her extra admirers.
The physicality of it all
becomes such an exhausting effort
for not only the males,
but the female to endure.
And so it's a really, really
physical process,
a very tough process.
And a very brutal fight.
This time, she's strong enough
to get to the surface.
And he's strong enough
to hang on to his spot.
If that one first male holds on,
he endures the beating of a lifetime,
his sperm fertilizes the female's eggs.
And then it all repeats in a few years.
Whether it's a deep-water melee,
a high-altitude cage match,
or a street fight between thugs...
(HISSING)
..diverse arenas sculpt the weapons
and tactics of combat.
Winners will pass on their genes
to a new generation...
..in the battlefields
of Southeast Asia.
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