The Wild Andes

The series premiere visits the southern tip of South America, a region with terrain as varied as its weather. Here, vast glaciers, towering peaks, active volcanoes and prehistoric forests form the backdrop to the lives of scavenging condors, sly foxes and a mother puma trying to feed her hungry cubs. On the western flanks of these southern ranges lies the Valdivian rainforest, the southernmost rainforest in the world, home to a secret world of creatures found nowhere else. Here, the male Darwin's frog nurtures its clutch of tadpoles in its throat, while a pair of pheromone-fueled Darwin's stag beetles battle over a female 60 feet above the forest floor.

The Altiplano sits at more than 12,000 feet above sea level - a vast, treeless plateau with dangerously thin air, toxic soda lakes and weather that can turn at the drop of a hat. Facing conditions like these, only a few remarkable animals have developed the adaptations needed to survive in the Central Highlands. One such animal is the vicuña. These distant cousins of alpacas have evolved the finest fur on the planet and the most oxygen-rich blood of any known creature, ideal for enduring nights of sub-zero temperatures and breathtakingly high altitudes. Their world is not carefree, however, as they must be on constant alert for nearby foxes and pumas searching for their next kill.

In a northern stretch of the Andes, tectonic forces still active today coupled with powerful tropical downpours have carved sharp peaks and deep valleys, each one an isolated pocket of evolution that has given rise to 150 species of hummingbird. This is a world of snow-covered volcanoes bathed in glaring equatorial sun, and roaming their slopes is the only species of bear found in South America - the spectacled bear. High in the dense cloud forest lives the nocturnal olinguito, a fruit-eating relative of the raccoon. Olinguitos are so shy that they were only identified by scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in 2013 - it's a rare feat to set eyes on this mysterious creature.