They're independent; they're affectionate; they're loyal; they're beautiful; they're sagacious; they're mysterious; they're ineffable; they're inscrutable. Cats are magic. They really are magic. Probably the most mysterious creatures in the world. They're also very vicious; they're very cruel things. That's another thing I like about them their ability to be one thing and then another. The domestic cat harbors a sort of split personality. Within even the most demure pussycat lurks a creature of the wild.

Even after thousands of years, we still know little about the behavior of domestic cats. Now, scientists and laymen alike attempt to understand them to demystify this elusive feline. For them, the domestic cat is every bit as intriguing to study as the lion or the tiger. To share one's life with a cat is to invite a bit of wildness indoors. Perhaps the writer was correct when he philosophized: God made the cat that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger. Today, the Western world enjoys an unparalleled love affair between man and beast. Cat coming through. The cat now surpasses the dog as the number one pet, and annually we spend more on cat food than on baby food.

In remote corners of South America lives a feisty animal, the elegant camel-like guanaco. You've got to be taught to survive here, especially if you're a male guanaco. In the southern Andes Mountains, fierce blizzards and crippling cold threaten to freeze you to death. Then there are killer cats. This is the home of the mountain lion known here by the Inca name, puma. It's strong and powerful predator. If the puma does kill you, a long list of animals will gladly dine on your remains from little gray foxes to giant Andean condors.

And you can't even trust your own kind. If the cold or the cats don't kill you, rivals for your territory will certainly try. But without a territory, you can't get a female to breed. So a male guanaco's life is filled with conflict. Supremacy is the objective, physical violence the method, females the prize. So if you're a male guanaco, tough isn't enough. You also have to be spitting mad. Born of volcanic fire, carved by ice and wind, the famous granite towers of Paine are the crowning glory of the world's longest mountain chain-the Andes. This is Southern Chile's Torres del Paine National Park only a thousand miles from the ice-cap of Antarctica. And just over the mountains is the Pacific Ocean a birthplace of storms.

On Mexico's Sea of Cortez a marine biologist prepares to encounter an animal local fisherman fear more than sharks. He is exploring a nether-world between fantasy and fact, pursuing a legendary monster of the deep that does, in fact, exits... Around the world, strange carcasses drift ashore, and fishermen catch huge creatures they have never seen before. Bit by bit, the secret life of this strange animal is becoming known. We can study its anatomy and the behavior of its smaller relatives - the bizarre and wonderful creatures called cephalopods.

If they did live anywhere where a man lived, they would make mince-meat of him in no time. Fiction has always branded the giant squid a ferocious enemy of man, and some of its close relations can be terrifying indeed. Master of the deep ocean, the sperm whale knows what we cannot, but recently scientists have found a way to learn its secrets. Whales were known to feed on squids, so it made sense to me try to use the sperm whale as our hound dog to lead us to the giant squid.