Africa - a continent teeming with life. Across its varied landscapes, an extraordinary range of plants and animals thrives. While its animal aristocrats are the most familiar, lurking in the shadows is an incredible diversity of reptiles we seldom see. They’ve conquered just about every habitat on the continent and have evolved a remarkable array of adaptations that make them the undisputed masters of the underworld.

This film documents the incredible diversity of snakes and lizards that occur across the varied habitats of southern Africa. It starts with the great leveller for all reptiles – that they are cold blooded and need to warm up to function efficiently. We see a rock monitor one of the largest lizards in Africa warming himself in the sun. From here we move on to discover that despite what the viewer might think snakes and lizards are in fact very closely related - and there are lizards with forked tongues (a snake feature), legless lizards - and snakes with legs.