Snapping Turtle Deadly 60 Bites

On Deadly 60, I've had loads of incredible animal encounters.

Here's just one of my many favourites.

This is Deadly 60 Bites.

We're here, in Louisiana, USA,

looking for the swamp beasts with the biggest bite.

This is Black Bayou wetlands.

All of these cypress trees, turning autumn gold

reflected perfectly in this glassy-smooth water.

It's about as beautiful as a swamp could ever be.

But somewhere beneath these dark waters

is a monster with one of the most powerful scalpel-sharp jaws

in the whole of the animal kingdom

and that's what we're hoping to find.

The monster in question is called an alligator snapping turtle.

They spend a lot of their time sitting still,

looking a bit like a log.

And the clever thing is they get their lunch to come to them.

On the inside of their open mouth, a fleshy growth wiggles invitingly

to passing fish.

Any who take the bait find themselves grabbed

by some of the most powerful jaws in the world.

To help find one, I've enlisted the help of an expert.

This is Mitch. He's studying the turtles.

The Black Bayou is pretty vast.

And the water is, as you can see, it's pretty murky.

So our chances of actually just happening across the animal

we're looking for, are pretty slender.

We put out these hoop net traps...

And there's fresh fish bait inside.

I'm really hoping...

..that we've caught something special.

OK, our first trap's empty. We've still got six more to try.

I'm still confident that we're going to find something.

I should never, ever say that on camera!

STEVE LAUGHS

Next trap's just in front of us here

and it's a good deal lower in the water than the others,

which could mean that something heavy inside is keeping it down.

Oh, wow!

Yes!

Oh, my goodness. Look at the size of it!

Two! There's two in there!

Oh, my God!

Look at the size of it!

STEVE LAUGHS

We actually have three.

I cannot tell you how heavy this is.

I was just starting to feel that, er, the day

was going to have no results.

We checked all our traps. This was the last one that was left.

And, um, well...

absolutely unreal.

Three giant alligator snapping turtles.

We're just going to be real careful, real gentle,

try to ease them out.

You'll notice, as we're moving into the turtle,

we'll keep our hands a lot further away from the head

than you would expect.

That's because it, actually... When it strikes,

the head really extends forward from the front of the shell...

a good distance.

And, where as with the small one here, I guess I'd be in danger

of losing a finger,

I think it's pretty safe to say that if my hand or even my arm

were to get too close to the jaws of this big fella

then I'd probably lose it.

Wow!

Well done, Mitch.

OK.

Steve, if you hold what you've got

-then just do your best to keep your fingers clear.

-Yeah.

Just make sure your right hand doesn't stray from that spot.

OK.

Right...

Good job, man. Good job. You've got him.

Woo-hoo!

That is a big turtle.

Probably the largest freshwater turtle in the world.

But that isn't really what's so impressive about him.

Look at the size of that head!

It's totally out of proportion to the whole of the rest of the body

and most of that is just pure muscle power

driving that jaw.

At the edge of it is, well, it's incredibly sharp.

It doesn't have teeth cos it doesn't need to have, really.

It's almost like a great big curved kitchen knife.

You can see the hooked snout at the end

and... Actually, I'm not going to be able to hold him like this for long

cos he's just too heavy.

They can get to be heavier than I am.

What do you reckon, Mitch, how heavy is this turtle?

About 110 pounds, Steve.

-110 pounds.

-Pound for pound, probably a lot stronger than you or I!

That's for sure!

Absolutely sure. I'm having so much difficulty holding him.

Oh, look at that!

You can see how I'm really straining to hold him

but you can see how far the neck extends.

And that's how he hunts.

I mean, looking at the shape of the head and the body,

it's very irregular.

The colour's quite dark and he blends in really, really well

with all the vegetation at the bottom of the water here.

And then as soon as a fish gets too close,

the head snaps out like that.

The jaws clamp shut incredibly quickly,

and the fish is history.

There's a lot of animals in this series that people say to me,

"What on Earth are you doing putting that on the Deadly 60?"

I don't think anyone's going to say that

about the alligator snapping turtle.

He really is a living dinosaur.

I'm going to put him back cos I just can't hold him any more.

All right, big fella!

In you go.

It's not only going in the Deadly 60,

but also on my personal list

of creatures that I never want to get bitten by.

Monster-sized, monster-looking

with monster jaws -

it's a living monster.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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