South America 2 Deadly 60

My name's Steve Backshall.

Whoo!

And this is my search...

For the Deadly 60.

That's not just animals deadly to me,

but animals deadly in their own world.

My crew and I are travelling the planet.

And you're coming with me! Every step of the way.

'Deadly!'

'Deadly is back in Venezuela

'and its wild neighbour Brazil, on a South-American odyssey.'

It's a land of big bugs, big snakes,

big cats and big adventures.

'We aim to catch a glimpse of the continent's biggest cat, the jaguar.

'As well as meeting a particularly slippery character.

'But first, I promised you big adventures

'and here it is, with one of South America's biggest predators.'

'My first contender weighs in at four times my bodyweight.

'If you went on bulk alone, it would be a dead cert for the Deadly list.

'It's the Orinoco crocodile.

'They're endangered. We have a chance to see one

'and help in the effort to save them.

'I've teamed up with Jack Hoopias

'who works for a Venezuelan crocodile conservation project.

'Working together, we need to find a nesting female.

'This means picking one out

'amongst the highest concentration of crocs I've seen.'

So these crocs off to our side here are spectacled caiman.

Now, that one there is about as big as they get.

They're not aggressive to people at all.

As soon as we've come close, they're heading down into the water.

But the Orinoco croc is just ahead of us.

And she's a very different story.

OK. Can you come in and...? Oy, oy, oy!

You can see she has a totally different attitude

to the spectacled caiman.

While they have headed into the water, she's come out.

That probably means she's being protective of something.

This is an animal that digs a nest

in sandy banks, just like this one here,

and lays her eggs into it.

And she will be very, very protective of those eggs.

The fact she's coming out of the water means either she's maternal

because she's thinking about laying, or she's already laid.

This is a good sign. There's a reason she's being protective.

We've sussed the situation and moved back to give her space.

It seems likely she's dug a nest and laid her eggs inside of it.

We'll go in and take some of those eggs

so they can be raised in captivity, then released.

So we'll get ourselves set up, get a much bigger stick

and try and collect the eggs off this very protective mother.

'Each nest has 20-70 eggs,

'but there are many scavengers who'd love to eat an egg or hatchling,

'that in the wild, perhaps just one might make it to adulthood.

'By raising them in captivity,

'their chances of survival are greatly increased.

'Unfortunately, she doesn't know we're trying to help her.'

It makes you jump, but that's exactly what it's designed to do.

This big display of power and strength and force

is trying to drive us away from the area. What do you think, Jack?

Here.

'Some estimates suggest there are only 250 animals left in the wild.

'To ensure their survival, we need a firm hand and a steady nerve.'

THEY SPEAK IN NATIVE TONGUE

So...I know that looked pretty brutal,

but we need now to keep her in the water

to buy Jack time to be able to dig up these eggs.

She's back, poised and ready.

And you can see...what she's just done to the stick...

with a couple of little snaps.

OK, she's preparing herself again. Here she comes.

The Orinoco crocodile is a really rather remarkable...

species of croc.

It has a snout that's kind of an intermediate shape

between those of true crocodiles and the gharial.

Very thin, quite narrow.

That means it can be driven through the water very fast.

This is really good for hunting in the water.

Hunting fish, hunting waterbirds.

But look back down the body

and you still have that classic broad, muscular shape.

The base of the tail is where they store a lot of fat.

That's broad on this animal, which is good.

It means she's in good shape.

The eyes have really caught my attention.

They're almost a kind of emerald green.

I don't think I've seen a crocodile with such piercing green eyes.

HE SPEAKS IN NATIVE TONGUE

There's something threatening about the way a croc sinks into the water.

And all of a sudden, a croc that's three, three-and-a-half metres long

and could weigh a quarter of a tonne,

just disappears completely.

We've got them.

-We've got the eggs, man.

-You've got them?

Yeah. I'm right behind you.

OK. I'm keeping my eyes on her.

'At three metres long, she's as big as any female crocodilian will get.

'Males get substantially bigger.

'Eggs and hatchlings are vulnerable in the wild.

'We can ensure this brood are safe from predators

'until they're old enough to take care of themselves,

'when they'll be released.

'It's simple, but very effective.'

Crocodiles have a reputation

for being cold, hard dinosaurs.

Mindless killing machines.

You can see that's far from the truth.

They are incredibly protective mothers.

She has this instinct to look after her offspring,

and she's willing to put herself in danger to do that.

'Each precious egg is carefully removed

'and placed in exactly the same position in the box,

'so as not to disturb the growing baby croc inside.'

-OK, Jack, are we good to go?

-We're good.

'A good day's work and a step in the right direction

'for this endangered marvellous mother.'

The Orinoco crocodile

finally starting to make a comeback here in Venezuela.

Protective mother and superlative hunter.

And definitely going on my list.

'Its protective maternal instincts

'make them a force to be reckoned with.

'With 68 pointed teeth and forceful jaw muscles

'that can snap rapidly shut on fish or much larger prey.

-'Orinoco croc...'

-'Deadly!'

'I've travelled across the river systems of south America

'looking for subjects for my lethal list.

'This environment is like a theatre of ferocity,

'with a whole cast of heroes and villains.

'A snappy caiman, a figure-hugging anaconda,

'a shocking electric eel

'and Deadly favourite, the piranha.' Argh!

Today, we're going for something different.

It's called the wolffish, and lives up to its wolf-like name.

Now, because they're only active, really hunting for a few hours,

we need a lot of things at our disposal.

A few local people are going to be fishing here.

In the distance, you can see a small house.

The people that live there say this is a good spot to catch a wolffish.

We've also got a tank here.

If we get one, we can put it in there and show it to you.

And we reckon there are probably two or three hours

that this animal is active and we stand a chance of catching one.

This wolf of the waterways feeds mainly on other fish,

but will have a go at anything in the water.

It's a ferocious hunter, and we soon had our first bite.

Success, Andrew?

-It's a small one.

-Can I have a look?

Look at the mouth there.

It is a wolfish, but small.

Well, yes, it's certainly small, but

you can see the beginnings of its deadly credentials.

So it's got some wicked-looking teeth.

Look at those!

They're like little needles.

That is a fierce trap.

You can properly also see that the eyes

are really reflecting the light of the camera.

Kind of glowing like rubies.

It's caused by a reflective layer of cells at the back of the eye

which reflects light back through the retina, increasing night vision.

This animal is fantastic at hunting at this time of day,

dusk and into early night-time.

Adult wolffish can be over a metre long and weigh half as much as I do.

That's something you wouldn't want to go swimming with.

Let's see if we can catch one.

Shall we put him in the tank?

'With the night young and having caught our first fish so quickly,

'I was excited by the prospect of catching our metre-long monster.'

I have caught something. I'm not sure what it is.

Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

I saw it come right up to the surface

and it got away at the very last second!

'But our early optimism turned to frustration

'as the big fish failed to show itself.'

-Have you got something?

-Yeah, yeah!

-OK.

OK, OK, OK.

No! We lost it again!

Just at the last second!

Argh!

It was there!

'Time and time again, the wolffish gave us the slip.'

I've had two very, very close calls and lost them at the last minute,

so I'm not taking any chances.

I've handed the line to Gardeia, who is an expert fisherman.

It's gone again!

'Even the locals were having trouble.

'It was time to call it quits.

'Word spread to the neighbours that we were on the hunt for a wolffish

'and they, too, had been busy fishing.'

Being as we had no luck,

a little bit of a way down the road, some other guys have been fishing

and I think they've got something. Let's go and have a little look.

-Aqui?

-Yes.

OK.

It may not be the monster wolffish we were hoping for,

but it's still pretty impressive.

It's a cylindrically-shaped fish with a great deal of muscle bulk,

which makes it very, very quick.

With one drive of the tail, it can propel itself forward

with terrific acceleration towards smaller fish.

And they are going to end up on the business end of the animal,

and that's those teeth.

We do actually overuse the term needle-sharp,

but in this case, it could not be more apt.

This fish has a face full of needle-sharp teeth.

Wolffish are one of the most aggressive fish found in this area.

They will take on anything they can fit into their mouths.

They have actually been said to leap into the canoes of fishermen

and people here can be frightened of these fish.

I'm not surprised. Imagine that super-sized.

It's a pretty freaky thought.

It really is a superb creature, even at this size.

This fish can grow to be well over a metre long

and weigh half as much as I do.

Imagine a fish like that stalking the depths of the Amazon River.

That is pretty fearsome, and that's the reason

the wolffish is going on the Deadly 60.

'The wolf of the Latin American waterways.

'With teeth that resemble little needles,

'it ambushes unsuspecting prey.

'The wolfish.

'Fighty, feisty,

'ugly and...'

'Deadly'.

On Deadly 60, we like a challenge. There is no greater challenge

than going looking for big cats in the jungle.

In the New World, which is where we are now,

the largest of all the big cats is the jaguar.

The jaguar is a creature of the deep forest.

It loves to stay hidden, particularly from its prey.

It won't pounce until it's any more

than five metres away from the animals it's hunting.

So it's expert at not being seen.

It also has enormous ranges.

Hundreds of square miles of forest that it'll range in search of food.

It's the hardest animal to find and film.

I've spent several months here looking for jaguars

and never seen them in the wild.

Let's hope our luck's going to change.

We have camera traps to lay out in places jaguars might go.

We're looking for people who might have seen a jaguar

and we'll cover the miles. That must improve our chances.

This is one of the biggest gambles we've ever taken on Deadly 60.

'We're following up reports of jaguar

'being spotted in this patch of forest.

'And they've certainly been here, leaving tell-tale traces behind.'

OK, this is interesting.

This tree is kind of like a scratching post for the jaguar.

You can see where the claws have cut into the bark here,

where it's scraped down with a massive paw.

There's even little chunks of bark here on the ground.

This is at a crossroads of several small paths.

So what's going on here is the jaguar is using this

as a way of marking its territory.

What it will probably also do is squirt some urine up here,

wipe the side of its face across this tree.

And any other jaguars that come through here

are going to realise that this is the border

of another jaguar's territory.

So this is actually a superb place to put up a camera trap

because it is possible that another jaguar will come through here.

Could be within weeks, could be within months.

If we're lucky, it could be in the next couple of days

and then we'll get it on our camera trap.

Right.

'Camera traps give us our best chance of filming this elusive cat.

'We'll leave them out all day and all night

'and anything that walks past will be caught on camera.

'Now all we can do is leave the camera to watch the forests for us.

'Our next lead was at a nearby village

'where one of the farmers had survived an attack by a jaguar

'and apparently sees them every few months.'

-Bonjour.

-Bonjour.

Mr Ivo here has had a very close encounter

with a jaguar here on his farm.

He actually protected his chickens from a jaguar attack

and actually got bitten in the process.

So, Mr Ivo was bitten here on the head.

You can see that pretty much took his scalp off.

There's a big scar here, more here.

He said he had nearly 50 stitches after the attack.

The jaguar delivers its killing bite right through the skull.

It's an animal that has a formidable bite force

and is perfectly capable of puncturing

right through the boniest part of the skull.

So to receive a bite to his head like this and get away scot-free,

actually, he's very, very lucky.

'In the hope jaguar may be prowling the area hunting livestock,

'we look for a spot to place our camera trap.'

There are two very small game trails running through the trees here.

And they intersect on this path.

So if I set up the camera just there,

I've got a nice broad spread over this area of forest.

Anything that passes through here, we're going to find on this camera.

'But we weren't going to rely solely on technology.

'The team and I were going to patrol the jungle

'to see what we could find.'

Jaguars are mostly nocturnal animals.

The majority of their activity, particularly hunting,

is around about dusk and just after.

'Whatever we spot,

'going out in a rainforest at night rarely disappoints.'

So much wildlife actually wakes up when it gets dark,

there's always likely to be a few surprises in store.

'Then my head torch caught the glisten of a twisted silken wonder.'

This is really rather beautiful.

It's the web of communal spiders.

Normally, spiders will build their web on their own

and hunt in pure solitude,

but these have learned to work together as a team.

Now, they are highly what's known as photophobic,

that is almost afraid of the sun.

So during the daytime, they'll find little alcoves

in amongst the silk where they'll hide out,

but at night, as you can see, they're scattered

all through this beautiful mesh of silk.

Because it's three-dimensional, it traps flying insects

from all sorts of different angles.

You can see that there's a shield bug that's got nabbed down there.

And once it's in there and stuck,

well, there's probably five or six different spiders

all scurrying in together to finish it off. It is wonderful.

Littered throughout the whole web, there are tiny remnants

of the insects that have been caught, killed and eaten in here.

It's absolutely beautiful.

'We continued looking well into the night, but with little success.

'Our only hope now was with our camera traps.

'Up early, we headed back into a now very wet jungle.'

The camera traps have been in place for a couple of days,

and more importantly, a couple of nights now.

So, we're heading back to see if they've recorded anything.

Unfortunately, it's a little bit on the damp side.

But I guess you kind of expect that.

After all, we are in the rainforest.

Here is our tree.

I can't see any more fresh scratch marks here.

OK. Well, we have some images on here, which is a good thing.

Let's get them into the computer so we can see what we've got.

This is all of us setting the thing up.

Right, OK, now we have an image shot at night-time.

And...

It's an opossum.

Fantastic. A common opossum.

Just wandering around the tree.

Very, very odd-looking animal.

And you can see as well the really direct eye shine in its eyes

picked up from the infrared light.

OK. Another night-time image.

And the opossum again, wandering...

this time, right through the central shot.

That's lovely. Really, really nice image.

OK. One more night-time image.

And it's our opossum again!

'The opossum certainly wasn't camera shy.

'But it wasn't the animal we wanted.

'The village camera trap was our last chance.

'But before we wandered into the forest,

'Mr Ivo had found a jungle jewel on his farm.'

Ah, red rump.

That's a nice one.

This is a Brazilian red rump tarantula.

Not as easy to get in the hand as they usually are. There we go.

Mr Ivo found this close to his house,

and kept it for us, which is really good of him.

Look at all those wonderful hairs covering the legs.

It just looks impossibly furry.

And those actually serve

as a means of picking up vibrations.

They're very, very sensitive.

They are, though, of course, superlative predators.

Mostly hunting at night.

And a spider of this size could feed on very small mammals,

but more likely, on things like crickets and cockroaches.

And it kills them by using those fangs.

Can you see those there?

OK.

I think we'll set him free a bit closer to the forest,

away from all the pigs and the dogs.

Wonderful. Can someone grab my snake stick?

'This was our last chance to get a glance of a jaguar.'

Now, if my sense of direction is right,

our second camera trap is up here somewhere on our right-hand side.

Yep. There it is.

Good job they're waterproof.

Let's see what we've got.

OK, so we've got absolutely nothing on this card whatsoever.

'Even the technology couldn't come up trumps this time.

'No jaguar, no nothing.'

Luckily, however, I do have a way that we can get close to a jaguar.

'Time for our backup plan.

'This captive jaguar was rescued by the Brazilian military as a cub

'and cannot now be returned to the wild,

'so is kept in this sanctuary.

'It's not the wild one we wanted,

'but a rare chance to see a jaguar close enough to smell its breath.'

You can see how the jaguar's

actually moving around its world, being drawn by scent.

So the nose is pressing down to the ground,

pressing to the plants around it.

It's processing its world based on smell.

It's quite interesting to see

how wary these guys are with the jaguar.

They come in here with him every single day

and they're big guys,

but they have an enormous amount of respect

for the power of this animal and I'm not surprised.

Looking at the bulk of the head,

it's so broad, so muscular.

Containing the vast muscles that drive a jaw

which can power clean through the bone of a skull

of a peccary or a tapir.

As jungle cats, jaguars are up there with tigers...

..as the big cats that are most comfortable in water.

You can see almost the first thing this animal has done

upon coming out into the open

is to head into the water to cool down.

They're great swimmers and quite often go into the water to hunt.

So they'll hunt crocodiles, caimans,

anacondas, all sorts of other large predators that inhabit the water.

Definitely very, very comfortable down there

where you think of cats as being completely out of their depth.

The jaguar is the largest cat found in the Americas.

An animal that can kill from no more than a few meters away

and with a single bite to the back of the head.

It is one of the most powerful animals in the world.

And for that reason, definitely going on my list.

'This stunning night stalker silently steals up on prey.

'With a stocky, sturdy body, it overpowers animals as large as tapir

'and delivers a killer blow clear through a skull.

'The ever-elusive jaguar remains undoubtedly...'

'Deadly!'

This is so exciting!

'Join me next time as I continue my search for the Deadly 60.'

Argh!

Really mistimed that quite badly!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd