Superpower Deadly 60


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My name's Steve Backshall.

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And this is my search...

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for the Deadly 60.

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That's not just animals that are deadly to me...

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but animals that are deadly in their own world.

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My crew and I are travelling the planet.

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And you're coming with me!

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Every step of the way.

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(Deadly!)

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This Deadly 60 is all about animal superheroes,

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each with their own special powers.

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Speed,

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vision,

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smell,

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hearing,

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touch

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and senses we humans don't even possess.

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Highly honed super powers.

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Imagine having hearing so acute you could hear the footsteps of a mouse

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or pinpoint a spider in its web or having such a highly developed nose

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you could smell your next meal from 40 miles away.

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But there's nothing mystical about these talents.

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They can all be explained through science, so we've come to

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Manchester Museum to put nature's miracles under the microscope.

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Museums are incredibly important places

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for the study of natural history.

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Inside these cases are wonders and oddities from all over the world

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and I can do a complete tour of the planet in a matter of minutes here.

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I can see everything from the very smallest creatures that have

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ever lived to the largest, like this mighty sperm whale.

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'We're here at the museum to get beneath the fur

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'and the feathers and find out the facts.'

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Below me is a labyrinth of passages,

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leading to endless hidden store rooms.

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There are tens of thousands of specimens here, endless rooms,

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boxes and drawers, filled with hidden wonders.

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This is the skeleton of a cheetah

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and obviously the cheetah's superpower is its incredible speed.

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The cheetah can run from 0-60 miles per hour

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in under 3 seconds,

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accelerating faster than a Ferrari.

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But how does it do this?

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Well, we can tell so much about the function of an animal

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from its skeleton and the fastest land animal has a bone structure

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built for a high-velocity life.

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I think the most interesting thing about it

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really is how lightweight the bones are.

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So lifting up this forelimb here, it almost feels

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more like the bones of a bird than a cat.

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They're incredibly lightweight, more lightweight for its size than

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any other species of cat and obviously that means that this

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animal has less weight to drag around with it.

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And less weight equals more speed.

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But that isn't the only secret to their superpower.

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Lightness can certainly help with pace

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but that alone doesn't explain the cheetah's superlative swiftness.

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You can also see that this shoulder joint here is incredibly

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flexible and the flexibility in these limbs and also in the

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spine here means it can travel a huge distance with every step.

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Flexibility at the hip and shoulder joints combine with a spine

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that flexes like a bow before springing back with elastic force.

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At full whack, the cheetah covers 7 metres with every bound.

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Slow motion film footage has proved that a sprinting cheetah

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spends more than half their time fully airborne.

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Now this also is very, very interesting, the skull,

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and it's tiny,

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it's absolutely minute.

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It has a massive nasal cavity here for sucking in huge

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amounts of oxygen to help it keep running for longer.

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'In South Africa, I had the opportunity to get unusually close

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'to this fleet-footed feline

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'and see a little of what makes them the Prince of Pace.'

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You can see here the body shape of the cheetah.

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Very small head, small ears, it's very, very aerodynamic.

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It's not like a lion that has a really, really heavy, hefty skull.

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The cheetah has to bring down quite small prey quickly

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and very efficiently.

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The cheetah's life is dominated by its high velocity

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hunting method.

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Unlike other felines, their claws do not retract

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but are always extended for better grip.

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The tail functions like a counterweight,

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balancing them in tight turns.

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It's no wonder that the cheetah can count speed

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as its superpower.

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So not quite faster than a speeding bullet,

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but they certainly shift, which makes them true animal superheroes.

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For many other animals,

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their highly developed senses are taken to the status of a superpower.

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Senses that enable them to discern their prey.

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One animal superpower that we as human beings are definitely

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lacking in is the sense of smell and perhaps the mammal that takes

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the sense of smell to the ultimate extreme is the bear.

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The bears are the largest land carnivores,

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with bags of brute force, bulk and brawn.

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But their superpower is surprisingly subtle.

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That nose is home to one of the most acute senses of smell on earth.

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With our puny sense of smell we wander around oblivious to the fact

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that the air we breathe is alive with microscopic molecules of scent.

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A bear, however, is hundreds,

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perhaps thousands of times more proficient with pong

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and is ceaselessly processing all these stinky signals.

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These grizzlies may look like they're

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ambling along aimlessly but as that nose drops to the snow,

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it's just found out all it needs to know, purely through smell.

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So these skulls here belong to a variety of different

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kinds of bears.

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We've got brown bear at the front,

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but this is a skull of the polar bear, the mightiest land carnivore.

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Being such a huge mammal, the polar bear relies on big prey,

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fat-rich animals such as ringed and bearded seals

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and even whales, gorging vast amounts of meat at one sitting.

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The largest polar bear ever recorded weighed over

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a tonne, as heavy and as long as a compact car.

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Despite their size,

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they can outpace the world's fastest man with ease.

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But it's their sense of smell that's so special.

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They must perceive the world in a whole different way to us,

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like the air's painted with invisible scents and aromas,

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telling of food, potential mates or rivals to be avoided.

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The polar bear's skull is quite dog-like.

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It has the same amount of teeth as you'll find

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in a dog's skull and it has an enormous amount of the skull

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given over to its sense of smell.

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So for comparison, this is a cast of a human skull.

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That little hole there is the nasal cavity.

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Well, if I was to take a line down the centre of this skull here

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I'd get this.

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That's a cross-section of a polar bear's skull.

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This little hole here is where the brain sits

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and this massive area here is the nasal cavity.

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Inside there is this twisted structure,

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those are called turbinates,

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and that increases the surface area of the inside of the nose.

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That massive, complex nasal system is linked to tangles of nerves,

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carrying back information to the brain.

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The part of the brain that processes these smells is also

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abnormally large and well-developed.

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A polar bear can detect a seal that's hidden a metre below the ice

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from over a mile away.

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So this animal is, more than any other, dominated by smells,

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so much so that polar bears have been seen walking 20,

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perhaps 40 miles in a dead straight line towards a seal carcass

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that there's no way they could have seen.

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The only way they could have known it was there was by smelling it

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from 20 or even 40 miles away.

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This is an animal that takes the sense of smell

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to the status of a superpower and certainly puts our own to shame.

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Manchester Museum is home to 4.5 million objects.

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But it's not just about long-dead specimens.

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There are plenty of live animals here too and the next one

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will help me illustrate our next super sense - eyesight.

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Vision is the most important sense for us human beings.

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But even our primary sense is pretty weak

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when compared with our animal counterparts.

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Geckos have great night sight and may be able to perceive colour

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even when it gets dark.

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Hippos can see even when they're swimming underwater,

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and birds of prey like buzzards can spot the tiniest of movements

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from a careless bunny from over a mile away.

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There are many groups of animals that have incredibly

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highly developed eyesight, but some of the most unusual,

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certainly the most charismatic, belong to the chameleons.

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These lizards are legendary for their colour-changing abilities

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and their blink-and-you'll-miss-it quick tongue.

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The tongue can be longer than its body, has a sticky tip

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that can envelop an insect, and it can fire out in 1/125th of a second.

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Argh!

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But before that tongue can fire, the chameleon needs to locate a target.

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And it does that with bizarre but brilliant eyesight,

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so good it qualifies as a super sense.

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This is a panther chameleon from Madagascar

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and at the moment he's unusually mobile.

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For the majority of time these animals stand still,

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blending in with their background, waiting for prey to come close by.

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The only thing that's really moving are those eyes.

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Because those eyes move independently of one another,

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one eye can look forwards while another eye looks backwards.

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It gives them an unprecedented field of vision.

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Each eye can twist around to span 180 degrees.

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With each functioning independently,

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it gives the chameleon near 360 degrees of vision.

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It means the lizard can stand still

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and its eyes do all the work of finding its prey.

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To show you what it must be like to see like a chameleon,

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I've got a Deadly 60 camera trick.

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Let's imagine for the purpose of this experiment

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that these two miniature cameras are eyes.

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For most animals, those are pretty well set.

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There's a certain amount of movement inside the socket

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but nothing like what you see on a chameleon.

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In a chameleon, I can have both eyes pointing forwards

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and then one eye can turn straight upwards and look at the ceiling.

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Perhaps go off to the side.

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I can even look directly behind me.

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And these eyes can be constantly scanning,

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on the lookout for a potential meal.

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There's my crew there in front of me

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while the other eye is looking way off to the side.

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But the crucial thing is

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when these two eyes come back together,

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because then they create an image

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that essentially overlaps and it's now in three dimensions.

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This is called binocular vision.

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In this sphere of vision there is greater perception of depth,

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greater perception of movement.

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This is the part of vision that's essential for any predator.

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Before a chameleon hunts, you'll always see it

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bring both of its eyes together and focus directly on its prey.

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Chameleons nail their victims nine times out of ten.

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It can choose between 360-degree field of view

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or highly focused binocular vision -

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finding its prey with wandering eyeballs then locking in on it,

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judging distance and movement - the perfect combination.

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Once those two eyes are concentrated into the forward position

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and the chameleon is aligned, they rarely, if ever, miss.

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Bam! Absolutely sensational.

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He is one messy eater.

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So far, our animal superheroes have shown us

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supreme special powers, and all revealed by their biology -

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their skeletons, eyes and freakishly sensitive sense of smell.

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But even the most brutal of predators can have a tender side.

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In fact, many build up a picture of a hidden world

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using nothing other than touch.

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As human beings, we really feel the environment around us using touch,

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and we actually underestimate quite how potent that can be.

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I mean, you're always sensing the texture, the temperature,

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perhaps the sharpness of objects.

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We do that is by having hundreds or even thousands of nerve endings

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close to the surface of the skin in our most sensitive areas.

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That can be the soles of our feet,

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the palms of our hands, perhaps our upper lips.

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But some animals have actually done this to such a degree

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that it's become a super sense, by developing whiskers,

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like on this Californian sea lion.

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Each whisker is connected to so many nerve endings

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that they're far more sensitive than any cat could ever dream for.

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The whiskers are connected to

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bundles of exquisitely responsive nerve endings.

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The tiniest movements excite them,

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sending messages pinging to the brain.

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This thermal image shows how hot they are,

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kept active with warm blood even in a world of ice.

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Living in extreme environments, they need an extreme super sense.

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In fact, this can sense fish not just by actually touching

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the animal itself, but by actually feeling the turbulence

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or the wake that's left behind as a fish is swimming away.

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During studies in Germany, researchers fitted a seal

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with a mask and headphones to restrict its senses.

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The aim was to find out what information it could pick up

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using only its whiskers.

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This superimposed white line shows the invisible wake

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left by a small submarine,

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much like the hidden trail left by a swimming fish.

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Even with its other senses obscured, the seal followed the submarine

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from the tiny turbulence it left behind.

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Tracking down a long-gone fish by the mere memory of its movements -

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without doubt a seal's winning whiskers are super-powered.

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In the icy gloom of the Canadian seas,

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we knew that underwater visibility was going to be an issue.

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But not for the Stellar sea lions we were there to find.

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They knew exactly where we were

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and came thundering out of the pea-soup seas with genuine menace.

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Oh!

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He is gigantic! This is spectacular!

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Well, I'm going to sit here on the bottom.

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Oh, that's a big male Stellar sea lion

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and a very frightening encounter as soon as we hit the bottom.

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'We human beings rely so much on sight

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'that when visibility's as bad as this, you instantly feel vulnerable.

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'The Stellar sea lions, though, could pick up everything

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'they needed to know about us purely through their whiskers.'

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It's thought that some seals can actually detect a swimming fish

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from as much as 100 metres away...

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..and sensing that fish up to 35 seconds after it's swum past.

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Their super sense enables them to put their superior

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twisting, turning, swimming skills to ultimate lethal effect.

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Our next superpower also involves sensing vibrations

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that are invisible to us.

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It's hyper-powered hearing - the ability to perceive sound

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by detecting vibrations through the ears.

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There you go, there you go.

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Isn't that beautiful?

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Amongst the birds, the group that perhaps have

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the most highly defined superpowers are the owls.

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This is a great grey owl and it has

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some of the most extraordinary hearing found on any species.

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The reason for that is that the great grey owl

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lives in the northern hemisphere in places where there tends to be

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a lot of snow, and their prey is very often hidden completely

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by that boundary of white thick snow.

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So eyesight is of no use whatsoever. Instead, it needs to be able to

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pick up on the tiny scuttling sounds made as those animals scurry around.

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The thing that's most instantly evident is this

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extraordinary facial disc.

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It's the largest found on any owl and it's made up of

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very stiff feathers which divert sound back towards the ears,

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which are hidden here, beneath these softer feathers.

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The face of the great grey owl acts very much like a satellite dish,

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channelling even the faintest of sounds towards the owl's ears.

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This is enough for this animal to pinpoint anything scuttling around,

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even if it's totally hidden, even if it can't see it.

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As some of the animals they're hunting also hear pretty well,

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the owl has a special mechanism that means death comes from above,

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with no sound at all.

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So, these wings here have, along the leading edge,

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special feathers which baffle the movement of wind over the wings.

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The great grey owl flies in towards its prey

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in almost total silence, and then can punch down through snow

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that can be solid enough to hold a human being's weight,

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and catch the vole that's moving around beneath it.

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Which means that a lemming

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scuttling around in a subterranean corridor of snow is still not safe.

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However, there's one animal that takes hearing to a whole new level.

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Even hyper-hearing owls are outdone by our next nocturnal beast.

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For starters they can fly which, for a mammal,

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is already pretty special.

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So the next group of creatures are airborne animals

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that do the majority of their hunting or foraging by night.

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But unlike the owls, they're not birds at all.

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In fact they're mammals, the only mammals that can truly fly -

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they're bats.

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And their primary superpower is called echo-location -

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locating objects using echoes.

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And in the Gomantong caves in Borneo, we saw this first hand.

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Living in this part of the world, you would not want to be an insect.

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Every one of these bats is equipped with an echo-location system.

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It's very much like the sonar on a submarine,

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you've probably seen it in movies.

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You hear a sound - "bop" - which disappears off into the distance

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and it bounces back off objects that are in front of it.

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In a bat, that click can reverberate off the smallest of insects,

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even something as small as a midge.

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The sound pattern that comes back tells the bat

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exactly where it is and then, bam, the bat catches the insect.

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We human beings actually have the ability to perceive a certain amount

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of our environment using sound,

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it's just nothing like as highly developed

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as the sophisticated super sense of bats.

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As a way of figuring this out for yourself,

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try closing your eyes and bringing your hand towards you.

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Keep on talking as you do so and you should be able to hear,

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from the change in tone as the sound bounces back to you,

0:21:390:21:42

that you've got an object in front of you.

0:21:420:21:44

That's kind of how the bat's echo-location works.

0:21:440:21:47

Any superhero would be proud with an ability so acute.

0:21:490:21:53

Bouncing invisible sound waves off the world around them,

0:21:530:21:56

they can detect the presence of distant insects,

0:21:560:22:00

as well as discerning their size, their speed,

0:22:000:22:03

even predicting where they might move to.

0:22:030:22:05

For a bat, it's all about constantly updating

0:22:100:22:13

an image of the world around you, using those ultrasonic clicks.

0:22:130:22:17

Seeing with sound is a sonic superpower

0:22:210:22:23

that means that bats can hunt in total darkness,

0:22:230:22:26

munching perhaps 3,000 mosquitoes in one night,

0:22:260:22:31

or snatching a spider clean off its web.

0:22:310:22:34

So we humans are put to shame in terms of sight...

0:22:380:22:41

sound...

0:22:410:22:43

..and smell.

0:22:440:22:45

But it gets worse because we're yet to deal with

0:22:470:22:50

one of the groups of animals that have the most different superpowers.

0:22:500:22:55

They've been around for an estimated 500 million years -

0:22:550:22:58

..the sharks.

0:23:000:23:02

With two-thirds of their brain dedicated to smell,

0:23:030:23:06

sharks can detect one drop of blood in 1 million drops of water.

0:23:060:23:10

They can hear seals from 250 metres away,

0:23:100:23:14

and even see in the dark better than cats.

0:23:140:23:18

So, far from a mindless killer, the shark is one of the most

0:23:200:23:23

highly adapted and perceptive of all predators.

0:23:230:23:26

But they possess one sixth sense superpower

0:23:260:23:30

that I personally think is pretty much unbeatable.

0:23:300:23:33

What that is is their ability to sense the weak electrical fields

0:23:350:23:38

that are given off by their prey.

0:23:380:23:40

This ability is called electro-reception.

0:23:420:23:45

It's the shark's power to detect the electrical signals

0:23:450:23:49

that are given off by every living creature.

0:23:490:23:51

And you can see that most evidently in this animal.

0:23:560:23:59

This is a baby hammerhead shark.

0:23:590:24:01

All over the snout of sharks

0:24:010:24:03

are little pores called ampullae of Lorenzini.

0:24:030:24:08

Those are filled with a special kind of jelly

0:24:080:24:11

which picks up the tiniest electrical fields.

0:24:110:24:13

I've actually seen great hammerheads underwater

0:24:160:24:19

and it was an awful lot bigger than this little one here.

0:24:190:24:22

Simon, Simon, Simon!

0:24:240:24:26

This is one of the most awesome creatures in the sea.

0:24:260:24:30

I don't believe it. It's a great hammerhead.

0:24:300:24:33

This is absolutely incredible.

0:24:330:24:37

It's come right up to us, right up in front of the cameraman.

0:24:380:24:42

Oh, my god, I don't believe it! I do not believe it!

0:24:420:24:46

That is out of this world!

0:24:460:24:50

As that shark got in close to us and came right up to the camera,

0:24:500:24:54

it actually shook its head towards the camera.

0:24:540:24:58

I don't know if that was a threat display of some kind

0:24:580:25:01

or if it was trying to sort out what was going on

0:25:010:25:04

with the electrical impulses coming from the camera itself,

0:25:040:25:07

but there's no doubt hammerheads use that super sense to find their prey.

0:25:070:25:11

It works in a very similar way to a metal detector.

0:25:110:25:15

Metal detectors can detect the very tiny electro-magnetic signals

0:25:150:25:19

that are given off by conductive metals.

0:25:190:25:21

Somewhere in this sand is a coin and I'm going to try and find it

0:25:210:25:25

in the same way that a hammerhead would try and find prey

0:25:250:25:29

buried beneath the sand.

0:25:290:25:31

The hammerhead would move along the bottom...

0:25:310:25:34

..doing circuits...

0:25:360:25:38

..until it picks up a very weak field.

0:25:390:25:43

The animals it's feeding on can't help but give off those fields,

0:25:440:25:49

even if they're lying perfectly still.

0:25:490:25:51

Just the beating of their heart is enough to create a field

0:25:510:25:56

that the hammerhead can sense.

0:25:560:25:58

When it does sense that, its senses will fire off,

0:25:590:26:06

telling it to target in on its food.

0:26:060:26:09

The hammerhead's electro-reception is so effective

0:26:110:26:15

that it's comparable to us

0:26:150:26:17

detecting a household battery from half a mile away.

0:26:170:26:20

BEEPING

0:26:230:26:25

It's right there. OK, I've got a beep.

0:26:250:26:27

Once the hammerhead has had one signal - there it is...

0:26:270:26:31

..it'll usually circle around and around,

0:26:330:26:37

using its flexible neck to find the epicentre of the signal.

0:26:370:26:44

BEEPING

0:26:440:26:45

It's right there.

0:26:450:26:47

And then it'll go in for the kill.

0:26:470:26:49

And there it is.

0:26:540:26:56

In this case, a two pence piece.

0:26:560:26:59

In the shark's case, lunch.

0:26:590:27:02

A fish can hide itself completely.

0:27:020:27:05

It can be still, silent, scentless, it doesn't matter.

0:27:050:27:09

The shark's special superpower will still find it

0:27:090:27:12

and when it does, there's only going to be one winner.

0:27:120:27:15

We tend to think of ourselves

0:27:180:27:20

as being the most highly-evolved species on earth.

0:27:200:27:23

But, as we've clearly seen, we're surrounded by animal superheroes

0:27:230:27:27

with special abilities beyond our wildest dreams.

0:27:270:27:30

Predators have superpowers and they always have.

0:27:320:27:36

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

0:27:380:27:42

Yes, I see it, it's enormous!

0:27:450:27:47

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