Cuba Deadly Pole to Pole

My name's Steve Backshall.

And this is Deadly Pole To Pole.

Oh!

From the top of the world to the bottom.

Whoa!

Deadly places.

Deadly adventures.

And deadly animals.

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

Argh!

Deadly!

Hola, hola!

This time on Deadly Pole to Pole we're in Cuba

and kicking off in style.

It's the largest island in the Caribbean

and a place that's legendary for its music,

its culture, its salsa dancing

and its classic cars,

but we're here to show you a completely different side to Cuba -

the deadly side!

I'll be calling out for a prehistoric predator.

HE CALLS OUT

Wah!

And going in search of subterranean snakes.

Plus meeting the mightiest mouth on the reef.

And it's going to be really cool if I manage to keep all my fingers!

Ah, ow!

From the start of our journey in Svalbard in the Arctic circle,

we travelled nearly 5,000 miles to reach

the Caribbean island of Cuba. We're pretty much halfway down.

Off the Cuban coast is an uninhabited island chain.

Somewhere in these coral seas hunts a vast reptile.

The American crocodile.

The biggest are longer than a minibus,

and more than half as heavy.

And the bite is bad!

All crocodiles tend to be most active at night,

so that's when our search begins.

After a few hours, we get contact.

We've had a call on the radio for a boat that's moored up

about five minutes away from here.

They reckon they've got a large crocodile that's come in to

the back of the boat looking for scraps.

I have no idea quite how big this is going to be

but this could be our chance to see the American crocodile at its best.

This looks like it.

Right, let's go see what we've got.

Hola.

-Hey, guys.

-Como esta?

-Hi.

Right. Yes.

That is a proper American crocodile.

At this size it's almost certainly a male,

the females don't get to be as large as the guys do

and I'm guessing that he's got a pretty potent bite force.

Crocodilians have the highest recorded bite force

of any creatures on the planet.

This pressure gauge tests bite force,

and to get a decent chomp,

the croc needs to sense there's food to be had.

And when pressure's applied to it...

the force is recorded on this meter here.

All we've gotta do is get this guy to pay us some attention.

OK.

Crocodiles have completely individual personalities,

so I really can't predict how this animal's going to react,

and this one looks like he's paying us some interest.

I'll just get my feet out the way.

Right. Here he comes.

OK, that's just a little nibble with the front part of the jaw,

it's now going to use the whole body to try and wrench that.

Oh, wow! Just the slightest squeeze of the jaws

and the gauge goes zipping up.

Yes!

That's a big croc.

He's gone over 1,000lbs per square inch.

That's one of the strongest bites we've ever recorded on Deadly.

Only outdone by its cousin, the saltwater croc.

But from the surface, you see only a hint of the croc's powers.

We want to see one underwater.

It's too dangerous to attempt at night so we're waiting for daybreak.

In the sunlight, we'll be able to see,

so there's less chance of a croc springing a surprise attack.

So all we need now is to find one.

These islands are dotted with loads of paradise beaches.

And it's a perfect place to start looking for crocodile signs.

Are you all right there, mate?

The beach is covered with animal tracks,

but none look like crocodile, so what are they?

-Look!

-There's lots of them.

Look at that.

This is absolutely remarkable.

There are wild animals scurrying towards me

from all over the place.

I feel like I've landed on Dr Doolittle's island.

And one of them has to be one of the most curious looking critters

I have ever seen.

Look at this!

I can't believe it, he really is just going to wander up

and take this out of my hand.

This is a Cuban hutia.

It's a kind of rodent. Oh, oops.

Essentially a massive hamster and they only occur in Cuba.

It's like someone rang the dinner bell

and all of a sudden all of the bushes

have just erupted with life.

We've got a hermit crab coming towards us as well.

Look at that, it really is coming into the food.

Surely the hermit crabs aren't going to come

and take things out of my hand, that would be too bizarre for words.

Nope.

Looks like the iguana might be about to dart in. No?

Look at that.

You are the most curious looking creature. It's like someone's taken

the head of a beaver and stuck it onto a wallaby.

I was expecting Cuba's wildlife to be special...

..but not quite this special.

Unfortunately though, we're on the hunt for deadly animals,

and I'm not sure that any of this lot qualify.

But an American croc definitely will.

Noel, our Cuban biologist, is taking us to a lagoon

where crocs are often seen

and apparently there's a good chance they might even come and find us.

HE CALLS OUT

The wild crocodiles here are sometimes fed by the locals.

HE CALLS OUT

When they hear these calls

they know there's opportunity for a free feed.

I know this seems ludicrous that we could be calling in

an ancient reptile merely by shouting out its name,

but these animals are surprisingly intelligent and they're very,

very driven by sound,

and there is already a crocodile heading straight towards us.

-So this is extremely...

-Everyone nice and quiet for a second.

I can't even begin to tell you how unusual this is.

There are certainly not many places in the world

where you can have a wild crocodile deliberately come this close to you

without any sign whatsoever of aggression.

It's not fully grown, but its senses are fully formed.

And this one here, you can see how much it's driven by vibrations,

if I just thrash the water slightly with my hand.

The sound mimics the splashing of an injured fish or other animal

in the water.

They're detected by sensory bumps in the lip scales.

It's going to come straight towards me,

and I'm going to take my fingers out of the water cos otherwise

I think I'd probably lose them.

If you think I'm being over-dramatic,

a few years ago in Argentina...

..I accidentally stepped on a croc this size.

Whah!

That was a cayman and I've just been given a really nasty bite.

A lucky escape, but I still needed ten stitches in my leg.

So, youngster or not, he gets my full respect and attention.

There aren't many rules for diving with crocodiles,

mostly because not many people have been dumb enough to do it.

So I'm going to stick to the rules I use for swimming with sharks.

Be confident and big in the water.

Don't flail hands and feet around that could look like fishy food.

OK, here goes nothing.

And the last rule,

keep your eyes on the animal, so they can't take you by surprise.

But as the visibility disappears in a puff of sediment,

the croc is suddenly invisible. Where have they gone?

You've got one at your ten o'clock, about ten metres away, just gone under.

Be careful, fellas. It's right ahead of you now.

Yeah, I see him.

It's such a chilling sight...

..having a crocodile head straight towards you like this...

..particularly when they're capable of just dropping out of sight...

and becoming invisible when they're just metres away from you.

But this, after all, is the entire hunting strategy of every crocodile.

Steve, there's another one here on the right. Bigger.

Another croc, as long as I am tall.

A much more menacing beast to share the water with.

He's walking along the ground, using the broad paddle-shaped tail.

There's certainly not many places in the world you could do this,

where you can be that close to this set of teeth.

I mean, I know this isn't a monster croc but it's still enough.

But when you lose sight of it...

..it sends a chill up your spine. Where's it gone?

His head is this far from my leg.

I don't want to move because

any movement might make me look like food.

Hold your nerve.

No sudden movements, and somehow

keep an eye on two separate circling crocodiles.

But they're not trying to munch me.

They think there's easy food around,

we just need to make sure we are not it.

Such a magnificent creature.

When he's on the surface like this,

the eyes have a fabulous green dinosaur quality to them.

But when he's underwater, like now...

..its eyes almost seem milky.

That's because he has an extra eyelid called a nictitating membrane

which closes over the eyes, protects them,

functions almost like a pair of swimmer's goggles.

So underwater, they can see, but probably not that well.

Instead they focus on vibrations,

and the wake left behind by swimming fish.

Fully grown males might hunt at the surface for birds,

or decent sized mammals.

They can lie perfectly still under the water for 30 minutes or more

on a single breath.

The body's covered with bony scales -

armour that protects them from prey and sneaky attacks from other crocs.

All that and 60 to 80 cone-shaped pointy teeth.

The American crocodile,

one of the largest reptiles in the world and this is one of

the only places where you're able to get into the water with one.

There is no doubt they're deadly,

and I feel very lucky to have kept all my fingers.

Phew!

A bulky beast with a bone-breaking bite.

Explosive speed.

Sneaky ambush hunting.

Another crocodile,

that is delightfully...

Deadly!

Back on Cuba's mainland, we're seeking a slippery assassin

in a spooky horror-show hideaway.

Everything about this mission is deadly.

Beneath Cuba's countryside are cave systems stretching miles.

In years of caving, I've been scared, squeezed

and just plain stuck, so I'm not wild about this!

Well, it doesn't look like much yet,

just like a kind of big slash in the ground,

but there's something very, very special inside this cave.

There's at least half a million bats roosting inside

and many, many other predators that have come here

to take advantage of that.

And one that can only be found here.

It senses the bats as they fly by, and snatches them in total darkness.

The Cuban boa.

To show them to you,

I'm going to have to take a journey into the underworld.

These animals choose to live here in darkness for a reason.

So as not to disturb them and cause a flying stampede,

we're switching to infrared light.

We can't see it, the bats can't see it, but our special cameras can.

So from now on we'll be working almost in complete darkness.

And when you can't see very well,

all of a sudden you start to feel uneasy

and particularly here in this cave

where there are the kind of sounds of things moving around you

and occasionally you'll see something scuttling off into

the darkness but you're not quite sure what it is.

It really, really gives you the fear.

The very floor seems to be moving, crawling with cockroaches.

They're feasting on guano,

the droppings of thousands of bats roosting on the ceiling above.

Look at that.

Heavily armoured cockroach.

I guess, for many people, this would probably be the reason why

this cave is an absolute nightmare,

but actually they're totally harmless to us.

But they can turn their tastes to flesh.

Any bat that falls from the ceiling won't last long.

A little deeper into this nightmarish world

stalks the classic cave predator.

Oh, oh, wow.

This is a whip spider.

Ah, here we go, here we go.

Yeah, perfect, there you go, look at that.

So this is an arachnid, but they're not a true spider.

They have eight legs but they also have two highly developed,

they're called pedipalps, here at the front of the head

and those are used for snatching out at their prey.

They're armed with incredible barbed spikes

and any cave cricket that wanders too close is going to be history.

Right, let's get him back on the wall.

But where are those bats?

Our mission to find the cave boa has now taken over two hours

and we've travelled nearly half a mile into the cave.

If we can find the main concentration of bats,

the boas hunting them won't be far away.

Unbelievable.

Now that is what I call a bat cave!

Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of animals,

and I can feel this wall of heat coming off from them,

from all of their bodies.

Caves like this are an absolute hell for human beings.

They are hot, they're humid,

we are ankle deep in poo, creepy crawlies everywhere,

but for bats they're a kind of paradise.

The temperature in here is constant,

they're safe from the elements, from the weather,

and this is a place where they can come and they can roost during

the day and be pretty much safe.

Safe, that is, apart from one rather terrifying predator

and that's what I've come in here to try and find.

But we don't just find one, instead we find a whole bundle of snakes.

Ah, I've got one, I've got one! I've got several in fact.

Oh my, there's loads of them! No way!

So...

this is why we've come to this cave,

Cuban boas, and they are pretty much everywhere.

And there's one reason why this snake is here, and one reason alone,

and that's to feast on bats.

I'm just trying to keep my eyes on this snake

but I can't really see it.

This is a really substantial snake

and I wasn't really expecting to find anything this big,

but I guess when there's this much food around...

you can grow to be a really good size and this snake is really fat.

I can feel inside him several bats that he's feasted on,

probably this evening.

In pitch darkness, boas can't rely on eyesight to catch bats.

But they do have several senses that enable them to find their prey,

the first of those, as with all snakes, is their tongue.

You can see this one here now, its tongue's flickering out on the air

and it's drawing in smells from the world around it.

That'll help it to zone in on bats that are roosting in the walls

and in the ceiling,

but also it has special scales on the lip which can see heat.

For us to see in the dark like a snake

we have to use a hi tech bit of kit that detects heat,

it's called a thermal imaging camera.

Warm blooded bats glow red against the cooler background.

This may be how the cave and its bats seem to a hunting cave boa.

Then it'll snatch it on the air as it fly's past,

grab a hold of it with their sharp curbed teeth

so that it's not going to get away,

then throw coils of their body around it

and just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.

For something as small as a bat,

it'll probably simply crush all the internal organs.

The Cuban boa, it may make its home in a nightmare of a place,

but for me this is a dream of a snake and undoubtedly deadly.

Thermal senses to hunt in the dark.

Vice-like coils to crush prey.

A mouthful of sharp teeth.

A hanging, dangling,

bat-catching snake.

Deadly!

Last, but not least,

is the mighty mouth of the Goliath of legend.

And the Cuban reefs are its stalking and hunting grounds.

These Caribbean reef sharks would be a more obvious choice.

Ah, yeah, I see.

But even they show respect, and give way to a huge-headed hunter.

The water is filled with predators.

Caribbean reef sharks, Nassau grouper, Black grouper

but there's one animal that is totally ruling,

it's the Goliath grouper.

Oh, here we go!

That is the big mamma!

This is the magnificent,

massive fish we've come all this way to find.

It's so big and bulky, the mouth could swallow my head whole!

All the other animals give it a wide berth

and a lot of respect.

This is a pretty good size for live grouper,

it probably weighs twice as much as me, but they get to be even bigger.

The record size was 363kg.

Which is as much as a small horse.

Those enormous, great big trouty lips give them a really weird comedy

appearance, but there's nothing comedy about the way they hunt.

The Goliath has one of the biggest bites on the reef.

They can gobble up fish, octopus,

even spiny crabs and lobsters in a single bite.

To see this mega mouth in action

I'm going to try and handfeed a Goliath grouper.

And it's going to be really cool if I manage to keep all my fingers!

Here he comes.

He's coming in.

Holy moley!

That is out of this world.

You can see all along...

the bottom jaw are rows of tiny sharp teeth,

those are fantastic for hanging on to larger fish.

Once it's inside that huge trap, the prey simply stands no chance.

Three rows of tiny teeth,

spines that can be erected on their back for protection

and they're a super sucker.

I've got my eye on you!

Ah, geez! Ow!

OK, I was a little bit too slow...

..and took in my hand as well as the fish.

It's all right though, no harm done.

Wow, he is such an ominous presence,

just hanging over the top of the reef...

SONIC BOOM

Did you hear that!

SONIC BOOM

These fish have the ability to twang their swim bladder,

it's an organ that regulates buoyancy...

and it sends a sharp sound out into the water...

Whoa, crikey.

..which is very much a warning,

a threat to other fish, or to me,

and you can feel it, it hits you right in the chest.

For a beast this bulky, the final impact is dazzling quick.

To figure out what's going on, we need to slow time down a bit,

and our underwater camera can do just that.

Here he comes.

He's coming in.

That is out of this world.

The jaws, moving outwards,

to create a pocket-sized cavern

that suck the fish in.

The fish I've been feeding this Goliath

have barely touched the sides.

I've heard at this size they can eat whole lobsters.

The ship's cook was planning on serving us this for supper!

Coming in.

Amazing!

It makes a vacuum, almost like a hoover,

and the lobster was dragged out of my fingers

into that cavernous mouth.

The Goliath grouper, a fish with incredible presence

and character that could probably swallow my whole head.

It's the biggest mouth on the reef and I reckon they're deadly!

Their sonic boom can scare off sharks.

Munching lobsters in one go.

The size and weight of a swimming horse.

The Goliath grouper, a big fish

with an even bigger personality.

Deadly!

Hola.

Join me next time as I continue my journey.

Deadly!