Texas Deadly Pole to Pole

My name's Steve Backshall.

And this is Deadly Pole To Pole.

Ohhh!

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!

This is Texas, the Lone Star State, and it's big country.

If you dropped France right in the middle

it wouldn't even touch the sides.

It has grasslands, mountains, deserts,

all full of deadly potential.

Texas is over 4,000 miles south

from our start point in the Arctic Circle.

And it's massive.

It's the second largest state in America,

with enough wild things to make your heart sing.

'We'll be taking a chance on America's most cunning carnivore.'

There's something in the trap.

'And sweating it out with venomous vipers.'

Wow!

But we begin in the blackness below,

'with not one predatory beast...'

Rope below!

'..but a mega-swarm.'

For at least six months of every year,

Texas is home to a higher concentration of hot-blooded killers

than any other place on the planet.

In the dark caverns beneath our feet right now

there are literally millions of predators just waiting for a feed.

It's one of the great spectacles in the natural world.

So our next step has to be into the abyss.

'By day, the cave entrance is patrolled by cave swallows

'that nest here.

'But we're heading beyond the reach of daylight,

'and into the dank, dark depths,

'into an underworld filled with a regular creep show of killers.'

The air in the cave is incredibly toxic

and filled with dangerous diseases.

Just a few breaths could be fatal to us.

We've got to be prepared.

So we have to cover ourselves up with these suits and wear gas masks.

It's going to be hot, it's going to be sweaty...

but at least we'll still be alive.

Just a few hundred metres into the darkness

and the horror show has already begun.

The floor beneath our feet is alive.

Ah.

Down here is the slightly more grisly side of life in the cave.

It's littered with these tiny little skeletons.

That's been devoured by this lot.

These are hide beetles, they turn up after a body dies

and then they just devour it, reduce it to its skeleton.

It's incredibly gruesome,

but I guess that's just the dark side of nature here in the cave.

Look at those, absolutely revolting.

'As we head further into the cave, it gets hotter and sweatier.

'Our swarm of predators is close.

'In order not to disturb them,

'we need to turn off our lights and switch to night vision.

'It's enough to give anyone the creeps.

'The noise is building, piercing shrieks in the blackness.'

Look at that.

Absolutely phenomenal.

'It's the largest congregation of creatures ever seen on Deadly.'

That is one of the most overwhelming sights you will ever see in nature.

These are Mexican free-tailed bats.

There are simply millions of them.

It looks almost more like a hive of bees

than it does a group of mammals.

The air is so thick with their calls.

Mexican free-tailed bats come here every year to breed.

And Texas holds the largest colonies on earth.

The best way to show you the intense conditions

created by this breeding swarm

is to use this heat-sensitive camera.

So here in this cave you can see that black

is just the normal cave walls.

And then you can see all of these tiny little glowing embers

flying through the shot.

Those are the bats on the wing.

But the most extraordinary thing is...

if I move around I get this incredible massive, glowing flame

in the centre of shot.

And that is hundreds of thousands, millions of bats

crawling all over each other.

And they've created so much body heat there

that it's almost like one big living radiator.

But these bats absolutely love it.

It creates the absolute perfect conditions for them

to raise their young.

Look at that.

These bats and their young thrive down here

in this hot, toxic environment, but not me.

'I've had enough.'

Oh.

I have never, ever been so relieved to get out of a place.

But if that was a vile vision of the underworld,

what happens next is one of the greatest shows on earth.

As night approaches, these bats emerge to feed

in a procession of millions.

They can pour from the cave for hours.

'And my ropes are hanging right in the middle of it.'

Ah!

Wow.

The bats are just coming hurtling down the line at me.

Ah! Right into my helmet!

I have never felt quite so in the line of fire

as I am right now.

There are just squadrons of bats hurtling past me,

and clouting into me and clouting into the ropes as well.

This is... Ah!

HE LAUGHS

This is the largest aggregation of mammal predators

found anywhere on the planet.

There could be 10, possibly even 12 million

of these wonderful furry hunters heading out on the wing.

And the amount of insects they will consume in one night

is simply unfathomable.

Each bat can eat up to their own body weight every night.

That's a serious midnight feast.

It's thought that all the bats from this one cave

may eat as much as 120 tonnes of insects in one night.

That's about the same as a passenger jet plane.

Moths, midges, mosquitoes, can you imagine

how many of those it must take to make 120 tonnes in one night?

In terms of sheer spectacle,

this is one of the greatest predatory forces

on the entire planet.

So many bats, tens of millions of them.

All the bugs round here simply do not stand a chance.

There is no doubt that Mexican free-tailed bats

emerging in their millions

are one of the finest predatory forces on the planet

and undeniably deadly.

The largest hot-blooded swarm on earth.

Eating hundreds of tonnes of insects every night.

Thriving in a truly toxic environment.

Mexican free-tailed bats are a flying force to be reckoned with.

Deadly.

The bats roost here each year,

so they're easy to find.

'But the next animal I'm hoping to track down

'is far more elusive.'

I've been out looking for wildlife

in this part of the world for many years,

but one of its biggest, most impressive predators

has managed to elude me -

the mountain lion.

Mountain lions are powerfully built big cats,

also known as cougars, panthers and pumas.

They're found all across the Americas, but are never common.

They're mostly active at night, secretive and sly.

In other words, a wildlife watcher's nightmare.

Well, this is classic mountain lion habitat.

These peaks are cut through with ravines and gullies

and there's loads of cover.

It's perfect for them to hunt their prey -

things like jack rabbits

right through to white-tailed and mule deer.

With such a massive landscape and a cat that eludes even the eagle-eyed,

we're going to need some help.

So we're teaming up with local wildlife biologists

who set baited traps to safely capture the lions

so they can radio-collar them and monitor their movements.

And on the way to check the first trap,

we spot some beady-eyed scavengers.

Turkey vultures.

These are really interesting birds.

First of all they have an incredible sense of smell

and that's very unusual amongst birds.

When you're out tracking predators,

vultures are one of the first things you look out for.

These birds have the ability to spot carcasses

from a great distance by flying up and getting high.

So the bait has brought in some vultures,

but has it tempted any other predators?

So this pig was placed here as bait only yesterday.

It was completely intact when it was placed here

and now the majority of the midsection has gone,

including a lot of the internal organs.

So something's been here, something's got stuck into this pig,

and that is a very good start,

particularly because there's a couple of camera traps

right up behind us.

With hidden cameras set and traps baited, all we can do is wait.

In the meantime, let's meet this cunning cat.

Mountain lions are pretty hefty,

but they're light on their feet plotting a silent ambush.

Prey animals go about their lives

unaware that a killer's lurking, till it's too late.

The stealthy stalk ends with a single pounce

and a fatal, decisive bite.

This is the skull of an adult mountain lion.

It's very blunt, very broad.

At the front of the mouth...

these, the canine teeth -

those are the chief killing tool.

Then at the back of the jaw, these stouter, sheering, slicing teeth

are called carnassials.

And those do the job of cutting up meat so it can be eaten.

These are really impressive.

Those are the claws of a mountain lion.

Now they would be kept sheathed inside the paw,

so that they can be kept sharp.

And look how curved and pointed that claw is,

that is a real tearing weapon.

The next thing is this.

This is the skull of a wild sheep,

and it's been eaten by a mountain lion.

Now almost certainly the killing bite would have come to the throat

or to the back of the neck,

but you can see that on this really quite substantial animal,

which has big horns to defend itself...

it's been bitten right through the skull by the mountain lion.

This is an animal of formidable power and strength

that can take down prey animals many times its own size.

The cat's own skull shows its lethal arsenal -

stabbing canines, sheering cheek teeth,

and its claws are just plain frightening.

That's why this cat is such a success.

Though this part of Texas looks green and lush,

during the daytime it's dry and it's hot,

so cats don't tend to be very active, instead they're nocturnal.

So if we want to stand any chance of finding one,

we need to go out after dark.

'And cats aren't the only wild things

'that come out at night.

'First up, a brown earth snake.

'And a sizable longhorn beetle.'

Before we come across a true Deadly icon.

Oh, yes.

In this tangled web in front of me,

one of the most notorious deadly creatures in the world

is about to make a kill.

That there is a black widow spider.

And a small chafer beetle has just flown right into her web.

She's trussing him up with silk.

Any second now...

There she's getting... She's doing it, she's doing it, she's biting.

The widow spider is armed with a venom

which is incredibly potent.

These spiders also have in their venom

something which turns their prey into a kind of liquid meat soup,

which she can then suck down.

It's all pretty grotesque but you can see it's unbelievably efficient.

They're also one of the spiders that human beings fear most.

But really the only time that a human being

has anything to fear is if they accidently put their clothing on

and there's a black widow inside

or perhaps put their boots on and a black widow

is hidden inside their shoes.

Despite their reputation, these spiders certainly mean us no harm,

and humans are very rarely hurt.

Instead their diet's flies, grasshoppers, beetles...

even each other.

The black widow name comes from the fact that the females,

and this is a female here,

will quite often eat the males after they've mated.

They have this really sinister, sinister reputation.

The female of the species is far more deadly than the male.

They're double the size, and are far more dangerous.

This is an epic drama in miniature.

She's pulling out silk from the spinnerets at the end of her abdomen

and trussing this little beetle up

so that he can be much easier to manoeuvre.

And then every once in a while she'll just jump in

and stab him with her fangs and inject the venom.

Well, we may not have found a mountain lion

but this is a sensational bonus.

The black widow spider,

one of the most venomous on earth,

ruthlessly efficient,

an unbelievable predator and undeniably deadly.

With its paralysing bite.

Using silk to shroud their prey.

And occasionally eating their own husbands.

Black widow spiders are Texas's miniature murderers.

Deadly.

'After only a few hours' sleep,

'we're on the road again to check the traps and hidden cameras.'

There's a real sense of anticipation

because we just don't know what we're going to find.

There could be a coyote, a bear, a deer.

Obviously the dream scenario will be to turn up

and find it filled with a big, angry mountain lion.

Fingers crossed.

As we approach our first trap,

we hear something before we can see it.

Stop. Stop, stop, stop!

There's something in the trap.

It's been sprung. I can see something moving.

But it's not a mountain lion.

Quite the opposite.

In fact this is an animal that would very much be mountain lion prey.

It's a peccary, it's a kind of wild pig.

Oh.

'The peccary's released without harm.'

And off he goes.

Well, there's certainly plenty of mountain lion prey around here.

All we need to do is to find the predator that's feeding on it.

'There's also an encouraging sign near our second trap.'

Well, our trap and bait is just shortly up there,

I can actually smell it right now.

And there is a super fresh

coyote track heading away from it.

So that might well be in our camera traps.

But I don't see anything bigger.

Disappointingly, the second trap doesn't hold a lion either

and the bait seems untouched.

I wouldn't say it's been noticeably fed on.

But the cameras have been in place for over a month.

There could be just about anything on them.

OK, let's see what we've got.

So we've got the images from the camera trap loaded into here.

Let's see what's wandered close to the bait.

What's going on there? Oh, there's a little rabbit.

This is taken at night and there's eye shine

reflecting back from the rabbit as it's running through the shot.

Oh, OK.

We have got our first predator.

It's just in the corner of shot

and that is a coyote or "coyo-tay."

I reckon that would have been the coyote that's tracks I saw

leading up towards the trap but didn't actually go into it.

And in all likelihood that's come in to get stuck into the bait.

Let's see if there's anything even more.

HE GASPS

Oh, my goodness.

I don't believe it. I don't believe it!

We've got a mountain lion.

There's a mountain lion just walked straight into the shot.

That's incredible.

And it's just wandered in broad daylight

right down this trail here.

Wow.

Even though we haven't managed to find mountain lions here in Texas,

we know they're here.

They're here but they manage to not be seen

and that I guess is a big part of what makes them deadly.

Muted colours that blend into its environment.

Silent stealth to get close to their target.

And the power to take down prey up to five times their weight.

Mountain lions, elusive, and still unfinished business.

Deadly.

Another ambush assassin now, but the cold-blooded kind.

This is beautiful woodland habitat and we're going to be watching

where we put our feet,

because apparently it's perfect for snakes.

And one is especially notorious.

An arrow-headed viper, that's a toxic terror.

Especially if you're a rodent.

They inject venom to paralyse their victims,

then swallow them whole.

They're also guilty of more bites to people

than any other venomous snake in the States.

'And talking of deadly things that bite and sting...'

Oh, my goodness.

And this shows why you have to be so careful where you put your fingers.

I had them just a hair's breadth away

from about three or four striped bark scorpions.

There are hundreds of them.

'It's a veritable who's who of venom round here.

'But what we really want is...'

Snake!

Ah.

First snake find of the day. He's only very wee.

This is a rough earth snake,

and although it's not the animal we're looking for

it's a very good start.

It means that snakes are up, about, they're here.

'After a big day's snake search,

'the effort pays off.'

Well spotted, Mark.

Beautiful.

We have our first copperhead.

If I try and point with a stick to where it is...

That there is the end of the nose

and the body is coiled around just in that area there.

This is still quite a small snake,

but the camouflage is just incredible.

The light brown, the dark brown blotches,

they match so perfectly

with all of these different-coloured dead leaves on the ground.

Let's see if we can just lift it gently up.

Oi, oi, oi.

Oh.

And this is why copperheads account for about a quarter

of venomous snake bites here in America.

They lie very still and they don't rattle their tail,

like a rattlesnake does,

to warn away intruders, instead they strike.

And when they strike they inject venom

and that can be incredibly painful.

So it's something I very much want to avoid.

Oh!

'It's a start, but let's face it,

'it's a bit...well, small.

'I reckon our odds will improve after dark.'

And I'm really excited about searching through here at night.

These rocks offer endless places for animals to hide and to hunt.

It is perfect for spiders, scorpions and, of course, snakes.

This canyon really feels like the kind of place

where you could find a snake at any second.

Kind of wish that was possible,

it would make my job an awful lot easier.

See that?

Beautiful big copperhead out in the open.

On the move.

It's quite unusual to see a copperhead

out in the open as active as this.

Normally they tend to just sit still and wait by a game path,

waiting for something to come close by that they can feed on.

But it just blends in so beautifully with the leaf litter.

There he goes. Look at that.

Just in there.

Yeah, I see him.

You come over to me? Come over to me.

This is an incredibly beautiful snake,

tongue flickering out on the air, tasting the world around it.

It's at the moment at its most active,

this is the time when copperheads are really looking for food.

Round here it could well be hunting for frogs,

you can hear the frogs making sounds in the darkness.

But for copperheads normally

their prey is made up of small mammals.

They kill them with a venom that's injected from hinged fangs

at the front of the upper jaw.

And they have a lightning-fast strike.

But to film that lightning-fast strike,

I'm going to need daylight and a fancy bit of Deadly kit.

I have in this box a good-sized copperhead

which was found in the local area just a couple of days ago.

It's the perfect size to show you a copperhead striking.

Down here we have a special camera

which can see in super slow motion.

'The only way to see a strike that happens in a heartbeat.'

So, Mark, can you watch Luke's back if at all possible?

'Copperheads react to movement.'

Ready?

You see that?

The flicking of my foot should get the snake to strike.

'Well, the snake certainly struck, but did we have any luck?'

'Played back 16 times slower than real life,

'you can see the action unfold.'

Oh, wow!

That was really incredibly impressive.

It would have stabbed those fangs into the body of the prey animal,

injected venom and then it releases, it sits back,

waits until it dies and then comes in to finish off the job.

This is exquisite.

But there is one last thing that I want to show you

about the copperhead.

Like all vipers...

..the copperhead has two hinged fangs.

They are absolutely exquisitely thin, pointed,

and they'll easily break through the skin and the fur

of a small mammal.

And that yellowish goo

that's accumulating on my stick...

is venom.

A venom that can bring down a decent-sized mouse

which the snake is then going to eat in one single mouthful.

Isn't that extraordinary?!

As many as a quarter of all venomous snake bites in the US

come from this snake,

but that's not why I'm suggesting it's deadly.

It's certainly not an animal that means human beings any harm.

I reckon it's deadly because it's fast, it's beautiful

and if you were a mouse

it would be the most lethal creature on the planet.

The copperhead, deadly.

An ambush attacker.

Hollow, hypodermic needle fangs.

Arrow-shaped head, launched like a missile.

Copperheads - potent killers of the southern states.

Deadly.

Rope below!

'Join me next time as I continue my journey.'

It got my pole!

'On Deadly Pole To Pole.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd