Southern States 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! Ha-ha!

Deadly places.

Deadly adventures.

And deadly animals.

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

Aaargh!

This time, our mission begins in the Deep South of America.

It's a wonderland for wildlife, particularly the cold-blooded kind.

'We're reeling in some Titanic Texan teeth...'

Whoa! Oh, my word, it's enormous!

'..getting blown away by a deadly tornado...'

Aaargh!

'..and wading in snake-infested swamps

'searching for these lethal jaws.'

I'm starting in Texas before continuing my deadly rodeo romp

across the southern United States,

ending in Georgia on the East Coast.

'First up, my crew and I are going fishing for a monster.

'And in Texas, they make 'em real big.'

This is the Trinity River. There are plenty of alligators here

and this would be our most obvious choice, but actually our target

animal is just as prehistoric, just as big and has even fiercer teeth.

These muddy waters are rumoured to be home to a giant fish...

..that looks like an alligator and can grow longer and heavier than me.

It's called an alligator gar.

'But to show you, first I've got to catch one.'

We're heading about an hour and a half downriver to the spot

where Bubba, our guide, reckons the best fishing is.

Already, it's really wild, there's no sign of people whatsoever

and the river's a kind of murky brown colour.

It's exactly the sort of place you'd expect to find a monster fish.

'Very few people venture down this river.

'Without Bubba guiding us, we'd have no chance of navigating past

'shallows, sunken logs and rapids.'

It's got a kind of lost world feel about it,

and I think from the fact that Bubba's

cut his engines that this could be where we start fishing.

'Now we just need to hook our dinosaur.

'Alligator gar are notoriously wily and difficult to catch.

'They probably won't take the bait while they can see the boats.

'So we're going to set up our fishing gear

'and monitor it from 100 metres away.'

So the way that this is working is we're going to put

a whole bunch of rods all the way down the shore here,

places where we think there are fish, and they have a special

bite indicator that'll tell us if they've got a bite.

'Now we have to sit back and wait

'for the alligator gars to start feeding.

'For hours, our bite detector alarms are silent.

'But then...'

-We can hear beeping.

-ALARM BEEPS

One of our lines is going and going fast.

It's just downriver now.

'Something's taken the bait.

'We need to get back to our rod and reel it in.'

Finally, we have got some action.

There is definitely something on the end of this line

and it's pulling out line at a right rate of knots. Look at that.

OK, here we go.

Yeah, look how much the rod's bending.

I can feel this is a good-sized, strong fish.

Ohhhh! OK, he's very close to us now.

Whoa! Sorry, Johnny.

-HE GASPS

-Wow.

'It's an alligator gar.'

That was like seeing a dinosaur come to the surface.

He's a reasonable size fish. Probably as long as my leg.

Ooh! Ha!

You can see that when they want to go away,

the explosive power from the tail is enormous.

'This prehistoric-looking fish can breathe air out of the water,

'so we can get a really good look at him.'

Once we put him back in again, he's going to be absolutely fine,

be able to carry on hunting.

And really, the impression of the fish is almost reptilian, it really

is like a swimming dinosaur. And I can feel under my fingers the really

coarse, bony scales that act as armour-plating, protecting his body.

I mean, there isn't really a single part of this fish that isn't

spiky, hard, tough, designed to protect it from all kinds

of other predators like alligators that occur in these rivers.

Once they get really big, though, there is simply nothing else

that can take them on and they are the top predator.

'This may be a big fish

'but it's not quite the monster I was hoping to catch.'

Hello.

-VOICE FROM RADIO:

-'It's going across the river.'

OK, we're going to release this little one and head up there.

'It's not over yet.

'Our bite alarms have been triggered upriver.'

Yes! Fantastic.

Right, now let's go and catch this one's big brother.

Here we go, hang on.

'The small gar put up quite a fight.

'If we've got a big 'un, it's going to be an epic battle to land it.'

That certainly feels heavier and stronger on the line.

Whoa!

Whoa, it's pulling the whole boat round! Look at that.

It is dragging our whole boat.

This is a really, really big fish.

Look how much it's bending the rod. That is just PHENOMENALLY strong!

Going to have to come up to the surface now.

Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness!

That is absolutely ENORMOUS.

There!

Oh, my word, it's enormous!

'A vast gullet lined with teeth breaks the surface.

'Exactly what we'd been hoping for.

'This fish must weigh almost as much as me.

'My fishing line just can't take the strain.

'To land this titan, we need to get a rope around it.'

Whoa!

'This is the first time I've tried to lasso a slippery fish.'

No!

-Yes, we've got him, we've got him.

-Hang on to him now.

-Yeah, I got him.

-OK.

'It would be too dangerous to bring this giant,

'thrashing fish onto our small boat.

'So we're taking it into the shallows to get a closer look.'

I have to say, I've never been so overwhelmed,

so absolutely awed and so surprised by a fish.

It's enormous. Seven feet long, which is well over two metres.

Much, much longer than I am tall and it is immensely powerful.

There's certainly no way that I could lift this myself

out of the water, it's much, much heavier than I am.

And...I'm just completely blown away by everything.

The complete scale of the animal is incredible.

It's the first time I've had a chance to

look at the teeth of a really big alligator gar

and they're some of the most ferocious I've ever seen.

All round the lips are tiny,

spiky little teeth for snagging into slippery fish prey, but once

you get inside of the mouth, they're more like a crocodile's teeth.

They're long, fang-like, pointed - there is simply no way that

any prey is getting away once this has got a hold of it.

Wow. Isn't it stunning?

A fish of this size,

I mean, really, it has no natural predators other than man.

Even a good-sized alligator is going to leave this well alone,

and it's just free to roam in these waters searching out for other

fish to feed on, perhaps feeding even on mammals that are coming down

to the water's edge, certainly on water birds.

This is the largest freshwater fish on the continent, and I don't think

that anyone seeing this is going to doubt that for a single second.

The alligator gar, prehistoric wonder,

with a mouth packed full of teeth, the ability to

sense its prey in waters where you cannot see anything at all.

It's a mighty monster with a mighty mouth, and undoubtedly deadly.

'It's time to let this fabulous fish go.'

Yes! Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Tough armour-plating.

Reaching three metres long.

With teeth and jaws to rival an alligator's.

This is a gargantuan fish like I've never seen before.

'My next contender is one of the fastest, strongest and most

'lethal we've ever encountered on Deadly, but it's not an animal.'

I want to show you something of how nature itself can have

extraordinary, destructive force.

We're talking about storm-force winds.

Found in hurricanes and tornadoes, these winds can reach around 300mph

and rip through everything in their path.

Tearing up trees, tossing trucks and cars into the air like toys

and reducing houses to splinters.

Little can match their raw earth-shattering power.

Texas gets more than its fair share of these fearsome winds because

it sits on the world's tornado hotspot, known as Tornado Alley.

Well, this really puts it into perspective.

It's torn apart this house almost like it was a doll's house,

and tossed cars around and caused absolute devastation.

This here is a testament to what a deadly force of nature

tornadoes can be.

It's just too dangerous to experience a tornado like this

first-hand, so...

..instead of doing that, we decided to create our own...using this.

This is an Albatross fighter jet and it's a seriously mean machine.

Powered by an immense jet engine, it can fly over 450mph.

But we don't even need to leave the ground to show you what this

baby can do.

The bit we're interested in is this - the exhaust.

When this jet fires up,

wind is going to come out of the back of here of well over 100mph,

possibly considerably more, and I'm going to try

and walk up the back and experience how it feels to be in a tornado.

'I'm no stranger to danger on Deadly.

'But staring down the barrel of a jet engine

'is a whole different level.'

All right, Dan, fire her up.

-Here goes nothing.

-OK.

OK, coming up.

Whoa-ho-ho! Argh! Oh, my goodness!

'The engines are on low thrust,

'roughly equivalent to a force one tornado, the least severe.

'But with wind speeds hitting over 80mph, it's already

'nearly impossible to stand up.'

When you're in wind like this,

the first thing that happens is that you start to get rain and water.

Argh!

'The rainwater is like a wet slap in the face.

'In a real tornado, there'd be giant hailstones -

'chunks of ice travelling at 300mph.

Argh! My ear defenders have gone.

It's all right. It'll be OK.

'Next up, this bag of flour is going to simulate dust

'sucked into our tornado.'

Aaargh! This is absolutely nuts.

'Like abrasive sandpaper, even dust

'and earth can strip the bark off trees...

'..and blast the paint off cars.

'The pilot is increasing the thrust.'

Do you want more power? I still got more.

Come on, I can take it!

'Wind speeds are now reaching over 150mph.

'I'm now in a category three tornado.'

'In this wind speed, even soft items caught in the jet stream

'will have a massive impact force.

'Using my body as a target, lets find out.

'I think this is going to hurt.

'Even a beach ball travelling at this speed

'looks like it would take my head off.

'Quite glad my director's a rubbish aim.

'Let's see what kind of damage a tomato will do.

'They're coming at me like rockets!'

Ow!

'A direct hit, and I've been floored by a supersonic soft fruit.'

OK, that's it, that's all I can take.

'I've had to bail out at a category three tornado.

'The most violent tornado winds are a category five.'

Oh, my goodness.

I've just been pretty much blown into the next county.

Um...that was incredible!

It was a horrifying sensation of what it must feel like to be

inside the tornado.

I got hit by two tomatoes, soft tomatoes,

and it felt like I'd been shot.

They just went off like missiles. Um...

I don't really know quite what to say.

It's completely taken my senses away.

But...although this has been rather dramatic, rather exciting,

obviously, there's a very, very serious side to what

a force of nature like a tornado can do in real life.

The path of destruction caused by a category five tornado can be

two miles wide and 200 miles long.

Those 300mph winds suck up,

mash up and spew out everything in their path.

Like natural wrecking balls filled with lethal projectiles,

they blaze a trail of utter devastation.

To see this destructive force for ourselves, I'm getting well

out of the way, and we're towing a car into the firing line.

The winds produced by our jet aren't strong enough to blow the car

away, but can show us what everyday objects can do

if caught in the wind.

-JET THRUSTERS FIRE UP

-The power is starting to build.

'Fence posts and timbers turn into jagged javelins.

'Tiles and even dinner plates are like spinning ceramic blades.

'But to see the full deadly potential,

'I need to score a direct hit on the car.'

-MUFFLED:

-Plant pot.

The flowerpot explodes on impact, showering jagged, serrated

pieces in every direction. Each one is now its own deadly projectile.

OK, let's see what utter devastation we've wrought on our car.

Now, this is actually pretty frightening.

That MASSIVE dent there, from the base of a humble flowerpot.

Just imagine what would be caused by something heavier.

You have to say, looking at this, that there is no

doubt that tornadoes, this remarkable force of nature,

have the power to make us feel incredibly fragile

and vulnerable, and for that reason they are, without doubt, deadly.

Winds that can reach 300mph.

Packed with lethal projectiles.

A natural wrecking ball.

Tornadoes have little competition when it comes to violent,

deadly destruction.

We're leaving Texas behind and travelling almost 1,000 miles

to Georgia on the East Coast.

This state is home to the largest blackwater swamps in the USA.

They're riddled with biting critters.

From the small...

..to three-metre alligators.

And we're in search of an old Deadly favourite.

One of the biggest bites in the world -

the alligator snapping turtle.

The T-rex of the turtle world,

alligator snapping turtles are carnivorous meat munchers.

Lying submerged in these murky waters, they ambush fish,

snakes, even other turtles that swim too close to those jaws.

'Our best chance of seeing this turtle is to catch one

'in a trap baited with stinky fish.

'But we're not going to wait around. We're also putting in the legwork

'and searching the swamp for a snapper.'

I can see why people would think that an environment like this

is like hell. There's lots of biting bugs,

it's muddy, sweaty, but for me, it's absolute paradise.

Lots of venomous snakes, gators... The only thing is, you have to

be very careful about where you're putting your feet.

We've fanned out into a formation to cover as much ground as possible,

and one of the guys has just shouted out that he's seen a snake.

Oh, this is wonderful.

OK, the tongue's just started flickering so he knows I'm here,

he knows that I've seen him.

So I want to move very, very cautiously.

Hopefully not disturb him.

OK, he is on the move.

OK, so what I've got here is a young canebrake rattlesnake.

It is only young, very small.

This snake...gets to be as fat as my arm when it's fully grown,

but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve exactly

the same respect as a fully grown adult snake.

The venom still has exactly the same toxicity, even though

it won't deliver quite as much of it with each bite.

I can just feel a tiny rattle buzzing in my hand.

It's actually moving right through me, I can feel it in my fingers.

There's only a few cusps now on that rattle.

Every time it sheds its skin, it'll develop more cusps.

This is the best possible start, we've not been searching long

and already we've got our first reptile.

But the cold-blooded killer we're here to find is on a whole

different scale.

So let's put our canebrake rattlesnake back

and carry on searching.

No sign of our snapper yet, but I just can't stop finding snakes.

-Got it?

-Yeah. Ow.

-Oh, he's gone in my pocket.

-HE LAUGHS

That wasn't intentional.

This is a brown water snake.

It's not venomous, which is why I can handle it like this,

although it has given me a little bit of a nibble.

'It's vital to know your snakes round here.

'This harmless water snake could be easily confused with my next find...

'..the most feared swamp snake, the venom-loaded cottonmouth.'

The scientific name of this snake means "fish-hooked, fanged,

"fish eater".

So I guess that tells you an awful lot about the biology

of the cottonmouth.

The fangs are really shaped like fish hooks,

and they will snag into slippery prey like frogs and fish,

which are the chief food item of the cottonmouth.

The name cottonmouth comes from its threat display.

If this snake ever feels cornered, it'll gape open its mouth

and show off the bright white interior.

Which looks just like a little ball of cotton.

That's unusual and surprising enough that it'll startle any larger

animal, they'll leap back

and the cottonmouth can make good its escape.

Well, this is a total triumph.

In fact, one of the most exciting animals you'll find in these swamps.

So today has already been a massive success.

'This has been one of my biggest, bumper snake days ever.

'But it's time to check our traps for the swamp king -

'the big daddy - the alligator snapping turtle.'

This one is empty.

It's all right, plenty more to check.

Let's see what we've got.

The answer is...

not a lot.

Ah, we've got something! Ohhh....

May not be the turtle we were hoping for,

but it's proof the traps are working.

'A pretty pair of yellow-bellied sliders.'

Oh, well.

This is our last trap.

Oh, no!

Empty. That's it done.

Luckily, though, we do have a backup plan,

and in this case, it's a pretty good one.

We've come to an ecology centre where

they educate people about the local environment and local wildlife,

and they've got one resident here who is a genuine superstar.

In this pond is a really big alligator snapping turtle.

And he's called Big Al for a reason. He's massive.

So I'm going to take this quite easily.

There he is.

Now, the alligator snapping turtle is the largest

species of freshwater turtle found on Earth,

and this is a true monster.

Look at the size of his head. It's bigger than mine!

These animals are notorious for having an extraordinary bite.

The mouth has no teeth

but it does have an edge to the jaw that is truly scalpel-sharp.

When you look at the body of the alligator snapping turtle,

there is not one single part of it that is uniform in colour or shape.

It's all designed to break up its outline

and make it merge beautifully with the bottom of the swamp.

It is some of the most perfect camouflage you will ever see.

And these animals will spend most of their lives just lying on the bottom

of the swamp with their mouths open, waiting for prey to come to them.

The way they entice them is with a remarkable little structure.

It's called a vermiform, or wormlike structure,

and it sits on the tongue.

When it's engorged with blood, it goes pink.

And it's just like a little wriggling worm or a maggot.

An enticing little morsel for any fish, frog or bird.

It'll go right into the mouth of the alligator snapping turtle,

and when they do, this is what happens.

CRUNCH!

OK. Well, that was pretty quick,

and obviously, you would not want that to be your fingers.

Using a super slow-motion camera, you can see that sharp beak-like

mouth slices through a carrot like a samurai sword.

CRUNCH!

What a sound! The alligator snapping turtle.

A true legend of Deadly and the mightiest snap in the swamp.

Capable of weighing more than me.

Enticing prey to its death.

Scissoring jaws that slice and dice.

The alligator snapping turtle is a sneaky swamp chomper.

Join me next time for another Pole To Pole adventure.

Aaaargh!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd