The Good, the Bad and the Scary Naomi's Nightmares of Nature

Welcome to my Nightmares Of Nature.

I'm Naomi Wilkinson... Whoo-hoo!

..and I'm coming face to face with the nightmares of the animal world.

The ones that make your spine tingle...

..your heart beat faster...

..and your blood run cold.

Are they truly terrifying?

Or is there a twist in the tale?

Come with me, as I shine a light on wildlife's deepest, darkest secrets.

And see if you can guess which will be my worst nightmare.

Hello. Recording - yeah.

Hi, everyone! Look - I'm back, I'm home!

Whoo-hoo!

It's been an exhausting few months.

I've been travelling around the globe

looking for more nightmares of nature for you to see,

so I thought while I'm unpacking my heavy suitcase...

Case explosion!

Promise it's normally a little bit more tidy than this.

..I thought I could give you a warts-and-all rundown on my journeys.

So in the last few months, I've visited six - six -

six different countries.

Mexico, Borneo, Thailand, Finland, the US of A, baby, and Wales.

Look, I sent my husband a postcard from each country I visited.

Normally get home before them.

That one took three months to get here from Mexico.

Anyway - boring!

Tell you what, though, every one of those places gave me nightmares.

Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh!

People really do this for fun?

I hate it!

Argh!

GROWLING

Oh, I'm going to have to be brave.

ANIMAL GROWLS Oh!

Look, still got a scar.

There, see it?

From Digby the racoon. Thanks, Digby.

I'm going to milk that - for ever.

No, he didn't mean me any harm.

And thankfully, I did also manage to squeeze in a little bit of time

to let my hair down, too.

And we're off - whoo-hoo!

Yes, this is more like it!

It's amazing!

So in this very special show, I'm going to be giving you

the inside word on what were my very best... Ding!

..and very worst moments.

SHE BLOWS RASPBERRY

Now there are just a couple of things for this show

that are essential pieces of kit that we cannot travel without.

Selfie stick.

Coats, waterproof shoes, hand gel, first aid kit.

Oh, passport, snorkel and mask - is that upside down?

Literally, this is how comfy it is sleeping on an aeroplane.

Urgh!

Sun cream and after sun,

mossie repelling things. Zzzz.

Powder, hard-core hairspray...

SHE COUGHS

..nail varnish, jewellery.

Every expedition needs those.

Oh, oh, oh - karate belt.

NINJA EXCLAMATIONS

Ninja! Hah!

You never know when the next ninja is going to be somewhere nearby.

On this series, we found five.

Ah!

First was that pious pretender, the head-munching,

boyfriend-chomping, kung fu-fighting -

I mean praying - mantis.

The next flew in on a frosty winter wind -

that ninja of the north, the great grey owl.

The sunbear used his ninja nous to chop through bamboo.

Wonder if he's got any tips he could pass onto soundman Rich.

NINJA EXCLAMATION

Ah, ah, ah!

By the time researcher Tom used my bed sheet to lure in

some ninja nasties, I was prepared for combat.

Leave us alone.

But the limpet's martial-art moves still took me by surprise.

Ninja limpet? Who would have though it?

Ah, now this was my favourite outfit of the series.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh - yeah!

# Lemme see ya shake it, shake it. #

I did get to wear some crackers.

Elasticated ankles.

But this was by far the best. I only got to wear it once, though,

although that time was...

..really embarrassing, actually.

So there we were in NYC, baby, and the crew told me

we were going to go and meet some honey bees

and told me I should bring my bee suit.

Na-na! Check me out in my bee suit. Buzz!

-Oh, you...oh.

-Bee suit.

Oh, no! I thought you meant this sort. You didn't...?

I'm a bit embarrassed now.

Most awkward.

Anyway, I was actually there to meet some big city buzzers.

So, dressed in the right kind of suit,

I went off to join Big Smoke beekeeper Andrew.

-Hi.

-Hey, Naomi. How are you?

Hello, Andrew. Good to meet you.

Good to meet you, too.

Wow! Look at all those bees.

-There are a lot of bees around us.

-A lot of bees.

What could happen if you get stung?

Potentially, if a person is anaphylactic, they can have a

very negative reaction and it could be as bad as death.

But we're talking about someone who is highly allergic to the

venom of the honeybee.

That person is probably aware that he or she is anaphylactic

and carries around an EpiPen.

So you could die from the sting of a honeybee,

but that's worst case scenario, and for most of us,

a sting will just give us a bit of pain and some swelling.

Did you hear that, Rich?

Do you know what? During this item, Rich, our soundman actually got

stung by a bee on his chin.

Luckily he wasn't allergic, but did we hear the end of it all week? No.

"Oh, it's a bit swollen, it's all red.

"Oh! Bee stung me on the chin - can you see it? It's all red..."

Oh!

Just play the film.

-Oh there's the honeycomb.

-There's the honeycomb and...

Brilliant. Oh, look at the honey! How do they make honey?

They suck up a bunch of nectar,

spit it into the mouth of one of their sisters, who spits

-it into another bee's mouth, back and forth, back and forth.

-No way!

It's true.

-Literally they pass it from one bee to the other?

-They do.

-In their mouths?

-They do, they do.

And then they'll...eurgh! it into one of these chambers?

Well, let's not think of it that way!

I was looking forward to eating this New York skyscraper honey,

but I'd forgotten about the whole, you know, sick thing.

What you talking about? It's nice. Mmm!

It's disgusting.

Come to think of it, those honey hurlers weren't the only ones

with bad table manners.

Frigate birds steal their food from other birds.

They just chase the bird until the bird either lets go or regurgitates.

Vomits the fish that is inside the stomach.

They'll make another bird puke up the fish

-and then they'll eat it mid air?

-Yep.

-Oooh!

That Ninja mantis hasn't even got the courtesy to wait

until its dinner is dead.

They start eating their prey alive

-starting with the head also.

-Eurgh!

And a cockroach tea party would also get a definite decline from me.

This is stunning.

Stunning? Not the word I'd use.

Just a seething mass of cockroaches.

What are they all doing?

They're all eating the pooh.

Oh! Vile.

But there's one animal whose dining habits really took me by surprise.

The whale shark.

The undisputed winner of the most massive mouth award

turned out to be the least offensive eater.

With the help of marine biologist Claudia,

we set out to track one down.

A shark the size of a bus.

So, Claudia, why do the whale sharks come to this area of the world?

They come here to eat.

They feed on very tiny creatures called plankton

and we have a lot of that in here.

Now that's a real surprise, isn't it?

Because it's such a massive creature

but, actually, they're eating something that you can't even see.

They have to eat millions and millions of them

to be able to make up for a big meal.

They just swim through the water, filtering everything that's in it

and they have to take huge amounts of water

so they need that huge mouth.

Now how do we know that we're not going to go into that mouth

and get sucked in?

Ha-ha! Don't worry about it. They're not after humans.

There's never been a record of an attack.

Good to know. Good to know!

Now we just have to find one.

There are a couple of ways to, um, spot them.

One is by the white spots all over their body.

The pattern can be used to tell individual sharks apart,

like a fingerprint.

The other clue to their presence is less appealing.

Also the dorsal fin.

You'll see the big fin come out of the water.

-But it's, like, rounded.

-OK.

-It's not like the normal.

Jaws, shark-shape.

-No, it's round.

-A round fin.

-Yup.

Our eyes are peeled and it's Claudia who comes up with the goods.

Oh, no! Here. Here, Naomi.

Oh, my gosh! I can see the shape. Argh! That's enormous.

Whoa! I can see the white spots!

There's its fin. Yeee-aah!

Oh, really round, then!

-It's still the shape of the shark, though, isn't it?

-It is.

Still a big shark-looking fish.

Oh, gosh!

At only 7m long,

this one's just a juvenile, but it's still MASSIVE.

Oh, yeah - and if you haven't already guessed from the wetsuit,

I'm going to swim with it.

It's time to grab our masks and snorkels

and join the behemoth in its watery world.

It's such a mental battle.

I know this shark is going to do me no harm whatsoever.

My gut is screaming, "It's a shark, it's a shark - you're scared."

And my head is going, "No, it's fine. It'll be fine. You're safe.

"Stop worrying."

And I want to grab this opportunity with both hands, so come on!

The water is dark and murky.

It's impossible to tell what's around us.

Where is the shark?

Then suddenly out of the gloom...

It is in fact beautiful - an elegant giant.

Then, as gracefully as it appeared, it glides away.

What an absolute privilege!

I got in the water and it was there.

Its head was there

and then the whole creature just swam past me

about a metre away and I saw all along its body.

That was amazing.

So I never, ever thought I would ever say this,

but I don't think I can call a bus-sized shark

with a gigantic mouth and over 300 teeth my worst nightmare.

I just want to show you some of my favourite photos from the trip.

Oh, look at these guys!

Ooh, I miss the crew already!

Oh, no. Hang on, maybe I DON'T miss them.

They made me do some pretty awful things.

Cue wibbly-wobbly memory moment!

What's this?

That's the wrong way round.

LAUGHTER

What a nightmare.

No, I don't miss them at all.

So what was the worst thing the crew made me do?

Well, they put me in a cardboard box and fed me yoghurt through a tiny,

weeny little hole.

Hello, husband. What have you brought for me? What's this?

Poor old female hornbill.

I can't eat that. It's going everywhere.

No, there was worse than that.

Oh, I know - they made me jump off a cliff like a guillemot chick,

into the water.

I don't want to do it!

Yoo-hoo-hoo!

SHE BLOWS RASPBERRY No, actually, that was quite fun.

Oh, I know!

They did make me swing through the jungle 15m up above the ground

to be like a gibbon.

Go!

Oh! Ha-ha-ha!

SHE BLOWS RASPBERRY

No, I'm sure there was worse than that.

Oh, I know. Ding!

They made me fish for my dinner at the bottom of an icy-cold lake

when the outside air temperature was minus A LOT.

And let me get one thing straight - I do NOT like being cold

and wet, AT ALL!

I don't remember having a conversation with my careers

advisor saying, "When I grow up, I'd like to wear a really

"fetching wetsuit with matching hood, gloves and goggles

"and nose clip, please, straight out of London Fashion Week,

"and then I would like to go and dunk myself into some ice cold water."

I don't remember that conversation. What happened?

So this was definitely the worst thing the crew made me do.

It's making my nose rather long!

My challenge was to fish like a dipper -

a little bird that finds its food

by diving into Finland's ice-cold rivers.

Do I really have to do this?

BIRD OINKS THREE TIMES

-What?

-Battery's died in the cold.

The cold water's killed our camera. Is it that cold?

That cold!

SHE LAUGHS

I don't want to play.

And what would be the one thing you wouldn't want to happen

just before get into that ice-cold water?

I'll tell you what - a member of the crew to put some

snow down the back of your wetsuit.

That's what happened to our cameraman Steve.

Not saying who did it - Soundman Rich!

The crew set me the challenge of retrieving my own plastic tub

of tasty treats from the riverbed!

Ho-hoh! It's so cold. Argh!

Ugh! Oh, oh!

What am I doing?

Oh, here we go. Oh, come on.

Ow, ow! That's so cold. Ooh, that burns your skin.

Ow!

There it is, there it is, there it is. Right!

I feel a bit hysterical, because this is so stupid.

Right, here we go. I've got to go and get my prize.

Oh, no, I can't find the c...

Hah!

Ow!

Ah! Ha-ha-ha!

I got it, I got it. Ow!

This better be something good.

Oh, good. Oh, it's a couple of chocolates and a rock

all covered in water. I'm so glad I went to all that trouble for that.

Can you find an animal that I can imitate that likes to sunbathe

and drink coffee, please, maybe like in the Maldives or somewhere?

Yeah, be careful what you wish for, people!

I did in fact end up sunbathing on a tropical beach,

but it turned out NOT to be the stuff sweet dreams are made of.

This was the dirtiest trick the crew played on me this series.

Ah! I'm in heaven. Tropical sun. Crystal-clear seas.

Pure white sand.

I could stay here all day.

Oh, what a way to relax.

Oh, what now?

"Just thought you might like to know you are lying in pooh."

Ugh! Fish pooh? That's disgusting. Urgh!

But I was intrigued to know whose pooh I'd been lying in -

so with sub-aqua Simon as my guide, I hit the seabed.

It wasn't long before we found the culprits.

UNDERWATER SPEECH

But so huge!

Amazing, isn't it? So these are bumphead parrotfish and you can see

that from obviously the large, large head that they have.

Yeah, big bulbous forehead, don't they?

-And you see the big beaks, as well, like parrots.

-Yeah.

Which is why they get the rest of their name.

They've got the weirdest teeth I've ever seen.

Well, that's what they're using to scrape the coral.

You can see there, they're scraping coral, taking chunks off.

You wouldn't think you'd get much goodness from eating rock.

But coral is made up of tiny little animals like anemones.

And algae grows on its surface too.

But it's not the richest source of food.

So the parrotfish have to eat a lot to get enough goodness from it.

And what goes in must come out.

Just constantly poohing all the time!

Everywhere you look, there's just these clouds of sand coming

out of the back of them. Gross. Gross!

And that corally sand can play havoc with your hair.

When you dive with bumphead parrotfish like this,

they end up getting sand and...

-Pooh in your hair.

-..pooh all in your hair.

But a beach made almost entirely out of fish pooh?

Still seems a bit far-fetched.

I don't quite understand how one species of fish can produce

not just one beach worth of pooh, though but hundreds of beaches.

Well, it's been estimated that an adult bumphead parrotfish can

produce five tonnes of sand a year.

Five tonnes a year from one fish?

And they live up to 40 years,

so if you imagine over the course of the lifetime...

-Yeah, makes sense now.

-There's some big beaches.

'Mystery solved!'

To tell you the truth,

I was dreading the whole bumphead parrotfish shoot,

but, actually, with many of the experiences that I always fear,

they turn out to be some of the best experiences of my life.

And I get to meet some amazing people along the way

and find out about their passion for their brilliant projects.

Like the lovely Alonkot in Thailand,

who's using elephants to give blind children some fantastic experiences.

Oh, hold on. Hold on.

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

THEY LAUGH

-She's OK.

-She's having the time of her life.

And I get to meet the animals, as well, like I got to take an

orang-utan orphan to her first day of school. Oh! That melted my heart.

This is what I was like on my first day at school.

Believe me, I know what it's like when you don't want to do

something that's scary.

Come on, then. Let's go.

This is going to be fun, you're going to make new friends.

I've got an orang-utan on my leg.

'Then there was swimming with turtles, the bat volcano,

'baby raccoons - oh, baby turtles, husky riding.'

So many special moments,

but if you're anything like me,

you probably enjoy watching the things that go wrong,

and we try and show you one of those at the end of each

programme, but there are so many!

Sorry, what was that, Naomi - you go wrong? No.

Be honest.

Yes, Well, just a couple.

Ha-ha!

Ow, ow, ow!

Whoo!

Well, the king cobra.

My next nightmare contender is the UK's largest meat eaties...

Can't say it! Sorry.

Meat eatie.

Meat eaters.

No, meatiee...

Meat eater! Meat eatis...

This is so embarrassing.

Hey! It's not just me that misbehaves!

SHE LAUGHS

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Did you hear me?

They're like funny little old men with bald heads, aren't they?

Like our crew. Ha-ha!

Right behind you, there's the biggest pile of pooh.

Just don't step back. SHE LAUGHS

I shouldn't have told you, should I?

Nightmare! Danger!

I feel like I've seen Steve Backshall here

and I thought, that is somewhere I never want to go.

Ha-ha-ha-ha!

It's like fishy, smelly feet.

SHE RETCHES

Want a whiff? Want to smell that?

Eurgh!

Heeby-jeeby! I don't like it.

THEY LAUGH

Jeeby-jeeby!

It's like the heeby-jeebies, but worse.

Jeeby-jeeby! Eurgh. Ragworms.

They really were disgusting,

but even they weren't the worst thing I had to deal with this series.

THIS may look just like a straw,

but it is no ordinary straw. No - this is a KCRD. KCRD.

King cobra resuscitation device.

Talk about drawing the short straw!

This gets my vote as the most terrifying moment of the series.

I joined Colin and his Thai jungle team as they sedated this

wild king cobra in order to give it a health check.

Look, it's still awake - its tongue is poking out.

It's still awake, but it will go down.

This snake is enormous.

Which end shall I... I don't want to go up the head end. Stay down here.

-You sure?

-Shall I. Yeah, cos...

He's asleep - he's nearly asleep.

Yeah, he's not dangerous at this point.

First thing was to find out exactly how long he was.

What's the length?

Three thousand, one hundred...

..sixty-nine...

-3.16 metres.

-He's grown a little bit, but not too much.

That's huge. Is that as big as they get?

No, not at all. They can get up to 5.8 meters.

Even more intimidating than their size, though, is their bite!

You can go unconscious from the king cobra's

neurotoxin in about 10-15 minutes, and if you are not taken to

a hospital after that, then you will surely die.

An adult male of five meters or so

maybe could inject enough to, say, kill an elephant.

Really?!

However, they probably wouldn't.

They might run away.

Chickens.

Easy to say when it's asleep,

but it was time to draw that short straw.

Would you like to try?

I'm going to wake it up.

-Yeah, well, I'll cover the head if you just...

-What do I do?

All you need to do is take a very, very deep breath.

We are going to put this in the glottis

and you will actually be able to see the fangs if you wish.

I'm going to breath into a king cobra's mouth.

-I'm looking right into its mouth. Wow.

-Those are the fangs.

And you're putting that tube right into its mouth.

-It's in its glottis.

-Oh, my gosh!

-OK, and then you're just going to...

-I'm going to breathe into its mouth.

-Yep.

-Are we ready?

'You're never quite ready to give mouth-to-mouth to a snake

'with venom strong enough to kill an elephant!'

Excellent. OK, that's enough. OK, push the iso out. Excellent.

-Excellent.

-Do I do it again?

-Yup.

And this time, try to push more,

because you actually didn't fill up the whole lung.

More, more, more, more, more.

There you go. Excellent.

Perfect.

And see - you're starting to wake him up.

Got a half-tongue flick.

Oh, his tongue's started going really... I'm so nervous! Oh!

Look at its tongue, its tongue's nearly touching your skin.

OK. Definitely getting tone back.

-Guys, is the box ready?

-Yeah, it's behind us.

-OK.

This could be one of the scariest things I've ever done -

breathing into a king cobra's mouth.

OK, I've got movement. Let's definitely go.

'With the cobra waking up,

'the team wasted no time getting it safely back in the box.'

-Ready?

-Yeah, I'm ready. All good.

OK and one, two, three, go.

-Good. Well done.

-Thank you.

Well done. Thank you so much for that.

Well, all I can say is I'm glad that's over.

I am not doing that again.

I'm just going to take some time to chill out, put my feet up,

get over all those nightmares.

PHONE RINGS

Sorry about this.

Excuse me.

Hello?

Yes, it's Naomi.

What, another series?

More Nightmares Of Nature.

You want me to pack now.

SHE EXHALES

Go on, then!

Ninja! Hah!

SHE GIGGLES

Is that all right?