Episode 3 Richard Hammond's Miracles of Nature


Episode 3

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Animals are amazing.

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That's astonishing.

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And the more we find out about them, the more amazing they seem.

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That feels pretty harsh.

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That's why scientists all over the world

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are trying their best to copy them.

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This is the future! Making brand-new inventions...

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Tomato juice.

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..based on what animals can do.

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Some are astounding.

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We've just dived under the sea!

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Some bizarre.

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This is not at all pleasant.

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Yes! It's gone!

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But they're all inspired by the miracles of nature.

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Episode three.

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How scientists designed this

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by watching this.

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In 1485,

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Leonardo da Vinci designed a flying machine by studying birds.

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You would think that by now,

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more than 100 years after we first invented aircraft,

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after airliners and jet fighters and spacecraft,

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there wouldn't be much left we could learn from birds

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about flying...but you'd be wrong.

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Take this bird, for instance

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He has a lot to teach us.

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Even though his big body and relatively small wings

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make him look about as likely to get off the ground as I am.

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This is Cody, and he is a cape vulture.

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And these are not being worn for fashion reasons.

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That's a really big beak

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and eyes are kind of tempting, apparently.

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'But to find out what makes cape vultures like Cody

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'so special, I'm going to need to get higher.

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'Quite a lot higher.'

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It's about 500 metres down there.

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And shortly, I shall be jumping off the edge

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with nothing but the contents of that man's rucksack

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between me and certain doom.

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That's assuming he's brought the right rucksack

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and we don't jump off the edge with his flask and some sandwiches.

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'Walter Nesser is a vulture expert.

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'Unfortunately for me, he also happens to be an expert paraglider.'

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Oh, now I feel secure.

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-That's it.

-That's it?

-Yeah.

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I don't want to wait too long, Walter, I really don't.

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Just don't... I just want to... Oof!

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-All right, the wind is really good, are you ready?

-No.

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Let's go.

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Oh! My God!

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-Now you can sit back in the harness.

-Oh, sitting back in the harness?

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-You doing all right?

-I'm scared...on an Olympic scale.

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All right, have a look up to your left.

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Whoa!

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There's millions!

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Look at them now, they're coming to join us!

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We are circling with them, it's astonishing!

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We're in the same thermal that they are.

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Ah, this is incredible.

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Vultures find it hard to get off the ground.

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But if they launch themselves off cliffs, like we've just done,

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they can use updrafts of wind to simply soar.

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Seeing them on the ground,

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you wouldn't believe they were such good fliers.

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And yet, here they are doing it - elegantly, beautifully.

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It sounds impossible, but they make it look easy.

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Up here, in these columns of rising air,

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those short, stubby wings give them a big advantage.

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They've got these reduced spans, but still with good performance.

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And you need to be really manoeuvrable.

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So, you need to be able to turn inside this tight bubble of air.

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And that is probably why their wings are so small.

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With the wind doing the work to keep them up,

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they just need to be able to turn really quickly,

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making sure they stay where the updraft is.

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And it's those astonishing abilities

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that have inspired an entirely new form of human transport.

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This is the Super Aviator.

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But it's not what you think.

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Despite the name and the aerodynamic appearance,

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this is a plane that will never leave the ground.

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Got my head in a fruit bowl, that's nice.

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Because it's not designed for the skies.

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It's built to go underwater.

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The Aviator's owner, John Jo Lewis,

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has offered to take me for my first flight beneath the waves.

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Forward thrust.

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Commencing our dive.

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-We just dived under the sea!

-Woo!

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So, Rabbit. I have to call you Rabbit, yeah?

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We've got handles and everything.

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Yeah, that's right. We try and pick a two syllable word,

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-and I've been Rabbit for quite a while.

-OK, Rabbit.

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-What am I?

-You're Hamster now.

-Nice.

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-Thanks.

-Actually, you've always been Hamster.

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Yeah, OK. That's familiar. All right, so we are now...

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Let me get this right - flying

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-even though we are under water.

-Exactly right.

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And literally, our wings are on upside down,

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it's as simple as that.

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That's right. Rather than keeping us up like an airplane,

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it keeps us down... like a flying submarine.

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'And down is where we're going.

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'Down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.'

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You've put us in a descent down into a valley.

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And there we go.

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And it's here that Rabbit shows me

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just what the Super Aviator is capable of.

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This is magnificent!

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'And as we circle and descend,

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'the link with our birds becomes obvious.'

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So, what we are is an upside down vulture under the sea.

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And the reason we're like a vulture is we have quite a large body

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in proportion to which, quite small, stubby wings.

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Yeah. They're short which keeps us manoeuvrable and allows us to go

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into tight places, manoeuvre around wrecks

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and not bump into anything.

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In the same way that a vulture needs to have short wings

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so it can be manoeuvrable and turn and stay inside those thermals.

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You couldn't do this with long wings on your flying submarine.

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That's right. That really is what allows us to have

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the manoeuvrability that we do.

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We've swapped the lift of a thermal for the buoyancy of water.

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It's a mirror image of what happens in the air.

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Like the vulture, the Aviator needs quite a lot of energy

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to get it away from the surface.

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But once it's down there, that vulture technology

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enables it to simply glide.

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And now a big old climb starts.

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Steep ride back.

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Oh! That feels pretty harsh.

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-100 feet.

-Oh, yeah.

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80 feet.

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That's a pretty a extreme feeling

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when you see the top, the surface of the sea getting closer

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-and closer.

-50 feet.

-It's like driving at a wall.

-20 feet.

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We're about to broach.

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And there is the surface! That's... Ah!

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It feels pretty good.

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Amazing! A submarine based on the way a vulture flies.

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That's got to be one of the miracles of nature.

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