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'Animals are amazing.' | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
That's astonishing. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:05 | |
'And the more we find out about them, | 0:00:05 | 0:00:07 | |
the more amazing they seem.' | 0:00:07 | 0:00:09 | |
That feels pretty harsh. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
'That's why scientists all over the world | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
'are trying their best to copy them.' | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
This is in the future... | 0:00:16 | 0:00:17 | |
'Making brand new inventions...' | 0:00:17 | 0:00:19 | |
Tomato juice! | 0:00:19 | 0:00:20 | |
'..based on what animals can do. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:22 | |
'Some are astounding.' | 0:00:24 | 0:00:25 | |
We've just dived under the sea. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:27 | |
'Some bizarre.' | 0:00:27 | 0:00:28 | |
This is not at all pleasant. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
EXPLOSION | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
Yes, it's gone! | 0:00:32 | 0:00:34 | |
'But they're all inspired by the Miracles of Nature.' | 0:00:34 | 0:00:39 | |
'Episode Six. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:43 | |
'How engineers decided elephants might be able to | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
'help them rescue trapped miners. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
'To prove it, I've come to a disused Californian gold mine | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
to take part in a pretty unusual experiment.' | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
Hello. Right, I'm in the gold mine. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
'I'm in, like, a very narrow corridor, it's very cramped.' | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
'But above me, at the surface, it's suddenly a hive of activity.' | 0:01:16 | 0:01:21 | |
I've come to like an old, broken... | 0:01:31 | 0:01:33 | |
STATIC HISSES | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
Of course, they can't hear me - the radio doesn't work down here. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
And my cellphone? Well, that's long since given up the ghost. No signal. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
So I have no means of communication between here and the surface. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:47 | |
And that is a problem, because, in about 30 seconds' time, | 0:01:47 | 0:01:51 | |
they're going to explode the doorway into this gold mine. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
RUMBLING | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
So here's the situation. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
I am now trapped in the mine. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
I've got no means of telling anybody on the surface | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
where I am or how I am. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
The only thing that stands a chance of saving me | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
has its roots on the other side of the planet - | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
in Africa. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:44 | |
Scientist Dr Kate Evans has offered to show me just what that is. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:57 | |
'We're installing a massive loudspeaker to test Kate's theory | 0:03:07 | 0:03:12 | |
'that elephants can pick up vibrations through solid rock.' | 0:03:12 | 0:03:16 | |
Well, what we really want to do is kind of pretend it's an elephant, | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
if you see what I mean. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:23 | |
'Kate hopes this speaker will act like an elephant's foot...' | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
-This is genuinely quite exciting. -SHE CHUCKLES | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
'..and transmit low frequency sounds straight into the ground.' | 0:03:30 | 0:03:35 | |
'To copy the huge weight of an elephant, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
'we pile heavy sandbags on top. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
'With our elephant-tech transmitter finally complete, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
'Kate and I retreat to a safe distance.' | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
This sound - who's saying what in it? | 0:03:48 | 0:03:53 | |
We previously recorded a known female. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
And so, what we hope is that this call will attract the males in. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
'So, basically, | 0:03:59 | 0:04:00 | |
'we're broadcasting the offer of a girlfriend.' | 0:04:00 | 0:04:04 | |
But even with an offer like that, | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
there is no guarantee of success. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:10 | |
Because the nearest male elephants | 0:04:14 | 0:04:16 | |
our camera team have been able to find | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
are more than a mile away, drinking at a bend in a noisy river. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
Is it even remotely possible that they'll pick up on our signal? | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
Time to find out. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
The call isn't being transmitted through the air, | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
so we can't hear it. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
But we can see the speaker moving. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:47 | |
And astonishingly, the elephants move straight away as well. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:55 | |
Within moments, the three males are moving away up the bank. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
But are they really going to come more than a mile to our loudspeaker? | 0:05:09 | 0:05:14 | |
There you go! | 0:05:20 | 0:05:21 | |
'And then, out of the blue, they appear.' | 0:05:21 | 0:05:25 | |
There's three! Wow! | 0:05:25 | 0:05:27 | |
-They're straight through. -Yeah. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:29 | |
-He's definitely looking for something. -Yeah. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
He's got something on his mind, hasn't he? | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
There's no doubt the lead male has heard our call. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:44 | |
He makes his way straight towards the speaker. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
Remarkable! | 0:05:54 | 0:05:56 | |
But can you imagine his disappointment when, | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
instead of a female elephant, | 0:05:59 | 0:06:01 | |
all he finds is a scruffy pile of stacks? | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
I'd like to think we just had a bit of a chat... | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
What did we say? | 0:06:09 | 0:06:10 | |
Shot the breeze. I've no idea, no idea. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
SHE CHUCKLES | 0:06:13 | 0:06:14 | |
'So, with the help of elephants, | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
'we've successfully managed to send signals through the earth. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:21 | |
'But how can that elephant technology | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
'rescue me from a Californian gold mine?' | 0:06:26 | 0:06:30 | |
Well, it's not quite an elephant, but it is an ELF - | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
an extreme low frequency device. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
And it can do, hopefully, what elephants can do so effectively, | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
which is transmit, communicate, through solid rock. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:48 | |
Quite a lot of it, in this instance. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
All I've got to do is assemble it. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
'It works in exactly the same way as our artificial elephant's foot. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:58 | |
'Only this time, the speaker is pointing upwards.' | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
This bit here will connect the device with the rock. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:08 | |
Obviously, you don't need me to tell you | 0:07:08 | 0:07:11 | |
that people do get trapped in mines for real | 0:07:11 | 0:07:14 | |
without the benefit of a TV crew | 0:07:14 | 0:07:16 | |
and, more importantly, without the benefit | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
of any means of communicating with the surface. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
Sometimes with terrible consequences. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
This device could give them a chance. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
The whole system has been designed so it can run from car batteries, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
which is pretty handy if you're stuck down a mine like this. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
So the control box, if I set this thing to five, | 0:07:37 | 0:07:39 | |
that is telling them... | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
And there it goes. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:42 | |
That's telling them I'm in sector five, so they know where I am. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
And I can tell them the air quality is OK. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
So now, they know where I am and how I am. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
At least, I'm telling them, | 0:07:51 | 0:07:53 | |
because I know the signal is leaving me and going up into the rock. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
What I've no way of knowing right now | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
is whether or not they're receiving that vital information. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
In other words, | 0:08:05 | 0:08:06 | |
have we the capability to do what the elephant does, | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
and pick those vibrations up? | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
100 feet above me, the ELF's inventors, | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
Jim Squire and Jay Sullivan, believe we have. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:21 | |
With the help of this small spiked cylinder. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
This is the ELF's ear. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:30 | |
All right, let's start acquiring. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
At this sort of depth, we should have the answer | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
in around ten seconds, if he's sending right now. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
OK, it looks like we're getting a signal now. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
And there it is. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
Location five, good air. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:02 | |
And that's the point at which they'd normally send in the rescue teams. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:07 | |
But...I don't really need them. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:09 | |
Well, no, they didn't actually shut me in a gold mine | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
and blow up the only exit. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:15 | |
There'd have been a lot of paperwork. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:16 | |
And, anyway, the point is we've proved it works. Thank you, guys! | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
And thank you too to the African elephant, | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
whose extraordinary super sense | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
is definitely one of the Miracles of Nature. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 |