Episode 6 Richard Hammond's Miracles of Nature


Episode 6

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Transcript


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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,

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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 in the future...

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'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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EXPLOSION

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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 Six.

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'How engineers decided elephants might be able to

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'help them rescue trapped miners.

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'To prove it, I've come to a disused Californian gold mine

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to take part in a pretty unusual experiment.'

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Hello. Right, I'm in the gold mine.

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'I'm in, like, a very narrow corridor, it's very cramped.'

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'But above me, at the surface, it's suddenly a hive of activity.'

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I've come to like an old, broken...

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STATIC HISSES

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Of course, they can't hear me - the radio doesn't work down here.

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And my cellphone? Well, that's long since given up the ghost. No signal.

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So I have no means of communication between here and the surface.

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And that is a problem, because, in about 30 seconds' time,

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they're going to explode the doorway into this gold mine.

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RUMBLING

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So here's the situation.

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I am now trapped in the mine.

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I've got no means of telling anybody on the surface

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where I am or how I am.

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The only thing that stands a chance of saving me

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has its roots on the other side of the planet -

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in Africa.

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Scientist Dr Kate Evans has offered to show me just what that is.

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'We're installing a massive loudspeaker to test Kate's theory

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'that elephants can pick up vibrations through solid rock.'

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Well, what we really want to do is kind of pretend it's an elephant,

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if you see what I mean.

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'Kate hopes this speaker will act like an elephant's foot...'

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-This is genuinely quite exciting.

-SHE CHUCKLES

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'..and transmit low frequency sounds straight into the ground.'

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'To copy the huge weight of an elephant,

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'we pile heavy sandbags on top.

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'With our elephant-tech transmitter finally complete,

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'Kate and I retreat to a safe distance.'

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This sound - who's saying what in it?

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We previously recorded a known female.

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And so, what we hope is that this call will attract the males in.

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'So, basically,

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'we're broadcasting the offer of a girlfriend.'

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But even with an offer like that,

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there is no guarantee of success.

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Because the nearest male elephants

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our camera team have been able to find

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are more than a mile away, drinking at a bend in a noisy river.

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Is it even remotely possible that they'll pick up on our signal?

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Time to find out.

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The call isn't being transmitted through the air,

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so we can't hear it.

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But we can see the speaker moving.

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And astonishingly, the elephants move straight away as well.

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Within moments, the three males are moving away up the bank.

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But are they really going to come more than a mile to our loudspeaker?

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There you go!

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'And then, out of the blue, they appear.'

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There's three! Wow!

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-They're straight through.

-Yeah.

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-He's definitely looking for something.

-Yeah.

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He's got something on his mind, hasn't he?

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There's no doubt the lead male has heard our call.

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He makes his way straight towards the speaker.

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Remarkable!

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But can you imagine his disappointment when,

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instead of a female elephant,

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all he finds is a scruffy pile of stacks?

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I'd like to think we just had a bit of a chat...

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What did we say?

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Shot the breeze. I've no idea, no idea.

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SHE CHUCKLES

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'So, with the help of elephants,

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'we've successfully managed to send signals through the earth.

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'But how can that elephant technology

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'rescue me from a Californian gold mine?'

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Well, it's not quite an elephant, but it is an ELF -

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an extreme low frequency device.

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And it can do, hopefully, what elephants can do so effectively,

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which is transmit, communicate, through solid rock.

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Quite a lot of it, in this instance.

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All I've got to do is assemble it.

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'It works in exactly the same way as our artificial elephant's foot.

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'Only this time, the speaker is pointing upwards.'

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This bit here will connect the device with the rock.

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Obviously, you don't need me to tell you

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that people do get trapped in mines for real

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without the benefit of a TV crew

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and, more importantly, without the benefit

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of any means of communicating with the surface.

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Sometimes with terrible consequences.

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This device could give them a chance.

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The whole system has been designed so it can run from car batteries,

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which is pretty handy if you're stuck down a mine like this.

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So the control box, if I set this thing to five,

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that is telling them...

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And there it goes.

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That's telling them I'm in sector five, so they know where I am.

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And I can tell them the air quality is OK.

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So now, they know where I am and how I am.

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At least, I'm telling them,

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because I know the signal is leaving me and going up into the rock.

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What I've no way of knowing right now

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is whether or not they're receiving that vital information.

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In other words,

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have we the capability to do what the elephant does,

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and pick those vibrations up?

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100 feet above me, the ELF's inventors,

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Jim Squire and Jay Sullivan, believe we have.

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With the help of this small spiked cylinder.

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This is the ELF's ear.

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All right, let's start acquiring.

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At this sort of depth, we should have the answer

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in around ten seconds, if he's sending right now.

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OK, it looks like we're getting a signal now.

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And there it is.

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Location five, good air.

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And that's the point at which they'd normally send in the rescue teams.

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But...I don't really need them.

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Well, no, they didn't actually shut me in a gold mine

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and blow up the only exit.

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There'd have been a lot of paperwork.

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And, anyway, the point is we've proved it works. Thank you, guys!

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And thank you too to the African elephant,

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whose extraordinary super sense

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is definitely one of the Miracles of Nature.

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