Nature's Mysteries Wild & Weird

# Marauding mice and walls of ice

# And sharks on a golfing spree... #

Agh!

# Cicada swarms and Martian storms

# And fish walking out of the sea... #

Really?

# Elks in trees and foaming seas

# And giant mayfly mobs... #

Huh?

# Zombie snails and friendly whales

# And completely frozen frogs... #

You what?

# They're wild and weird Wild and weird

# Really, really wild And really, really weird

# They're wild and weird Wild and weird

# They're really, really wild And really, really wild

# And weird. #

Coming up on today's show, some mysteries of nature...

..trees covered in candyfloss?

..Bees with an artistic streak...

..and the golf course water hazard with serious bite.

PINK PANTHER THEME

Mm. Yes.

Ooh.

Really?

Hm...

PINK PANTHER THEME CONTINUES

What are you doing?

I'm investigating a mysterious disappearance.

Disappearance of what?

The television remote control.

-Oh, well, have you looked down the back of the sof...?

-So far...

my investigation points towards a team of highly trained monkeys

that have crept in here and snatched it

-under the instruction of a criminal mastermi...

-Ooh, here it is!

-TUNE STOPS ABRUPTLY

-Oh, wicked!

And if it is mysteries that you're after,

look no further than the natural world.

Ooh.

'We're travelling to the heart of Pakistan where, in 2011,

'heavy rains resulted in widespread flooding across the country.'

Today brought new flood warnings in the southern Sindh province.

Thousands of square miles of land were submerged underwater.

And from all the media reports came this set of mysterious photos.

What is that?

Is that candyfloss?

Well, let's ask the man who took the photos.

Russell Watkins from the Department for International Development.

He looks like a man who's really prepared for anything.

Nothing really prepared us for what we saw when we got there.

I really wasn't prepared for that.

What we were confronted with was quite spectacular.

It was very, very surreal.

Quite spooky, in a way.

The trees just looked like they were wrapped in candyfloss.

Ha! I knew it.

Oh! Candyfloss.

I love candyfloss.

HE CHUCKLES

Mm.

Every tree that you could see,

every piece of vegetation that you could see for miles and miles on end

was just cloaked in these enormous webs.

Webs?

Did he say webs?

Yep.

Every tree was coated in a shroud of spooky silk,

creating a weird, alien-like landscape of water and webs.

Erm...

-this isn't about spiders, is it?

-Why?

-You're not scared of spiders, are you?

-No.

I was asking for a friend, actually.

Well, that's good, because there's one down there.

Where?

Oh! Look, is this about spiders or not?

Maybe. Maybe not.

'Let's ask web specialist Chris Holland.'

It's a spider!

It might not be.

He's got one in a jar!

OK, it's spiders.

Whilst these trees completely covered in silk

may seem really unusual to the vast majority of us,

there's actually a very simple natural process occurring here.

The rising floodwater had made life at ground level impossible,

so the local spider population needed a new home.

It just happens to be that when you have flooding events,

they have very few places to go.

And they usually go for high ground and, in this case,

it would be the trees.

So the types of spiders that you see in these trees

are most likely the sheet web-building spiders.

I don't care what they are,

as long as I don't get them in MY back garden.

These are the spiders that you tend to find in the back of your garden,

under your shed, or in your kitchen cupboards.

You're making dinner.

But why were there so many spiders?

The answer lay in the very water that trapped them.

A stagnant breeding ground for mosquitoes.

So when you get a few spiders confined to this really small space,

but a lot of food around,

for example, mosquitoes from these floodwaters,

you suddenly would generate a huge population explosion

where all these spiders are having babies,

these spiderlings are running amok around these trees,

creating lots and lots of sheet webs,

which creates these huge, beautiful coverings of silk,

as we see in these photos.

So the flood means more mosquitoes,

which means more food for the spiders...

which means more spiders survive

and that means more webs covering the trees.

Simple.

And that concludes the mystery of the candyfloss trees.

Are you sure you don't want the rest of this?

No, you can keep your spiders webs. I'm going to have some honey.

-Ooh!

-Urgh! That's not honey.

-It's green!

-Actually, it's another mystery.

Watch this.

'This time we're in the village of Ri... Ribeauv... Ri...

'We're in France, famed for both its beautiful scenery

'and also for its beautiful honey,

'but recently the local beekeepers had a shock.

'When they opened their hives, they found something truly disturbing.

'The bees were making vivid, green honey.

'In other hives, it was bright blue.

'In fact, they were producing a full range

'of mysterious, multicoloured honeys.'

Are you sure it's not hair gel, or something?

'The key ingredient in honey is a sugary substance called nectar,

'which the bees collect from flowers.'

No, it's not hair gel, is it?

MUSIC: Sugar, Sugar by The Archies

# Ah honey, honey. #

'The bees take the nectar back to their hives

'where the worker bees pass it around, chewing it.

'They then place it in a cell of their honeycomb

'and buzz their wings to evaporate the moisture

'and the result is honey.

'Different flowers produce slightly different nectar

'and this affects the honey colour.

'Normally, from pale gold to dark brown.'

-OK, so if this is honey...

-Yeah.

..why are the bees making it green or blue or red?

'Well, the answer to this mystery might lie

'in one of the last places on Earth you'd expect to find a beehive -

-BUZZING

-'The Big Apple.'

Well, that's just ridiculous. How would a beekeeper get in there?

No, Naomi. The Big Apple.

New York City. You know?

-Oh, yeah.

-Yeah.

-I knew that.

'In New York City, beekeeping is a increasingly popular pastime.

'Andrew Cote is head of the New York Beekeepers Association

'and he's also seen some surprising shades of honey.'

'Since I've been keeping bees in New York City, I've come across'

bright red, green and blue honey.

'City bees normally forage for nectar in parks and gardens,

'but there are plenty of other places to get a quick sugar fix.'

'In our takeaway, fast food world,

'sugary snacks and drinks are everywhere.'

'And, just like us,

'it seems the bees can't resist these sweet treats.'

A friend of mine found that her honey was bright red.

And another fella, he found that his honey was bright red

and it turned out that in this little peninsular area of Brooklyn,

called Red Hook, there is a cherry factory

that's been there since the 1940s.

Turns out that the bees were...

sipping up the run-off from that factory.

So it was the brightly coloured cherry water

that was responsible for the red honey.

Mm! Cherry honey?

Ooh, that sounds lovely.

When there's a concentrated sugary syrup

that's just ready to be picked up,

it's very hard for the bee to resist.

And it turns out the bees in France were feeding on discarded sweets

from a local processing plant, hence all the colours of the rainbow.

Cherry, sweets, fantastic.

What's in this green one?

I think it was probably antifreeze.

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea

to try an odd-coloured honey

or drink a plutonium milkshake.

Oh, what?

So, whilst the idea of a multicoloured sweet spread

for your breakfast toast might sound very tempting,

it's probably best to leave any funny honey off the menu.

-Mystery solved.

-Very good. I liked that one.

-Yeah, me too.

-Much better than the spiders one.

-What, those spiders?

-Ooh!

-Ha-ha! Too easy!

I've got one more natural mystery for you, if you're interested.

-Hasn't got any spiders in it?

-No.

-Go on, then.

We're off to the sun-kissed shores of Queensland in Australia.

A lovely place for a relaxing round of golf.

Ah! I love golf.

It's not a sport you would normally associate with danger.

WHISTLING

CRASHING

But, for the members of Carbrook Golf Course in Brisbane...

WHISTLING

CRASHING

..it seems their water hazard...

WHISTLING

WHISTLING FADES

..might be a little more hazardous

than they expected.

Standing on that green over there...

and I was about to hit me ball,

and I heard this big splash. So I look up like this.

Miss the putt by two foot.

Rumours were beginning to circulate amongst the members

that something big was living in the lake.

And those rumours soon reached course manager Scott Wagstaff.

Around '97, '98, we had one of our members come in and tell us

that he'd seen a fin out on this lake.

Wait, wait, wait. Wait.

A fin? Is this story about sharks?

You're not scared of sharks, too, are you?

Well, maybe just a little bit, yeah.

Well, don't worry. Sharks live out in the sea.

-This lake is surrounded by land.

-Right.

How would a shark get from the sea into a land-locked lake?

Yeah. OK.

So what was it then?

'It was...a shark.'

Naomi, you said that this wasn't about a shark!

You said there was no way a shark could get into a landlocked lake!

I know. It's a real mystery, isn't it?

'And it wasn't just a single shark.'

We threw some chicken in and two sharks,

about eight to nine foot came up. It was just incredible to see.

Incredible? How about terrifying?

In fact, it turned out that the lake contained

more than ten bull sharks.

Bull sharks?

They're the nice ones, right?

Let's ask expert Dr Michael Heithaus.

Bull sharks have a reputation for being pretty darn aggressive.

We don't really know why, but they can also be really unpredictable.

They're big predators and one of the few species

that'll attack prey almost as big as they are,

so, yeah, they are dangerous predators

that you need to give a healthy respect.

Don't worry, Tim.

It's not like sharks can climb out of the water and walk on dry land.

-Or can they?

-You're loving this, aren't you?

It turns out that bull sharks are one of the few fish

that can live in both salt and fresh water.

But I know what you're thinking, Tim.

Yeah, that we should stop talking about sharks.

No. Why would a bull shark want to venture

into fresh water in the first place?

-I wasn't thinking that.

-The real benefit for an adult

to get into fresh water is probably to have their pups.

It's a good place for them, cos there's plenty of food

and there are no bigger sharks that would like to eat them.

See? Even sharks are scared of being eaten by sharks

and it still doesn't even explain

how a shark got into a lake completely surrounded by land.

Well, our friend, Scott, has a theory.

This area's part of the Logan River flood plain and in the mid-90s,

the river which sits next to the golf course just burst its banks,

flooded across the golf course

and, as the water receded,

there were some little surprises left in the lake.

He's very cheerful for a man who's got

a bunch of gigantic sharks in his lake.

Tim, you're just being silly. There's nothing to be scared of.

-Sharks aren't interested in us at all.

-Really?

What are they eating then?

The sharks are very self-sufficient

and there's quite a lot of variety of fish for the sharks to feed off,

so it's a bit of a smorgasbord, I guess, for them.

And the golfers don't mind them being there at all.

Sharks aren't the worry, mate.

It's the snakes around here you've got to worry about.

What? Snakes?

Let's not go there.

So the solution to this riddle is our shark swam up a river

to have pups, the river burst its banks

and the floodwater carried them over into the lake.

Mystery solved.

Phew!

Thank goodness for that.

I was starting to think that sharks could walk on dry land.

Right, Na...?

Naomi?

JAWS THEME

-HE SCOFFS

-Yeah. Nice one. Really funny.

What's funny?

Wh...?

JAWS THEME

# Wild and weird Wild and weird

# Really, really wild And really, really weird

# Wild and weird Wild and weird

# Really, really wild And really, really wild

# And weird. #

Wild...and...weird!