Freaky Phenomena Wild & Weird

# Marauding mice and walls of ice and sharks on a golfing spree (Argh!)

# Cicada swarms and nasty storms and fish walking out of the sea (Really?)

# Elks in trees and foaming seas and giant mayfly moths (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

# They're really really wild And weird. #

It's all things freaky on today's show,

as mysterious webs cover a street.

Foaming seas!

-A disappearing playground!

-And multicoloured lobsters.

We got ourselves another crazy lobster down here.

Tim? The TV remote's not working. Can you come and have a look?

What is it?

I only put brand-new super-strong batteries in that this morning.

-Have you pressed all the buttons?

-Yep, everything except the blue one.

Blue one? I didn't even know we had a blue one.

There you go, let's give it a go.

-NAOMI'S VOICE:

-Well, that didn't do anything. Ooh!

I sound all high-pitched and squeaky, like you!

Well, thank you very much(!) Oh! Ooh! I sound like a man!

Quick, press the blue button again.

I daren't speak.

Oh, good, back to normal. What about you?

He...llo. Yeah. I was getting worried then!

Why are you wearing my clothes?

Argh! Why are you in my clothes?

Oh, no, I look and I smell like you, too.

-Quick, get me out of these.

-All right. It isn't comfy for me either.

Right, you ready?

-We speak of this to no-one. Agree?

-Agreed.

What happens in the treehouse stays in the treehouse.

-It was pretty freaky, though.

-Yeah. Almost as freaky as this.

We start our journey of all things freaky in the city

of Rotterdam in Holland, when, in 2009, this happened.

-No way!

-Way!

It was like something out of a Grimms' fairy tale.

Look at it. The poor owner of this car had something much worse than

a parking ticket stuck to his motor.

-That is horrendous.

-I know, the webs.

Ooh, stuff of nightmares.

No, owning a red car! Only weirdos own red cars!

My car's red.

And it didn't stop there. Everything was entangled in this mysterious web.

A closer inspection revealed millions of the silk-spinning

offspring of a species of ermine moth.

So, what were so many caterpillars doing wriggling over

the surface of this thick web?

It's no good asking me. Ask him.

That's Ray Barnett from the Bristol Museum.

What he doesn't know about moths isn't worth knowing.

-I bet he doesn't know all their names.

-Shhh.

The adult female, flying about at night, like most moths, would find

the right food plant and then would lay a clump of about 50 eggs.

Tiny little caterpillars hatch out,

and then they will start to move about and find some food.

And that's when they start to form webs.

They spin the silk over the food that they're on

and hide underneath it, and that just means the birds,

which are the main visual predators of caterpillars,

are unable to get at them easily.

So why that street in particular?

Because it's lined with plenty of their favourite food,

the leaves of the spindle tree.

Ohhh, fair enough.

But that still doesn't explain why they coated the car,

unless they were going to eat it.

As they gradually exhausted the food supply,

they continued to look for more by spinning more web and expanding out

and perhaps leaving the tree that they were feeding on to try

and locate more.

If you imagine yourself as a poor little defenceless caterpillar...

Hm! I'm there already.

..you can't run across the road, because the birds will eat you,

-so you have to keep your protection with you.

-Good advice, Doc.

Safety doesn't take a day off.

HE STRAINS

-Do you want some help?

-Yes, please. Would you mind?

Thank you. Yeah.

Ow.

It's a bit tight.

They have to keep spinning the web and moving underneath that web,

so they're moving off the tree.

They don't know where they're going, but they're

trying to find more food plants

and consequently they've ended up covering up all the bits and pieces

around the tree, which happened to include in this case a car.

So quite a remarkable incidence. But I don't think they were fooled.

They didn't think this was something to eat,

they were just on their way to try and find more to eat.

Finished!

-Ooh! I like what you've done with the place.

-Mm!

So, the moral of that story is if you've got cherry trees

of spindle trees in your garden, don't park your car underneath them.

Hey, freaky moth webs are one thing, but what about this?

Would you, er...?

Thanks.

Imagine sending your kids to school one day.

There they all are, merrily playing at a well-earned breaktime.

Next day, this.

Check out that massive hole!

That's what happened to a school playground in southern China.

-Where were the kids?!

-In the hole!

-NAOMI GASPS

-I'm joking. Of course they're not.

No, nobody was hurt, but that hole was 80 metres wide

and continued to grow for almost six months.

And that is not the only incident.

In June of 2010,

a massive hole opened up in the middle of a suburban street,

swallowing a three-storey building.

Terrified local residents had a lucky escape and were evacuated

when the 60-metre-deep chasm appeared suddenly during the night.

A little closer to home, and this time a small town in central

Germany suffered a devastating collapse.

Houses nearby had to be evacuated, and two car owners, well,

they were left with a bit of a conundrum.

Holes appearing in cities? What's going on?

Well, I'm not going to lie to you, Naomi. I have no idea.

I'm just reporting the news. Fear not, though. Help is at hand.

British geologist Tony Cooper is an expert

in these terrifying sinkholes.

What has happened is that material has gradually washed away

underground and the cavity's got very large at depth and then

the material has continued to wash away and collapse over that cavity

and that cavity's worked its way up to the surface.

At the surface, especially in towns and suchlike,

you will have things like roads and concrete structures and so on,

and these can actually bridge quite significant holes in the ground

until it gets to a point where it is so large that nothing will

bridge it, and then you'll get a catastrophic collapse.

So in the case of the school playground,

China has huge areas of limestone, and although no-one knew it,

the school playground that collapsed was right on top of a massive cave.

Right, for our next freaky phenomena,

-we are heading down under.

-Ooh!

Australia, the epitome of beach culture - sand, sea, surf.

But what happens when this...

turns to this?

# Twisting my melon, man!

# You know, you talk so hip, man You're twisting my melon, man... #

Overnight, the ocean had been whipped up into something

quite extraordinary.

When the waves would push in, they'd push the foam up real high.

You know what I'm thinking?

-BOTH:

-Foam party!

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

Meanwhile, back in Oz,

the locals head to the beach to enjoy the spectacle.

Whoo-hoo-hoo! Foam par-tay!

The waves were lifting the foam,

but you couldn't actually see breaking waves.

Whoo!

We even had one member of my wife's family disappear in it,

and it took us quite a while to find him.

DANCE MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY

-Ooh!

-Actually, it's not so funny, is it?

No.

-SQUELCH

-Oh, the sea's a dangerous place.

Yeah.

So go on, then, what's going on with this cappuccino coastline?

Let's get some answers from this man.

Dr Simon Boxall is a coastal expert at the National Oceanography Centre.

Over the last few years, we've seen some fantastic sea foam events.

A lot of people assume it's caused by pollution.

In actual fact, it's not, it's caused by these things.

Bottles of washing-up liquid. I bet it is washing-up liquid.

This is caused by plankton, phytoplankton primarily.

Or plankton. That would have been my second guess.

-Oh.

-Remind me, what's plankton?

Plankton are microscopic plants and animals that live in water.

They're the bottom link in the food chain,

feeding everything from tiny fish to the giants of the ocean.

And plankton supports us, too.

Much of the earth's oxygen is produced by these tiny organisms.

As the phytoplankton die, they release various compounds.

When these things are agitated, they create sea foam.

They act like surfactants,

almost like washing-up liquid in some ways.

Ha! I was right! Plankton schmankton.

This combination of strong blooms, strong wave activity produces

the most spectacular sea foam shows on the planet.

Hey, Tim, do you want to see some freaky-looking lobsters?

Er, hello, remember who you're asking.

-Does that mean you want to see them?

-Yeah, course I do, yeah.

Now, don't adjust your TV set, you are seeing this right.

Fishermen on the Atlantic coast of North America landed a lobster.

Bright blue lobster! Freaky!

Just got this blue lobster.

They're normally that colour, aren't they?

Yep. And check out this one.

We got ourselves another crazy lobster down here.

-Pretty funky. Pretty cool.

-Another was brilliant orange.

That's the colour lobsters go when they're cooked.

And just when they thought they'd seen it all,

up from the depths came this...

..an impossible-looking lobster with a colour split that was jaw-dropping.

Like I said, jaw-dropping.

-Dana and Ryan Duhaime caught it.

-I wonder which one will speak first.

Ah, decisions, decisions. I'm going for the guy in the red T-shirt.

When we came on deck, I said, "What is this?"

I couldn't believe we had a lobster that was orange on one side

and black on the other, straight right down the middle.

We couldn't wait to take it in and show these guys on the dock, y'know?

"What do you think of this?"

Tell you what I think. Doesn't look very appetising.

So hang on, what's going on with all these colourful crustaceans?

Well, pretend you're a lobster.

-Done.

-As a lobster, you like eating other shellfish.

Tasty!

Well, inside the shellfish that the lobster eats is a red pigment.

It's the same pigment

that gives flamingos their characteristic colour,

only in the lobster's world, that pigment moves around its body

and changes colour again, this time to blue.

But it changes again, this time to yellow.

But for most lobsters, all the colours merge and you get this.

Down on the sea bed, where lobsters spend most of their lives,

this layering of colours provides excellent camouflage.

It keeps the young safely hidden

and allows adults to stalk their prey unseen.

So they're a mismatch of colours. But what about the two-tone lobster?

Well, unlike us,

each side of a lobster's body develops completely independently.

So occasionally you get a split like this. And that's not all.

Most two-coloured lobsters are boys on one side and girls on the other.

Can't even begin to imagine what that would feel like.

-What are you laughing at?

-Erm...

-Have you been at the blue button again?

-Who, me?

-Yeah!

-No.

-Give it here.

-No.

-Please give it here.

-See you next time.

# Dude looks like a lady!... #

# 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

# They're really really wild and weird

# Wild and weird. #