Strange Sounds Wild & Weird

# Wormy fish-killers Convoys of caterpillars

-# Super-clever, brainless slime... #

-Ugh!

# Bunny rabbit swarms, raging storms

# And pigs that swim at dinner time

# Tornadoes of fire Starfish going haywire

-# Algae balls from space! #

-What?!

# Prairie dogs that chat Birds going splat

# And fish slapping in your face

# 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... #

Coming up on today's show...

Some strange sounds.

The man who grunts for a living.

A squeaky Mexican wave.

And a bad case of underwater wind.

SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT

-What's that?

-That?

That is a pronoun used to identify a specific person or thing.

No, not the word, that sound.

Oh, you want me to tell you what that strange, unidentified sound is?

Yes.

It's a clown flicking jam on a mosquito.

-Really?

-No, if I knew what it was, it would be a strange,

unidentified sound, would it?

Hey, I do know all about another weird noise, though.

Here you are.

MOSQUITO BUZZING

SPLAT

Welcome to Florida, in the deep South of America,

where among the mist-shroud trees...

BURP

-Oh, Tim!

-No, that wasn't me.

It's part of the story, look.

Where among the mist-shroud trees,

a strange sound breaks the tranquillity.

GRUNTING

It's being made by this man, Gary Revell,

and he has a very peculiar job.

I not only love what I do,

I'm bonded to it.

Oh, does he sell glue?

It's in my blood to do this.

He's a vampire. No, a haematologist.

No, Gary is actually a musician of sorts.

There is a technique to it, there is an art.

It's like playing an instrument - either you can play it

or you can't.

And to a certain group of subterranean invertebrates,

Gary's unusual melodies are the equivalent of a Justin Bieber gig.

Because Gary is a worm grunter.

A worm grunter?

Yeah, when it comes to collecting worms,

Gary is the best in the business.

There is no other technique

that I know of that can get these worms like this,

but with this right here, it's simple.

A wooden stub and a piece of iron.

Well, that sounds easy enough.

It seems that earthworms are irresistibly drawn

to Gary's grunting.

All his wife, Audrey, has to do is gather them up and sell them on to

the local fishermen.

GRUNTING

Oh!

-Look, I got one.

-Really?

Oh, no, it's just an old noodle.

So, what makes the worms so drawn to Gary's good vibrations?

Is it time for a scientist?

Absolutely. Allow me to introduce Professor Ken Catania.

Being on the surface of the soil,

it's the last place you want to be if you're an earthworm.

There's birds and snakes and lizards and ants and all kinds of things

that can eat you, not to mention you're out in the sun.

Why would an earthworm come up out of the ground when it senses

vibrations?

To find out, Ken hit the road and went to visit Gary and Audrey,

and he was amazed by what he saw.

Up came the earthworms, out of the ground.

Audrey could go around and collect thousands of them.

It was just really something to see.

And they are huge earthworms, so it is really dramatic.

So, what on earth?

-Get it?

-Yeah.

-Earth, earthworms.

-Yeah.

-Never mind.

What is going on, then?

Well, Ken suspected that so many worms would only surface so quickly

if they were running scared.

If you're chasing your dinner, you don't want to risk your life.

But if you are about to be dinner,

you need to risk your life to escape.

And his suspicions were confirmed with the help of an old friend.

-Father Christmas?

-No, that's Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin is Father Christmas?

-Oh, just listen.

-Darwin says that it has often been reported that when

the ground is beaten or made to tremble that worms believe they're

pursued by a mole and will exit their burrows to the surface.

So Ken believed the vibration of Gary's grunting

was mimicking the tunnelling of the worms' ultimate predator

- the mole.

But how to prove it?

Gary had a bucket of worms

and I had collected a mole and...

Hang on, hang on. He collected a mole?

Where from, Moles "R" Us?

-That's good.

-Moles And Spencer's.

Moles-isons?

Good.

Mole...

Uh, mole...

I can't think of any more.

Nor me.

Well, anyway, Ken released his mole back into the ground and...

Up came the worms, streaming up to the surface,

and that was just great because the two of us sort of looked at each

other and thought, "It's probably moles."

So it turns out worm grunters

are actually world-class mole impersonators.

The sound that the worm grunters are making is like the giant mother of

all moles.

To an earthworm, that is a terrifying sound.

That is what he told me, he said, "You're a giant mole."

And I said, "That works for me."

Why do all your stories

have to be about things that are slimy and wriggly?

Because cute, fluffy, little animals are boring, aren't they?

Oh, I beg to differ!

Watch this.

Here's another odd auditory tale from North America,

this time from the Great Plains.

These giant expanses of open grasslands are home to some rather

cute and cuddly inhabitants.

-Meerkats.

-No, prairie dogs.

An animal famed for their...

-Car insurance.

-No, a spectacular network of underground burrows.

They create vast subterranean tunnels where these fluffy rodents

form complex social groups.

But, recently, some prairie dogs have been spotted acting

very oddly indeed.

THEY SQUEAK

Look at that. Brilliant, they're doing a Mexican wave!

Naomi, it appears

we have another curious sound-based conundrum to solve.

It's time to call in the expert.

Another scientist.

No, me, Naomi.

Me.

These squeaky spasms are clearly courtship calls made by the males to

impress their lady friends.

Actually, all prairie dogs make these strange squeaks - young, old,

male and female - so that's that theory in the bin.

Well, what I really meant to say was they are alarm calls.

After all, there are plenty of prairie dog predators around.

Like that big-eared dog, yeah.

And the worm thing.

You mean foxes and rattlesnakes, Mr Expert?

If you want to use the scientific term, yes.

I think we should ask a proper expert.

How about Professor Slobodchikoff?

-Bless you.

-Of Northern Arizona University.

Sure, anyone can be an expert if they are from some fancy pants

university.

I bet he's got loads of hi-tech equipment and gadgetry to

help him as well, hasn't it?

Hm, not exactly.

Using some rather unique research techniques.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's that?

It's a fake mounted badger being pulled across the grass by a small

man hiding in a tent.

OK.

Con and his team have discovered that prairie dogs use a different

alarm call for each predator,

and these calls contain huge amount of information.

We think that each one of these chirps contains a noun-like word

and it also contains adjective-like words, so we might say,

"tall, skinny, a coyote with yellow fur,"

and the prairie dogs manage to put all of this into a single chirp.

Wait, so prairie dogs can talk to one another?

Yes, they can change the meaning of their calls by varying the harmonics

within each chirp.

So what does, "yip-yap" mean?

Tim! I can't believe you just said that.

Sorry.

Some scientists now believe that, apart from us humans,

prairie dogs may have the most complex language found anywhere in

the animal kingdom.

And rather than being alarm calls,

Con and his team now think our squeaky Mexican waves are probably

an all-clear signal or a way of reporting in for duty.

So, hang on, they don't know for sure?

No, not yet, but they're working on it.

Well, I would call that Ward-one, Experts-nil.

Why? You don't know what they mean either.

Details, Naomi, details.

Anyway, I've got another eerie ear-based mystery for us.

And this time it involves travelling back to the 1980s.

Perfect.

Sweden. Or to be more precise, the waters around Sweden.

And strange things are happening.

Remember, this was the 1980s and the East and West are still engaged in

the Cold War.

Isn't that the one with the giant polar bear?

No, you're thinking of The Golden Compass.

-Oh.

-The Cold War was between Russia and, well,

pretty much everyone else, and Sweden was right on the front line.

Russian submarines were regularly reported off the Swedish coast,

so the canny Swedes came up with the idea of using

underwater microphones.

Oh, I love canny Swedes.

-Do you?

-Yeah.

And canny peas and canny carrots.

Terrible.

The Swedish Navy use the microphones to detect the Russian submarines.

And the sound the subs made was imaginatively labelled

the typical sound.

-Catchy.

-Hm.

But when the Cold War ended and the Russian submarines went home,

something strange happened -

the Swedish Navy could still hear the typical sound.

So if it wasn't being made by submarines,

what had they been listening to all these years?

To solve this marine mystery,

the Navy called in a team of ocean acoustic experts,

including Magnus Wahlberg.

We're all sitting quiet in this room, listening very carefully,

and then they play the sound for us.

RADIO STATIC

It sounded like someone frying bacon.

Magnus immediately realised the Navy had been fooled

by a red herring.

So, what was it then?

I just told you, a herring.

Oh.

There's only one way to produce the typical sound,

and that is to squeeze a herring.

So there we go, that wraps that story up perfectly.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, did he just say squeeze a herring?

Why would you do that?

I can't tell you any more, it's a classified military secret.

-What?

-Hm. Interrogate me all you like, I will not break.

-Go on.

-OK.

So herring is a very interesting fish.

It has a swim bladder.

The herring will pump in air to its swim bladder to sort of keep afloat.

The funny thing with herring is it has a canal from the swim bladder

and out to the anal opening.

So they can sort of fart, if you want.

BUBBLING

And each time they release this bubble, that will cause sound.

So you can have millions and millions of herring.

One school can be like several square miles.

You'll have this cacophony of...

farts coming and you will hear this, it's like

a roar of farts coming

and it can actually sound quite impressive.

Never mind about the sound, what about the smell?

They use this as what we call an anti-predator defence,

so you have a killer whale or a dolphin chasing a herring school,

they can release a lot of air, and the dolphin is like, "Hey,

"where did the herring go? I can just see bubbles now."

If you think about this guy moving through the water,

all of the herring will sort of be scared and probably release

all these bubbles.

And the sonar operator inside here, he will be like,

"I can hear the Soviet submarine, it's just next to us!"

So the Swedish Navy had been mistaking a school of flatulent fish

for Soviet subs all along...

..making this a rather embarrassing case

of mistaken identity.

Well, I think we got to the bottom of that one.

Great, does that mean we can get out of these ridiculous clothes now?

Yeah, because I tell you what, these cowboy boots are really comfortable.

HE FARTS

Uh, there is a herring at the door, I think.

I'm just going to go and check to see. Uh...

# 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

# Wild and weird. #