Tales of Terror Wild & Weird

# Wormy fish-killers Convoys of caterpillars

-# Super-clever, brainless slime

-Ugh!

# Bunny rabbit swarms Wedding 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 and really, really wild and weird. #

On today's spook-tacular show...

Brainless bats.

I couldn't believe what I saw.

Zombie starfish!

They've been filmed actually pulling off their own arms.

And a waterfall that bleeds?

A package has arrived for you, Tim.

Dangly things, check.

Cobwebs, check.

Spiders, check.

Ooh, yes.

Mmm. Spooky snacks, check.

-Oh!

-Oh, I like what you've done with the place.

-Is that for me?

-Yeah.

Just arrived. What is it?

This is my consignment of toy bats.

Ah. HE LAUGHS

-Really finish of the place.

-Yeah.

-That's strange.

-What is it?

Well, it's got no head.

I'm sure they had heads when I ordered them.

That's very realistic, though.

-Realistic?

-Mm.

Who's ever heard of a headless bat?

Tim, you might want to sit down for this.

SPOOKY MUSIC

The Bukk Mountains in northern Hungary.

Bats were discovered in a cave with their brains removed.

Ugh.

Local naturalist Peter Estok had heard a grisly story

that pointed to an unlikely culprit.

I was very surprised and I could not really believe that story.

So we came to the cave and see it for ourselves.

# Where's your head a-at?

# Where's your head at? #

Ugh.

It's usually birds of prey like hawks and owls which go for bats

but what Peter discovered went against all his expectations.

-A ghost?

-No.

-A zombie?

-No.

-Dracula?

-A mummy? A unicorn?

-SHE SIGHS

-Goblins?

-No.

-Werewolves?

None of them because they don't exist.

Oh, what then?

Peter found a bird in the gloom

but this was no bird of prey.

Suddenly a tit, a great tit, entered the cave

and it was looking for something near the crevices.

-Great tits? In caves?

-Mm-hm.

Surely they're not to blame, are they?

You're right, Tim. We're more used to seeing them in our gardens.

When they're not feeding on nuts and seeds at the bird table,

the largest prey they're likely to dine out on

are small insects and spiders.

But these great tits weren't searching for creepy crawlies.

We observed that the tits got a bat in its beak

and it started to eat the bat.

# Why did we have to meet On the night I lost my head...? #

And as Peter observed, this wasn't just an unfortunate one-off.

HE GASPS

# I guess I just lost my head

# I know I should really know much better. #

We saw several occasions

when great tits managed to get bats

and they were eating the bats.

Some of them were still alive.

No. I'm not buying it.

What could turn this sweet little great tit

into a vicious, bat-hunting killer?

Well, it's not the first time

great tits have done some pretty strange things.

-Milk?

-Ooh.

-That was a clue.

-Ooh.

-A tasty one, though.

-SHE SIGHS

HE SLURPS

Aah.

Back in the day when milk was delivered to our doorsteps,

great tits learned how to peck through the foil

to get to the rich cream at the top.

Something completely out of the ordinary

in terms of their usual diet

but they did it in times of hardship when food was scarce.

Peter thinks the same thing was happening back at the cave.

In hard winters it is difficult for the great tits to find food outside,

especially when the snow cover is significant.

So, the great tits were starving.

As soon as Peter put out an alternative source of food,

they stopped hunting the bats straightaway.

-Ah, that explains these, then.

-Mm.

Yeah, I don't really want them any more.

I'll send them back. Refund.

You really know how to put a guy on edge, don't you?

Oh, I am only just getting started.

You see, great tits aren't the only species to track down

and eat things out of the ordinary.

-No?

-No.

Over in the States, a couple caught this vegetarian on camera.

He's got a bird.

On the ground, Michael.

Yeah, there's a bird on the ground.

It's hurt.

The culprit is a white-tailed deer, munching on a chick.

What?!

He's got it in his mouth.

He's got the bird in his mouth.

Oh, my goodness. He ate a bird.

Michael, he ate a bird!

He ate a bird!

-Did you see that?

-Yeah.

AMERICAN ACCENT: Tim, he ate a bird.

Did you see that?

That's not something you see everyday.

-Question, though.

-Go on.

Why?!

Well...

The boffins think it was either supplementing its diet

with a quick protein-rich meal

or trying to get the calcium it needs to grow strong antlers.

Either way, it's pretty terrifying.

Deer eating birds, birds eating bats, the world has gone mad.

It is going to be hard to top that.

Oh, I don't know.

I've got a story that will make your toes curl...

and fall off.

What?

Oh, nothing. Get a load of this.

The West Coast of America.

Starfish, or sea stars as they're known these days,

usually live a quiet life.

Protected by their hard skeleton, they have very few predators

and spend most of their time mooching around rock pools and reefs

eating shellfish.

Oh, they're so pretty.

-Do you mind?

-Sorry.

But in 2013, divers noticed something very disturbing -

thousands of sea stars disintegrating and dying,

their limbs littering the seabed along the whole Pacific Coast.

-Whoa!

-Yeah.

Melissa Redfield from the University of California in Santa Cruz

witnessed first-hand exactly what was going on.

-SHE GASPS

-Cool, isn't it?

No! It's terrifying!

People have seen arms basically crawling away from the body.

-What?

-I know.

And if that's not enough, once they're detached,

the limbs seem to have a life of their own.

They're moving like zombies. Ugh!

Sea stars losing their arms all over the place

and crawling away is pretty terrifying.

If you imagine that that was some sort of animal on land,

losing its arm and crawling away,

you know, it would be quite frightening and a lot more obvious.

Oh, there's a...

HE LAUGHS Oh, Tim!

Don't worry, it's armless.

It's not going to arm you.

Because it's...

-Oh, no. I'm out.

-Just going out on a limb here...

Oh, should have thought of that.

..but once they've lost them, can't they re-grow them?

You are right.

If one of their limbs is nabbed by a predator,

they can simply re-grow a new one.

In fact, they can lose up to 3/4 of their own body and still survive.

Even if they get it wrong sometimes.

That arm is massive.

-It's not growing a new arm.

-No?

It's growing a new body from an arm.

-Whoa!

-I know.

And it's all possible as long as

a small portion of the central disc remains.

But this doesn't explain the strange phenomenon

on the West Coast of America.

These starfish are dropping their arms with no sign of danger nearby.

So, what's happened to these adorable invertebrates

and turned them into the walking dead?

Well, in November 2014, biologists found the culprit.

The zombie-like behaviour is all down to a virus

aptly named sea star-associated densovirus.

Catchy.

Yeah. Actually, it's very catchy.

It's spreading like wildfire

and it's that that's making their limbs fall off.

So what is going to happen to the sea stars?

Well, there is a little glimmer of hope, Naomi.

We do have a little glimmer of hope

which is that this past spring and summer,

we have seen a big influx of juveniles.

This is likely because when many animals are stressed,

as a sort of last ditch effort to keep the population going,

they'll reproduce.

Sea creatures with their arms dropping off, fair play, Tim.

-That was a good story.

-Thank you.

HE SCREAMS

You thought that was scary,

consider it just a warm-up to a very chilling finale.

You gave me zombie sea stars,

I give you a frozen waterfall of blood.

Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Antarctica, a remote, frozen wilderness

and hidden away in this world of white is a gaping wound in the ice.

This is Blood Falls.

-Is that lump of ice bleeding?

-Uh-huh.

It's a bizarre mystery

that's intrigued scientists for more than a century

and for one it became a lifelong fascination.

The first time I saw Blood Falls was in a graduate glaciology class

and I saw a picture of it and I got really excited and intrigued

as to what this feature was.

Everybody thought the incredible spectacle was down to a phenomenon

called watermelon snow.

Wait. Wait a second. Watermelon snow?

-Yeah.

-That sounds amazing.

HARP PLAYS

Ah!

Ah! Ah!

Oh.

-Ah.

-HARP PLAYS

Ooh, and painful.

What are you on about, Tim?

This is watermelon snow.

Watermelon snow is caused by algae which grow at low temperatures.

The algae produce a pigment that acts as a natural sunscreen

and it's this pigment that gives the snow a pink appearance

and the faint smell of watermelon.

Hence the name.

# I just like it nice and juicy Watermelon man... #

Well, that's it then. Case solved.

Watermelon snow. It's not scary, it's delicious.

Er, actually, no. Case not solved.

-Oh, really?

-Hmm.

-So what is the cause of the bleeding waterfall?

Glad you asked.

Where did you get that?

Oh. Shwoo-ponk.

Mmm.

Hmm?

Jill discovered a vast reservoir of salty water

stretching at least 5km beneath the glacier.

And in there, she found something extraordinary.

HE SLURPS

-A giant watermelon?

-No.

A tap-dancing polar bear?

-No.

-A swarm of jelly babies?

-No... What?

-Yeah.

Jelly babies, man, they are scary.

It's like a baby but made of jelly.

I mean, who on Earth would want to eat an effigy of a small child?

That is just wrong.

Ooh.

Gill discovered a massive community of bacteria...

That would have been my next guess.

..frozen, deprived of oxygen and isolated for millions of years.

That still doesn't answer why the waterfall is red.

Well, without oxygen to breathe,

these ingenious little life forms evolved a way

to live off elements in the rock,

extracting minerals like iron to produce energy.

And guess what colour iron is when it dissolves in water.

-Blue.

-Red!

-Red.

-Got it in one.

-Or two.

Mystery of Blood Falls solved.

So it's basically rust not blood?

-Yes.

-Well, that wasn't scary at all.

Well, I must say, Tim, I'm impressed.

-You dealt with that very well.

-Thanks.

Well, it's just over the years now, I've changed as a person.

I've become more mature, more sophisticated,

I've become a lot braver.

Well, that's good because I've brought you a little Halloween gift.

-Aw.

-And to be honest, I wasn't sure quite how you'd handle it.

Wow, it smells amazing.

Is it aftershave?

# Sticky, sticky, sticky, sticky jelly... #

HE SCREAMS

# Easy as jelly, baby. #

See you next time. Bye.

Bye-bye.

Please don't eat me.

# 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

# Wild and weird! #