Peculiar Phenomena 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... #

It's all things peculiar on today's show, including a blue volcano.

Glowing waves.

Gifts from our feathered friends.

Buttons, screws, a lot of things.

And the mystery of the fairy rings.

-#

-There'll be trouble when the kidz come out...

-#

Tim, the remote's playing up again.

Something peculiar's happening.

HE SIGHS

Whoo, whoohoohoohoohoo!

Who are you?! Where's Naomi?! What have you done with Naomi?!

Right here, I'm Naomi.

But you're...

Young again, I know.

What's happened?

Well, I was fiddling with the remote,

pressed the blue button and bang!

What have I told you about pressing the blue button?

Listen, I'll fix this, don't panic.

Hmmmm-ma!

-Ah.

-Better?

-Better.

In fact... SHE GASPS

Uhhh...Tim?

What? I've turned you back. Whoa, whoaaaa, whoa!

Why are my hands so small?

My legs have shrunk!

I'm tiny.

Quick, just pass me back the remote, I'll press the blue button again.

Good idea.

Huh!

-Oh.

-Oh.

-That was peculiar.

-Yeah.

-Oh, well, at least everything's back to normal now.

-Yeah.

-No, something's still not right.

-What is it?

Well, look at that lava,

it's blue and it should be fiery red!

Actually...

-Meet your classic volcano, very hot and very...

-Red.

Certainly not the kind of place you'd want to be

spending a lot of your time, eh?

I really want to spend as much time as I can on volcanoes.

OK, maybe not.

For Olivier Grunewald, they're an obsession.

I have been on maybe 100 volcanoes in the world,

but one changed, really, my life.

Kawah Ijen, east Java,

famous for its glowing rivers of blue light.

Olivier's photographs of this peculiar phenomenon went viral

and caught the attention of geologists.

Now I've been studying volcanoes for years,

but I'm constantly surprised by them.

Everything about this blue material

that's flowing down

the volcano appears to be like lava.

It flows over the mounds and troughs. It looks like lava

but it's blue, which means it can't possibly be the lava itself.

Why not? Why can't lava be blue?

Why's it have to be red? Why is it red?

-Because...

-Don't, just continue.

When lava erupts from the earth's crust, it can flow at

temperatures of more than 1000 degrees centigrade,

and it's the heat from the lava that tends to give

a volcano its incandescent red glow.

So, if it's blue, it can't be lava.

Well, that's it then. If you don't know and Natalie doesn't know,

we might as well go home.

Ah, hold your horses.

A man with a stick held the answer to this mystery.

During the day, Olivier noticed the locals moving in,

completely unfazed, hacking off what appeared to be

chunks of yellow rock.

But it's not rock they're mining, it's actually solid sulphur

that's cooled and solidified on top of the rocks.

Now, check this out.

We're used to the yellow flame that carbon produces

from burning wood or paper,

but when sulphur burns, it reacts with oxygen to produce...

Oh, a bright blue flame. Whoa!

Now, sulphur is common at every single volcano around the world,

but what's special at this particular volcano is that

it's got really high concentrations of sulphur.

A breathtakingly beautiful phenomena

explained by simple chemistry.

If my GCSE results are anything to go by, chemistry is not simple.

-Mm.

-Surfing, on the other hand, I'd have aced that exam.

Sparks fly when I hit the water.

You are not the only one.

Look at this, a video gone viral of a surfer on the San Diego coast.

Check out his technique, very smooth.

Forget his technique, check out the light show under his board.

Oh, yeah, that's pretty awesome too!

Surely it's just a camera trick?

No camera trickery here, Tim.

So, why's it glowing?

Allow me to explain.

Actually, allow me to cue up a clip of

marine biologist Helen Scales to explain.

The reason the wave is glowing like that is because,

within the water, there are thousands of

tiny single-celled creatures

known as dinoflagellates.

And they do that when they're

knocked around, so whether it's the

water moving or the surfer with his board touching the waves.

Each of them are only glowing for maybe half a second at a time,

but because there's thousands of them you get this kind of

twinkling and glowing effect across the whole wave.

Dinoflagellates use this illumination as

a kind of security light to deter predators.

Or dudes on surfboards.

-Exactly.

-Ah, that's amazing.

CROW CAWS

Oh, right on time.

Oh!

Thanks for the chocs!

CROW CAWS Ahh.

Uh, sorry, what just happened?

A crow flew in, dropped in a pressie for me. Tasty one at that.

Mmm.

Yeah, it is a bit of a weird story.

I once found a crow stuck in a fence.

I rescued it and ever since, it's been bringing me gifts.

-What?!

-And I'm not the only one this happens to.

Seattle, home to eight-year-old Gabi Mann and her family.

Like many kids, Gabi likes to collect things,

but her treasures aren't dolls or stickers.

Metal, plastic, buttons, screws,

rocks, more glass, bones.

A lot of things.

And it's not just the content of her collection that's unusual,

it's who gave it to her.

They're my friends and some of them are like family.

They're really nice.

At least, most of them, I think.

Gabi's not referring to her friends at school,

but to the crows in her back yard.

Over the past two and a half years,

these generous garden visitors have been regularly bringing her gifts.

Her collection now contains over 100 different objects,

some dropped right at her feet, and her collection is still growing.

Can I show you one right now?

Is she talking to us?

I think so, yes.

Blimey, this show really is interactive.

Uh, yeah, go on, then, Gabi.

I have one right in my hand.

My squid that I got a week ago.

Bit confused. Tell me there's an expert on this.

Oh, yes. This guy.

A lot of animals use gifts

of one sort or the other to convey either their status

or their interest in another partner,

but, as far as we know,

corvids are the only birds that do this with people.

Crows give gifts to people really to help cement a bond,

an important relationship that they have with this person.

Come on, then, Tim, how common are crow companionships like Gabi's?

Ooh, I'd say there's probably about 20 to 30 instances

of this happening around the world. Am I close?

How DO you do it?

There's probably 20 or 30 instances of this happening around the world.

Ah, it's a lucky guess.

And they all have some consistency in terms of

a person that's been engaging quite actively with the birds,

feeding them a lot consistently, maybe even rescuing them.

We've had cases where a crow was stuck in a fence and a woman

took the crow out of the fence and then started getting gifts.

Hang on, that's you, that... No!

So, the gifts seem to be a thank you for the food Gabi leaves out

for them. Pretty good manners, if you ask me.

You know, that was an incredible story.

Peculiar, but it was a really incredible story.

-Hey!

-Get your own crow!

I don't need one, I've got my own peculiar pet.

-What is it?

-A fairy.

And I tell you what, it's been up to no good in the Mibdi...

Nim...Nimbib... Africa.

MUSIC: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Tchaikovsky

Check this out,

a vast scrubland pockmarked with thousands of shallow circles,

rings of grass surrounding barren soil, each about five metres across.

One local myth holds that these rings are the footprints of gods,

but modern-day scientists are exploring other theories.

So the interesting thing about the Namibian rings,

they don't have any human origin to them.

They extend over such a vast area.

You can travel hundreds of kilometres

and you'll find exactly the same patterns.

So what's causing these elliptical oddities?

Sorry, what?

Oh, uh, these strange circles.

Oh, right, well, I'm telling you, it's fairies.

-Tim, fairies don't ex...

-Gahuurghh!

..explain this fully. Um, apart from fairies, any other theories?

Uh, well, there's one or two, but they're pretty weird.

Some of the earlier ideas suggested that maybe

there was gas seeping from underground,

or that perhaps they were the remnants of toxic bushes that had

previously lived there and had poisoned the soil,

and then nothing could live around them any more.

But that's not all.

Others thought that radioactivity could be causing the circles.

Others still favoured fungi.

Some even thought they might be made by rutting ostriches.

So, which of these odd theories was the correct answer

to the circular conundrum?

-Ostriches?

-No!

-Fungi?

-No.

Radioactivity?

No-ooo.

-Poisonous gases?

-No!

What?! But that's all of them.

What? Is it?

Oh.

Ah.

Ha-ha-ha.

Music, maestro.

GAME SHOW MUSIC

Uh, ants?

Yes, we have a winner.

And here to tell us more about it is special guest Dr Markus Eichhorn.

Hit the button.

Every one of the fairy rings is colonised by ants and termites,

and there are nests around the edges of the rings.

Were these hive-minded harvesters the real cause of the fairy rings?

There are other parts of the world where leafcutter ants clear

patches of vegetation and leave bare ground

or where termites clear the areas around their nests.

Well, it looked promising, and termites are master architects,

building complex mound structures all around Africa.

They certainly seem like the perfect fit.

But it says here, "Ants..."

Hang on, what you reading?

-The Little Issue, it's a magazine for small insects.

-Oh.

Anyway, it says, "Ants and termites don't clear perfect circles,

"and even if they did, it's unlikely they'd be the same diameter

"and the same distance apart.

"They'd have to be pretty obsessively compulsive colonies

"to achieve that."

-So the termite theory...

-It's another dud.

Ah, OK, any other ideas?

Well, we could ask ecologist Dr Stephan Getzin.

That's a good idea, a second expert.

Do you think Markus will mind?

-No, ecologists, they're like that.

-Yeah.

# Circle in the sand

# Round and round... #

It's actually a very,

very unique pattern.

After studying thousands of fairy rings,

the answer suddenly came to Stephan.

We believe that gaps emerge due to competition for moisture.

Stephan realised that the fairy rings only form

with exactly the right amount of rain.

Any more water and they would be simple grassland savanna.

Any less and it would all be desert.

What we now think is that fairy circles

are actually creating themselves.

Ah, so the fairy rings develop as a way for the plants to

organise themselves to survive in an area with very limited water.

Well, that was all a bit peculiar.

-HE CHUCKLES

-What are you doing?

Sorry, Tim, I can't resist. I want to feel young again.

-I'm going to press the blue button.

-No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Ah!

Oh, oh, dear.

-I think I pressed the wrong button.

-You're telling me.

-Oh.

-At least you've got teeth.

Be a love, make us a cup of tea.

HE CREAKS AND STRAINS

Can't get up.

I just can't get up.

THEY SNORE

# 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!

-#