L-Animals QI

This programme contains some strong language.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, good evening, guten Abend,

bonsoir and welcome to the QI L series.

And this is our L series animals show, so let's meet my lovelies.

-The leonine Ross Noble.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-The larky Sarah Millican.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Lounge lizard, Colin Lane.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And the lesser spotted Alan Davies.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Thank you.

And here's what they sound like. Ross goes...

LION ROARS

A lion!

-Sarah goes...

-LARK SINGS

A lark, or possibly a ring tone.

And Colin goes...

HOWLING CRY

I thought YOU were supposed to have the worst one.

See if you can guess what that is.

-That was a human simulator.

-It's an L.

HOWLING CRY

-MIMICS IN AUSSIE ACCENT:

-"I never!"

It's not a Melbourne housewife, no.

It's a good score at Scrabble for a four-lettered animal.

-Lynx.

-Yes, it's a lynx. It's a lynx.

And Alan, your sound is...

'Stephen! Stephen! Listen to me!

'I want points!'

Right.

Now, I've given each of you a penny in case you're caught short.

-One of these.

-TOILET FLUSHES

Yes, because one of our questions tonight,

as in throughout this series, will be a little bit lavatorial.

So, if you think that the answer to the question

concerns the lavatory, you get a chance to spend your penny.

It's a joker card. All right.

Now, what does the loneliest whale in the world sound like?

LYNX BUZZER

LAUGHTER

That's amazing.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I was going to say Richard Littlejohn.

Someone sent me a thing about blue whales, that they are really loud.

They can make a noise of 180 decibels.

It's the loudest noise any animal can make. All whales are loud.

-It's louder than a plane taking off.

-Oh, completely so.

-Or a baby crying, or anything.

-And it can be heard 500 miles away.

-And further.

In fact, the deeper it is, the further it sounds,

and if it's very, very low-pitched...

MIMICS WHALE SONG

HE GETS LOUDER

HE REACHES SCREAMING PITCH

Somebody feed them!

It's not even close.

I don't know what that sounded like. I never want to hear it ever again.

Your wife is a very lucky woman. Do you know that?

Yeah, this particular whale, there's one, we don't actually know

what species it is, because no-one's found it, but people have heard it.

And it's very unusual

because it's the highest-pitched whale that's ever been recorded

by hydrophones, the microphones you pop down into the depths.

-But how do they know it's lonely?

-Because it's never been answered.

-Ahhh!

-But maybe it just likes spending time on its own.

Maybe it's like singing in your kitchen in your nightie,

maybe it's like that.

There's a subtle difference between lonely and alone.

That's very, very true, I agree.

Maybe it's just reading books and spending some time...

Not reading books, I don't think we can go that far.

MIMICS WHALE SONG

Also, how do we know, if we've never seen it,

how do we know that it is a whale?

It might just be a couple of dolphins mucking about with a big shell.

HE HOOTS

"They're coming, they're coming. No, nothing. No.

"There's a whale over there, I think, but, then..."

-HE HOOTS

-No, I think...

-That's the shell.

-That's the shell.

It's a conch. HE HOOTS

I didn't think conch when you did that.

Oh, dear!

-Are you suggesting that I'm...?

-I'm not suggesting anything.

Are you suggesting I'm somehow pleasuring a whale?!

LAUGHTER

The sperm whale's penis is about three metres long.

Yeah, you'd need a bigger mouth than even you have got.

LAUGHTER

-Isn't it great how we are all so keen to be involved?

-Absolutely.

I'll have a go!

Hang on a second, if we're all getting involved,

I'll start here, have it all the way along the front.

Here, you hold it like that...

Right, here you go. Right there we go, there we go!

Heave ho! Heave ho!

It's going to blow!

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear, dear, dear. Well...

Where has it been heard, this...?

It's generally believed that it is a blue

or a fin whale and it's 52 hertz, which is the far higher register.

We've actually got it, we can hear it.

DEEP VIBRATING CALL

That seems very deep to us, but that's actually the highest.

It sounds like standing outside a nightclub.

-Deeper ones travel much further.

-HE MIMICS BEATBOX

This is the Ministry of Sound.

Yeah.

What time are you closing? We're trying to sleep.

Not with that shirt, mate. Members only.

At home you might not be able to hear that,

because not all televisions can actually take that amount of bass.

You probably haven't got a woofer at home, as I have.

LAUGHTER

And just on the issue of last creatures, not necessarily...

Some people believe that rather than being a blue whale

or a fin whale, it could actually be a whale

that is a result of two different species of whale mating, a calf.

A new kind of whale, and that it doesn't have a natural mate,

because it's a sort of mutated voice.

Well, the 52-hertz whale has a high-pitched voice and no mates.

Now, what form of transport might a caterpillar use?

Do they hitch onto things?

They do. And I wonder what they hitch onto.

Furry mammals. Furry mammals carry a lot of stuff about.

They do, but in this case they use each other.

-Aw!

-They use a principle which is quite fun.

The one that's on the bottom layer is going at a certain speed

and the one above twice the speed,

and the one above that thrice the speed.

So all told, the whole group goes faster.

And we've done a little experiment using stop motion photography.

Some boot's going to come in in a minute. Splat!

Awful, isn't it? But if you watch, we've got two yellow pieces there

and they're both moving one step at a time.

But you'll see the one on the top layer is going faster

and the single one can't catch up with it.

And that's the principle they use -

that the top layer is going quicker.

And so that's how caterpillars move at greater speed

to get to where they need to be.

-It's like a travelator.

-The travelator.

Except when people get on the travelator, they slow right down.

-So annoying.

-It drives me mad. When I get on a travelator,

-I really make the most of it.

-Me too.

-I accelerate.

I love the way that the windows and everything just speed past you.

Oh, it's fabulous.

-Travelator!

-Yeah.

-People even on the travelator, they just stop.

-I know!

-Yes.

-Yeah, but it's doing the moving for you, so you don't have to move.

That's why we're a nation of morbid... Oh, dear...

LAUGHTER

Or if you have small children, they turn around and run the other way.

-Yes, they will do that.

-And then there's people coming and you're like...

You have to do quite a lot of loud coughing and harrumphing

and, "My flight's about to leave," sort of stuff,

in order to get people to move across.

It's just politeness to take one side of the travelator.

Or say, "GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

Yes, all right. That's an option too.

Anyway, moving from larvae on to adult lepidoptera.

What's a sure-fire way of telling two butterflies apart?

Different colour wings.

-ALARM BLARES

-That would be true of those that were different colours.

But suppose they looked identical?

-Well, then you can't.

-And were different species or genus.

-Then you can't. That's it.

-Well, you might be able to.

-Their breath.

-Their breath!

Is it the prettier they are, the stinkier their breath?

Their address.

Their address, yes. That would do it.

-Are they the same but different?

-Their names.

-They're all the same but they're not?

-There are two genera

of butterfly that look almost identical, and it's a type of evolution called Mullerian.

There they are. And one of them tastes disgusting to birds,

and the birds quite quickly learn that.

-You just lick them?

-Well, the birds did.

-Just get a bird to lick it.

And so the other one evolved to look as much like the one

that's disgusting without actually being disgusting.

Because it doesn't need to develop the disgusting taste,

because the birds will assume that it IS disgusting.

And this is a thing that happens in nature.

-You look identical just to survive.

-How smug must they be?

-It's very, very good.

-So smug.

And also, the one on the right there seems to have a tiny roll

of gaffer tape in its mouth.

-It does, doesn't it?

-LAUGHTER

They're not even his real wings. He's made them.

He's like that...

Look at that, I'm just like him. Come on.

You go round the other side of that,

that's all sticky-back plastic round there.

But there is an answer to how you would tell the difference, and it's deeply personal.

-Oh, it's the downstairs, is it?

-You would look at their genitalia.

And there's a truly great novelist of the 20th century,

although English was his third language,

and he was very good at sexing butterflies. Indeed...

-Sexing?

-Telling their...

-Sexing.

-..telling their gender, examining their penises.

-Sexing or texting?

-Sexing.

-Texting.

-No, sexing. There is a collection at Harvard University of these tiny

little phials filled with penises of butterflies that he collected.

There he is. He lived in America, hence Harvard, but he was born in Russia

and then moved to Paris from a rather nobby family.

And his name was Vladimir Nabokov.

But you must have heard of his most famous novel.

Yeah, 50 Shades Of Butterflies.

Come on.

-Yeah, it was amazing.

-Don't let us down.

-Lolita.

-Lolita, thank you, Alan. Yes.

He wrote Lolita, amongst many other magnificent novels.

Operation Yewtree are all over him at the moment.

LAUGHTER

-"Lolita, light of my loins."

-The Russian Yewtree.

-And he collects the penises.

-Well, he was a...

But he's not bothered about the rest of it.

He was an incredibly enthusiastic lepidopterist.

And then he lets them go.

-And he went, in fact, on index cards...

-Without a penis!

That's a butterfly that's had its penis removed by Vladimir Nabokov.

I got it, I got it, it was really good, Alan.

-Was his name...?

-Stick to girls!

Was his name Knob-off, did you say?

Vladimir Knob-off.

Knob-off by name, knob-off by nature. I'll do anything.

Start with a butterfly, work my way up. Don't care.

He was, as well as being a great writer,

one of the finest lepidopterists of his time.

He used his index cards, on which he wrote his scientific notes about lepidoptera,

to write the entire novel of Lolita, in fact, his most famous work.

Did he try and collect all of the lady gardens of the butterflies?

-LAUGHTER

-That's a very good point.

I don't know if he exclusively confined himself to the penises of butterflies,

but I suppose they were the easiest bits to see in such a small insect.

The wings are easier to see.

Well, yeah, no. When it comes to sexing, I mean.

Butterfly pubes, imagine that.

Imagine a pillow, how soft would that pillow be?

-Just filled with butterfly pubes.

-Ohhh...

He gave a very, very...

LAUGHTER

That's what... Not many people know this.

Not many people know this,

but all of Stephen's suits are lined with butterfly penises.

That's true.

By the finest tailors in the land.

-No, I do have...

-Butterfly tailors, no less.

That's right. Tiny moths come in.

Mr Fry, we have collected the butterfly pubes

of a million butterflies.

They've been donated willingly.

They have. More than willingly.

That's why he looks so comfortable on this show.

See, look, he's even flapping like a butterfly.

The power of the pubes are moving through the fine...

LAUGHTER

Look at him moving. There it goes again!

The best way to tell butterflies apart is to look them

straight in the genitals.

Can you give me your impression of a puffer fish on the pull?

LYNX BUZZER

LAUGHTER

That's the gift that keeps on giving.

Oh, you're puffing your face.

They play down the puffiness, I reckon.

They do. Well, what they do is play up some whole other skill,

which is really astonishing, in order to attract a female.

They turn themselves inside out. Fully inside out.

I would be impressed by that.

What, if a bloke came up to you in a nightclub and went,

"Watch this, love!" Woomf -

and his lungs and heart and all the rest...

-I wouldn't hug him, but I'd be impressed.

-Yeah.

Fish, like birds, as you probably know, the males tend to be more colourful

-and put on a good show to attract females.

-I did not know that.

-Did you not?

-I knew it about birds.

-Hmm, beautiful plumage.

Has he just had a Slush Puppy?

LAUGHTER

A blue Slush Puppy. What he does...

It was in such a big glass, he went like that, it's gone on his eyes.

-Gone on his eyebrows.

-LAUGHTER

What they do is actually remarkable.

If you watch what he does, at first you'll think it's just random,

but then you'll go, "Oh, my goodness."

It takes nine days for him to prepare this for the female.

Is that just farting, what he's doing there?

-LAUGHTER

-No, that's... He turned, oh.

-It's extraordinary.

-Aww!

-He's made this enormous crater with ridges.

-He's made a lair.

Which are decorated with seashells. And it's there.

WOMEN: Aaah!

The ladies are so impressed. Is that what you want, a sand castle?

No, I think their "aaah" was they were impressed.

-Nine days' work to attract a female.

-How many days?

-Nine.

-Hmm...

LAUGHTER

A lot of females say that. They go, "No, not good enough." It has to be absolutely perfect.

And then when it is perfect, the female lays her eggs right in the middle.

And he then fertilises them and looks after them for six days, just to protect them.

That's nice, and then she can go back to work.

Or go to another crater.

No, the most amazing thing about that is, that's actually on the beach.

That's not even under the water.

-That would be...

-It comes out, like that.

Puts little flags in every ridge as well.

It's...I won't say entirely unique, because we know

so little about what goes on in the ocean, but it's one of the few

we know which is quite so marvellous and distinctive, the puffer fish.

But nine days is a long time. I mean if you, Sarah...

-It's not really, though, is it?

-She's worth it.

I mean, when she comes in, she comes in and just goes,

"Well, you've done that all wrong.

"Been waiting six months for you to get that finished and it's wrong.

"Do it again. I should have got somebody in to do it."

LAUGHTER

Anyway, the male puffer fish attracts his lady with

a heart exhibition.

Now, what do we call a fish that drives a tank?

Tank fish.

You might call it tank fish, but when I say "we", I mean WE.

What do we here at QI Central call a fish that drives a tank?

Sir.

ALARM BLARES

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

That was a shock. We read you like a book.

No, we're going to show you a fish driving a tank.

-What?

-Yes.

So if my splendid porters can come on with a little tank tray...

-The porters, ladies and gentlemen.

-Yeah!

There we are.

So, we've got a tank and we've got a fish who's going to drive the tank.

And there's our fish. He doesn't live here,

I want you to know, this is just its transport system. And...

This is, like, the poshest fairground ever.

Yeah. And if I turn on his little motor here...

-So this is a fish tank tank.

-And since he moves, he will...

Give him some food or poke him with a biro.

Every different direction he goes, he moves the tank.

And, whoa, there you go.

Let's move you into the middle here.

There you are, because you were getting all excited.

There you are, a few ant's eggs for him,

or whatever it is we feed him with.

Butterfly penises.

-But you obviously want to know...

-LAUGHTER

I said, what do we call him? His name is Alan.

LAUGHTER

He's Alan the QI goldfish, and just to put your minds at rest,

this is not his tank, he has a beautiful...

It's MY tank.

Yeah, exactly. He has a beautiful place where he hangs out, which is

full of wonderful toys and fronds.

It's near Watford and he drives there himself every morning.

Yeah, exactly. And you might like to meet our splendid elf, Alex Bell,

who built this particular contraption for Alan.

Come on, Alex.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-We mustn't...

-Here we have the classic elf.

Absolutely.

Educated to within an inch of his life. Smartly turned out.

So how long did it take you to build this?

A couple of days. It's made of Lego, completely, so...

-It's entirely Lego.

-Yeah, it's all Lego.

Can we race it against caterpillars? LAUGHTER

And why did you make it?

-Someone...

-No, it's not rude, just asking.

There's a Dutch company called Studio Dip,

and they made a bigger version of this for a fish to live in,

and we thought we'd have a go at making our own.

Did you build it over two days to attract girls?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Sarah, are you impressed?

It's working for me.

I think the question that everyone wants to ask is that

if you were to make a full-size version out of the Pope-mobile...

LAUGHTER ..and the Pontiff was to swim very hard,

could he...would that work?

-Could we do that?

-Yeah, probably.

Just to put at rest those who are wondering what the

principle behind it is, it's when he swims forward, what happens exactly?

There are four sensors, one in each corner,

so whichever corner he goes to, it goes in that direction.

-It's that simple, nothing to do with the pressure of the water?

-No.

Would it be possible to build a giant one,

put a dolphin in it that could swim up,

do a somersault and then the whole vehicle could loop the loop?

-Yes.

-Theoretically, yes.

Let's do it.

I shall pay for that out of my own pocket.

-Are there future uses for this?

-Maybe military, I think...

-Military uses.

-The British Army is on its uppers.

-Yeah, I think they'll probably be the only ones who'll fund it.

Well, it's very exciting for him.

But I'm sure he wants to get back to his huge

and very luxurious accommodation

-in the QI offices.

-He lives in a cistern.

-I'll hand him over to you.

-LAUGHTER

-Thank you, Alan.

-Thank you, Alan and Alex.

-APPLAUSE

That was very pleasing.

-The porters!

-APPLAUSE

So, anyway, moving on. What has 32 brains and sucks?

-The front row.

-LAUGHTER

Is there a creature that has 32 brains?

Does an octopus have lots of brains in its tentacles?

Yes, and the genitalia are at the end as well, if you remember.

-Oh, yes, I do remember.

-Really?

-On one of them.

-How do you know which one?

-You'll soon find out.

-LAUGHTER

Get a few lagers into it. Wey! Wee-e-ey!

But it's not an octopus.

It is an animal that is associated with moist conditions, and...

A slug.

It looks rather like a slug.

Here's a thing you can do to test this particular animal.

They've done it, they've filled a condom with blood

-and dropped it in the water where these creatures...

-Leech.

-Yes.

-And they've found...

-People have done that intentionally? Filled a condom with blood?

-In order to demonstrate how leeches..

-Some intentionally.

-Others accidentally.

-LAUGHTER

Exactly, exactly.

Are you all right in there? Yeah, yeah, yeah!

LAUGHTER

Don't flush it down the... No!

That's why it's always...

LAUGHTER

That's horrific.

What it doesn't do is catch a leech,

because leeches haven't evolved expecting humans to splash

through the marshes, but they have expected other kinds of animal. And...

A frog, perhaps?

A frog is a perfect example.

If you put the condom in covered in blood,

leeches will not be attracted to it.

If you just wipe the condom over a frog,

and then drop it in, the leeches will go pha-doing!

-Because they smell frog.

-And the frog will be your friend for life.

They go, pha-dong, boing! Wheee!

-Exactly. They hop around.

-Yeah.

So, the merest whiff of frog will lure a leech to lunch.

Now, what's the most energetic thing that a sloth ever does?

Oh, you're spending your penny. And you're right to.

-Is it?

-Yes. Well done.

APPLAUSE

-Going to the lavatory.

-Going to the lavatory.

They spend all their time in the trees except when they go down

and use a communal lavatory, which they share.

And this habit of sharing lavatories has given rise to some pretty

-unpleasant...

-Oh!

-Somebody's missed the lavatory there.

Well, I'm afraid it gets...

-Go and wee on a friend.

-It gets really, really worse.

It's grim beyond believing, this,

but at the Estacion Biologica Quebrada Blanco in Peru,

which is a field research site in the Amazon,

they observed very odd feeding habits of two-toed sloths.

They were hanging upside down from the roof of the scientists'

latrine, and they started to drop down into it

and scoop up handfuls of human excrement and toilet paper,

-and they would eat it.

-ALL: Ugh!

They even plunged into the pit itself, which you can see,

and emerged covering, after a liquid lunch, in poo.

The research paper noted, "It was scooping with one hand

"from the semi-liquid manure, and then eating from the hand.

"When more persons gathered around the latrine to watch this

"bizarre behaviour, the sloth emerged from the latrine and climbed into the nearest tree."

So it didn't like being watched. It might have been slightly ashamed.

You know when the film Jaws came out and it was really terrifying

to go to the toilet in case a shark came up and bit your bum...?

-I don't remember feeling that, to be honest.

-Maybe that was just our house.

But now we've got to worry about sloths coming up and...

-Clawing at your arse. Yeah.

-Yeah.

Well, it wouldn't do that, it would just sit there like that, going...

LAUGHTER

Hit me! Hit me! Ah, oh...

-Oh, God!

-As Supernanny would say, that was unacceptable.

-Unacceptable, yeah.

-I mean, dear...

It must be hard for them to be both an animal and a deadly sin.

-LAUGHTER

-That's true. That's true.

Because every morning they just go, "Ohhh..."

Is it the sloth - I might be wrong here, you'll know -

when they die, they stay in the trees, don't they?

-Totally.

-How long for?

-Just for ever.

-For ever?

-Yeah.

-Shut up!

Honestly, they're like... they'll be like...

-They'll rot away.

-..a skeleton, like just a...

They'll be eaten, perhaps, by other things.

-Yeah, but not the bones, just the outside.

-Yeah.

That's a hell of a way to find your nana, isn't it?

That's how we found mine. In the local park.

"What are you doing? Oh, no. Oh, God."

She'd only gone on the climbing frame.

Oh, dear. The only...

Not really!

Why...why did people go, "Ohhh"?

As if my nan genuinely... "Oh, that's terrible."

We don't know much about what goes on in the north-east, but we hear things.

LAUGHTER

-Mainly from you.

-Yes.

So, the only reason, as Alan knew,

that sloths ever move out of a tree is to spend a penny.

But now it's time to wallow for a while in the filthy pile of ordure

that we call General Ignorance, so fingers on buzzers, please.

Which cat never changes its spots?

Well, now, see, I sense a trap.

Do you?

-LION BUZZER

-Oh, lion.

Is it the jaguar?

Good.

Because if you shave a jaguar it's got that,

the jaguar pattern on its skin, that's not its fur.

So therefore, it doesn't matter how many times you shave it,

the spots remain the same.

Interesting. It's not the correct answer.

All right, I'll be off, then.

We avoided saying the leopard.

Yes, because that was the trap I sensed.

You can see a little leopard kitten, with its mother,

and you can see the leopard kitten really does have quite tight spots, very close together,

and the mother has what are called rosettes, which are very different.

The animal actually is a lion

and the spots are where its whiskers sprout from.

And you can see those little lines of dots there.

-Oh. Like it's been sniffing glue, like that.

-They never change.

They never ever change, so they're like fingerprints - you can

identify a particular lion just by the array of its spots.

You'd have to get very close to it, though.

-And you wouldn't necessarily want to do that.

-No.

-No, exactly.

So, it's lions not leopards that never change their spots.

Which is the biggest of the big cats, though?

-LION BUZZER

-Yes, lion in first.

Is it the jaguar?

-LAUGHTER

-No. Not even the V12. No, I'm afraid not.

Any other thoughts?

Well, the lion?

ALARM BLARES

-The leopard? No.

-Panther?

-The tiger, is it the tiger?

-You're both half right.

The cougar.

-The liger?

-It is the liger, and the liger is composed of what?

-A lion and a tiger.

-But which gender round?

The front half is a tiger. LAUGHTER

The back half, it's like a dodgy safari salesman.

-"Tell you what, mate, that's lovely, that's a lion, that is."

-Cut and shove.

-A male tiger and a female lion.

-Yes.

In both cases they put the male first,

so if it's a liger, it's a lion male and a tiger female.

And if it's a tigon, then it's a male tiger and a female.

-The best one is the ziraffe. Yeah.

-Well...

It's just got a zebra body and then a giraffe neck,

and it's always falling forward.

LAUGHTER

Anyway, the biggest of the big cats are ligers.

That brings me to the scores.

In last place, I'm afraid,

he's come thousands of miles to be minus 20, it's Colin Lane.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In third place, twice as good a score,

but still minus 10, Sarah Millican.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And minus 5, Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Which means that our winner on a staggering plus 6 is Ross Noble!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, it's good night from Sarah, Ross, Colin, Alan and me.

And I leave you with the last words of Noel Coward, of all people,

and how sad they are - "Good night, my darlings, I'll see you tomorrow."

Good night.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE