Costa Rica Deadly 60 on a Mission

My name's Steve Backshall.

And this is Deadly 60 On A Mission.

My team and I are travelling the world

in search of the planet's deadliest animals.

Ho ho!

I want to find out what makes them so deadly.

That means getting close to them in the wild.

Wow!

Only the most lethal will make my list and in this series,

we're going to show you my most extreme animal encounters.

And you're coming with me every step of the way.

This time on Deadly 60, we're in Costa Rica in Central America.

This is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

That means there's more species of plants and animals

living here than anywhere else.

We're going to be on the Pacific Coast.

Where we're going is so remote, there's no roads at all.

I think it's going to get a little bit bumpy.

Getting there is half the fun, of course.

But personally, I can't wait to get unloaded, into the forest and on the hunt for the Deadly 60.

Located in the heart of Central America, Costa Rica has more

than a third of its land covered in forest.

It's home to hundreds of thousands of different species of plants

and animals so my hopes of finding something really exciting are seriously high.

But of course, it's the deadly ones that I'm after.

If you've seen Deadly 60 before,

you'll know I've got a thing for snakes

so I've assembled a hit-list of Costa Rica's most incredible snakes.

They're complex, they're fascinating and very, very different.

All we need is to figure out which ones make it onto the Deadly 60.

The first contender in our Costa Rican snake contest

is the mighty boa constrictor.

The largest snake in Central America,

they can grow up to four metres in length.

They kill their prey using constriction,

crushing the life out of their victims.

I'm hoping to show you just how that works.

This three-metre snake had slithered into a local farmer's backyard.

And unsurprisingly, he wanted it back in the wild.

But before I release it, I want to experience first-hand

the formidable power of this deadly predator.

Snakes have to eat their prey whole,

so a boa the size of this one couldn't eat me

but it could still choke the life out of me.

This magnificent creature...

-SNAKE HISSES

-0oh!

..is a boa constrictor.

"Boa" refers to the group of snakes this belongs to.

They're thick, heavy-bodied snakes.

What I'd really like to do is to show you how it hunts.

That's the constrictor bit. To do that, I'm going to need to get control of it.

SNAKE HISSES

Wow, listen to that hiss.

You can see that it's not actually trying to bite me.

Those strikes are just to try to frighten me away,

as is the hissing sound.

'Believe me, with all that solid muscle,

'this isn't going to hurt the snake at all.'

Right.

So, if you look into the mouth, at those thin, needle-shaped,

backward-pointing teeth, they're really vicious,

designed for hooking into their prey.

Right.

Let's see if I can show you a little bit more about how this snake hunts.

So now you can see quite a lot of the snake's bulk

has gone straight around my neck.

Around here is where my windpipe is,

where air comes in and out of my lungs

and also where the arteries are that carry blood to my brain.

Now, as I breathe out...

..the snake is very subtly

increasing the pressure around my throat, as you can see.

That's making it more and more difficult for me to breathe.

And every time I breathe out, it just tightens a little bit more.

Until eventually, I can't get any air

in or out of my lungs and already at this stage,

if I wasn't just to ease the pressure,

I would be finding breathing very difficult indeed.

This is what constricting means.

If you see me starting to go blue or purple in the face,

then I might need a little bit of help.

Constructing basically means to strangle,

to suffocate the life out of prey.

And that's how this magnificent animal...

HISSING

..manages to kill the mammals it's feeding on.

Its tail's going round the back of my neck now, it's just finding

places and ways of getting purchase

to use its really strong muscles in choking me.

Now, we've only got quite a short time that I can show you this

before I'll have to release myself.

The amazing thing that happens next is that the boa constrictor

will actually start to swallow its prey whole

and to do that, it can open this mouth incredibly wide.

GROANING Are you all right, Steve?

Actually...

Yeah...

It's amazing how strong it is.

I mean, this snake is only actually feeding on mammals

about that sort of size, maximum,

and it has the strength to choke the life out of me.

I mean, I must be 10 times, 20 times the size of its normal prey

and he easily has enough strength to choke me.

There's no doubting this is an incredibly strong predator.

I don't know, I think it's going to be very hard to beat.

Can I take this off now, please?

If I can get her off my neck.

Wow.

So, the boa constrictor is the muscle man

of the snake world here in Costa Rica.

Our next contender could not be more different.

This is the wonderful eyelash pit viper.

Even if you're someone who absolutely hates snakes,

you'd have to admit that that is a really beautiful animal.

But they're also very highly adapted hunters,

and the clue to that is in their name - pit vipers.

That doesn't mean, as I thought when I was a kid, that they live in pits.

Actually what it's talking about is a tiny pit

that they have between their nostril and their eye

which is incredibly sensitive at picking up heat.

I've got a special camera here, a nice little toy,

which, hopefully, I can get close enough to show you that pit.

Move carefully here.

I don't want to have it strike at me.

That's looking right down the heat-sensitive pit

of the eyelash pit viper.

Now, that pit works like a kind of sixth sense.

It can actually pick up heat,

and how that helps it hunting is that

most of the animals it will feed on actually generate warmth

in their muscles as they move, so even if it's completely dark

it can build up a three-dimensional picture

of anything it wants to hunt,

just using those incredible heat-sensitive pits.

Now, I've got a little Deadly 60 experiment,

that I'm hoping will show you how those pits work.

I've been dying to give this a go.

Typical food for the eyelash pit viper

would be something like a small mouse, perhaps a bat,

they'll even catch hummingbirds on the wing.

The core body temperature of a bird or a small mammal

is around about 38 degrees, so what I have here is a balloon

filled with hot water that's almost exactly that temperature.

I'm going to move it in close to the viper,

and, hopefully, I'll get it to strike towards the balloon.

Here we've got our mini-cam set up and ready to record at high speed.

That means that we should see the strike slowed right down

and be able to really appreciate quite how awesome it is.

Let's see what happens.

That was amazing!

What do you reckon, Nick, do you think you got it?

Let's see.

Incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

Saw the mouth open almost so it was fully wide like that,

almost as if it was creating a stabbing kind of shape

rather than a downward strike,

and the fangs are almost used like daggers

to pierce into the balloon.

That was amazing.

Can I have another go? Is that all right? I could do this all day long.

The eyelash pit viper's venom is hemotoxic

which means that it affects the blood and circulatory system

causing almost instant death to small prey

and severe pain, swelling and tissue damage in humans.

Worryingly, these snakes occasionally end up

in shipments of bananas to the UK.

That's so perfect. You can see it resetting itself at the end.

Letting the fang come back into position.

Absolutely incredible.

So two sublime undoubtedly deadly snakes so far.

But Costa Rica is snake central so before I make my final decision,

I have one more contender I have to include.

The most feared snake in Central America.

It's called the bushmaster

and because of the sheer quantity of toxin it injects,

it's considered to be the most venomous snake in the New World.

The venom works so fast, it can stop a rat in seconds

and could kill a man in minutes.

But what makes the snake so intimidating is its camouflage.

It's so good, you just wouldn't see it until it was too late.

To prove it, a local snake expert is going to hide one

and I'm going to try and find it before it finds me.

I'm going to start looking around about here.

The snake expert said that he's not going to put it

too far off the side of the trail, it's going to be very close.

So...

Big heavy-bodied snake, they don't climb

like the eyelash pit viper,

they're always down on the ground.

OK.

Ah! I have it.

OK.

Oh, that is just amazing!

OK.

Now, I'm going to go in quietly and carefully so it doesn't move.

And I think you'll have a lot of trouble spotting it.

Right.

OK.

So, follow the end of my stick.

That is its head.

-Can you see that?

-Yeah.

Yeah?

Just remarkable, the way that all those diamond patterns

down the back and the stripe down the neck

completely break up its outline and make it almost invisible.

And this is exactly the kind of position

the snake would just hang in,

perhaps for days on end, waiting for a meal to come past.

Right, let's get him out so I can show you him properly.

Such a heavy-bodied, thick snake.

And all of that weight is used to anchor it down as it strikes.

Really heavily, what's called, keeled scales.

Very dinosaur-like.

And absolutely magnificent.

Well, I have to say, I'm a little bit undecided.

I think all three have been utterly magnificent.

This is really tough.

There's no doubt all three snakes deserve a place in the Deadly 60.

The boa is by far the most powerful.

The eyelash viper is accurate enough to catch hummingbirds on the wing.

And the bushmaster has enough venom to bring down a buffalo.

Three wondrous snakes.

But on the day, it's the eyelash pit viper

with the speed of its strike which has impressed me most.

So fast they can catch a humming bird on the wing.

With fierce hemotoxic venom

and heat sensitive pits to enable it to hunt in pitch darkness.

Eyelash pit viper could be the most striking snake

on the Deadly 60.

It's the perfect start. Now in our search

for Costa Rica's deadliest,

we're going to take a break from the jungle

and head to an area used by cattle farmers.

Locals report their livestock are under nightly attack.

This is one of the cows

that's been being preyed on by our deadly predator.

You can just see here the evidence of the presence

of our next deadly animal.

This is all dried blood.

It's been lapped up and then spilled down on to the fur.

So, to find to the bloodthirsty creature responsible,

we're going to enter a twilight world

where few would choose to tread.

So, just there ahead of us,

that dark hole is a cave.

And that's where we're heading.

Watch your step, it's slippery.

We're going underground to find a creature

whose feeding habits strike fear deep in the human psyche.

The cave is the perfect hiding hole

for a particularly intimidating species of bat

and is knee deep with the hundreds of years of their droppings.

In the darkest corners of the cave, fluttering shapes catch my eye.

Oh, lord, look at that!

BATS SQUEAK

Got one then?

Yep, got one.

So, what I have in this bag is an animal that's probably

inspired more myth and legend than any other animal in the world.

It's a vampire bat.

They have also, possibly the sharpest teeth of any animal.

Which explains why I'm wearing these thick gardening gloves

before I think about trying to get it out.

Last time I tried to do this it bit clean through the glove

and into my finger.

BAT SQUEAKS

Oh!

Right.

OK, let's get you into a good position.

BAT SQUEALS

Whoa! Look at him whirling around

to try and get his huge canine teeth into my fingers.

OK.

So, that is the face that all the fuss is about.

The vampire bat.

So, up above me now is a roost of about 30 or 40 vampire bats.

And at night, they'll take wing

using that remarkable wing membrane

and fly out in search of a warm blood meal.

They use the ridiculously sharp teeth

at the front of the mouth here.

I don't my finger too close

cos I know I'm going to get bitten on camera!

But they shave away a portion of hair from the animal

that they're going to be feeding on

and then bite a tiny hole

and lap away at the blood that leaks out.

Their saliva keeps the blood flowing,

it's what is called an anti-coagulant.

They know exactly where to bite, using their sensitive noses

to pinpoint where the blood flows closest to the surface of the skin.

They take in about a soup spoon of blood,

which doesn't sound like much

but when you look at the size of this tiny bat,

actually, for its body weight, that's an enormous meal.

While it might seem everything about vampire bats

is just a bit grim and grotesque,

amongst themselves, they're really quite thoughtful creatures.

In fact, if they come back from having got a really good meal

and there's another bat that hasn't managed to feed,

one of these guys will actually regurgitate their blood meal

and give some to the other bat.

They look after each other.

So, vampire bats they may be the creature of nightmares

but with possibly the sharpest teeth in the whole animal kingdom,

I reckon they're worth a place on the Deadly 60.

He's not on my back, is he?

With the sharpest teeth in the world,

centres in their nose help them pick the best place to bite,

they consume a third of their body weight in blood at every meal.

Vampire bats are on my deadly list.

We're heading back into the jungle for my next deadly creature.

In some parts of Costa Rica

they get four metres of rain a year.

Which creates the perfect conditions for something tiny

but utterly and completely lethal.

In fact, just one could kill the entire crew.

But its identity might surprise you.

The most poisonous creature in the world by some distance

is a tiny frog no bigger than the end of my thumb.

They're called poison dart frogs

and a particularly beautiful variety is found right here.

Poison dart frogs secrete poison onto their skins.

When Colombian Indians are hunting,

they wipe their blowpipe darts on the back of the frog.

Any animal they hit with their dart will be dead within minutes.

These technicoloured amphibians

come in an array of different bright colours, warning how dangerous they are.

No, there's three - there's three in there.

Now, I've made sure that I've washed my hands,

because these frogs are very, very sensitive in the skin...

..and you don't want any insect repellent or anything hurting them.

Most people are absolutely blown away, the first time they see a dart frog, about how small they are.

It's incredible to think that an animal this size can be the most poisonous on the planet.

Those bright, bright colours are part of the reason that this frog

is actually found active during the day.

Every other frog around here comes out at night.

It's deafening with the calls of frogs.

But these dart frogs can be active during the day

and they're brightly coloured because they know that predators

are going to see these colours and know it means just one thing - this is highly poisonous

and certainly not going to be good to eat.

So the poisons that are created by this little frog

are one of the absolute miracles of nature.

They start off in the leaves of plants.

Ants eat the leaves, frogs eat the ants,

and then they almost sweat the poison out on their skin.

There's one particular species of dart frog,

about the same size as this. It's found in Colombia

and it has enough poison in its body to kill ten people.

That's pretty incredible.

This tiny little animal is a living chemical weapons factory

and for that reason alone, it's got to go on the Deadly 60.

The dart frog produces the world's most powerful poison.

It's vibrant colours warn off predators

and just one frog could kill ten humans.

Small but utterly deadly.

Before I leave Costa Rica,

there's one final creature I want to put on my list

and...it's a bit of a monster.

It can grow up to six metres long and weigh in at a staggering 1,000kg.

This area is infested with them.

They're most active at night

and I'm starting my search on a beach near our camp.

Wow!

Look at that!

Wow! What a magnificent creature.

Right down at the surf.

This is an American crocodile.

Isn't it wonderful?

Still comparatively young.

It's probably only about... I guess, two years old.

But still you can see the power that makes it such a formidable predator.

Look at those teeth!

They actually...overlap the jaw so that it can't actually completely shut its mouth and hide its teeth.

You still see them bristling from the mouth.

And those are used almost like a trap for catching fish.

And when it gets bigger they'll also catch large mammals,

even things as big as deer.

And every once in a while, big American crocs have been known to take people.

But at this size...well, I don't think he's any danger to me.

But absolutely glorious.

I would love to put American crocodiles onto the Deadly 60

but to do that, I think I'm going to have to find something

a little bit bigger.

Come on, fella.

There are definitely some bigger ones around, so the hunt is on.

What makes these crocs so capable is that they're adaptable,

at home exploiting both freshwater and sea.

I have a plan to entice what I hope will be a large adult

out of hiding and onto my Deadly 60 list.

Did you see that lightning?

Crocs have well-developed senses of hearing and smell

and can also pick up vibrations of struggling prey in the water.

Let's see if they'll sense my fish bait.

This is absolutely extraordinary.

There's a massive American crocodile...

just zeroing in on my bait.

I should explain that there's no hook on this line.

It's just a piece of fish tied onto a rope,

so there's no way that it can hurt the croc if it decides to go for it.

In actual fact, all he's going to get is a free meal.

He's just there.

He's got it! He's got the fish!

He's got the fish.

Come on then, big fella.

Come on.

Let's get a look at you.

Whoa! That's some strength!

Look at that.

Ah-ha-ha-ha!

Oh!

Slipping around in the riverside mud,

you can see why crocs are so deadly.

Even when I'm out of the water on the riverbank,

he still has the upper hand.

Just when I think my job can't get any weirder,

I end up fishing for crocs in an electrical storm.

Madness.

He is the master of these murky waters

and I certainly wouldn't fancy swimming in there.

Crocodiles probably have the most powerful bite in the world,

12 times stronger than a great white shark.

Oh, that's strong. That is so strong.

Because the tail is paddle shaped,

it gives them great power through the water when they need it.

Which isn't often, because most of the time is spent almost motionless.

Our last fish.

This is our last chance for an encounter with this magnificent living dinosaur.

There he is.

Though the American crocodile is primarily a fish feeder,

a big croc like this could easily take decent-sized mammal prey.

Or chug back a huge fish in one gulp.

Effortless. Just effortless.

That's not just one of the most deadly predators in Costa Rica -

that's one of the most deadly predators in the world.

They've been around since before the dinosaurs,

they grow and replace up to 3,000 teeth in their lifetime,

reach an enormous six metres in length.

American crocodiles are definitely...

WHISPER: Deadly!

So my trip has given us a huge haul

of fascinating and formidable creatures,

from but hugely powerful croc...

to the lethally-fast eyelash pit viper.

And from the phenomenally-toxic poison dart frog

to the sharp-toothed vampire bat.

Costa Rica has certainly lived up to expectations.

So join me next time for some more of the planet's Deadly 60.

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