Sri Lanka Deadly 60 on a Mission

My name's Steve Backshall.

Woooo!

And this is Deadly 60 On A Mission.

My crew and I are travelling the planet

in search of its deadliest creatures.

That's not just animals that are deadly to me,

but animals that are deadly in their own world.

Only the most lethal will make my list.

And you're coming with me!

Every step of the way.

Deadly.

This time on Deadly 60 On A Mission,

I'm ocean-bound to find

the largest animal that's ever known to have lived.

Hold on to your hats!

There's a surprise in a sack!

And a menacing meeting with an ancient reptile.

All this in Sri Lanka,

a paradise island in the midst of the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka's forests are inhabited by

one of the most successful wild cats in the world,

but it's also supreme at not being seen.

We're gearing up for a tall task.

We've come to Yala National Park.

It's the most famous national park in Sri Lanka

and one of the most beautiful,

and we're here to find Sri Lanka's largest cat, the leopard.

These leopards are the largest found anywhere on Earth,

which means the legendary leopard bite and pounce

is even more effective.

Leopard use stealth and camo colours to creep within metres of their mark

before making a decisive leap.

In most of Asia, leopards are out-competed by tigers,

but Sri Lanka has no tigers.

This makes leopards top cat.

They're bigger, bolder, more brazen,

and they're Sri Lanka's number one predator.

Here in Yala National Park, there's probably a higher density

of leopards than anywhere else on Earth. But that said,

this is still a leopard, so finding them isn't going to be easy.

We'll need to scour the roads, keeping an eye out for any signs

a leopard might have passed this way.

Although one of the best places to see leopards,

there are only around 30 or so in the whole of the park.

To find one we'll have to follow the signs

that have been left behind in the sand.

There's a line of leopard footprints

running down the side of the road here.

But the really interesting thing is that we've got very, very fresh

jeep tracks from this morning and the prints are on top of them.

This has been left really, really recently,

like, within the last few minutes.

So a leopard has been walking in that direction

and that is obviously where we have to go.

We head in the general direction of our leopard,

hoping it hasn't vanished into the scrub.

There's something moving in the undergrowth,

but we can't quite get a glimpse.

Just here, this is going to be good. This is going to be good!

And a little more, little more, little more, little more.

OK, now stop and look that way.

We have two leopards in dense undergrowth,

to the side of the vehicle. They're wandering along this way.

I'm hoping that they're just going to come out into the open

and show themselves.

And it looks like they're coming now.

OK, spin around.

And then, for a second, one emerges.

At this distance, it's not easy to tell if they're male or female,

and they're certainly not massively active.

I mean, this isn't an animal that's thinking about hunting.

But we're just getting tantalising glimpses, which really shows how

they just blend in seamlessly with their background.

It's this camouflage which aids the leopard's hunting strategy.

Leopards won't indulge in an all-out chase like a cheetah will.

What they need to do is creep up on their prey and get to within no more

than perhaps five metres before they pounce,

and then when they do, they deliver a killing bite to the throat

or to the back of the neck.

Well, we've had a tiny, fleeting glimpse,

but a fleeting glimpse that to me sums up everything that's lethal

about the leopard.

Stealth, cunning and cryptic colouration.

There's no doubt the Sri Lankan leopard's going to go on my list,

but before I do that, I'd like to get a slightly better look

at this incredible predator.

As long as the sun's up, we're determined to keep looking.

Seeing a leopard out in the open would be the perfect end

to our day.

Whoa! Our driver's suddenly put the pedal right down

and is going crazy fast, which I think means that he might have had

a call from someone saying they've seen a leopard.

Stop, stop!

-WHISPERS:

-Yes, yes!

S-s-sh!

We've got a female leopard sat in perfect view,

right on top of a rock just above us.

It really is a formidable animal.

Even from here, you can see how big the paws are.

They kind of look like they're too big for the legs.

And those can be used as a powerful tool for clouting smaller prey.

I mean, whacking a peacock or a rabbit or something

with one of those paws is easily enough to kill it outright.

But the paws are just half the story.

Just got a yawn and a really nice look at those big canine teeth.

As long as my thumb, sharply pointed

and driven in with sturdy jaw muscles,

these are the leopard's bit of killer kit.

Had a bit of a stretch.

And now standing up,

and off it goes.

What a fantastic encounter.

Sri Lankan leopard.

Cunning and perfectly concealed cat.

Utterly beautiful, totally deadly.

This camouflaged predator sneaks up unnoticed,

then pounces, overpowering its prey...

and suffocating with a bite to the throat.

Next up, we head inland to find an ancient reptile.

But on our way we discover that here in Sri Lanka,

even urban gardens have animals on offer.

Just pulled into our driver's house,

and as we were pulling into the driveway,

saw a big old snake heading under here.

The shape, size and colour match that of the cobra,

common round here and lethally venomous.

I'm taking great care where I put my hands.

Just give us a shout if you see anything, chaps,

even if it's a tail.

Oh! Hey!

As it shot past, I could see it wasn't a venomous cobra.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Fantastic!

Well...

Well, it made a break for freedom,

and it's one of the more common snakes

found in this part of the world.

It's a common rat snake,

and they're really rather wonderful animals.

This is a snake that people genuinely do want to have

in their back garden, because it's not venomous,

it's not going to do any harm whatsoever to people,

but what it does do is feed on the rodents that nobody wants

around their house.

So this will munch down rats, Indian gerbils,

and it could quite easily eat two or three of those in a night.

This snake really demonstrates the problem that snakes face here

in Sri Lanka.

At first sight, there is no way you could tell it apart from a cobra.

So, obviously, if people perceive this as being a dangerous,

highly venomous snake, the first thing they'll do is kill it.

And that would be an absolute tragedy,

because it's not only harmless, but extremely beneficial.

Sri Lankan people live with fearsome reptiles on their doorstep.

Some are good neighbours,

others - well,

let's just say you want to be very sure about where you go swimming.

Many of the waterways are haunted by this horror.

It's the mugger crocodile,

which translates as "the water monster".

The record mugger was near five metres in length.

With an unusually broad snout, their bite force is exceptional.

The jaws alone could warrant a place on my list.

Birds, fish and mammals can all end up

On the receiving end.

This is a highly populated part of the country

so most of the crocs spend the day hidden in burrows.

As the sun fades

they cautiously emerge, and we'll be waiting to catch them on camera.

To entice them out, I lay out some irresistible chunks of chicken.

Now that the light's gone, we've set up an infrared camera.

So this can see even in total darkness,

by firing out a beam of infrared light which should be invisible

to the animals and will bounce back off everything we see.

And this camera should be able to see everything in front of us.

'After a few hours of waiting, a burning eye appears.'

Out of the burrow now.

Properly into the stream.

All that we can see so far is just the eye shine.

That's all that's exposed above the surface of the water is the eye,

and it's reflecting back light from our infrared light

that we've got on top of the camera.

To begin with, it's going to be very cautious.

It's going to be very, very careful that nothing out here

is any danger to it before it emerges.

And when it does that, I'm really, really hoping it's going to pick up

the scent of our bait.

Oh, that was fantastic!

It just gave a great big blink from the nictitating membrane.

That's the third eyelid which it uses to cover its eye when it dives.

You see the eye blinking both from the side, from below and above.

That's incredible.

'If we want to see anything more than the reflections of its eyeball,

'we'll need to get creative.'

I'm going to get this chunk of meat in on a string.

'Johnny the cameraman can see what's happening through his viewfinder,

'but I don't dare turn on my head torch in case I spook him.

'I'm relying entirely on Johnny to let me know what's happening.'

Fishing for mugger crocodiles in the middle of the night,

and I can't see anything at all.

All I can do is listen.

He's just moved up a bit.

Just made a full-on pounce at the chicken,

and is now waiting on the other side of the stream again.

He's gone under.

Can you...? What can you see?

Close to the chicken?

Oh-h! Ooh, going to lose my fingers here.

OK, so he's got a hold of it now. I can feel it.

Just tugging gently on the string.

I don't want to make him feel that he can't take it.

It's very, very odd knowing that I've got a crocodile

on the end of this line and I can't see it.

I wish I could see what's going on!

'From feeling the tugs on the string I can tell the bait's working

'and Johnny's getting some fantastic footage on the infrared camera,

'of the mugger in chilling predatory style.'

What an animal.

With its bulldog appearance, its power, its jaws, that incredible

burning eye shine, the mugger crocodile is definitely on my list.

The biggest mugger crocs have reached five metres in length.

They can remain hidden in the shallowest waters,

and possess a potent bite force.

Sri Lanka's one of the best places on Earth for reptiles

and especially snakes.

There's about 103 species here,

including the most dangerous on Earth -

the saw-scale, king cobra

and Russell's viper.

Plus several other kinds of cobra.

But not all rely on toxins to terrorise their prey.

We were out at night, snake-hunting,

when a local turned up with a sack

and a real surprise inside.

So, this snake was found close to people,

and needs to be released into the forest.

But let's see what we've got.

Oh, my word.

That is beautiful and absolutely enormous.

'An Indian rock python, one of the world's serpent giants.'

OK, I'm going to need to tip this out,

because they can be quite snappy.

So, everyone, watch yourselves.

That is absolutely massive.

And very, very strong.

OK, where's it going?

OK.

OK, what I need to do is get control of the head.

Cos once you've done that, you have control of the snake.

OK, yes, got it.

Crumbs, that was harder than I was expecting! OK.

HE EXHALES DEEPLY

'This snake is just under four metres long, pretty impressive,

'but they can be up to six.'

It's extraordinarily strong, and obviously doing very,

very well for itself, because this particular animal is very fat,

very healthy, and has obviously been feeding with great regularity.

It senses its prey with highly sensitive scales

running down the upper lip,

which can actually pick up warmth from warm-blooded prey.

'These lip or labial pits help pythons to detect prey.

'Once it's been caught, the snakes in this group will constrict,

'enveloping their victims in muscular coils,

'squeezing and squeezing till there's no life left.'

A snake of this size could quite easily feed on pig or deer,

and it would swallow them in one mouthful,

as all snakes have to do,

because they're not capable of chewing their prey,

and swelling - this head just distending the jaw

and walking it down,

the massive animals that it's capable of feeding on.

This marvellous, precious,

beautiful snake will now go back to the forest, where it can be

safe from people - as far away from human beings as possible.

But before we do that, you've got to say,

this huge, incredibly strong, muscular,

magical animal has to go on the Deadly 60.

Indian python. Deadly.

It has long, thin teeth, and lots of them.

Constricts the breath out of its prey, and grows to an enormous size.

My main reason to journey to Sri Lanka was for an almighty gamble...

..aiming for a close encounter with nature's leviathan...

..the largest animal ever known to have lived,

the blue whale.

Weighing as much as 180 tonnes,

and 30 metres in length,

that's as long and heavy as a passenger jet.

Their tongue alone weighs more than an elephant,

and they're predators. With gargantuan mouths,

they consume up to four tonnes of small animals called krill

every single day.

Which makes them the hungriest predator on Earth.

Despite their size, they're difficult to film.

They're constantly moving and deceptively fast,

and our eventual aim is to film them in their world,

something few people have ever done.

Spotting one will only be the start of our monumental challenge.

Blue whales are an animal I genuinely never thought I'd see.

Until quite recently, they were almost impossible to see.

They're an animal that's endangered, that lives way out in the deep sea.

But a few years ago, scientists realised that there's a population

of blue whales actually living off the coast of Sri Lanka,

between here and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

'The whales are attracted here by an upwelling of nutrients

'from currents that sweep deep sea trenches near the coast.

'These nutrients lead to blooms in krill,

'the tiny prawn-like crustaceans blue whales feed on.

'And richly-stocked oceans lead to an abundance of hunters.'

Heading towards us, towards us, towards us! Oh-ho-ho!

Oh, my...! Look down, look down, look down!

Oh-h!

'These are spinner dolphins.

'They're named for their habit of spinning around their axis

'as they leap from the water.'

There's so many of them, it's just, we're completely surrounded!

Any day where you see a dolphin is, in my book, a very, very good day.

'But we were in search of the dolphins' much, much larger cousin.'

'A spout, and for a split second, we think we see a whale.'

The boat's motors have slowed, because...

There, right in front of us! Johnny, over to the left!

Right alongside the boat!

And it's going to dive under us. It's going to dive under the boat!

No more than 20 metres.

Oh, my word!

No way!

Yes, I see it, I see it.

The only comparison I can make is like a nuclear submarine.

Just breaking the surface. It's almost silent,

and you just see the water dripping off its flanks.

The spray just came back and hit us all in the face. It's that close!

'There's a reason this is seen as the best spot on Earth

'to see blue whales.'

There's two animals, side by side,

and for the first time, you can really get a sense of the scale

of the animal. It is genuinely bigger and longer than our boat.

Blue whales are the largest of the baleen whales.

Baleen whales don't have any teeth.

Instead, hanging from their upper jaw,

they have plates of a substance called baleen, made of keratin,

same thing that our fingernails are made of.

And they'll open their mouths,

they'll take in GIGANTIC amounts of water and krill,

then close the mouth up,

squeezing all the water out.

And all the food is trapped on the inside.

The baleen acts like a sieve.

They then use their ENORMOUS tongue to slurp down all of that food

and that can be tonnes of food in a day.

'Which makes them a very fitting subject for my list.'

My goodness!

You beauty!

This has been an experience I will never forget.

But, if this has been challenging,

our next task is even more difficult.

'And that is to try and get an underwater shot

'of this mighty giant.'

Now, you've seen how fast they move,

you've seen how difficult they are to predict.

This is one of the biggest challenges we've ever taken on.

We've got a small rib behind us, which is more manoeuvrable,

which'll make it easier for us to get into a good position,

and then Johnny the cameraman

and I are just going to have to dive in and swim like crazy.

But if we pull it off,

it'll be one of the greatest things we've ever done on Deadly 60.

'We've been putting together a picture

'of what the whales are doing.

'It seems they're diving for about eight minutes

'before surfacing for about three.

'Our plan is to use the rib to position ourselves

'where we think the whales might come up.

'But for this mission to succeed, we're going to need a lot of luck.'

Now that we're in the rib, we're much more manoeuvrable.

It's much easier to get ourselves into a good position.

-You see it? Johnny's got a vision on it. How far?

-150 metres.

150 metres ahead of us, OK.

Hold on to your hats!

'But trying to get there before the whales dive is proving difficult

'as they're moving at 20mph.'

Tracking them down is next to impossible,

particularly when you've got this vast expanse

of open blue ocean to look in.

There, though, there, right over there!

-Gear up, Steve?

-Yes, it's no more than 100 metres away.

OK. Get the gear up.

Can you see it, Johnny?

-OK.

-Ready?

'An animal I've waited a lifetime to encounter.

'Very few people have ever managed to film them underwater.

'It's a vast, blue shape in the crystal-clear seas.

'Sunlight dapples its flanks.

'It cruises past, barely seeming to move at all.

'But no Olympic swimmer could ever keep pace.'

'Both the whales and I have to surface to breathe,

'but while I can dive for just minutes,

'whales can disappear for an hour or more.'

'It's diving right in front of me.

'This is our big chance.

'The tail flukes can be as broad as a bus,

'powering it back to the deep blue.

'It's disappearing to impossible depths

'in search of krill to feed on,

'and my lungs are bursting.'

HE GASPS

I think we got it! I think we got it.

It swam right underneath me, it dived in front of me,

and I just saw the tail flukes disappearing below me.

'Thinking our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was over,

'Johnny and I head back to the big boat to check our shots.

'But before we have a chance, another whale surfaces.'

'And this one pops up right alongside us.'

'We get kitted up in record time,

'and drop in.'

'For a second, it seems we've missed our golden opportunity.'

'But it practically swims right over the top of us.'

'This whale is more relaxed, less eager to return to the depths.

'It's the perfect opportunity to fully appreciate

'this true marine marvel,

'as it hangs out at the surface, recovering from its deep dive.'

'I've never felt so tiny in my whole life.'

'Then its nose drops and the tail flukes go up.

'This one will be a deep dive,

'and I follow as far as I can.

'But I'm just a temporary visitor here -

'this is definitely a whale's world.'

Whoo!

That was like nothing I have ever seen before.

Just a giant submarine cruising below us,

and totally at ease.

Didn't seem to care at all that we were there in its world,

and I have never felt so utterly dwarfed

by a living creature in my life.

The largest animal that has ever lived.

The blue whale, definitely on my list.

Yes!

It's the biggest creature on Earth,

with the largest appetite,

eating four tonnes of food every single day.

Sucking down little crustaceans by the tonne.

Sri Lanka - wildlife paradise -

with mighty snakes,

water monsters...

..fearsome felines,

and, of course, the big, big blue.

Join me next time for more Deadly 60 On A Mission.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd