Episode 3 Nature's Weirdest Events

In this episode,

we'll be shedding light on some of nature's weirdest mysteries.

Why is this shark dressed for a night on the town?

What has so enraged this placid marine mammal?

ANIMAL ROARS

And why has this guy got peanuts stuck on his head?

Pull.

Our trek into the world of weirdness kicks off with

a tour of the transformative powers of light.

This is Hessdalen - a sleepy Norwegian town.

There are hills and mountains and, well...

To be honest, that's pretty much it.

But when the sun goes down, its reputation for the weird

has given this remote village global notoriety.

SHOUTING

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

SHOUTING AND SCREAMING

Nope, that's not a trailer for the latest Scandi crime thriller.

This is simply what Hessdalen's night sky looks like -

sometimes as often as 15-20 times every week

since as far back as anyone can remember.

And a good mystery draws crowds, including intrigued academic

Erling and the contents of his research shed.

He was determined to find some answers.

Now, of course, the locals would love them to be UFOs,

but let's just put that notion aside for

a moment and explore some more earthly possibilities.

Elsewhere in the world, earthquakes have sparked strange lights

caused by the build-up of electrical charge where the ground rips apart.

So how about seismic activity?

Scratch that off the list, then. But Erling's not alone in his research.

Atmospheric physicist Bjorn Gitle Hauge

has also been conducting some experiments of his own.

He took some readings of the light emanating from the phenomenon

and discovered something extraordinary.

It was made of the same sort of light as the sun - a huge

burning ball of plasma.

Now, we probably all know that there are three states of matter,

if we consider water.

You've got solid, like this, in the form of ice, and then,

when it comes to the liquid, well,

that's the water as we know it,

as you can see here at the bottom of this beaker,

and then emerging from that, because it's hot, we've got steam - the gas.

But in fact, there's a fourth state of matter. It's called plasma.

It's like a supercharged gas - a gas on steroids - a gas where the

atoms have got so hot, they've split apart and they're emitting light.

It may sound sci-fi but, in fact, you can make plasma very simply.

All you need is one grape, sliced in two but still connected,

one microwave and 15 seconds.

All the energy in the microwave gets concentrated on those two

tiny grape halves, bouncing from one to the other.

The skin between them becomes a bottleneck of energy,

getting so hot that the charged atoms split apart.

And hey, presto! Collecting at the top of the beaker - plasma.

BEEP

The same type of light, it seems,

as the sun's and Norway's strange phenomenon.

So, plasma - well,

it's quite a good theory to explain the Hessdalen lights.

Quite good but not brilliant. In fact, it's got one massive flaw.

You see, plasma is hot.

In fact, plasma is very, very hot and there's one thing you

must have noticed about Hessdalen - it's snowy.

Very snowy.

Not even a trace of melting snow, so not plasma after all.

But all is not lost.

The scientists have one final theory up their sleeves,

and it might just hold the key.

To understand it, we need to look at the valley itself.

The Hessdalen Valley might be acting like a giant natural battery.

Hessdalen Valley is divided in two, unsurprisingly, by a river.

To the west are the remains of old zinc mines.

To the east, the remains of old copper mines.

Think of these as the metal ends of a classic AA.

And, when it rains, water pours into the shaft of an old sulphur

mine nearby, dissolving the sulphur as it goes.

It drains into the river and pollutes it with

a potent acidic mix - the final ingredient of a battery.

Could this be what's powering Hessdalen's light show?

Well, it works all too well in our lab.

A few simple beakers of acidic mud, each containing a stick of

zinc and a bit of copper pipe, are all you need to power a light bulb.

So just imagine the energy a natural battery the size of

an entire valley could create.

Well, potentially enough for a severe electric shock,

as Bjorn found out one time when he took a meter reading of Hessdalen.

Ouch! That's the equivalent of over 600 car batteries.

It's an amazing thought that there's enough power in the

earth beneath Hessdalen to charge the air above it,

firing lights into the sky. But it is just a theory.

It hasn't been proven yet.

And they still need to work out just how the battery could cause

the lights to hang in the air. But...

It's pretty compelling - got to say that.

And I've also got to say that, for the time being,

it's the best theory they've got.

Just incredible, the tricks that light can play on our land,

but it's nothing compared to what it can do below the tide line,

which is where we're headed next - to meet

a creature that single-handedly changed the face

of marine science...

..a simple green eel...

..snapped in 2011 on a Caribbean coral reef.

Now, it may not look much, but thanks to this one eel,

we've discovered that our oceans don't look like this.

They look like this.

Now, to understand this weirdness,

we first need a crash course in how light works.

Now, we all know that white light is made up of the full spectrum

of colour - all the colours of the rainbow, if you like.

But the reds and the oranges are made up of light with longer

wavelengths, whereas the blues,

the greens and the indigoes are made up of shorter wavelengths.

Now, all of this light can penetrate through air,

but when it comes to water, it's only these short wavelength

blue lights that can penetrate any distance.

And that is why the sea is blue.

But as we travel deeper and deeper,

that blue makes the ocean look...well, a bit boring.

Imagine we're dropping underwater.

As soon as we start going down, after only about ten metres,

all the red is gone.

So if you were to bleed underwater and you look at your blood,

it would look black because there's no red light there.

But, in fact, our vision is letting us down.

This blue light is responsible for a whole world of colour down there

that our eyes simply cannot see.

Marine biologist David has long been studying corals that fluoresce.

Fluorescent molecules in their skin absorb the high-energy blue light,

use up a bit of the energy,

and then release what's left as lower energy wavelengths.

In other words, a different set of colours.

Shine a powerful beam on them and suddenly,

it becomes clear to us too.

OK. That is already pretty weird.

I know what you're thinking - what about the eel?

Well, one day, David dived down in search of his beloved corals

and what he found changed the way that he looked at the ocean forever.

So we're making an exhibit for the American Museum of Natural History.

It's a virtual coral reef.

While we're shooting the night coral reef...

something happened that totally changed the trajectory

of my research.

We come back to the lab and in the photos

is this one green fluorescent eel.

Like, unbelievable.

This is the first green fluorescent fish that we've seen.

And there it was. Photo-bombing us.

This was the first time that a fish had ever been seen fluorescing.

So was it a one-off?

A freak of nature?

Or are there more glowing fish in the sea?

David had to find out.

So we designed a new set of big blue lights.

And we began scouring the reef.

It's kind of like ET phone home.

We're giving blue light off and we're waiting for an animal

that's going to respond back, shine it back to us.

And shining back at him was

a deep-sea fluorescent wonderland

of nearly 200 species of biofluorescent fish.

Lizard fish, bream, scorpion fish, a whole gamut.

But the weirdness didn't stop there.

Yes, the world's first glow-in-the-dark shark.

Astounding.

There's little twinkly stars, there's patterns on the females,

they have these rings around their eyes.

In the deep blue, these sharks are emanating patterns of green.

And the light show didn't stop there.

One more ocean inhabitant had a colourful secret to give away.

This time it was a marine turtle.

The first sign ever that reptiles can biofluoresce too.

And that, for the moment,

is where David's weird biofluorescing marine list stops.

Incredible.

The fish had been fluorescing right underneath the scientists' noses.

So, it's an astonishing discovery, there's no doubt of that.

But it does beg the question - why were these fish producing such

a vibrant range of colours?

It could be used for mating, for courtship.

It could be used for predator avoidance.

It's a perfect camouflage for them.

In the swellsharks, it's secret patterns among males and females,

perhaps to allow them to separate the sexes,

for identification of other members of the same species.

So it's like a secret channel of communication.

I like that. I like that very much.

I like the fact that marine life has been communicating using a

secret spectrum of colour, something that we're entirely blind to.

Now, if only we could figure out

what they were saying to one another.

Well, as it happens, our oceans are full of colourful communicators.

So here we're staying

to meet our next magical marvel.

These little gems.

The jewel in the crown when it comes to using light for deception.

Now you see me...

now you don't.

This sparkling blue beauty has been nicknamed a sea sapphire.

For obvious reasons.

They measure just a few millimetres.

They're like the bugs of our oceans - floating around

until they get gobbled up by passing fish.

How remarkable that this tiny, insignificant and yet

very, very beautiful little invertebrate

has pulled off the Holy Grail of science.

The ultimate in trickery.

The art of invisibility.

But a real life invisibility cloak?

Surely that's impossible.

Isn't it?

It's a question that many a marine biologist has asked themselves.

You can have one right in front of you in a bowl

and you just can't even find it.

A biologist losing his own subject?

Come on, then, Steve, let us in on its secret.

Sea sapphires have a unique morphology in that they're

very flattened.

They have very little tissue when you're looking through them.

The effect, as you might expect, is that it makes them transparent.

Being thin and translucent clearly helps.

But there's a little more to it than that.

They are, in fact, cleverly constructed

to get a little helping hand from the sun.

The surface of the sea sapphire is made of layers of perfectly

hexagonal crystals.

Not just one layer, but several.

One on top of the other.

With liquid in between.

Think of it as like a wafer biscuit.

As the sea sapphire moves in the water,

the blue ocean light gets bounced off of these crystals,

creating an iridescent sheen of blues and violets.

What's more, it can actually move the crystal layers

to change its colour. A bit like a chameleon.

The key to its invisibility though

is its angle to the sun.

When the sea sapphire hits a crucial point of 45 degrees to the light

the clever crystal layers bounce back only ultraviolet light.

UV. Which our eyes simply can't see.

Combined with its ultra-thin transparency,

the sea sapphire seemingly disappears.

Now, that is one clever trick of the light.

Having this ability to effectively switch their colour on and off,

like a flashing ocean beacon,

is what gives these tiny jewels their real advantage.

The sea sapphires might be using it to find each other.

You'll see a little column of these guys stacked up,

swimming just above each other, all swimming in a little line.

So they seem to be homing in

using this blue iridescence to signal each other

in some kind of a social structure.

That has to be one of the most remarkable organisms that

I've ever... Well, never seen.

Using its crystal shimmer to communicate across the vast oceans.

It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

But I'm still struck by that invisibility.

That's one superpower I would very much like to have.

The mind-bending powers of light will never cease to amaze.

Next, we're headed on a journey of exploration of, well,

there's no other way to put it, strange sticky things.

And it all starts with this guy here.

Jamie.

He looks pretty ordinary.

But in fact, he has an extraordinary superpower.

My ability is actually sticking anything solid to my body.

I can stick cans, bottles, cellphones, almost anything

to my skin, without no glue.

(Go on.)

You know you want to.

At this point, you want to rush into the kitchen, empty a can,

and try and stick it to some part of your body.

Here. I know what you're thinking.

This simply cannot be true. Can it?

Well, yes, it can.

Because Jamie holds the catchily titled World Record for

most drinks cans placed on the head using air suction.

And now he has a job as a walking ad campaign.

So, not only does it all stick to my head...

Let me put these over here so it's out of the way.

..it also can stick to my hands,

my back, my butt, my legs, my knees, everywhere sticks.

I discovered my unique talents around seven years old.

Things started sticking to me.

I climbed trees, you know, normal boy things, just climbing around.

That's why I thought it maybe had something to do with

the sap from the trees.

But once he grew out of tree-climbing

his incredible ability to, er, stick stuff to himself continued.

And he knew something was up.

Wow.

That's insane.

I bet that comes in handy when you're getting snacks out of

-the kitchen fridge.

-Oh, yeah. Watch this.

Drive hands-free when you drive.

Dang. These nuts are on your head.

I'm going to hurt you.

-See?

-Oh, my God.

So what makes Jamie sticky?

Everyone's got an opinion, it seems.

I thought maybe he had a magnetic plate in his head or something.

-You don't have a plate in your head, do you?

-No.

It's plastic and aluminium. None of it can be magnetised.

Wow.

So he's not magnetic.

What he is...

is baffling his doctors.

Lot of doctors have different opinions.

They actually think I'm a real-life mutant.

One thinks I'm like a human gecko.

Another says octopus.

OK, let's just hold it right there.

A human gecko?

Could that really be?

Geckos stick to things because their bulbous toes are covered in

hundreds of microscopic hairs.

Particles in these bristles interact with particles on the surface

of the wall, or tree, creating an electromagnetic attraction.

Interesting theory for Jamie, but I have to say,

he doesn't look particularly hairy to me.

So what about the octopus theory?

Octopuses stick using suction.

Morphing their suckers to the shape of different surfaces.

Muscles inside the sucker contract to create a watertight,

or airtight, seal.

It almost looks as if I could see the muscles doing something.

And there's no hiding the suction marks either.

Perhaps he really is more octopus than human.

Humans with animal traits. I like that. I really do.

But there is a human trait here that we didn't want to overlook.

Have you noticed that Jamie seems to be extraordinarily sweaty?

Because my body temperature is so hot, usually when it's really warm

I have to constantly dry my head off cos the sweat clogs my pores.

I think he has some sort of perspiration on his head that

-sticks that stuff. It's amazing.

-Yeah.

So could human sweat be sticky enough to make things stick?

We asked a dermatologist to take a look at the evidence.

It's remarkable. They seem to be pretty solidly stuck.

I've never seen anything like Jamie before.

His skin looks normal but he's sweating a bit.

The majority of sweat is just straightforward water.

As the water evaporates it leaves behind the sebum,

and that's the oily substance,

our skin will end up feeling a little bit sticky.

Some people complain about excess sweating and that's

a recognised condition.

I've never come across any condition of the skin which specifically

makes it more sticky.

But the sweat may be important nonetheless.

Just from the video footage, I would say that this is a suction thing

rather than purely a sticky thing.

But if the skin was completely dry

it would be much more difficult to create a good contact suction

between the can and the skin.

So a little bit of moisture there is probably helpful for this.

It's an amazing talent, the way he does it.

Suction alone, however,

doesn't explain how he can stick a mobile to his face.

So, Jamie's condition still leaves rather more questions than answers.

But whatever the reason turns out to be,

for Jamie, it seems it's a skill that has its perks.

I actually do love having this ability.

It puts a smile on people's faces.

They just look at me and they start laughing.

Even if they think I'm a goof or whatever.

Why would anyone think that(?)

Jamie - also known as Canhead -

his name, not mine, I'm not being rude -

is still mostly a mystery.

But it has also made him somewhat of a celebrity.

He now makes thousands of dollars wandering around America

sticking cans to his head.

Something to aspire to, I suppose.

So, all hail the power of the sticky.

An enviable superpower if ever there was one.

Finally, we're going to introduce you to a series of animals

whose weird behaviour leaves a lot to be desired.

Kicking us off, a refreshing dip in the west Irish Sea.

A hot summer's day off the coast of Doolin.

Perfect for a swim.

But when the locals hit the surf, they found they had company.

A sociable, affable dolphin, and not just any old dolphin,

it was Dusty the dolphin.

A female bottlenose who'd become quite

a celebrity on the Irish coast.

Dusty is one of Ireland's friendly, solitary, community dolphins.

Like famous Fungie of Dingle.

Dusty's story starts some 16 years ago

when she first appeared here as an adolescent.

And never left.

Hanging out with the locals year after year after year.

Building up quite the CV.

There she is. Dusty.

Hello. Hello.

Dusty the peacekeeper.

She's brought so much joy to so many people.

She induces a lot of peace and...

I guess, love. You know?

Dusty the environmentalist.

She came and she had the huge white bag on her nose.

And she brought it to us.

She was playing games but cleaning the ocean.

It was so beautiful to do it with her.

And Dusty the life-saver.

Yes, Dusty helped saved surfer Luke's life.

Guiding him back to the shore after his surfboard split in two.

Everybody said that it was an amazing thing to watch -

a dolphin sort of shepherd somebody in.

Especially someone who's struggling.

It was a very beautiful experience.

St Dusty.

She's swum with local residents Kate and George for

so long she's become part of the family.

It's no wonder when people see scenes like this

that they want to join in.

Which is what local resident Valerie did in July 2013.

But she was in for a surprise.

SHE SCREAMS

Dusty, it seemed, had gone mad.

I knew I needed to get out of the water quick.

I went to swim out but it slammed into me.

SCREAMING

It was very powerful and she hit me with her nose.

I had six spinal fractures, some broken ribs and a damaged lung.

INDISTINCT SHOUTS

In fact, this is not the only time this five-metre mammal

has launched itself at swimmers.

SCREAMING

So how do you reconcile these two images?

Well, to understand, we need to get to grips with what sets Dusty

apart from other dolphins.

Now we all know that dolphins are highly social animals,

living together in pods.

So what on earth was she doing swimming around on her own?

Solitary dolphins are common amongst males.

Adolescent males hang out alone, getting big and strong

so they can compete for access to females.

But Dusty is a female.

It's a bit weird, to be honest.

And it's not typical or normal of bottlenose dolphins.

When there's other dolphins around

she almost seems to be hiding from them.

It seems to be that, in Ireland especially,

people are almost looking for dolphins to swim with.

You know, to go and befriend.

So I'm not convinced the dolphin is seeking out humans.

I'm not convinced they're choosing a solitary existence.

Whether she chose us or we chose her,

there's plenty of dolphin left in Dusty.

She's just rolled.

And dolphins need other dolphins.

It's possible that Dusty now sees her human "friends"

as her surrogate dolphin pod.

And that could begin to explain the aggression.

If Dusty treats humans like dolphins treat dolphins,

well, put it this way,

bottlenose dolphins can be quite brutal.

We perceive dolphins as these friendly animals.

They have that lovely smiley face.

You know, don't trust everything that smiles.

It could be the smile of a sadistic killer dolphin.

This is a highly-evolved marine mammal

that is strong, can wipe you out with a flick of the tail.

Ram you, which is what bottlenose dolphins do.

They're covered in scratches and scars,

they're covered in notches, they're covered in tooth rakes.

The trouble is, humans are not built like dolphins.

We don't just come away with scars.

We come away literally broken.

But Dusty only gets mad with certain people.

So, what about her Jekyll and Hyde character?

Why do some people get darling Dusty

and others, a very angry dolphin?

It all depends, it seems, on whether or not you're in her pod.

If you're a regular to Dusty, like Kate and George,

you're fine.

But if you're a new face, like Valerie, you're a threat.

I've learned, since my accident, that when Dusty's having a moment

with people who do swim with her, she doesn't like to be interrupted.

She gets very territorial.

And I think that's the reason why she attacked me.

Sadly for Valerie, she just wasn't in the in-crowd.

She accepts some people and she doesn't accept some people.

It's hard, but it's like that. Definitely. It's like that.

Valerie was lucky. She recovered from her attack.

And what's more, she's made peace with Dusty.

After a while she came back to me.

She was kind of bobbing vertically.

And we just locked eyes.

I personally felt there was a lot of remorse

and she was trying to apologise.

So I don't have any problem with Dusty at all.

But I wouldn't get in the water, no.

Dolphins are not like humans.

They are wild.

And unpredictable.

So don't get confused by the smile.

Our final weird wonder is famous worldwide.

Well, amongst birders like me, anyway.

It's a bird whose behaviour is so mysterious

that it outwitted scientists in a game of hide-and-seek that lasted

for over 100 years.

So much so that they began to wonder if it had gone

the same way as the dodo.

It's the Holy Grail of birds for birders.

Not only in Australia, perhaps in the world.

It's nominated by the Smithsonian Institute

as the world's most mysterious bird.

And it is the night parrot.

Common in Australia hundreds of years ago, but around 1912

this reclusive species simply disappeared.

Rumour and a few museum specimens revealed them to look

a bit like big budgerigars.

A nocturnal, ground-dwelling, ground-nesting parrot.

Not the best ingredients for survival.

They hid amongst Australia's arid spinifex grassland.

Well, supposedly.

Problem was, no-one could find one.

So, in 1989, a 25,000 reward was offered for their discovery.

Dead or alive.

Everyone took to the road.

From truck drivers

to scientists.

And what happened next was incredible.

The curator of ornithology at the Australian Museum

was travelling in outback Queensland

and stopped by the side of the road, legend has it, to relieve himself.

As he looked down at his feet, there was the remains of a night parrot.

A dead night parrot carcass.

A curator of ornithology had accidentally found a night parrot

in the middle of the vast outback.

The first confirmed sighting in over seven decades.

Can you just imagine how excited he must have been when he finally

rediscovered that bird after all of that time spent looking for it?

OK, I know it wasn't ideal.

It was dead.

But nevertheless, it did prove that this mythical bird wasn't

a myth after all.

And so began the hunt for a living specimen.

16 more years went by.

And finally, another was found lying beside a fence.

But guess what?

Yes, it was dead too.

Presumably it had hit the fence and decapitated itself on the fence.

Unlucky.

But trust me, patience in ornithology does eventually pay off.

People were so dedicated and so determined.

There was a lot of obsession amongst certain people.

One of those determined obsessives was John Young.

A naturalist who'd spent 15 years traipsing the outback

for clues.

Finally, in 2013, success.

A bunch of feathers led him to a live individual.

After 100 years, the game of hide-and-seek was over.

And the scientists had won.

I just can't tell you how exciting this discovery was.

This was a bird brought back from the dead.

This was ornithological dynamite.

The bird-watching equivalent of a supernova.

But don't go grabbing your binoculars just yet.

To protect the bird, John kept the exact location a secret.

And to this day, only three people on the planet are confirmed

to have seen live night parrots.

And this guy here, ecologist Steve Murphy,

has gone one better.

He's actually held one.

When he and his wife fitted one with a tracker.

We really had to focus.

We were both, you know, shaking pretty madly at the start.

The sense of responsibility was just awesome.

There is still just one known population of night parrots

in the world. The rest were wiped out

by fire, and their number one predator,

yes, kitty.

There's quite a famous story of the telegraph stationmaster at

Alice Springs in the early 1800s.

Lining the inside of his cabin with the wings of night parrots

that had been brought in each night by his pet cat.

Unfortunately for the cats,

the best way to keep this chubby little parrot alive

is to take kitty out of the equation.

Where's the cat? Good girl. Good girl, Mag.

And for a while it seemed to be working.

When, in 2016, Steve Murphy made an incredible discovery.

A nest! A nest of two perfect night parrot eggs.

This was dynamite.

This was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Not only were night parrots alive,

they were breeding.

But then, just like every other aspect of this legendary tale,

there was another twist in the plot.

You see, a couple of days later, Steve returned to the nest.

And what did he find when he peered in?

Broken eggshells.

Can you believe it?

Can you imagine how he felt?

Well, so great is the desire to preserve this species,

so enormous was the gravity of this crime

that the shells were collected and sent for analysis

to try and identify the culprit.

And this time it was no cat.

It was a native king brown snake.

A new player in this now deadly game of hide-and-seek.

The story of this ground-living bird continues.

And in fact, due to the incredible secrecy about its location,

its mythical status, its legend lives on.

So, whether it's ancient legends or brand-new discoveries,

there's no doubt at all that

there are plenty of weird stories out there.

And I can promise you one thing, there are a lot more to come.