Episode 5 Curious Creatures

Hello. I'm Kate Humble and this is Curious Creatures,

a quiz all about the fabulous fauna of planet Earth.

It's amazing, isn't it,

to think that every animal alive today has evolved over hundreds of

millions of years from a very basic single-celled organism

in the primordial soup. Of course,

some have evolved more than others.

Let's meet them. On my left,

please welcome the godfather of natural history, Chris Packham,

and wildlife film-maker extraordinaire Simon King.

APPLAUSE

And on my right, the fairy godmother to the world's sloths, Lucy Cooke,

who is joined by writer and former zookeeper Niall Strawson.

APPLAUSE

Let's get cracking with our opening round, Yay or Neigh?

I will read each member of our teams

a statement about the animal kingdom.

Their job is simply to decide whether it's animal fact...

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

That's a yay. Or beastly fiction...

HORSE NEIGHS

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a neigh.

Chris, we'll start with you.

The inside of a wolverine's nose

has twice the surface area

of a bloodhound's nose.

-CHRIS:

-We have six million scent cells

in our noses and some breeds of dog have up to 600 million.

What's interesting is that those dogs which are very good at smelling

are better at smelling than wolves are

and all dogs have evolved from wolves.

We've selectively bred them and

bloodhounds are those animals with THE most accomplished sense of smell,

so they're up in the 600 million sensory cell range.

They can track animals over huge distances.

Vast distances. Tiny parts per million in their capacity.

They're part of the mustelid family,

so they are related to things like pine martins,

badgers - they're in that gang,

and they have very variable senses of smell, it has to be said.

Some don't work by their noses a great deal and others do,

the badger being a good example.

It has a brilliant schnoz.

The wolverine however, is doing what it has to do on a daily basis,

but as you rightly say, it hasn't

been selectively bred by anything other than

nature's demand - find a meal.

One other thing. When it comes to smell,

some animals lack one of the senses of smell because it doesn't operate

very well in the cold. We know that smell is not as good in the cold.

I'm tempted to go...

The dog has a better sense of smell than the wolverine.

-Because of selective breeding?

-Yeah.

We're going to neigh that one.

-HORSE NEIGHS Are you?

-Yes.

You're wrong.

-Oh!

-Oh!

-BOTH:

-Yes!

I'm afraid it is absolutely true.

Despite, as you said,

the bloodhound having one of the best senses of smell of any dog,

the wolverine has twice the turbinal surface area of the bloodhound

so it's thought that it does have an even better sense of smell.

-Shall we have a look at one, scampering about?

-Yes, let's.

Aren't they great?

-Aren't they beautiful?

-Yeah, they're fantastic.

I would love to spend time with them in the wild properly.

Well, I'm sorry, guys, you don't add any parts to your creature.

What a fabulous start to this quiz, I'd like to say!

It's extremely unusual that Chris Packham gets caught out.

He'll be thinking about wolverines now for the rest of the show,

which is also an advantage.

I used to like the wolverine!

So, Lucy, I put it to you that coconut crabs can climb trees.

Now, that's a fantastic animal.

How are you on the coconut crab, Niall?

It's not my strongest suit, I'm going to be honest.

They grow to a really massive size.

I think they grow...

I mean, actually...

They grow really big.

There's an amazing photograph on the World Wide Web

of one climbing a bin.

Anything that can climb a bin deserves to climb a tree.

Crabs are good at climbing.

Therefore let's give it the credit that it can climb a tree.

So you're going yay or neigh?

Yay.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

You're right.

APPLAUSE

I can even show you a coconut crab up a tree.

-Brilliant.

-Have a look at this.

There is. There's one up a tree and there's one below with a lovely

bunch of coconuts. Very good.

So, congratulations to both of you,

you win your first part of a Curious Creature.

Here it is.

Ooh.

To-wit, to-wooh(!)

To-wit, to-wooh, yeah!

Now, Simon, your turn.

I'm going to put it to you that kangaroos cannot swim.

I've seen kangaroos under attack

from dingoes and one of their predator evasion strategies

is to get into water,

so they spend a lot of time standing

in the water with their head here.

They are very reluctant to go any further than that.

Big, fat back legs.

A lot of top-heavy animal, try and push that through water,

what's going to happen to its face?

It's going to start to go down.

I've never seen a kangaroo swim or a wallaby.

-What do you think, Chris?

-I entirely concur.

So you are saying yay?

-Yes.

-ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

You're wrong.

Two wrong!

They can.

As we saw when they're hopping, they use their hind legs absolutely in

tandem with each other, when they swim, they use them independently.

-OK.

-They doggy paddle rather than kangaroo paddle.

Do they inflate their pouch for buoyancy?

I'm going to have to have a word with the ones that were under attack and say, "Why didn't you swim?!"

Absolutely. Lucy and Niall,

they haven't got any parts of their Curious Creature.

-Yes!

-AND it's your turn.

Woohoo! Yay!

So Niall, the final yay or neigh question for you is,

an octopus' arms can still work

even when detached from the octopus?

I think they can, but I'm not sure why.

If you chop a chicken's head off,

famously they can run around, can't they?

And a chicken is a bird, it's a more highly evolved,

more complicated species than an octopus, so therefore

one would think that...

-Yeah, um...

-Although it doesn't necessarily work like that.

Let's take a punt. Let's go for yes.

So you are saying...

-Yay.

-Yay.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

Congratulations.

APPLAUSE

Two thirds of an octopus' neurons are in its arms

rather than in its central brain,

so each octopus arm acts autonomously

when feeling around for food or threats

and researchers have found that even detached arms could recoil

from an unpleasant stimulus.

There you are. These guys have just won

another part of their curious creature. Congratulations!

Ooh!

So, as Lucy and Niall's curious creature begins to take shape,

we move on to round two, which today is called Who's the Daddy?

Each team will be shown a picture of a baby animal.

All they have to do is figure out what species it is, in other words,

who's the daddy? And for that matter, the mummy.

Chris and Simon, have a look at this glorious little one.

-First thoughts?

-We're both, at the moment, very confident.

-What gives you clues?

-You begin.

Well, I'm thinking monotreme,

which is a small group of creatures

that live in the Antipodes in Australia

and they are unusual mammals in that they lay eggs,

the duckbilled platypus being one, echidna being the other.

The echidna is a spiny anteater.

It's a little creature that...

From this, you can't see very clear spines,

but what you can see is the strong digging claws

because they do excavate and break into termite and ant nests and I

believe the spines develop later.

It would be a painful thing to come out of an egg, anyway.

-So, that's where I'm heading.

-I'm heading for echidna, too.

That head shape is characteristic.

They've got these wonderful little noses which actually grow when they

mature, so they come out in a little narrow, pink snout.

I was driving along once in Australia

and there was one on the side of the road

and I picked it up and put it down onto the soil and it vanished.

I've never seen anything digging into the ground so quickly.

It sort of shuffled and disappeared into the ground.

I would say that has an awful lot to do with your personality,

because I was driving along a road...

LAUGHTER

..in South Australia once and saw an echidna at the side of the road

and said, "Stop the car!"

I'd never seen an echidna, I was quite excited.

I got out, the echidna scampered into the bush,

I scampered into the bush after it, which was quite prickly,

and I was trying not to think about snakes,

and I got down on my hands and knees and I was crawling along and there

was the echidna and I just stood there and did it burrow down like it would when it met you? No.

It came and walked up to me and we ended up nose-to-nose,

doing a little...Eskimo kiss.

LAUGHTER

Stick with me, Packham, you'll see a lot more.

So you're going echidna?

You're sounding very, very confident.

Let's see if you are right.

Yes! There it is.

APPLAUSE

I'm going to throw this open to everybody, because this is

possibly the sweetest thing I've ever heard.

Does anybody know what a baby echidna is called?

-A puggle.

-Yes!

It is. Isn't that adorable?

-It's called a puggle.

-That's a lovely name.

So, thank heavens for you, because you were trailing so far behind,

you have managed to claw yourselves

back into the game and get your first part of your Curious Creature.

APPLAUSE

Lucy and Niall, over to you, here is your bouncing baby.

Ooh!

Ooh, yeah!

Looks simple, but could be tricky.

What are you thinking?

I did used to look after sea lions.

Brilliant - yes, because you were a zoo keeper.

Although, I'm almost certain that's not a sea lion pup.

So it's got flippers, so we can tell that it's a pinniped,

pinniped being the name of the group

to which sea lions, seals and walruses -

animals with flippers - belong to.

That's a clue. But which KIND of pinniped?

It has the ears, which is a giveaway, isn't it?

-Some have ears, some don't.

-Yes.

Ah, which ones have ears?

My gut went with fur seal.

Fur seal. OK.

Why would you say fur seal?

-Cos it looks like a seal and it's furry.

-Mm.

I'm LOVING your deduction.

Do you know why I think a fur seal?

If you look at its face,

it's got like a little miniature face of a fur seal, because fur seals have quite a doglike face.

I trust you, Niall.

Foolish.

I think you've had a more intimate relationship with pinnipeds than

-I have.

-That's probably sadly true!

From your experience at the zoo.

-Yes.

-So...

-Fur seal.

-Sure?

-Oh, no!

-You're right!

Yay!

So, you're absolutely right, it's sea lions that have visible ears.

Seals generally don't, but fur seals are one of the few that DO

have visible ears.

So, if you shaved that fur seal, he'd have massive big ears.

Massive ears. Do you want to see a little bevy of fur seal beauties?

Aw, bless.

With their little ears.

-That is cute.

-You have won another part of your Curious Creature.

Fantastic.

That's easy peasy, isn't it?

There are many questions in this complicated world of ours,

but none more pressing than

Is It Bigger Than A Chicken?

Our teams' task in this round is to work out the identity of a mystery

animal. They take turns to ask me questions about it,

to which I must be able to answer simply yes or no.

Each time they get a yes, a small part of the animal is revealed.

At that point, teams, you can make a guess

as to what the animal is,

but do remember, if you guess wrong, you are then out of the round.

There is just one other rule.

The first question that's asked in this game has to be, audience...

-ALL:

-Is it bigger than a chicken?

Thank you very much indeed.

Chris Packham, we are going to start with you.

What would you like to ask me?

Is it bigger than a chicken?

LAUGHTER

Is it really, really, really bigger than a chicken?

Much bigger than a chicken?

No.

Lucy.

What do you mean, no?

I mean no!

How many ways can I say no?

No.

He's not going to get over that easily!

Does that mean that it's smaller than a chicken?

It's not your question.

-Lucy.

-OK, so what we know is that it's smaller than a chicken.

What shall we ask next?

Shall we go for a group?

Or...cold blooded or warm-blooded, to make it a bit more general?

-OK, I like that.

-Is it cold-blooded?

Yes, it is. Here is your clue.

-There it is.

-Hmmm.

Any initial thoughts?

I'd love to see where that square belongs on its body,

like which bit of the screen...

We can do that for you.

OK.

It's quite a distinctive marking.

It's too difficult to guess.

Even Chris Packham and Simon King don't know what that is.

-Shall we find out?

-Yes.

Simon, what would you like to ask me?

Is it an amphibian?

Yes, it is. So you get another clue and here it is.

Let's shrink it back to see where it belongs in the overall picture.

-Look at a common toad, Bufo bufo.

-Yes.

You've got the... Sorry, I'm doodling a toad here.

You've got the great big poison gland behind the...

The parietal gland.

The parietal gland. Then you've got the great big eye here and then

you have the eardrum, which is what that is.

-Yes, it is.

-That's not the eye, that's the ear.

-It's the tympanum...

-However, with the cane toad, they,

I think they've got quite a prominent ridge...

..over the ear. I'm going to say a common toad, Bufo bufo.

DUCK QUACKS

Aah!

And you are out of the game, sorry, Simon.

I think, we need a question that gets a yes answer,

so we think it's Bufo marinus, which is the cane toad.

So...

I know what we ask, is it toxic?

I was going to say, is that the one you lick?

Exactly, cane toads are toxic, so shall we ask that?

-One could lick it.

-Yes, exactly.

That's a good question, I think.

-Is it toxic?

-Yes, it is.

So here is another clue.

Would you like to see it in its position with the rest of the clue?

-I'm sure I know what it is, but it might be helpful, yes.

-Let's see.

-There it is.

-It's not its tentacles on the top of its head!

So, Niall, you are able to make a guess, if you would like to.

With the help of my esteemed colleagues...

..I believe it is a cane toad.

"ELEPHANT" TRUMPETS FANFARE

So, very many congratulations.

-You win another part of your Curious Creature.

-Yes!

Well done.

Chris and Simon, if you can answer

this question, you too can get a part.

It's like school sports day.

You get a medal for taking part.

Cane toads have been described as one of the most invasive species in

Australia, but why were they introduced there in the first place?

-Pest control.

-Pest control, yes.

It's one of these ludicrous and early attempts at what we call biological control.

Specifically, they were introduced to annihilate cane beetles

that were destroying the sugar cane crop, but congratulations,

you do get one more part of your Curious Creature.

Round four today is called Pecking Order.

So, Chris and Simon, we are going to start with you.

I'm going to give you the images of three animals,

and I want you to rank them in the order of length of time they're

asleep during a 24-hour period, from least to most, OK.

So here's your first one.

It is the hairy armadillo.

The second one is the baboon, and the third one is a giraffe.

Well, you've spent time watching giraffes.

I have. In fact, I filmed giraffes sleeping for a programme I made about sleep a long time ago.

And you slept through most of it.

And I had to. I tell you what, it was a test of stamina.

Giraffe, being a very tall animal, can't afford to take a nap,

because if it lies down, it takes a long time to get up.

It lives in the world of lions.

You don't want to be caught napping, when lions are there.

It takes a giraffe many seconds to get from being on the floor

to being up.

They sleep proper deep sleep for five minutes in every 24 hours.

And they do it by lying down,

and they allow their head to sag back over onto their rump.

They go like this.

And it's there for about 20 seconds, maximum,

and then they snap out of it, and then they do it again.

And they do that for a maximum of five minutes

across a 24-hour period.

They can catnap, and they do it like many Ungulates do,

any hoofed animals, by standing

and letting their head sag, so are we calling that sleep?

It is a short kind of nap, I wouldn't call that sleep.

So I would put giraffe as the least.

-Yes.

-By a long way.

The least sleep, giraffe, then.

Then we've got baboons,

which are principally diurnal

because they bivouac at night, don't they?

They like to find either a tree or an escarpment of rock

or even a cave.

They'll go into a cave.

And they go in, and...

slightly before dusk and emerge at dawn,

and given that they live in tropical or Central African areas,

-that's about ten hours' sleep.

-At least.

So that just leaves the old hairy armadillo...

Which knocks around in Patagonia, South America.

They're very busy by day.

-Yes, they are.

-Knocking around.

I think they're also fairly busy by night.

Yes. Cos they're opportunistic omnivores,

so they'll be out and about looking for things, needing to bump into

-them.

-Shall we go giraffe, armadillo, baboon?

I think so.

Frankly, we're...

LAUGHTER

We're stuffed anyway!

So your answer is giraffe, armadillo, baboon?

-Correct.

-Let's see if you're right.

You're not.

Simon, you were absolutely right

when you said giraffes sleep roughly five minutes a day.

It can be up to 30 minutes.

Baboons, absolutely spot-on, ten hours, roughly.

They do tuck themselves up at night and then get up in the morning.

Giant hairy armadillos

sleep for up to 16 to 18 hours a day,

with 20 hours of their day spent in their burrows.

So they're like teenagers really, in that respect.

And if I ever meet one, it'll be sleeping a lot longer than that!

So I'm very sorry, but you don't add to your slightly paltry collection.

-ALL:

-Ohhh!

Lucy and Niall, we have...

a Galapagos tortoise...

..a garden snail...

..and a three-toed sloth.

And I would like you to rank them

in order of their top speed.

From slowest to, shall we say, slightly less slow.

OK, so top speed.

Right, OK, this is...

The Galapagos tortoise isn't actually as slow as people necessarily think.

I've seen them in my zoo days wandering around.

-Booking it.

-They can go at a fair old lick.

One, maybe two... No, probably not even that.

So sloths, harpy eagle is their predator.

You know about that. They often get taken out of the tree,

so they can't run away from that.

-Do they drop out of the tree?

-They don't drop out of the tree.

The sloths' defence strategy is to look like a bit of tree.

It has green fur and it sits in the tree all hunched up, and it's

actually thought their movements are so slow

that they pass under the radar of the harpy eagle,

which actually is flying around looking for movement,

and it can't actually detect the sloth cos it's so slow.

So actually, the sloth's slothfulness is part of its defence

strategy. And they are indeed very slow.

In particular, the bradypus,

the three-fingered sloth that we can see there,

is actually significantly slower than the two-fingered sloth.

I think the snail will be the slowest, because it's just tiny.

I think it's snail, tortoise, sloth.

-All right, go on.

-Let's see if you're right.

-Ah.

-You're not.

You were right about the snail.

A garden snail was recorded by the Guinness Book of Records

moving at just under ten metres per hour.

Three-toed sloth, ground speed is 160 metres per hour.

They do move faster in trees -

a positively breakneck speed of 270 metres per hour.

But the Galapagos tortoise is our speedy one here.

It can get up to 370 metres per hour.

Think of the G force in that.

LAUGHTER

Well, both teams drew a blank there,

so that leaves Chris and Simon with just two parts of their Curious

Creature, and Lucy and Niall have four of theirs.

So now it's time to see how many bits our teams can identify.

-So, Chris and Simon...

-This won't take us long!

..your slightly paltry collection.

If you identify both of these body parts correctly,

-you can score four points. ALL:

-Ooh!

However...

We will show you the three missing parts,

and if you can identify those,

you can get one point each.

So, you could come away with a total of seven points,

which isn't too shabby, but let's see how you get on.

We'll start with that lovely little face.

So, it's a chimpanzee or it's a bonobo.

Bonobos generally have a really good parting.

-Have you noticed?

-I haven't, actually, no.

They generally have this really neat parting,

-it looks like they've been working on their hair.

-Right.

Chimps are hugely variable.

I spent a lot of time with chimps in Tanzania,

and they're everything from pink gnarly faces with black spots

to fully black faces, depending on their age.

The female has got a narrow little face,

the male has got a big, brutey face.

We know it's one of the two. What would you say, chimp?

Under extreme pressure,

and therefore desperate to get this right...

LAUGHTER

..we're going to come down to

whether it's got a centre parting or not!

-Let's go chimp.

-Go chimp.

-Chimpanzee.

-Two points.

-Yes.

-Well done.

-Well done.

APPLAUSE

Thank goodness you were paying attention to their haircuts!

Now, what about this rather splendid snout?

-That's marvellous.

-That's lovely. Obviously,

-it's part of the alligator crocodile group...

-Mm-hm.

..with a very long, narrow snout.

-Mm-hm.

-Yeah... Gharial.

-Absolutely right.

Two points.

Now, if you'd managed to get any other questions right...

LAUGHTER

..throughout the game,

you would have been awarded this rather glorious body part.

Yes. Well, those feathers there on the left-hand side,

that are wrapping around the breast

-look very much like a resplendent quetzal.

-Yes.

You are absolutely spot-on.

-Yay.

-One point.

Now, the body would have been adorned with a pair of these.

What are they? Who do they belong to?

That looks very lobster claw to me.

-It does, yes.

-It looks like a...

-European lobster.

-Most people think lobsters are pink.

Unfortunately, because they see them after they've been in the pot!

They can be beautifully coloured.

Beautiful blues and purples and mauves.

That's a European lobster.

-Yes.

-You're absolutely right.

APPLAUSE

So you have six points.

To get to the maximum you can achieve of seven,

you need to identify this.

Well, there are six of them and they're in matching pairs,

-it's going to be an insect.

-OK.

Neat little claw toes here.

Neat little claw toes.

I think it's more likely bee than beetle.

Hm. Looking at those legs.

Yes, and these would be the pollen catchers on the legs, the hairy legs.

-Could well be a honey bee, couldn't it?

-It could be a honey bee.

Or are you thinking bumble, cos it's got a lot of hair going on here?

That's very hairy, coming through here.

Maybe they'll let us get away with just saying bee?!

I WILL let you get away with just saying bee.

APPLAUSE

It was a honeybee, as you surmised.

So, you have seven points to beat,

Lucy and Niall.

So let's start with your head.

Ooh, this is a toughy(!)

If you don't get this right, you're sacked!

We're really in trouble. We'll go for barn owl.

And you will get two points for that.

APPLAUSE

How about its rather splendid hat?

Initially when I saw it I thought, that could be an ibex, but actually,

looking at it more closely, I went a bit bighorn sheep...

My instinct when I saw it was bighorn sheep, as well. So...

-Well, there we go then.

-Shall we go for big-horned sheep?

-And you get two points.

-Great.

APPLAUSE

So, four points. Let's go for your body.

-Well...

-Again, I can feel a sacking coming on.

It's everybody's favourite bear, isn't it?

I believe it's a giant panda.

And you would believe right.

APPLAUSE

So it's almost neck and neck.

Six plays seven.

Now, these legs?

I feel like it's a grasshopper.

-Could be a locust.

-Do they...?

They do, but I think they're not... They're back legs.

They're not so jumpy, they're more fly-ey.

There is an awful lot riding on this, namely beating HIM,

which is impossible to do, because he knows so much!

They had a hair parting, we have the whole world of insects that jump.

Yes, exactly, I know, it's hard, isn't it?

-Come on, let's just go for it.

-Let's go for it.

-Yes, go on.

Grasshopper, please.

If you're right...

you will have eight points,

which will be a point more than Packham and King.

Ladies and gentlemen,

they've done it!

-Yes!

-Yay!

Woohoo!

APPLAUSE

Would you like to seal the deal and see if you can clear the board

and identify your final body part?

-Yes, please.

-OK, let's have a look at it.

Ooh.

I'm not sure, I think there's a few types.

Let's go for...

-Sea dragon.

-Yes, is it is sea dragon?

One point.

APPLAUSE

Congratulations.

-Very good.

-Which means that Lucy and Niall are today's winners

with eight points!

APPLAUSE

So, thank you to all four of you curious creatures for playing,

and to all you awesome organisms at home for watching.

We'll see you next time. Goodbye.