Episode 7 Curious Creatures

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

a quiz containing more fascinating animals than Noah's Ark itself.

And just like on the Ark, our players come in two-by-two.

So please welcome on my left, Chris Packham -

is there anything he doesn't "Noah"?

Who today is joined by

conservationist and countryside ranger Ajay Tegala.

And on my right, bringing her own flood of animal facts,

Lucy Kirk, who is joined by the presenter with the deadly knowledge,

Steve Backshall.

Let's sail on to our opening round, Yay or Neigh?

I'll read each team a statement about the animal kingdom.

Their job is simply to decide whether it's true...

ELEPHANT TRUMPETING

..that's a Yay. Or false...

HORSE NEIGHS

That's a neigh. And Chris, we'll start with you.

Your statement is,

the American white pelican can hold about 24 pints of water in its bill.

Well, I must take umbrage with the pint...

-Do you want to go litres?

-Yes, I'm a child of the '70s.

But it's an American pelican.

And the Americans like to do things in pints.

But if we want to do litres, 13 litres.

-Will that do you?

-It's 13, is it?

-About 13 litres, yeah.

-Excellent, thank you very much.

13 litres.

Ooh, he looks like a thirsty chap, doesn't he?

A 30, rather than 13.

Ajay, have you ever had a pelican pass you by in Norfolk?

I've never seen a pelican in Norfolk, no.

We had a couple of Chilean flamingos that escaped from a zoo and flew past.

-Oh, right.

-That was quite unusual.

-Yes.

-But never a pelican.

-OK.

-Still waiting for that.

So what do we think?

Well, what pelicans do when they are fishing is that rather like the baleen whales,

they scoop their heads beneath the surface of the water,

and they use what is essentially a very large scoop to

catch fish, but in the process of catching fish,

they take in a large body of water.

So that flesh that you can see beneath there - the beak,

is just like the baleen whales,

it's extremely flexible and stretchable material,

so if you see a pelican beneath the water,

or even just lifting its head up, as it's all pouring out,

it's got this huge sac of water which it's filled,

and its job of course is to expel the water

and retain the fish which it's captured in it.

So what we're thinking about here is the volume of what we might call

the gular sac, the throat sack.

I mean, it's got to be close to the limit, I imagine.

Yeah, if it's close to the limit, maybe that is the limit.

Maybe it could be that much.

I'm leaning that way. We are going to go a Yay for that.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETING

Good call. You're absolutely right.

APPLAUSE

It can hold three gallons,

24 pints or around 13 litres,

which is roughly three times the amount of blood in a human body.

-Wow!

-And its pouch can hold more than its belly can.

It's a remarkable beast, the pelican.

-Its beak can hold more than its belly can.

-And...?

I can't remember the rest of it. That's as good as it gets.

Very well done.

Yes, you have won yourselves a part of a curious creature.

Have a look at this.

-Right.

-All right.

OK. And now, Lucy.

Your fabulous fact is

a swarm of desert locusts can consume the equivalent

weight of over 400 jumbo jets in a single day.

Wowsers!

OK, so that's a hungry swarm of locusts.

That's a phenomenal number, isn't it?

But they are prodigious eaters, aren't they?

They are. So the remarkable thing about these beasts is that actually,

they just... They move around like

other normal grasshoppers and crickets

until, on some perhaps pheromone cue,

they change their behaviour and they turn into this swarming beast,

which decimates huge, huge areas of farmland.

They've been seen flying in swarms

that have been continuous for three or four days,

just completely blanking out the sky and in some places,

Madagascar, for example,

they can cause absolute blights that decimate the landscape.

I think it's possible.

We can, I think, only really guess on this one, can't we?

I mean, it's going to be very, very hard, so we have to take a punt.

-So we're going to go a Yay.

-You're going to go a Yay?

Let's have a look at locusts in action

before I tell you whether you are right or not.

So as you said, Steve, a locust swarm can be truly huge.

It can be 1,200 square kilometres in size

and pack between 40 and 80 million locusts

into one square kilometre.

A locust can eat its own weight in plants every day, 2g,

so a swarm of 80 million

would consume 192 million kilogrammes

of plants in a single day. Are you doing the maths?

-Yeah.

-I am.

-We are 192,000 tonnes.

-You're absolutely right. It's a Yay.

-Yes!

Well done, Steve.

So you have won your first part of your curious creature.

Let's have a look and see what it is. Ooh! There we go.

One of your best friends, I believe, Steve.

It is, very much so, yes.

Ajay, here is your fantastic fact -

but how fantastic is it?

Female dragonflies will fake death

to avoid unwanted male attention.

-We've all been there!

-Well...

Just saying.

Yes!

I can imagine if it was for humans, that would...

I would definitely sympathise with that.

Yeah, OK.

So...

What do you think, Chris?

They do get an enormous amount of attention.

Some species will actually not even go near the water until they're

absolutely ready to mate and lay...

What is it that is so exhausting

about being courted by a male dragonfly?

It's not the one male dragonfly.

It's all the male dragonflies.

Do they fake their own death?

Well, one of the ways that they could do that

is just dropping out of the air into the water.

Then, of course, they would risk being eaten by anything that lived in the water, like a fish.

What's your gut feeling?

My gut feeling is that although it's almost believable,

it's not quite believable.

Yeah. I'm with you on that.

Yeah. I think it's going to be a Neigh,

You're going to Neigh it, are you?

I'm afraid you're wrong.

A scientist called Rassim Khelifa

witnessed the behaviour for the first time in the

moorland or common hawker dragonfly

while collecting their larvae in the Swiss Alps.

He observed, this scientist, 27 out of 31 females,

plummeting and playing dead to avoid males,

with 21 of these ploys being successful. So there you are.

-What about that? Even you've learned something new.

-I love to learn new things.

I'm afraid you don't add to your curious creature.

Steve, let's see if you can to yours.

Tell me whether you think this is a Yay or a Neigh.

A male giraffe's coat gets whiter as it gets older.

So, it's actually one of the ways that you tell the difference between

male and female giraffes

and particularly from their maturity,

one of the things is the ossicones - the horns on top of their head -

on males tend to be bald, because they use them for combat,

and on females, they're not.

Generally speaking, the older and more mature giraffes

have darker blotches as they get older.

-So...

-I'm going Neigh on that one.

You're going Neigh.

You're right.

Very good, well done.

And we can prove it with this picture.

There we are, there's a youngster, much paler than the adult.

A 33-year study has shown that the brown markings on male giraffe coats

actually, as you said, turn darker with age.

-There you go.

-So very well done.

You have now added another part to your curious creature,

so along with the head, you get this.

Ooh!

Curiouser and curiouser indeed.

So as Lucy and Steve's curious creature begins to shape up and,

well, Chris and Ajay's has a little way to go, we move on to round two,

which today is called Who's the Daddy?

Each team will see a darling little baby animal -

but what species could it be?

Who is the daddy and indeed, the mummy?

Chris and Ajay, I'm going to start with you.

Have a look at these little cuties.

What do you think, Ajay?

We can safely say they're mammals.

-Yeah.

-We can say that much.

-And they're in a den.

So they look to me like they've been born underground and they've got

a very canine-looking face, I would say, yeah.

But when I look at their tails, I see that they're banded.

And I'm gravitating towards an African animal.

-Yes.

-What are you thinking?

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think I'm along the same line of thought.

-Are you thinking a scavenging animal?

-Yes, I am.

Yeah. I'm thinking hyena.

But could they be raccoons?

-You know...

-What were you thinking, Ajay?

Well, I was thinking raccoon when you said...

-Were you? OK.

-..when you said the stripy tail.

-Yeah.

-But then, obviously, you justified hyena quite well.

But one of the things that drew me to that was that they were fluffy

and I once saw some very young hyenas that had just come out of the den.

They were terribly cute. They really, really were.

That's not a word usually associated with hyenas, either, is it?

No, but at that age, honestly, they're divine.

They've got these little crests that come up, big eyes, nice big noses.

But they normally have larger litters, I've got to say, hyenas.

You get fives, sixes and sevens.

I tell you what, let's be a little bit cleverer here.

Look at that foot. Look at the pink foot there.

-That's not the paw of a hyena, is it?

-No, that's not.

-No.

And they've got a raccoon-y nose.

Their ears are a little bit big.

But as they grow, things will get more in proportion, potentially.

Indeed. Indeed, OK.

So we're going to go...raccoon.

Let's see if you're right.

-Yeah.

-You are.

And so, you do get another part of your curious creature.

Splendid.

Lucy and Steve, here is your little beauty.

-Ah!

-What do we think that might be?

-A bird?

-No points for a bird, Lucy Cooke!

OK, tell me what you're thinking.

I'm thinking Cassowary.

You're thinking Cassowary? Why?

Well, Cassowaries' youngsters have dark striped heads with just

those colours, that kind of russet and dark,

and then they have this forest of quills,

black quills towards the back of the animal,

and they have that very raptorial foot

that you can see they're coiled round towards the head of the bird.

I looked at it and I thought emu.

But putting them side by side, an emu chick and a cassowary chick...

-I'll go emu.

-No, no, no, no.

Because your first instinct was cassowary.

OK, cassowary.

Well, I have a little bit of film to show you

which will reveal the answer.

-No!

-Oh, they're emu chicks.

-Oh, no! I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

They're not emus.

Oh, they're ostrich!

They're ostrich chicks.

They would have been much stripier if it had been a cassowary,

and the egg would have been slightly greener if it had been an emu,

so I'm very sorry.

-I'm sorry for talking us out of it.

-It's OK, don't worry.

It's all part of the process.

No part to add to your curious creature.

Now, it is the moment in the show

where we ask the time-honoured question,

Is it Bigger than a Chicken?

Yes, this is where we take an in-depth look

at one particular animal, but first of all,

our teams have to try and work out what it is.

They take turns to ask me questions about it,

to which I must be able to answer only yes, or no.

Each time they get a yes,

a small part of our mystery animal is revealed on the screen behind me.

Now, at that point, teams,

you are allowed to guess what that animal might be, but remember,

if you get it wrong, you are out of the game.

The first question that must be asked of me, is, audience...

-AUDIENCE:

-Is it bigger than a chicken?

Thank you very much indeed.

So, Ajay.

What question would you like to ask me?

Well, I think the question I might ask is,

is it bigger than a chicken?

Well, it is about the same size as a chicken,

but let's say that it's a very small chicken,

in which case it is bigger,

and so I am going to give you your first clue.

There you are. How generous am I?

-Incredibly.

-What question would you like to ask me, Steve?

Is it a mammal?

Yes.

-Ooh!

-Ah!

That's quite a distinctive ear, isn't it, so...

Does that not look like that's in a pond behind it?

So it would be an aquatic mammal.

If that is water, Steve Backshall,

and that is an aquatic mammal, what could it be?

Platypus is kind of around about that size

and has quite densely packed fur of that kind of hue.

-Yeah.

-Obviously, there are things like water voles,

which can be a similar sort of weight, at least.

-Too many animals to take a punt at this stage.

-Too many animals, OK.

-So you're going to wait at that?

-We will.

-OK. So, Chris.

-Is this animal herbivorous?

No.

-Lucy.

-Your guess that it was a platypus would be correct, then,

because it would not be herbivorous.

So we're getting rid of things like beaver,

and coypu and muskrat and water vole,

all of which do feed on plant material?

-Yeah.

-But shall we try and solidify whether it is in the water,

because all I'm looking at is a tiny little section that looks like it's

-got a bubble in it.

-OK, so let's ask that.

-Let's do that as a question, then, shall we?

-OK.

-Is it, Kate, aquatic?

It can be, yes.

So you get another part of this mystery beast.

Here it is.

Ah!

Perfect.

So we'll shrink that back.

You're looking a little bit smug.

That's a duckbilled platypus foot, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. Because they're just such fantastic...

Cos I think that's the first time a duckbilled platypus

was seen by the Natural History Museum, I think it was.

They thought that it was several different animals

that had been stitched together as a joke...

Like a sort of Doctor Doolittle animal.

Exactly, like one of our curious creatures, in fact, that had been...

Cos they thought that they had the feet of a duck -

-was it the feet of a duck?

-The bill of a duck.

The bill of a duck. And then the feet of something else.

-And the tail of a beaver.

-Yes.

-And yeah, it was...

-Just like it was a simulacrum of lots and lots of different animals.

-Yeah.

-Yes, OK,

but you're making quite a big assumption here that you are absolutely right.

Shall we find out whether you are?

ELEPHANT TRUMPETING

-Yay!

-Very, very well done.

You win another part of your curious creature.

Let's have a look and see what it is.

Ooh, that's tricky.

Be much easier if we got a platypus tail.

So, Chris and Ajay,

you don't lose out entirely, because if you can answer this question,

you too can add another part to your curious creature.

And the question is, which sex of duckbilled platypus is venomous?

The males are equipped with a spur, a venomous spur.

Whereabouts is that spur?

On their feet. And they will use this to envenomate other mammals.

I'm not sure how toxic it is, but...

I only know one person who's seen a platypus and he's still alive.

He did wrestle with it and so, I presume it's not that toxic.

We interviewed a Vietnam War vet in Australia who had been...

He'd been fishing for crayfish and he caught a platypus and got stung on his arm.

The pain didn't go away for six months,

and he said it was way worse than being shot.

-And he lost all use of his arm completely for six months.

-Really?

Yeah, the venom is extremely painful

and not even morphine will take away that pain.

Chris, Ajay, it is the male platypus that is venomous

and you get another part of your curious creature. Well done.

Ooh, yes.

And just to celebrate your joint success,

shall we have a little look at a duckbilled platypus...

-Oh, please.

-..in action?

-Yes, yes.

-Cos they're so magnificent.

-Here it is.

The really shocking thing about a platypus is, they always...

when I first saw one in real life, is that they're tiny.

Well, they're about the same size as a chicken.

-So, well done, everybody.

-Yes.

We are now all doyens of the duckbilled platypus.

Now we move swiftly on to round four,

which today is called Pecking Order.

As the name suggests, your tasks, teams,

is to rank three animals in a particular order and Chris and Ajay,

I'm going to start with you.

Your animals are the Asian grass lizard,

the long-eared jerboa

and the stoat.

And I want you to rank them in order

of the maximum length of their tails.

Starting with the shortest.

Well, jerboas are a jumping animal,

and like many other jumping animals,

they need, relative to their body size,

a long tail to balance whilst they're jumping.

So they have, relative to their body size, quite long tails.

The stoat...

doesn't do a lot of bounding around....

-Jumping, no.

-..like a jerboa, to be honest with you.

And they are famed for having, amongst those British mustelids,

you know, weasel, stoat, pine marten, otter,

the latter two have much longer tails, so weasels and stoats,

relative to their body again, have quite short tails.

So, stoat is... This is stoat.

-Yeah.

-Jerboa, I reckon it's going to be longer.

-Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

-Yes. Are you happy with that?

-Yeah.

OK, so at the moment we've got stoat,

jerboa - where do we put the lizard?

Is there another clue in the picture?

Can you see in the background there?

-There's quite a...

-Long tail.

-A lot of tail in the background there.

Yeah. There is. It seems to be reaching all the way around, doesn't it?

I'm tempted to go stoat, jerboa, lizard.

-What do you think?

-I think definitely stoat at the bottom, yes.

I think we'll go with that, shall we?

Let's see if you're right.

You are absolutely right.

APPLAUSE

A stoat's tail can grow between 12 and 14 centimetres.

The jerboa has a tail length of about 16 centimetres,

which is twice the length of its body.

The Asian grass lizard's tail is over 25 centimetres.

Three times the length of its body.

So, very well done. You get another part of your curious creature.

I just hope it's not the tail of some grass lizard from,

you know, Outer Mongolia.

There it is.

So, Lucy and Steve, your turn,

and your three are the sea otter,

the Arctic fox

and the musk ox.

And I want to you rank them in terms of

the number of hairs per square centimetre,

with the least furry first.

So I can tell you that the sea otter is the densest fur of any animal,

with 100,000 per square centimetre.

The Arctic fox is famous for not even starting to shiver

before minus 50 degrees below,

and they have unbelievably dense fur,

whereas the musk oxen,

it's like a carpet that's thrown over its back.

They're very, very long hairs, huge guard hairs,

and I wouldn't think the density of the fur

is anything like the other two.

I have actually had a musk oxen fur around my shoulders in the Arctic

and slept on one, and it's unbelievably heavy.

The animal itself, musk oxen, when you get to them, are tiny.

They stand up to about your lower chest height.

-Really?

-But because they have this enormous fur coat,

they seem so much bigger.

So I think we're heading towards the musk ox

having the least dense fur,

then go Arctic fox,

-and then go for the sea otter as the densest.

-I agree with that.

Let's see if you're right.

You are absolutely right.

The musk ox has just 420 hairs per square centimetre,

the Arctic fox, 20,000 hairs per square centimetre,

and the sea otter around 120,000 to 125,000 hairs

per square centimetre, possibly more,

but I don't know about, you, I'm not going to count them to find out!

Well done, you have won another part of your curious creature.

So, both teams have four parts of their curious creatures

and we're nearly at the end of the show,

which means it's time to see how many bits of their curious creatures

our teams can identify.

So, Chris and Ajay we'll start with you,

and we'll start with that handsome head.

It's a baboon. Do you need any more than baboon?

-No, baboon will do and it will give you two points.

-Excellent.

What about those rather splendid ears?

It can only be an elephant.

It can only be an elephant. I'll give you two points,

but you can get a gold star if you can tell me which elephant.

I don't think it's an Asian, so, African elephant?

You're absolutely right. Well done.

APPLAUSE

Now then, what about this rather splendid body?

It's lovely isn't it? This is the rounded opisthosoma,

the rear part of the body of a spider,

marked characteristically with the hourglass pattern, which is - Ajay?

Well, it's a black widow.

You are really, really close.

It is a widow spider, but it's not a black widow spider.

It's a redback spider.

So I am going to give you a point.

APPLAUSE

Now then, what about this rather lovely little tail?

-Short, isn't it?

-Yeah, it's short and fluffy.

I'm sure it's a rabbit's tail, isn't it?

The only rabbit that I know that has a name

specifically after its tail

is the cottontail rabbit,

the North American cottontail rabbit,

so on that account, if I was to hazard a guess

at any old rabbit's tail in the world that looked white

and was fluffy, I'd go cottontail.

That's exactly what I want to hear. It gives you two points,

and that now brings your total up to seven points.

Now, if you'd like a chance to make it eight,

see if you can identify this final part of your curious creature.

It's clearly the underbelly of a mammal of some kind.

It seems to have a fringe running down its flanks.

Why would it be up in the air like that?

Meerkats stand up in the air like that.

Definitely, yeah. Upright, in sort of meerkat fashion.

Well, that might suggest meerkat, then.

You're right. So you get one point,

and you finish the game on eight points.

We're in with a chance.

So, Lucy and Steve, you've got it all to play for.

Let's see how you do with your head.

That's the easy bit, isn't it, Steve?

-That's actually one of your best friends, isn't it?

-You could say that, yes.

I have had the great privilege with diving with several

different species of hammerhead shark in the past.

-Unmistakable.

-Unmistakable, yes.

Hammerhead shark. You're absolutely right.

Two points.

APPLAUSE

Now, what about this body?

Now, that's much trickier, isn't it?

Well, first of all, we've got no sense of scale.

I mean goodness me, it's a grey, furry animal!

But both of us instinctively thought it was an agouti.

We could be so wrong.

It was what both of us at the same time said we thought it was.

You are wrong, I am afraid.

It's a wombat.

Oh, is it?

Ah, we should have known, because wombats have got the most amazing bums!

-Yeah.

-I can't believe I got that wrong,

because they have a bony plate in their bottom,

and when they are under attack from a dingo or another predator,

the males will run and ram their heads in the burrows and

protect all their family inside, and leave their bottom sticking outside,

and then if a dingo comes along,

they can actually crush a dingo's skull

with that bum, with that bony plate in their bum.

Death by bum, my friends.

That's what the wombat is capable of,

and I'm very sad to have got that wrong.

So, no points for the body.

Can you claw anything back and identify the tail?

Well, now, this is also... It could be a lot of things.

-It could be a monkey tail.

-It could.

-Maybe.

-It could,

but to have it in that almost erectile position like that...

Although potentially, actually,

-a moving monkey on a branch could have that held above it.

-Yeah. Yeah.

Although it's quite bushy for a monkey tail though, isn't it?

-Shall I give you a clue?

-Yes, please.

I can give them a clue because I'm afraid you can't win at this stage.

The clue is, jam sandwiches.

Jam sandwiches?

-You know what I'm talking about.

-I do, yeah.

Jam sandwiches?

LAUGHTER

If you wanted to film one of these creatures,

and you had a jam sandwich in your pocket,

and you were in Scotland, you might be successful.

-Oh, a pine marten.

-Yes.

Am I allowed to give them two points?

Shall I give them two points?

No. No.

-I was about to say...

-You're going to get no points.

A pine marten loves a jam sandwich.

It's just about all they eat most of the time, I think.

They're up there in Scotland just chowing down on jam sandwiches?

-Strawberry is the favourite.

-Really?

Apricot, not so keen on.

-Interesting.

-Let's move on and see if you can identify these

very splendid wings.

So, my first thought was that this looks very much like the position

that the wings would be in in the courtship display of a crane.

When two cranes come together, they throw their heads back.

They have a bugling call and throw their wings forward.

You felt quite convinced about the crane.

So let's go with that.

-A crane.

-A crane? Chris?

Well, I was thinking Andean condor.

-Were you?

-Mm...

-You see, you would have got two points,

and you don't get any at all!

Let's just, for fun, because you know, finishing a show on two points

would be a little bit pathetic.

Shall we see if we can make it three?

When you see this beautiful set of legs....

-Okapi.

-Yes. It is.

Relative of the giraffe, the okapi.

Absolutely, you a point and so, you finish on three points.

Thank you.

Well done.

Which means that Chris and Ajay have blown away the competition

and are today's winners.

So, thank you to all four of you

glorious, curious creatures for playing,

and thank you, you beautiful beings at home for watching.

We'll see you next time. Goodbye.