Magical creatures have fascinated us
ever since we first walked the Earth.
Whether created entirely from the imagination
or inspired by the animals around us,
mythical beasts have captured our attention
for thousands of years.
But why, in this modern age of science and technology,
are we still so captivated by these fantastic beasts?
And what are the truths that lie behind the myths,
the magic and the legends?
Join me on a journey of exhilarating exploration
and daring discovery as we uncover the secrets
behind some of our best-loved mythical creatures...
Oh, my heavens!
Wow!
..revealing the real-life beasts
behind some of the greatest legends in history...
You look at some of nature's extraordinary creations
and you think, "Well, CGI will never match this."
..and finding out why the world of magical animals
is more popular today than ever before.
These are the extraordinary stories
of the world's most fantastic beasts.
This is one of the greatest treasure troves of the natural world.
London's Natural History Museum is a cornucopia
of unique and fascinating collections from across the globe.
It's also a place where the worlds of science and fiction
have been known to overlap.
I'll be exploring the museum's labyrinth of corridors and cabinets
and uncovering the stories that continue to fascinate
millions of people today.
From the legendary creatures of ancient mythology
to the magical animals of Harry Potter and the Wizarding World.
Stories like these.
The mythical beasts and magical creatures within these pages
appear to be pure fantasy.
But things aren't always quite that simple.
We begin our story
with arguably the best-known mythological animal on the planet.
The dragon.
NIFFLER SNUFFLES AND CHITTERS
One of the most ancient and universal
of our mythological creatures,
the dragon has enthralled the human race for thousands of years.
But where did the idea for this creature first take flight?
Was there a spark of truth behind the dragon myth?
Chinese New Year is often celebrated around the world
with a traditional dragon dance.
In the dance, the dragon represents wisdom, power and wealth,
and it's believed that performing the dance
scares off evil spirits and brings good luck.
But why the dragon?
What is it about this creature that so excites and mesmerises us?
Many cultures around the world have a dragon myth,
although they often vary in appearance.
European dragons are usually seen as terrifying,
fire-breathing beasts with wings and horns.
Whereas Asian dragons are depicted as wise, benevolent creatures
with a more serpent-like appearance.
In Aztec culture, the dragon-like god Quetzalcoatl
was often shown with feathers and sharp fangs,
while others, like the Rainbow Serpent
from Australian Aboriginal mythology,
have a large, reptilian head and monstrous teeth.
But if you take a closer look at the dragon,
you can see that many of its features
are borrowed from real animals.
Animals that have a fearsome reputation.
A dragon's large, powerful talons are like those of an eagle.
EAGLES SCREECH
Its sharp teeth and strong limbs are like a lion's.
And its scales and hissing tongue are similar to a snake's.
One recent scientific theory suggests that the dragon
is simply a combination of those three animals -
the animals that our early ancestors were most afraid of.
An interesting idea, indeed - but what lies behind this theory?
I visited San Diego Zoo in California
to meet a little creature that could help to explain.
Oh! Now, who have we here?
So this is our vervet family.
This chap here with the blue bottom -
he's looking rather alarmed.
So that is our dominant male in the family.
There's some new enrichment in their enclosure
that they haven't seen before,
so he's letting everyone know there's something new.
When you say enrichment, do you mean that earthen pot? Correct.
They've never seen it before? Never seen it before.
It has mealworms in there, it has peanuts,
so they have to reach their hand in. Right.
But because it's something new in their environment,
he's started making the alert call.
And I don't know if you noticed,
they all started to jump into the trees. They did, didn't they?
They were all responding to his, "Hey, there's something new here!"
"There is something new, we don't know what it is.
"Everyone go to your post."
Vervet monkeys can be found across most of Africa,
and usually live in large groups known as troops.
Studies have revealed that they communicate
in a highly sophisticated way,
using different alarm calls for specific predators
to warn their troop of approaching danger.
MONKEYS CHATTER
Is it a very particular kind of warning that they know
means something on the ground rather than something on a tree?
They do. They have three different calls.
So they have one for something that's on the ground, like a snake.
Oh, right. They have a different call for something's in the air,
like a bird of prey. Yeah.
And then they have another call for big cats.
Those are the three things that are most likely to threaten them.
Correct. So that was a snake call, was it?
Cos they were all looking down. It was.
They were all up on their tip-toes, all looking down at it. Of course.
It's exactly what they do for a snake.
And, you know, I was cleaning their bedrooms one time
and they started to do the same call for the water hose.
Really? Of course!
A hose is a green snake, isn't it? They were like, "What is that?"
So what does this all mean?
Well, it's thought that vervet alarm calls
indicate a very deep-rooted fear of these three predators.
And we humans, as the primate cousins of the vervet monkey,
share the same instinctive fears of big cats,
birds of prey and snakes.
And perhaps that primal fear is what led people around the world
to combine these three deadly animals
into their own unique version of the almighty dragon.
But there is another theory behind the legend of the dragon,
and it's based on a group of formidable reptiles
that walked the Earth millions of years ago.
If you've ever wanted to dig up a dinosaur,
then this is the place to come.
I am surrounded by thousands of dinosaur fossils here.
I'm in the Valley of Bones.
Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Utah, America,
has the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur fossils
ever found on the planet.
So have they dug up anything here
that can help us decipher the dragon myth?
I'm meeting with two of the quarry's top experts,
Mike Leschin and Casey Dooms, to find out.
So, in terms of recent human history,
when was this place discovered?
We know that people knew about the area
since probably at least the late 1800s.
The first Europeans undoubtedly
stumbled across a lot of different finds.
Dinosaur fossils and all kinds of things.
Because they were visible? Eroding out of the hills,
eroding out of these formations, these features.
Bones poking up through the soil? Mm-hm.
And, Mike, the Europeans, the ranchers in the 18th century,
they had no reason to suppose that the creatures
that were exhibited there were extinct,
and some people still kind of get confused in their head, don't they,
about the fact that obviously
we never coexisted with these creatures?
Oh, yeah. I've had people come out here and say,
"I'm here cos I don't believe in dinosaurs." Really?
Yeah, so it's like, "Well, go look down there and then we'll talk."
STEPHEN LAUGHS
What about the non-Europeans, the Native Americans, the Ute?
The Ute tribe is the local tribe.
They knew they were the remains of a living creature. Yeah.
And their attitude was to respect that and leave it alone. Yeah.
Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent on Earth.
Could they be behind the dragon story?
If you take a look at the T-Rex, with its terrifying teeth,
sharp claws and enormous size,
you can see how the idea could arise.
Some ancient civilisations did believe fossils
were the bones of dragons.
Over 1,500 years ago, Chinese medical scholars
used "dragon bones" in recipes for many ailments,
but it's thought these were actually fossilised dinosaur bones.
Goodness me, what is this place?
So this is the actual Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry.
And you've enclosed it to show off these amazing specimens. Yes.
So over here we have some back vertebrae from a Camarasaurus.
From what animal? Camarasaurus. So it's a herbivorous dinosaur.
One of the big long necks.
Right next to it we have a tail vertebrae of an Allosaurus.
Oh, yeah. The big predator, the major predator of the day.
You can really see here, Casey, how the dragon myth can arise.
Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you're finding stuff like this.
That is a single tooth of an Allosaurus. Oh, my goodness!
I can feel its serrations, saw-like. Serrations, yeah.
Like a steak knife, for cutting through flesh.
Still, after 147 million years, you can still see them
and you can still feel them.
I mean, that's a dragon's tooth - there's no question about it, is it?
It's just... Wow!
I'll give it back to you. It's very valuable. Look at that. Wow!
Indigenous American mythology features dragon-like creatures,
such as the Piasa Bird, with feathery wings,
elk's horns, and a long spiked tail.
And the Gaasyendietha dragon,
a lake-dwelling, fire-breathing beast.
Perhaps these creations were inspired by fossils
like those discovered here in Utah.
If I was here some thousand years ago or so,
it's easy to see how, if someone dug up something like this,
it could conjure up the image of a dragon,
and terrifying it would be.
Because how could I know that this was from a species
that had gone extinct millions of years ago?
As far as I was concerned,
this was one of a species that was still very much alive,
and might swoop down on me at any moment.
In the world of mythical beasts,
there is another creature that's as universally-recognised
as the dragon.
You know, there's one mythical creature whose popularity
seems to be even greater today than it's ever been.
And it's one of the few magical animals
that isn't a terrifying monster.
Indeed, it's famous for its peaceful and benevolent nature.
I'm talking, of course, about the unicorn.
One more!
I'm on my way to a country which was so convinced
that this mystical creature was real,
that they named it their national animal.
TRAIN WHISTLES
Often depicted as a beautiful, horse-like creature
with flowing mane and long, spiralled horn,
the unicorn is a symbol of purity and innocence.
Believed to have magical powers,
the unicorn's horn was said to heal sickness
and protect against poison.
In recent years, unicorns have seen a huge surge in popularity.
But this adoration is nothing new in Scotland,
where the unicorn has been revered for centuries.
So what is this obsession all about?
I've come to Stirling Castle to meet historian Professor Donna Heddle
to find out.
Professor Heddle. Oh, call me Donna.
Donna. What a place.
Oh, my goodness!
Unicorns absolutely everywhere.
I know, it's splendid, isn't it?
And there are more all round the room.
This tells us the story of the Hunt of the Unicorn.
So it's an allegorical piece based on tapestries
we know that were in the collection of James V.
They're called the History of the Unicorn.
America has a bald eagle and France has a cockerel
and we have a lion in England.
You in Scotland don't have a real animal, you have a mythical animal.
Why is that, do you think?
Well, I think at the time when it was chosen,
people did think it was real. They did believe in it.
But it is a kind of a thing in the 15th century,
lots of kings were adopting animals as their personal symbols.
And the unicorn became the symbol of Scotland
because it is untameable, it is undefeatable.
Oh, so that's a symbol of Scotland's sense of itself? Absolutely.
It's brave, it's courageous. What's not to like?
How cool is that for a national symbol? Yes.
In the Middle Ages, the evidence used to prove that unicorns existed
came from another mysterious creature entirely.
A genuine unicorn horn.
Or is it, in fact, a narwhal tusk?
I think it's a narwhal tusk.
In fact, it's a replica of a narwhal tusk,
cos we wouldn't have such a thing -
obviously they belong on the narwhal's head.
They sort of grow up like that.
I mean, extraordinary things on the narwhal.
And you can see why somebody enterprising,
who unfortunately caught one of those whales and sawed off his tusk,
would have thought, "I can sell this as a unicorn horn,"
because that's just what it looks like.
It's quite beautiful.
The narwhal is an elusive toothed whale found in Arctic waters.
The spectacular tusk, usually only found on male narwhals,
is actually an overgrown spiralised tooth.
Scientists are still unsure as to what exactly the tusk is for,
but it's thought that it may be used to break through ice,
help catch fish, or possibly to impress female narwhals.
I believe I'm right in saying that these did change hands
for quite astonishing sums of money.
Vast sums of money.
We know that Queen Elizabeth I paid £10,000
and that's kept in the Tower of London, for example.
So it's a very high-status object.
Who created this market?
Well, they were mainly people who were fishing
in the north of Norway or Greenland.
In the Arctic, Scandinavia.
They would come across the narwhals, and it was a huge trade.
And the idea was that it obviously was a symbol
of your own power and wealth,
but also that it would protect you in some way?
That's right. The purity of the unicorn.
This was believed to be able to purify water
and to guard against poisons.
Also, in rather more mundane fashion,
it could cure boils and plague.
And it was used by apothecaries up until the 18th century.
It was called alicorn, the powder.
A mere pinch of this would have been beyond the dreams of ordinary men.
Right.
It's thought the first written reference to unicorns
dates back to over 2,000 years ago.
Over that time, many real animals have been linked
with this mythical creature.
The Arabian oryx, also known as the Arabian unicorn,
has two long, slender horns, and when viewed in profile,
their horns can appear as one,
making them closely resemble a unicorn.
But there's another, rather different animal
that is part of the unicorn story.
One that may have the strongest connection of all.
There they are. The little armoured tanks.
The rhinoceros. The rhino.
Surely one of the nature's most iconic creatures.
With its unmistakable thick, grey hide
and its signature horn.
I call it one of nature's masterpieces.
An extraordinary, unique beauty, aren't you?
RHINO HUFFS Yes.
These magnificent creatures are Indian rhinoceros.
And their scientific species name is, splendidly,
Rhinoceros unicornis.
And they are, in fact, distantly related to a "real" unicorn.
"Oh, come now, Stephen!"
Well, millions of years ago,
a creature called Elasmotherium sibiricum,
the Siberian unicorn, roamed between Asia and Europe
and around for many, many millions of years.
These prehistoric rhinos wouldn't have looked terribly different
to the ones we know today.
But they were enormous - twice the size of modern rhinos,
at around three metres tall, covered in thick, shaggy hair
and thought to have a single, large horn.
The Siberian unicorn is believed to have grazed
almost entirely on grass, and, despite its large size,
was built to run at speed across the plains.
They survived until 39,000 years ago, when they became extinct.
But at that time, we were there. We Homo sapiens.
We had developed language,
and so we were able to tell each other
about meeting these incredible creatures.
What would we have thought of them?
Perhaps that's another reason why the idea of the unicorn
entered the human imagination.
NIFFLER CHITTERS AND SNIFFS
What kinds of creatures lie hidden
in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean?
Even today, scientists are making the most incredible discoveries
about life forms that exist
thousands of metres below the surface.
But so much about the deep is a mystery to us.
And it was an even deeper mystery to the adventurers
who first began to sail around the world in the 1500s.
These early explorations led to an explosion of extraordinary fables
about our oceans...
..as sailors returned home
with terrifying tales of huge sea monsters.
It was also a time in our history when real-life science
and ancient folklore began to overlap more than ever before.
Of all the eerie legends of the ocean depths,
there is one that has enthralled us more than any other.
The kraken.
Over 500 years ago, sailors first told of an enormous sea monster,
said to live in the waters off Norway and Iceland,
which had long, snake-like arms
covered in suckers for grabbing prey.
Some stories reported the monster as being two kilometres in length,
with tentacles as thick and long as ship's masts.
By the 18th century, scientists truly believed that the Kraken
was a living, breathing animal,
and so it was included in all the highly-respected
scientific journals of the time, including the Systema Naturae,
developed by the famous Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus.
Was there really a huge monster living in the ocean depths,
that overturned ships and devoured sailors?
This is the Natural History Museum's Tank Room,
home to thousands of the most incredible scientific specimens.
And there's one in particular that may explain our kraken myth,
along with a little help from museum curator, Jon Ablett.
Hello, there. John. Hello. How good to meet you.
Thanks for showing me around your incredible...
STEPHEN GASPS
What the heck is that?!
Well, this is Archie, our beautiful giant squid specimen.
This is a giant squid?
One hears about giant squids
and one imagines that they are maybe what people mean by sea monsters.
Is this what they are? Are these the monsters?
Well... I mean, we don't really know what people were seeing
when we think of these kind of old-fashioned sea monsters.
But these are definitely a great candidate.
I mean, they get up to about 13 metres,
so Archie here is about 8.6 metres, so not fully grown.
This is a junior? This is a junior.
So the females, we think, get to about 13
and the males about 10, 11.
Oh, I can't imagine what it must be like,
seeing one of those actually in the water.
One of the most elusive creatures on the planet,
giant squid are believed to weigh up to 500 kilos,
and inhabit the deepest oceans around the world.
This incredibly rare footage was captured by scientists
in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico in 2019.
Thought to be a juvenile,
and measuring over three and a half metres,
the squid is attempting to feed on a decoy bioluminescent jellyfish.
This is only the second time in history
that a giant squid has been filmed in the wild.
So that sort of child's adventure book,
with a huge tentacle coming into the deck
and wrapping itself around an unfortunate sailor
is not very likely?
Pretty unlikely. I mean, these live at really great depths.
We're thinking possibly down to 2,000 metres.
And it's actually very likely
they can't actually breathe at the surface. Really?
Oh, look. There's more. You've got suckers. There - that's wonderful.
This isn't actually part of a giant squid.
There is something that possibly gets even bigger.
This is actually from a colossal squid.
We think they get bigger than the giant squid,
possibly up to 18 metres. 18 metres?!
Wow!
So shall we have a look inside? A closer look.
STEPHEN GASPS
Wow! I can see the suckers so clearly.
So here you can see just the very tip
of a tentacle of a colossal squid.
And you can see they have these traditional circular suckers,
with the saw-toothed edge, just like you see on lots of squid.
Yeah, yeah.
But also, these very sharp, talon-like...
Oh, yes, I can see them!
Ooh! Goodness, they are, aren't they?
Two or three in each sucker, these claws. These thorns.
Even the ones that don't have thorns
have a certain sort of raspy burr to them, don't they?
Yeah, they sort of have a serrated, saw-toothed edge as well.
So, yeah... I mean, absolutely terrifying.
You wouldn't want to be caught by one of these.
Even bigger than its giant cousin,
the colossal squid is the largest invertebrate on Earth,
potentially almost as long as an early sailing ship.
These mysterious creatures live in the icy depths of Antarctic waters,
and most of what we know is based on a small number of carcasses
found by deep-sea fishing vessels.
Images like these are almost the only evidence we have
of their existence.
Did these enormous squid,
found washed ashore or caught in nets long ago,
launch the legend of the kraken?
I mean, they really are so otherworldly, aren't they? Yeah.
And it's hard not to be scared at the thought of
one of those tendrils coming out and grabbing you.
It is a pretty primal nightmare. It certainly is.
Sailors could spin wonderful yarns
about the strange sights they saw at sea,
but not all the tales they told were of the terrifying type.
Some took a more appealing form.
Mermaids have featured in legends from around the world
for thousands of years.
In 1493, the explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing to the Americas,
saw what he believed to be three mermaids, describing them as,
"Not so beautiful as they are said to be,
"for their faces had some masculine traits."
But some scientists now think that what he actually saw
was a creature that is still found
along the coasts of North America today.
Crystal River in Florida is home to these enigmatic animals.
There's one. This little nose popped up, saying hello.
These incredible creatures are manatees, or sea cows,
and they're the ocean's largest herbivore or grazer -
in their case, on seagrass.
And despite their massive bulk, unlike me,
they are incredibly graceful swimmers.
Local manatee expert Monica Scroggin has studied
the population on this river for a number of years.
What brings the manatees to this place?
Do they find it as beautiful as everyone else does?
So, actually, it's the water temperature,
but that's because they have a very small metabolism,
so they have to eat about 10% of their body fat every single day,
so for 1,000 lb manatee, that's about 100 lb of food.
My goodness. Yeah. It is a lot of green vegetables.
Manatees can be found along the coasts
and rivers of North America,
the Amazon in South America, and Western Africa.
Though populations are on the rise in Florida,
manatee numbers are declining worldwide
and they are considered vulnerable to extinction.
Measuring over three metres in length,
these gentle giants often travel long distances
in search of seagrass.
Manatee tails certainly look very mermaid-like.
Perhaps it's the graceful way they move in the water
that has inspired these legends.
Or had the sailors who glimpsed them simply been at sea for too long?
And when you look at manatees, do you see merpeople?
Mermen and mermaids? I do!
I think they have a similar shape, they have a similar tail,
they have flippers.
Yeah, do they use them almost like hands?
I mean, obviously, they're not opposable thumbs or anything.
Right, but, they almost are. Um, you could think of their flipper
like our hands, but only with skin covering it,
and their bones look just like ours.
The manatee skeleton could also hold a clue to the mermaid myth.
Take a look at their arms and hands,
and you can see they are similar to ours.
Yet their tail bones are unmistakably fish-like.
It's easy to see how these skeletons washing up on shores long ago
could have inspired the idea
of a mysterious half-human, half-sea creature.
Well, I'm not entirely sure about these theories,
so perhaps I'd better take a closer look.
Here goes.
Wow.
They are amazing.
So much bigger underwater.
And yet still so graceful.
They don't seem to mind my presence.
They just gently nibble away at that seagrass.
Incredible.
It's not hard to imagine, is it, how a sailor far from home,
after a long voyage and maybe after a little tot of rum,
looks out and sees a manatee and, in his mind's eye,
there's a mermaid, a beautiful mermaid.
All right, perhaps a large tot of rum!
Meanwhile, the mermaid myth lives on.
Mythical beasts don't just lurk on land or slither through seas.
From griffins to thunderbirds,
harpies to hippogriffs
many magical creatures can be found on the wing,
soaring across the skies.
Oh, good lord. Chris, hello.
Hi. STEPHEN GASPS
What's the name of this extraordinary creature?
This is Nikita.
She's a Steller's sea eagle.
A sea eagle. So beautiful!
And that beak, is it a specialist beak for fish?
That's a serious beak.
It's designed for cutting flesh,
but a fish pulled out of the water at -40 is going to be a block of ice
within a couple of moments, so that's what that tin opener is for.
And those trousers, I love those.
Shaggy, shaggy feet.
On the soles of her feet, she's got almost like Velcro,
to enable her to grab hold of slippery fish
and pull them off the surface of the water. Of course. Yeah.
As you can see, Nikita is no myth. She's all reality.
Steller's sea eagles are amongst the largest eagles in the world,
and they're formidable predators.
There have been stories over the years, of course,
of eagles attacking humans,
which is why perhaps it isn't surprising
that stories through the ages have been passed down
of mythical winged beasts with enormous claws and beaks.
In New Zealand,
Maori mythology tells of a monstrous eagle,
known as the poukai, that was said to eat humans.
These stories may have been based on a real bird known as Haast's eagle,
the largest eagle ever to have lived on the planet,
with a wingspan of up to three metres.
Haast's eagles were extinct by the 1400s,
but generations of Maoris would have witnessed
these enormous birds,
perhaps leading to the poukai bird legend.
And, with that in mind,
it's time for me to get a bit closer. So wish me luck.
Right, Stephen, so, essentially, it needs to be upright.
Oh, like that? Yeah.
And then I'm going to place the bird on your arm on the top
and then you've got to just keep your arm nice and level
and just slightly away from your body.
It's going to be heavy.
So I'm now going to give you the weight.
Oh, my heavens!
Wow.
Enormous as you are,
you'd be small compared to some of your ancestors,
both real and mythical.
One flying beast that appears in ancient tales
from the Middle East is known as the roc.
Described as an enormous eagle
it was said to be strong enough to carry off an elephant.
Inspiration for the roc is believed to have come
from the eggs of a real bird, Aepyornis,
which lived in Madagascar over 40,000 years ago -
one of the largest flightless birds ever to have existed,
at over three metres tall, and weighing 500 kg.
Also known as the elephant bird, it went extinct around 1,000 years ago.
But its eggs were so huge - as large as 150 chicken eggs -
that people thought they must belong to the legendary roc.
NIKITA KEENS
Aren't you amazing? Well, I think it's time you had her back!
So I'll hand her over to you.
Perhaps it's the very mysteriousness of flight itself that has inspired
these stories of legendary flying creatures over the centuries.
That, and a fear of the very powerful,
and very real, birds themselves.
NIKITA SCREECHES
Goodness!
Fortunately, nobody's told Nikita how delicious I am,
so I think I'm safe.
Stories of fantastical beasts aren't just a thing of the past.
And there's one world-famous legend
that is alive and well here in Scotland.
The Loch Ness Monster.
The origin story of this iconic monster
can be traced back to around 1,500 years ago,
when Irish missionary St Columba was said to have encountered a beast
in the River Ness.
Over the years, thousands of people have claimed to see Nessie,
and there have been numerous attempts
to find conclusive proof of its existence.
But none have been as promising, or as high-tech,
as recent efforts.
I've travelled to the banks of this legendary loch...
Stephen! Hello. Come aboard.
..to meet Adrian Shine,
a naturalist involved in this exciting new development.
Why do you think that there's a special quality to Loch Ness?
I mean, why has it has retained such mystique over the decades?
Well, it's fascinating.
It is probably, arguably, the most famous lake in the world.
And it's quite large.
You could put the whole human population of the world into it
at least three times over.
Seriously?! It is quite deep. Good gracious! Wow!
And it's hostile,
so, in that respect, it qualifies as a lost world,
and we need lost worlds
to make our mythical creatures at least credible.
Or more credible.
Yeah. So it's big enough for... If there were a monster,
it could have credibly hidden for all this time.
The story of Nessie evolved over centuries,
but it was in the 1930s that things really took off.
That was when the Loch Ness Monster
that we know and love today was born.
There's the multi-humped sea serpent
and the plesiosaur, the idea of a prehistoric monster,
long neck, four flippers, stumpy body.
We used to spend a lot of time in trying to work out
what was in Loch Ness with our fish nets,
towing things like that around,
then we'd spend hours and hours and hours looking through microscopes,
identifying things, counting things,
but now there is a much more elegant way.
Listen to this delicious... SPRINGING NOISE
STEPHEN LAUGHS
Just a minute. What a lovely noise. There we are.
Using a process called Environmental DNA Sampling,
or EDNA,
scientists examined the different types of animal DNA
found in Loch Ness water.
And there we go. That's it.
My very own bucket of Loch Ness water. That's right.
There are many different theories
as to the Loch Ness Monster's true identity.
One that Adrian supports is that it could be an enormous eel.
Eels are an elusive species.
Much of their behaviour, and exactly how large they can grow,
is still a mystery to scientists.
One of the biggest species in the world
is the European conger eel,
which is thought to grow to over three metres long.
But some believe eels are capable of growing to a much larger size.
Known as eunuch eels,
their existence is somewhat controversial.
Usually, adult eels swim into the Atlantic Ocean to breed,
after which they die.
But eunuch eels are said to be infertile,
leading them to remain in fresh water,
and continuing to grow for many years,
potentially to a huge length.
So will the DNA results confirm Adrian's suspicions?
Now presumably it will take a few days to get this analysed,
but you've had previous samples.
Well, we certainly think we know what's in Loch Ness
and there weren't any great surprises from the DNA.
What have you found?
Bacteria, plankton, lots of fish.
No reptiles.
No reptiles? It's sad, that. Slightly disappointing.
Didn't really expect them, to be quite honest.
But there we are.
But we got lots and lots of eel DNA.
But, of course, it would be the same DNA for an ordinary eel
as for a huge eunuch eel.
An ordinary eel, which comes into Loch Ness
but likes it so much that it doesn't go back
to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.
It just grows huge! So it avoids the famous life cycle.
One of the things that's so intriguing
is that this latest DNA work that you've been doing
still leaves avenues open to believing, doesn't it?
And that's the fun of it. Yeah.
That nature surprises us all the time.
Exactly right. Exactly right.
And so the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster continues.
Our passion for all things magical
has never been stronger than it is today.
Many of the most popular books and movies of our time
are based on myths, legends and fantasy worlds,
filled with some of the most extraordinary creatures
you'll ever see.
And now, with cutting-edge computer technology,
we can bring them to life like never before.
Now, behind these doors is something just a little bit special.
HE GASPS
I've come to The Making of Harry Potter
at the Warner Bros Studio Tour near London,
to see how the Fantastic Beasts of the Wizarding World
are brought to life,
and to discover how the natural world
has often inspired these extraordinary creations.
This is quite an honour for me.
They don't usually let muggles in here!
But where do you start when trying to create
a Fantastic Beast for the big screen?
Surely a description in a book can only tell you so much?
I've come here to find out some tricks of the trade
from visual effects supervisor Christian Manz.
Oh, now, hang on!
I think...
..I recognise where we are - this is Dumbledore's office!
THEY CHUCKLE
Now, Christian...
..I'm sure a lot of people have heard of CGI, as it's called.
Do you spend your whole time just looking at the computer screen,
doing mathematical things to create images?
The brilliant thing about visual effects
is it's a real marriage of the creative and the technical.
And our inspiration, particularly with animation,
is looking at creatures from all over the world
and make the audience believe that what they're seeing is real.
Have you got some examples?
Well, in the second film we had the zouwu -
an elephant-sized, really colourful big cat.
In the script it said that the zouwu could travel 1,000 miles a day
and that led us to that idea of speed.
So here, this is a design that bedded in for a while, actually,
the cobra-like head... Yes. ..with a reptilian body.
We got to the point of modelling it and animating it
but we were never quite sure about it.
It didn't quite feel of our world.
And then somebody came up with this design, this concept.
Goodness! And we were like, "Wow, that feels bonkers,"
and also felt very akin to some of the Chinese dragon dancers.
Yes! The sort of ribbon...
I've taken a look at those, too, and I know what you mean
and that exactly suggests it, that long, sinuous, flowing tail.
And then kind of the catlike face and then the body
which, in the end, lizards were a lot of our inspiration.
So from that we'd look at wildlife.
So you've got coral, and is that a variegated tulip?
Yeah, and then fighting fish.
And also we tried it with the sea anemone. Yes!
That's so surprising,
cos I can believe that you might look at lizards
and you might look at large cats and things, but coral and flowers?
And yet, once you point it out, you can see that.
What's so interesting is that the most ancient stories
of mythical creatures drew their inspiration from nature
and the most modern technological mythical creatures that you create
also draw from nature.
And I suppose, as long as the lead times and the process
of doing computer graphics is,
it's nothing compared to the millions of years
that nature has to try out new ideas.
I think that's one of our biggest learning experiences, really,
is that Mother Nature's definitely better at it than we are!
STEPHEN LAUGHS
But she's had practice. She's had so much practice!
But where on Earth did all of this start?
When did we very first create or imagine these mythical creatures?
When early humans began to draw,
we depicted the world we saw around us -
landscape, people, and animals,
like this magnificent mastodon.
But we also began to create entirely imaginary creatures too.
There are examples of these mysterious creatures
painted in caves and on rocks found around the world,
some dating back as far as 44,000 years ago.
No-one really knows why these images were created,
but perhaps the most reasonable explanation
is that they were one of the earliest forms of storytelling.
I wanted to know more about this instinct
to create mythical creatures,
so I asked someone who knows a thing or two
about telling stories -
author of the Harry Potter books
and creator of Fantastic Beasts, JK Rowling.
Why is it that we humans have to tell everything through stories
and examples? It's our great creative power, isn't it?
I think about this a lot,
the fact that we're storytelling creatures,
because, to our knowledge, we are the only animal that does this.
And obviously it was an attempt, I think...
Certainly in terms of myth and folklore,
it's an attempt to explain the natural world,
things people didn't understand.
I am very interested in story, inevitably.
I'm not just interested in writing stories,
I'm interested in why we write stories. Yes.
I'm even more fascinated by the fact that discrete cultures
who'd never met create such similar archetypes
and such similar creatures,
So we see the fire bird - the Phoenix, as I call it -
you see the creation of a fire bird, throughout different cultures. Yes.
And what is that telling us about what it is to be human,
and what lives at the back of our minds, in our subconscious?
You often see this in magical beasts,
that very similar beasts have been imagined by... Yes!
..by, after all, peoples who are living among different real animals.
We're talking cultures across different continents.
That fascinates me because it's clearly telling us about ourselves.
And a perfect example is the dragon. There you are.
All over the world - in China, famously, of course.
And what else are there? Mermaids.
Mermaids. It's very interesting, isn't it,
because where did that myth come from?
Even in Africa...
These inland countries, of course, have great rivers.
Yeah. ..there is a form of mermaid, the Jengu. Ah!
So, again, this is something
that has been created across these different cultures.
Why where British sailors imagining fish-tailed women
when people in Africa were imagining fish-tailed women?
It's just extraordinary.
Do you think it's possible to invent a creature
that has no basis in nature?
I think it would be exceptionally difficult. Wouldn't it?
I created a creature in Fantastic Beasts, the original book,
called a lethifold. Yes, a nasty piece of work!
Now, that is my worst nightmare.
I had really, there, gone for something
that would scare the bejesus out of me. Yes!
Although I was taking
the idea from a cloak,
when I stood back from what I'd invented,
I thought, "Well, that's just a manta ray."
And a manta means a cloak, doesn't it? There you go. Exactly.
So, basically, I've invented a manta ray that doesn't need water.
And the niffler. Well, I was going to say, the niffler, exactly.
So the niffler is a bit of a favourite of mine.
It's a treasure seeker. It likes everything that glitters.
So it can locate treasure for you.
So, for those who don't know, a niffler is a curious creature.
I suppose it's a cross between a magpie in nature,
and a duckbilled platypus in appearance.
And a mole. And a mole, exactly.
But they used a platypus to get the snout-like appearance in the movie,
which I adored. I mean, they ran these things past me,
and I just loved it.
It gave it such an endearing appearance, I think.
So, it's exceptionally difficult to invent something,
and, often, nature got there far better,
because you look at some of nature's extraordinary creations,
and you think, "Well, CGI will never match this."
You created your own world
that has its famous and knowable characters and creatures,
which must give you an enormous sense of satisfaction,
and you've done it by examining the real world,
and the world of the imagination that our ancestors had,
all the way back through earliest myths.
I was thinking about the creatures,
because we were going to sit down and talk about this.
And I realised that half the books fold without those creatures.
You know, they're so important.
Hedwig the owl. Yeah.
And then we move through the Thestrals and the dragons
and they're key plot points, and, obviously, thematically,
they work in terms of life and death and power
and struggle and treasure,
but I realised when I really focused on those creatures
just how important they were,
and that shows we have a deep need, I think,
to be connected to the animal world.
Fantastic beasts have been with us since the dawn of time.
From the first imaginary creatures sketched on cave walls,
to the state-of-the-art animals
that we see on our big screens today,
they are a fundamental part of our own history.
But behind these myths and legends from fantasy worlds...
..lie the very real
and truly magnificent animals of our own planet.
On land...
..sea...
..and sky.
The incredible creatures of this world
have the skills and strengths...
..to outdo even the most magical beasts.
And whether in the real world,
or the realms of fantasy,
there is so much that remains a mystery to us.
If we keep our eyes - and our minds - open,
who knows what might be out there?
NIFFLER SNUFFLES AND CHITTERS
CHITTERING CONTINUES