Narrator: Songbirds are famous
For their calls,
But one makes a sound
That's had scientists baffled for centuries.
[ beep ]
I'm like, "oh, my gosh."
[ beep ]
How the heck does it do that?
And, in new zealand, inky the octopus
Has made headlines around the world
By going missing from his tank.
He's there one day.
The next day, he's not.
[chuckling] the question is,
Where did inky go?
[ suspenseful music plays ]
Nature is awe-inspiring,
But sometimes it just doesn't make sense.
Man: I have never, ever seen anything like this.
Strange animal behavior,
Unexpected events captured on camera.
[ animals screeching ]
The truth behind them is astonishing.
Woman: My god!
Nature's greatest mysteries solved.
-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
Deep in the heart of the ecuadorian jungle,
One small songbird is the stuff of legend.
[ beep ]
It makes a call
With a truly mystifying technique.
[ beeping ]
This is one of my favorite studies that I know about.
So it's ecuador, beautiful.
[ beep ]
And scientists are baffled by this bird.
♪
So manakins come from south america.
There are 60 different species
And, as you would expect,
Most of them sing from their beaks.
[ chirping ]
Narrator: But one, the club-winged manakin,
Has a call that's different.
It makes this extraordinary sound
Without even opening its beak.
Narrator: Hold on. What?! [ beep ]
It makes a call without opening it's beak?
It's a sound that you couldn't imagine
Would be produced by anything but his mouth.
[ beep ]
And so there was something going on there.
Narrator: About 20 years ago, dr. Kim bostwick
Journeyed deep into the jungle to see it firsthand.
[ beep ]
I'd woken up pre-dawn, hiked up 1,000 meters
Of tropical forest to see this bird
That I've thought about and looked at,
Listened to the sounds of, for many months.
[ beep ] narrator: Kim had heard the club-winged manakin song
On recordings, but had never seen it in action.
Bostwick: So I get up to the ravine.
I lift up my binoculars and then
"bink-bink-biiink." [ beep ]
He does his thing and it's just like, "flash-flash-flash!"
[ beep ] and I'm like,
"oh, my gosh."
[ beep ]
What did he do? How did he do that?
[ suspenseful music plays ]
Riskin: So one obvious place to look for the sound is the wings.
[ beep ]
He just did something that looked impossible.
Here, this is at quarter speed.
[ honk ]
And there's a wall of sound that just hits you,
This "mehh!" sound, like a foghorn.
[ honk ]
What is he doing in the speed that I can't see?
It was a perfect mystery.
♪
Narrator: If the manakin was making a sound with its wings,
Its secret might be revealed with high-speed filming.
♪
Kim returned to the jungle with a camera
That could shoot 1,000 frames a second.
And the bird comes and he does it,
"tick-tick-tiiing!"
[ click-click beep ]
And, right there in the field, we play it
And what we see is the male's sitting there
And he throws his wings up.
What we see is boom, boom, boom, boom.
Narrator: You're about to see how many movements
The club-winged manakin can make in just a third of a second.
That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
Nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 --
He just keeps going.
He pulls his wings together 37 times,
All that in just a third of a second.
So, when he does that sound, the "meeep!",
[ beep ] in that time, he's goin',
Bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp
Bomp bomp, beatin' his wings together.
♪
To give some perspective on that speed,
If you see a hummingbird come up and flutter in your face,
His wings are typically going
Between 60 and 75 cycles a second.
This was 107 cycles a second.
Narrator: So was the manakin beating its wings together so fast
That they created this song?
When you watch that high-speed video,
You can see the wings coming together and clapping
And so, if you look at how fast they clap,
That should explain the sound.
[ triumphant chorale climbs ]
Mystery solved! Right?
[ musical powerdown ] no! No!
That doesn't solve the mystery.
It's like a piece, but it's not there.
Narrator: Kim realized this couldn't be her answer
When she analyzed the manakin's song further.
Kim decided to do some audio analysis on a manakin call
And what she discovered was something really bizarre.
[ beep ]
A club-winged manakin's pitch
Operates at a frequency of 1,500 hertz.
[ chiming ] narrator: Sound is produced by vibrating an object
And the speed of that vibration is what dictates the pitch.
The manakin's pitch of almost 1,500 must be created
By around 1,500 individual vibrations.
But, we just figured out that the bird
Only knocks its wings together 107 times a second,
Which would create 107 vibrations,
A frequency of 107.
That's still really fast, but obviously, it's not 1,500,
So something else is going on there.
[ beep ] so now there's this mystery.
If they're hitting 107 times a second,
How can the noise possibly be coming out
At a higher frequency?
If it's not the wings clapping against one another,
Is it something about the feathers
That's making the noise?
Narrator: It's an idea that brought kim to her next hypothesis.
Cooke: Are the feathers rubbing together
And producing sound in a similar way
To how singing insects do?
♪
I delved. I peeked [laughs] into the literature on insects
And went, "oh, my gosh!"
They do so much stuff.
[ chirping ]
What I came away with was that most sounds
Are produced at speeds way faster than anybody moves,
Even insects.
Narrator: Many insects make high-pitched noises
To communicate, often called chirrups.
[ whimsical tune plays ]
They create them by getting body parts to vibrate
Much faster than simple muscular movements would allow.
But how?
Insect body parts are both elastic and rigid,
So they are perfectly evolved to vibrate.
[ chirping ]
Everybody knows about grasshoppers.
Grasshoppers sing by rubbing their hind legs
Against their closed wings.
Narrator: Crickets also create a noise
By rubbing their body parts together.
In their case, it's one wing against the other.
And often, one side is serrated, it's ridged,
So, one part of the body is rubbed
Over this ridged part of the body.
Narrator: The ridged body parts are too small to see,
But it's akin to rubbing your fingernail
Across a comb;
Or looking at a frog,
A wooden one.
When I was looking at the literature,
I happened to come across this
And, with one [chirp] rub of my stick,
I get knock, knock, knock, knock,
Knock, knock, knock. [chirp ]
But the sound you get isn't knock, knock.
[tapping] you get that same little [chirp] tune.
Hear it in there? [ chirp ]
Narrator: Moving back and forth quickly over these ridges
Produces a huge number of vibrations
In that part of the body.
This creates a high frequency of sound waves
And, therefore a high-pitched song.
And, boom, you have this sound that's up here,
Even though the cricket's doing this down here.
[ chirping ]
The question is -- can a bird do something similar?
[ beep ]
♪
[ whimsical-suspenseful tune plays ]
Narrator: The club-winged manakin makes a song with its wings.
[ beep ] the question is --
Does it use the same technique as an insect?
[ whimsical outro plays ] [ chirps ]
♪
The idea that this bird is producing the sound
In the same way is really unlikely
Because insects are able
To contract their muscles at much faster rates
Than a bird's wing muscle, for example,
And also they have these much more rigid body parts.
Narrator: Birds don't have hard bodies, like insects.
They just have feathers, which are soft.
Could the club-winged manakin's feathers be different?
[ beep ]
It is well-known for having some that look unusual.
Now, wings are made up of primary feathers,
Around here;
And secondary feathers, around here.
The manakin's funny-looking ones are secondary feathers,
On the inside edge of each wing.
Here they are close-up.
The spines of feathers 6 and 7
Are much bigger and harder than those of normal feathers.
They look like a club,
Hence the name club-winged manakin.
♪
But kim noticed something new about feather 6.
Bostwick: There's a bunch of ridges right here
In the surface of the feather.
Narrator: Ridges on hard surface,
Just like insects use to chirrup.
If these ridges are being used in a similar way,
What could be rubbing against them?
What I had overlooked for a long time
Was that this feather, number 5,
Is weird in its own way.
It's super-straight and then it kinks over,
Choot!, just a little kink,
And it's got kind of a blade on the underside.
And, suddenly, what it looked like I had
Was teeth on a comb and a plectrum
And, together, they form an instrument.
[ chirp ]
Narrator: Each time the manakin beats its wings together,
The plectrum moves down
And then up, against the hard-ridged feather,
Strumming each of those bumps as it goes
And causing the feather to vibrate.
Kim had found the first bird in the world
That chirrups like an insect. [ beep ]
Not only has it evolved special feathers,
It has also evolved stronger muscles
[ beep ] with which to power them.
Narrator: But does it vibrate fast enough
To get us to our magic number of just under 1,500,
Which is the bird's frequency of pitch?
Remember, the manakin makes
107 wing beats a second,
But produces a sound that's made
By almost 1,500 vibrations a second.
Here's the really cool thing.
There are seven bumps on that feather,
Which means that, every time the wings smack together,
It gets rubbed on the way in seven bumps
And then rubbed on the way out with seven bumps.
So there are 14 bumps every time the wings hit
And that perfectly explains the sound.
♪
Narrator: For every wing beat in and back,
That's 14 ridges and 14 more sound vibrations.
If it's bouncing at 107 times a second,
You would expect the frequency of the sound
To be exactly 14 times higher,
And that's exactly what it is.
It's a beautiful scientific experiment.
Narrator: It's a huge feather in the cap
For this manakin, [ beep ]
But why has it evolved such a complicated system
Just to play a song?
The club-winged manakin may not be
The highest flier or the best flier,
But he is a high flier when it comes to the ladies.
He's turned his wings into a musical instrument
And the females love a musician.
[ click-click beep ]
♪
[ suspenseful chord strikes ] [ crickets chirping ]
[ whimsical-suspenseful tune plays ]
Narrator: April 2016.
The national aquarium of new zealand has been home
To inky the octopus for two years.
[ squawking ]
He was donated by fishermen
Who caught him off the nearby coast.
♪
He was identified as a new zealand common octopus,
But there was nothing common about this guy.
He became a favorite with visitors
For his friendly nature and stunning colors.
But then, something bizarre happened.
Conley: One morning they came in.
He was missing. He was gone.
He was not in his enclosure anymore.
Inky, beloved octopus.
He's there one day.
The next day, he's not.
The question [laughs] is -- where did inky go?
[ suspenseful music plays ]
Narrator: The mystery of inky's disappearance
Captured the world's attention.
Newspapers couldn't get enough of the story.
♪
Now, octopuses do have some special talents.
Could inky have just made himself invisible?
♪
The amazing nervous system of the octopus
Allows it to change color, to change texture,
To camouflage and blend in with its surroundings.
Narrator: They're master body sculptors,
Creating shape and color changes in a flash.
And it can do this with these amazing, color-changing cells
Called chromatophores
And each one of these operates like a pupil of an eye.
It can dilate. It can constrict.
Narrator: These cells are like water balloons
Filled with color pigment.
They can expand and contract in unison,
Altering the octopus' appearance dramatically.
And so this allows the octopus to blend in
With its surroundings, to hide itself from predators,
Maybe even to hide itself from oncoming prey.
[ whimsical tune plays ]
Narrator: Staff check the tank carefully
To see if inky was actually masquerading as some sand
Or another creature, but he was nowhere to be seen.
So, he must have planned his own escape.
Narrator: The question is -- how?
♪
[ whimsical tune plays ] narrator: Inky the octopus
Has disappeared from the new zealand aquarium.
He's definitely not camouflaged, so he must've escaped.
[ suspenseful music plays ]
But how could an octopus escape from a tank,
Let alone an aquarium?
They're invertebrates, which mean they have no bones,
And that allows them to pretty much squeeze through
Almost any size space that they wanna squeeze through.
Now inky's tank did have a lid on it,
But this might not have stopped our houdini-like friend.
Connecting this all back to inky,
Even if he didn't have to open the tank all the way,
He could probably open it a sliver
And push his body through.
Narrator: Finding an escape route through some pipes
Or a gap in the lid wouldn't be impossible for this guy.
Octopuses are really well-known for being able
To problem-solve and figure out puzzles
And be able to open things
That you wouldn't expect an animal to be able to open.
[ tranquil tune plays ]
Narrator: Kaelie sivihok is a handler at birch aquarium in san diego.
She knows not to underestimate them.
♪
She's a very intelligent animal,
So I try and come over and say hello
And interact and give special treats here and there.
[baby voice] you found me. [laughs] yeah.
She can recognize my face,
After being the hand that fed her for a couple years,
And then she can also recognize my smell.
Narrator: Octopuses pick up smell through floating molecules,
Like we do, it's just that theirs are
In seawater, rather than the air.
♪
Kaelie keeps this one regularly entertained with challenges.
We are going to use this puzzle.
So I have prepared a little octo-pop, I like to call them.
This is made of clam juice.
I'm gonna put that in here and, as you can see,
It looks very similar to all the different plastic pieces
That are in here, so she'll have to differentiate
Which is an octo-pop and which is plastic.
[ whimsical tune plays ]
Narrator: The octo-pop is the shape of an ice cube.
It won't fit back through every hole,
So the octopus will have to problem-solve to get it out.
Sivihok: So, as soon as that octo-pop hit the water,
It started to release all of its yummy smells.
Narrator: Each arm of the octopus
Is operated by its own nervous system,
So each one basically has a mind of its own.
So they actually have nine brains.
It gives them advantage when it comes
To this problem-solving because they can manipulate things
On multiple levels without havin' to think about it
Through a central brain.
Sivihok: So, right here is a little piece of clam
That she's got in her suction cup right here,
So, she's found it.
You can see her arm inside of it, though.
See it coming out the other end?
Narrator: Clever stuff,
But what does this intelligence mean for inky's escape?
So an octopus might escape because all those nine brains
Are workin' overtime and they're super-curious,
So they're gonna see what's new.
Narrator: But if inky did escape on his own, where did he go?
♪
[ whimsical tune plays ] narrator: Inky the octopus
Has escaped from a new zealand aquarium,
Sparking fascination around the world.
[ whimsical outro plays ]
[ suspenseful music plays ] one question being asked
Is -- why?
Could he had seen some sort of food that he wanted?
♪
Narrator: Jennifer hofmeister,
From the university of california,
Knows all about octopuses' huge appetites.
They find their food
And determine what food is
Based on tasting and touching
Everything around them.
All of their suckers are covered in taste buds.
It would be like me having taste buds
All over the bottom of my feet
And being able to taste every single thing that I walked on.
Narrator: And they don't just hunt underwater.
[ suspenseful music plays ]
In some habitats, for example, in tide pools,
We know that they can leave the water,
Actually walk on land,
And go into another tide pool to find additional food.
Narrator: Octopuses have gills,
So they're dependent on water to breathe
And, as long as their skin stays moist,
They can breathe out of water for several minutes.
But, when they do venture out, they make sure it counts.
♪
Speaker: [gasp] shorty!
There's an octopus eating a crab!
Hofmeister: Octopus have very high metabolisms
And so we think a lot of what's driving their movement is food.
They see that crab. It's out of the water.
Doesn't bother them.
They're gonna jump right out and get it.
So, because they can crawl, it gives them some
Of that freedom to explore these new habitats.
[ sinister chord strikes ]
Narrator: But would a well-fed octopus in an aquarium
Really be hungry enough to go in search of food?
♪
It's weird in aquaria because they are fed a lot.
You can feed an octopus crabs and crabs and crabs
And I don't think an octopus at an aquarium is hungry.
♪
Narrator: If inky was well-fed,
Why else would he escape?
♪
It seems likely that inky tried to escape,
Not because he didn't like it where he was,
But because he could.
Some have argued that octopuses are as intelligent as dogs.
I mean, my dogs love trying to get out of our yard.
It's a great yard, but they wanna dig their way out.
They wanna eat through the fence.
♪
They see something new. They see something exciting
And they just wanna check it out.
Narrator: But where could inky have gone?
Well, staff believe that, in the middle of the night,
He decided to explore
And photos reveal a possible escape route.
Behind this wooden panel
Is an overflow pipe from the tank,
Which leads to a pipe that goes across the room,
Underneath these floorboards,
And to a 50-meter drainpipe
That leads right to the open sea.
Many staff are convinced
That this is exactly where inky ended up.
Given everything we know about octopuses,
It's not that surprising that inky would be able
To sneak out of his tank, find a drain,
And find his way back into the open ocean.
Narrator: Inky now has twitter accounts and his own children's book,
On top of dozens of headlines.
Everyone loves an octopus houdini.
♪
[ crickets chirping ]