(dramatic music)
How do you decide nature's weirdest animals,
is it the sloth that hangs upside down and move so slowly
that moss grows in its fur,
is it a sea pen
that sits rooted to the seabed in endless darkness
and emitting its own glow,
could it be carnivorous snails that leave the ocean
to digest dead creatures on the beach,
finches that drink blood,
or the tarantula that keeps a frog as it's pet,
or are adaptations to help animals survive
the challenges of life in the wild?
They might be neat solutions,
but that doesn't stop them from odd.
(birds chirping)
But with nature's endless variety,
which is the weirdest?
We can't decide.
Can you?
(peacock squawking)
We love nature and all its glorious diversity.
Some creatures we admire for their deadly beauty,
(alligator hissing)
others because they are cute,
but for some it's hard to figure out exactly
why we like them so much,
perhaps it's a quirk.
(dramatic music)
Everyone loves sloths,
but have you ever stopped
to think about just how weird they are?
Hanging upside down is pretty odd.
They have adapted to eat rainforest foliage,
but it's not very nutritious.
To get by on the few calories they consume,
they barely do anything.
Their metabolism is so slow
that it take a month for a leaf
to pass through their digestive system.
They typically sleep for 20 hours a day.
The only time they leave the tree tops is once a week
when they descend for a bathroom break.
The hair of most mammals grows neatly to life flat
top to bottom, and nose to tail,
but slots have turned that on its head.
The hair pointing from belly to back to help rain runoff.
Thanks to their lack of movement in the moist habitat,
their fur is quickly colonized by algae,
giving them a greenish tint
that might help camouflage them from predators.
(dramatic music)
There's no doubt that slots are odd,
and it's hardly surprising
they come from a whole family tree of weirdos.
Their closest cousins are the hard shelled armadillo.
And long snotted anteaters, all creatures confined
to south and central America.
But another weird quirk of nature
is the way some unique traits are replicated in animals
that are not related.
Something known as convergent evolution,
two animal families following different parts,
but arriving at similar destinations.
The pangolin is one of the weirdest,
but most wonderful creatures.
Often called the scaly anteater
because it too uses its long snout and tongue
to hoover up termites and ants.
But though it lives like an anteater
and with its scaly body, it looks a bit like an armadillo,
it's not related to either.
In its own unique family, this Cape pangolin
is one of eight species found across Africa and Asia.
Though he might look a bit dinosaur,
he harmlessly plods between termite mountains
or ant nests to feed.
His armor, which is just modified hair
keeping him safe from predators.
As sweet and innocent as pangolin are
these bizarre animals are hunted for meat and medicine
and are threatened with extinction.
So while anteaters got the ant eating job in the Americas,
pangolin has filled the position in Europe and Asia,
but what about down under?
This appears half anteater, half hedgehog,
but the echidna is neither.
Australia has been separated
from the rest of the world for so long
that the creatures on it had evolved in isolation.
(birds chirping)
There are three kinds of mammals, the placentals like us,
marsupials that raise their babies in a pouch,
and then monotremes like the echidna,
a true mammal, but one that has a beak and lays eggs.
That's pretty weird.
Perhaps beaten only by its cousin
and the only other kind of monotreme.
(dramatic music)
The duck-billed platypus.
(water bubbling)
Not only do these curious little mammals lay eggs,
but they raise their young in pouches.
They don't have nipples,
but produce milk from sweat glands
that the babies can lap up.
And their beaks have electro receptors
like the snouts of sharks to help them locate their prey.
Ideal for the platypus,
as he swims around with his eyes kindly shut using his beak
to locate little creatures.
(water bubbling)
As far as mammals go, it doesn't get much weirder.
(platypus growling)
(dramatic music)
But explore the animal kingdom, and after a while,
nothing will surprise you.
Did you know the octopus is basically a snail
with problem solving intelligence?
(water bubbling)
This one has learned that boiling rocks tossed to the sea
by an active volcano will cook fish.
When the danger passes, it sneaks out to feast.
(dramatic music)
But knows to retreat before the next rain of rocks.
Octopus have the biggest brains of any invertebrates.
They've been seen to build shelters, mimic prey
and use tools,
something only thought possible among the smartest
of the smart like primates, pirates, and people.
(dramatic music)
They have nine brains.
In addition to the main brain,
there are many ones at the end of each tentacle,
helping each one's coordination.
And with poison ink and three hearts,
the clever mollusks are weird through and through.
(water bubbling)
Though imagine being able
to wriggle each of your eyes independently.
Now that would be pretty odd,
but there's a creature that does it.
(dramatic music)
Chameleons are famed for color changing abilities,
though not so much for camouflage is often believed,
but more subtle shifts in their tone to communicate
with one another.
The nano crystals of color in several thin layers of skin,
the chameleon can shift the skin layers over each other
to adjust the light,
reflecting on the crystals, changing the tone.
Useful if it wants to be darker to absorb more
of the warming sun or light to reflect too much heat.
But importantly, chameleons can convey moods like anger
or fear, dominance or submission,
which is useful when they meet.
Chameleons fight fiercely and it might even turn cannibal,
so it's good to communicate, to avoid awkward interactions.
Those weird eyes are bulging behemoths encased in a sleeve
of fused eyelid with only the pupil showing through the tip.
They can swing each one through 190 degrees
and because they can move them independently,
they can look at different things at the same time.
They have a 360 degree field of vision.
But when the two lock onto the same target,
usually an insect, the bug better beware.
Their tongues are like sticky, ballistic missiles.
Though, it's twice the length of the lizard,
the tongue can fully extend in a fraction of a second
hitting its prey with 40 times the force of gravity.
That is one weird weapon,
making the chameleon a contender as oddest among reptiles.
But it's not the only one.
(birds chirping)
(water bubbling) (dramatic music)
Turtles are pretty strange things when you think about it.
Their rib cage fused into a shell on the outside
of their bodies,
a rib cage into which they can pull their heads
to avoid danger.
And they are reptiles that evolved on land,
but have gone back to a life in the water.
But one kind the matter matter gets stranger still
by growing fleshy fingers all around its shell.
(water bubbling)
Like shapes to help disguise it in leaf litter
on the river bed.
Here it can lie and wait
until unsuspecting fish drift too close,
perhaps looking for shelter from the leaves,
not the sanctuary they were hoping for.
But perhaps the weirdest turtles of all
are soft shelled turtles
(water bubbling)
who have a less complete carp face
that's coated in rubbery skin.
Though they have snorkel like nostrils
and fully functional lungs,
they can also breathe through the skin of their throats.
And here's the fact you may not want to hear
if you were having dinner,
they can excrete urea from their mouth.
Ever been called potty mouth before,
these bizarre turtles literally pee through their mouths.
(water bubbling)
Underwater there is no shortage of weird and wonderful.
Every kid knows how to draw a starfish,
but these much loved sea creatures are pretty freaky
when you get to know them.
Related to sea urchins,
their tough bodies don't have much inside them,
no brain, heart, or blood.
Instead, sea water is pumped through their bodies
and into the 100s of tiny hydraulic feet
that help them move.
Though cherished as cute and cuddly critters,
starfish are predators,
(dramatic music)
tigers of the invertebrate community.
Their sucker like feet and powerful arms can lock onto
and pry open shell fish.
And once they are on a meal,
they squish their stomachs out through their mouths
and into the meat to start digesting it.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
When they reproduce starfish release eggs and sperm
into the water.
The fertilized eggs hatch in the plankton
and look like tiny star ended jellyfish.
When they are old enough, they settle on the seabed,
and the jelly drops off.
A true starfish is born.
But these odd animals have another way
to produce new starfish.
They are well-known for being able to regenerate.
If its leg is bitten off by a predator, it can regrow it.
But sometimes even the broken leg can grow a new body,
a second starfish clone,
just one of the seas many surprises.
(water bubbling)
Fish come in every conceivable size, shape, and color,
many spot bizarre structures and markings.
From goat fish with wiggling tentacles on their chins
to probe the sand,
to trumpet fish, living tubes to suck in prey.
(dramatic music)
But these oddities might take the prize.
(dramatic music continues)
Similar in weight to a rhinoceros or large car,
they are giants of the fish world,
ocean sunfish.
Their bizarre appearance
has earned them names around the world that translate
as the wheel fish, head only, or the swimming head.
The name sunfish comes from it's habit of floundering about
on its side at the surface to sunbathe.
Amazingly, their huge bulk comes from a diet of jellyfish.
Like all sunfish features, their mouths are weird
with jaws that don't completely close,
but they simply suck the jellies down.
(water bubbling) (dramatic music)
The giants are mindblowing from the day they hatch.
Females release eggs into the water column, a lot of eggs.
In fact, one fish can produce 300 million in a season.
When they hatch, the babies are minute,
weighing about the same as a matchstick.
They'll have to increase their mass by 60 million
to reach adulthood.
(water bubbling) (dramatic music)
The oceans are full of mysterious beings,
surely contenders for the World's Weirdest.
The sea cucumber barely looks like an animal at all.
Dragging itself along the sea floor,
tiny arms draw plankton and other little particles
to its mouth.
They do the same job that earthworms do on land,
taking in large pieces at one end
and passing finer particles out of the other,
fertilizer that enriches the seabed.
They breathe through their backsides.
And if that wasn't enough,
when frightened a sea cucumber can eject its own organs out
of its bottom, to try and scare off the threat.
But the underwater world gets weirder.
When a dead porpoise sinks to the sea floor,
it's a dinner gong drawing some of the strangest creatures
from the mark
Eel like hagfish are fish without scales,
or jaws, or backbone.
Two cerated plates, wrap together in the mouth
to draw in food
and their bodies tie themselves in knots
to better their grip.
(dramatic music)
To avoid predators like weird deep sea sharks,
they constantly ooze a viscous slime
that can clog predator's gills.
Another odd bot swims overhead,
the aptly named chimera.
Chimeras haven't changed much
since their ancestors separated
from the shark and ray family 400 million years ago.
The name comes from a mythical beast
made up of other animals, which is fitting.
Chimera fish have many shark like features,
but their jaws are attached to their skulls
and they have gill coverings,
more like bony fish.
They don't have sharp teeth, just grinding plates.
Like sharks, they use electro receptors
to locate their prey, and to avoid becoming prey themselves,
they have a poisonous spine on their backs.
They prefer to live at great depths
where some of the most extraordinary,
alien-like life forms exist.
(water bubbling)
Like sea pens,
named for their appearance,
somewhat like the old fashioned quill pens made
from large feathers,
each sea pen isn't one, but a whole community of animals.
A type of coral,
each pen is made up of a colony of individual polyps,
each has a mouth and a ring of stinging tentacles
to capture its prey.
Apart from the primary polyp who takes one for the team,
it burrows into the ground,
becoming a stem to anchor the colony.
In the inky darkness,
it has a surprising defense when disturbed,
it can glow.
The flash of colors are thought to deter attackers.
The primary polyp can pull the pen into the ground
if danger threatens,
but the colony has another defense when disturbed.
(dramatic music)
(water bubbling)
Jellyfish are ocean weirdos too.
You could call these species spineless, they are,
also brainless, and heartless.
They are gelatinous blobs, 96% water.
(dramatic music)
They do have a basic nervous system
and can control their movements.
(water bubbling)
And they don't have many organs,
so make the most of what they have.
The mouths take in food,
but also excrete waste and propel them by siphoning water.
And they're more than capable of taking care of themselves,
their tentacles are covered in stinging cells,
and in some species carry deadly toxins
to harpoon their prey.
The oldest multiorganed animals,
jellies were drifting in the oceans,
long before dinosaurs walked the earth.
They evolved 600 million years ago,
pre-dating insects, trees, and fungi.
They have survived five mass extinctions
and conquered all the oceans of the world.
So they are obviously doing something right.
(water bubbling)
But for all their success, they are powerless
if they get stuck on land.
And when this one washes up dead
on the coast of South Africa,
even stranger creatures emerge
(dramatic music)
like a scene from a monster movie.
Using it splayed foot to surf catching the tide
to follow the jelly ashore,
this plow snail storms the beach.
And it's not alone.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
(water bubbling)
The snails locate food with smell,
and then excrete digestive enzymes,
and suck up the jelly smoothie
through their straw-like mouths.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
It looks gruesome,
but the snails are doing a beach clean, removing debris.
When the tide retreats and the temperatures rise,
the slimy mollusks dig their way into the damp sand
until the next call for a cleanup crew.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
While some creatures vanish into the sand,
(thunder rumbling)
others seem to magically emerge from it.
(water bubbling)
African deserts don't seem like obvious places to look
for thin, moist, skinned amphibians.
(dramatic music)
But a few drops of rain is all it takes
to bring a desert frog from its sandy bunker.
The bushveld rain frog
can lie dormant in the ground during winter,
but the spring rains cool it to the surface.
It's hard to tell if it's in a rush,
looking more like a marshmallow than a frog,
but it gets to work catching up on misdemeanors.
(dramatic music)
It's tiny legs are an adaptation to digging,
but they make it hard for the males
to grip the larger females during mating.
So when the time comes,
the female will secret a glue to stick him to her back.
When she's done with him,
she'll secrete a reversing agent
and they can go about their business.
Now that's weird.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
It's extraordinary that this frog can live in the desert,
but some are not put off by the cold either.
(birds chirping)
The wood frog has conquered the far north of Alaska,
(dramatic music)
but to cope with the brutal seasons here,
he provides a scene worthy of weird science fiction,
allowing his entire body to freeze.
No heartbeat, no breath,
an apparently lifeless frog sickle.
But when spring returns,
he performs a miraculous resurrection.
A natural anti-freeze kept his cells just above freezing
to avoid ice damage to his organs.
After eight months,
he can gradually wiggle his body back to life,
and resume his business.
(dramatic music)
(water bubbling)
Amphibians, like all groups of animals
have made some extraordinary adaptations
to help them carve out niches in the natural world.
But to see what's perhaps the most peculiar,
you need to head underground.
(dramatic music)
Limestone caves are not the richest places
to look for wildlife,
but the olm lives here and nowhere else.
They might've looked like transparent worms,
but olm are cave salamanders.
They are blind and colorless
because they live in total darkness,
but have adaptations,
including a well-developed smell, taste, hearing,
and a high sensitivity to electronic signals of prey.
With limited resources in a cave,
olms can survive for a decade without food
and live for a century.
They are so odd
that our ancestors thought they were baby dragons
waiting to grow and emerge from the mountains
to wreak havoc.
(dramatic music) (birds chirping)
Some of the weirdest creepy crawlies live underground.
A tarantula layer is the stuff of nightmares.
The last place, any sane creature might want to wonder,
(frog whistling)
unless you are a narrow mouthed frog.
(dramatic music)
Little amphibians, like this one are ideal pray
for the huge spiders,
which can kill them with a lethal injection
from their fangs.
(dramatic music)
But this one seems to be a welcome house guest.
Some even suggest the frog is the tarantula pet,
though it's probably more of a two way relationship in that.
The giant arachnids have been seen to pick up
and inspect frogs to figure out which is pet
and which is prey.
(dramatic music)
The narrow mouth clearly has a unique chemical signature
that meets with a spider's approval.
Being the living frog
keeps the vulnerable little animals safe
from other predators,
and the spider benefits from keeping a frog
because the tiny amphibian will eat insects
and other parasites
that might threaten the spider's eggs and babies.
The frogs might not be pets,
but they are certainly friends with benefits,
unusual relationships between species and weirdness
to the natural world.
(birds chirping)
The associations can be mutually beneficial,
but most are one sided.
(water bubbling)
This mother mollusk is looking for babysitters.
She has been nurturing eggs inside her body,
but now they are ready to hatch,
time to leave home.
Willing foster parents are hard to find,
but she lures them in through deceit.
Her mantle is perfectly colored
to look like a little mineral.
(dramatic music)
She even animates it to look like a little fish
battling the current.
Bass are drawn in
thinking they have spotted their perfect prey.
But as they lunge for the snack,
the mussel releases a tiny lava.
The baby molluscs will attach themselves to the fish's gills
and absorb nutrients from it
until they are big enough to fend for themselves
and drop off.
(water bubbling)
Exploiting other animals is not that uncommon,
but you might be surprised by this one,
the devious plans of a tree.
(vulture screaming)
(indistinct)
grow in the tropical islands of the Pacific
and Indian oceans, colonizing beautiful island beaches.
They produce unusually sticky, barb seed pods.
On tropical islands,
sea birds that need rest or breeding places
have little choice other than to land on the trees.
(songbird chirping)
And when they do the seed pods glue themselves on
and are extremely difficult to remove.
The adaptation might've started
so that trees could harness the flying power of the birds
to ship their seeds from one island to another.
But the seeds are so abundant and sticky
that there is sometimes a more sinister outcome.
Once a number of pods have adhered themselves,
they cloak the birds feathers, weighing it down.
Having to drop to the ground,
it can't avoid accumulating even more.
Many birds become hopelessly stuck.
The tree doesn't get it seeks delivered,
but at least when they germinate
they'll have a bundle of fertilizer
in the form of a dead bird.
(fly buzzing)
Complex behaviors can make the seemingly ordinary
into something weird.
(bird chirping)
Take this family of shrikes,
perfectly normal, looking songbirds,
cute if a little drab.
(birds chirping)
Like any other songbirds,
they ferry back food to their nest of hungry youngsters.
(songbirds chirping)
(dramatic music)
Nothing weird here
(songbirds chirping)
until you look closely at the branches in their territory.
(dramatic music)
It looks like there is a serial killer on the loose.
Shrikes are sometimes known as butcher birds
because they use natural thorns
and other spikes as butcher's hooks
to anchor their prey while they dismember it.
Leftovers remain hanging like a scene from a horror film,
but as a larder for the birds,
next time they get hungry,
ghoulish behavior, the seemingly normal
revealing its weird side.
These lizards pretty normal looking.
A toad-headed agama, a specialist at scurrying over
and digging into the ever shifting sands of the desert.
(dramatic music)
He doesn't seem particularly odd,
until he's spooked by a hungry snake.
Friend to freak in an instant,
the lizard opens
(indistinct)
flaps of skin at the sides of its mouth
to make itself look big and scary.
It works as anyone who watches alien movies will testify.
(air whooshing)
Our love of
(indistinct)
can play into our assessment of other animals.
(dramatic music)
Dear, cute and cuddly woodland creatures we all love, right?
Not that they've got vampire fangs.
Long before dear revolt antlers,
they developed exaggerated teeth instead for the same reason
so that the males can compete with each other for mates.
(raven cawing)
Several species like the musk deer
still have tusks, throwbacks to their evolutionary past.
Their bizarre tusks are tucked safely backwards
when not needed,
but muscles can pull them forward
to reveal their full length,
making them effective weapons when needed.
Though they are pretty harmless herbivores,
their ability to scare is enhanced
by a hiss or scream when they feel threatened.
(raven cawing)
The deer munch on lichen, not necks.
(dramatic music)
But there are true vampires out there and not just bats.
(raven cawing)
The Galapagos islands are a hotspot for weirdos.
From supersized tortoises to see birds with blue feet
that they flash to try and attract a mate,
to flightless cormorants who have to clamber
and pop their way to the ocean
where they swim with other oddities, diving marine iguanas.
(air whooshing)
These are the only lizards to enter the sea
and feed on sea weed.
As species colonized and spread
through the volcanic island chain,
they evolve quickly to adapt to the quirks of each island.
It was the staggering diversity in such a small area
that helped shape Darwin's theory on the origin of species.
The volcanic islands are hot and dry
and food is in short supply.
(birds chirping)
With one of the new arrivals discovered a way
to exploit its neighbors.
There are 13 kinds of Galapagos finch
all evolved from a single species that made it
to the islands and diversified.
(seabird quacking)
Some became fruit heaters,
or seed eaters,
or insect eaters,
but not this one.
During the dry season, there is nothing to eat on land,
but the seas remain rich.
(dramatic music)
Seabirds make their living fishing,
but the colonies where they rest and breed
are on the island.
These finches may have started out grooming
the largest seabirds
to pick off parasites like fleas and ticks,
but the blood engorge bugs refining the finches taste
for blood.
(dramatic music)
Now the little terrors go straight to the source.
A quick peck with their sharp beaks
and their cravings can be satisfied.
(birds chirping)
The larger birds barely notice
perhaps because they have no reason to fear the finches,
or just assume the little birds are doing them a favor
and are busy picking off ticks.
It might be gruesome, but the blood is a neat solution,
getting the finches food and water when there is none.
(dramatic music)
(raven cawing)
They are a reminder
that though animals might seem weird to us,
their quirks are always adaptations that have enabled them
to carve out niches,
to find food and adapt to the challenges of a landscape.
(raven cawing)
(dramatic music)
And that weirdness is in the eye of the beholder.
Those hairless upright apes are pretty weird too.
They build elaborate houses,
change the landscape around them to grow food,
live in vast numbers and concrete jungles.
They seem to break all the ways of nature,
but each to their own, let's face it,
we are all a bit weird
and a world without weird would be a poorer place.
We should embrace our quirks
and gratefully enjoy the weird
and wonderful diversity of the natural world.
(dramatic music)