(eerie music)
(dramatic music)
Narrator: Space.
Is not the final frontier.
You don't need to go that far
to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life.
(dramatic music)
There are alien worlds right under our noses.
(insect buzzing)
(insects chirping)
Insects as close to an alien life form that we'll ever see
without leaving planet Earth.
They've been around for well over 400 million years.
Insects were watching when our distant ancestors
took their first footsteps on dry land.
(dramatic music)
They saw the dinosaurs come and go,
and witnessed the rise of a smart two-legged ape
who thinks it rules this planet.
(dramatic music) (electrical whirring)
But think again.
(gentle music)
This planet is run by insects.
They're crucial to almost every ecosystem on land.
(bees buzzing)
Without them our world would fall apart.
(birds chirping)
This is their world and their story.
(gentle music)
(birds chirping) (animal calling)
(gentle music) (birds squawking)
The sheer diversity of insects is astonishing.
(gentle music)
About one million species are known to science,
but, best guess,
at least another five million are out there
as yet unseen by human eyes.
At least two-thirds of all animals
on the planet are insects.
(gentle music)
Or, as one renowned biologist said,
"To a good approximation,
"all species are insects."
We may never know the true number
of different kinds of insects on planet Earth,
but one thing is certain.
They're the most successful group
of animals to have ever lived.
(gentle music)
What's the secret of their world-conquering success?
One big reason is that their bodies
can evolve almost any form you could imagine.
(dramatic music)
As well as some that seem,
well, beyond imagination.
In just one rainforest there could be
two-and-a-half million different kinds of insects,
all shaped to fit their own unique lifestyle.
When it comes to all the ways
in which insects have adapted their bodies,
design flexibility seems something of an understatement.
(birds squawking)
Insects hold dominion over dry land and fresh water,
even beyond the teaming world of rainforests.
(dramatic music) (water gurgling)
The ultimate bug-eyed monster, a dragonfly larva,
a perfect example of how insects
can reshape any part of their body.
(dramatic music)
(water gurgling)
It's the only insect that's jet propelled.
(dramatic music)
It squirts water from a very muscular backside,
and it patrols its world like a tiny submarine,
a hunter-killer submarine.
At the opposite end from its jet engine,
it has sharp eyes with stereo vision.
It judges the exact distance to any unwary creature,
and when it sneaks close enough,
it deploys a unique dragonfly weapon.
(foreboding music)
It's reshaped its mouth parts into an extendable trap
that can shoot out nearly half its body length
and snap closed.
A precision shot
over in the blink of an eye.
Being able to customize any part of their body,
isn't the only reason for the triumph of insect kind.
We've recently discovered
something even more surprising about insects.
It turns out that some are really, really smart.
(dramatic music)
One test of intelligence in animals
is when they're given a problem,
they can workout a solution in their heads.
Hang a piece of food from a perch out of reach,
and a smart bird like a raven soon works out what to do.
Just pull the string.
Hold it with your foot.
Pull a bit more,
and in no time at all you have a snack.
(dramatic music)
Yet, anything a mere vertebrate can do,
bumblebees can also do this,
even though they must be trained to solve the problem.
Pull the string and reach a reward of nectar.
(bees buzzing)
Now this bee hasn't been trained at all,
but if she's allowed to watch
her nest mates solving the problem,
she knows exactly what to do when she gets her turn.
(bee buzzing)
Teachers and students
and all with brains only the size of pinheads,
combine this with the flexibility
of the basic insect layout,
and there's not much that insects can't do,
(tense music)
or places they can't go.
(wind blowing)
They now live in every habitable spot on the planet
as well as quite a few that, to us at least,
seem totally uninhabitable.
White Sands, New Mexico,
a sea of dazzling, white dunes.
Not a familiar silica sand,
but gypsum crystals.
(footsteps crunching)
Yet, it's home to darkling beetles
that survive searing temperatures.
The ground can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Insects have adapted to these extreme conditions
in a relatively short space of time.
(insects chirping)
(dramatic music)
These dunes are at most only 10,000 years old.
Yet, all kinds of insects are now perfectly at home
in this desolate world.
(dramatic music)
Gypsum crystals are much bigger than grains of silica sand.
Yet, harvester ants manage to dig their nest here
among what must seem like boulders to them.
(dramatic music)
(insects chirping)
Under cover of darkness,
even stranger creatures emerge.
Sand treader crickets.
(dramatic music) (crickets chirping)
Their back legs have evolved spiny shovels
to kick the crystals away from their holes.
Though even the best adaptations
are never foolproof.
Is there anywhere too harsh for an insect?
(bird squawking)
The dead of winter,
a world of snow and ice,
even here some insects are in their element.
Snow fleas.
They are related to fleas,
but instead of hiding in warm fur or feathers,
they're out and about in the middle of winter.
They don't even like sunny winter days,
sheltering under the ice until the cold returns,
(wind blowing) (bird squawks)
and from the dazzle of dunes and snow,
to the darkness of a deep cave,
it's just another place to call home.
Cave crickets.
This far underground it's pitch black,
but still no problem for insects.
Cave crickets have absurdly long antenna
to feel their way around in the dark.
(dramatic music)
(water trickling)
Anything that gets lost down here is soon found.
(tense music)
There's not always much to eat.
So when something tasty does turn up,
it's worth fighting over.
(suspenseful music)
You never know where your next meal's coming from
in this dark world.
(water trickling)
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
Insects are nature's ultimate success story,
(birds chirping)
but some have done better than others.
(gentle music)
There are just a few thousand kinds of mantises
or stick insects.
For others their numbers are off the scale.
(gentle music)
Of all insects beetles are the most successful.
There's nearly half a million
different sorts that we do know of,
but a lot more that we don't.
Around a thousand different kinds have been found
in just one sort of rainforest tree.
(insects chittering)
And there are a lot of trees out there.
(dramatic music)
Nearly half of all insect species are beetles.
That means a quarter of all animals
alive on earth today are beetles.
(dramatic music)
Everywhere you look
beetles and more beetles.
(birds chirping)
Spring in a Northern European woodland
a more familiar world,
(birds chirping) (woodpecker pecking)
but still home to perhaps
a thousand different kinds of beetles.
One reason that so many beetles can live in one place
is that they've evolved a lot of different ways
of making a living of finding a bite to eat.
A Goldsmith beetle prefers earthworms.
(birds chirping)
A glowworm beetle eats only snails.
(birds chirping)
In the canopy above
a Dendroxena beetles
specializes in hunting caterpillars.
(insects chittering)
Happy to gorge on those even bigger than itself.
(birds chirping)
Just three unique lives among many
in this one patch of woodland,
and they all pass unnoticed.
(tranquil music)
But the more we look the more we find.
(birds chirping)
(insects chittering)
Butterflies and moths
are not far behind beetles in sheer variety.
(birds chirping) (upbeat music)
One in every 10 animals alive on the planet
is a butterfly or moth.
(birds chirping)
(upbeat music)
Surely, everyone loves butterflies.
(upbeat music)
(gentle music)
An infinite pallet of colors and ornate patterns,
all created by a mosaic of tiny scales covering their wings,
and there are still thousands more species
that we have yet to see.
Hidden beauty yet to be discovered.
Museums around the world already house
160,000 different butterflies and moths,
but every year we find another 800 new ones.
(insect buzzing)
Maybe not as welcome,
flies are another insect triumph.
There are nearly 160,000 different kinds
that we already know about,
but that's nowhere near the whole story.
Recently, in just one year,
30 new species were discovered
within the city of Los Angeles alone.
So it might be there are even more flies than beetles.
But they're not as popular as beetles or butterflies.
So fewer people are searching for new ones,
which is a shame because they're just as beautiful,
if you look at them in the right way
They're all miracles of micro engineering.
Precision built,
(dramatic music)
and equipped with some pretty high-tech features.
(dramatic music)
They have gyroscopic stabilizers.
Their hind wings are reduced to long stalks
with a heavy club at the tip, called halteres,
that beat up and down as they fly.
(dramatic music) (air whooshing)
At the base there's a complex arrangement
of tiny sensors that measure stresses along the stalk.
These little knobs behave like gyroscopes.
They always beat in the same direction.
As the fly's body turns,
the halteres don't.
Instead they bend and twist at their base,
and the sensors read this information
and send it to the flies brain.
(wings whooshing)
(dramatic music)
So a fly has continuous feedback
on its flight attitude,
on roll, pitch, and yaw.
It has its own autopilot
giving it precise control of its flight path,
no matter what hits it.
(air whooshing) (fly buzzing)
(liquid gurgling)
Their mouth parts are just as beautifully engineered.
(fluid gurgling)
Built like a sponge on a stick.
For these flies every lunch is a liquid lunch.
(liquid gurgling)
Bugs usually get a bad press,
especially the ones that exploit us
and our way of life.
(knife thudding)
Look at it another way.
Maybe we should admire how they profit
from any and all opportunities.
Left unnoticed many generations of bean weevils
live out their lives in a jar of dried beans.
(insects chittering)
Their whole world, as their larva grow
from egg to adult, inside a single bean.
Beetles do just as well in our world
as in remote rainforests.
There seems to be a beetle
that eats every kind of grain we store.
Flower beetles,
rice weevils,
(eerie ambient music)
Golden spider beetles,
on the other hand,
eat just about anything.
From pasta to mouse droppings,
any recipe works for them,
even the recipe book itself.
(insects chittering)
(woman gasping)
(glass clinking)
Insects have conquered the world, theirs and ours,
because their basic body design is so flexible,
and that's mainly down to one feature of their architecture
shared by all insects.
(insects chirping) (tense music)
(upbeat music)
They have a hard outer skeleton,
an exoskeleton.
(upbeat music)
It's an insect equivalent of plastic.
It can be molded into all kinds of shapes
for all sorts of purposes.
From camouflage,
to combat,
the exoskeleton can be shaped into intimidating weapons.
Many beetles grow horns like miniature dinosaurs.
(dramatic music)
A male atlas beetle is armed with opposing horns
that work like a vice.
At three inches long,
these beetles are intimidating,
and they use their horns in a trial of strength with rivals.
(dramatic music)
Like sumo wrestlers each tries to lift his opponent
clear of the ground,
(suspenseful music)
and throw him from the field of battle.
(suspenseful music)
(body thudding)
But that tough exoskeleton
means he'll live to fight another day.
A strong suit of armor
also protects insects from the elements.
(thunder rumbling)
(thunder crashing) (rain pattering)
(dramatic music)
(droplets plopping)
The exoskeleton is so water repellent
that raindrops just bounce off.
(droplets plopping)
(gentle music)
The colorful scales covering a butterfly's wing
are made of the same stuff as the rest of the exoskeleton,
and are just as un-wettable.
(gentle music) (droplets plopping)
Droplets simply roll away
keeping these airfoils in perfect shape.
(serene music)
We know the very first insects to evolve
already had an exoskeleton,
but we still have no idea
what those first insects actually looked like.
(birds chirping)
We can find a clue though in this lake
on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
(dramatic music)
(water gurgling)
Sink below the surface
and this small pool opens
into a fast network of flooded caves a lost world,
and in the deepest recesses hidden from all
but the most intrepid scientists
there are creatures that we thought until recently
only existed as fossils.
Remipedes.
(dramatic music)
They look like swimming centerpieces,
but they're crustaceans.
Although, not like any other on the planet.
We know now that these particular crustaceans
are the closest living relatives of all insects.
(gentle music)
A glimpse of how the ancestors
of insects might have appeared.
(gentle music)
They lived in an ancient ocean
and had long bodies with lots of segments,
each protected by an exoskeleton,
and lots and lots of legs.
Great for swimming,
but just as good for walking on land.
Armed with a waterproof and rigid case and legs for walking,
creatures like these invaded land
on three different occasions.
(insect chittering)
First, were the centipedes and millipedes,
they kept all those legs
somehow coordinating them to walk.
(insect chittering) (upbeat music)
Next on to dry land were the spiders and scorpions.
They'd reduced hundreds of legs to just eight,
much more manageable.
(upbeat music)
Insects were the last to venture onto land.
Last but not least.
They soon outnumbered all the others.
(upbeat music)
Insects kept even fewer legs, just six.
Yet, their legs are another vital part
of the insect blueprint for success.
Obviously, they're useful for walking or running,
and a cockroach can certainly run.
It's one of the fastest things on six legs.
(fast-action music)
(door creaks)
To our eyes it's just a blur.
(suspenseful music)
But slowing it down 40 times reveals a neat trick.
It keeps three legs on the ground at any one time
forming a tripod
the minimum number for a stable base.
With six legs an insect steps from tripod to tripod,
which keeps it rock steady.
Their legs also give roaches all terrain capability,
but just using legs for walking is a bit of a waste.
They're much more useful than that.
(gentle music)
(birds chirping)
Late winter in Namaqualand in Southern Africa,
The rains have triggered one of the most
spectacular displays of flowers
anywhere on the planet.
(bright music)
Among them are twinspurs,
which have two long tubes
or spurs that extend below the flower.
It's the favorite flower of one of the strangest
looking bees in the world.
A female oil bee has ridiculously long front legs.
Much longer than the rest of her body,
for a very good reason.
(dramatic music) (bee buzzing)
She collects oils made by twinspurs
to mix with pollen to make food for her larva.
(dramatic music)
But the oil is only found
at the very bottom of the two spurs
(bee humming)
where only a bee with really long legs can reach it.
Having two long legs,
an oil bee can insert them into both spurs together
and collect oil twice as quickly.
(dramatic music)
As complex a docking maneuver
as any carried out by NASA astronauts.
(dramatic music)
(birds chirping)
(owl calling) (insects chirping)
(insects trilling)
At the other extreme,
mole crickets have converted their front legs
into short but broad and powerful shovels.
They look very much like the feet of moles.
Clearly evolution isn't afraid to recycle a good idea.
They can dig quickly
excavating long burrows under the soil,
(gentle music)
and like moles they grab worms
that break into their tunnels.
A welcome addition to their diet of roots.
(tense music)
(insects trilling)
The great thing about having six legs
is that the front two can be converted
into all manner of useful tools.
Still leaving four to walk on,
(suspenseful music)
not as stable as six,
but still no problem.
(tense music)
Mantis have converted their front legs into Jack knives
edged with sharp teeth.
The weapons of a lethal hunter.
Like any good hunter,
it keeps everything clean and polished.
Ready for action.
(tense music)
(insects chirping)
And with sharp eyes,
it can spot the slightest movement.
(dramatic music)
(body crunching)
(dramatic music)
The rainforest is no place to be a small tasty insect,
(dramatic music)
and neither is this tranquil looking pond.
(dramatic music)
A water stick insect has evolved the same technique.
Like the mantis, it has sharp eyes,
(suspenseful music)
and front legs designed to grab prey.
(water gurgling)
It also has a sharp beak
that stabs through the exoskeleton of its lunch.
It injects toxins and digestive juices
to dissolve the body of its prey.
(heartbeat thumping)
Turning it into a hearty soup.
(water gurgling)
(birds chirping)
Walking on water
doesn't need a miracle in the insect world.
(gentle music)
Water striders stride over water.
Their legs are so densely covered in hairs,
they're un-wettable,
so they don't break through the surface film.
(birds chirping)
The trick to surviving here is regular maintenance.
Any dirt would destroy the waterproofing
and the strider would sink.
(gentle music)
The surface film is a busy place.
A water measurer doesn't so much stride as use
long thin legs to step carefully over the surface,
like a novice ice skater.
For any creature not specially equipped,
the water surface is a lethal trap.
(tense music)
Even large insects are held fast by the surface film,
and struggling just catches the attention
of the water walkers.
(suspenseful music)
Water stripers only walk on their four back legs,
so their front legs can be used to subdue trapped prey.
It doesn't take long for a dinnertime scuffle to break out.
(dramatic music)
Water measurers don't have the stride's powerful front legs,
so they wait until the prey has almost drowned.
This means the desperate struggles of a trapped insect
won't damage the measurers thin legs and body,
(gentle music)
Then like a tiny leopard,
it hauls its prey up a stem
away from the frenzy on the pond surface
and away from the dangers that lurk beneath.
(birds chirping)
The water walkers might have
mastered life on the surface film,
(water gurgling)
but even they must be wary of monsters that swim below.
(tense music)
(birds chirping)
Backswimmers are also predators
big enough to kill striders
but only if they can catch one.
(dramatic music)
(water gurgling)
(birds chirping)
Striders can also use their long legs to jump,
and for them the surface film is like a trampoline.
(birds chirping)
(water gurgling)
Backswimmers have turned their back legs
into oars for rowing through the water.
The paddles on their hind legs
are made of a fringe of hairs
that opens out on the power stroke to provide thrust,
and folds down on the recovery stroke to reduce resistance.
Just as rowers feather their oars on the return stroke.
(dramatic music)
With legs this powerful and a little bit of luck,
backswimmers can drag an unwary water strider
below the surface, (suspenseful music)
where a predator becomes prey.
(birds chirping)
Versatile legs played a big part
in the insect success story,
but another innovation really
launched them to world domination.
(upbeat music)
They discovered the power of flight.
(upbeat music)
Not that long after they conquered dry land,
insects conquered the air.
(upbeat music)
(birds chirping)
Every year around the margins of ponds and lakes,
that momentous event is replayed.
(dramatic music) (water gurgling)
A dragonfly larva leaves its home beneath the surface.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
It was the terror of the pond.
It will soon become a master of the air.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
Its wings are structures of delicate beauty,
(dramatic music)
shaped to harness aerodynamic forces
in ways that we are only just starting to understand.
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
Wings played a major part
in the insects rise to domination,
and not just by lifting them into the air.
(birds chirping)
Atlas moths have some of the largest wings
of any living insect,
and like all moths and butterflies
they're covered in tiny scales
that form intricate patterns.
The markings on these wing tips
bear an uncanny resemblance to a cobra.
When viewed up close,
maybe it's enough to convince predators
to leave well alone just in case,
but from the start the most important thing about wings
is that they allowed insects to take to the sky.
(dramatic music)
(upbeat music) (birds chirping)
The first insect flyers looked
a little like modern dragonflies,
though many were much larger.
Some had a wings span of over two feet.
Those ancient swamps must have been amazing to see.
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
Even today dawn over the marshes
reveals a spectacular site.
(serene music)
(birds chirping)
These dragonflies have spent the night
in this patch of reeds.
They chose their roost carefully.
It catches the first rays of the morning sun,
warming up the dragonflies
until they're ready for flight.
(gentle music)
(birds chirping)
Insects had the air to themselves
for 140 million years.
Until they were joined by Pterosaurs, bats, and birds.
(birds chirping)
All these creatures have a very
different body plan from insects.
They have an internal skeleton.
This allows them to grow much larger
than even the biggest insects.
These new super-sized flyers soon made
short work of the ancient giant insects.
(birds chirping)
Today insects still face finally honed aerial predators.
(dramatic music) (bird calling)
Hobbies are small falcons
with the aerobatic skills
to hunt down dragonflies in flight.
(dramatic music)
But insects have also sharpened their own aerial ability.
(dramatic music)
A hobby misses as many as it catches.
(birds chirping) (dramatic music)
Insects evolved flight 400 million years ago.
They've had plenty of time to perfect the art of flying.
Hummingbird hawk-moths fly and hover
with all the skill of hummingbirds.
(gentle music)
(birds chirping)
But as good as these moths are,
they're not the best.
The top guns of the insect world are flies.
(fly buzzing)
Even the humble green bottle
can outperform most other insects.
(flies buzzing)
Males chase and grab females and flight,
even if that means flying upside down.
(dramatic music) (flies buzzing)
They're called flies for a very good reason.
They can really, really fly.
Look close enough,
and this small world is filled with wonder.
Even the most familiar,
the most unloved reveal hidden beauty,
(dramatic music)
and we've hardly even started to explore "Planet Insect".
(dramatic music)
(upbeat music)
(bright music)