ATTENBOROUGH: The natural world is full of extraordinary animals
with amazing life histories.
Yet, certain stories are more intriguing than most.
The mysteries of a butterfly's life-cycle,
or the strange biology of the emperor penguin.
some of these creatures were surrounded by myth and misunderstandings
for a very long time.
And some have only recently revealed their secrets.
These are the animals that stand out from the crowd,
the curiosities 1 find most fascinating of all.
some animals acquired frightening reputations
almost as soon as they were discovered.
1n this episode, we investigate the stories surrounding two such creatures.
-(GORILLA BELLOWS) -The gorilla and the vampire bat.
Why did they get such bad reputations? And were they justified?
This statue in the London Zoo is of Guy the Gorilla.
He was perhaps the zoo's most well-known resident
and became one of the world's most famous gorillas.
In his prime, Guy weighed in at over 200 kilos.
His neck, as you can see, was thicker than a man's waist.
And he stood 5'4'' tall, over a metre and a half.
And that was with his knees bent.
When Guy arrived here, in 1 940, little was known about gorillas.
And the reports from Africa hinted of a creature that was shockingly brutal.
so it's hardly surprising that people flocked to see
this fearsome monster for themselves.
But Guy proved to be a gentle giant who won the affection of the public.
So how and why did the gorilla gain this reputation as a fearsome savage?
Today, we know a lot about gorillas and their way of life.
There are, in fact, a number of different kinds,
some of which live in the lowlands and others in the mountains.
They stay in small family groups
and spend much of their days feeding on leaves and shoots.
Many people, including myself,
have travelled a long way to meet these close relatives of ours.
Remarkably, despite being the largest living ape,
the gorilla was one of the last to be described by science.
1n 1 84 7, an American missionary and naturalist, Thomas savage,
was travelling back home from Africa
when he stopped off to stay with some friends in the Congo.
His friend's house was decorated with African curiosities
and one of them caught his eye.
A skull.
But it was not like one that he'd ever seen before in Africa.
It had two huge eye sockets,
a crest like a Mohawk haircut, running from front to back,
and another running transversely across here.
These are anchor points for huge muscles for the jaw and the neck.
And he knew immediately he was looking at a spectacular new species.
But he had no time to go in search of it.
He frantically negotiated with some African hunters
and managed to acquire further skulls and bones of the same kind of animal.
When he got back to the states,
savage handed the specimens to an anatomist friend
who immediately recognised that they belonged to some kind of ape.
He gave it the scientific name ''Gorilla, ''
a Greek word meaning ''wild, hairy people. ''
He then sealed the reputation of the gorilla
with the convention of adding the surname of the person who discovered it.
In this case, Thomas Savage.
(GROWLS)
But many people misguidedly assumed that the scientific name Gorilla savagi
was a description of the nature of this newly-found ape.
Though gorillas had somehow remained
unknown to science until Victorian times,
other great apes were already quite familiar.
They were all commonly called orangs after the most famous of them,
the orang-utan,
which the Dutch had encountered in 1ndonesia in the 1 7th century.
shortly afterwards, the Portuguese had discovered chimpanzees in Africa.
And by the time reports of the gorilla appeared,
both chimps and orangs had been appearing in circuses
at the courts of European royalty for over 200 years.
The first gorillas to arrive in Britain were dead specimens.
And, unlike these later arrivals, they were often badly preserved.
They went on display at the Crystal Palace
and their grotesque appearance was supported
by horrific accounts of their nature.
One of the early collectors of gorillas
was an American anthropologist called Du Chaillu.
He made numerous expeditions to Africa
and returned with tales of terrifying encounters with gorillas.
In this, his bestseller,
Exploration and Adventure in Equatorial Africa,
amongst the sensational tales of cannibalism,
charging buffalo and tropical fevers,
is a very first eyewitness account
of man meeting male gorillas in their jungle home.
''He was a sight I think I shall never forget.
''Nearly six feet high with immense body,
''huge chest and great muscular arms,
''with fiercely glaring large deep-grey eyes,
''and a hellish expression of face
''which seemed to me like some nightmare vision.
''Thus stood before us this king of the African forest.''
To be fair, Du Chaillu did dispel some of the more ridiculous stories
and myths about the gorilla.
But his compelling tales of their fierce nature
was just what the public wanted to hear.
(GORILLA HOOTING)
Du Chaillu's vivid description of the gorilla in the wild
reinforced its image as a fearsome beast and confirmed its reputation.
These displays may look fearsome,
but, in fact, they're only rarely followed by physical violence.
Du Chaillu's description may have wowed readers,
but the scientific establishment were rather less easy to impress.
He was branded a braggart, a plagiarist and a charlatan.
Some suggested he'd never even visited Africa
and that his ferocious creatures were, in fact, gentle.
But he had his strongest support right at the top.
Professor Richard Owen, founder of the London Natural History Museum.
Owen was one of the most respected figures of Victorian science.
But also one of the most widely disliked.
He was vehemently opposed to Darwin's theory of evolution
which suggested that apes and humans were closely related.
Du Chaillu's description of a ferocious gorilla suited Owen
because it seemed to support his view
that we could not possibly be related to such dreadful monsters.
But he could hardly deny the anatomical similarity between gorillas and humans.
This illustration from 1 855
shows the skeleton of a man and gorilla side by side.
1t was published by Owen himself
and makes clear the likeness between the two species.
But Owen was still not willing to accept that man could have ape-like ancestors.
In 1 860, a great debate about evolution
and man's place in the natural world took place in this very room in Oxford.
Richard Owen presented compelling evidence for the presence
of three structures in the human brain that were absent in a gorilla's.
According to Owen, this made the descent of man from apes impossible.
As the only anatomist with access to gorilla specimens,
he was confident he was on firm ground.
But he hadn't counted on biologist Thomas Henry Huxley.
Huxley, known as Darwin's bulldog, was, in his own words,
''waiting for this opportunity to nail that mendacious humbug Owen
''like a kite to a barn door.''
And immediately challenged his findings, vowing to prove him wrong.
In the years that followed, Huxley doggedly pursued Owen
and did indeed prove him wrong on all counts.
He found all three brain structures in the apes
and proved apes were closer to men than to monkeys.
Richard Owen had, according to Huxley,
been, ''guilty of wilful and deliberate falsehood.''
(GORILLA HOOTING)
Owen and Du Chaillu's misleading descriptions of the gorilla
failed to disprove our relationship to apes.
On the contrary, they became a turning point in our acceptance
that they are our cousins.
But, sadly, the damage to the gorilla's reputation had already been done.
When Guy arrived in London almost 1 00 years
after the discovery of gorillas,
people still regarded him as a fearsome and savage beast.
It took the next 30 years of Guy's life
for a more accurate picture of the gorilla to emerge.
Although gorillas can indeed be dangerous when angry or threatened,
most of the time, they are mild and peaceful creatures.
And nowhere is this shown more clearly
than in a charming story from Guy's time here at the zoo.
Guy's cage often attracted sparrows that then became trapped inside.
But rather than kill them,
Guy would lift the tiny birds carefully onto his hand,
examine them and then release them.
He was indeed a gentle giant.
Over time, thanks to the determination of field researchers like Dian Fossey,
people have seen another side to gorillas.
By the time 1 met them,
many of us were ready to see them not as savages
but as animals that are equally suited to their environment as we are to ours.
so now, at last, the gorilla, which was once labelled a fearsome beast,
has managed to shake off its undeserved reputation.
(BAT SCREECHING)
Our second subject, the vampire bat,
has also had an undeservedly bad reputation
and been the inspiration behind tales of evil.
Bats have had a bad reputation for a very long time.
As creatures of the night, they're connected with dark mysteries
and devilish goings on.
But there was never any real evidence to support
these claims of their evil nature.
That is, until the Conquistadors returned from South America
with tales of giant bats that dropped down on you as you slept
and sucked the very blood from your veins.
Tales of vampire bats.
stories of giant, blood-sucking bats
have long been part of the culture of south American people.
1mages of them with savage fangs are common.
And a bat god was associated with death.
But it wasn't until the 1 8th century
that a detailed description of a vampire bat was published in Europe.
And it came from one of its victims.
An Englishman by the name of John Gabriel stedman came back from
south America with reports of having been bitten by a vampire.
He described a bat of monstrous size
that sucked the blood of men and cattle when they're fast asleep.
And he proudly declared that he had managed to catch the beast
and cut off its head.
stedman's descriptions were detailed but nonetheless misleading.
His drawing shows in fact the bat that feeds on nectar
and is only a few centimetres long.
He had been bitten by a vampire but he had blamed the wrong bat.
Clouded by their own ideas of what a vampire should look like,
early naturalists jumped to all sorts of conclusions
and assumed that it was the biggest and the most ugly
that were the bloodsuckers.
In fact, the name ''vampire'' was sometimes given to bats
that looked the part but had never so much as sniffed blood.
These bats, for example,
drawn by the 1 9th century German naturalist Ernst Haeckel,
belonged to a group called the leaf-nosed bats
because of these strange protrusions around the end of the nose.
This gives them a particularly menacing appearance
and some early naturalists thought that the nose leaf was, in fact,
the mark of a vampire.
The leaf-like object on its nose was thought to be so sharp
the bat could use it to puncture a victim's skin.
And since many bats have such nose leaves,
over 1 00 species were mistakenly described as vampires.
1n fact, the nose leaf is made of nothing more than soft flesh
and couldn't possibly draw blood.
1t's used for echolocation.
(BAT MAKING SHRILL NOISE)
Echolocation works like sonar.
The bats produce high-frequency calls
and use the returning echoes to build up a mental map of their surroundings
so they're able to find their way in the pitch dark and hunt for prey.
Most bats produce these calls in their throats.
But leaf-nosed bats project them out through their nose in a beam.
By doing so, they can feed and echolocate at the same time.
(BAT CHIRPING)
so many leaf-nosed bats had been discovered
that the arrival in Europe of a specimen of another smaller species in 1 8 1 0
attracted very little attention.
1t was simply named Desmodus rotundus on account of it being a little portly.
some 30 years later,
when Charles Darwin was travelling around the world aboard The Beagle,
he observed Desmodus feeding in the wild for the first time.
He saw it drinking the blood of sleeping horses and cattle.
He had at last identified the true vampire.
We know that there are only three species of vampire bats
and they all live in South America.
They're totally unique in being the only mammals to feed exclusively on blood.
But feeding on blood is not as easy as you might think.
It's actually a pretty challenging diet.
Blood is made up of water and protein and has virtually no fat.
So vampires find it hard to get enough energy.
They must consume 50% of their own bodyweight in blood each night
or they'll die within a few days.
Under the cover of darkness, the vampire sets out to hunt.
The nose leaf and echolocation help it to home in on its prey.
The bat approaches carefully.
Unlike most other bats, it can use its wings as legs
and it walks on its elbows.
Once near its victim, it uses its nose leaf in another way.
1t acts as a heat-seeking device,
guiding the bat to the warmth of its prey.
Today, livestock have largely replaced wild jungle animals.
But even livestock can be dangerous to a small bat.
Patiently, the vampire stalks its prey.
And, at last, it's close enough.
The teeth are so sharp that a nick is all that's needed.
Blood from the wound doesn't clot, but continues to flow.
And, within a quarter of an hour, the bat can drink 40% of its bodyweight.
That's the equivalent to one of us drinking over 20 litres.
Having had its fill, it's back to the roost.
Finding a meal every night is not easy.
But vampires have come up with a solution to that problem.
Those which have been successful share the blood they've drunk
with those who had failed to collect any.
Vampires are most likely to share
with those they know well from roosting and grooming together.
1t's an act of apparent kindness.
But the colony, as a whole, benefits.
so it seems that there is another, gentler side to these bats
than anyone could have imagined.
Unfortunately, just as light was being shed on the true nature of the vampire,
an Irish novelist published a book
that would seal their reputation for the foreseeable future.
Bram Stoker's classic Dracula
leaves little doubt as to where his inspiration came from.
His story combined European myths of vampires that come to haunt the living
with stories of blood-sucking bats from south America.
And it's an association that the real vampire bats have struggled to shed.
More recently, vampire bats have made headlines once again.
It's been discovered that their saliva
contains a remarkable blood-thinning agent
that's been named ''Draculin.''
And its proving to be the most successful treatment for stroke victims.
How ironic that a creature we once believed to be a deadly threat
may turn out to save human lives in the future.
Maybe it's time we re-evaluated the reputation
of the much-maligned vampire bat.
Vampire bats and gorillas were long pursued by unfair reputations.
But while our fear of gorillas has turned into respect and admiration,
the vampire bat, for many of us, continues to evoke mixed emotions.