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ATTENBOROUGH: The natural world
is full of extraordinary animals

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with amazing life histories.

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Yet, certain stories are more
intriguing than most.

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The mysteries of
a butterfly's life-cycle,

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or the strange biology
of the emperor penguin.

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some of these creatures were surrounded
by myth and misunderstandings

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for a very long time.

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And some have only recently
revealed their secrets.

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These are the animals
that stand out from the crowd,

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the curiosities 1 find
most fascinating of all.

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some animals acquired
frightening reputations

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almost as soon as they were discovered.

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1n this episode, we investigate the
stories surrounding two such creatures.

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-(GORILLA BELLOWS)
-The gorilla and the vampire bat.

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Why did they get such bad reputations?
And were they justified?

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This statue in the London Zoo
is of Guy the Gorilla.

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He was perhaps the zoo's most
well-known resident

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and became one of the world's
most famous gorillas.

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In his prime, Guy weighed
in at over 200 kilos.

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His neck, as you can see,
was thicker than a man's waist.

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And he stood 5'4'' tall,
over a metre and a half.

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And that was with his knees bent.

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When Guy arrived here, in 1 940,
little was known about gorillas.

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And the reports from Africa hinted of
a creature that was shockingly brutal.

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so it's hardly surprising that
people flocked to see

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this fearsome monster for themselves.

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But Guy proved to be a gentle giant
who won the affection of the public.

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So how and why did the gorilla gain
this reputation as a fearsome savage?

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Today, we know a lot about
gorillas and their way of life.

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There are, in fact,
a number of different kinds,

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some of which live in the lowlands
and others in the mountains.

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They stay in small family groups

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and spend much of their days
feeding on leaves and shoots.

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Many people, including myself,

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have travelled a long way
to meet these close relatives of ours.

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Remarkably, despite being
the largest living ape,

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the gorilla was one of the last
to be described by science.

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1n 1 84 7, an American missionary
and naturalist, Thomas savage,

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was travelling back home from Africa

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when he stopped off to stay
with some friends in the Congo.

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His friend's house was decorated
with African curiosities

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and one of them caught his eye.

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A skull.

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But it was not like one that
he'd ever seen before in Africa.

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It had two huge eye sockets,

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a crest like a Mohawk haircut,
running from front to back,

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and another running
transversely across here.

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These are anchor points for huge muscles
for the jaw and the neck.

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And he knew immediately he was
looking at a spectacular new species.

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But he had no time to go
in search of it.

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He frantically negotiated
with some African hunters

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and managed to acquire further skulls
and bones of the same kind of animal.

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When he got back to the states,

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savage handed the specimens
to an anatomist friend

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who immediately recognised
that they belonged to some kind of ape.

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He gave it
the scientific name ''Gorilla, ''

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a Greek word meaning
''wild, hairy people. ''

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He then sealed
the reputation of the gorilla

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with the convention of adding the
surname of the person who discovered it.

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In this case, Thomas Savage.

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(GROWLS)

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But many people misguidedly assumed
that the scientific name Gorilla savagi

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was a description of the nature
of this newly-found ape.

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Though gorillas had somehow remained

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unknown to science
until Victorian times,

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other great apes were
already quite familiar.

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They were all commonly called orangs
after the most famous of them,

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the orang-utan,

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which the Dutch had encountered
in 1ndonesia in the 1 7th century.

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shortly afterwards, the Portuguese
had discovered chimpanzees in Africa.

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And by the time reports of
the gorilla appeared,

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both chimps and orangs had been
appearing in circuses

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at the courts of European royalty
for over 200 years.

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The first gorillas to arrive in Britain
were dead specimens.

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And, unlike these later arrivals,
they were often badly preserved.

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They went on display at
the Crystal Palace

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and their grotesque appearance
was supported

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by horrific accounts of their nature.

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One of the early collectors of gorillas

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was an American anthropologist
called Du Chaillu.

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He made numerous expeditions to Africa

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and returned with tales of terrifying
encounters with gorillas.

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In this, his bestseller,

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Exploration and Adventure
in Equatorial Africa,

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amongst the sensational
tales of cannibalism,

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charging buffalo and tropical fevers,

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is a very first eyewitness account

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of man meeting
male gorillas in their jungle home.

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''He was a sight I think
I shall never forget.

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''Nearly six feet high with immense body,

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''huge chest and great muscular arms,

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''with fiercely glaring large
deep-grey eyes,

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''and a hellish expression of face

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''which seemed to me
like some nightmare vision.

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''Thus stood before us
this king of the African forest.''

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To be fair, Du Chaillu did dispel some
of the more ridiculous stories

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and myths about the gorilla.

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But his compelling tales
of their fierce nature

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was just what the public wanted to hear.

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(GORILLA HOOTING)

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Du Chaillu's vivid description
of the gorilla in the wild

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reinforced its image as a fearsome beast
and confirmed its reputation.

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These displays may look fearsome,

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but, in fact, they're only rarely
followed by physical violence.

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Du Chaillu's description may
have wowed readers,

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but the scientific establishment
were rather less easy to impress.

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He was branded a braggart,
a plagiarist and a charlatan.

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Some suggested he'd never
even visited Africa

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and that his ferocious creatures
were, in fact, gentle.

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But he had his strongest support
right at the top.

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Professor Richard Owen, founder of
the London Natural History Museum.

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Owen was one of the most respected
figures of Victorian science.

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But also one of the
most widely disliked.

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He was vehemently opposed to
Darwin's theory of evolution

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which suggested that apes
and humans were closely related.

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Du Chaillu's description of
a ferocious gorilla suited Owen

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because it seemed to support his view

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that we could not possibly be related
to such dreadful monsters.

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But he could hardly deny the anatomical
similarity between gorillas and humans.

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This illustration from 1 855

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shows the skeleton of a man
and gorilla side by side.

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1t was published by Owen himself

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and makes clear the likeness
between the two species.

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But Owen was still not willing to accept
that man could have ape-like ancestors.

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In 1 860, a great debate about evolution

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and man's place in the natural world
took place in this very room in Oxford.

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Richard Owen presented compelling
evidence for the presence

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of three structures in the human brain
that were absent in a gorilla's.

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According to Owen, this made
the descent of man from apes impossible.

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As the only anatomist with access
to gorilla specimens,

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he was confident he was on firm ground.

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But he hadn't counted on biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley.

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Huxley, known as Darwin's bulldog,
was, in his own words,

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''waiting for this opportunity
to nail that mendacious humbug Owen

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''like a kite to a barn door.''

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And immediately challenged his findings,
vowing to prove him wrong.

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In the years that followed,
Huxley doggedly pursued Owen

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and did indeed prove him
wrong on all counts.

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He found all three brain
structures in the apes

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and proved apes were
closer to men than to monkeys.

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Richard Owen had, according to Huxley,

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been, ''guilty of wilful
and deliberate falsehood.''

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(GORILLA HOOTING)

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Owen and Du Chaillu's misleading
descriptions of the gorilla

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failed to disprove
our relationship to apes.

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On the contrary, they became a turning
point in our acceptance

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that they are our cousins.

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But, sadly, the damage to the gorilla's
reputation had already been done.

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When Guy arrived in London
almost 1 00 years

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after the discovery of gorillas,

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people still regarded him as
a fearsome and savage beast.

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It took the next 30 years of Guy's life

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for a more accurate picture
of the gorilla to emerge.

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Although gorillas can indeed
be dangerous when angry or threatened,

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most of the time,
they are mild and peaceful creatures.

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And nowhere is this shown more clearly

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than in a charming story
from Guy's time here at the zoo.

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Guy's cage often attracted sparrows
that then became trapped inside.

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But rather than kill them,

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Guy would lift the tiny birds
carefully onto his hand,

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examine them and then release them.

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He was indeed a gentle giant.

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Over time, thanks to the determination
of field researchers like Dian Fossey,

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people have seen
another side to gorillas.

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By the time 1 met them,

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many of us were ready to see them
not as savages

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but as animals that are equally suited
to their environment as we are to ours.

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so now, at last, the gorilla, which was
once labelled a fearsome beast,

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has managed to shake off
its undeserved reputation.

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(BAT SCREECHING)

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Our second subject, the vampire bat,

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has also had
an undeservedly bad reputation

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and been the inspiration
behind tales of evil.

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Bats have had a bad reputation
for a very long time.

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As creatures of the night,
they're connected with dark mysteries

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and devilish goings on.

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But there was never any
real evidence to support

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these claims of their evil nature.

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That is, until the Conquistadors
returned from South America

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with tales of giant bats that
dropped down on you as you slept

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and sucked the very blood
from your veins.

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Tales of vampire bats.

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stories of giant, blood-sucking bats

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have long been part of the culture
of south American people.

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1mages of them with
savage fangs are common.

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And a bat god was associated with death.

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But it wasn't until the 1 8th century

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that a detailed description of a vampire
bat was published in Europe.

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And it came from one of its victims.

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An Englishman by the name of
John Gabriel stedman came back from

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south America with reports
of having been bitten by a vampire.

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He described a bat of monstrous size

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that sucked the blood of men and cattle
when they're fast asleep.

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And he proudly declared that he had
managed to catch the beast

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and cut off its head.

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stedman's descriptions were detailed
but nonetheless misleading.

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His drawing shows in fact
the bat that feeds on nectar

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and is only a few centimetres long.

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He had been bitten by a vampire
but he had blamed the wrong bat.

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Clouded by their own ideas
of what a vampire should look like,

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early naturalists jumped
to all sorts of conclusions

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and assumed that it was
the biggest and the most ugly

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that were the bloodsuckers.

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In fact, the name ''vampire''
was sometimes given to bats

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that looked the part
but had never so much as sniffed blood.

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These bats, for example,

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drawn by the 1 9th century
German naturalist Ernst Haeckel,

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belonged to a group called
the leaf-nosed bats

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because of these strange
protrusions around the end of the nose.

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This gives them a particularly
menacing appearance

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and some early naturalists thought that
the nose leaf was, in fact,

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the mark of a vampire.

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The leaf-like object on its nose
was thought to be so sharp

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the bat could use it
to puncture a victim's skin.

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And since many bats have such
nose leaves,

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over 1 00 species were mistakenly
described as vampires.

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1n fact, the nose leaf is made
of nothing more than soft flesh

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and couldn't possibly draw blood.

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1t's used for echolocation.

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(BAT MAKING SHRILL NOISE)

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Echolocation works like sonar.

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The bats produce high-frequency calls

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and use the returning echoes to build
up a mental map of their surroundings

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so they're able to find their
way in the pitch dark and hunt for prey.

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Most bats produce these calls
in their throats.

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But leaf-nosed bats project them out
through their nose in a beam.

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By doing so, they can feed
and echolocate at the same time.

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(BAT CHIRPING)

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so many leaf-nosed bats
had been discovered

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that the arrival in Europe of a specimen
of another smaller species in 1 8 1 0

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attracted very little attention.

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1t was simply named Desmodus rotundus
on account of it being a little portly.

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some 30 years later,

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when Charles Darwin was travelling
around the world aboard The Beagle,

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he observed Desmodus feeding
in the wild for the first time.

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He saw it drinking the blood
of sleeping horses and cattle.

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He had at last identified
the true vampire.

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We know that there are only
three species of vampire bats

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and they all live in South America.

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They're totally unique in being the only
mammals to feed exclusively on blood.

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But feeding on blood
is not as easy as you might think.

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It's actually a pretty challenging diet.

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Blood is made up of water and protein
and has virtually no fat.

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So vampires find it hard
to get enough energy.

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They must consume 50% of their
own bodyweight in blood each night

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or they'll die within a few days.

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Under the cover of darkness,
the vampire sets out to hunt.

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The nose leaf and echolocation
help it to home in on its prey.

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The bat approaches carefully.

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Unlike most other bats,
it can use its wings as legs

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and it walks on its elbows.

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Once near its victim,
it uses its nose leaf in another way.

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1t acts as a heat-seeking device,

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guiding the bat
to the warmth of its prey.

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00:18:15,807 --> 00:18:21,165
Today, livestock have largely
replaced wild jungle animals.

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But even livestock can be dangerous
to a small bat.

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Patiently, the vampire stalks its prey.

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And, at last, it's close enough.

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The teeth are so sharp
that a nick is all that's needed.

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Blood from the wound doesn't clot,
but continues to flow.

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And, within a quarter of an hour,
the bat can drink 40% of its bodyweight.

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That's the equivalent
to one of us drinking over 20 litres.

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Having had its fill,
it's back to the roost.

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Finding a meal every night is not easy.

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But vampires have come up with
a solution to that problem.

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Those which have been successful
share the blood they've drunk

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with those who had failed
to collect any.

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Vampires are most likely to share

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with those they know well
from roosting and grooming together.

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00:19:36,247 --> 00:19:38,681
1t's an act of apparent kindness.

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00:19:38,927 --> 00:19:41,680
But the colony, as a whole, benefits.

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00:19:43,087 --> 00:19:47,126
so it seems that there is another,
gentler side to these bats

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than anyone could have imagined.

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Unfortunately, just as light was being
shed on the true nature of the vampire,

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an Irish novelist published a book

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that would seal their reputation
for the foreseeable future.

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Bram Stoker's classic Dracula

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leaves little doubt as to where
his inspiration came from.

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His story combined European myths of
vampires that come to haunt the living

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with stories of blood-sucking bats
from south America.

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And it's an association that the real
vampire bats have struggled to shed.

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More recently, vampire bats have
made headlines once again.

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It's been discovered that their saliva

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contains a remarkable
blood-thinning agent

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that's been named ''Draculin.''

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And its proving to be the most
successful treatment for stroke victims.

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00:20:52,087 --> 00:20:55,921
How ironic that a creature we once
believed to be a deadly threat

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may turn out to save
human lives in the future.

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00:20:59,887 --> 00:21:03,084
Maybe it's time we re-evaluated
the reputation

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of the much-maligned vampire bat.

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Vampire bats and gorillas were long
pursued by unfair reputations.

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00:21:13,407 --> 00:21:17,923
But while our fear of gorillas
has turned into respect and admiration,

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the vampire bat, for many of us,
continues to evoke mixed emotions.