*Q I* Season 18 Episode 14 IMDB S18E13 Video Release
Episode Title: "R-Animals" Aired on: January 07, 2021
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI.
Tonight we'll be regaling you with remarkable research regarding
animals starting with the letter R.
And we'll be doing it with these magnificent beasts.
A rollicking rockfish, Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
A roguish Rottweiler, Ed Gamble.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
A ravenous raven, Tom Allen.
Oh, a ravenous raven, that's who I am.
And Roger my Rabbit, Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Right, let's hear their beastly buzzers.
Maggie goes...
ROARING
You bet! Yeah, that's very good.
Ed goes.
FROG CROAKS
Fair enough, yeah. Yeah. Tom?
MONKEYS CHATTER
That's what's happening inside my head all the time.
Alan goes...
WHALE SONG
What animal do you reckon it was?
It sort of sounds like a blue whale, surely?
KLAXON SOUNDS
I mean, what kind of boy doesn't know his blue whale
from his humpback?
Oh, a humpback, of course.
Right, now, today's show all about animals but, Maggie,
you work on The Sky At Night, you're a scientist,
you're always looking up into space.
What animal can you see here, if I show you this picture?
There are people in the world, mostly Japan, China,
other Far Eastern countries. Ah, yeah. Ooh, ooh... Rabbit?
It is. It is a rabbit. I can't see it myself.
Tom, are you seeing rabbit? What do you reckon?
I feel like it's when somebody shows you their baby scan.
Yes. And you go like, "Oh, yeah, that's...
"Wow! It looks just like you!"
It's just like... It just looks like that.
Yeah. No, I can't see anything.
Sometimes even when the baby's been born,
you think, "No, I'm still not..."
Just, "What's that?" Like a turnip.
I don't see it, but we can superimpose...
Oh, please superimpose. ..the thing on the top of it.
Oh, yeah.And then. See? I mean, that's. Yeah. What?
Even that doesn't look like a rabbit.
It looks like a sorrowful rabbit.
It looks like the rabbit's going, "Oh, I'm on the Moon.
"I've no friends."
It looks like a map of the UK in a high wind. Yeah.
It looks like a rabbit trying to do a magic trick
where it pulls a smaller rabbit out of a hat.Yes.
Apparently it's meant to be a mortar and pestle and it's grinding,
I don't know, herbs for the gods.
In some stories the rabbit is a companion
of the Goddess of the Moon, who's called Chang'e,
the Chinese Goddess of the Moon.
She floated up to the Moon after drinking too much
elixir of immortality.
Oh. Oh, I've... I've had that evening.
Yeah. I've been there. People who peddle these things,
do you think they ever run out of steam?
"She floated up to the... oh, it doesn't matter."Yeah.
She was married to a celebrated archer, who was called Hou Yi,
and it was too hot.
There were ten suns in the sky, and he shot nine of them
out of the sky, so that we only had one left.
And the goddess in charge was so thrilled with this
that she gave him the elixir of immortality,
but only enough for one.
So he thought, "I'm not leaving my wife, that's not nice,"
so he put it under the bed. She drank it. Yeah. Ooh...
I know, it's not a happy marriage story, is it? Not really.
They couldn't split it?
Well, anyway, she floated off to the Moon,
because he was so cross with her. Oh. Wow.
That's a bitof a downer, that story, OK.
What do they think the Moon is?
I mean, does she think you get up there
and it's like sort of a Four Seasons hotel or something?
Well, it's a really good question, what do you think the Moon is?
Because the Samoan people believe that there was a girl called Sina,
and she was a beautiful girl who thought that the Moon
was made of breadfruit and there was a terrible famine,
and so she asked the Moon to come and feed her.
The Moon was annoyed, so it kidnapped Sina into the sky.
And so she lives in the Moon. It's crowded up there, isn't it?
Terribly busy. Everybody living up there.It's terribly busy.
So she thought the Moon was breadfruit?Yes, she did.
So she asked the breadfruit to come to her
so she could eat the breadfruit?
And then the breadfruit kidnapped her because it was annoyed?
"Hey, breadfruit!" "Yes?"Yeah, yeah.
"Come down!" "Yeah, sure, OK."
MAGGIE: "Now you're coming with me!" Yeah, exactly.
It's not a good story. When I see... ..when I hear about planets
with more than one moon, I'm quite envious.
Like Jupiter has got several moons, hasn't it?
Well over 60, and we're finding more.
Well over 60? Oh, yeah. Oh. The outer planets tend to sort of be...
..they're bigger and there's sort of more gravity and stuff like that.
But, you see, our moon is the best moon.Why?
Well, compared with Earth, our moon is very big.
And so it helps protect us, so asteroids, meteorites,
things like that, the Moon will take some of those knocks.
You can see it on the craters.
So the Moon takes some of the knocks for us.Like a bouncer.
Yeah, that's it. "Oi, step away. Yeah, I'll take that. Move away."
If the Earth and the Moon perhaps were formed at a similar time
and the Earth is in the Goldilocks zone with the water
and the environment and the atmosphere. Yes.
And so is the Moon, but the Moon, nothing. No.
A really harsh environment.
But the Moon's so much smaller.
If you took the surface area of the Moon,
it's about... Slightly smaller than the surface area of Asia.
So it's quite small in comparison.
And also, being small, it's got lots less gravity, and so, yeah,
if it did ever have an atmosphere, it's long gone.
So it's the size and the lack of gravity
that stops it forming an atmosphere? Yeah. Also, as a result,
it means the sun's rays blast it really hard.
And so, for instance,
the temperature on the moon goes from minus 150 to plus 150.
So in... Oh, I had a boiler like that once.
Just can't get it right.No. Nothing in the middle.
So, tell me something, while we're delving into your knowledge here,
if there was an actual rabbit on the Moon... Yes?
...would we have been able to detect it, in theory,
if we had had the Planck spacecraft? Yes.
Am I right that they were able to detect variations in temperature...
Yes...to, like, a millionth of a degree? Yes.
So you could, through temperature, have picked up a rabbit on the Moon?
Yes, but assuming a rabbit could survive on the Moon,
and maintain its temperature, then it could have picked it up.
Right. Sorry, I'm getting so carried away.I know.
No, we want people... No, I'm quite interested in this stuff.
Generally on this show we know nothing,
so this is a very exciting move into actual facts.
At the moment this feels like the morning of a science exam
and Maggie is the only child who's done any revision.
I've done more than you guys!
There may be some actual animals living on the Moon,
that is a possibility,
so in 2019 an Israeli spacecraft crash landed on the Moon.
The payload contained tardigrades. Do you know about tardigrades?
Yeah, water bears.
Yes. Yes. Argh!
Oh! Very, very robust.
They were encapsulated, I think, in amber,
but they can hibernate for sort of decades at a time.
And they can experience sort of very cold temperatures.
So they could survive.
They could bring them back to Earth and see if they sort of wake up.
They're amazing, they're micro animals.
Do you not think they're extraordinary?
I think they're kind of cute, actually.
No, it's horrible. It's like some horrible alien dick pic.
Let's Google that, "horrible alien dick pic."Dick pic.
See what comes up.
They were desiccated, the ones that landed on the moon.
Presumably if they... Like coconut? Yes, darling, exactly like coconut.
I'm going to... Chewy, but. Delicious.
If you drop you drop them in water, whether they'd come back to life.
I don't know enough about tardigrades.
Tom, this is not Bake Off.
Right. How might small pants affect your sex life?
Oh, my!Any thoughts?
I'm very much enjoying the dungaree version on the far left.
I don't know quite what he's going to put in that pocket.
Yeah. Yeah. What's going to go in there? But imagine if a...
If a painter/decorator turned up dressed in that,
you'd be like, "Oh, no, you're not taking this seriously at all."
I don't think you would be either, darling. No.
I have a little prop here to see if this assists you.
So I'm talking about very, very small pants, OK
Aww!
These are polyester underpants and they have been used to -
not these particular ones, obviously -
but pants this size used examining the sex life.
You're not asking how it would affect my sex life?
It would, it might. Those might? Notthese ones, but...
Well, I'd imagine... I bet they would!
It would completely destroy it, I'd imagine, Sandi.
This is a pair of tiny trousers, a little bit like the ones
that were used by an Egyptian neurologist called Ahmed Shafik,
and he wanted to study the impact of various textile
materials on the sex life of rats, OK?
Oh.Why might he think that this was a good idea?
Funding?
Yes, it's how you get... how you get grants, isn't it?
Research grant?Yeah.
Well, rats are quite similar to humans, well, in some ways.
We often use them... Well, "we," - I don't, no.No.
They have been used. They have been used, yes.That's absolutely right.
So they had different groups of male rats
and some of them had tiny pants made of wool,
some had cotton, some had polyester.
Some had a polyester/cotton mix, which I don't approve of, darling.
Oh, no, that sounds very sweaty. Yes.
And then there was a control group
who were obviously commando, clearly. Of course, yes.
Clearly the commando rats. Letting it out there. Yeah.Yeah.
And I don't know if I can say it on here,
but they had little openings made for the anus
and for the penis and for the tail.
You've said it, you just said it straight out.
I know, did it sound all right? Yeah, it sounded fine.
You really ran with it. Fine. Yeah. I just...
You're saying it with a pair of tweezers in your hand.
I know, I was trying to...
Didn't want to touch it.
Have you got a picture of a rat wearing those?
Sort of, "Hey!" No. Unfortunately, we don't.
Samuel Whiskers is the best that we could do wearing a pair of pants.
Anyway, the rats were selected based on their high potency, OK?
Ooh-hoo!I know.
And so they had their sexual activity...
They fill in a form.
"High potency?" "High." "Oh, yes, that's me."
So they had their sexual activity checked four times.
So it was once before the study,
then once after six months of wearing the pants, whichever.
Six months of wearing the pants?! I know, wow.
And then once after 12 months of wearing the pants. 12 months?!
And then finally, at six months after the pants had been removed.
So these are the four times that they checked.
A year of wearing the same pants, what were they, students?
So here's the bit of the graph that I don't care for.
It's the insertion to mount ratio.
TOM GASPS
So, the control group, the wool group and the cotton group,
didn't seem to make any bloody difference to them at all.
Their sex life seemed exactly the same.
They don't have to take their pants off, they're ready to go?
No, there's a hole... I tried to show you. Oh, yeah.
A little... Don't make her do it again, Alan, it's very unpleasant.
If their partner's got the tweezers, they're all right?Yes, exactly.
How do the pants with the hole in the front and the back
for the tail relate to human trousers?
Because I've only got two to three pairs of trousers
with a hole in the front and the back.
No, so what I'm saying is, the wool was fine, the cotton was fine,
the commando, they were all fine.
It's the polyester and polyester mix pants. We said that.
So they showed an increase in attempted mounts,
but a decrease in successful insertion. Oh.
Is it because they just slid right off?
MAGGIE: "Wheeee!" Well, it may...
Was the other rat wearing polyester as well and just...?
"Wahey! Wow" Terrible friction. Get a bit of friction there.
It could cause a fire. Yeah, there was a...
Does anybody remember nylon sheets? That was a very bad idea.
You got into bed and slid out the other side.
If you did it in the dark, you could stroke them and they'd spark up.
Spark up? Really?! Yeah, it is, like a light show.
So, darling, this is some of the issues
with these polyester pants, right... Oh, really?!
...is that it generated electrostatic charges in the scrotal area.
Do you see how I'm saying all of these things?
Oh, everything about that is so sexy. Yeah.
I'm going to Google that one first!
Wow! When you say things like that, Sandi,
I mean, I don't know if they'll be able to broadcast this.
It was very good, I...
Electrostatic charges in the scrotal area.
I'm just committing it to memory.
I'm going to make up a poem. I'm going to use that one.
I've never seen a pornographic film. Do they have voice-over?
I could do the voice-over. I think that... I think you just did.
No, they don't have voice-over. I wish they did have voice-over.
Do you think it's like a David Attenborough nature documentary?
"And here we have the plumber."
"No, that's not the tool I thought he meant at all!"
Surely there's audio description?
Pornography for the visually impaired.
It's possible that this electrostatic field,
I'm trying to be serious about it,
is responsible for reduced sexual success.
That is the possibility. Well, it would put you off, wouldn't it?
Yes. With the light and sparks. So why...?
Yeah, the sparks coming off it, I think I'd probably say,
actually, "Let's just have an early night."
"Another time." Let's, yeah.
So anyway, you know, don't wear them.
I think that's fundamentally what we're saying.
Or do wear them, if you want an electric shock in your balls.
Anyway, moving on.
What is powdered rhino horn used for in traditional Chinese medicine?
I'm going for it. ROARING
Yes? Aphrodisiac?
KLAXON SOUNDS
Oh. I know, I know.
Ah.ED: Yeah, that's obviously what we were all thinking.
Yeah. But I'm always thinking that with everything.Are you?
"That could be an aphrodisiac, I'll give that a go."
In official Chinese traditional medicine, rhino horn -
or xi jiao - has never been prescribed as a sexual stimulant.
It's a myth which the western media seems happy to run with,
and it's not true at all.
Most often seems to be prescribed for fever.
But there's a whole list of things that you might suggest it for.
I imagine the horn, if it wasn't powdered,
I imagine the horn could be quite a sexual stimulant.
What, so you could just literally say, "I've got the horn?"
Yeah.Yeah. Da-da!
Is that where that comes from? Here it is!Got the horn? No.
In these socially distanced times, it might be better.
Oh, Alan! Here's a rhino horn!
What are you doing there, Harry Potter?
What are you doing, conducting the Proms?
I haven't got the point... The pointy end's pointing out.Right.
I want... and I'm... Tempting a woman.
Yeah, I'm being tempting. It doesn't have to be a woman,
could be a rhino. But being very alluring.
I don't think a rhino would be tempted
by the disembodied horn of its friend.
That's Uncle Albert!
"Come on!"
You go, "There's a rhino over there," and they come over
and then they think, "Well, actually, now I'm here."
Have a look at all these diseases that in traditional Chinese medicine
they reckon you can cure with some rhino horn.
Of which my favourite, I think, is, "The evil miasma of hill streams."
Classic, yeah. When you get it, it's...
That's very bad. Can't get rid of it.
Although rectal bleeding... Well, you would get that with a rhino.
Yeah. Yeah.
China isn't the only culture
to attribute special properties to the rhino horn.
So the Greeks believed that you could detect poisons if you drank,
because it would produce bubbles, or by the horn changing colour.
So there may be something in the poison detection thing,
because rhino horn is mostly made of keratin,
and it chemically reacts with strong alkaline solutions,
which many poisons are.
But it's a nonsense, isn't it, the medicinal thing?Yeah.
I mean, they did a study in 1990 at the Hong Kong University,
and they used very large doses of rhino horn and it very...
Again rats, very slightly lowered fever in them, but not worth it,
I think, to kill a rhino to get a rat to feel a tiny bit better.
The trade-off is not good. Just take its pants off, it'll be fine.
Call me an animal rights mad person, but I think that's probably...
Put some cotton briefs on.
You'll be right as rain.
But the reason that they come to a point is that the outer keratin
is softened by the sun, and then it's worn away
when they clash horns and rub and so on, and the solid core remains.
And if their horns were hard all the way through,
then it would have a cylindrical horn,
it wouldn't be shaped in any way.
If they looked after it, they could have like a Coke can,
a little stump.It would look great!
A flat top.Yeah. Yes.
"Just back off, I'm growing this!" Yeah.
"I don't want one of those pointy ones, I want a stumpy one."
Well, there are some that have a different shape to it,
because most of them tend to grow in that shape
and that's because keratin... Look at him!
The keratin on the front grows faster than the keratin in the back.
But you do see the occasional rhino with a forward curving horn.
Oh.And this one just looks depressed, doesn't it?
Because it's always...
Yeah, it's like he had a normal horn and then it went, "Oooh!"
I know! Aww!
Right. Which part of a race horse anatomy needs to be really big
if it's going to win?
His nose.
KLAXON SOUNDS
A long nose is going to get you there first.Yeah.
Well, it depends how long, right? Yeah. But ahead by a nose.
A couple of feet.Yeah.
And just the whole length of the track and just go...
Yeah. Yeah.I don't think this one's a winner, particularly. No.
But... It can read though, so.Yeah.
What's the feature that most directly links
to success on the track?
Oh, is it...?
It'll be testicles or something again, won't it?
KLAXON SOUNDS
LAUGHTER
Yeah, that wouldn't work at all, if...No.
If you had big testicles, that would be like bongos going down the track.
Yeah. It would be like that
executive toy, wouldn't it? When they...
Yeah, true, and the jockey gets relaxed.
Yes. Yes, or if they swing up and hit you on the head,
I mean none of it's... None of it's...
No, darling, not testicles.
It's not that, OK, fine. Anybody else? Anybody?
Lungs? Sort of capacity? Oh.
It is sort of to do with lungs. It's... ED: Brain.
So it can outfox the rest of the competitors.
Takes the short cut round!
It is to do with the size of the heart. Ah.
So the way that gamblers used to predict...
Are you... Do you follow the horses at all?
Do you ever bet on the horses?
Your name's Gamble, that's why she's asking you.Yes.
That was quite accusatory, "Do you follow horses?"
No, sorry. "No, I just leave them alone."
Well, I love a bit of a gamble, but I don't know anything about it.
But it used to be whether the horse was from good stock,
so whether the parents or the siblings
had won lots and lots of races -
but, in fact, they did some analysis.
There's a man called Jeff Seder, he's a racehorse analyst.
So he collected lots of data from young racehorses
and about how many races they had won,
and the size of the left ventricle was the most telling physical trait.
So the left ventricle is obviously the bit
that pumps oxygen back out into the body, right? Oh.
Right ventricle puts it back into the lungs,
but then pumps it out into the body.
And the size was the most critical thing.
So he examined them all using ultrasound.
Not surgery, because that would be... Yes.
That would be... "This one was great!"Yeah.
"He would have been really fast!"
And it led him to predict
the greatness of a horse called American Pharoah.
It was an extraordinary horse, went on to win the 2015 Triple Crown,
which is a sort of Grand Slam of racehorsing success.
So this is American Pharoah.
And there was also a famous racehorse called Phar Lap,
he was a sort of national celebrity in Australia
during the Great Depression.
And it was discovered he had a heart
that was twice the size of an average horse.
In fact, that heart is now displayed in the National Museum of Australia.
I do hope they have other things, as well, because...
It just doesn't...
The most successful racehorses are the ones with the biggest hearts.
When the ravens leave the Tower of London, where do they go?
They're not allowed to leave, are they?
The throw of the monarchy, or... I think something horrible happens.
Yeah, is it kingdom of rule? Well, it's a myth.
So the notion is that they've consistently lived at the Tower
since the reign of Charles II
and that he was warned the Crown would fall if the ravens ever left.
In fact, the earliest record that we can find of ravens at the Tower
only goes back as far as 1895,
and probably it was to do with the sort of raven craze
that followed Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem in the 1850s,
and we can't find any evidence of them being further back than that.
Really?So usually there are six ravens, right, in the Tower,
and they get... They get raw meat and dead mice.
Special treat, biscuits soaked in blood. Anybody?
There was one called George who was a repeat offender,
and in 1981 he disappeared but was recaptured at the local pub
and made to return to duty.
But his bad behaviour continued and eventually he was retired.
The Tower announced on Saturday 13th September, 1986,
"Raven George, enlisted 1975,
"was posted to The Welsh Mountain Zoo, conduct unsatisfactory."
They posted him?!
Died in the envelope on the way there.
But he's not the only raven to have gone AWOL.
There are wonderful stories that Christopher Skaife,
current Ravenmaster of the Tower, recounts in his book,
The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London.
And he talks about how raven Munin escaped in 2010,
but you don't need me to tell you about that,
because he is here himself.
Ravenmaster, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming.
Tell me about Munin's escape, what happened?
Hmm, I was a little bit worse for wear one morning,
when I was getting the ravens up.
And it was at a time when I was going through
some minimum wing trimming and Munin herself wasn't trimmed-up very much,
and when I opened up the enclosure, she got out and flew off.
And was it OK?
No.No.
No, she flew off and she disappeared for seven days.
She was eventually found in Greenwich on the Royal Observatory.
MAGGIE: Astronomy.Yeah.
Yeah.
And did she come back then? Did you take her back?
Well, she did eventually, she was caught by a member of the public
and eventually returned back to the Tower of London under an ASBO,
and that's where she spent the rest of her life.
Is it true that ravens play KerPlunk?
Yes.
But not with plastic straws.
I use spaghetti straws, because it's obviously better for them.Yeah.
And, in fact, Munin was very, very good at it,
it would take her about 45 seconds or so to get the mouse out,
with going around and pulling out all the spaghetti.
And did you use a real mouse?
Yes, I did, yes.
OK, moving on. With very small pants.
TOM: Very small pants.! Well, because there are sort of...
There are ravens, there are crows and what's the other one?
Rooks. Rooks. Rooks, yes.
And I don't know how to tell the difference between them.
Well, they're different species, really.
A raven happens to be about twice the size of a crow,
so it's like the daddy of them, all the birds, really,
and the most intelligent.
And they have excellent memories, do they not? Is that right?
They do, they remember for life, yes.
For good and bad reasons, as well.
Some of them like me, some of them, like Munin,
who I chased around Greenwich, didn't.
Now, we've talked about having a very good memory,
so here's the thing, you were supposed to be on the show
before we had lockdown. I was.
And you were supposed to be here on your wedding anniversary.
I was.So we were very excited about this,
and you've got your wife Jasmine with you.
Hello, Jaz, welcome to the show. How many years is it? 32.
32, wow, that's fantastic.
So, anyway, because you were coming in on your wedding anniversary
and you were both going to be here, we thought we'd get you a cake.
So we are now here, finally doing this show, five months later,
we found the cake, it was still backstage.
TOM: Mm, delicious! CHRISTOPHER SKAIFE: Lovely. Yum-yum.
The cake is there, shaped like your hat.
It was a light sponge.
We're going to get Tom to decide later on.
I'll judge it, yes.
I feel like it might be quite a heavy sponge now. Yes.
I think the ravens might need it soaked in blood.
But thank you both very much for coming in. How fantastic.
Absolute pleasure, thank you for having us.It's lovely.
APPLAUSE
Raven George was dismissed for being stark raven mad.
Now, what's the most reliable way to recognise a rattlesnake? Oh...
FROG CROAKS Go for it, Ed.
Its rattle.Yay!
KLAXON SOUNDS
No. And why not?
They're all the same?
No, no, they're not all the same.
Not all rattlesnakes rattle...
Ooh...is the problem.
Wouldn't that be annoying if you were a rattlesnake
and you didn't rattle? Yeah. One thing!
None of the other rattlesnakes would hang out with them.
No, you would just be embarrassed, wouldn't you? Yeah. Yeah.
The Santa Catalina rattlesnake, it's...
Santa Catalina is an island off the coast of southern California,
doesn't have a rattle at all. And nobody knows why.
Maybe because it lives on an island
where there aren't any large-hoofed mammals,
there's very few humans that might stumble on it.
It basically doesn't need one.
So what makes it a rattlesnake? Yeah. It's just a snake.
No, you can tell a rattlesnake by its head,
by its triangular head and its slitty eyes and so on.
It just doesn't have this particular thing.
Let's have a quick look at one that does have a rattle.
RATTLE HISSES That'swhat the rattle sounds like.
But this is obviously not living in Santa Catalina.
It is quite distinctive, you'd run away from that.
You would, yeah. I wouldn't like that.
So, the other possibility is, if it doesn't have a rattle,
is that it's a baby rattlesnake.
Oh.Yes.
They're born with venom but without the rattle.
So the bit that we saw there is a segment of, again, keratin,
and those grow bit by bit.
It sheds its skin, when it's young, every few weeks,
and then each time a new segment of this keratin is added.
And the snake needs at least two or three of those,
if you imagine, in order to make that distinct rattling sound.
And it comes from those keratin segments
knocking against each other.
Weird, because if you're a human and you've got a rattle,
you're definitely a baby.
Yes, I know! Opposite.
And also an adult could lose the rattle through injury
or through, you know, just old age, bloody annoying.
Oh, that's upsetting for them.
If you have a look at the one coming towards you,
you can see it's distinctive, even without the rattle.
You can see the triangular head
and it's got these rather... MAGGIE: Oh!
Yeah, I mean, it's slightly creepy, isn't it? Sorry.Yeah.
Oh, you don't like it, Tom?
I do have a pathological fear of all snakes,
so it's no big deal that there's a massive one on the screen,
but I'm not going to look at it.
Heading straight towards you.
I just might not look up at that, if that's all right.
Tom, it's gone, Tom, it's gone, don't worry mate.
Tom, you're all right Tom. Tom, you're fine.
Yeah, just look up now. No! You're all horrible!
There's not one coming in, though, is there?
It's not like, "Oh, we've got one here now"?
Here's one we made earlier. We've got a cake.
I don't want to run all the way home. And a cake.
And now the keeper of rattlesnakes. The cake!
If you are bitten by a snake, what should you do?
Oh, I'd just die. I would just die. No, you probably wouldn't, darling.
Really? Would I not? Probably not, no.
In the United States,
about 9,000 people a year are bitten by a snake,
and about five die. So statistically you're unlikely to.
You're supposed to... Wee on it.
Yeah, you get someone to wee on it. Are you confusing jellyfish?
Spreads quickly.ED: I just think it's always worth a go.
Stung by anything, wee on it. Have a quick wee on it.
And then you get a cowboy from a film
to suck out the venom and spit it out.
Oh, is that what it was? Yeah, yeah. Oh.
I always get those two muddled.
Do you wee on it or do you suck out the venom?Yes, I know.
Standing there having a debate with yourself, trying to work it out.
Ooh! Just try it all. Have a wee, have a suck, why not?
TOM: "Excuse me, cowboy, would you mind having a wee or a suck?
"I've been bitten by a snake.
"No, it's not a chat-up line."
We'll get you to do the voice-over, Sandi.
Yeah, I was, "At this point...
"..a large handsome cowboy."
Call an ambulance, you fools!
Don't... Oh.
In America?! No, thanks, I can't afford that!
Just suck it!
Stay calm, basically. You don't want to raise your heart rate.
"Stay calm, you're dying!" Yeah.
You've got about... About 12 hours to 18 hours
before it turns too serious.
You'vegot time to go, and the main thing is,
if it's on a limb, apply some pressure to the bite.
You don't want it spreading through you,
but certainly you don't want to. Like a tourniquet?
You certainly don't want to suck it,
because you'll get it in your mouth,
and you might have a cut in your mouth and die that way.
I think that's a terrible idea. Wouldn't that be terrible?
Now, why did the Japanese import so many raccoons?
Thank God we're talking about something else - I can look up!
You're all right with racoons?
Oh, God!
The only thing I can't stand more than rattlesnakes
are racoons!
So, why did the Japanese import loads and loads and loads of them?
Must be something to do with some problem that they had,
that a raccoon could help with.
A computer virus?
No, it all goes back... It all goes back to a single raccoon.
There was a raccoon called Rascal the Raccoon,
and it was found and raised by author Sterling North
when he was a child, and he wrote a book about it
and it was called Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era.
Back in 1963, Disney made a film of it,
and then in 1977 it was released in Japan
as an animated television series.
I have to say, the Japanese animated version
looks less raccoon-like to me... Oh. Yeah, it's a cat.
It's got a bottle! It's a Pokemon, yeah.
Yeah. It's a drinker - it's a big drinker.
But it was incredibly popular, so Japanese families thought,
let's import North American raccoons and have them as pets.
Clearly, they had not reached the end of the series beforehand,
or they would have realised this is a terrible, terrible mistake.
Rascal the Raccoon ends up released into the wild
because they make terrible pets.
They are unbelievably destructive and vicious.
I understand they're quite violent...Quitevicious, yes.
But by then, over 1,500 raccoons a year had been brought into Japan,
until they eventually banned them.
And they're not suited to domestic life at all.
They released them into the wild in droves, and they're now pests.
About 80% of all temples in Japan
have suffered raccoon-related damage.
The clue was there when he was called Rascal.
Ah, yes. I don't know how that translates in Japanese.
Oh, maybe it means adorable. Cute.
The Japanese name for them is "araiguma",
which means "washing bear",
and it's thought that they wash their food,
because they so often dip it in water
and roll it around in these incredibly dextrous hands.
So they have an incredible sense of touch,
and two thirds of their sensory data comes from touch,
and water is thought to help this tactile ability
to retrieve the information that they're holding.
Why do you think they have a mask?
Why do you think they have that thing around the eyes?
Coronavirus. Yeah, to protect them, yeah.
Yeah. Just, they have it on public transport.
Yeah. They only wear it... Take it off when they get there.
They take it off when they're just walking along. So responsible. Yeah.
They knew about it before we did. Yeah.
But it's on their eyes, rather than... Yeah, they got it wrong.
That's why they're always washing their hands.
They've got an in and out... burrow.
Yeah!
One way. It's one way.
Any thoughts? Dark mask around the eyes.
There's something camouflagy about it.
Well, we're not really sure, but it may reduce glare.
Oh, they do that, the American footballers, don't they?
They put dark...Yeah. Yeah. Yes. ..black under there.
It reduces the glare from the floodlights.
I thought it was just to look mean. Yeah, I thought it was!
"Grrr. "That sort of thing. Yeah! I think it has gone a bit war paint.
But that was the original idea.
The Japanese do have a native population of raccoon dogs,
which are totally unrelated to raccoons, despite their appearance.
And they call them tanuki.
So the one on the right is a raccoon dog
and the one on the left's a raccoon. They are not in any way related.
They're very important in Japanese mythology.
Sometimes outside shops, you see statues of raccoon dogs,
and they... Here are your huge testicles, OK?
Not yours, sorry, I don't know why I... Hold on!
I knew there was a reason I'd been booked for this!
LAUGHTER
Here are your huge testicles!
Ahh!
Who ordered the huge testicles?
What I meant was, huge testicles we talked about on horses.
I can't sit comfortably any more, now you've said that!
So these statues outside shops sport huge testicles,
and... There we are.
And... Unmistakably you, Ed. Yeah, there I am.
There's a children's song and the song goes,
I mean I'm translating roughly here,
"Tan-tan, the tanuki's testicles ring, the wind has stopped blowing.
"But still they swing-swing."
I mean, what child in the world doesn't want to...
Who wouldn't love that? Lovely song. I know!
"Swing, swing." Even with no breeze at all.
Keep on swinging!
Wafting in the wind.
Those testicles are all the better for the fact they move
when there's no wind.
He doesn't look well, does he? He doesn't look well at all.
Constantly horrified by the size of his own testicles.Yeah.
Or just exhausted from dragging them around.
Argh!
Right, moving on.
Name a rock singer who doesn't have a scrotum.
LAUGHTER
Do you like the width and variety of the questions I'm asking?
Yeah! I mean, when I said about the balls earlier on the horse,
everyone was like, "No! Don't be so disgusting!
"Why are you obsessed with talking about scrotums?"
Every question! It's a reoccurring theme! Yes.
Right. What are we going to do next year when it's the S series?
We'll have no scrotums. No scrotums, you'll have run out of scrotums.
Yes!Name a rock singer who doesn't have a scrotum.
Well, Avril Lavigne, Pink?
Yes, darling, quite right!
No boy comes up with this.
Debbie Harry, Janis Joplin, Stevie Nicks...
It does sound like an interview question from 1960s Q magazine.
"Go on, name one rock singer without a scrotum. Go on!"
It isn't an actual rock singer, although it kind of is.
It's a creature called the rock hyrax,
also known as the rock rabbit.
It's found in Africa and in the Middle East.
So the male does not have a scrotum, it keeps its testes in its abdomen.
What it does have is the most fascinating
system of communication, which is communicating through singing.
I'm not surprised, if it's balls are... It must be high pitched!
"Aaah." There's a chorus there, isn't there?Yes!
It's got about 30 syllables that it can do.
Wails and chucks and snorts and squeaks and tweets.
And it turns it into a song that can last several minutes.
And it's a bit like bird song - it's a sort of form of self-advertising.
So you can tell about its size, of its age, its social status,
even its hormonal state, that kind of thing.
So we have a rock hyrax singing.
Please do not think, as soon as you've heard this,
you're going to rush out and get the album,
it's on the edge of disappointing, just going to put it out there.
OK, let's have a listen.
SQUAWKING
Andy Kershaw would play that...
Yeah. ..on the radio.
It's like something written by.
"Now a new one from the rock hyrax."
And he looks so grumpy. Yes, he does.
I was sort of looking for something a bit more romantic, at least.Yeah.
A bit more swingy. Yeah!
That is all to do with having its bollocks stuck in its tummy.
That's nothing to do with singing or its social status.
Yeah, that's why he's so angry. That's, "I want a scrotum!"
It could also be to do with its childhood, I think,
because baby hyraxes have to eat their parents' poo.
Which is, in the long...
They don't have to, come on. Yes, they do have to, darling.
They don't have the necessary bacteria to digest plant stuff,
so, a bit like baby koalas,
the solution is to eat the mother's faeces.
There's got to be another solution.
Get it while it's hot.
Tuck in, kids.
Eat that before it goes cold!
So, a hyrax is about this big.
About that big. And its poo is THIS big!
What would you guess their closest relative to be?
Meerkat.
Yeah, you would think that, but it's not that.
Well, it's not their parents, if they're making them do that.Yeah.
That's upset you, hasn't it? Yeah! It's just not on.No.
You'd think they could just have a yoghurt or something.Yeah.
Yeah, something with friendly bacteria. Yeah!
Yeah, that would be much more civilised.
The nearest relative to a hyrax? Pick an animal.
Is it a dog? Mouse, rat, cat, dog, raccoon?
Huge... Huge.
Elephant?Elephant. Tiger? An elephant?! No, an elephant?
Elephants and sea cows, or manatees.
They share a fairly recent common ancestor.
This is going to come up in a couple of years' time.
"When science got it wrong." Yes.
LAUGHTER
"Can you believe we ever thought these three things were related?"
One geneticist, one wrong... Rogue geneticist.
One drunk geneticist...
Yeah! "I'll have that one, that one and that one!"
That seems right...Can I just say that I think the Elves
were a little bit drunk because I said what was the common ancestor
and they did a picture for me. Just have a look at this.
This is their view of what the common ancestor looked like.
LAUGHTER
Elephants and hyraxes have certain characteristics which they share.
So elephants don't have scrotums -
they keep their testes near their abdominal cavity, near the kidneys.
I thought you were going to say in a suitcase, or something.
I thought they are meant to have their scrotums outside,
to keep the testes cooler,
because otherwise the sperm doesn't produce properly.
Humans keep them outside for that reason, but elephants don't. Oh.
Both have tusks, and instead of claws,
they have the same flattened hoof-like nails that elephants do.
So if you look at the feet of the hyrax, they're sort of sweet...
They look like they've got slippers on.Yes!
Actually, look at the ends of the flippers on the manatee,
or the dugong. Yes.It has a similar sort of look to it, doesn't it?
Yes.And both female hyraxes
and female elephants have a pair of teats near their armpits.
I beg your pardon? I know, it's not pleasant, is it?
"Tuck in kids, help yourselves!"
After you've had your shit!
Yeah! "Eat your shit first!"
Then you can have milk.
Now it's time for the relentless rat-race that is General Ignorance,
so fingers on buzzers please. Ooh.
What does Allen's swamp monkey use its tail for?
I'm not answering that.
Well, that would be good if...
Dangling from trees. Dangling from trees?
KLAXON SOUNDS
No. So, it can't swing from trees or dangle from trees.
Why not? It's a fish.
There's a picture of it, right in front of you!
It's in the water, could be a fish. It's behaving like a fish!
The other one was like an elephant. Why is that not a fish?!
Yes. Er, no...
Its tail is not prehensile - it's not able to grasp anything.
So the tail would need to be prehensile
if you're going to swing through a tree.
So there are different monkeys.
There are Old World monkeys and New World monkeys,
and the swamp monkey is an Old World monkey,
so, native to Africa and Asia.
And the New World monkeys are in the Americas.
Most Old World monkeys do have tails,
but the tail is not prehensile - it's mainly for balance.
So only New World monkeys, the ones from the Americas,
have prehensile tails and can grab things
and swing through the trees.
In fact, we can have a look at a New World monkey.
There we are. Ah!
Look at that, it's astonishing, isn't it? Yeah.
So monkeys from the Americas can do that, but African monkeys can't?
No, they don't have that ability with the tail, to grab things.
There are lots of creatures that do have prehensile tails, so...
But why? Why, Ed?
Why not give them that gift? I don't know.
They can't hang from... I could have sworn I've seen them doing that.
You think it's a conspiracy?
Well, I'm trying to think of the monkeys in London Zoo.
They're neither here nor there. They're in London.
They're not... Yeah, they're... They're London monkeys, right?
They're the London monkeys. Yes. They're big city monkeys.
Yeah, they're just very chilled.
Yeah. They've got controlled parking zones.
There are lots of creatures with prehensile tails.
There's seahorses and anteaters, harvest mice,
the tree pangolin.
And there are also creatures with extraordinary things.
So creatures with prehensile lips.
Rhinos have that.
Harvest mice have the prehensile tail.
Cats have prehensile claws, so they can grab and grasp things.
The giraffe, if you have a look, has got a prehensile tongue.
Oh, yes. Yes!
But most extraordinary,
and I'm not going to look at Ed as I say this,
tapirs have prehensile penises.
Yes, I knew someone was going to have one! Ed.
Me too. There's no way...
No way, with all the evolution that's gone on,
someone was going to get one.
As soon as we finish here, I'm going to swing home.
What do they do with it?
Yeah, why did that make them survive?They stay...
When you're watching the telly and you can't reach the snacks!
Before the remote was invented.
It keeps them coupled.
Put the Nachos a bit nearer. Oh, I see! It keeps them coupled?Yeah.
Yeah. Like barbs on foxes.
Yes, or the pig, which has a corkscrew penis.
There's a... I know.
Yeah, you have to get one pig and then spin the other pig into it.
Yes!I think even worse than that, well, for me anyway,
the leaf beetle larvae, they have prehensile anuses, OK?
It's like a sort of anal turret, and what they can do is,
they can build shields out of poo on their backs.
And they place each piece of poo on their backs
and it becomes this sort of growing structure,
and they can even move it slightly.
I'm just pleased for them that they don't know that's weird.
Yeah. If they had any sort of consciousness
that they were shitting on their own backs,
and nobody else was doing that...
Yeah!
"I've got an anal turret. Why? I could have had a prehensile cock!"
I could have had massive bollocks like Ed Gamble!
Right, moving on.
What should you call this if you are in Wales?
FROG CROAKS
Yes, Ed? Rarebit.
KLAXON SOUNDS
Cheese on toast. Yeah.
No, so it's been around since the 1500s,
but the idea of calling it Welsh rarebit comes in in 1785.
It's a corruption of Welsh rabbit, which you find much earlier.
You find that in 1725.
So, according to Fowler's English Usage, in 1926,
"Welsh rabbit is amusing and right.
"Welsh rarebit is stupid and wrong."
I like a dictionary that just tells you straight out how things are.
Why have you put up a picture of the moon?
Yes, that's a large picture of the moon.
But it's possible they were making a joke at the Welsh's expense,
which is mean, isn't it? Oh, that is mean.
So I've been asking for Welsh rarebit
and it turns out I've been offensive, right?
Offensive, yeah. To say "Welsh" in the Middle Ages was a slur -
it sort of meant fake or poor or foreign,
and there were lots of stereotypical jokes
about the Welsh love of cheese.
Right, speaking of rabbits, let's go back to the moon.
Can you name a star that is the same size as the new moon?
A star that is the same size?
Same size as the new moon.
It's a slightly trick question.
Yes.
Well, the stars are massive.
OK.
At the time of recording, the planet Earth has acquired a new moon.
It's a tiny asteroid, which we think has been circling
the Earth for about three years.
It's known as 2020 CD3,
and it's somewhere between 1.9m and 3.5m in diameter.
So it's about the same size as Richard Osman,
this, this... Object.
That's our star, that's our star, that I was trying to say.
Good idea for what to do with Richard Osman.
A star that is the same size as the new moon -
has this not made space news, this?
Well, I think one of the challenges
is what do you define as a moon? Ah, OK.
We've had lots of things on this show, when we...
Oh, we've had so many moons, honestly.
Yes, right. How many moons would you say the Earth has?
And we have variously said there are two,
which include Cruithne, a co-orbital body of the sun.
Yes. I can remember Rich Hall sitting in that very chair saying,
"It's called THE moon."That's it!
We've had many moons, as an answer, because of the small asteroids.
Yes.And we've had no moons at all, because, in fact,
the moon and the Earth are twin planets.
Yeah, because the moon is so large, it could be like a binary system,
and not actually sort of seen as a separate...Right.
So if we were to ask the question, how many moons
would you say the Earth has, what would your answer be?
Yes, as a self-certified lunatic,
I'll say there's only one moon and it's the best. Boom!
Yeah, yeah. I'm with that.
What do you think Ed? I love that answer. Yeah, one moon.
Yeah. Yeah.Yeah, we don't want to muck about.
I know. One moon and one Osman.
You could call anything a moon,
because there's no cut-off on the size of a moon.
As astronomers, we're a bit namby-pamby really.
We only recently defined planets.
I mean, we...Yes, because poor Pluto lost out, didn't it?
Yes, well you see, that's it!Yeah. Pluto was a planet for ages,
then someone went, "Sorry, mate. You're a dwarf planet."
Yeah. Is that because it's just gases?
No, no, it's actually a solid rock.
Oh. But it's not big enough?
It's actually smaller than our moon.
Oh, really? Yes.
It's probably the size of Wales. That's what people say, isn't it?
Yeah, everything's the size of Wales.Yeah.
Especially Wales.
There's a suggestion from the Elves, which I think you'll like, Alan,
that you get 20 restorative points
to make-up for all the previous moon questions
that you've suffered on QI.
Does that... Now we've had an expert tell us there's just the one.
Yeah. Well, as an opening offer, I'd like to go back...Oh, right!
Right, thanks to Maggie we finally know how many moons the Earth has.
At least till we move the goalposts again.
All of which lunar lunacy brings us to the
hair-raising business of the scores.
So over the moon, in first place, with minus five,
it's Maggie!
CHEERING
In second place, with minus nine, Tom!
Oh.
In third, even following the restorative points,
you've got minus 16, Alan.
APPLAUSE
And in last place, not a happy bunny at all I would imagine.
No. With minus 17, it's Ed.
Yeah.
CHEERING
So, my thanks to Maggie, Ed, Tom and Alan.
I leave you with this quote from the High Times Encyclopaedia
of Recreational Drugs.
"A drug is a substance that, when injected into a rat,
"produces a scientific paper."
Goodnight.