APPLAUSE
Hello, and welcome to QI,
for a show all about animals beginning with T.
Let's meet our beastly panel.
An absolute terrier, Jason Manford.
Hello!
Turtley awesome, it's Desiree Burch.
T'mightest of 'em all, it's Hannah Waddingham.
And a pterodactyl who needs a P,
it's Alan Davies.
And their buzzers are all T animal noises.
We've got a toad for Jason.
TOAD RIBBITS
Hannah's got a turkey.
TURKEY GOBBLES
Desiree's a tiger.
TIGER ROARS
And Alan's got a tit.
BUZZER: Hello, I'm Piers Morgan.
APPLAUSE
Right, question number one.
How would you cheat in a turtle race?
Oh, easy.
Wheelies on the bottom.
OK, that is exactly right.
CHEERING
What?!
1974, Britain hosted the world turtle racing championships, OK?
It was a surprisingly big deal.
The chairman of the New World International Turtle Track Commission
was a man called Cutler Jissom.
LAUGHTER
He didn't pronounce it that, though, did he?
It's JAYssom.
JIssom. JIssom. Actually.
Anyway, he said of the event,
"Turtle racing stood on the verge of becoming a mass sport."
OK, so there were over 200 competitors
from nine different countries,
and the occasion was slightly sullied
when the winning turtle turned out to have been
placed on a toy car and mechanically propelled.
LAUGHTER
Yes! Wow.
The other way you could cheat in a turtle race
is if you dust your turtle with the insecticide DDT...
Oh, no! Mm.
..it sends the turtle's ticks into an absolute biting frenzy,
they bite like crazy and the turtle goes, "Ah!"
God. That's my impression of a turtle racing.
Very good. Very accurate.
I was thinking a piece of lettuce on a massive long arm.
OK, I'm going to give you a point for that
because that is how a lot of turtle racing was done.
They used to have a stick with a cabbage, you're absolutely right.
Usually the turtles were riderless,
sometimes they had riders. What?
Oh, my God, those poor little things.
The things we did before Netflix.
But there's a very famous photograph of Walter Rothschild.
There's the stick with the cabbage on it.
I was thinking of attaching it to his head.
OK. But instead put a whole man on top of him
and then make him go, that's safe. It's not just any man.
Walter Rothschild was heir to one
of the greatest banking fortunes in history,
and he had the largest private zoological collection,
and this was his Galapagos tortoise named Rotumah,
and when he acquired him in 1897,
he was reputed to be the oldest and largest tortoise in the world,
thought to be 150 years old,
and he used to like to ride him around like this.
Rotumah was described as "a most erotic and savage individual".
He died after two years in England over sexual over-excitation.
Oh, God!
Anyway, I had a thought, Jason. Oh, yeah?
Which is, could you recreate the picture for us?
LAUGHTER
Because you, Jason, are both erotic and savage.
Well, I am, to be fair. I've got about two years left in me.
OK, let's have a look. We've got a stick.
Right, OK. I've got the hat.
Is this your finest moment?
This is the moment my dad means
when he says I've not got a proper job.
Oh, here we go, I've got the, er...
..and I'm just going to climb on here...
Oh, yeah. Oh, look!
History, ladies and gentlemen, history!
APPLAUSE
That actually does look quite fun.
Yeah. Do you want to have a go?
No, I don't.
I've actually got a pet tortoise. He's not that size, obviously,
he's this big, he's called Flash.
When we got it, my mum said, "They live a long time, you know."
I said, "I know. When I got it, the pet shop owner said 'You've got to include it in your will.'"
My mum said, "You're pulling my leg". I said, "I'm not."
She said, "What are you going to leave it?"
I quite like the idea of bringing back turtle racing.
Al Capone, he used to have a lot of speakeasys in the 1930s,
he brought 5,000 turtles that he was going to do turtle racing
in the speakeasy, and it didn't work out for him,
so he released them all into the street at the same time.
Can you imagine waking up nearby and going,
"I didn't even have a drink. What the hell is happening?"
Just more interesting times, weren't they?
The Kentucky Derby has been delayed twice. Once in 1945 by...?
War. War, and once in 2020?
Pandemic. Pandemic, and each...
Doesn't stop the horses running, though, does it?
"Are the horses ill? No. Get them out, then."
Each time, the Kentucky Derby has been substituted
by the Kentucky Turtle Derby,
known as "the eight slowest minutes in sport."
Not the same track, then?
LAUGHTER
Sun goes down, they all have a kip. Comes up again, off.
Difference between a tortoise and a turtle?
Is it not like one goes in the water and one doesn't?
Tortoises are a kind of turtle
distinguished by living on land, so that's fair.
Ah, that's what I meant.
Tortoises would drown, wouldn't they, if you put them in the bath?
Yes.
I knew that's what'd happened.
LAUGHTER
"It's drowned!" "It's asleep."
"It's drowned! It's in the bottom of the bath!"
And tortoises are mostly vegetarian.
Can I just ask a question? Why in the turtle racing
does there need to be a person on top of the turtle?
Cos humans are arseholes, essentially,
and they want to dominate the animal.
Yes!
When you go to the car show and there's the car and someone says,
"You know what we need to do? We need to put a girl on top of it."
"Ah, now it looks like a good car."
This turtle needs a girl on the top.
JASON: MiSHELL.
Wahey!
APPLAUSE
And SHELLey! Michelle and Shelley, yes!
Which brings me to the fact that if you stick your turtle on a toy car,
it'll help you accSHELLerate.
CHEERS, GROANS, AND APPLAUSE
Now, what's the trademark trick of a horny toad?
Do you want toad sex jokes? Is that what we're after?
You know the difference between a horny toad and a regular toad,
don't you? No.
A regular told says "ribbit",
a horny toad says "RUB it".
I'm not thinking about sex, I'm thinking about auto-haemorrhaging.
It's slightly complicated. Come on.
It's called a horny toad, or a horny frog,
but it's actually a lizard,
and it has this way of defending itself against predators.
It can squirt blood from its eyes, five feet, OK,
and it contains an absolutely foul-tasting chemical.
So this toad was rescued by a perfectly nice man
who took this photograph.
He was rescuing it from traffic
and it then did the blood-squirty thing.
Wait till you see this... Oh, good God.
Yeah, it's going to repel a dog.
Just check it out.
It's not really repelling anything. If anything, the dog's just going,
"Oh, you dirty bastard!"
You find these creatures in the desert, North and Central America.
But they're becoming endangered
because there's just not enough for them to eat.
They eat huge quantities of ants.
So, for example, a Texas horned toad,
which isn't a toad, it's a lizard, but that's what they're called,
needs 70-100 ants a day.
There's one there. This is getting more rank by the minute.
Trust me, wait till we get on to some of the other toads.
My lord. They can't get enough ants any more, and that is because
they imported South American fire ants accidentally,
on pot plants, and they basically got rid of all the native ants.
And so the poor creatures can't get enough to eat,
and you now have to have a special permit
if you want to keep one of these creatures as a pet.
They used to be really popular as pets.
And the other thing they do, apart from the blood thing,
some of them can blow their bodies up twice the size.
Now, why would you do that?
I've been doing that, sustained over the last two years.
Is it so a snake can't eat it? It is.
I don't know how I found that out.
Other animals that defend themselves by hurling body
parts at attackers include... Let's have a quick look.
Hurling body parts. So, the turkey vulture.
What do you reckon they do to deter intruders?
That's the one on the left.
What about, they've got such a big wingspan, just pow! Round the face?
Yeah, that would do it.
Or do they pretend they've got a dog?
Just before the open the door they say, "Down, boy! Down, boy!
"Back off! There's someone at the door."
No, they projectile vomit.
They can projectile vomit up to ten feet towards an attacker.
Oh, my lord. That's worse than the blood. Isn't it?
And I would not want to date one of these.
They also defecate on their own feet to cool off.
Excellent. Wow.
We should try it. Who knows? I haven't tried it.
It might be excellent. It's good for athlete's foot as well.
Athletes don't shit on their own feet, do they? Yeah.
I want to know which turkey vulture did it first. Oh, yeah.
One did it first and then they go,
"What? you've shit on your feet there!" Yeah. Yeah.
"It's roasting. It's roasting in here." "Yeah, it feels lovely."
The Eurasian Roller bird -
Their babies throw up all over themselves,
so that they're less appealing as a snack.
And even the parents find the smell off-putting.
Are we not sort of assuming that?
There seems a lot of assumption there that the bird has got
enough about it to go, "I don't want to get eaten, so I'll vomit."
Is it not just like a baby vomiting on itself and then
we've just gone, "That's because he doesn't want to get eaten?"
No, it's because it is a baby. It's brand-new.
If David Attenborough says so, then that's always good for me.
Yeah, I think if Dave says...
I withdraw. The prosecution rests.
The last one on the right, Does anyone know what that is?
That's a wig! Well, yes.
It's been blown into a tree, off a celebrity's head.
Who is the celebrity?
It does look a bit like it's the top of Donald Trump's head,
but it's called a Puss Moth.
Of course it is. Yeah.
And they are common throughout the British Isles,
and what they do is they shoot formic acid vapour at predators.
They've got two horns at the end of their tails.
They have them when they're caterpillars,
they have them when they're moths.
And it's the same venom that bees use,
it's the same venom that lots of ants use.
So Formica, the Latin for ant... Table tops!
Yeah, but here is a funny thing, Alan.
So, "mica" is the Latin for "ant", right? Yes. But the table tops...
This is one of these weird things that I know about
the British language. There used to be an insulation...
I mean, it still exists, but it was very expensive, called Mica.
And the person who wanted to replace it with something cheaper made
something called "for-Mica" so that it has nothing to do with ants.
It was to replace Mica.
So we have these two words. Instead of? Instead of.
Yeah, exactly, instead of.
I love things like that, Sandi Toksvig!
Yes, it's so weird, isn't it?
Now for a question about real toads.
OK, can I give a phobia alert here? And to everybody in the audience,
if you are a trypophobe and fear clusters of small holes,
OK, and it is a thing, I need you to look away now.
So you've all heard of toad in the hole,
but how do you explain the holes in this toad?
Is that someone's shoe that went on it?
BLOWS RASPBERRY
Looks like it's outside a Wetherspoons on a Friday night.
There's a lot of... A lot of stilettos have walked over that.
They look more like seeds,
like I would say that's an everything toad,
instead of just the sesame seed
or the cinnamon raisin, it's got all the things on. It's a multi.
Yeah, turn it over, schmear cream cheese.
Is that splatted? It is always like that, this particular toad.
I'll tell you that Desiree's onto the right track.
It is a kind of seed,
as it were. Is it a sexy seed?
Oh! Well, it depends...
It is when you say it!
It depends, I mean, it comes from sex...
Is that the little tadpoles? Is that how they carry the babies?
That is how they carry their babies. All of the babies.
Ugh. I know.
That toad is immediately losing
all of its baby weight, the minute they're gone.
It's like, "Yeah, look at all my holes now."
The new mother doesn't just lose her baby weight,
she loses all her skin and gets a brand-new skin,
which I think... Oh, excellent! How cool is that?
So the way they have sex, I don't know why nobody's ever
made a porn film of this, cos it's fascinating.
Mating can last up to 30 hours,
and bear in mind, they don't have access to films...
LAUGHTER
It's just elbow grease and determination.
So the male grabs the female from behind...
Yeah, he does. Yeah.
Inside voice.
So what happens is the male grabs the female from behind,
they do loop-the-loops underwater
while he massages her abdomen to squeeze the eggs out.
Eventually she lays about 50 to 100 eggs,
which he catches on his belly,
he fertilises them and then he sticks them onto her back, OK?
And what hour are we at when the sticking comes?
Are they doing loop-the-loop for five, six hours?
She's like that, she's like, "Seriously,
"I don't even know your name any more."
She's coming down there like,
"No, Mark, I can feel you're putting them on wrong.
"There's too many on this side. Over here."
"I wanted the horny toad!"
Another skin grows around it for about three to four months
and then... Oh, crikey. Just be ready for this, OK,
before they emerge as complete toadlets.
So, basically, they squeeze themselves
through tiny holes in her back skin.
So one comes out for every hole? It's not just like... Yes.
Yeah. Oh, my God.
LAUGHTER
Oh, Desiree's going to be sick.
Oh, that's gross.
Do you know that when toads are sick, OK, which they are sometimes,
it's called gastric aversion. If they eat something toxic,
they expel their entire stomach from their mouth,
inside out, rub it clean with their hands,
and pop it back in again.
You wonder how any of them get laid.
Let's take a look at the toadlets coming out of the skin.
JASON: No, I don't want to.
Yeah, you do. Is this an actual...?
HANNAH GAGS
Incredible.
Oh, my God.
We could have put some lovely music on.
I think they're all going, "Kill people!"
"Kill people." "Brains!"
"Must kill people."
And then they get out and go, "People are enormous!"
"Oh, shit!"
"Form coalition to kill people!"
Would you like to know a surprising trick
to get endangered Puerto Rican crested toads to produce semen?
Oh, yes. I would.
Always. Yeah.
It's what we need in our lives.
OK. So they needed to try and see if they could save the population.
Now, these particular toads, they release sperm in their urine
and they usually pee when they're picked up
but there were ones that didn't do that,
and they are endangered and we need to do something about it.
The scientists discovered
if you hold one of these little frogs in your hand
and you look at them and you bark like a dog,
they pee straight away.
Out of fear? I was going to say, cos they're terrified?
I don't know how... Perhaps they're just kinky frogs.
The project was completely successful.
300 toads were hatched from the frozen sperm.
The first one was called Olaf, anybody, why?
Frozen. Frozen...
..from the movie Frozen. That's so cute.
And look, there's the... Oh, my gosh!
Woof! You didn't think you'd get an "Aw" over tiny frogs. Woof!
There you are.
Put that in the freezer.
Let me get this straight, so they...
..woof, they go, "Ah!"... Yes. ..piss themselves... Yes.
..and then... Collect the sperm. ..spunky monkey? And make...
Chunky Monkey is an ice cream.
Spunky monkey is something else. Is it? Yes!
But the thing about the dog barking,
so I was once in a place called Calaveras County in...
ALAN BARKS
I can do about four breeds. Sorry.
I was once in Calaveras County in California...
JASON: Come here, boy!
..and they have an annual frog-jumping competition,
and I went along and said,
"I don't have a frog but can I still take part?"
Is that you in your costume? That is me.
And it's bullfrogs, and they just lend you a bullfrog.
Love a bullfrog.
You put your hand in a bucket,
you pull it out and hold it under the forearms,
and they stretch out like this, about eight inches or so.
This is the mascot of Calaveras County, called Ribbit.
And that particular frog is fantastic.
Anyway, what you do is you have three goes to stand behind your frog
and make it leap, and whoever gets it to leap the furthest,
and you do it by barking like a dog.
The world record is held by Rosie the Ribiter.
Yeah!
But they do jump like bastards, don't they? Yes, they're amazing.
My frog did not move, not an inch.
Did you bark like a very small dog?
I don't know what I did wrong. I think I was too Pekingese.
I needed to go a bit more Alsatian, I think was the problem.
What's the most unusual thing you would find inside a tiger shark?
Oh!
TIGER ROARS
Um, a grizzly bear.
Well, I... That's one we hadn't thought of, so...
In Jaws, when they open the shark up in Jaws,
it had all sorts in it. Yes. Like a bike.
Yes, and a number plate and... Yeah.
OK, and that is... ..Nicholas Parsons and...
LAUGHTER
I mean, really, they will just swallow anything.
Is this going to be sad, where it's like,
oh, they swallowed all of our trash?
No, so, you're all right in a way,
because they're called the trash cans of the sea. Oh!
And when you look inside a tiger shark, you find incredible things.
There's a fantastic display, here it is,
at the California Academy of Sciences.
A Barbie doll, licence plate,
they have found whole turtles in there...
A shoe! ..a tin of spam.
There is even footage, and this is my favourite,
of a tiger shark swallowing a video camera
which continues to record... Oh! Nice! Fabulous. Nice.
..inside the shark. So here is the shark
actually ingesting video camera. Oh, my God.
JASON: Wow. Oh, my gosh.
"Well, that looks tasty." "I'll have that!" Jesus.
Oh!
DESIREE: Now that shark is an influencer.
LAUGHTER
With three million followers!
So what did they do then? Did they Wi-Fi it and download it?
How did they get the footage?
Did someone have to reach in and get the...?
"I just need the card!"
"I'm just going to get the card out of it!"
"Don't be ridiculous, it'll bite your arm off!"
"I'm going to get the card if it kills me."
"It might!" "Going to be on QI!"
"Just tempting it. I've got a lettuce in my other hand."
I wish you would do the next Blue Planet.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
In the Gulf of Mexico,
the different species of shark take shifts to eat.
Beg your pardon? They take shifts...
LAUGHTER
Shifts. They take shifts to eat,
so that they kind of don't get in each other's way.
So who do you think gets the best shift in the Gulf,
of all the sharks?
JASON: The great white shark, is that...?
No, it's a tiger shark. Oh, it is the tiger shark.
Because if you don't let him have what he wants,
he'll... He'll eat you. ..eat you. Absolutely.
I was going to say, are there ever sharks in sharks? Yes. Yeah.
There are sharks inside sharks, so... Like Russian dolls.
Like a babushka. It's a way of claiming territories.
One of the really sad things is that there are more and more
unusual things in the sea now for tiger sharks to eat
which really shouldn't be there.
There are eight million new pieces of plastic in the ocean
every single day. And...
Looks like he's going shopping! Well...
Well, with all the plastic, you know Ellen MacArthur,
the sailor and environmentalist? She has predicted
that there could be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.
The great white shark also has a reputation as a tremendous glutton,
and there was a naturalist in the 16th century
called Guillaume Rondelet, and he claimed that a great white
had once been opened up and found to have swallowed
an entire knight, complete in his suit of armour.
Don't you want it to be true? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Wow.
I read a story about, that in Australia now,
there's sharks that actually can use their fins
to walk on the bottom of the sea,
so they can actually move and actually walk on the land.
Imagine, you're like getting chased by one and then you think,
"Oh, nice one, I'm on the beach," and then it gets out after you!
Was it an Australian that told you that?
You know what they're like. Yeah, yeah. When I think about it...
My wife and I went to Australia
and we want to see some emus in a wildlife park
and they said, "Now, look," excuse the accent, Aussies...
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: "If they come at you, they can be aggressive.
"Put your arm up."
LAUGHTER
"Put your arm up. Act like an emu, they'll back right off."
And they... Obviously, that's bollocks.
But they find it hilarious, when tourists get nervous
and they start going like that!
"Help, help!"
What is the most terrifying noise that you can't hear?
TURKEY GOBBLES
Your breasticles just gently drooping over time.
SHE CREAKS
You wake up and you're like, "When did that happen?!"
A scary noise I heard recently
was rhubarb growing. What?!
Yeah, rhubarb grows and it makes, like, a noise.
What, like a squeaking? Like a... HE CREAKS
Are you sure that wasn't her breasts?
Was that just me?
Are you just being nice?
"Hannah, Hannah!
"I can hear the rhubarb growing!"
So when a tiger roars or growls,
let's have a sound of a tiger... TIGER ROARS
..it also emits sounds at a frequency
lower than the human ear can detect. Is there a thing called infrasound?
It is infrasound, absolutely right. You get an extra point.
Lower? Lower, yes. So we can hear from 20...
Not...
Wow, how high can you go? That was...
Probably that.
We can hear from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz
and anything below this range is infrasound,
and tigers can generate a sound of 18 Hz,
so we can't hear it but we can feel it, OK?
So the sound is just below our hearing range but it still affects us,
it particularly affects those areas that are responsible for emotion,
and unconscious bodily functions like...
Silent but deadly farts.
Heart rate... "Just done one at 15 Hz."
But it affects the things that you can't really control,
so your heart rate and urination.
I just listened to this podcast,
Uncanny on BBC Sounds,
and there was an episode of that
where they're talking about this Room 611 in Belfast,
where people are terrified, it was just a scary room
where there was ghosts and paranormal activity,
but what the scientists said is the lift emits this infrasound
at such a low frequency, you can't actually hear it
but it just makes you... It's like the sound of fear,
like, it's fearful. That's why you feel weird.
So, you know, sick building syndrome, you hear about that,
and again, some people think now that that may be infrasound,
so it's like the ventilation system
is emitting a sound that you can't quite hear
but you can absolutely feel it
and it can induce a sense of dread, a sense of nausea.
Cars generate infrasound.
But it's key to communication between rhinos,
and between elephants, and your favourite, the whales,
because, of course, this kind of sound can travel so much further,
that's the whole point of it.
Elephants can detect vibrations through their feet
and they have been shown to start walking
towards the infrasound of a thunderstorm
that is 150 miles away because they want to get to the water.
Wow. That's amazing.
Incredible. I know, it is beautiful.
And also infrasonic growls,
not just made by animals,
there is a human who can make this noise, too.
OK, there's a guy called... Brian Blessed.
LAUGHTER
There's a guy called Tim Storms, he's an American voiceover artist,
and he has a vocal range of ten octaves.
He holds the world... Wow. No!
..world record for the lowest musical note ever sung.
So in 2012, he sang a G eight octaves lower
than the lowest G on a piano, OK?
Wow. This is him speaking.
LOW VOICE: This is the voice of Tim Storms.
Nice to meet you.
OK, so this is a little treat.
ALAN BLOWS RASPBERRY
Just did one at about 30 Hz. Uh-huh.
OK. You are definitely going to do something involuntary
because he does a lot of movie trailers, Alan...
Does he? ..and he has done the honour
of recording a trailer for us.
You watch this if you dare.
DRAMATIC MUSIC
In a world where everything you think you know is wrong...
..one man stands alone
against the forces of ignorance.
Alan Davies
is Alan Davies
in QI.
The answer is never "blue whale".
APPLAUSE
Rated R. Terms and conditions apply.
QI is not responsible for lost points. Watch at your own risk.
That was great. That's pretty cool!
DESIREE: That's pretty amazing.
That's very cool!
Has that made you feel a bit funny?
Yeah.
Aw, thank you very much to Tim. Amazing.
How do you think a tadpole tastes?
With its little tongue.
KLAXON
Oh! Hey!
APPLAUSE
Yes!
A little bit froggy, a little bit rubbery?
I like frogs' legs. Anybody like frogs' legs? Hell, no.
Don't they taste like chicken? Don't they say frogs taste like chicken?
KLAXON
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I think you should keep the hat. Looks good on you.
1971, the scientists at the University of Notre Dame,
they published a study into the palatability of live tadpoles.
Now, they managed to get a group of students to eat tadpoles
by bribing them with beer. Who thought that would work?
Um, like, anyone who's ever met a college girl.
I bet they taste better than all the swimmers I've had in my mouth. Hey!
LAUGHTER
I'll tell you that much.
APPLAUSE
So, the volunteers, there were 11 volunteers,
were given specific instructions
about how long to hold the tadpoles in their mouth
and how to chew. They were told not to swallow.
They were told to spit them out, OK, afterwards.
Anyway, you'll be wanting to know the result. Of course.
Cane toad tadpoles are the worst tasting.
Now, why might you try and discover
which of the tadpoles are the worst tasting?
JASON: Er, Ant and Dec told you.
Well, it turns out that our sense of taste is surprisingly similar
to spiders and to frogs and to lizards and birds and so on,
so if it tastes disgusting to us,
it probably tastes disgusting to a tadpole predator.
And what they discovered was that cane toad tadpoles
are the worst tasting but they are also the most vulnerable.
Mm. Cos they appear in highly visible swarms,
they practically swim into nets.
The tastiest tadpoles
were the well camouflaged and hard to catch tree frog tadpoles.
No need to develop an unpleasant taste. No need, yes. No need at all.
Absolutely. No-one can see them anyway.
So there are 11 students who took part in this test
but only, in the end, there were nine... Survived! Two...
LAUGHTER
Nine survived!
No, two were such heavy smokers
they couldn't taste it anything at all, so they...
That'll do it. And it matters whether they taste good or not
because apparently, cane toad tadpoles
do taste good to other cane toad tadpoles,
so there's an awful lot of cannibalism.
And this is not, I have to tell you, a cane toad tadpole.
It's a spadefoot toad tadpole.
Apparently getting a picture of a cane toad tadpole
eating another one is not as easy as you might think.
LAUGHTER
The male Darwin frog puts his offspring in his mouth,
but not to eat them. That's how he keeps them safe.
It's a parenting technique. That's so cute!
I mean, unless he gets the hiccups and he's like, "Oh... Just...
"Tell her there were only five in there!"
Every now and then... "Oh, no." "Oh, no."
I've lost Jeff! Yeah!
Now, what does a really big tadpole turn into?
JASON: Female. DESIREE: A really big bully.
No, so the thing is, it may just stay as a tadpole.
So some of them don't turn into frogs or toads or whatever,
they just stay as tadpoles forever.
JASON: Really? They get really big.
Wow! Oh, my God.
So this one is Goliath, ten inches, discovered in 2018.
It never, ever metamorphosed into a frog.
Can I just say, the person who gave us this picture
was at pains for us to understand
that this tadpole was not harmed during the measuring
and went on to live a very happy life in an aquarium,
eating algae for the next two years
before passing away from natural circumstances, OK?
With its nose stuck against a pencil. Yes.
Now, moving on.
A tapir walks into a pub.
What does the barman ask him?
"Why the long face?"
KLAXON
I mean, it was there, it was there.
I actually get a sense of achievement when that happens!
Yeah. Yeah.
So, tapirs, found mostly in South and Central America. In pubs.
Yeah, in pubs, yeah.
They look sort of like a cross between a pig and an anteater
but they're more closely related to the horse and to the rhino.
Oh! Are they?
The question that the... I can't even do this.
The question the barman would ask is, "Why the long penis?"
Yeah.
"Cos I got it like that!"
Oh, you are not wrong, Desiree.
It is 60% of the length of their bodies.
That's so stupid! Wow. Why?!
Just be ready for these pictures, OK?
Are they going to be blurred...?
Jeez! Oh, my God! Ah!
What's the thing on the end?! Yeah, well...
It's so long, it needs to walk on its own. It's disguised as a leg.
JASON: Jesus! Is it, like...?
Yeah, I'm going to explain that.
It's an umbrella feature, kind of.
Oh. So the guy who took this photograph
is a man on Twitter called Will Spencer.
I'm just quoting... He'll be over the moon to be named.
Well, I just want to quote this, it says,
"The highlight of my life was watching a tapir dragging his penis
"along the ground like a third leg."
I just think, is that seriously the highlight?
Surely he means a fifth leg.
Basically, it's not really convenient
to have such a long schlong because...
A long schlong.
You don't want it because there's a lot of swings and misses, right?
There's a lot of...
And then sometimes, apparently, they stand on them...
JASON GROANS
..while they're mating and they scream in pain.
There was a story... No, they tread on it.
They don't actually stand on it.
"O-o-o-o-o-o-oh!
"Look at the tapir, spinning on his cock!
"Spin him, spin him, spin him!"
He goes all the way down
into the ground and then he can't get out again.
"Unscrew me, unscrew me."
"You're not coming to this bar again!"
There was a tapir in a zoo in San Francisco who stood on his penis
and he bruised it so badly that it...
Aw! OK, this is so horrible...
..it fell off and he then ate it.
LAUGHTER
Anyway, they need this very long device because, apparently,
the female has a particularly extensive genital tract.
So this brings me to the umbrella thing,
and just again, going to be a close-up picture, OK?
Oh, God. Yeah.
So these long flaps hang over the end of the penis and they rise...
LAUGHTER
Listen, if you had an extensive genital tract,
you wouldn't be freaked out.
Well, so it rises up horizontally during mating,
so it creates a watertight seal so that they can mate underwater
without... How am I going to put this?
..the relevant fluids being washed away.
The guys.
They also must have to have really amazing lower abdominal muscles,
cos it would be totally new meaning to not being able to get it up,
like, it's so heavy. Yeah.
If you're in the water, it's just floating...
LAUGHTER
Sounds like this comes from experience!
I mean, if yours fell off, you might eat it.
What?
I'd have to find it first.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Anyway, let's come on...
Calling it a bloody umbrella a minute ago,
you've ruined Singin' In The Rain for me.
APPLAUSE
They are extraordinary, the males,
they can spray their urine up to five metres.
God, what is wrong with...? I'm not surprised!
It's like a bloody hose!
It is mad, isn't it, when you think...?
Like, these are the sort of things that make me realise
that there probably isn't a great creator of all animals
and all things because... Unless he was just pissed!
Having a laugh.
"Right, this one, massive cock.
"Sprays pee...
"Come over here, stop getting blood out of that lizard's eyes!"
"This is what we're doing. We're concentrating on this one today."
"God, God, God! He won't be able to keep that up!
"What about his abdominal muscles?"
"He does it underwater!"
"What's water?"
"I've just thought of it, I've just thought of it!"
That's the stuff that's missing from that book. Yep.
LAUGHTER
Look at the babies, though, just look at the babies.
The babies are very cute, they have speckled and striped... Look!
Aw! And the smiley face! That's cute. Yeah.
Cock's already bigger than mine.
LAUGHTER
And with those titillating T animal titbits,
it's time for General Ignorance.
Can you show me how a gorilla beats its chest?
KLAXON
No, not that.
Widespread belief that it does that. How do they do it?
They don't do it with their fists.
With the flats of their hands? Yes, why? Why?
More reverberation. Yeah.
If the palms are open, it is louder,
it also minimises the risk of bruising your chest because
you're just not... Spread it out. ..hitting yourself so hard.
That does actually hurt.
Maybe it's cos they're sinking.
Maybe it's...
"I thought I heard something."
I thought it was rhubarb.
Gorillas use chest-beating to advertise their size,
so large gorillas produce sounds
with a lower frequency than small gorillas
because they've got larger air cavities, a bit like a drum.
A larger drum will make a deeper noise.
And the wonderful thing is that gorillas can't fake the noise.
It's called "honest signal of competitive ability".
So it is a genuine thing, if you beat your chest,
that is how big you are.
I didn't know they wore gloves. Weird.
LAUGHTER
Gorillas beat their chests with their palms, not their fists.
Buzz in when you know which sort of bird this song is about.
# Tweedily-deedily-dee
# Tweedily-deedily-dee. #
Oh. I mean, a robin? Rockin' Robin?
Yes, of course. Rockin' Robin. KLAXON
Rockin' Robin. Yeah, it is. Yeah.
No. So, OK.
Rockin' Robin is about the American robin.
Here is the flaw in the name of the song.
It was named after our robin,
because both birds have that red and orange breast,
but the American robin is actually a thrush.
Oh! Isn't that typical?
You think it's one thing and it turns out to be thrush.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
The two aren't even in the same family.
But the song itself was written by an American song-writer, Leon Rene.
It was released in 1958.
Anybody know where the name
the fungal disease thrush comes from?
Does anybody know why we call it thrush?
Universal silence! Yeah.
No-one wants to be the thrush expert in the room!
OK.
So this is one of my favourite facts.
The person who first isolated the fungus which causes thrush
was called Charles-Philippe Robin.
LAUGHTER
No! Yes. What?!
Isn't that great?
Charlie Robin's fungus isolator. Yes.
Wow. "Whack it in there, I'll soon separate that."
ALAN IMITATES WHIRRING
# Rockin' thrush. # Yeah.
It doesn't really have the same... No. No.
Now, what do storks do with babies?
TOAD RIBBITS They deliver them! They deliver 'em!
KLAXON
Oh!
I can't help myself.
I can't help it, can't help it. It's like a disease!
I must say, Jason, it's lovely having you here.
There's a legend, of course, that they bring people new babies
that suggests that they are very caring birds.
And the amazing thing about this legend, this myth,
is that it's absolutely global.
It appears in folklore in Europe, in the Americas,
in North Africa, in the Middle East,
so despite this, unfortunately, they often kill their own babies.
So you often get, in bird species, you get babies tussling in the nest,
and one falling out and so on, and the strongest survive.
So stork offspring never, ever fight each other,
and the family feeds all the birds exactly the same,
but eventually there's going to be too many, right,
and they're all strong.
And so one of the parents, usually the dad,
just breaks the neck of one
and then will often eat the one they've broken the neck of.
I think people need to start rephrasing it
when they say they're animal lovers. Yeah.
You know, there's some right pricks in there.
Do you know what I mean?
I mean, certainly some big ones. And some big ones, yeah.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Right. What animal guts are made into violin strings?
Oh! Oh, ball sacks.
That's not my answer! I'll take this.
Not cats!
It's cows.
It... Yes! Oh, is it? Really?
Cows. Ta da!
APPLAUSE
So catgut is a cord made from the intestines of animals,
but it is made primarily from sheeps and cows
and has nothing to do with cats.
There's no evidence, in fact, that cats
were ever used for this purpose.
So, a herbivore's intestines
are much longer than those of a carnivore.
So a cow's intestines is 30 times longer than a cat's intestines,
and it could make a catgut string of 160 feet,
which you could then use for strings for musical instruments,
you could use it for tennis racquets,
you could use it for archery bows.
And nobody really knows why it's called catgut.
Maybe it's an abbreviation of cattle. Hmm.
Or it has evolved from kitgut.
So kit is an old word for fiddle.
And certainly, it has been called that right back to the 16th century.
Shakespeare called it catling.
There's a wonderful line in Much Ado
in which he says, "Is it not strange that sheep's guts
"should hale souls out of men's bodies?"
It's beautiful, isn't it? Oh, yes.
Isn't that lovely? Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah.
So much nicer than talking about penises.
Well, hmm.
Yeah, Hannah and I are friends. We don't always agree. Um...
Right, let's see which of our panellists will be gutted tonight
as we look at the scores.
In first place,
trotting into the lead with five points,
this week's winner is Hannah.
Yay!
In second place, with minus five,
it's Desiree!
In third place, with minus 12,
it's Alan!
Thank you very much.
And last place... I rode a tortoise for you.
Yeah. Despite your fine riding,
with minus 47, and the tail...
..and your tail between your legs -
at least, I think that's what it is...
..it's Jason! Yes!
CHEERING
My thanks to Hannah, Jason, Desiree, Alan.
And I leave you with this from the novelist Anita Brookner.
"It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market.
"Hares have no time to read, they're too busy winning the game."
Good night.
APPLAUSE