CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
How lovely!
Very nice! Lovely!
Thank you very much.
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we are nurturing nature,
and our guests are a natural selection.
A natural woman, Cariad Lloyd.
A natural gas, Ross Noble.
A natural resource, David Baddiel.
And a natural disaster, Alan Davies.
And we have a natural selection of buzzers.
Cariad goes...
CICADAS CHIRP
Oh, that's rather pretty, isn't it? Ross goes...
DUCK QUACKS
I went out with somebody like that once.
David goes...
ELEPHANT TRUMPETS
Wow. Alan goes...
MONKEY YELPS
YELPING CONTINUES
SHOTS FIRE AND YELPING CEASES
LAUGHTER
I don't know if that means you can ever press it again.
I'm afraid to in case another one dies. I know!
Question one concerns the most natural noise in the world.
Why do bees hum?
People hum,
I've noticed this, when people are a bit embarrassed.
Oh, right. Because they don't know what to say,
and I wondered if bees did it. Yeah, so, no.
Is it something to do with pollen?
Yes. So it's about finding pollen?
It is to do with pollen.
Is it sending out a vibration?
Absolutely right, absolutely right, that there are bees...
It looked like people were going to applaud, there,
but they weren't sure if they wanted to applaud.
Some bees, not all bees,
Iiterally shake pollen out of flowers
by humming very loudly at them.
Do they? Isn't it astonishing? They hold on to the flower and they beat
their wing muscles phenomenally fast and those rapid muscle contractions
produce forces up to 30G,
so that is about three times what you would get from a fighter jet
making a tight turn. I mean, it's absolutely astonishing.
It's also the reason why they banned sex toys from Kew Gardens.
Because... It's true...
Is that actually in the rule book? "No sex toys"?
That's certainly why I got thrown out!
They got confiscated. Exactly.
HE IMITATES BUZZING
"What are you doing?! We need that pollen."
"I'm sorry, I can't turn it off!"
How big was the sex toy?
That was like a fishing rod!
I don't want to know. She's a very lucky woman, my wife.
But it is incredible,
that thing you can see on their leg there is called a corbicula,
and it is the little basket that they keep the pollen in.
Scientists, they did research, and the best bit of the bee
is its knees. Oh, right.
Shortly followed by the testicles of a dog.
All in science, all in science. No, I'm glad you brought it up.
There is a bee that, when it goes near, it creates, like, electricity.
So, this is an extraordinary thing -
it can also harness electrostatic forces,
so when a bee flies through the air, the friction that it causes,
it causes their bodies to build up a positive charge.
This is incredible - when they get close to the flower,
which usually carries a negative charge,
the grains of pollen literally jump from the plant to the insect.
They learn to distinguish the different electrical fields around
different flowers so they can tell
which plants have nearly been depleted of pollen,
and they don't bother with those. Do they work for npower?
ROSS: You said SOME bees. Yeah.
Some are electric, some acoustic bees? Yes.
There's a wasp in the background going, "Judas!"
And they don't hum, they go... HE HUMS
I'm good in the library...
DAVID: That does sound like...
Dylan obviously sounds like a bee, doesn't he?
ROSS: Yeah. He does.
And that's why, a lot of his gigs, pollen all over him.
HE SINGS
He's got terrible hay fever.
What's extraordinary - there's a recent study
at the Jiangxi Agricultural University in Nanchang in China,
and they attached radio frequency identification tags
to 300 honeybees - look at that! Wow!
That... Seriously, that's dedication, isn't it?
What, so they can control them with a...
They turn them into drones... No. DAVID: What, like an Xbox?
No. They wanted to see how much foraging they did,
and what they discovered, which is extraordinary,
is that they forage in anticipation of a rainy day,
and the weird thing is that they don't actually need
to save for a rainy day.
But they do it anyway
They're just really practical. Fantastically practical!
"I know I don't need to, but you never know!"
Those tiny little helmets they've got on... Yes.
They're little radio identification tags.
So they're like the badges that people wear at conferences. Yes.
Has anybody ever heard bees having sex?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was one of the worst porn films I ever saw.
There it is, in fact. They got kicked out of Kew Gardens for that.
The extraordinary thing is that it makes an audible sound.
It's a very female-centred society - the women do all the work.
I know, Cariad, no change there.
No change. And the drones, the boys -
their sole job is to mate with the queen, and hardly any of them get
a chance to do so, but if you manage to mate with the queen,
once you have done so, your phallus ejaculates from your body,
the whole thing tears off with an audible pop.
CARIAD LAUGHS
"I've finished!"
I think most blokes would think that's worth it.
Well, it actually plugs up the vagina.
That's the whole point - it stops the semen coming back out again.
So all of the drones want to mate with the queen,
but only a very few of them are able to do so.
It's like Beyonce and Jay Z, so many want Queen B -
she chooses one, who lets her down, then she steals his phallus,
and makes an album about it.
She has sex with multiple drones, and then...
Beyonce?! Not Beyonce!
What does she do with all the spare, er...?
The spare?
They get ejected eventually - she gets rid of them.
That must be intimidating -
you go in to see the queen, and they're all on a shelf.
It's not a shelf! It's a dartboard!
"Don't open the door!" Boom!
The bee that's just had sex with her,
he walks out, and there's a big long queue, and then his cock just hits
him on the back of the head.
"Take that with you!"
"Oh, sorry."
But how long do you think they have sex for?
I'm thinking if you know that was going to happen,
you'd be making it last as long...
It's anywhere between ten and 80 minutes.
OK. And sometimes while they're flying,
which must be... That must be, you know...
Is that like the Mile High Club for bees?
"Woohoo! This is better than I imagined... Oh, no!"
"No!"
Now, describe nature's Top Gear.
Nature's drugs?
Oh, is that a thing? Drugs? Gear, you know, your gear, man.
Don't...
"I've got some top gear for ya."
OK, it's not gear in the sense of drugs.
What other kind of gears are there?
In a car. The cogs of something? Yes, yes, yes.
Nature is full of tremendous wonders,
and nothing I think more wonderful
than the immature planthopper, or a nymph and gears.
Now, you can't really tell, cos it's a massive picture,
but they're only three millimetres long...
I'm really glad that's a massive picture.
They tend on the whole to move very slowly, cos they don't want to
attract attention, which is really sweet,
but they are able to jump up to one metre from a standing start.
So, that is 300 times their own body length.
Imagine if it was me,
I would be able to jump, from a standing start, a third of a mile.
I'd love to see that.
And now, the thing is, if you jump that far,
and you don't get your timing spot on,
you spiral out of control, so they have little, tiny,
tiny gears, that enable them to synchronise their legs
within 30 millionths of a second.
You can see here, the top of each hind leg has a circular set
of minute teeth, and just before takeoff, the insect's thighs,
they squeeze together.
You can see they're kind of ratcheting up,
causing the teeth to mesh like gears, and the legs are then locked
together, and then they can thrust off like that in perfect unison.
That's amazing!
It's amazing, but it looked like CCTV of it,
so I wonder if it had committed a crime.
"Seen fleeing the scene!"
In 2011 in Papua New Guinea, they found a weevil
whose legs are screwed into the body, and...
That's such a phallus sticking out. It is, isn't it?
I'm really struggling with everything else on the screen.
You could take the front legs off while it was sleeping,
put it on the back...
Interchangeable - "I want that one."
Yes, but...
..why do you think they might do this? It takes its legs off?
No, it doesn't take them off... It tightens them.
It tightens them, so it can pull along the length of the leg
in order to make it rotate in its socket.
So they can rotate the back legs 130 degrees,
and get a better grip. Wow!
Or they can rotate the front 90 degrees and get a better grip.
Why haven't we evolved to do that? Because you'd get drunk,
you'd put your legs on wrong, and you'd go,
"I'm off!" Oof! And you'd shoot off that way.
Now, nobody will be surprised to hear
that cows emit a lot of methane,
so, what would you use to ensure your cow meets emissions standards?
Is this about cows farting?
Well, it doesn't come out just one end, does it?
Farts don't come out of just one end? No, the methane.
Oh, are they burping as well? They do.
I know how they feel. It's difficult being a gassy lady.
Are you a gassy person? I'm SO gassy. Are you? Yeah, it's insane.
Are you responsible for global warming? Is it you?
In an area of North London, yes.
That's me - soz. I don't know why that is
that some people are and some aren't.
In my entire life - this is a very odd thing to admit -
I have never farted.
What?! What?!
Seriously. That is a very bold claim.
I know! So what you mean is, you haven't let rip?
No! So... Have you found yourself ever rising off a seat?
Perhaps you just have incredibly taut buttocks.
I'm happy to take that claim, yes.
Only dogs can hear them.
Oh! They're just on a different frequency from everybody else's.
It's no wonder our dog goes mad every now and then.
Is the dog down there going, "Blame it on Sandi"?
Come on, now, what are we going to do?
We need... So, a badly tuned car belches out all sorts of pollutants.
What do we do? Is it something to do with what you're feeding them?
Er, no, it's an actual device.
A catalytic converter?
It is - a catalytic converter for cows.
These particular catalytic converters go in the nose
of the cow, so they go like that.
That's a scientific drawing right there!
Very technical.
Is that a gin and tonic going into its nose?
It doesn't have to be cows - it can be sheep or goats or whatever,
and the apparatus is retained in the nostril by one or more springs or
other mechanical devices, and configured to ignite in the presence
of methane gas.
Incredible, cos then it would be like a sort of a cow-dragon.
Yeah.
And then late at night, if you were lost in the hills...
Yeah...warm milk.
Ah, here's the thing. You don't need to get lost, because it can also be
fitted with a GPS tracker.
Is it actually succeeding, this,
in stopping the methane emissions from cows?
Not yet. It's a brand-new notion as to how to do it.
Something that is succeeding is fistulating cows.
What, they've got holes in? Yeah, they've got holes in them.
I've seen this. When you look in, all it is is grass,
Iike a big hopper full of grass, honestly, it is,
and I've seen a documentary where, a doctor or a vet, I suppose...
I'd hope so.
..put his arm in, rummaging around and showing you the...
It's really weird and the cow's just standing looking, it looked fine.
They don't seem to be the slightest bit bothered by it.
It is a sort of rubber cannula, it unscrews, a bit like a petrol cap,
and you're quite right, you can put your hand right inside the cow.
Why might you want to do that?
Because he's got a very busy day, and you want to have
a business meeting with James Herriot.
He's got his hand up the cow's bum, and he goes...
You shake his hand. ..put it in, shake the hand...
DAVID: You've sorted that deal with James Herriot.
That's it. So it just vents? It vents the cow?
No, you actually want to get to the stomach contents.
Why might you want to do that? There's something in there that...?
Yeah, so, basically,
you may have a sick cow, and the cow that is fistulated
is perfectly healthy.
You want to get some of the bacteria from the stomach
of the healthy cow, and give it directly to the other cow.
It is a cunning plan. It IS a cunning plan.
You also can check exactly what the nutrients that the cow was eating,
how they're breaking down in the stomach.
Doesn't it...? It doesn't bother them in the slightest.
Are you sure? Absolutely.
Honestly, it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
It would bother ME, I think, if I had one of those here.
Which is a shame, because we were going to do...
an experiment.
ROSS: Yeah, but come on, that would be a hell of a party piece,
though, wouldn't it? What? If you had it in your head?
No, no, just, you know, "Baddiel's here, come on,
"let's see what he's had for dinner."
DAVID: And then if you were a bit peaky,
someone would reach inside, and give my bacteria to Ross Noble.
That's what would happen. It would be a strange thing.
ROSS: Yeah, like, say you had the last French fancy...
DAVID: You can't just have it if you wanted my food!
That's not how it works. You have to be ill.
ROSS: So I'm... "Oh! I need a French fancy!"
"Gat Baddiel - he's polished off the lot!"
Then you came round...
DAVID: I hate to tell you this, Ross -
you can't die of needing to eat French fancies.
ROSS: Right. Well, if you go to any Parisian hospital...
..and find somebody who is fancy-deficient...
Yeah, you could be saving lives.
You've understood that the French fancy direct from his stomach
is not going to look as attractive as when he first ate it?
That's the thing about Mr Kipling -
he makes such exceedingly good cakes...
whatever form they're in. Yeah.
Have a look at these, and tell me what's going on here.
Different cow, different look.
He's saying, "I wanted it to be a zebra." And so...
"I've done my best."
What do you reckon? He's painted it for some reason. Yeah.
Why might you paint a cow?
To disguise it?
In fact, quite the opposite - it's World War II,
and it was farmers trying to stop people running over their cows
during the blackout. Oh!
They painted them white. Why didn't they just write...
"COW"?
No, no, because then, if it was behind a bush,
it would say, "OW."
DAVID: "Ow, I'm being fistulated."
Or, "STOP," you know? That would be...
Wouldn't it be funnier to write "PIG,"
then people would stop and go, "That's never a pig!"
But surely that would draw the attention of the Luftwaffe,
wouldn't it?
DAVID: Yeah, but if the Luftwaffe just bomb cows,
that's not such a big problem.
No, by the end of the first month of the war,
1,130 human road deaths had been attributed to the blackout,
so it was really a serious issue, and people were...
Always knocking into cows?
I don't know - no bovine casualties were listed. Oh, OK.
So, if you want to do your bit to save the planet,
invest in a pair of cattle-ytic converters.
AUDIENCE GROANS
Oh, all right!
Not sure about that.
What's the point of licking your own eyeballs?
Oh, quite a lot of animals lick their eyeballs.
Lizards do that. They do. Why do they? For moisture. For moisture.
So, this is the palmato gecko, lives in the Namib Desert,
so kind of Namibia, Angola, South Africa, that area.
It's one of the driest places on Earth,
so it needs to use all its ingenuity to get moisture,
so it gets a little bit of moisture from its diet of insects,
but it perches on a sand dune, and it waits for the early morning fog
to condense as water droplets on its absolutely massive eyes,
and then it licks it off with its very long tongue. Wow!
That is very clever. They also don't have eyelids, so licking also helps
to keep their eyes clean. I mean, to be fair, I have been to that desert.
I rode a motorbike across that desert.
DAVID: I've been there, too. ROSS: Have you? DAVID: Yeah.
Fight, fight, fight!
Lick your eyes, lick your eyes!
It's amazing, it's an incredible place.
Yes, extraordinary and incredible.
The Namib Desert - extremely arid -
they only get a few millimetres of rain every year,
so the fog that rolls in from the sea in the morning
is incredibly important, and there's a wonderful little creature
called the fogstand beetle,
and it doesn't use its eyes, but it uses its rear end,
so what it does is it... Oh!..props itself up at an angle of 45 degrees,
and the water condenses onto its hard wing cases,
and then it rolls down into its mouth.
That's horrible.
If I came across you, standing with your head on the ground... Yeah...
..Ietting your arse-water roll down to...
Arse-water? It's not coming out of its arse!
We know where it's travelled.
It's come down its undercarriage.
Have a look at this Welwitschia plant.
Its ability to survive is absolutely astonishing,
and it is testified by...
Not doing too well there by the look of it.
The thing is, some of the individual plants are about 2,000 years old.
Wow!
So the roots are buried about 30 metres below the ground,
searching for moisture,
and it also absorbs water through its pores, its stomata,
on its huge, frayed leaves.
Oh, God, imagine if you went away and asked a friend to look after it,
and it didn't survive. It died!
"It's 2,000 years old!"
"Sorry, I was busy." "I left the window open."
Quick supplementary question -
what do they call a ship of the desert in Namibia?
You mean a camel?
KLAXON BLARES
How stupid of me.
The question was "in Namibia."
Is it not camel, it's the other one? What's the other one? Dramadon?
Dromedary? A Dromadon's from Star Wars.
Hey! There is nothing wrong with something from Star Wars.
There are different kinds -
there are Bactrian camels, and there are dromedaries.
Do you know how you can remember which is which?
No. Cos one's got two humps and one's got one.
The dromedary begins with a D, which is one hump,
and the Bactrian begins with B, which is two humps,
so that's how you can remember, and it's completely the wrong answer.
Is it a Toyota pick-up, or something like that?
It's nearer that. It's an actual ship.
It's an actual ship. Oh! I know this, there's a coastline...
Don't click your fingers at me!
Sorry! I wasn't clicking them AT you.
Suddenly I've turned into a waiter with no English!
ROSS: Skeleton Coast. DAVID: Yeah, the Skeleton Coast in Namibia.
ROSS: Skeleton. DAVID: Yeah, stop saying skeleton!
Guys, you should have your own programme about Namibia,
where you can fight about how much you love...
This is sort of extraordinary,
to see a ship right in the desert like that.
That's the so-called Skeleton Coast.
It's long been a menace to shipping, and carcasses of hundreds of vessels
Iitter the coast, but you also get silting and encroachment
of the desert, so you sometimes get ships as much as 500 metres inland.
There are ghost towns as well in Namibia,
that are completely covered in sand, but you can go and stay there.
Yeah, a bit like Tatooine.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Star Wars. ROSS: Star Wars. Star Wars reference. Star Wars.
OK, Star Wars. OK.
Moving on.
What does the world's fussiest eater eat?
Is the world's fussiest eater not a human being?
Correct.
Is it something that is so fussy, it just doesn't eat, and then dies?
No, it is very specific.
It only likes one thing on the menu.
Is it bees' penises?
Well, you're not far off the area that we need to be looking to.
It's so deeply unpleasant,
there are few parasites who have cornered a market so decisively.
It's a little leech.
It rarely sees the light of day,
because it lives up a hippopotamus's bottom.
That is where it lives.
It's called the Placobdelloides jaegerskioeldi.
Here's the thing, hippos have incredibly tough skin, right?
So, if the leech is looking for a blood meal off the hippo,
it really has to go to the rectal region, because that's where
the blood vessels are - the skin is vascular.
Where the best restaurants are. Seriously, best place to hang out.
It is literally a pain in the arse, this leech.
So it's a big, gaping hole, like that, and it's like...
HE GURGLES
Much like the sarlacc pit.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Here's the thing - has anybody ever seen a hippo being excused?
No, I've not seen that.
Well, it's the most extraordinary thing, because they are noted
for the violence of their bowel movements, OK?
So, they fire out an absolute explosion of slurry.
I know how they feel, guys.
A hippo is incredibly...
We went to a zoo in Spain, and they had a hippo,
and they are incredibly heavy.
Yeah. They weigh 3,000 kilograms.
What were you doing at this zoo?
What do you mean? "Come on!"
I wasn't carrying it!
It's got a little plaque - you can read all about it.
I thought you were going, "Come on, kids!"
"There's no-one here - we'll get another one!"
They're incredibly heavy, but they're incredibly dangerous.
They weigh the same as 150 people. Yeah. I made that number up.
Oh, sorry. He was just saying it wasn't 150 people.
I just made that up. It might be about 50.
I was trying to get attention, that was... Yes.
Why are the bowel movements so violent? I'm interested.
Well, OK. So, it is extraordinary.
What's amazing is that the leech is able to hold on while...
It has a fantastic grip.
It's got a pair of suckers, front and rear,
which provide incredible anchorage.
So, while this poo is spraying everywhere...
And we don't know the reason, but there's a really nice story,
which I like, which is the San people, which is the wonderful
hunter-gatherers of southern Africa... The Sand People, you say?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Oh, yeah! Yeah, you've got to be careful,
cos they're a lot more aggressive than the Jawas.
Yeah. You can get them mixed up easily, but those Sand People -
don't trust them.
It's like I've moved into a parallel universe.
The thing about the Sand People is, they always travel in single file.
Do they?
IMITATING ALEC GUINNESS: Beware of the Sand People.
What...?
Yes, Ross, is it something helpful?
Yeah, it is. It is.
I have a slight confession.
Yes? Right.
I recently...
whilst bored in a hotel room... Yeah.
..er... No!
If you go online and type in, "Hippos pooing", there are...
Sorry, I'm just going to stop you there. Why would you do that?
Just, I was...
Start with dogs.
Work your way up. Bears.
In the woods.
And there are huge amounts of videos
of people filming hippos at zoos... Yes.
..who, the tail goes up, and they go...
It's unbelievable.
People... I don't know how it... It just sort of...
No!
But that's the thing...
You've got a leech.
Urgh...
There's a reason that the hunter-gatherer people
of South Africa, the San people, which I really, really like...
So, when the Creator assigned each animal its place in nature,
the hippos really wanted to live in the water,
but it was feared that they might eat all the fish,
so they were finally allowed to live in the water on the condition
that they would eat grass instead of fish, and would fling their dung,
so that it could be checked and inspected for fish bones,
and that is the reason.
Isn't that sweet?
Is this scientific research?
Yes. Yes. It is. OK.
Leeches aren't the only animals
having trouble penetrating tough skin -
vultures are consummate scavengers.
Their beaks are designed for ripping and tearing,
and they can't get into the carcass, so a lion has to open it first.
If that doesn't happen, they have to find a soft entry point
and they thrust their heads into eye sockets and nostrils,
and here is a fantastic description from National Geographic.
"A Ruppell vulture is eight inches into the wildebeest's anus
"before another bird wrenches it away, then slithers its own head,
"like an arm into an evening glove, up the intestinal tract."
Got very lyrical there.
It is. "It's dirty work sticking your head up someone else's bottom,
"but the vulture's sparsely-feathered head and neck
"are just what is needed to keep gore, guts and faecal matter
"from clinging after a deep carcass dive."
So, the world's fussiest eater won't eat anything but hippo's arse.
In fact, they've taken the little leeches into the lab
and offered them other things to eat, and they refuse.
They only want... Does it eat hippo poo or hippo arse?
They're leeches, so it wants the actual...
So it's not interested in the dung at all?
No, it doesn't want the dung. It just hears it coming.
Yeah. Whaaa!
It's like living in a wind tunnel for them.
Now, what is this plucky little bird up to?
Ah! Cleaning the teeth, cleaning the teeth, surely.
KLAXON BLARES
Oh!
So, all we can say about this particular bird
is the word "Photoshop."
Oh!
It is a digital reconstruction, as the copyright owner readily admits.
It's the so-called story of the crocodile bird.
It goes back to Herodotus writing in the 5th century BC,
but it has never happened.
Herodotus wrote,
"When the crocodile comes ashore and opens its mouth,
"the trochilus flies into its mouth and eats the leeches.
"The crocodile is pleased by this service,
"and takes care not to hurt the trochilus,"
which is usually identified as the Egyptian plover.
You'd think it was perfect, the bird and the teeth...
He was making it all up, though, wasn't he?
He made that up, indeed, and indeed, this photo is made up.
That whole story is made up.
There's no reliable evidence whatsoever that this ever happens.
Mainly because crocodiles regularly shed their teeth -
they have no need for them to be cleaned.
They just get new ones. Why would he make that up?
ROSS: Cos it... Wasn't it furry ants? Didn't he...
Did he talk about furry ants?
I'm sure he said that there was, like, massive furry ants.
CARIAD LAUGHS
Stop looking at me like I'm insane!
No, I love that. It's like...
"Stop looking at me like I'm insane"?
No, but... How often do you say that every day?
You know my wife.
The thing is, all of history is littered
with people saying things for sure that they weren't.
DAVID: Yeah, but I don't understand with Herodotus and the bird
and the crocodile - he stood to gain nothing from that lie.
Yeah, but it's a great story - there's a notion of symbiosis.
The vicious crocodile and the tiny little bird,
and this wonderful image of the two of them working together.
He was in the pub and everyone was like, "Go on, Herodotus!"
Yeah, "Tell us a story!"
"Tell us that one about the bird and the crocodile
"that makes us feel like we can all get on no matter our size!"
There are birds who DO provide cleaning services.
Or is it sharks get cleaned by fish?
Well, the cleaner wrasse fish provides cleaning services
to other fish, and they set up a sort of cleaning station,
and they do this little dance to attract...
So that's a massive Moray eel,
and then it cleans the teeth and the gills of the client -
I'm sure you can call it the client -
and they get a good valeting in return for, you know,
scraps for the fish.
If you go scuba diving and you meet a Napoleon wrasse, you can give it
a hard-boiled egg, and all the shell comes out of its gills.
Wow! Right!
It's quite a sight. Yeah. Wow!
So it... Don't you wonder who discovered that?
"I know - I'm going to go diving with a boiled egg."
I think it was Humpty Dumpty.
He fell off the pier, and he went, "I'm not having that again.
"The job that the king's horses have done's rubbish, and this is..."
And then he's fallen in the water...
I don't know if you give it a Creme Egg you get all tinfoil...
A Kinder egg, a toy comes out!
Warthogs - Ugandan warthogs - they are groomed by mongoose.
Oh, look at that! Aww! Oh, you see, the warthog's my favourite.
It's licking its arsehole, it's licking its arsehole!
Oh!
Oh, it just keeled over in pleasure.
"Oh-ho-ho!"
This is what Ross's special videos were.
Look at them! Aww!
So cute.
So, years and years ago, in 1975 - in fact, 1975 to 1977 -
there was a golf course in Zimbabwe
called the Elephant Hills Golf Course,
and I had the good fortune to play there just the one time,
but they had special rules to deal with warthog-related matters
to do with golf, and the rule was, if you hit a warthog -
and they were everywhere - I'm going to read it out...
"It does not entitle the player to replay the shot,
"except when the ball strikes the upright tail, in which case
"it shall be deemed to have struck a miniature moving flagpole."
So, anyway.
The nilgai lives in northern India.
"Nilgai" means "blue bull."
Its scientific name is Boselaphus tragocamelus,
which means ox-deer-goat-camel.
It used to be called the nilgor, meaning "blue horse,"
so which is it?
Is it a bull, an ox, a deer, a goat, a camel, or a horse?
Is that it? That is it.
It doesn't look like an ox. It's an antelope, isn't it?
It is, absolutely.
It is possibly the most misnamed animal in the bestiary,
because it is actually an antelope.
The scientific name Boselaphus tragocamelus was first used
by an English zoologist called Philip Sclater in 1833.
He was actually a trained ornithologist,
so it's no wonder he didn't entirely...
"It's not my remit, guys."
Other than zoological misnomers,
what can you tell me about the nine-eyed eel?
Does it have no eyes?
No, it's got eyes. It's got eyes!
Is it more than one eel?
Er, no. Is it that those aren't the eyes - it's markings on its body?
That is absolutely right, yes. Ah, brilliant! Clever.
It is actually a two-eyed Scottish lamprey...
What a lovely mouth it's got! Hideous, isn't it?
So, it's got seven gills on each side, and two eyes,
and one nostril, so strictly speaking,
I suppose you could call it 17-eyed, it should have been,
but the mistake was the gills.
Lamprey used to be much-eaten.
The Queen was sent a lamprey pie by the people of Gloucester every year.
It's a parasite, and what it's doing there is it's digging a little hole
into the side of a fish, and then it has an anticoagulant,
so that the blood will continue to flow... Oh!
..and then it eats off the fish, but apparently they're delicious.
King Henry I died of a surfeit of lampreys.
That'd be quite easy to avoid, I would have thought.
If the doctors had spotted it early, it's quite easy to cure that.
But you can't say to a king, "You've had enough."
"I'm starting to feel unwell!"
If you find a dead one, if you blow on it, can you play it like a flute?
DAVID: Why does it have to be dead? ROSS: Because it's a parasite.
If you try to play that like a flute you'd probably go...
Now, can you describe a bearded tit?
If anyone says "David Baddiel," I'm leaving.
Well, once you get past 30, it does happen.
We don't always talk about it.
No woman should be without tweezers.
No.
Or the skill of plaiting.
That's true. Give the children something to hang on to. Exactly.
Save on a sports bra. Tie them together around the back. Bosh.
Off.
I sometimes feel, when I speak to you, Ross,
that I haven't thought things through.
All I'm saying is, "You're welcome."
Thank you.
There are many, many tits in the woods, aren't there?
There are, my darling. Yes. Is this not one of them?
No, it's not a tit at all, and indeed, it hasn't got a beard.
It has, in fact, got a rather fine...
what I can only describe as a Fu Manchu moustache.
It's not even closely related to - can I call them "true tits"?
You can. I'm going to.
It's more accurately called the bearded reedling.
It's actually a unique songbird,
and no other living species seems to be particularly closely related.
I wonder if the person who invented
the word for birds that are called tits... Yeah.
..how upset they would be to know that now no-one
says them without sniggering.
Unless when he did it, he was like, "Tits!"
He's the same bloke that, when he had chickens, he went, "Cock!"
Yes!
Come on!
I don't know how you boys get there so quickly.
APPLAUSE
So much focus on something so undependable. Now...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Oh, yes, there's been a regime change!
Are you saying your tits are undependable?
Seriously, it is a weird thing, isn't it?
Boys are constantly fiddling
because your bits are not in the right place.
You never see a woman going, "Ooh, how's that got up there?"
You see it all the time.
My Gran...Iike that.
DAVID: Your gran used to do that?
Was your gran Les Dawson?
So, who eats royal excrement?
Is it bees again - is it because of royal jelly?
No, they are the only mammals to live in colonies
with a single queen.
The royal family?
No - in fact, they are naked mole-rats.
They are known as sand puppies. Oh, yeah, I've seen these before.
That's Boris Johnson in the morning.
APPLAUSE
"One eyelash!
"One eyelash, and a long one - that's all I need!
"I want it straight up. Straight up!
"And can you get these teeth in my mouth?"
The teeth are unbelievable.
They protrude in order to dig,
and they're able to seal their lips behind the teeth,
so they don't get dirt in their mouths when they're digging.
They live in a colony with a queen.
All the other colony members are infertile,
but they eat the pregnant queen's hormone-rich faeces,
and that gives the subordinate rats a boost of oestrogen,
and that makes them more attentive to the needs of the young.
But they're not the only ones who eat dung.
Baby elephants eat the dung of their mothers, and indeed,
other members of the herd,
because the bacteria is actually very good for them.
So, in their vegetable diet... Are they doing that right there?
But it happens to humans, as well.
You know when you take antibiotics,
you should replace the good bacteria in your...
Aww...
How cute is that?
We sometimes get the bacteria in our gut depleted.
There's a thing called a poo pill, isn't there?
There IS a poo pill. There's also a faecal transplant.
Oh, yes, I've heard of that. Cos some people's guts have more bacteria than others.
Yeah, and they've been doing it since the fourth century in China. It's known as yellow soup. Oh...!
So if you see that on the menu, don't order it.
Which naturally brings us to the matter of general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
So, a nice, easy one to start with.
Which animal can jump the highest?
Yes? Flea.
KLAXON BLARES
Oh!
It's not the flea.
It's the kangaroo.
Uh-oh.
KLAXON BLARES
No. The record, in fact, for a red kangaroo is ten feet
over a pile of timber, so we're looking for something
that can jump higher than that.
Yes, Cariad?
That one we learnt about earlier that has cogs for legs.
The planthopper? Yeah. No.
Again, no.
KLAXON BLARES
Anybody... Any more for any more?
A monkey with a jet pack.
DAVID: Could be any animal with a jet pack, to be honest.
ROSS: No, because you need to have the straps over the...
The monkey's got to hold on.
If you put a jet pack on a horse, it's standing like that.
It's just going to shoot straight...
DAVID: He's prancing.
Its side. You could put it on its side. That's two jet packs.
We sometimes do experiments on this show, and why that hasn't come up...
It's not that. It's not that. It's not even on land.
Dolphin? Flying fish.
No, it's the shortfin mako shark.
It can jump 20 feet clear of the water.
That's terrifying. Isn't that unbelievable?
Then pluck something out of the sky?
Yeah. A monkey on a jet pack.
More than a dolphin, even?
Yeah, it's one of the fastest swimming fish as well in the world.
35km an hour. 22mph.
But it is the highest jumper.
Wasn't flea right, relative to the flea's size, though?
Ah, but that wasn't the question.
Which animal can jump the highest?
Not in relation to its body size.
Oh, you're so strict! I know.
I like it, though. I know you do!
Fleas can jump vertically to a height of about seven inches,
which I suppose, for a flea, is a fantastic amount.
Froghoppers, which is also a tiny little bug -
they can jump four times further than fleas, and they're heavier,
as well, so a bit more impressive.
A tarantula can jump three feet.
SILENCE
LAUGHTER
We all paused to be frightened of that.
I'm scared to believe it in case it's like the hippo fact,
and you're just making it up again.
The myth, of course, is that elephants are the only mammals
that can't jump, but it's not the case - there are many others.
White men? White men, yeah! White Men Can't Jump.
Hippos, rhinos, burrowing animals such as moles, and so on.
What do wolves howl at?
Not the... Oh, no.
Yes? Women walking past not wearing enough, because they're very sexist.
I like that, and I want it to be correct. But it's not. It's not.
That's what's always got me about the idea of the wolf whistle,
cos wolves can't actually whistle.
So, like, strictly speaking,
if you're a builder on a building site and a woman walks past,
you should go, "Phrrrrp!"
But what are they howling at?
DAVID: Are they howling at other wolves? The moon. The moon?
KLAXON BLARES No. Other wolves.
It is other wolves. They're very intelligent animals
with very strong family ties and complicated social relations,
and they howl in order to communicate.
It so happens they sometimes howl when the moon is out.
Would you like to hear a mouse howling at the moon?
Yes, please! Here we go.
VERY HIGH-PITCHED SQUEAK
DAVID: Is that your mic feeding back?
Isn't that the sweetest thing?
That is brilliant.
That is the southern grasshopper mouse
of southwestern USA and Mexico.
It's also known as the wolf mouse, because it has a reputation
of howling at the moon. I love these little creatures.
They're extremely aggressive hunters.
They catch and kill all sorts of prey,
and they have a resistance to poison.
They can actually catch and kill and eat a scorpion
while it's repeatedly stabbing it in the face.
I think they're astonishing. I like little and aggressive.
I have no trouble with that at all.
How many Earths does the moon have?
Yes?
One.
KLAXON BLARES
So, there's a staple question,
"How many moons does the Earth have?"
At various times, you'll get different answers -
two, several, one, more.
They're all arguable answers, but this is turning the question on its head -
how many Earths does the moon have?
Now, if you asked me about the ice planet Hoth...
We'd be in there. We'd be in there straightaway.
DAVID: It's more than one, then?
Well, it depends on what theory you believe in.
So, the most widely accepted theory of how our moon was formed
is the Big Splat, OK? So, that proposes that it was created...
By a hippo?
..about four and a half billion years ago, there was a collision
between the Earth and another Mars-sized planet known as Thea.
And we've always assumed that the thing was a glancing blow, right,
and Thea would have spun off into space and left a large debris from
the collision, and that is our moon.
There's a more recent development of this idea,
which is that the collision was head-on, in which case,
the Earth is a fusion of two planets,
and it would mean that the moon, in fact, has two Earths.
If that is the thing that we believe.
Speaking of the moon, did you know that the original video recording
of the first moon landing on 20th July 1969 no longer exists?
Did you know this?
In 2006, NASA admitted they couldn't find the original videos,
and it turned out the tapes had been erased and reused
in the '80s to save money.
Luckily enough, there were some good archive copies found.
Does anybody know where I was on 20th July 1969?
Denmark? I don't know.
Were you faking the footage?
I was 11 years old.
Were you there, in America? I was... On the moon?
I was in...
I was in Mission Control in Houston. Yeah! You were? I was.
My dad was a foreign correspondent, and that's why I was there,
and I said to this woman, "Are you all right?"
She said, "I'm kinda nervous -
"my boss is about to step out onto the moon."
And I said, "Oh, don't worry, I'll hold your hand." Erm...
So, when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the moon,
I was holding his secretary's hand.
Aww! Wow!
APPLAUSE There you go.
Sandi, you're like Earth's real-life Princess Leia.
Cos you were watching it there.
Is that a good thing? Yes! That's definitely a good thing.
Is that why you've had your hair done like her? Yes!
According to the latest version of the Big Splat,
the Earth may be a fusion of two planets,
which brings us to a nice, natural ending.
Let's have a look at the scores.
In last place, with minus 23, it's Alan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In third place, with minus 16, it is David.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with minus five, it's Cariad.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And tonight's winner, with minus four, it's Ross.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
So, it only remains for me to thank Cariad, David,
Ross and Alan, and as we seem to have wandered onto the moon,
I leave you with this tale from the News of the World long ago.
"A Guinness heiress yesterday protested that a busload
"of cheeky airmen mooned at her
"when she visited the Greenham Common Peace Women.
"'I don't know if they were American,
"'because I only saw their buttocks,'
"said novelist Lady Caroline Lowell, 51."
Good night.
APPLAUSE