5 Stories That'll Sting

[Music] [Music] this is Justin Schmidt yeah my name is Justin Schmidt he's an entomologist and I'm an entomologist I basically studied stinging insects he's been stung by a lot of insects I've probably been stung at least a thousand times he reviews insect stings the way a somali a reviews wine pure intense brilliant pain like walking or flaming charcoal as a three-inch nail embedded in your heel which insect was that that's the bullet and this is his lab in Tucson this is his harvester ant this is his vinegaroon this is a tarantula hawk these are some more harvester ants in a park near his lab he is the creator of the Schmidt pain scale the Schmidt pain scale is basically a scale to rate the painfulness of stinging insects on a scale of one to four but one would be a sweat B two would be something like a yellow jacket was the three would be something like a harvester ant and a four would be a perennial hog how bad is a 4 4 is absolutely excruciating the debilitating incapacitating just shuts you down just absolute sheer pain there's just nothing you can really do about that I don't think I'd want to be stung by a whole bunch of different for I don't think I could endure that for very long let's be clear Justin Schmidt doesn't just go out and get stung on purpose it's just that he's dedicated his life to studying well my passion is insects and stinging insects in particular yeah I get stung but that's that's all just part of the passion you know what that gives me data you know thing helps me in understanding what the insects doing and I get to be out in the sunshine and out in the rain out in the environment studying these magnificent beautiful insects just just such a joy I can't imagine anything I'd rather do more [Music] do you see the budget I had a second Granger [Music] Milverton came at akashavani yo Sonali Gionta Nagy Tilly got an identical Oki binary Manticore sorta deep in the Himalayan mountains about 80 miles outside of Katmandu the Bujang village takes part in a death-defying tradition all in the name of honey [Music] yo Polly but I'm gonna journey or not it's on your honey cavity stone that it but procuring this precious honey takes more than just strength a team of honey hunters assembles twice a year to prepare and Madan he leads the pack finally you just the Emerald gonti jadi here are your gum time sixty boil you hear about how you gotta go you're a monocot even a movie theater of this deep pass an online today ancient customs are still closely followed before each hunt Madan must visit the village guru to receive His blessing Pinero Buddha by oh no no se quedó baba domalix each ad era I was oval egg and era tikka masala dhaba till Arab armies become garbage answer one day Madan will fill the girls shoes in the meantime he leads his team of honey hunters into the jungle [Music] the team braids and Bree secures their handmade rope ladders then they've ventured to the cliff side where the beehives are hiding the team creates smoke fires down below to encourage the giant fees to scatter Madonn lowers himself onto the Rope dangling hundreds of feet from the ground Oh Moira and elkanah tell a league or very much a varsity team Amara meanwhile a acrimony gratitude telling America stole a tamale given ear by or about a delegate at le meriden mother bunny poor Emily what is it amalgam I get my limo team despite the incessant stinging on his unprotected skin he calmly cuts away at the hive fulfilling his duty and securing his liquid gold forever daddy I have a dingy dirty fancy but it's offered it around a little deliver him the hives are collected by the hunters and packed up to bring back to the village where their safe return is celebrated yo Ramiro Genma Diego de Lima Mira Bobby Lea and Lea neither a Malaysians actively any other corny porta young Willie you you can wear animal attack damage Santa you put on Ronnie Kalen butter our pork only whatever you Maura can challenge a vaca Roger this is the dictator scorpion growing up to eight inches in length it is one of the largest scorpions in the world for its colossal size the dictator scorpion has relatively weak venom so for defense it resorts to its enormous claws they help it to catch prey and ward off other scorpions located within the region of West Africa the dictator scorpion is nocturnal spending most of its life underground sometimes burrowing as deep as six feet unfortunately size doesn't matter when it comes to the preservation of the dictator scorpion with their natural habitats being destroyed by deforestation its future is uncertain this is the dictator scorpion [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the internet the other day I found an animal that looks like something quite familiar they've tried to block the road but outside of the road one sure turns out this fluffy looking caterpillar that looks super soft is actually super poisonous so I called dr. Wagner he's an entomologist up at UConn my specialty is Lepidoptera which is the study of butterflies and laws this caterpillar it has a few names well it's mega l'apicio perky Alerus most people call this animal the post caterpillar except in the south where many people call it the ass these caterpillars are distinct because they're covered in what looks like long soft hair only mammals have true hair and then what we find on insects are really derived scales underneath those it's where the poison spines are there may be a little bit like a hypodermic needle when you pet the caterpillar it's quite a wallop I think of all the caterpillars in sting that ass may have the most painful and most toxic sting that poison can cause headaches swelling nausea blisters even difficulty breathing and in case you were thinking that these guys probably live deep in some jungle you would be wrong they're found mostly south as an Asian victim line on a research boat usually it's the new guy who gets the dirtiest job this time is no exception I'm Wes Larson a wildlife biologist and lover of the outdoors for as long as I can remember I'm traveling the country to find the next generation of conservationists the people on the front lines of the fight to understand our planet and protect the animals we share it with [Music] we've got a pretty big hermit crab today I'm headed to Sarasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida it's home to a beautiful a little understood animal the spotted eagle ray I'm joining up with the research team from Florida Atlantic University and Mote Marine Lab there's some of the first scientists in the world to study this animal in depth so Brianna what are we doing today so today we're gonna attempt to visually spot some spotted eagle rays bring it on board take a bunch of samples and then we'll release it back into the wild I'm Way excited Brianna deGruy is a master student at FAU she's been obsessed with race ever since she was 11 years old she's leading the field research today spotted Eagle razor pretty understudied we really don't know a lot about them right yeah there's not a whole lot of information about just even their basic biology or ecology so what do they mean for the environment how are they affecting the environment how many of them are out there and from an environmental component they're really important to keeping the ecosystem in balance so it's really important that we understand basic questions about them which is what we're trying to do here [Music] grow up on the spotting tower point the view up here you can definitely see into the water a lot better than you can down there they stand out pretty good we're gonna go over the grass bed right now a tendency to hide in the grass what we're looking for is there a large enough to surgically implant a tracker and it takes an experienced eye to spot one right there yeah I believe so that's him that's him that's an eagle rated be ready catching array is a complicated maneuver we have to completely encircle it with the net or the ray will escape and you've got to be quick about it the water is really choppy in these maneuvers that they do with the photo really dress it once we've got it surrounded we need to bring in the rave and he's in the middle he's going to the north this ray turns out to be tiny just a juvenile my job is to hold it in place while the team does their work despite its size it's not easy as soon as we flip them over you can really see how much just calm down that's the state that they go into called tonic immobility it's kind of like the Rays hypnotize a lot easier to work with any money when he is on his belly we get there are quite a bit bigger than this right yes we get to be about seven feet I want to send this ray is too small to surgically implant a tracking device so once we've gathered what data we can it's time to let him go and while the spotters keep an eye out for a big ray we take a break from the hunt when you begin researching an animal one of the most fundamental things to understand is its eating habits and to figure out the Eagle race the team has come up with a creative solution [Music] Breana this is kind of what we're looking for exactly this is a gastropod yes or for the layman we take back the snails and clams to the lab where the team has two wild rays in a holding tank we're gonna put some free items into the water and we're going to record the sounds that they're making while they're crunching down on the hardshell prey items and we're trying to decipher if these different prey items are making different signature sounds by tracking the sounds at different shells make when the race crunch them the team believes that they can decipher the Eagle race diet and that's big just crunched it there exactly yep but the hope is to put these listening stations out into the environment and we can know exactly what they're eating when they're eating it and how much they're consuming as the captive raised crunch away we get word that another has been spotted offshore that's bigger so it's time to head back into the Gulf for one last attempt to catch a big one we just got word there's another spotted eagle ray got double the size of the ones that we currently make so we're on our way to go relocate it and hopefully we'll get another right hand for it it's pretty clear when the team grabs the other net that this is a much bigger Rea unreal this raised over five feet wide from wingtip to wingtip plenty big enough for the surgery Brianna's hoping to do my job holding the Rae upside down and perfectly still while she implants the tracking tab position for you to raise this so preparing all of our surgeries supplies to do an internal acoustic surgery it's a really quick procedure where an internal tag is implanted into their belly area and it allows us to follow their movements as they travel up and down the coastline sharks and rays don't feel pain the same way humans do and with the Ray on its back it stays calm and relaxed throughout the procedure yeah that's quick the surgery is over in just a few minutes this tag will allow the team to track her for years to come giving them a detailed picture of where eagle rays live and how far they travel putting us one step closer to understanding this beautiful animal I come from a mammal background and working with mammals there's kind of this natural connection that you have with them and I didn't really expect to have that sort of connection with these rays but when we pull them up onto the boat I felt this intelligence coming out of them they're very personable animal yeah that's the reaction most people have they're highly intelligent and obviously their beauty and grace just helps us to form another connection to them I've heard people say there isn't much mystery left in nature but eagle rays remind me that there are still animals we know hardly anything about answering the basic questions can help us better understand them and in turn protect whole ecosystems watching this discovery firsthand was a true privilege it makes me wonder what other hidden secrets must be waiting out there you

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 116,631

Rating: 4.898077 out of 5

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, sting, bite, venom, entomology, bee, insect, planet, conservation, New Releases, Great Big Reels, Planet Earth, Nature & Animals

Id: VipconF96H0

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019