Namib: Surviving the Sand Sea Documentary

[Music] [Music] the Namib Desert a parched land that spans a vast area the entirety of Namibia's west coast [Music] certain sand dunes here bear a striking resemblance to some of those found on the surface of Mars consequently NASA has officially named several Martian views of the dunes within the namib [Music] as one of the driest places on earth parts of the Namib can be seemingly devoid of life [Music] however life does exist here [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] here life can be as otherworldly as the landscapes themselves over the course of countless millennia life has adapted to thrive in this arid wilderness many of the plants and animals found here are endemic found nowhere else on earth one such creature however is immediately recognizable to all the ant ants are some of the most numerous creatures on all of planet Earth and the most abundant of the social insects ants are found on every continent except Antarctica their reach even extending to the Namib sands see wandering these dunes the aptly named Namib Doonan camponotus detritus can be found [Music] the ants make a comfortable living here food and moisture is plentiful for those who know where to find it what seemed to be dried grass stems actually provides ample food and shelter [Music] do you Nance mainly subsist on honeydew excretion from a fit and scale insects which are commonly found on this dry vegetation pollen nectar and dead animal material are also part of the dune ants diet one behavior that aids the ants in their survival is trophallaxis the exchange of regurgitated liquids between adult insects this apparently revolting behavior can be observed between many ant species the world over not just in units of manometer [Music] and as gruesome as it sounds moisture is always welcome in the hyper arid desert [Music] professor Christian Peters and his colleagues experts on ants have traveled here to search for a dune and queen for their studies so we're looking at them there are species of ants and studying their adaptations to desert life so ants can do very well in lizards because they are social insects and so they have an advantage of a solitary insects because there are so many laboring individuals that they can dig nests and having a long-lasting nest is a greater obsession for living in the desert because that means you can actually get away from the heat you can go deep go to where there is moisture and you know that's where you are going to look after the Queen and the many eggs larvae and pupae the answer to see on the surface are only a very small fraction of the colony these are the older individuals that are looking for food looking for honeydew from the scale insects on the graphs and sometimes carrying back dead insects as well we want to bring back a colony in Belgium follow in the lab so we need a queen to fall to lay eggs in captivity to a captive colony that can continue and thrive if you're never Queen there is no one that can lay eggs and the colony will just collapse in a few month so basically we're trying to find the queen of the comparators koni koni is our huge thousands of workers trying to defend a home the workers by our biding us and it's not easy it's a bit tiring the great thing about insects living in societies is that they can collaborate when getting food to bring back to the nest and to do this they need to communicate and ants communicate using chemical signals pheromones and so usually when a an older worker has found a food source you will come back to the nest and lay a chemical trail the pheromone trail on the ground and then the other workers just need to follow this but when you live in such an environment because of the sand and because of the wind that blows the sand away the pheromone trail is not idea and so and such as camponotus the dune and they really navigate using visual means and so either they memorize the landmarks or else they can actually read in the sky the the pattern of polarized light and this is the way they can forage quite a distance away from the nest and come back without getting lost for the namib boon and navigation by polarized sunlight is usually a sure means of not getting lost occasionally however the ants may wander into enemy territory in this particular individual seems to have strayed far from her home colony unfortunately for her goon ants are extremely territorial and the other and senses from her pheromones that she is from another colony unusual pheromones usually result in hasty retreat or battle and in this case it's the latter [Music] the two do not aggressively battle to pin each other to the scorching sand aiming to dehydrate and ultimately kill [Music] one of the ants tucks her gasta underneath her body aiming to spray formic acid [Music] [Music] the strong grip of the attacker is momentarily loosened and a rare opportunity for escape presents itself these brutal battles can take their toll on the ends and even the victor will often walk away severely battered and bruised not all are so lucky as the day progresses and temperatures rapidly increase many of the ants return to their nests a whole host of other desert dwelling creatures also shelter from the heat of the day by borrowing borrowing is a technique in which a variety of animals in the Namib such as this solar fuge have adopted [Music] weevils such as this one found only in the namib bury their larvae in the sand [Music] this be dicks numerous burrows to camouflage the one that contains food provisions or its larvae the intriguing thing about the Namib for now is that almost everything when they have to escape whether they escape the enemy or the conditions and the wind conditions temperature whatever they don't like they have to burrow this no there's no vegetation there's no trees no cross nothing like that at the microscope where they can go to what you find in all deserts is that your desert animals thing to be burrowing animals [Music] certain species of an ancient creature have mastered a variety of borrowing techniques [Music] scorpions not all scorpions dig a burrow and this particular highly venomous species often shelters under rocks or in crevices although commonly feared and often vilified most species pose little threat to humans this perilous fellow says however is one of the most venomous species of scorpion found in the Namib [Music] scorpions are an important resident in arid ecosystems playing a key role in food webs primitive species such as this Europe lactis opted for shelter in the peeling bark of trees found in their thousands along the banks of often dry ephemeral rivers [Music] this abundance of cracked and desiccated bark is an anomaly in the desert this river the qui set traverses only a small section of the Namib Desert but where it does occur it provides ideal shelter [Music] scorpions are mostly nocturnal creatures and as night falls they begin to emerge some from behind rocks others from beneath the bark of trees other species lie in wait door keeping at their self-made burrows patiently waiting for unsuspecting prey to wander by in the darkness of night ultraviolet light reveals these secretive animals they're normally cryptic colors obscured in the bright fluorescence there are numerous theories as to why this happens attracting prey is one allowing the creatures to know they are exposed is another the helpful hint for these cannibalistic creatures none of these theories have provided the answer for now the scorpions glow remains a secret some species of scorpion use the environment around them to shelter such as the para booth is Filosa s-- or the Europe Lexi's tree bark scorpion there are certain species however which create their own home [Music] here in the central nammed desert a gaba pep a scientific research station with a history that dates back to over 50 years Martin Han Jabba a technician and researcher has been studying the burrows of these incredible creatures using UV light to locate nocturnal scorpions Martin places pitfall buckets at the Burrow entrances to harmlessly trap the scorpions before analyzing their burrows what we are doing right now is we are casting the scorpion barrel [Music] we have metal aluminum and we hit metal aluminum in a crucible at over a thousand degrees in that melts now the liquid aluminum is the one that we pour down the barrel of the scorpion and it gives us a beautiful outline of the barrel and that blueprint of the barrel is the one that you're interested in the reason why we are casting the Scorpion Paris because you can get a lot of data from that for example we can work how the architecture of the power looks like that's number one but you can also get a few other parameters for me for example the width of the barrel the depth of the barrel and from that we can work out how the barrel is very important in the in the environment scorpions are carnivores and they do when through the eating of the insects they take all the insects and all the other organic matter down the boughs and that helps fertilize the soil in such an arid Namib Desert having safely removed the burrow occupants using a pitfall trap the day before Martin must now wait for the cast to harden so this is the two of our experiment so we are here to take out the custard made yesterday it is cooled down and it is solidified so we're just waiting to see what's under there so what what's interesting about this power right here is there were two individual squads were two individuals trapped and caught from this burrow so we are really anxious to see what is underground there so how wasting time right now let's just stick it out all right so we've got our barrel quite short we expected it to be a little deeper than this but nonetheless still interesting because if you look at this barrel here you can see that there is a main chamber coming up coming here from the entrance and if you look closely you'll see that that is the ground surface that we have the Namibian coin there that shows the ground surface and also shows the scale but what's also interesting is that you will see immediately from the main and from the main chain from the main chamber there that is an extra chamber coming from the main chamber and we don't really know what is why there's this chamber here but as I said earlier they were two individuals found from this barrel now the other thing is also if you look at it right at the end of this chamber you will notice that there are some insect remains if you look closely now those insect remains often often mean that that is the end of the barrel because at the end of the barrel that's all that's where the Scorpion devours their prey and that's where you find most of the insect remains it is a short barrel but it's still an interesting barrel and we still want to we still want to compare them and see their differences [Music] other species of scorpion can produce alternative burrow designs this impressive spiraling structure descends almost a meter under the sand [Music] [Music] the flora and fauna living in the Namib have adapted to this environment over the course of thousands or even millions of years although rarely considered charismatic insect life plays a crucial role in pollination and food webs [Music] ecliptic colors and patterns on this grasshopper allow it to blend into its surroundings making it difficult for predators to notice it this spider also displays extraordinary camouflage perfectly blending in with the sand tall clumps of grass step agrostis are plentiful in parts of the sand sea these islands of vegetation provide food and shelter for numerous insects reptiles birds and mammals a variety of endemic tuna Briony beetle species have evolved to be perfectly adapted to life in the dunes this diverse family of beetles feed on dead dry and windblown plant material known as detritus Wannemacher is plan on this beetles long legs lift its body away from the sandy surface which has been known to reach over 70 degrees centigrade a few extra millimeters of height makes all the difference at insects scale it is also an extremely fast running beetle when running at top speed its movement produces a convective cooling effect [Music] water is essential for life this rule applies to even the hardiest of desert organisms here in the Namib life must find creative ways in which to obtain moisture for many of the animals is often obtained through food however some of the Namib flora and fauna have adapted to exploit a rather special phenomenon as the cold Benguela current flows alongside the warm western coast of southern Africa clouds of fog regularly form [Music] numerous plants and animals depend on this fog as a vital source of moisture [Music] a fog basking beetle places itself on the crest of a doom its body acting as a condensation unit fog droplets accumulate on its body and then trickle down into its mouth via narrow grooves in the shell the nocturnal Palmetto gecko or webbed foot gecko which mysteriously fluoresce is extraordinary colors when exposed to ultraviolet light and lick accumulated fog moisture from its eyeballs the geckos webbed feet are perfectly adapted for digging burrows in the sand but the purpose of the geckos fluorescence on the UV light is a mystery rainfall in deserts is notoriously unpredictable parts of an onyx see little to no rainfall for years at a time making folk the primary and essential source of water when it does finally rain here it can be a dramatic event [Music] [Music] [Music] despite the sudden and copious amounts of rain this rare local event does not flood this dry ephemeral river the cui sir rainfall some 200 kilometers away in the mountainous interior of Namibia floods the catchment area pouring massive quantities of water down this tree-lined riverbed transforming the dusty Channel into a linear erases [Music] [Music] [Music] this infrequent flow sometimes several years apart ports the sand sees further northward March the cui subs dry river course forms the northern border of the namib San C an impassable barrier between the shifting sand dunes and the gravel plains despite such a large quantity of water in mere days the scorching Sun dries the riverbed once again these are ephemeral floods for charge the underground aquifer enabling the growth of an abundance of plant life [Applause] the cracked bark of ancient trees withers in the harsh environment their roots extending many meters below the sandy surface to extract precious underground water [Music] some examples of true desert adapted plant life can be found further away from the rivers revitalizing influence [Music] a namib endemic known as nara is a classic example of desert adapted flora Nara is leafless it photosynthesizes through its long and thorny stems discarding large leaves is typical of many desert adapted plants this allows them to lower water loss by reducing leaf surface area Nara is dioecious meaning that there are separate male and female plants it is the female plants that bear fruits which for thousands of years has provided a valuable food source to the indigenous people of the land archaeological evidence indicates the earliest human use of nara seeds dating back to some 8,000 years ago from a rock shelter located on an homage gravel plains found around 40 kilometres from the closest nara plants this rocky outcrop would have provided shelter from the merciless heat of the plains surrounding it the top nur a small rural community who live along the Kweisi Brava still harvest the fruits of the Nara plant the highly nutritious seeds are extracted from the fruit as a source of food and income which is fundamental to the top mass cultural identity and lifestyle [Music] mara is not only a dependable source of food for humans but also an incredibly important plant species for a variety of other organisms hummocks the mounds of sand surrounding the plant provides stable shelter Nara stems and roots stabilise the surroundings and enabling creatures to dig burrows the Nara plants is quite interesting as a keystone species in the in the Namib because it collects and in creates hammocks but at the same time they have other attributes that makes them as important to the male's flower right through the year the flowers don't last very long only two or three days and then they fall off so they produce a lot of detritus there's a lot of food around around the north basically the nura hammock is a generator of plant food and primary production in the desert at the same time this other attributes which would be interesting to find out how our effectivity is like that the it condenses fog so you have water dripping from it which provides a source of moisture which in the desert is always important for organisms to have sufficient moisture in order to develop and then because you have then the that the two combination food as well as water in one place that becomes very attractive evergreen and continuously photosynthesizing nara is a constant source of food especially useful to insects flies require the green vegetation where larvae can develop the pollen packed flowers attract nectar feeders of all kinds blister beetles are often found chewing the stems which produces a SAP the other creatures then feed upon so what your avidin are mock is this whole series of Nicias of different type of type of niches way which can be inhabited by different organisms now in this whole process what you would expect is that through natural selection that you would start finding some specialists that is that you're only finding nora and we think they are they but at the stage we don't know about many there's only one that we quite sure of it was only described some four years ago by David paraffin and Nutella which is a small fly we call it the knot of Lights emerald green running around it and it is a very small family of flies and it's what we call it man a typical genus this there's only one species in the genus both the genus as well as a species you only find in Iran that's the only one that we're sure of there's some other animals that you do find on it that people will tell you our specialist of neuron like one of them is a big crown cricket a beautiful Easter some people think that they're very ugly they call it the narrow cricket but they're not not a specialist you actually find them right through the dunes [Music] mara has been utilized by inhabitants of the desert for millennia and in recent years been the subject of scientific investigation yet there is still much to learn in current ongoing research of Bob Abed hopes to unlock some of NARAS mysteries so my project is to determine if the Nara plant utilizes fog as a source of water that's important in this hyper arid environment because rain is so unpredictable and so scarce that plants and animals in this environment need to find a different source of water so I'm trying to determine how Mara can use fog and you as a source of water and if it really does require it as a source of water existing knowledge of Nara points the groundwater is the main source of water and it is widely believed that its tap roots could reach up to 50 meters however many Nara plants grow far from obvious groundwater sources the question is do these populations utilize moisture from fog we do there's different methods for Nara to utilize fog so it's also just maybe droplets dripping on the ground and being absorbed by the roots or some plants also have the ability to absorb water directly through their stems or through the leaves so I've collected different nora stem clippings of younger stems and in older stems just to determine in a lab experiment if it does absorb water directly through the stem [Music] in the laboratory fluorescein dye is mixed with fog water which then fluoresces under ultraviolet light with a humidifier to prevent evaporation time-lapse photography reveals the stems ability to directly absorb moisture [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] this discovery of fog absorption in Nara contradicts previous assumptions of the plant's reliance on groundwater as science continues to delve deeper into phenom its intricacies nature's brilliance gradually becomes clearer yet evermore complex and fragile as is the case the world over the physical adaptations of the flora and fauna are often representative of the environment they inhabit we have learned that many arid adapted plants have lost the large leaves of their temperate cousins however there is a plot endemic to the nammed that defies the ordinary it is so unusual yet perfectly adapted for Riccio marabous a true living fossil the interesting thing about welwitschia is that the leaves seem to break the rules for what we would predict leaf sizes of plants and an environment like this to be so there's quite a bit of work been done to predict the relationship between environment and beef size and one of the conclusions from that work is that if you have a plant that's in a hot sunny environment that plant should produce leaves that are small numerous and narrow and here's welwitschia it breaks the rules [Music] these large leaves when you're dealing with a healthy intact plant provides an enormous patch of shade and shelter underneath them and this is a phenomenon that's called niche construction it's an organism actually building an environment in another environment so you have these patches of shadiness and and relatively cold temperatures under the canopy of the welwitschia leaf and this might not only help to welwitschia for example cooler temperatures will result in higher humidity that'll mean less demand for water on these plans to do what they need to do but it can also provide a shelter for other organisms that live around the village here and this is a relatively unexplored area and it's in part it's because niche construction is a relatively new way of thinking about adaptation and evolution and this may be why welwitschia leaves break the rules the evolution of the angiosperms the flowering plants took place at the beginning of the Mesozoic period some 250 million years ago this period was when the amphibians dominance of the earth started to fade and the reptiles began to emerge about a third of the way through the Mesozoic the dinosaurs began to emerge and it is widely believed that welwitschia came into existence around this time they emerged first that we know from fossil evidence around about 200 million years ago we believe that it was about 200 million years ago they found the Richer fossils in Brazil around about a hundred and fifty hundred and sixty million year old deposits they recognized the flowers they recognized the cones and they recognized also some of the pollen that he seen that in those deposits today vii chia is found only in the Namib Desert the Brazilian fossils however are evidence of the plant primordial existence first growing in a time prior to the existence of the Atlantic Ocean [Music] South America and Africa were once connected in a vast Continental area known as Gondwanaland around 130 million years ago the gigantic landmass gradually broke up to form the Atlantic Ocean separating populations of plants and animals here in the midea in this now extinct supervolcano known as Messam crater any large and thus presumably ancient specimens of Ovadia can be found lichens cling to this giant which stands almost 6 feet tall [Music] notoriously difficult to date no one truly knows the age of any of Archaea specimens although scientists have estimated that a plant this size could be over 2,000 years old [Music] clearly the adaptations of this extraordinary plant species have served it well throughout the ages 18 kilometers in diameter the giant mesm crater supervolcano was believed to be last active around the time of the Continental breakup unique landscapes such as Messam crater speak to the wonders of the Namib Desert a vast and primeval wilderness much of the Namib Desert still is wilderness its conditions unfavorable to many but not for the countless arid adapted organisms inhabiting it [Music] the inhospitable desert a false statement its inhabitants have shown us that it is anything but inhospitable the adaptations of the Namib flora and fauna arising over millennia in this fantastic and bizarre environment a true testament to the diversity and resilience of life [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Oliver Halsey

Views: 221,635

Rating: 4.8098207 out of 5

Keywords: namib, desert, documentary, film, science, namibia, gobabeb, research, centre, wildlife, natural history, video, insects, behaviour, adaptation, biology, independent, nara, plant, welwitschia, dunes, dune ants, scorpions, africa, burrowing, nature, environmental, ecology

Id: DqbOgx_FCbw

Length: 50min 0sec (3000 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019

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[u/plurwolf7]

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