Natures Weirdest Events Series 5 4of4

we live in a very weird world and the more we discover about our planet the stranger it gets every day new stories reaches stories that surprises what is shockers sometimes even scarce we've scoured the globe to bring you the most curious creatures the most extraordinary people I can stick almost anything to my skin without no glue at the most bizarre behavior using eyewitness accounts and expert opinion to explore a weird world of unexplained underwater blows Brian goes and glow-in-the-dark fish we examined the evidence test the theories to work out what on earth is going on in this episode an australian town under attack from aerial invaders an exquisite piece of alien artwork and the mystery of sperm whales washed up on the north sea coast but first to the USA Denison Texas but most American towns Denison has a main road nothing unusual about that well that was until the morning of May the 29th 2015 this highway became the scene of a very strange sighting balls of worms appeared overnight squirming in circles all lined up exactly between the center lines piles of worms are not small piles I'm talking about massive piles of worms hundreds piled together in the middle of a Texas Road why had these animals come together in such unusual numbers with no one admitting to putting them there the people of Denison were left baffled so the footage was put online where it caught the attention of an expert it is really unusual to see them lined up in the middle of the road like that I've never ever seen that before now Emma could think of some good reasons why the worms have clumped together like this it's much much safer for the earthworms once they're on the surface to actually congregate into these big balls worms actually breathe through their skin so they do need to stay moist at all times so being up on the surface being exposed to the sun's rays it's actually really really harmful and they can have died pretty quickly but of course if they're encased around with other worms that will actually keep them a lot safer okay so the worms had balled together for safety but this doesn't explain why they were on the road in the first place there just didn't seem to be a sensible answer and whilst the residents were there scratching their heads looking for clues the day just got weirder and weirder with reports coming in of something equally odd 75 miles south in Dallas check this out this is amazing Andre luzo captured this bizarre footage of fish trapped dead in a fence a meter above the ground check that out my first reaction when I saw these fish an offense was holy cow this is bizarre bizarre indeed I mean it's not every day you see a suspended fish stuck in the fence for playing field I didn't expect to see that at all because suddenly I'm walking around in these prehistoric looking things with mouths full of teeth they're suddenly right there and it was just you know immediate cellphone what is this well these freaky looking fish are gasps one of the largest freshwater fish in North America often called living fossils they've remained virtually unchanged for the last hundred million years sharing the world with t-rex and velociraptors these truly are prehistoric beasts so Andres knew what these fish were but why were these unfortunate few stock so high and dry wow that was a mystery weird you don't expect to see a whole bunch of fish randomly sitting in a fence and no one's gonna show up oh I've got a great idea let me take all these dead patients take them in offense no one's gonna do that so how did they get there so we have two bizarre animal appearances 75 miles apart happening within hours of each other could these strange sightings be linked could they possibly have in common well it turns out that may was a busy month for this corner of Texas while fish and worms made mysterious appearances a much more public event was making itself without before these weird happenings a whopping 37 trillion gallons of rain fell on Texas it pushed the water table far beyond its normal range lakes spilled over rivers burst their banks and large parts of Dallas experienced severe flooding affecting not only the community living along the river but also it's fish the entire field where I was had been flooded it would have been about chest-high for me that's a significant amount of water significant indeed enough water for the fish to swim easily over the fence across the flooded fields looking for something to eat but when the water level dropped well the way home was blocked they imagined the small ones got through the holes in the fence there's no problem but the bigger ones they happened against Ike it was a miserable end for these fish in the fence but what about those worm balls on the road could the extreme Texan weather provide the key it's been raining really really heavily everywhere was absolutely saturated completely waterlogged so basically all these worms have to come up to the surface and as they're trying to escape they've all hit this big tarmac road to avoid drowning the worms took to higher ground but this still doesn't explain why they lied themselves up in between the double yellow lines earthworms don't have eyes like we do but they are very sensitive as to whether it's light or dark so when they've got into this middle back area they maybe stay there and then not wanted to venture the other side either because of the other yellow line so maybe it feels to them a little bit safer and so the worms huddled together safe from the floods but trapped between the lines no other parts of Texas had recorded the saying nightmarish piles of worms or weird fish stuck in fences this was a very location specific event down to the unprecedented levels of rain that had come together to produce the perfect storm next we travel down under to a small town with its own set of strange invaders New South Wales Australia the coastal town of Batemans Bay sees its fair share of tourists people come to buy presided relaxed to take it easy they like through the visual aspect of it they like the clean beaches they like the trees but in 2016 the blade became famous for an invasion of much more unwelcome visitors it smells the noise you can't hang your washing out late men's babe is under siege there's when they let go over nighttime I block out your TV it's just all black the people of date men's Bay have had their peaceful lives turned upside down the high an invasion of bats and not just any old fatty giant Australian fruit bats otherwise known as the gray headed flying fox gray head of flying foxes are one of the largest bats in the world their wingspan is about a metre each bat weighs up to a kilogram and they don't fly alone either flying foxes are high the colonial animals they roost in large aggregations during the day in the open canopy of trees now the area around Batemans Bay has always been a flying fox hotspot loosing out in the wilderness beyond the town but in 2011 these bats turned their backs on the bush and set their sights on the town centre year by year the numbers have rocketed from around 10,000 to over 100,000 it's the largest number ever recorded in an urban area and the reason behind this relocation well it's all to do with this flying foxes are fruit bats and feed on fruit and nectar and there's nothing they like more than the nectar rich flowers of a gum tree the forests around baby's face contain a large number of eucalyptus species known as spotted gum it produces particularly rich nectar flows from its flowers so a spot of gum is almost like a magnet for flying foxes not only is the center of Batemans very close to these tasty trees but it's also got a good supply of freshwater and lots of pleased abou sting during the daytime this place is about heaven and when you consider that large areas of forest in the surrounding area have been cut down for logging and farm laugh now bedding down in the center of town makes perfect sense to the flying fox it's just that the human population is not quite so happy about it everyone's had a dog that sparked a lot next door to their night losing the drives you insane well multiply that by a hundred thousand and then you actually get an idea of the the physical and the mental stress this place on a community with that size of numbers it's not the Batemans Bay or entirely anti bad they're not it's just that they well they'd rather they weren't living quite so close to their homes so they've cut down a couple of the best favorite trees and they're using bright lights some loud noises and smoke so safely and humanely encourage the flying foxes back into the bush they eat the scent of our Shire is covered in National Park and concise and welcome to go to that I'd even say and we weren't even courage me to do that it's not just to respect the nature that's motivating the residents here you see bats play a vital role in the ecosystem every nightly opinion in the bush they come back to pollen in their firm on your heads and they move it to each successive tree of the very visit and in doing that they're providing an extraordinary service pollination you see keeping the force alive good for the flying foxes and good for people too so let's hope that man and bat find a happy compromise and peace can return to Batemans Bay as soon as possible our next unusual animal sighting was reported much closer to home January the 9th 2016 Germany a sperm whale the size of a double-decker bus was washed up on the north coast then within a few hours another whale appeared then three more nearby a few days later six more sperm whale was stranded unbelievably the news got worse whales began appearing on English beaches the world's media looks on horrified as over a period of three weeks 29 sperm whales washed ashore their bodies found all along the North Sea coast it was the largest mass sperm whales stranding event in the North Sea since records began the UK's leading whale stranding expert rushed to the coast to investigate I never had to deal with anything that before those emotionally physically we haven't had an event of this magnitude normal sperm whales for a hundred years question arises what happened what could possibly cause so many sperm whales to strand in such a short period of time well whales do strand across the world every year in 2004 150 melon-headed whales came ashore in Hawaii and in 2005 over a hundred pilot whales stranded in Tasmania but both of these events had one thing in common they coincided with large sonic activities label testing and minesweeping why ours have particularly sensitive hearing and loud unnatural sounds can interfere with their navigation but in 2016 there was no evidence of any naval exercises or other loud underwater disturbance Rob went back to the drawing board when the farm slightly causing it and asked more esoteric ones and a Large Hadron Collider might be impacting or climatic factors the El Ninos going on are we having an impact to those things we must consider but then more information arrived from Germany post-mortem examinations of sperm whales revealed something disturbing inside their stomachs was plastic a lot of plastic plastic in the marine environment is a very very serious issue and surely a whale with its stomach packed full of this stuff would suffer some very serious health problems so could it be that this oceanic litter is responsible for the stranding that would be case closed well actually no because you see not every whale had a stomach full of plastic so plastic could not have been the cause of the stranding it was a case of back to the drawing board or perhaps more pertinently back to the history books you see although this stranding in 2016 was the biggest in historical times or say the last hundred years if you go back further into the past a very curious picture emerges these works of art date from as far back as the 16th century it's a very familiar scene isn't it the 2016 event was by no means the very first mass sperm whale stranding there are many famous astark accounts per mile standings and mass landings all around the southern or sea and well frankly you can't help but notice that these whales are all males but what about the 2016 whales is there a link well what was startling about the latest stranding was that they too were miles every single one of them and that wasn't all these old works of art show the exact same stretches of coastline whales have been stranding here after centuries so what makes this Coast so deadly the sperm whales sperm whales like to live in water thousands of metres deep but this part of the North Sea is surprisingly shallow in some places only 50 metres deep sperm whales use an impressive bio sonar to navigate and find food it's the loudest sound produced by any living creature its path back to the deep water in this part of the North Sea the sonar bounces events the shallow ocean floor the whales become confused and they lose their way now the North Sea is a death trap there isn't anything to eat because the squid their main prey species is mainly found in much deeper water and a sperm whales get all their fluid from their food no food means no water they become dehydrated we are confused if they don't get out there they their chance of standing up in public quite high but why does so many he strand at once and why are they always Meyer when young males grow up they form groups called bachelor pods that migrate to colder waters in search of food all 29 whales that stranded in the North Sea were most likely from the same bachelor pond all it takes is for one to make a wrong turn and the entire pod will follow even into a dangerously shallow sea this was undeniably a horrible tragedy but paradoxically it might also be a sign of some of good news you see since 1996 when most commercial whaling was outlawed some whale populations have begun to increase now we can't say for certain but that's the case with sperm whales but it's likely and of course if there are more sperm whales in the ocean there are likely to be more sperm while strandings so although this was a very sad event we can perhaps look forward to some better things to come so from invasive invertebrates to stranded leviathans animals can turn up in the weirdest of places coming up what happens when technology and nature meet first up let's find out how a robot could help save one of the world's greatest natural wonders this is the Great Barrier Reef the world's largest living structure and it's under attack tropical cyclones are becoming more frequent and severe battering and damaging relief and warming seas have caused widespread bleaching of living coal but there is a much nastier threat the wheat is being devoured by a lethal predator that's multiplying at an alarming rate with a voracious appetite for living coal it leaves only death and destruction in its wake the culprit is something you may not expect we're in the midst of an outbreak of panel on starfish right now yes the coal killing culprits are starfish crown of thorns starfish or cuts going to almost a meter across these things are called eating machines a problem is an oath on starfish is that they have gracious appetites coal is their number one food and their appetite isn't the only problem a single female can generate 100 million eggs and so they have an amazing capacity to multiply and then spread from one reef to another in healthy reefs there are only one or two starfish per acre but in outbreak areas there can be thousands so what has caused this invasive invertebrate to swarm in such numbers it's natural predators like the Tritons snail and humphead wrasse so in serious decline due to shell collecting and overfishing but there's an even more serious issue the release of pollution from agriculture which is in fertilizing the water and helping the starfish propagate when excess nutrients runoff farm fields and into the ocean plankton blooms and starfish larvae slide on plankton with too much food and nothing to keep cots numbers in check the situation is desperate so can anything be done to stop these coral killers in the 1960s when these outbreaks first occurred Wow meaning divers went down collected the starfish and cut them into pieces the thing is each of those pieces can regenerate into a fully formed starfish so this simply made matters worse thankfully after years of research scientists have come up with a far more precise method teams of divers go out on a boat they'll take a solution of what are known as bile salts and you inject that single injection into the body of the starfish and that can kill the starfish bile salts dissolve the starfish from the inside out rapidly killing it but without polluting the marine environment it's effective but it's labor-intensive hmm with such a massive reef there must be millions of crown-of-thorns starfish out there and of course human divers have got a limited amount of time that they can spend under the water and they're limited to how deep they can go so to get rid of them that way would be a monumental task what they needed was a far more efficient solution to this thorny problem introducing cops fault a team at the Queensland University of Technology have developed a dedicated starfish destroyer what we've done is designed a robot like a predator and it's a robot becoming crown of thorns starfish that look pretty stable we've developed this system to actually maneuver around the reef bite stuff it has an onboard brain the interprets environment it has a vision system three articles hecht organisms on the street and at that time it's actually looking for these crown of thorns starfish this robot can actively seek out its victim using a state-of-the-art vision system if then maneuvers itself for a closer look and with one's stab at the needle it's game over for the starfish you'll see the arm go down delivers a dose of ten millimeters with bile salts retracts brings a time back up and then the robot moves on to the next star and this ingenious invention isn't just precise it's also practical they don't get tired we can go down to 100 meters currently occupational divers planning out of 30 we can operate at a night so we could eradicate quite a few hundred a day this is actually going to make a big difference so if it's something I'm very proud of it then hopefully we'll see more types of these solutions to help protect our natural environment in the future it's hoped that in the future there'll be a whole fleet of robots patrolling the reef helping to protect one of the world's greatest and most fragile ecosystems but it's not just the how oceans that are under it our skies are being invaded - in 2016 more than 1.5 million drones were sold worldwide no one is safe from these flying camera and with so many amateur filmmakers now taking to the sky it's not just humans who are unhappy with the aerial intrusion drones are easy to come by these days what's it for that this will only cost a few pounds and anyone can fly them Wow almost anyone but the fact that you can get them quite literally off the shelf and they're relatively easy to fly means that they are becoming a bit of a problem when wildlife takes on these aerial spies it can make entertaining beautiful but in the wrong hands drawings become a very serious danger indeed as well as leisure use drones present the possibility of use for criminal purposes has also had the potential for drones to be used by terrorists with spectacular consequences certainly this is an issue that is at the forefront of governments and corporations thinking about how we respond to the potential only the potential so far use of these things for what we call nefarious purposes the possibilities are too terrifying to imagine and it's a problem that needs to be solved the issue of how to deal with problem drones has come up with a whole variety of novel solutions the manufacturers themselves have talked about geofencing building software the drone to prevent them going anywhere where they could cause a real problem airports use their power stations the Japanese are developed drone with 11 lists so the version of area on the cross the scoops more drugs out of the air all good solutions but in the global fight against dangerous drones there's a more surprising strategy in 2014 a team of Dutch security experts started employing a flyer even more skilled than the drones other technologies have been investigated was novel one of those is the potential use of eagles yep you heard it right he said Eagles the Dutch team believes that Eagles might just be the perfect weapon to combat dangerous drones Eagles pili are supreme aerial predators with eyesight eight times better than ours a drone has no chance even the loader blades are no problem for their immensely powerful talons and if large gatherings of people were under threat but reporting event a child Eagle could be the perfect weapon to safely neutralize a suspicious drone Eagles trained in anti-drone defense are now being very seriously considered by police forces all over the world but I suppose we could think of this as a perfectly evolved natural solution to a new high-tech table next to North Africa where a surprising discovery in the June's could take us to other worlds 2008 malapa on the edge of the Sahara German professor Ingo Russian bird made an astonishing discovery I was very very excited very excited I was crying now professor Russian bird has dedicated his life to designing machines inspired by nature he loves the climate and the tranquility of the Sahara and spends his winters living here but one night he was in for the shock of his life I was growing outside in the night and in any moon was crossing me heads up feeling it's a very large any movie maybe jumping malls or maybe a lizard or something else and then I looked and just before me the spider was sitting down inspired I will serve the size of about 10 centimeter very large spider and as Ingo watched the spider did something extraordinary sadly since fight I was rolling away I was crying look the spider eyes rolling yes the spider was indeed rolling but that's not so strange because there is in fact another spider that Valls the golden wheel spider it balls itself up to roll down the dunes so why was Ingo so excited well the this moroccan spider was different it wasn't just rolling downhill soon soon and so I must say it was very very exciting it was a completely unique form of locomotion totally new to science but why would a spider want to do this the velocity when rolling is twice the velocity when the spider is walking with 8 feet it has a big advantage in the desert this spider could be prey for larger and faster beasts like the fennec fox or the Pompeian wasps when threatened this amazing arachnid flips into rolling mode and doubles its speed for a fast getaway it's just brilliant and of course it's every biologists dream to discover a new species the strange thing is the profession Berg is not a biologist he's a scientist with a very particular specialization my interest is mainly bionics that means that we try to study the performance of biological systems then of course we tried to imitate this and to develop a new machine or something else it's being quite modest professor Ingo Russian burg is at the very top of his field world-renowned for designing robots inspired by nature so after discovering the spider professor in the russian burg did what any world-renowned bionics engineer would do so we started to imitate the motions and our aim now is to design a robot which is able to do both to walk and to move in the wheeling condition here it is yes a robot the vols just like the spider it's certainly a very clever bit of engineering but the question is why I mean what possible purpose would there be for such an invention well professor Russian birth has bigger plans for his little robot you see with this particular type of movement it has the potential to boldly go where no robot spider has ever gone before hope that NASA also here either will become interested then when you're finish the robot to do design an arch awareness then we design here for the use on the next sir next mass a robot on Mars I wrote a walk and roll adapting to even the most challenging alien landscape so space really could be the final frontier for a little spider robot calling involving over the surface of Mars and just to think that all of that came to pass because of a chance encounter with a real spider in the Sahara one that now bears the name of the man who discovered it Sabonis Russian Bergy so we've learned when nature and technology meet the results can be both ingenious and wonderful coming up a weird world of new discoveries first up though the Amazon South America 2011 field biologist Aaron Pomerance was on an expedition in the deepest reaches of the Amazon rainforest there is an insane amount of diversity out there I was walking down this trail that was just covered in mud and I just sort of casually walked past this tree when I took a closer look I noticed something I wasn't really expecting hanging from a tree with something my youth and extraordinary a strange structure delicate and complex it was like nothing Aaron had ever seen before this structure is really odd looking like a little hanging orange basket it just looks like something 3d printed it I was just like oh my god I need to catch this like we need to look at this further just look at that it was bright orange made out of a very delicate lattice it's like a little alien basket but what was even stranger is that when Aaron peered inside he could see something in there something that any entomologist would easily recognize it was a pupa a moth chrysalis which means the tiny alien structure Aaron found was in fact a cocoon cocoons are made to keep caterpillars safe as they transform into moths they need to be weatherproof and to keep out any predators so why would a moth create such a fragile structure well a Pew play in the rain forest has one particularly prolific predator enter everywhere in the Neotropics and so we think that this adaptation with this odd structure allows the pupae to sort of hang there where it's protected away from ant yes suspending itself on a long thin thread the cocoon becomes ant proof even the most persistent and hungry and can't safety to send such a long thin fiber but then why the weird latticework surely the pupae will be safer completely enclosed now you see living on a long thin thread is a very fragile existence too much weight or wind will snap the thread and it will be game over for the pupae so the caterpillar that made of this cocoon came up with an ingenious plan but to understand it we need to look at the structure more closely the nearest we can get to making something so intricate is with a 3d printer and here is our cocoon copy and here's a more classic looking to good nice safe clothes sides if we recreate rainforest conditions the solid cocoon becomes waterlogged and heavy but the latter lets the rain drain straight through this keeps the cocoon nice and light and prevents its anti ant strands snapping and then if that wasn't clever enough air can circulate through the lattice keeping the pupae dry and preventing fungal infections if it was just enclosed like a lot of species that we have in say your for North America there's not as much humidity and not as much rain in these environments so in the rain forest we think is this open structure so it doesn't drown this delicate intricate structure is actually completely and wonderfully well practical so you might expect that the moth that would emerge from this would be a great mesmerizing beauty a paragon amongst moths Wow ladies and gentlemen young people I give you the Euro did both I'm afraid it's rather drab but thankfully our next weird discovery is far more colorful as we venture into the rainforests of Borneo home to some very unusual plants hidden amongst the greenery are some hair-raising hunters picture plants most plants get nutrients through their roots but these peculiar plants have an altogether more sinister strategy they eat sweets now all pictures are pretty wonderfully weird but there's one particular species that's puzzle botanist for decades Nepenthes Hemsley honor because well it's a picky eater this species catches seven times fewer insects than its closest relatives it's practically a vegetarian but if it isn't eating insects what is it eating in 2014 a scientific expedition to Borneo captures these incredible images that's inside the pitcher plant could this be the first documented case of a bat eating plant captivated by these images bat experts Michael and Caroline sure nerves travelled from Germany to the jungle to find out if the plant really had developed a taste for bats we don't think that the plants have evolved to digest these kinds of animals there's rules to that chest as important sex for example potentially pets would be able to die inside but if so if the pitcher plant wasn't eating the bat what was going on perhaps the bat was the one hoping through a meal we had this idea at the beginning that the best mites steal insects from the pitchers but actually it's not working because the better and never reached is destroyed no these peculiar pitcher plants weren't providing a free lunch they were offering something much more unusual fixers they have a very stable microclimate inside so during the hottest hours of the day they are cooler than the outside temperature and this is something which but absolutely like these pitcher plants make her the perfect air-conditioned place to rest during the heat of the day but what's in it for the plant why is this carnivore cuddling up to a bat well this guest leaves a gift behind bad pieces contain a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous and also potassium those nutrients are missing in the areas where the plants are crying this extraordinary pitcher plant has evolved to survive almost entirely on the poo of its guests relying on the bat to bring its sustenance I just love this a perfectly strange symbiosis between a plant and its small furry friend and it's a win-win situation the pitcher provides the perfect bat bag and of course the bat benefits at the same time the pitcher surviving on the bats poo and their survival is intricately intertwined there's just one last piece of the puzzle how does the plant attract the bat well we know that bats use echolocation to find their way around they send out high-frequency calls and use the reflected sound waves to build up a picture of the forest around them but Borneo has over 15,000 species of plants and more than 30 types of pitcher plant so how does this particular one make sure that the bats find it well would you believe the pitcher has evolved to become noisier it's back wall is unusually wide and curved just to reflect and amplify the bats calls it's the perfect bat it works amazing not only has the picture evolved to fit the bat like a glove it's also come up with a structure that acts as an advertisement which says this is the best bat hotel in town now honestly that's why I get up in the morning that's proper biology and finally we investigate a very serious danger from the Australian bush danger from above so drop air is like a cross between a polar bear and a koala bear that potentially could drop out of a tree when you're out camping for example it's probably almost as deadly as the crocodile but you just yeah almost many places around the world at their own legends of mythical creatures Scotland has the Loch Ness monster North America has Bigfoot and Australia has the drop bear the drop was a truly terrifying beast the complying freeze and drop down on you from above the drop bear a fearsome koala like creature that preys on the weak and unsuspecting but also just a piece of Australian folklore the sort of thing you hear around a campfire to scare you if you're tourists ill give you nightmares of your kid couldn't possibly be any truth in it or could there in 2015 in a remote corner of Western Australia researchers found weird scratch marks high up on a cave wall scratches that were vital clues clues to shed a new light on the mysterious drop there you see those scratches might actually point to some evidence that proves that the dot there is more than a ton of time hmm scratch marks on the cave wall that wouldn't mean much to you or I but to one paleontologist this was a monumental discovery our story begins almost two centuries ago with the settlement of Australia in the eighteen hundred's pastoralism was moving out beyond the main centres of occupation like Sydney and Melbourne in the process people were stumbling on the remains of large animals that they knew nothing off this was the Australian megafauna and giant animals one of these early finds was a skull of the very strange-looking animal about the size of a leopard it had the front teeth of a herbivorous marsupial like a kangaroo or koala it's cheek teeth were huge sharp blades the kind you would expect from a meat-eater a marsupial with carnivores teeth now that's a very weird find indeed it was so unusual is like in no other species ever seen it was given a very fitting scientific name fire Coolio carnufex which translates as the marsupial lion of the butcher but what exactly was this mysterious Beast well with only a skull to go on it was anyone's guess and would stay a mystery for a hundred years until a young paleontologist made a huge breakthrough in 1969 I was exploring with a colleague and we detected a gust of air coming out of the rock pile so he wriggled through into a chamber and in that chamber there was a silk floor with these funny sawtooth patterns then when I've got a customer I looked down and there at my feet was the upturned skull of the marsupial nine incredibly exciting I still get excited and telling you about it to the side of that there was the arm of the line with a hand reaching up out of the sediment against the rock and on the arm were long sharp claws exactly the sort a predator would use to catch and hold onto prey over the next few decades more discoveries of complete skeletons help flesh out a picture of a truly terrifying predator this animal can produce the most powerful bite known for any living mammal it could crush her skull in a single fight he really is the stuff of nightmares but can we say that this was the drop there well remember those scratches on the can fall in just recent times covered my colleagues have been examining scratch marks on the walls of caves in which we find the marsupial line this seems to suggest that they were actually actively climbing in and out of the cave it could climb out of a cave then potentially it could climb a tree and if it could climb a tree then it could drop out of it onto unsuspecting prey you can see where I'm going it's beginning to sound more and more like the drop there I suppose the question then is how could the legend pass into the present day well just look at this rock art made by Indigenous Australians more than 40,000 years ago are you seeing what I'm seeing experts believe this is most likely our marsupial lion and it's so it's direct evidence that some people came placed to face with it and lived to tell the tale a tale that could make even the scariest campfire story imaginable real even perhaps memorable enough to pass on to the next generation and the next generation all the way down to the present day and you never know it might still be out there if ever you're camping in Australia you might want to look up from the discovery of an alien cocoon to a plant that makes a home for a bat and the unraveling of an ancient legend I find it strangely reassuring that when we finally explain one of these weird mysteries we've become aware that there were still loads more out there to be solved there's no doubt at all but there are plenty of puzzles left on our planet next time we investigate vampire fish head-banging sharks and some very weird waves a deeply moving documentary marking the anniversary of one of the UK's darkest days now surviving a Pathan over on BBC Four whilst all they BC warm things are getting very tasty for the contestants in The Apprentice as Lord Sugar lives up to his name but says nothing sweet about the fall next here on BBC two a stellar comes face to face with Sonny on this desperation

Channel: Richard Mckinney

Views: 11,424

Rating: 2.9622641 out of 5

Keywords: Natures Weirdest Events Series 5 4of4, Natures Weirdest Events Series 5, Natures Weirdest Events Series 5 Episode 4, Natures Weirdest Events Season 5, Natures Weirdest Events Season 5 Episode 4

Id: EuupfZHQ2cI

Length: 59min 2sec (3542 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2016