- [Mark] Show him. - Check out what Mark found. - [Mark] Show him. (ethereal music) (gasps) - Get out of here. You are kidding me.
- We found it. (tribal beat music) - [Coyote] The Costa
Rican rainforest is considered to be one of
the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet. Home to literally
thousands of species, the crew and I have
been fortunate enough to encounter some of
its most iconic animals, from the striking
red-eyed leaf frog, to the adorable ocelot. Now she has found
the microphone. No, no! When exploring in
Central America, one of our favorite
places to visit is the Costa Rican
Amphibian Research Reserve, which is famous for having
some incredibly rare, and almost never seen creatures. Mark Mark, come here! - What is it? - [Coyote] Hurry up,
hurry up, hurry up. - What have you got? - [Coyote] You will
not believe this. Oh my gosh. And while I have been
present for nearly all of these initial finds, every once in awhile,
Mark and Mario stumble upon an
animal without me. And on this rainy evening, they just so
happened to encounter what may be considered
the rarest animal we have ever found
in a rainforest. - [Mark] Mario! - [Mario] Yeah. - [Mark] Come look what I found. - [Mario] What, what'd you get? - [Mark] I found a
giant Onychophora , the rare one.
- What? - [Mario] Oh man. - [Mark] Right
here on this rock. This is the one that's
on the wall in the cabin. - [Mario] Yeah, it totally is. - [Mark] What do we do? Coyote's not even here. What do we do, just film it? - [Mario] Uh well certainly
we have to film it. I've got a container
in my backpack. We could contain it, take
it back to the lodge, have Coyote check it out and we'll get some great shots. - [Mark] We have to right? - [Mario] Yeah. We'll bring it back.
- Oh yeah. - Yeah, we'll bring
it right back after and that'll be awesome. Great find dude. Okay so. - [Mark] Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. - Let's be gentle.
- Careful careful. - [Mark] Be careful. You know these things
could spray stuff. - [Mario] Oh,
you're very velvety. - [Mark] Hold on,
I gotta touch it. Oh it's so cool. - Let's go, I'm so excited.
- Yeah, alright. - [Mark] Let's do it. I can hardly stand
still, let's go. - Secured. - [Mark] Yes. - Woo! - [Mario] Coyote. - [Mark] Coyote - [Coyote] You guys find
anything cool to photograph? - Yeah maybe.
- Maybe. - [Mark] Show him. - Check out what Mark found. - [Mark] Show him. (gasps) - Get out of here. You are kidding me.
- We found it - [Mark] We found
it on the rock, like four paces from where
we found the brown one. - [Mario] Yeah. - [Coyote] Get out of here,
I cannot believe that. - [Mark] Go inside and get
the picture, show everybody. - Oh my gosh, I cannot
believe you guys found the Holy Grail. Oh my goodness guys
the Onychophora. - Good good, that's what we were
looking for, that reaction. - Get out of town. What? - [Mark] We've just been
like jumping for joy the whole way over. Look at it, yep, there it is. So we brought it back. What we want to do
is we want to build a little film set. - Ooh that's a great idea. Oh you know what we should do? Like a planet earth type shoot where we set it up
on a little table. Like having a little
table up here, we'll get some moss, and some logs and set it
up and do a presentation. - [Mark] Absolutely. - This'll kind of be like
the mole cricket episode, only with a much rarer animal. Oh my gosh. I can't believe you
found an Onychophora. This is insane. So wait, who found
it, you found it? - [Mark] Yeah I mean where we
were just filming with you. - [Coyote] Woo, this is crazy. - [Mark] Not a bad gig Coyote
when you can do your job and wear sandals. - I do, I got my sandals on, I don't even have
my snake boots. I was I was working
on the orca script, and just kinda lounging, so I saw the rain
starts coming down, and I was like, man
these guys get back before those cameras get soaked. Let me see if I can get it to just stay totally
calm on my hand. Whoa, you are looking
at the Velvet Worm, quite possibly the rarest
creature you can come across in the Costa Rican rainforest. This creature's
ancestors date back 500 million years to
the Cambrian period, that is before the
time of the dinosaurs. Now this was one of the
first terrestrial creatures to ever walk this planet and even to this day, they are strictly terrestrial, which means that
they stay on land. Well let's talk about
where this animal gets its name from,
the Velvet Worm. Believe it or not, this creature feels
just like velvet. It does not have any
hard outer exoskeleton like an arthropod, but in fact has a very
soft squishy body, almost feels like a gummy worm, but if you pet it very gently, go ahead Mark, put
your hand out there, tell everybody at home, it feels just like velvet. - [Mark] Oh wow. - So soft. - [Mark] Yeah, like a
crushed velvet suit. - Is is so soft. - [Mark] That is so cool. - Here's something really cool. They are actually
capable of shedding the outer layer of skin
around once a month, just like a snake, and when they do shed that, they basically walk
out of the skin, similar to the way a snake
slithers out of its skin and then they're even softer
and more brilliantly bright. Oh it's so cool. Let's take a look at the
anatomy of this animal. It looks like a mix
between a caterpillar, a worm and a slug. But Onychophora is actually
its own phylum, right? And there are close to
200 of them worldwide. However, scientists don't
know how many truly exist, because they're
very rarely seen. This is a nocturnal creature and the fact that Mark, you and Mario just
stumbled upon it tonight is why they're so hard to find, because oftentimes they're
out on rainy nights when most people aren't
out venturing around. Now despite the fact
that this creature is actually kind of cute, believe it or not, it is a voracious predator. And the way that they hunt, is they slowly move through
the rainforest flora, foraging amongst
leaves and dead logs and they'll use those
two front sensory organs to kind of tap on their prey and as soon as they
sense something to eat, this is crazy, they have
two glands on the side of their face that shoot
out a sticky slime. It's like Spiderman's
webbing, right? And it is so incredibly strong, that it can immediately
pin the prey down. It actually shoots
out in two streams, and those streams will cross, creating a net. So let's say it's
a small beetle, it will go, shoot out
those two streams, tangle up the beetle and then slowly walk
up on top of it. And they have a
little mouth up front, I don't know if you'll be
able to see that or not. But inside that mouth
is a single tooth that is like a razor blade. They insert that
tooth into the victim and then they leak in saliva. That saliva is
similar to the saliva of a giant waterbug that it
slowly breaks down the insides of their prey and
they drink it up just like a milkshake. - [Mark] Are you afraid
of being bit right now? - No, its tooth is much too
small to potentially bite me and they're not aggressive
in any way whatsoever. It's not a centipede
or a waterbug, this is something that is
completely safe to handle, however it's incredibly fragile, so as you can see, I'm trying to be just
as careful as possible. I also don't want it to shoot me with that sticky slime,
because it's just like glue. - [Mark] Is it toxic, the slime? Could it like poison you? - As far as I know,
everything I've read, no. The slime is
completely harmless, so if it does get slime on me, I'm gonna be absolutely fine. Now each one of those
little stub feet has two little hooked claws. They almost look
like cat's claws and they use those to
hold on to rigid surfaces when they're moving over let's
say a log or a dry branch. However, if they're walking
on something moist and soft, like moss, those claws
retract in and they have these little tiny soft pads
on the ends of their feet. I can actually feel it
gripping onto my hand and it doesn't hurt at all, but it feels really interesting because those legs on each side move in unison with one another. And just like a
worm, and remember, this is not related to a worm, but like a worm, has
a very soft body, and it's the expanding
and contraction of the muscles
inside of its body that allow it to get
longer if it needs to. So let's say it's moving
through some crevices in a log, it can
stretch its body out and get itself completely
out of a sticky situation. Oh hi there buddy. I see you. And look at the
strength of its body. It can completely
extend itself out, just like we've seen
millipedes do in the past, searching for the
next move to make. And there it goes,
right up on my fingers. Wow. - [Mark] Lucky night
in the rainforest. Man that thing is so cool. Alright well you built
a pretty awesome little set here Coyote. - I think this is
a good opportunity for us to get this Velvet
Worm down on the miniature set and start filming
some epic B roll. Are you guys ready? - [Mark] Let's do it. - Let's get the voiceover going. And turn this into a
planet earth episode. (majestic atmospheric music) The Red Velvet
worm is a creature that is almost never
seen in the wild with human eyes. Their elusive nature
and nocturnal lifestyle, combined with their tendency to exist in only the remote
areas of the rainforest, make encountering them
nearly impossible. To our knowledge, we are
one of the only teams to have ever captured video
footage of this animal. So having this opportunity was truly a once in a lifetime. This lucky moment will
now be held near the top of our greatest memories
we as animal enthusiasts will forever carry with us. And we are incredibly proud that we have now been able
to share this encounter with each and every one of you. Wow. What an absolutely
incredible night, getting the Holy Grail of
bizarre rainforest creatures, the Red Velvet worm, up
close for the cameras. I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave, stay wild, we'll see you
on the next adventure. - Alright guys, here we are, back at the rock
where we found this amazing rainforest
creature, the Onychophora. By far the coolest
animal I've ever found. Coyote was pretty impressed. - [Mario] And jealous. - And maybe a little jealous. But man, we had a great night. Alright buddy, right
back where we found you, just like we promised. - [Coyote] Hey Coyote pack, I've got some great news. We are doing two live
shows in Australia, one in Melbourne
and one in Sydney. The tickets are on sale now. And for everyone in
the United States, get excited, because
a West Coast tour is coming in early 2018. And don't forget, subscribe, so you can join me and the crew, on our next big adventure. I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave. (cheering) (coyote howling)
OMG look at its little face!
You can tell they really enjoy what they are doing. I'm glad these guys are content creators.
Alright. Buckle up, because the velvet worm is the center of a big controversy in the entomological and scientific publishing world (circa 2009).
The National Academy of Sciences is an invite-only and highly illustrious institution, made up of the top scientists in the world (with a mostly-US focus, but there are plenty of NAS members from Canada, Germany, etc.). It was set up by Abe Lincoln's cabinet to advise the nation on scientific issues.
About 100 years ago, they started publishing in their own journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (or PNAS, or penis). For most of this time, it was significantly easier to get works published in the journal if you were an NAS member compared to if you were submitting as an outsider.
Scientific publishing, and publishing in journals with a high impact factor (a metric on how frequently publications are cited by other publications), are critical to get grants. If your lab is pumping out annual publications in PNAS or Nature, it'll go a great deal further than if you're publishing in smaller specialty journals or large journals more infrequently.
This brings us to Lynn Margulis. She is known for being an esteemed bug scientist/founding symbiogenesist and being an ex-wife of Carl Sagan. She (her lab/sphere of scientific influence) came up with a highly controversial (wrong) conclusion that modern butterflies derived from an inter-species breeding between butterfly ancestors and velvet worms. Essentially, caterpillars were descendants of velvet worms that found it to be genetically useful to metamorphose into butterflies based on some ancient, inter-species sexcapades.
At the time (2008-2009), PNAS' process for reviewing NAS member-submitted materials involved a softball "submit the manuscript with the reviews from reviewers that you yourself chose outside of our system, and we'll send it to a board member, and they'll rubberstamp it." Now, if you're a not-quite-accomplished-enough scientist being asked by an NAS member if her research is up to par, without any veils of anonymity, are you going to tell her it's bunk or are you going to call it a breakthrough? Anonymous peer review is one of the most powerful mechanisms for ensuring good science gets published, and the then-existing process kept that from taking place (at least among NAS member submissions).
Predictably, the research gets presented to a bug expert board member; that expert glosses over the research, seeing that it's an NAS member submission; it gets published; controversy ensues:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/controversial-caterpillar-evolution-study-formally-rebutted/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/national-academy-as-national-enquirer/
Here's the abstract from the publication:
I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor. Rather I posit that, in animals that metamorphose, the basic types of larvae originated as adults of different lineages, i.e., larvae were transferred when, through hybridization, their genomes were acquired by distantly related animals. “Caterpillars,” the name for eruciforms with thoracic and abdominal legs, are larvae of lepidopterans, hymenopterans, and mecopterans (scorpionflies). Grubs and maggots, including the larvae of beetles, bees, and flies, evolved from caterpillars by loss of legs. Caterpillar larval organs are dismantled and reconstructed in the pupal phase. Such indirect developmental patterns (metamorphoses) did not originate solely by accumulation of random mutations followed by natural selection; rather they are fully consistent with my concept of evolution by hybridogenesis. Members of the phylum Onychophora (velvet worms) are proposed as the evolutionary source of caterpillars and their grub or maggot descendants. I present a molecular biological research proposal to test my thesis. By my hypothesis 2 recognizable sets of genes are detectable in the genomes of all insects with caterpillar grub- or maggot-like larvae: (i) onychophoran genes that code for proteins determining larval morphology/physiology and (ii) sequentially expressed insect genes that code for adult proteins. The genomes of insects and other animals that, by contrast, entirely lack larvae comprise recognizable sets of genes from single animal common ancestors.
I'm surprised how so few of this guy's videos ever make it to Reddit. They're always really good.
Really unrelated question here, but what watch brand/model is he wearing?
Looking at the phylogeny it's closest living relative is the Tardigrade (Water Bear) which is pretty neat. I wonder what it fed on back in the day, considering it had to have a steady supply of whatever was back then.
Always enjoyed this guys videos. But now seeing this and his totally genuine excitement, I like this dude even more.
Dude shaves his knuckles..
awesome vid. love this guys enthusiasm!