In the animal world, the bizarre is commonplace.
The powers of nature make almost anything possible.
But even events that seem paranormal
usually have down-to-earth explanations.
(Cawing)
This journey explores the weirder side of nature.
Crop circles inhabit the strange world between science and popular mythology.
They are either attributed to aliens
or revealed as the work of hoaxers.
In any event, their scientific credibility has collapsed.
But corn circles have been reported since the Middle Ages
when devils in the crop were blamed.
Some must have a natural explanation.
Wind appears in many forms, from tornadoes to dust devils.
Its power is still mysterious.
Although tornadoes are rare in Britain,
smaller pillars of rotating air are common.
It seems these miniature twisters whip the corn into shape.
Inside the vortex, collapsing columns of air create a downward thrust.
0ther rotating forces are thought to cut out the circle.
The more creative designs are the work of hoaxers.
The force of the wind is only one of nature´s miracles.
In the lost worlds of Central America,
it´s animals that dabble in the paranormal.
The Jesus Christ lizard lives up to its name
by performing a miracle.
Also known as the basilisk, its powers are reserved for times of danger.
(Bang)
(Crashing)
In its world, threat takes many forms.
To escape, the Jesus Christ lizard walks on water.
The name basilisk suggests another miraculous power.
The mythical basilisk could kill with a single glance.
Although this lizard takes its name from the fabled beast,
the resemblance is probably purely physical.
The miracle is seems to perform can be explained.
As it runs, its feet trap cushions of air that stop them breaking the surface.
Walking on air, it can cross up to 40 metres of water
but only by reaching speeds of ten kilometres an hour.
Although this basilisk may not really have looks that kill,
some animals do seem to possess the evil eye.
A hunting predator has a penetrating gaze.
Stories tell of animals dropping dead with this intimidating sight.
Perhaps the stress initiates a heart attack.
For when eyes meet, there is often a moment of hypnotic tension.
Frozen, neither wants to initiate a chase when the stakes are so high.
For some, the shock can simply be too much.
The trauma of attack can initiate another hypnotic state.
These pigeons are in a state of trance,
a bizarre condition that affects many different animals.
Alligators are easily mesmerised too,
a fact exploited by Florida showmen.
Avoid the teeth, and it´s easy to provoke this weird, catatonic state.
The alligator reacts as if it had been grabbed by another predator.
A chicken can be hypnotised too,
by turning it over and focusing its attention.
These strange states probably originated as a defence.
Predators react to movement.
If their quarry plays dead, the killer instinct is suppressed.
It´s this inborn defence that´s triggered when people hypnotise animals.
In trance, breathing and heart rates drop.
They can stay like this for hours.
When they come to, it´s as though a hypnotist has clicked his fingers.
They even wake together.
And they don´t remember a thing.
In the Mexican deserts, predators are faced with another miraculous defence.
The horned lizard uses camouflage only as a first resort.
Its eyes hold the secret of ultimate defence.
(Dog barks )
The lizard´s behaviour is so bizarre,
reports of it were originally disbelieved by science.
Many predators are deterred by the lizard´s alarming, spiny appearance.
But sometimes, curiosity gets the better of them.
(Dog barks )
The lizard increases the blood pressure in the eye sinuses
until their walls burst.
Blood squirts a metre into the air,
a trick that can be repeated 20 times in succession.
The dog is shocked into retreat, and the lizard remains unharmed.
Statues that bleed are sometimes credited with the power to heal.
In nature, healing happens without the need for divine intervention.
The red colobus monkeys of Zanzibar
have the power to heal themselves.
The poisonous leaves of almond and mango can give them stomachache.
Just like human sufferers, they seek a cure.
(Cock crows )
Like herbalists, monkeys and apes have knowledge of medicinal plants.
Chimpanzees know of cures for parasitic infections.
Baboons even have a remedy for period pains.
But these colobus seek a man-made medicine.
They´ve recently discovered
that the remedy for stomachache is theirs for the taking.
(Bicycle bell)
Charcoal burners work in the forest
and a steady stream of baskets carries their produce into town.
This charred wood makes effective medicine for the colobus.
People use charcoal primarily as fuel,
but it can also be taken as a remedy.
It works by absorbing poisons,
a property long recognised by western medicine.
0nce the monkeys learned to appreciate its value,
they seized on any chance to steal,
behaviour that hasn´t endeared them to the locals.
(Shouting)
Through thieving, they gain an antidote to the tree´s poisons,
allowing them to feed on a greater variety of leaves
without fear of stomach upsets.
Like monkeys, birds too have an uncanny sense of what´s good for them.
There are even good reasons for this jackdaw´s bizarre interest in smoke.
A crow stirring up an ant´s nest
could provide an explanation.
The ants are provoked to a frenzy by the crow´s ritualised movements.
They attack with aggressive bites.
They also have a chemical weapon,
a spray of formic acid that they squirt at any attacker.
But the crow´s apparent masochism has a purpose.
The acid spray kills bacteria and parasites.
It´s the perfect plumage conditioner.
Smoke seems to act in a similar way,
fumigating the jackdaw´s plumage.
Burning desire can go further.
Some jackdaws crave cigarettes.
It´s not the nicotine that attracts. It´s the smouldering tip.
Anything bright or burning fascinates them.
In the Middle Ages, birds of the crow family were known as fire birds.
When fires in the hearth were common,
nature´s fire starters carried smouldering embers instead.
Some still believe a jackdaw visiting a house is a bad omen,
certainly true if it carries a cigarette.
Birds bringing glowing treasures to the nest
explain many mysterious fires.
A bird´s pyromania may have given rise
to the myth of the phoenix rising from the ashes,
particularly as birds that smoke-bathe also play with fire.
Mysterious fires include spontaneous human combustion.
0ne creature really does self-combust.
Instead of fire, the bombardier beetle´s combustion involves chemical burning.
Two body chambers separate the chemicals involved.
When attacked, the chemicals flood into a combustion chamber
with explosive effect.
They´re shot out as a boiling, noxious spray.
To control the chemical reaction,
the beetle pulses the spray 700 times a second.
This stops it boiling itself alive.
Some creatures appear less concerned about their own survival.
Why whales strand is one of the natural world´s great mysteries.
The reason may lie in their extra sensory perception.
Whales can sense distortions in the earth´s magnetic field
caused by the rock beneath the ocean floor.
These create an invisible landscape similar to the contour lines of a map.
In places, the magnetic force lines create invisible roadways,
almost like ley lines.
Whales are believed to follow these routes on their migrations.
When the roadways lead to the shore, the results can be devastating.
If the leader beaches, the others follow.
Their strong social bonds bind them together.
Between 1,000 and 2,000 whales
inadvertently kill themselves this way each year.
Illness might be another cause of stranding,
but disruption of their magnetic sense is the likely explanation.
Mysteries still surround many natural phenomena.
Stories tell of live toads found entombed in rocks,
a paranormal riddle that may have a rational explanation.
When young toads disperse, they seek shelter anywhere damp and protected.
Insects seeking similar shelter give the toad little reason to leave.
0ver the years, the toad starts to outgrow its home
until the chamber becomes a prison.
The crack is too small to squeeze through and the toad is entombed.
0nly human help can release him from his rocky grave.
To an observer, the natural has become paranormal.
Another apparently supernatural power is that of telepathy.
Because termites build complex structures
as though controlled by a single mind,
telepathy was once proposed as an explanation.
We now know chemical messages
unite the actions of the colony in their construction work.
True telepathy involves the transfer of electrical waves
from one brain to another.
The elephant-trunk fish has this power.
Special circumstances can demonstrate their paranormal ability.
Elephant-trunk fish communicate with electricity.
This signal travels along a wire more readily than through water.
If a wire links two pools together,
a female could use it to send a message, as if making a phone call.
If a male is on the other end of the line, the conversation can get heated.
He can even persuade her to lay eggs.
But when making private calls like this, you never know who´s listening.
A rival male can be provoked into sending an electrical challenge.
This jamming signal forces his opponent off the line.
(Dialling tone )
The world of the paranormal is full of surprises.
Like some kind of astrologer, a bush baby looks to the stars for guidance.
He knows the different constellations,
and uses them like a map to plot his nightly wanderings.
The Dogon tribe of Central Africa also have an interest in the stars.
Their understanding almost defies belief.
Bush babies can see ten times better in darkness than humans,
but the Dogons have knowledge beyond any vision.
Without telescopes, they knew of the existence of Jupiter´s moons
and the complexities of the Sirius star system,
long before it was discovered by astronomers.
The Dogons believe the information was given to them by extraterrestrials.
Aliens may be more common than we think.
Throughout history, comets have been associated with outbreaks of disease
and there is a theory that viruses and spores
are carried in the icy debris of their tail.
Comets do contain the chemicals needed for life
and probably seeded our planet with them.
But fungal and bacterial spores
are resilient enough to make the journey unaided.
Spores produced on earth can survive the rigours of space.
They can stay in suspended animation for thousands of years
and are small enough to escape the effects of earth´s gravity.
Perhaps the spores of earth travel to other planets
and the life of other planets reaches us.
Who knows? Aliens may have been under our noses all along.
(Sneezes )
We look to the sky to find evidence of other life
but the life of our own planet is still full of surprises.
The wind not only carves the corn circles we attribute to aliens,
it´s responsible for the one of the most bizarre events in nature.
Whirlwinds over water become water spouts.
They have phenomenal lifting power.
The swirling suction can empty the entire contents of a pond.
But what goes up must come down,
somewhere.
Stories of fish falling from the sky have been told for centuries.
0ver 600 accounts date from this century alone.
Sometimes they fall in a frozen state, suggesting a spell in a storm cloud.
0thers survive the journey.
Besides fish, newts, eels and frogs have all fallen from the sky.
Nature is rich in bizarre events that seem to us paranormal.
As our understanding grows, it prepares us to expect the unexpected.
0n our next journey,
we explore how the supernatural powers of animals interact with us.