Predators (2000) s01e03 Episode Script

Predators, armed and dangerous, looking for prey.
Their ultimate advantage comes from amazing weapons and hardware.
Meet nature's special agents.
Predators uncovers how they use their license to kill.
Fish, being attacked by guided missiles, entering the sea at sixty miles per hour.
Diving from 100 feet is like smashing into a wall.
But these birds are unscathed because they're masters of extraordinary technology.
Everything about them is designed to withstand impact.
It's what makes them devastating predators.
The torpedo-shaped body and strong wings are characteristics of boobies and gannets, members of the Sulidae bird family found all over the world.
This gannet will fly hundreds of miles searching for a shoal of fish.
It spies the telltale shadow below.
The gannet now performs an amazing series of maneuvers combining aero-dynamics, coordination and perfect timing to transform itself into a weapon.
First it rolls like a fighter pilot to check it's zeroed in, turning using its feet.
It then begins a gravity plunge steering with its wings just before impact the gannet folds its wings right back and becomes a streamlined missile.
Timing is critical.
If the gannet streamlines too early, it's difficult to steer, too late and it may crash.
Both could be fatal.
It has to calculate the critical moment to make the switch.
Whatever the start time the terminal speed of the dive this moment is always the same.
Precisely 820 ms before impact.
820 ms gives it just enough time to pull its wings into position.
But split-second timing is not enough It also uses a special equipment hidden from our eyes.
As the gannet plummet seawards, it gulps air.
This inflates pockets in its neck and breast to cushion its body just like the airbag in a car.
Together with a skull like a crash helmet, the gannet has total impact protection In the phase of this cutting edge design, the fish's defences are shattered.
Even 4-5 feet below the surface, fish are not safe from this unique missile technology.
From a missile to a master of safe cracker.
In the forests of Madagascar, the aye-aye hunts for prey hidden deep inside wood.
It's armed with one of nature's weirdest weapons, an extraordinary thin bony finger.
When it comes to breaking and entering, this finger is the skeleton key.
The aye-aye uses it to tap the wood sounding out any hollow areas.
It can tell if there's anything moving inside.
In slow motion, another trick behind the aye-aye's tapping is revealed.
After each tap, the fingernail is gently dragged along the surface.
Scientists think the aye-aye is also picking up tiny vibrations.
It's able to do this because its finger is so bonny that it resonates.
This allows it to fine tune its picture of what lies under the surface.
Their ears are huge and extremely mobile.
They form a tent to capture sound adding to the minute sensory input traveling through the finger.
It's found something, a channel three centimeters below the surface.
All its powers of surveillance now focus together.
The eyes are shut perhaps to heighten the other senses.
When the grub hears tapping, it starts to move providing the aye-aye with yet more clues It rips the wood apart.
The aye-aye doesn't go straight for the grub.
It's smart.
It chisels in half way up the channel, hoping to find even more prey in the neighborhood.
An acute sense of smell confirms the presence of a grub at the far end.
To reach it, the finger will have to switch to a different function.
The nail which was earlier used for scrapping now becomes a hook.
The grub's safe haven has been cracked, thanks to the aye-aye's all-purpose skeleton key.
Some animals combat gear is built for both attack and defense.
Two crabs fight for territory like knights in medieval armour.
Within the suit of armour is a vulnerable body, but it is well-guarded.
The crab is reinforced contraption built of levers, pivots and joints.
Formidable claws deliver crashing power.
Even the eyes are mounted on tractable turrets.
Powerful legs drive it into gaps and rocks, a gladiator safe in its fortress.
It seems that nothing could storm the crab's defenses.
But one creature can.
Its design is totally the opposite.
It has long sinuous arms, elastic suckers and a soft body.
But unlike the crab, its armor is worn inside.
The octopus eases out of its den.
It steers its siphons and glides towards a possible meal.
The crab sees the predator coming and runs for cover.
But it's forced to defend itself.
The octopus descends like a cloud and envelops the crab, rendering the claws useless.
Smothered within a web of suckers, the crab is swept back to the den.
The crab is protected by its armour and is too strong to be simply pulled apart.
But in the safety of its den, the octopus unveils its own hidden hardware.
In its mouth, it has two armored tongues.
The first 7 millimeters long and called the radula is loaded with rows of spiky teeth, the second, the papilla is studded.
Their purpose is to break through the crab's armour.
First the radula grinds away the outer layers of shell, close to the crab's heart.
It's like scraping reinforced concrete.
Then the papilla drills a tiny hole.
It injects toxins into the crab's flesh causing the armour to fall away.
But even with its formidable power tools, it still takes 40 minutes to break its prey's defenses.
Some special agents are double agents.
Dragonflies pass a few weeks in the summer hunting insects on the wing.
But before this they have lived for three years in a completely different world.
Back in time, before it had wings, before it lived in air and before it emerged from this cocoon it was an awesome hunter.
Anax, the dragonfly larva.
Anax is armed with a weapon out of Hollywood science fiction.
But before the weapon can be fired, it has to get within range.
It detects the movement of a tadpole.
To close in on its prey, anax uses jet propulsion.
It sucks in water at its rear vent then squeezes it out again, by compressing its abdomen.
It works like a hydraulic rocket launcher.
Anax now becomes a stalker.
It still needs to get within a critical distance before it can strike.
It sees in stereo.
At 15 millimeters, the two images from its eyes merge, the tadpole is then in range.
Anax's secret weapon is also precisely 15 millimeters long.
It's a modified part of the mouth, called the mask.
It's folded in two under the head, a hydraulic masterpiece.
When the prey's within range, anax arms its weapon.
It uses its jet propulsion technology in reverse.
The abdomen is compressed, but this time the rear vent is closed, fluid is forced forwards instead of backwards, building up pressure in the mask.
Two clasps hold the mouth closed until the pressure reaches maximum.
Then in just milliseconds, it fires.
At he end of the mask, there are two deadly claws which harpoon the prey.
This special agent is a miracle of precision engineering eyes and mask perfectly calibrated to kill.
Nature's equivalent of the jaws of Hollywood's awesome alien.
No matter how advanced a killer's tools maybe, it's often a question of playing a waiting game.
A light bulb draws predator and prey together.
A moth is mesmerized by the light.
As it circles, it becomes disorientated, stuck on a merry-go-round.
From down below, the moth is spotted by a moth eater.
To catch the moth, the gecko will have to defy gravity.
But it's got a complex traction-control system that can adapt and grip to any surface.
Some toes have claws perfect for climbing wood.
However walking up a pane of glass requires more sophisticated traction.
The gecko's traction control operates at a microscopic level.
Each toe has pads which can be inflated with blood.
Each pad is covered with thousands of neatly arranged bristles.
Their surface area is multiplied with a forest of branches.
At the ends, hooked spatular shapes are charged with natural static electricity.
Microscopic particles in the window are also charged.
When these different charges get close enough, they stick and gecko exploits this.
As each foot touches the pads inflate to maximize contact, smothering the surface with millions of different charges.
The gecko sticks like a rubbed balloon.
To cope with a textured wall, another level of traction is engaged.
This time the spatular hooks physically grip the surface.
When all these kinds of traction control work together, the gecko can hang on with only a single toe.
On the ceiling, the gecko faces its next gripping challenge in the hunt for its prey.
Upside down, it becomes difficult to pump blood to the feet, but the gecko's control system simply switches, sending blood the right way to maintain just enough sticking pressure.
It's so effective that gecko can hang in neutral for hours, waiting for the chance to launch an ambush.
This is the final test for the world's most incredible traction control system.
Prey captured, mission accomplished.
Patterns of dunes snake across the blistering Namibian desert, ordered and shaped into beauty by the wind from the chaos of billions of grains of sand.
But down on the desert floor, there's another kind of order another force at work, creating strange patterns.
It's a tiny pattern that litters the plains.
It's created by an extraordinary special agent that uses technology to catch its prey.
Night.
A foraging ant.
At ant level, it's impossible to see these tiny stone circles, or to recognize the danger within.
Inside each one of these circles is a corolla spider -- waiting If the ant touches the wrong stone, it will mean certain death.
It's like walking through a minefield.
It's a game of chance.
Tonight, the ant is lucky.
The corolla's pattern is an astonishing solution to an engineering problem.
It takes great care selecting the right tools for the job.
7 or 8 round pebbles, rejects are catapulted away.
Each pebble is just over twice the spider's weight.
Crucially, the selected pebbles are made of quartz because they have a special property.
The corolla carefully arranges its quartz pebbles around the rim of its burrow.
Corollas can't build traditional webs because their silk will be destroyed by the desert's windblown sand, So they have to construct this unique answer to catching their prey.
Within the burrow, incredibly fine silk threads are attached to the pebbles, the spider rests its legs on the silk.
The trap is set.
The ant can't see the circles, and soon it descends to unwittingly run the gauntlet through the spider's minefield.
Just a hair's touch will be sufficient to raise the alarm.
The ant's presence has been betrayed by a quartz pebble.
This is what happens when an ant's antennae brushes it.
The quartz crystal transmits the tiniest vibration with no distortion.
This then travels along the silk to the spider on the other side.
Amazingly, the spider can tell if it's caused by prey, another predator or just the wind.
The vibration also tells the spider exactly where to strike.
In the desert, the corolla spider has learned the remarkable power of quartz to transmit tiny vibrations undistorted and over millions of years has taken advantage of it.
Man has only made this discovery in recent years using it today to regulate wristwatches.
Very rarely, nature designs a weapon system that is quite literally stunning.
Here in the Pacific Ocean is a special agent armed with such a weapon.
A torpedo ray is hunting.
It has harnessed one of the forces of nature and is capable of unleashing devastating power.
This predator is armed with a deadly weapon - a ray gun.
It is wired for attack.
A sixth of its weight comprises a network of modified muscles stacked like 1000 miniature batteries.
Their combined voltage is enough to knock a man unconscious.
At night creatures seek safety under weed and rocks.
But the ray scans for them two meters above.
A member of the shark family it can detect the minute electrical signals produced by living things.
A fish has strayed from the safety of the rocks.
The ray detects it but the fish is unaware.
The ray closes in ready to strike.
It fires, the attack lasts 3.
5 seconds Within this time, the ray has judged the size of the fish and zapped it with a lethal dose of electricity.
As the ray surges forwards and wraps the fish in its fins then it fires three blasts from the stun gun each one containing 19 electrical pulses.
It's like an electrical storm of hundreds of separated shocks.
The fish's muscles contract so rapidly it breaks its own back.
It's consumed and the special agent's batteries are recharged.
Not all animals invest in such extreme weaponry.
They use strategy to catch their prey the subject of the next programme.
A hunting lioness has many choices but there are only two outcomes.
She can fail or she can succeed.
Prey too must make difficult choices Choose the wrong exit hole, and the predator awaits.
Battles require many different strategies.
Predators uncovering the moments where life hangs in the balance.