Super/Natural (2022) s01e06 Episode Script

Enter a world
just beyond your perception.
A world of extraordinary animals,
with hidden powers,
and super senses.
If you think you know nature
think again.
To survive in extremes,
you have to push the limits.
In the Italian Alps,
a towering dam
as high as the Golden Gate Bridge.
It holds a hidden treasure
salt.
Pouring from its wall.
It's so rare up here,
ibex risk everything
to reach it.
Scaling these near-vertical walls calls
on incredible climbing skills.
These natural-born mountaineers
make it look like a walk in the park.
But imagine what it's like for a kid.
Going up there
for the very first time.
He has no choice
but to follow his mother.
A fall would mean certain death.
But step by step,
he discovers
he has an amazing grip.
The higher he goes,
the more vertical the face.
Now, his survival depends
on his innate superpower.
Soft, rubbery soles mold around
even the tiniest ridges.
Locking them inside the hard edge
of the hoof.
He balances.
Every step on a knife edge.
It's exhausting work
for one so young.
Just in time,
his mother notices.
She gives him a chance
to recharge.
A 5-minute power nap.
150 feet up,
finally, he reaches his goal.
Twenty percent of concrete
contains salt and water
seeping through the dam
brings it to the surface.
It may not look like much,
but this mineral lick is crucial
for the kid to grow up strong.
Muscles and nerves replenished,
his epic ascent is complete.
Death-defying missions like this
are a vital part of many animals' lives,
and we're only just discovering
the wondrous ways in which they succeed.
The dunes of northeast Brazil.
An area larger than Los Angeles.
Scorched by the fierce equatorial sun.
Many who try to cross
never make it.
But there are opportunities
you just need to find them.
After five months in suspended animation,
without food or water,
a Brazilian slider,
a normally aquatic turtle, emerges.
Something has awakened her.
Her acute sense of smell has detected
a change in the humidity,
her only hope of survival
is water.
But to reach it,
she must attempt the impossible.
Traveling for days
across sunbaked sands.
Every moment exposed
means hydration lost.
And as the wind picks up,
she loses the scent of water
So, which way now?
In this hostile landscape,
she'll soon dry up.
But the sun that threatens
to cook her
is also her guiding light.
Using its position as a compass,
she keeps on her course.
She's almost there
Just in time.
When the rains arrive,
a magical transformation begins.
In most dunes, water quickly drains
through the sand
But here, a layer of solid rock
beneath
blocks the water's path,
allowing thousands of pools to form.
Just one last obstacle.
Now, it's downhill all the way.
Time to do what a slider does best.
A crystal-clear oasis.
These ephemeral pools bring food.
And the chance to meet a mate
before the water vanishes
and the scorched desert returns.
Incredible journeys
are happening across the planet.
But they're often overlooked.
The city of London.
A confusing man-made maze.
But hidden away behind its walls,
there are animals
who've learned to navigate
this urban jungle.
This buff-tailed bumblebee is about
to embark on a royal mission
to find food for the queen's larvae
and secure the future of the colony.
Easier said than done.
Confusing concrete corridors
could be hard to navigate.
But not for her.
Like a London cab driver,
she's got the knowledge.
She knows the landmarks to build
a mental map of the streets.
Though some things in this city
never stay put.
But it takes more than a little traffic
to stop this busy bee.
She travels up to seven miles
on her daily commute in search of nectar.
And this is where she finds it:
one of three million gardens
that make up a quarter of the city.
And it's in full bloom.
Thousands of lenses in her eyes
detect the shape and color
of nectar-rich flowers.
And ultraviolet vision,
reveals secret patterns in the petals.
But another bee's already been here.
So, to target untapped plants,
she tunes into an invisible force.
As bees fly, they gain a positive charge
from the atmosphere,
but flowers
are negatively charged.
So, when a positive bee visits
a negative flower,
it briefly alters the electric field.
Hairs on her legs
detect these changes.
Ensuring she strikes gold every time.
But her journey has just begun.
She's called a worker bee
for a reason.
She'll visit up to 5,000 flowers a day.
Then, remembering every twist and turn,
she carries her own body weight in pollen
and nectar, all the way back
to the nest.
A royal delivery for queen and colony.
While many animals undertake
a testing daily commute,
others embark on epic migrations
that take months to complete.
Winter is coming.
Days are getting shorter.
Food is running out.
Bad news for a young humpback whale.
He arrived in Antarctica with his mother,
but now he's left all alone
in this vast ocean.
And soon he must embark
on one of the longest migrations
of any mammal.
Swimming 80 miles a day
to reach warm waters further north.
But how to navigate 3,000 miles
through a featureless ocean,
with strong currents
that could push him off-course?
To stay on-track,
he tunes into
a mysterious planetary phenomenon.
As charged particles
from the sun hit the Earth's atmosphere,
they illuminate the southern skies
but there's more to this heavenly display
than meets the eye.
The Aurora Australis reveals
Earth's magnetic field,
an invisible force scientists
believe whales can sense
using magnetic particles in their brains.
This internal compass keeps
the humpback on course,
accurate to one degree.
But it leads him out into the open ocean
where the fish and crustaceans he eats
are hard to find.
It's been weeks since he last ate.
But then
he hears something.
Using his body
like a giant microphone,
sound vibrations
rush through his skeleton,
straight to his head.
The welcome calls of other whales,
hundreds of miles away.
He homes in on a growing barrage
of sound.
Finally, five weeks
after leaving Antarctica,
he joins hundreds with other whales
for a monster feast.
One of the largest humpback gatherings
on the planets,
there are hundreds of them.
This annual assembly has only
recently been discovered.
Three miles off
the coast of Africa,
strong currents create an upwelling
of nutrients and an explosion of life.
In a single mouthful,
he swallows
thousands of fish and shrimp,
150,000 calories,
that's the equivalent
of 600 chocolate bars.
Once fully fed,
he must leave his friends
and head off alone
to complete his epic journey north.
There are animals with the power
to travel right across the globe,
but the most intrepid of all
is a creature you'd never expect.
The British countryside
home to a baby cupboard spider,
no bigger than a pinhead.
She's got about 200 brothers and sisters.
And her siblings have some
truly appalling table manners.
These spiderlings
are cannibals.
This is one family meal
you don't want to hang around for.
Better get away as fast
and as far as she can.
The trouble is
her siblings
have the same plan.
And she just ran out of road.
But when it comes to great escapes,
this spider has an extraordinary skill.
She fires out
negatively charged silk thread
into the positively charged atmosphere.
Opposites forces attract,
pulling her up,
up
and away.
Heading high,
riding the wind,
even cruising the jet stream,
she can travel for thousands of miles.
By ballooning,
they've colonized
every corner of the Earth.
At the mercy of the wind,
she has no control over
where she touches down.
But weighing less than a grain of sand,
she doesn't even break the surface.
She just deploys her magical silk
once more,
and kitesurfs to safety.
A new place she can call home.
One animal's journey is all about timing.
Waiting for the planets to align
so it can transcend
from one world
to another.
A three-foot-long epaulette shark
may not seem
the most adventurous traveler
He rarely even strays far
from his patch of reef.
But on some special nights,
heavenly bodies
turn his world upside down.
At full moon,
a spring tide pulls billions of gallons
of water off the reef,
stranding creatures
in a maze of tidal pools.
Or worse.
Left high and dry,
a fish out of water soon suffocates.
Unless
it's a super fish.
A walking shark.
And he's not just saving his skin,
he's on the prowl.
Heading towards rich hunting pools
full of prey trapped by the tide.
Forcing a jet of water
through his muscular gills,
he hoovers up his cornered victims.
But he's caught in a race against time.
Oxygen levels in the pool
are falling fast.
Pretty soon, he'll run out of energy.
With an hour till the tide returns,
he's close to death.
But these extreme conditions trigger
an extraordinary physiological response.
Slowing his breathing,
reducing his heart rate,
even shutting down part of his brain.
He enters
a self-induced coma
One last breath,
and he can survive for an hour.
But after that,
his time is up.
Finally, the tide turns,
immersing him
in oxygen-rich waters.
A miraculous resurrection.
Perhaps the most impossible journeys
of all
are made by those
who can't even move.
The secret to how plants spread
is seeds.
All the ingredients for new life,
packed and ready to go.
Some have evolved explosive mechanisms
others harness the wind.
But one cunning plant
simply makes someone else
do all the legwork.
A female dung beetle
on the African plains.
There's only one thing that will
make her go to extraordinary lengths:
the sweet scent of antelope droppings.
Perfect food for her young.
Using her antennae,
she selects the juiciest morsel.
It smells like it,
it looks like it,
it even rolls like it.
But this poop is an imposter.
It's so convincingly like the real thing;
she's prepared to fight for it.
Victorious, she heads off
to stash her prize away
from the competition.
But she's been duped.
She thinks she's hiding it,
but really she's planting it.
She's nothing more than a vehicle
in the incredible adventure
of the cunning elephant reed.
One animal traveler takes the journey
of a lifetime,
just to get back to where it started.
This nymph
has been hanging out
in a Hungarian riverbed.
For the last three years,
she's been building strength
for an incredible journey.
When the water temperature is just right,
she departs one world
to enter another.
It's a magical transformation.
A mayfly is born.
And not just one
thousands emerge every minute.
Though many are eaten by predators,
there is safety in numbers.
But numbers soon become
her greatest challenge.
She's mobbed by an army
of male suitors.
Weighed down with 8,000 fertilized eggs,
she needs to lay soon.
This is the best place for her young
to grow
but if she laid here,
the current would carry her eggs away.
She has to make it further upstream.
Her polarized vision
picks up light reflecting off the river.
A shimmering path leading
to her final destination.
In just a few hours,
she travels six miles.
Close to death, she reaches
the same stretch of river
where her life began.
The perfect place to lay
so her eggs can drift downstream
and hatch in exactly the same spot
where she grew up.
As her life ends,
others begin.
Now, her offspring start
their own voyage
all the way back
to where it began.
When starting a new journey,
sometimes it's the first step
that's the most terrifying of all.
After 20 hours trying to break free
a guillemot chick's first view
of the world is this
1,000 feet up.
It's like peering off
the top of the Empire State Building.
But why be born in such a dangerous place?
This Icelandic cliff is inaccessible
to most predators.
A safe haven to grow up in.
But in just three weeks,
it will be time to leave the nest.
And this chick will face
a life-or-death decision.
Her bond with her parents
is already strong.
It started long before she even hatched.
Responding to her first gentle calls,
her parents talked to her
inside the egg.
These early conversations
ensured the newborn already recognizes
and trusts Mom and Dad.
Her parents work tirelessly
to feed her up
in preparation
for the journey ahead.
But as the weeks pass,
it gets harder
to satisfy her growing appetite.
And now this clifftop home
that protected her
has been discovered
by ravens.
Predators kill
up to 70 percent of chicks
and parents are almost defenseless
against the threat.
This time, the chick gets lucky.
But she needs to leave
before the ravens return.
The problem is,
without adult feathers,
she can't fly.
Her father encourages her to jump.
It's a vertical drop
of more than one-hundred stories
Trusting him completely,
the chick takes a leap of faith
The chicks flapping seems futile.
But it's just enough to slow her down
and steer her away from the jagged rocks.
Her downy feathers soften the landing.
This seemingly impossible journey
is vital to her survival.
Now out at sea,
Dad can lead her to food.
She will face many more obstacles,
but with extraordinary bravery,
she can make it through.
When animals can tap into
remarkable senses
and supernatural skills
crossing the globe,
even moving between worlds
to find a mate,
safety
and food,
they become truly unstoppable.
If you think you know nature,
think again.