In the Wild (1992) s01e07 Episode Script

One of the wonderful things about walking through the bush is you never know what you're gonna see next.
In this case, it's one of the most delightful small animals you could get - pygmy possums.
They really are delightful things.
You probably wonder why they're not running away from me.
The reason is the blossoms they're feeding on have been in the hot sun, and the nectar in them has fermented.
These little fellows have eaten the fermented nectar and, in fact, they're drunk! (THEME MUSIC) Many people think that this karri forest in the deep south-west is the most beautiful sort of forest there is, at least in this part of the world probably because of the atmosphere of cool and wet and damp and these great poles going up supporting the sky.
It's almost like a cathedral in here with just the hush underneath the canopy, the winds moving over the top in the canopy, and down below in the undergrowth is the hush.
Even the bird calls are muted.
'Cause this is a monument - a tree like that, 400 years old, big enough to cut two houses from, one of the biggest trees in the world, and they're only found down in this high-rainfall south-west corner.
All of this karri forest is owned by the forest department and is worked as a managed forest, because that's the only way karri can be regenerated properly.
This dense undergrowth springing up in the shade and moist conditions has a very wide range of jungle plants and indoor plants too.
The lush greens, the wet, moist conditions and the ample fresh water were the things that really attracted the first settlers to this part of Western Australia.
Lord, can you imagine what it'd be like? A fella comes along, he's got a little block of land.
He's fresh from England - he's raw.
And he finds out he's got a block of land in the colonies, and out he comes.
He's got his axe over one shoulder, he's gonna make himself a fortune.
He's gotta cut that down with an axe! No horse, no power saws, nothing! So they developed a specialised technique.
They called it ringbarking.
They just went around the tree and took little bits out.
One of our famous poets has a line, "The tragic ringbarked forests," and it's so right, because you can look across this country and there are these great, dead giants just in lines marching across the hills.
And the little settlements carved out, the little farms carved out.
Tremendous courage on the part of the men who did it.
Dairy farming and things like that were the end result.
This sort of forest has only two real habitats.
It has the canopy, which is the unbroken leafy part of the forest, and up there is a world apart - birds, animals, insects.
So high - 200 or 300 feet up in the air - you can only see them with binoculars or something like that to get up there among the trees.
These red-tailed black cockatoos are very upset because they've got two babies and they're a little bit perturbed that I might be going to hurt them.
There's the young fellow now - smart, isn't he? Down on the forest floor, the dense, lush undergrowth is the second basic habitat, and here you get the small, insectivorous birds, the slow or the poor flyers, who can hide and protect themselves in this vast, green jungle.
No hawks can penetrate here, so they're relatively safe, and there's plenty of insect food! Every forest has its ogre, its beast, its dangerous animal, and this is the one for here.
This is norrun, the tiger snake.
The western tiger snake.
And he is not a very nice animal at all.
He's one of the few snakes that, legend has it, will attack you on sight.
And you can see how wrong legend is.
There probably is no snake in Australia that will attack you on sight.
If you happen to interfere with the snake by getting in between where it's going or where it thought it was going or for some snaky reason, you annoy it, then it may attack.
But this tiger snake is out sunning in a little patch of the forest and is quite relaxed, although I'm alongside it.
Come up even closer.
Now, all he wants to do is get away.
Now he's getting mad, because I'm annoying him.
Now, to catch a snake The tail is always the best way.
'Cause when you've got them by the tail, not many of them can climb up their own bodies.
Even now, even though I'm annoying the annoying it very much, it's not trying to bite me.
All it's concerned with is getting away.
Let's have a close look at you, little man.
Come on, round that way.
No, no, no.
There.
The only safe grip for a snake is with your thumb and your finger under his ears - where his ears would be if he had any ears.
You can see why he's called a tiger.
Brilliant snake.
Lovely yellow belly, shiny black body.
But he's the devil in this country, because if that fellow were to bite me now, without first aid treatment, I could die in three minutes.
So he's a very dangerous animal.
Though he's only a small snake, he's got fairly large fangs.
See them there? Not exactly retractile, but they are on a bone plate that lies along the roof of the mouth.
When he opens his mouth fully, the bone plate tilts down and the fangs are extended forward.
Also, you can't see the fang.
Just the tip of it is showing through gum, which covers it.
'Cause these fangs have grooves in them.
Instead of being hollow, it's got little grooves running down the front and the back.
And when the snake bites, this grooved fang goes into the flesh and then the gum presses down around it and makes a seal and forces the poison in.
Snake poison is a sort of saliva, a sort of spit.
And a snake can no more run out of poison than you can run out of spit.
You can run out of spit - you can spit yourself dry - and half an hour later, you've got it again.
But at this time of the year, these fellows are pretty bad, because they've been through the cold, wet months lying dormant and doggo.
They've built up their venom content and now they're hunting.
Incidentally, tiger snakes are readily told from all the other big, dark snakes by the under-tail pattern, which is completely single scales right along under the tail.
I mentioned the word 'norrun'.
That's the Aboriginal name.
And the Aboriginals of this country very much feared this snake, and rightly so - it's a killer.
I'll let him go.
And he'll go straight into a crawl away.
So much for the aggressive tiger snake.
He's just not at all interested in eating me.
He's much more interested in getting a little bit of sun and getting away from this horrible naturalist.
From the beast to beauty.
And in the south-west forest, there is a tremendous amount of beauty.
Over 6,000 different sorts of wildflowers - every conceivable colour, shape and size.
Look at that bug eating the plant.
(CHUCKLES) But that's wrong.
Because, in fact, that plant, which grows here in this swampy country where the nitrogen is very low, makes up its nitrogen supply by actually eating bugs.
It catches them and sticky hairs digest them and so build up its nitrogen supply.
The most exciting of all of these insectivorous plants live really deep in the heart of these peat swamps.
They actually have the leaves converted into insect-eating traps.
There's a leaf.
And it's changed Even though it still conserves and carries out the normal function of leaves - that is, it's green and can use sunlight to change raw material into food - it's changed into a total trap.
It has a little door.
Turn it around a bit.
And inside, there's some fluid nice, sloppy liquid which tends to smell a little bit.
Around the top of it is a whole row of in-pointing teeth.
This just lays down in the swamp.
Insects come along - they're attracted to the fluid.
They crawl in to get to the fluid.
The lid never closes - it doesn't close like a trap.
It just stays like that.
But the insects trying to get out meet these down-hooked teeth, and they can't get out.
And eventually, they drop back into the fluid and they're digested.
And we'll just take a quick cut.
There we are.
There's the digestive fluid.
A few little bugs floating in it.
And the name of this wondrous plant is the pitcher plant.
P-l-T-C-H-E-R.
'Pitcher' from its shape.
There are pitcher plants all over the world of different sorts.
There's the Venus flytrap in America.
But in Australia, this one is unique.
It's the only one of its kind that you can find here.
It lives deep in these swamps and has exactly the same problem as all the other insectivorous plants - how to get enough nitrogen.
And this is its way - it eats insects in a most remarkable manner.
These little streams are all the way through the forest.
Little tiny things - they're just a trickle of water.
By the standards of people from Europe or even the eastern seaboard, they wouldn't even register as a stream - they'd be a gutter.
And yet in these, there are a host of fishes.
Yeah, here's one.
Long, streamlined, beautiful shape of the Australian minnow.
He's got relatives in the South American zone and, of course, right across Australia and Tasmania are relatives of this little fellow.
When I say 'little', a good Australian minnow will reach oh, perhaps six, seven inches.
But that beautiful streamlined shape, just like a salmon, is for hunting.
He's an efficient hunting animal, and he relies on speed to pick up midges and things like that.
Now, what about this one? That's a nightfish.
He's a sluggish, sullen fellow who lurks in the dark patches of the stream.
Comes out at night, as his name suggests, and eats the little shellfish and insects, mosquito wrigglers that he can find.
That's the fish I'm specifically looking for here.
And it is a really archaic fish.
It's called a mud minnow.
Lepidogalaxias - that is, sort of, the first of the galaxias, the father of the galaxias.
And it's an ancient fish in that its spine goes down, and instead of ending up like a normal fish's spine, it tends to branch out into bonelets rather than the rays of a normal fish's tail.
Now, this fish has a peculiar adaptation for living.
He walks along the bottom of these tiny little streams.
And you can see those fins - see the way they fan out like legs? They're adapted for actually walking in the mud.
And when the dry season comes, and these streams just go down to little trickles in the moss, he walks up in those trickles and survives in those trickles during the dry season.
Now, it's obvious to anybody who moves in this country there are much bigger streams here.
Why, then, come and fiddle around in these little poky gutters when there are really good streams of water? Well, the answer to that lies, again, in the European ancestry of our colonisers.
Because when they first came to this country and they looked at these streams, they found there were no good fish from a fishing point of view, so they introduced brown trout and rainbow trout.
And these fish have pre-empted the entire river systems where they've been introduced.
In Europe, and the countries where these fish come from, the streams flow through fields, places where there's lots of stock and cattle, and there's lots of food in the streams.
Here, there is very little food.
And so the native fishes, these unique animals, get eaten out by the trout.
And the only refuge for them is up in these little tiny streams where the trout can't penetrate.
That's why I come looking here.
To the avid trout fisherman, this would be a marvellous place.
But for me, there's better sport than trout.
In these streams is one of the finest opportunities for fishing in the world.
This is the sport - the only sport - of marron fishing.
Simplest thing in the world.
All you need is a little bit of fine copper wire, a pole, which you can cut from the bush.
Bit of raw meat tied to another stick somewhere where you can reach it, shoved into the ground so the marron can't take it away.
And, most important, a marron licence so you can catch these delicacies when the season's open.
His eyes are on stalks and can go back in under these very heavy overhanging ridges.
And his whiskers have got little fans to open out.
A double pair of whiskers - one lot for very coarse sensing across the bottom of the river, and the very fine ones for telling him exactly where his dinner is.
See, you've got a problem - you've got your eyes on top of your head like that, and your mouth underneath there and this great big thing in the middle, you've got a problem of finding where your mouth is.
So when you're feeding in that position, those little whiskers turn back down and tell his mouth where the food is.
It's a beautiful animal, threatened by the trout and threatened, of course, by poachers and overfishing.
Off you go! He's too big to be eaten by a trout, but they'll eat his little ones.
Did you see that? That was a rat, but not the sort of rat you get in your house, eating your goodies.
That was the bush rat - the south-west bush rat.
They occur in the forest countries of Australia.
Beautiful little animals.
Could track him down, but this stuff's pretty thick in there.
I'll set some traps and probably get him in the morning.
There! Look at those teeth! Alright! I know you'd love to bite me.
Now, contrary to what it appears, that is the safest and the best way to hold these animals.
It's the slack of his scalp, the scruff of his neck, like a kitten.
He's not hurting.
He can't reach me.
And at the same time, he's not being damaged.
If I hold him around the chest, they're so fragile I'll collapse him in.
In general appearance, the Australian bush rats look very like the European - or Norway, or brown or whatever you like to call them - the introduced rats.
There are a few differences.
The number of nipples are one.
The introduced rat has 10 to 12 young at a time.
These only have four.
Now, now, now.
We're gonna let you go.
So next time you're in the bush and you see a rat, let it alone, because it's probably an Australian native.
Now, I'll let you go, fella, in a nice, easy place so you can have a good run off.
I think over there, so we can all have a good look at you running.
(SQUEAKS) Alright! Here you are.
He didn't waste any time getting away, because all around, there's crows and there's eagles, hawks, and on the ground, there's lizards and snakes and all sorts of bities and eaties looking for a nice, fat rat chop, because they're very good food indeed.
Oh, well, pick up the traps.
Trapping's lots of fun! You never know what you're gonna get.
Of course, you never set just one trap.
You set a whole string of them.
Marker.
Trap.
Now, that's a different animal.
It doesn't look very different, but it's very different and it's very dangerous.
This is the introduced rat.
Dangerous because he carries diseases, but from a naturalist's point of view, he's dangerous because he replaces the native rats.
He eats exactly the same food as them, but at the same time, he produces up to 12 young whereas the native rats only produce four.
So he outbreeds everything else in the bush.
That combing of his whiskers is an energy displacement thing.
He's trapped.
You've heard the saying "a trapped rat".
And just like a man who's angry in a situation where he can't do anything about it, who runs his fingers through his hair or claps his hands together, it's displacement behaviour.
And rats display it very, very obviously.
(SQUEAKS) Alright.
Yes, you'd squeak, wouldn't you? (SQUEAKS) Same great teeth - huge things.
Now, those teeth keep growing, 'cause it's a gnawing animal, and if one of them breaks off, this animal will die, because the tooth grows right around and curves up and goes through He stabs himself to death with his own teeth, in fact - that's if he doesn't die of starvation, 'cause his teeth block his mouth.
You see the little paws - very strong, powerful claws.
Much stronger than people imagine.
And this little gland this little gland is a scent gland.
And that's how the rat marks his pathway.
He owns this territory, and as he runs around the bush, he leaves a little bit of rat smell around the bush.
And as soon as an enemy comes, he can run straight back to a place of safety purely on smell.
Territory is like dogs lifting their leg on posts.
Most animals have territory.
Even people put fences around their house as a territorial marker - that sort of thing.
This is one I won't be letting go.
When you walk through the bush, you can find little tragedies everywhere.
Here's one.
This superb gum emperor moth has had a bout with a bat or a bird and come out with his life, but very much the worse for wear.
I say 'his' 'cause you can see these tremendous feelers.
Down in the forest, in this floor, the larvae of these eat, pupate, and then turn into moths.
And the female has a tremendous scent gland.
She sits on a tree trunk and pumps out the scent.
And the male moths pick up the smell, some of them from, apparently, about seven miles away.
And they follow up the scent trail along these damp gullies and watercourses until they find the female.
Sex drive in moths is very strong indeed.
Usually birds don't eat these.
And it's quite interesting - it's probably a bat has caught this one.
Come swooping in with its radar, made a grapple, realising it is a moth, and then rejected it.
That yellow patch there indicates "Leave me alone, I'm dangerous.
" Yellow, in the bush, is a warning colour.
Even these eye spots are an attempt by the moth to protect itself.
Normally, in the day, the wings are folded down, and it's just a simple little brown moth folded up.
But as soon as something like me comes near it, or it's hurt, it pops its wings out and exposes these big eye spots.
And it looks like a big animal staring at you, and so the enemy goes away.
And the moth, which is really quite small and inoffensive, is able to carry on.
These particular moths don't eat.
They carry enough fat in their body from their pupation time to keep them going, and then once they've mated, their life is over.
Their survival is in the next generation.
All of these things - the birds, the mammals, the fish, the frogs, the flowers - are all tied to the karri, to this tree.
And this tree will only remain while there's management.
Management gives you karri, and karri gives you all the other things - sweet water, wildlife, the lot.
Completely tied system in a forgotten corner of a continent where the brush of nature has swept past and a few little remnant things are left behind.
And they can be saved for everybody if the trees are saved with them.