Predators (2000) s01e02 Episode Script

Predator, prey locked in a deadly game of hide and seek.
The hunted try every trick to avoid detection, but hunters use amazing senses to find them.
Senses that seem belong to a different world.
Simply by being alive, the hunted give themselves away.
There is nowhere to hide.
A hammerhead shark, a predator in search of prey.
And in these wide waters, it's not easy.
Visibility is poor and prey are clever.
Their lives depend on it.
But something in this head is even smarter.
Out of sight is not enough.
Even hidden in its burrow, the goby gives off telltale clues and there is nothing it can do about it.
The goby blows its cover just by breathing.
As water passes over its gills, oxygen is extracted and absorbed.
Every breathe produces a minute electrical field which pulses around the fish's head.
This bubble of electricity reaches 20 cms upwards.
An invisible signpost marking buried treasure.
Of course, not everyone can read this sign.
It needs a special kind of extra-sensory perception - one that's found inside this unique head.
The underside of the head is lined with thousands of electrical detectors.
These are connected to long dots that allow the brain to register even minute electrical fields.
It can pick up on the goby's tiny charges from a distance of 20 cms, the equivalent of finding a household battery from half a mile away.
It scans the ocean bed using its head like a metal detector waiting for something to spark it off.
Because it can't actually see the electric sign, the shark needs to pass directly over the generator.
As it systematically works every sandy area, the head doubles as a hydrofoil keeping the detectors inside the critical 20 cms.
The hammerhead is the only shark with a flexible neck.
It can turn on a six-pence.
Now it's only seconds from the jackpot.
Death seems inevitable.
But occasionally luck is on the goby's side.
But it's only a matter of time.
It senses fire and the hammerhead turns.
To get a better fix on its target, it swings in a figure of 8 through the bubble of charge.
It's now directly above.
The goby's stone fortress will buy a few seconds, but it's not enough.
The rules of hide and seek are very different underground.
Down here, it's more like murder in the dark.
Artificial lights help us to see this hidden world.
But those that live here have to feel their way.
Instead of vision imagine life based on textures.
Slimy worms and hairy grubs make a banquet for one predator that can.
They stumble into its labyrinth of tunnels and now it comes to collect them.
Nothing escapes its touch.
Their moist soft bodies will give them away.
This is the world of the most bizarre predator of all - the star nosed mole.
It sees the world through its nose.
One square centimeter at a time.
It reads the tunnel walls like a Braille map and in this soup of soil and roots, it can pick out tiny worms and insects only millimeters across.
In fact this nose is just like an eye except it sees in textures.
And to see how it works, we must enter the microscopic world.
22 fleshy tentacles surround its nostrils.
Each one is covered in thousands of tiny buttons, enough to touch a pinhead at more than 600 places at once.
When pressed they pass a 3-D picture of the soil to the brain.
The central arms are especially sensitive, like an eyespot.
They could detect a grain of salt in a pile of sand.
An animal half a millimeter across is no problem.
The outer arms detect, central arms confirm the mouth eats.
As it feeds, the nose's position is squared to the floor And the tamping action guides the eyespot to any tasty tip bits.
Touch vision only works when the nose is in contact with the ground.
It sees texture one frame at a time.
It presses down and an impression is formed.
It detects hairs.
It lifts its head and effectively goes blind.
It changes position and down again.
Prey is confirmed and it's eaten.
But watch how fast that really happens.
It's like reading a flicker book.
As the mole moves, it constructs a 3-D model of its tunnel.
Roots become pipelines, grains of sand, boulders and tiny animals, spiky monsters.
Spring tails smaller than a match head are covered in telltale hairs.
So are soil mites But this is the greatest prize of all, a mole banquet, a humble earthworm.
Its segments and hooks advertise its presence like a textural neon sign.
But the mole still has to touch it to see it.
It misses, the equivalent to a 30-pound sausage.
It turns.
It's definitely worth fighting for.
Tunnels don't work in sand, so other ambush techniques are required.
Here in the deserts of Arizona, prey are few and far between.
Predators need senses that extend their hunting range and strategies to avoid the blistering heat.
Such a predator has been the inspiration of many Hollywood film directors.
At dusk, it moves to favorite hunting areas.
Soon desert insects will leave their daytime hiding places to feed.
It's a sand swimmer snake and it's perfectly designed for life here in the dunes.
A streamlined head has toughened glossy scales to cut through the sand.
Eyes are scratch resistant.
Nostrils have valve that keep out the tiniest sand grains.
Even the mouth is set back to reduce friction.
But its biggest secret is how its skin works underground.
It doesn't use tunnels.
It squeezes through the sand grains.
Tonight it will submerge a few centimeters and prepare an ambush.
In a world of darkness, it will survey the surface of the dune for activity with its skin.
It is thought that special receptors here detect vibrations as they pass through the sand and walking insects produce good vibrations.
All it has to do now is wait.
But it has competition.
Other predators can hear the same dinner bells.
Desert scorpions are practically blind.
But their bodies are covered in a battery of detectors.
Soft hairs detect the faintest waffs of air and all eight feet have vibration detectors.
For these to work, it must stay still.
Like the sand swimmer, to move is to go blind.
Desert insects also have to feed.
Foraging at night avoids daytime birds.
But it's still a risky business.
Simply by walking, the insect's signaling its arrival.
Sand grains beneath each footstep betray its location.
The insect is like the epicenter of a moving earthquake.
As it movers, each leg produces waves of an invisible seismic ripples acting like a bar code to those who can read them.
First there is a shook wave then a rolling tide of information that travels up to 20 cms.
Each wave reaches the scorpion's legs at different times.
There's only a microsecond between them, but it's enough to work out where they're coming from.
It turns to face the waves for better reception.
But someone else is already receiving the transmission.
Now the insect and the signal have stopped.
Both snake and scorpion must wait for service to be resumed.
Any movement by the insect could prove fatal.
The scorpion only needs to feel one more step.
It's a bad time to have an itchy leg.
The scorpion rushes in.
but its charge is cut short.
In a twist of fate the scorpion's own footsteps have led to its capture.
Even a sting in the tail cannot save it.
A lucky break for the insect.
Here in the Arctic, its vibrations travelling through the air that can give the game away, sound waves.
This lemming is 10 cm under a vast security blanket of snow.
It's unseen, seemingly protected on all sides.
But in a few seconds it will be dead.
The great grey owl has stuck again.
But how did it know the lemming was there? It has powerful vision.
But in this case it's hearing that matters, and this head is wired for sound.
It tunes in to the empty landscape.
The noise of wind and snowfall is filtered out.
It's rustling that the owl is interested in, A false alarm.
But it doesn't have to wait long.
From deep under the snow, a lemming transmits a high frequency rustle And around here, the penalty for rustling is death.
The signals are too weak for our hearing.
but this owl has the ultimate amplifier, Its face acts like a satellite dish.
The dish's formed by a ring of stiff feathers.
They collect and channel sound inward.
The eyes look central but the dish actually focuses on the ears.
They are on the side of the tiny skull next to the eyes.
The dish is divided by a line of bristles giving stereo sound.
It's like having a giant cupped hand behind each ear.
To pinpoint the lemming, the owl must tune its receiver.
The dishes moved, the eyes automatically follow.
Too far then back again.
The lemming is now being totally reckless.
Sound dish and eyes are now focused.
From this point on, it won't look away until the lemming is in its talons.
The sortie begins.
The owl's approach is absolutely silent.
Soft velvety feathers have serrated edges that simply caress the air.
As a result no wind flaps interfere with the lemming's transmission.
The head remains focused at all times, even if it has to fly around obstacles.
Beneath a carpet of snow, a stationary target is easy to hit.
But it's not just a simple dive-bomb attack.
The head stays locked on until the last moment.
Then the talons are raised into the line of the sound.
Claws on each talon are extended.
Two above and two below, perfect for catching cylindrical prey.
The lemming's number is up.
Even if the lemming is moving the owl can compensate.
The owl hovers.
It checks signal direction.
The body twists and the talons are repositioned, When you are dealing with senses this sharpen and specialized physical defences like snow can be useless.
But there are other ways of making yourself invisible.
There are creatures in these waters that live almost unnoticed.
To see them, predators almost have to touch them.
The glass shrimp has the ultimate form of camouflage.
Only by removing all background light can we see its secret.
Special tissues that let light pass directly through its body.
A transparent heart pumps transparent blood to transparent muscles.
Any background colors shine straight through, so the glass shrimps blend in anywhere.
Against predators with normal vision, these shrimps have the upper hand.
But one predator has a trump card.
A cuttlefish sees the world in a different way.
Animals invisible to our eyes shine like beacons in its monochrome world.
It has locked on.
The victim unaware of the danger.
For one animal the game of hide and seek is over.
A shrimp dies.
Its cloak of invisibility peeled off by a predator with an alien sense.
Their eyes may not see color, but they can detect light that has been twisted.
It's something we cannot see but it's something a shrimp's body does all the time.
It rotates each wave of light by up to 90 degrees.
Almost invisible to us, but like a prism to a polarized light camera or a cuttlefish.
They see a skeleton of light, leg muscles shine, the base of the invisible antennae glows, a kaleidoscope of gills and abdominal muscles.
In fact, inside every muscle, fibres twist and highlight each wave of light In cuttlefish vision, the shrimp signs its own death world.
They make easy meat but they are just for starters.
The cuttlefish can also see others in the same menu But the main course is more mobile and harder to catch.
Fish merge into the background as their scales act like mirrors.
But as they reflect light they also rotate it.
obvious to cuttlefish eyes, they disappear in hours.
Now the cuttlefish uses body language that is out of this world, a disguise to confuse the fish's eyes.
Tentacles raise and undergo bizarre contortions.
Its body extends and grows some projections.
The tentacles hide the siphon and skirt used for gentle propulsion.
It now creeps closer.
By moving so slowly it avoids creating turbulence that can trigger detectors on the fish's lateral line.
All the fish sees is a piece of floating weed drifting closer and closer.
It starts its final approach.
It readies the tentacles that will break through the final security space.
To catch prey, superior senses must be backed up with the right hardware.
And predators with the most sophisticated weapon systems will be covered in the next program.
Some predators use formidable fire power.
The torpedo ray armed with a deadly stun gun The real monster behind the Hollywood alien With a jaw designed for precision killing And gannets, nature's guided missiles Predators, uncovering the moments where life hangs in the balance