Dolphins – Spy In The Pod

Last year, Penguins – Spy In The Huddle, which had robot spy cameras filming penguins in their natural habitat and was narrated by David Tennant, proved to be a hit. So it’s not that much of a surprise that we have a repeat of that format. But how can you follow penguins? What other animal is as cute, funny and popular? Ah yes, dolphins.

Possibly because they had to film in the sea this time, which is much more vast than land, there were almost of army of spy robots in this, in contrast to Spy In The Huddle. It was a bit like Gerry Anderson’s Stingray. We had Spy Clam, Spy Nautilus, Spy Turtle, Spy Tuna, Spy Dolphin, Spy Baby (Dolphin), Spy Ray, two Spy Puffers, and Spy Squid, which had its own mini-narrative of being pursued by various potato cod, and eventually broken apart by them when they attempted to eat it.

Dolphins have long been a symbol of New Age and hippy fashions, possibly because of their cute appearance and friendliness towards humans, even though they are a predator animal. In the ’90s a lot of trip-hop and trance music featured dolphin imagery. They are known for being highly intelligent as non-human animals go, and are occasionally depicted as being more intelligent than humans, such as in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy where they are able to figure out that the Earth is about to be destroyed and escape in time even though humans weren’t. In Finding Nemo the sharks dislike dolphins because they see them as  show-offs who think they’re cute. We often see dolphins performing tricks, which saw them being called “the clowns of the sea” in The Simpsons Halloween Special segment Night of the Dolphin, which had one of their most horrific portrayals of them coming from the sea to take over the land. But what are they like in the wild?

It’s no doubt they are impressive animals. The programme pointed out that they have a natural sonar, which allows them to beam sound waves from their heads, and to use the returning echoes to create a clearer picture. Their milk is six times richer than a cow’s milk. Each dolphin has its own signature “whistle”, which seems to be similar to how humans have names to identify each other. They can leap up to six metres in the air. One thing about them which people generally don’t seem to know is that they are very sophisticated hunters. A lot of people who have seen dolphins have probably seen them as part of theme parks where they perform tricks such as literally jumping through hoops for fish, or have fed them fish themselves. Dolphins aren’t ones to turn down an easy meal even in the wild, they are shown here waiting outside fishing boats to catch fish which slip through the net, and waiting on the surface ready to open their mouths for unwanted fish which are thrown off the boats. But they are more than capable of hunting for their own food.

We saw many times in this programme where the different of species of dolphin can herd fish to the water surface or to mud banks, picking them off there. There are skills which seem specific not just to particular locations but to certain pods of dolphins as well. In the Florida Keys a pod of bottlenose dolphins stir up a U-shaped mud cloud with their tails which causes a blackout for fish, allowing the dolphins to swim through and eat them. They go further with this trick if they work as a team, where one creates a circular mud cloud which causes mullet to leap out and into the mouths of waiting dolphins, then they repeat the process and wait for passing fish to go in. Apparently, this particular pod is the only one known to use that technique. Dolphins tend to learn hunting techniques suited to their area, and they are passed on through generations.

Bottlenose dolphins are the most famous dolphin, and the majority of this programme focused on them, and specifically followed a sort of Bambi-ish story of a baby dolphin, in that it was in two halves; in episode one, it was him learning skills from his mother, and in episode two it was him making his own way in life. In most species of dolphin the males leave the pod they grew up in after two years to join a pod of bachelor males, while the females tend to stay with their family, although for male and female pods membership isn’t set in stone, they often drop in and out of the group as they please.

The pods of young male bottlenose dolphins were characterised in this programme as ladz on tour, boisterous, rowdy, and described as “boy racers” and “teenage tearaways”. One group we meet in episode one were shown lusting after a pod of females. When the males went over, the females protected the baby dolphin, as it’s not uncommon for the males to kill a calf which is getting in their way. The females eventually fought the males off, so the pod of males started headbutting the spy cameras. They were later shown enjoying surfing in the sea waves before coming back to the pod of females and taking a more romantic approach by offering seaweed like bouquets of flowers. One of them dropped the seaweed for the female to catch, which she did. They were flirting together while other males tried to get in with her.

The baby bottlenose in episode two had left his pod, and seemed very lonely. Dolphins are extremely social animals and crave companionship. He tried to bond with Spy Baby, but didn’t have much luck. Then he made friends with a different species of dolphin, a humpback.  They seem very close, but this unlikely friendship doesn’t last. They encounter a gang of other young male bottlenose dolphins. The bottlenose tries to join them, and the humpback dolphin keeps close at first, but the dolphins in the gang drive the humpback away. The bottlenose has to make a choice, and ultimately he chooses to be with his own kind. He has to perform an initiation ritual before becoming a part of the gang though, which involves him flirting with them like a female dolphin, and the others all performing mating rituals on him.

The gang later engage in what looks a bit like recreational drug use! They play catch with a puffer fish which had inflated itself into a ball, and then the puffer fish releases a neurotoxin, which seems to make the dolphins “blissed out”, and they pass the puffer fish along each other. After they are all affected, the puffer fish leaves.

The bottlenose who’s story we have been following gets a new “best mate”. “Bromances” in bachelor male pods are extremely common, some last for life. When this pod encounters another gang of males and a territorial gang warfare fight breaks out, our bottlenose and his new friend drop out of the pod for a bit and leave finding a group of females. Our bottlenose finds a female who shows she’s interested by turning pink and slapping her fins together, and, to continue using human slang terms, his friend acts as a sort of “wingman”, but more in the sense of fighting off other males who are trying to get with this female. He also manages to find a female who is interested in him.

So the programme had a storyline where it was very easy to personify the bottlenose dolphins, which if we’re honest, is large part of the appeal of these programmes. But there was also some good footage of dolphins. Some of it was cute, such as the baby bottlenose “eating” the bubbles which came out of the Spy Clam (though the scientific explanation for it was that dolphins ‘test’ everything with their mouths). Some of it was interesting, like some which was filmed using a camera on the back of a tame bottlenose dolphin, who was allowed out into the open ocean and would come back as he pleased, and at one point he rolled around in the sea and leaped into the air.

A lot of the footage in the programme was spectacular, particularly the scenes of spinner dolphins leaping out of the sea against a fiery sunset, and underwater with their “speech bubbles” coming from their blowholes when they do their signature whistles, which looked like sparkly magical glitter.

Spinner dolphins are so-called because of the twirls and corkscrew shapes they do when they leap in the air. We had a baby spinner dolphin which didn’t have as big of a “journey” narrative as the baby bottlenose, but we saw it slowly learning the complicated leaps.  It’s not clear why exactly they leap like this, although it seems to help them to get rid of parasites like remoras, a sort of suckerfish which attaches itself to dolphins and feeds on their leftovers. We saw a superpod of hundreds of spinner dolphins run into another superpod, and that merged into a megapod of 3000+ spinner dolphins, it was compared to a “free love” music festival.

There’s also something people never seem to consider a dolphin, the Orca. It looks quite different from other dolphins, it’s larger, black and white and has a more fierce looking appearance and reputation. It has a popular name the “killer whale”, which is another reason why they never seem to be associated with other dolphins. There’s also the fact that they like to eat other species of dolphin. But despite the “killer whale” name, orcas are indeed dolphins rather than whales. Yet another difference orcas have with other species of dolphin is that they tend to stay in families rather than in social groups, and the males stay with the family along with the females. The females always lead the way in the hunting expeditions, but males can be very good hunters, in one pod of orcas the best hunter was a massive 50-year old male. We see two different pods of orcas which are in the same area, one likes to hunt salmon, while the other likes to hunt seals and porpoises, and despite being the same species pods of orcas who hunt mammals and pods of orcas who hunt fish never interact, and apparently even sound different.

I liked seeing the way many of the ocean animals react to one another. We saw the female pod of bottlenose dolphins along with cobia fish and other stingrays following a small-eyed ray which could  detect electrical signs of fish buried underneath the sand. The smaller stingrays and cobia fish had to have the scraps of small-eyed ray, but the dolphins could use their own sonar to detect other fish under the sand, knowing they were in this area after the stingrays had led them there. There was also the way parasites of kingfish, which dolphins prey on, jumped from the kingfish onto the dolphin! There were two different but similar scenes of a lot of predators coming for a mass of prey, something you don’t really see in the same way with land animals. In episode one, we saw lantern fish get feasted on by spinner dolphins and giant Mobula rays. In episode two, we saw a migration of sardines eaten by a superpod of common dolphins, gannets flying into the sea from the surface, bronze whale sharks and a huge Bryde’s whale. In both cases, it’s a feast for the predators, and they eat until they are full. But for the prey, it barely makes a difference to their numbers because there are so many of them in a shoal. It’s always interesting with shoals of fish, like flocks of birds, is that they appear to move like a single organism even though they are a mass of individuals.

Visually speaking, this programme was often very beautiful, such as the gorgeous blue of the ocean. You can see why dolphins are well liked by people. There’s something soothing about the clicking and whistling sounds they make. They are very playful and seem to like having fun, and it is fun watching them. They are quite intelligent, which means they like to keep themselves occupied, and this is seen with their curious nature and that they seem to do things purely for the enjoyment of it. I think these are the reasons people personify dolphins so much, as they seem on some level closer to us than many animals are.

Nature’s Weirdest Events

Presented by Chris Packham, this programme had a bit of a The X Files feel to it, like it was investigating paranormal mysteries, but the point of it was that these events are perfectly natural rather than supernatural.

Trees bleeding have long been an effect used in the horror genre. It looks very creepy to us, seeing blood pouring from a tree when it has been chopped down. On one example mentioned a churchyard in Pembrokeshire had people coming to visit a yew tree which was said to bleed. But it isn’t blood at all, even though it performs a similar function. It is in fact sap that trees use to heal a tree when it is injured, and it sometimes appears red when it comes into contact with open air.

In the Cameroon, in Africa, is the wolverine frog. Like the X-Men character,  they have skeleton which break through the skin on their hands to act as weapons. The males are also covered in what looks very much like hair, but is actually skin.

Some of the things discussed in the programme were in the vein of those “and finally” amusing stories you sometimes get at the end of TV news, such as the ones about elephant seals coming from the sea onto beaches, very far away from Antarctica, which is usually the only place they go on land.  The two examples here were one case in 2000 in New Zealand and one in Brazil in 2013, and in both they didn’t just go on the beach, they went far in land. The New Zealand one began wrecking any parked car in its path. It was speculated to be due to the fact it was October, which is in the elephant seal’s breeding season, so he was more aggressive and trying to prove himself as the alpha male. The one who ended up in Brazil was shown going down a zebra crossing, on a road with a lot of traffic.

One of the most shocking stories was of a golf course in Australia which has some man-eating sharks in its lake! Most species of fish can’t live in both freshwater and sea water, but apparently bull sharks can. The big question was how they managed to get into a landlocked lake in the first place. It conjures up cartoonish visions of a shark’s fin tearing through green grass, but of course it wasn’t that. There was a flood from a river which leads to the Pacific ocean, and it’s likely that some young sharks were washed into the lake, where they’ve thrived as there are plenty of other fish for them to eat. The golf course like the fact they have such unusual inhabitants in their lake though. We saw the very surreal sight of golf club members feeding the sharks pieces of chicken the way a lot of people feed bread to ducks in ponds!

In the UK we will have heard of urban foxes stealing from bins, and in the US it’s not uncommon for racoons to do so, but in this programme we saw a bear stealing whole dumpsters and another bear breaking into a chocolate shop!

In March 2013 in Washington in the US, a boat was washed up covered in seaweed and sea creatures, was called by the narration a “floating aquarium”. It even had a live fish in there, which turned out to be a striped beakfish, which are found in coral reefs of East Asia. When the boat was cleaned it was discovered from the lettering on there that it was from Japan, and it was almost certainly the 2011 tsunami in Japan which caused it to end up on an American beach. The fish may have been born there or hitched a ride.

Tumbleweed is perhaps most well known as a staple of Wild West films, to show a place and/or time is quiet and desolate, and nowadays has become such a cliché it is more used for comic effect, often to show for example someone’s joke not going down well and in places where you would never find tumbleweed. But in Bakersfield, a small town in California, tumbleweed is far from solitary and quiet. There was an invasion of them, an avalanche of massive ones moving across roads and covering people’s gardens. Tumbleweed is plentiful in this area. Most of the time they are fairly indistinctive green shrubs, but in winter they dry out and become a yellowish ball. Then the wind snaps them off their stem, and they scatter thousands of seeds as they roll along. Believe it or not, tumbleweed isn’t actually native to America, but was bought over by Ukrainian settlers in the 19th century.

Many of the creatures discussed in this programme were sea creatures. They often seem “weird” to us, because the rules of living in seawater are so different to the rules of living in land and air. They also can look like they have alien origin, as many sci-fi writers took inspiration from sea life.

On a beach in Argentina, one day hundreds of strange translucent eggs with something moving inside were found washed up on from the sea. They certainly looked like something that could have been alien, but they in fact came from a marine snail, Adelomelon brasiliana. They also weren’t single eggs as such, but were more of a “nest”, capsules containing several eggs.

Divers in Tasmania saw a peculiar glowing blue tube, which looked very like something which could be alien. It turned out that it wasn’t an individual creature, but a pyrosome, a colony of animals stuck together.

The immortal jellyfish was mentioned, as it can reverse the aging process. Jellyfish have two stages in their life cycle, a polyp and a fully grown Medusa, but with this particular jellyfish it can revert back to a polyp and start the process again. Over and over again.

A fishing boat in 2010 in Alaska caught a giant pacific octopus, we were shown a video of it managing to escape by squeezing through a small hole, much smaller than its body. Octopuses are related to molluscs, oysters and snails, but unlike those they don’t have a shell. They don’t have a skeleton either, their only hard part is their beak, which is on average about 5cm. So as huge as an octopus can grow, if their beak can squeeze through somewhere, the rest of it can. Also mentioned was the mimic octopus, which, rather like a chameleon, can change colour to camouflage, and it can go further than a chameleon can by even imitating the shape of other sea creatures.

Speaking of chameleons, some in Madagascar, brookesia mica, have been found which are very small, they can fit on someone’s fingernail. It was theorised that because they live on an island, it favours those who do not need as much food.

Getting washed up or caught from the sea is one thing, but fish coming out of water of their own accord? It has happened. In Florida, catfish were shown crawling on land after a storm. It’s similar to when the first amphibians evolved from fish. The expression “fish out of water” is true, as most fish die because their gills are equipped to extract oxygen from water, not from air. They also can’t move on land. This particular type of catfish is different, it can go on land as long as it has a lot of water along the way. They were show swimming in puddles then crawling on pavements. This is bad news for people who have fish ponds as the walking catfish go there and eat them. They go from pond to pond, waiting for a heavy rainstorm so they can move on again.  

Catfish also turned up in a later episode, in Southern Europe. While this species can’t survive on land, they can go up to river banks and catch and eat pigeons! As we well know, the predator/prey dynamic between birds and fish usually has the birds as the predators. But what is strange is how some crows have managed to go about catching fish. Crows and rooks apparently have larger brains in areas such as memory than many birds, and seem to know about delayed gratification as opposed to instant gratification. In this programme we saw a crow using bread fed to it by humans as bait to catch fish. They worked out they can use the bread to get a better meal than if they just ate that bread there and then.

Animals forming bonds with other species was seen recently in Animal Odd Couples, and this programme referred to something in that programme, Della the Irish farm cat who adopted some ducklings. There was another case discussed in this programme of Sonya, a cat in Russia, who adopted three baby hedgehogs. It’s also known for cats to adopt rabbits and squirrels. This programme again said that in the case of Della and the ducklings, it was the animals instincts plus brilliant timing that caused it to happen, the cat having recently given birth and the ducklings imprinting on her. But this programme went into more detail. The particular hormone which caused the cat’s behaviour was oxytocin, which, when a mother mammal gives birth and then suckles, promotes a caring, nurturing instinct in that animal. They also went into further detail on the theories behind imprinting. In the 1930s Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz discovered goslings followed him if he was the first thing they saw, and it possibly was because young birds are mobile from the start, while baby mammals are more vulnerable and dependent on their mothers for longer. The strange thing about imprinting though is that sometimes they can imprint on inanimate objects like watering cans. I suppose what this says is that sometimes, natural survival instincts while they have a good reason to exist, aren’t perfect.

Those of us in the UK might not be familiar with the American saying “playing possum”, or the reason behind it, but it is what possums are most famous for across the pond, that their defence strategy is to play dead. It sounds like a bad one, but it seems to be a question of what gives it a better chance. A possum is a slow moving creature, so has no real chance of outrunning its predators. But if it plays dead, the predator may assume it doesn’t need to kill it, and then may store it for later rather than eat it right away, meaning the possum can get away when the predator leaves.

There were goats in Tennessee where a similar thing happens, goats going stiff and falling on their back for a few minutes when startled. But this appears to be a genetic defect resulting from inbreeding.

Some genetic defects were noted with lobsters. Their normal colouration is a mix of orange and blue/black, but sometimes the hormones controlling the pigmentation do not work, resulting in all orange or all blue lobsters. Then there are “two-tone” lobsters, where split down the middle one half is orange and the other is blue! In those cases, they tend to have different sex organs on each side, one male one female. This can happen with butterflies too, with one half male, the other female and the wings on each side having different patterns and sizes. The reason for this is that with some creatures like lobsters and butterflies, each side develops independently, as opposed to both sides developing together.

Two headed snakes have been on a lot of internet posts recently. We see a two-headed corn snake here who was aptly named Medusa after the famous snake-haired gorgon from Ancient Greek mythology. In captivity, two headed snakes can live for quite a long time, but they have difficulty in the wild. They are conjoined twins, with the heads sharing a single spine, but each head has a single brain, so they can disagree with which direction to go. They can also fight over food if one has caught something, and even will attack one another if the other head has a scent of food on it. But there was a report of a two-headed adder found in Yorkshire only last year, which looked quite healthy and a few years old, so it’s not impossible for them to survive in the wild.

Of all the bizarre sights in this series, the most striking to me were bees making honey which is colours like green or bright blue! It looks truly strange, almost like those episodes of The Simpsons were Mr. Burns dumps nuclear waste causing it to mutate the natural surroundings. It turned out the reason for this coloured honey was from factories, but not nuclear power plants or even irresponsibility per se. The answer lies in how bees actually make honey. What they use always effects the colour of the honey. They use nectar from flowers most of the time, and that leaves the colour of the honey a range of gold, yellow and brown. But they will use anything that tastes sweet to them. In the UK, it’s been observed they used runoff from coca-cola bottling plants. In France, a range of colourful honey turned out to be because bees had been using sugar from discarded M&Ms from a processing plant. In New York, beekeeper Andrew Cote mentioned finding bright red, green and blue honey during his time beekeeping. The reason for the red honey was syrup runoff from a maraschino cherry factory. He suspected the green honey could have come from antifreeze. For these reasons, unusual coloured honey cannot be sold as food, as sometimes there’s no telling where it came from. Anti-freeze for instance, is deadly if humans ingest it. But it can be sold as a curiosity item.

The programme did what it said on the tin really, showed us some unusual events from the natural world. You can tell why in centuries past when there wasn’t as much known about science, that it was taken to be signs foretelling of an apocalypse, and why even today they can stun people. We probably still have much to learn, but it’s always interesting to see events which are out of the ordinary.

 

Top Ten Songs of 2013

10) Gabrielle Aplin – ‘Panic Cord’

This song is music for a rainy day, so it won’t be to everyone’s taste. I like the fact that unlike a lot of break-up songs, it doesn’t completely demonise the ex. In fact, the line it emphasises the most is “maybe I’m the one to blame”. Sometimes relationships just fade away, and it’s sad and that’s how it is. The video is extremely pretty, including Gabrielle herself and Sid Ellisdon, the model who plays the boyfriend

9) Lorde – ‘Royals’

‘Royals’ was one of the biggest hits of the year, but it took a while for it to grow on me. It’s very catchy, even though it’s fairly unusual for a pop song. The sparse, icy production is perfectly suited to Lorde’s vocals. It’s refreshing both in its sound and its lyrics, talking about how the luxury world of pop stars is completely at odds with the reality of many of their fans.

8) Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz – ‘Thrift Shop’

‘Thrift Shop’ was, like ‘Royals’, another anti-materialism Translantic chart topper, although the style and delivery were very different. I used to work in a charity shop, so that was one reason I connected with this song, but I’ve never been a fan of buying overpriced clothes just to look “cool”, and certainly never been a fan of flaunting it, so I liked that this song noted that there’s something to be said for individuality and that you don’t need to spend too much money. Macklemore was not just unafraid of looking goofy and wearing second hand clothes, he was downright proud of it. It helps that there is a lot of humour to this track and the performers themselves.

7) AlunaGeorge – ‘Attracting Flies’

AlunaGeorge are a fantastic duo, whose talents complement each other. The silky vocals and charisma of Aluna Francis and George Reid’s creative production make for some great tracks. ‘Attracting Flies’ was my favourite of the bunch. The music video is directed by Emil Nava who also directed the video for Ed Sheerean’s ‘Give Me Love’. ‘Attracting Flies’ shows “urban decay” versions of well known fairytales.

6) Fenech-Soler – ‘Magnetic’

Fenech-Soler’s ‘Magnetic’ is a very pleasant track to listen to, even though it sounds quite eerie. It goes very well with the video, which has something of an Alice In Wonderland vibe. There’s a sinister rabbit a bit like the one in Donnie Darko, clocks moving backwards, and it becomes very dream-like, flashing from different locations, such as going in a washing machine and coming out in a desert.

5) Mutya Keisha Siobhan – ‘Flatline’

Oh dear, it all seemed exciting at first when the original Sugababes announced they were going to reunite and record some new material. But there were various delays before anything was released, and when ‘Flatline’ eventually came out it didn’t get much radio play or chart success. Which is a shame, as it’s a fine pop track, and a great “end of the summer” anthem. This song really deserved better. Let’s hope that final shot in the video of Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan driving off into the sunset isn’t their farewell to the pop world.

4) Marina and the Diamonds – ‘How To Be A Heartbreaker’

Part of her Electra Heart concept album, ‘How To Be A Heartbreaker’ was kind of what it said on the tin, a tongue-in-cheek lesson on how to break hearts. It’s a fun song, and there is a subversive nature to it.  The lyrics are generally playing with stereotypes about gender roles, and there is a bit of a gay subtext, with the homoerotic scenes of hunky men in a shower and a glamorous woman with a heart-shaped beauty mark being fabulous.

3) Paramore – ‘Still Into You’

On my birthday playlist, this song would be 2013’s entry. It was my favourite song on my birthday this year. Well, the video has a lot of cakes and fireworks. ‘Still Into You’ is definitely one of the poppier songs Paramore have done, it sounds a bit like something Kelly Clarkson might do. That said, a lot of Kelly Clarkson’s songs are about a bitter break-up, this song is quite the opposite, a celebration of a long-term relationship and about continuing to be in love.

2) Don Broco – ‘You Wanna Know’

Rock band Don Broco had their first entry in the UK top 40 with the ‘You Wanna Know’ E.P, which also includes a brilliant cover of AlunaGeorge’s ‘You Know You Like It’. The title track of the E.P  ‘You Wanna Know’ was one of the best songs of 2013, with the stormy guitars and the strong vocals, shared by frontman Rob Damiani and drummer Matt Donnely.

1) Ellie Goulding – ‘Burn’

Ellie Goulding has been becoming an increasingly big star throughout 2013, and got her first UK number one single with ‘Burn’. It’s weird to think the song was almost on Leona Lewis’ Glassheart album, though even Leona Lewis herself doesn’t think she’d have had as big a hit with it. Ellie Goulding co-wrote the song with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, and it suits her vocals beautifully. Her voice makes it sound all the more celestial, while the electronic production has a very sparkly, almost outer space feel to it. While it’s still early days, I think this track will be seen as one of the best chart toppers of the decade.