Nature Shock: The Snake That Exploded

November 16th
Channel 5 at 10am

Documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world.

The first documentary of the series, ‘The Snake that Exploded’, takes us to the Everglades National Park in Florida. While flying back to base after a routine land survey on 26th November 2005, contract pilot Michael Barron spotted something unusual in the water below. “What struck my attention was the size of it,” recalls Michael. “It was amazingly big.”

Michael knew he had to get in closer for a better view, so he landed the helicopter and took out his camera. What he had found seemed to be the bloated corpse of a huge, scaly creature with two tails, two legs and no head. Michael showed his photographs to forensic analyst Dr Kenneth Krysko. “It was kind of bizarre...” remembers Kenneth, “kind of gruesome.”

What Michael had found turned out to be a tangle of snake and alligator, with half of the latter animal trapped inside the former. However, what was not clear was whether the alligator had eaten its way into the snake, or fought its way out. The mystery was only just beginning to unravel. Among the other cases explored in the series are that of a vengeful elephant, a giant bear with a missing body and some zombie alligators.

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Nature Shock: The Whale That Blew Up in the Street

Tuesday 28th October
8pm on Channel 5

The documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world continues. This instalment focuses on the circumstances surrounding the gruesome events of January 2004 when a dead sperm whale exploded in the middle of a Taiwan street.

At 6.30am on 26 January 2004, police were called to a grisly scene on a busy street in Tainan, southern Taiwan. A huge dead body lay on the back of a truck, while blood and entrails were spread across the road, nearby cars and shop fronts. All the stunned bystanders knew was that a whale had just blown up in the street.

The 50-ton sperm whale - the biggest ever recorded in Taiwan - was being transported from the coast where it had washed up 24 hours earlier to a university for examination. But the journey was cut short by the unimaginable event. Large parts of intestine, chunks of blubber and gallons of blood burst from the tail section of the animal, bringing traffic to a standstill.

Before long, local news cameras arrived on the scene and began to capture the surreal images. The man in charge of transporting the whale was Professor Wang Chien-ping, of the National Cheng Kung University, who wanted to perform a necropsy on the animal. While the rest of the city cleaned up, the indefatigable professor began the long, unpleasant process of collecting the miscellaneous body parts from the street.

The whale eventually reached its destination and was placed under a huge canopy, where a 60-strong team of scientists and volunteers started the immense task of dissecting the animal. By this time, hundreds of onlookers had gathered to watch the scientists at work.

Four years on, the skeleton of the whale is a popular tourist attraction in Taiwan and its story has become part of local folklore. But the cause of the explosion is still the subject of much debate.

Now, a team of international experts attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery. What could inflict such a huge trauma on the biggest predator on the planet?

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Nature Shock: The Mutant Devils

18th October 2008 on Channel 5

The documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world continues. This instalment uncovers the mystery of a group of hideously disfigured Tasmanian devils discovered by scientists in the late 1990s.

The devil is a carnivorous marsupial unique to the Australian island of Tasmania. It is the size of a small, sturdily built dog, and the name ‘devil’ comes from its loud and fiendish shriek. Due to its status as the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world, the animal is of great interest to conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts alike.
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One night in 1996, a wildlife photographer set out to capture these fascinating nocturnal creatures on celluloid. The resulting pictures sent shock waves through the scientific community. “What we saw was both disgusting and spectacular,” says Nick Mooney, a biologist who has studied the Tasmanian devil in its natural habitat for 30 years. The pictures showed the devils emerging from the forest with grotesque disfigurements in the form of monstrous facial growths.

It was not until five years later that zoologist Dr Menna Jones came across another group of devils with the same affliction. “They were horrific,” she says. “Teeth falling out, jaws breaking off, tumours protruding into eye sockets.” The growths had all the hallmarks of cancer. But cancer is not contagious, so why were so many devils suffering the same symptoms? “You cannot catch cancer from someone else,” confirms immunologist Professor Greg Woods, “so something unusual was happening with these Tasmanian devils.”

Experts looked to the past for answers. Devils have been extinct on the Australian mainland for over 600 years because they were easy prey for dingoes. Yet the devils were not safe in Tasmania either. For over a century, they were hunted and poisoned by local farmers. It was not until 1941 that a new law was introduced banning anyone from harming the creatures. As a result of inbreeding within the dwindling population, the devils’ immune systems had weakened. This meant their bodies had no defences against foreign cells, and diseases such as cancer became transmissible.

The mystery of the ghastly tumours was eventually solved once and for all when scientists diagnosed the growths as a new type of cancer exclusive to the species – devil facial tumour disease (DFTD). Only two other strains of transmissible cancer have been recorded in the world, making it incredibly rare.

On learning about DFTD, conservationists feared the worst for the future of the devils. “An island is a very finite place, and extinctions have a very nasty habit of occurring on islands,” says Nick. Indeed, DFTD is a particularly aggressive form of cancer, with death almost certainly resulting within three to eight months of contracting the disease. In an attempt to halt the advance of DFTD, authorities launched the Save the Devil Campaign in 2003. Donations made to the cause help fund research into and management of this devastating disease.

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Nature Shock: The Polar Bear that wasn't

13th September 2008
Channel 5

The documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world returns. Using testimony from scientific experts, interviews with the key players and dramatic reconstructions, the series tells the stories of unique discoveries that have shocked naturalists and led to a broader understanding of the animal kingdom. This first episode examines the discovery of a mysterious animal in a remote part of the Arctic Circle.

In April 2006, hunter Jim Martell set out on an expedition to track down one of the most fearsome creatures on Earth – the polar bear. As the world’s largest land predator, the polar bear has been known to target humans. For Jim, his journey to the remote Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic Circle to confront these beasts was the trip of a lifetime. Accompanied by his Inuit guide, Roger Kuptana, Jim set off in the early hours of the morning, not expecting the drama that would soon follow.

The pair began their quest under dog-sled power, skimming across miles of three-foot-thick frozen sea. Then, after tracking on foot for nearly two hours towards the south-east of the island, they spotted their prize. Jim fired a single bullet, which was enough to fell the beast. But as the men approached the magnificent creature, they were in for a shock.

Roger, a skilled huntsman, realised that this was no ordinary polar bear. In fact, it looked nothing like it should. It had dark rings circling its eyes and, most frightening of all, an unusual hump rising from its back. Roger had never seen anything like it before on the island. The pair alerted the Canadian authorities and made their way back to the mainland with the monstrous body in tow.

When experts viewed the remains, they were unsure what to make of them. In addition, officials claimed that Jim had violated the rights of his hunting permit by shooting an animal that was not a polar bear. Jim faced conviction for a crime he did not commit, despite the having purchased a permit for $40,000. It was now up to scientists to identify this unknown animal and solve a most baffling mystery.

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Nature Shock - The Zombie Alligators

The documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world continues. This programme focuses on a bizarre chain of events in Lake Griffin, Florida, which turned a once peaceful wilderness into a scene reminiscent of a horror film. Over a period of years, a number of Griffin’s resident alligators were turning up dead, but scientists were baffled as to the cause.

In May 1997, the bloated bodies of a number of adult alligators were discovered on the shoreline of Lake Griffin in central Florida. “There were times when I would go into the lake and find ten alligators within half a mile,” recalls local fisherman Skip Goerner. The reports of these strange deaths caught the attention of the Florida state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), who sent a team to look into the mystery. Leading the investigation was wildlife biologist Allan Woodward who immediately suspected the work of poachers. However, the corpses told a different story –they bore no signs of attack by man and, most shockingly of all, some of the motionless animals were not even dead.

In order to discover the cause of these events, the FWC team began to study the behaviour of the alligators before they died. What the scientists found was that the animals were struggling to move properly and keep their heads above water, with many alligators spending much of their time floating listlessly in the lake or lying motionless on the banks. “We noticed alligators that showed poor equilibrium,” says Woodward. But why would these amphibious creatures who have survived for millions of years suddenly be unable to survive in their natural environment?

Pathologist Dr Scott Terrell conducted thorough autopsies on the alligators, but he could find no clues as to the cause of death. “What we were seeing were adult, healthy animals,” he recalls. “We weren’t finding much.”

Since the dead bodies were offering no evidence, the scientists returned to the lake and went in search of a living ‘zombie’ alligator. Soon, they had caught one such animal –an unusually easy manoeuvre since the alligator was incapable of putting up a fight. A sample of blood was taken from the animal and sent to Mark Merchant –a professor of biochemistry at McNeese State University. But Merchant could find no sign of any illnes. In fact, he attempted to infect the blood with a number of deadly viruses, including E. coli, salmonella and HIV, but each time the incredibly resistant blood fought off the infection.

Having drawn another blank, the scientists returned to their living specimen. “Some of the signs we saw did suggest some neurological problems,” says Woodward. “That became our next suspect.” Tests showed that the animal responded in a slow and unpredictable way to electrical stimulation, suggesting that the problem did lie somewhere in the nervous system –but it was still not clear where. Dr Terrell suspected that the key to the mystery lay in the alligator’s brain –an organ weighing just eight grammes. He sent tissue samples for tests and soon discovered that many of the neurons in the animal’s brain had died. “There were areas of the tissue that were almost ghost-like,” he says.

This brain damage explained all the symptoms common among the alligators, including disorientation, loss of balance, nerve damage and drowning –it seemed that for some reason, portions of these alligators’ brains were dying while they were still alive. However, despite their breakthrough, the scientists were still no closer to finding the culprit for the animal deaths.

The FWC suspected that man’s activites were responsible and began to focus on the change in water quality caused by increased agricultural activity on the banks of the river. However, it was not until a chance meeting with a man called Dr Dale Honeyfield at a scientific conference in Maryland that Woodward and his team would finally get to the bottom of the case. Could something as simple as a vitamin deficiency be responsible for such a strange turn of events?

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Nature Shock: Dolphin Murders

Channel 5, 8pm
Tuesday 28th Jan, 2008

The documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world continues. This programme focuses on a series of attacks on dolphins and porpoises in Virginia and Scotland. The victims all shared horrific internal injuries yet showed no sign of external trauma. Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic considered everything from underwater explosions to predation by other creatures in a bid to try and explain the deaths.

In 1997, marine biologists in Virginia were astonished to find the bodies of two dolphin calves with seemingly inexplicable injuries. Neither dolphin showed signs of injury on the outside, yet post-mortem exams revealed massive internal damage, including bleeding, shattered ribs and fractured organs. “We saw things like massive fractures of all the ribs on one side,” recalls biologist William McLellan. “It looked like the ribs had just been imploded.”

At the same time, Dr Ben Wilson, a marine biologist in Aberdeen, was puzzling over the corpse of a porpoise found in the Moray Firth. Although they belong to a different species, the porpoise is a similar size and shape to a dolphin calf. This creature appeared to have met with the same fate as the Virginian dolphins. “There was nothing obviously wrong with the animal,” Wilson recalls. “[But] the moment the animal is opened up, you realise it’s a mess inside... It looked like an animal that had been in a car crash.”

Establishing the cause of death would prove exceptionally difficult. Much of dolphin behaviour is poorly understood, as they spend 98 per cent of their lives underwater at depths of up to 1,000 feet. The presence of humans can also alter dolphins’ behaviour, making them extremely difficult to study. With no crime scene, no DNA evidence and no witnesses, the only clue for investigators to follow lay in the corpses.

The primary cause of marine mammal deaths is intensive fishing, yet there was no sign that the victims had been caught in fishing nets. Similarly, the physical evidence seemed to discount the possibility that they had been hit by a boat. “Boat strike is a common cause of mortality in marine animals but then again, you should have an injury that’s coming from one direction,” says military pathologist Colonel Dale Dunn. “These animals were obviously impacted from many directions.”

Investigators considered the possibility that the dolphins and porpoises were attacked by larger predators, such as killer whales or sharks, but with no bite marks, it was clear they were not hunted as food. Meanwhile, the body count continued to mount; over several months, nearly 30 victims appeared in both locations.

The next step was to look at environmental factors. These marine ‘murders’ had only been reported in two parts of the world, so the teams looked for common factors. They found that the Moray Firth is home to a number of oil rigs, which use air guns to detect hidden caverns. These guns produce sonic pulses akin to an underwater explosion. “Basically, a loud explosion underwater could shatter the ribs of a diver,” says Wilson. “So maybe that was happening to these marine mammals.” The Virginian dolphins, meanwhile, swam in waters that were used by the US navy. However, the forensic teams soon decided that the animals’ injuries were too focused to be consistent with the type of diffuse injury usually associated with ‘blast trauma’.

A breakthrough finally came when the US team discovered puncture marks on the dolphins’ lower jaws that matched the teeth of a bottlenose dolphin. For the first time, biologists had clear evidence that dolphins attack their own kind. Even more conclusive proof arrived in the form of shocking amateur footage that captured these attacks on film. But the question remained: why would these dolphins prey on their own helpless calves and the equally blameless porpoises?