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In the waters of the Galapagos island a lone sea lion is peckish – and he decides to go after a fish that almost always proves a challenge to catch – tuna!  He tries every trick up his metaphorical sleeve, but the tuna proves elusive.  He is not one to give up and so the chase continues… but as success is (perhaps) on the horizon a Galapagos shark appears.  That’s unfortunate because he has brought his friends with him, and the sharks want to snack on the tuna too – having let him do the all the hard work of tiring out the fish in the first place. 

Ultimately, the sea lion wins out, but I have only told you half the story.  Watch the amazing video below.  It was created by John Downer Productions and originally broadcast as part of the “Spy in the Ocean” series which was narrated by David Tennant (who is a natural voiceover fit for documentaries of this kind).  What helped Downer and team capture this remarkable footage is a pair of “spy robots” – one which looks like a sea lion and for the aerial shots, one which closely resembles a frigate. 

This is a superb piece of photography – a great marriage of human ingenuity, patience and technology, with nature supplying the drama – and it’s edge of your seat stuff all the way through, here.

I love the little victory “arf arf” the sea lion does at the end! 

Did you know that when it feels threatened, a slow loris can stay motionless, gripped onto a single branch, for hours? That isn’t the only remarkable fact about this animal, which is endangered.  Their single biggest threat is us – you can obviously see the attraction from the picture of the Javan Slow Loris above – and in their own habitat they are often taken as “living toys” for children.  They are also victims of the international global animal smuggling network and videos of them in captivity often get hundreds of thousands if not millions of hits. They look very passive and docile in the videos – and do you know why that is?  It is because their defense mechanism is to freeze – so what you are seeing in these videos is not a slow loris happily joining in the fun, but an animal that is so scared that it has become motionless. Image

The video below is a TED-Ed Lesson by Stephanie A. Poindexter, directed by Reza Riahi and it focuses on the life of the slow loris in the wild, looking at when they diverged from other primates (an awfully long time ago) and how that defensive mechanism works when they are confronted with danger.  Although they are omnivores, they also love to eat tree gum – and it is thought that they sequester the toxins from the gum for their own use.  They are venomous – the only primate to hold that particular badge, and one of the few venomous mammals in existence.  They secrete the toxin from their armpits, mix it with their saliva and spread it on their teeth, so when they bit another animal, it will start a flesh-rotting process almost immediately.  They also spread it all over their coats, which makes it a highly effective anti-parasite balm. Some animals (like cats and civets) hate even the vaguest smell of slow loris saliva, so you can see how their venom has multiple uses.

So, if a slow loris ever adopts its venom pose (the very cute hands above its head that so many people think is the slow loris joining in the fun), accompanied by swaying and throaty noises, make a quick exit.  However, the “people” who work in the illegal trade of the slow loris do something unspeakable – they file down their teeth so the venom cannot be carried that way, or they remove the teeth altogether before selling the wretched animal on. It is mind-boggling to think that people want to keep slow loris as pets given the suffering that they go through and, let’s face it, that they are still potentially venemous. Having said that, wildlife researchers have revealed that the biggest victim of slow loris venom is, wait for it, other slow lorises.

Although there are only a fraction of the suburban hedgehogs in the UK that were around even twenty years ago, life must go on.  This clip from the BBC documentary Secret Gardens shows a female hedgehog looking for a mate.  She really does have to search far and wide in order to find a mate, but eventually she succeeds!  This is a sweet story but sad too, as it underlines just how few of these lovely, harmless creatures are left in the towns and cities of the UK.

Perhaps, as is featured in the video, more effort should be put into creating hedgehog corridors, so that they can safely navigate routes between properties in order to find the love of their life (well, of the evening at least).   A little patience and a little help can go a long way – and it would be great to think that hedgehogs are considered when new houses are built too.  Sometimes, one has to wonder why people even build houses with gardens – they are in such a rush to pave them over that it is little wonder that the hedgehogs of England are becoming something of a rarity.

Animals that are cave specialists are known as troglobites and can be counted as the most specialist species in the world – one species of angel fish troglobites lives only in two small cave waterfalls in Thailand.  To say that they have a precarious grip on survival in this day and age is putting it mildly.  Many of these species have lost the use of their eyes altogether as the sun never penetrates their cave dwellings. However, to become troglobitic can take thousands of generations. 

This fascinating video from BBC Earth, narrated by Sir David Attenborough looks at troglobites in general – those who have lost the pigment in their skin and also their eyes.  However, to compensate for their blindness, creatures like the Texas Blind Salamander has other senses fine-tuned to compensate for their lack of sight.  Take a look at this video – and discover more about the strange cave-dwelling species, who somehow manage to survive despite the odds being massively stacked against them.

Here’s the story of Doris the duck and her nine eggs, as told on the BBC’s new nature programme, Secret Garden.  Narrated by David Attenborough, it shows how the ducklings “talk” to each other and so trigger hatching at the same time, so that all nine get to experience life simultaneously.  Of course, the mother duck does not have the father around, and looking after  nine ducklings present her with a set of big challenges. The first one is getting the ducklings from the nest to the water.  As they jump down, you will  be forgiven for keeping fingers, toes and everything crossed, but thanks to the cushioning effect of their downy feathers, they all make it to where they want to go intact. Phew!  

Mum Doris is waiting at the bottom of the drop to escort them the last of the way to  the water, and once they make it, she gets them into hiding as soon as she can.  There are predators about, and she wants to make sure they all her ducklings survive!  This is a beautiful piece of film-making from the BBC and I look forward to watching the rest of the episodes on iPlayer.  Let’s keep our fingers (at least) crossed that Doris and her ducklings make it through!