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00:00Tonight on The Proof is Out There.
00:03Could these clothing stains prove two fishermen were abducted by aliens for hours that they can't remember?
00:10There are many instances when there's some type of an alien abduction experience where missing time occurs.
00:17Five UFOs hover near a U.S. military base.
00:20If ETs wanted to study our military, this would be the place to do it.
00:24What kind of creature was photographed walking by this river?
00:28Is this being phasing between dimensions?
00:31And how can this zombie insect keep crawling?
00:35That's crazy. It's walking along. This thing should not be alive.
00:44Around the globe are videos.
00:46What are those things? It's moving.
00:49Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
00:58We don't know where they come from, who made them, or how they operate.
01:02What are they?
01:03Some sort of bizarre mutation.
01:05What's exciting is nobody really knows.
01:07Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
01:10I'm Tony Harris, and as a journalist for more than 30 years, I've followed the facts where they take me.
01:18Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation to the world's strangest sounds and images.
01:24We'll analyze each one with top experts.
01:27It's a credible case. It's a credible video.
01:30And pass a verdict on what it is.
01:33This video was clearly faked.
01:35The proof starts now.
01:45Good evening, everyone, and welcome to The Proof Is Out There.
01:48Stories of UFO abductions are pretty common.
01:52But forensic evidence that corroborates such accounts is much harder to come by.
01:57So when two self-proclaimed victims of alien abduction claim to have proof, you know we have to take a look for ourselves.
02:05It's August 2014 in Salt Fork State Park, Ohio.
02:10Two men are out fishing at night when suddenly their lives are changed forever.
02:15Tom Workman, the state director of Ohio's Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON,
02:20say these photos of what they were wearing may hold the clues to what they went through.
02:25Roughly about 10.30, they saw a light coming across the sky to their north.
02:31An hour later, another set of lights comes by.
02:35And about 1.30 in the morning, they heard this extremely shrill woman's cry coming from across the lake.
02:42At that point, the 43-year-old's sitting in a lawn chair, watching his fishing pole.
02:47The 19-year-old, he's baiting his hook.
02:49The next thing you know, the 43-year-old gets his cell phone out.
02:53And it's 5.19 in the morning.
02:55He has no idea what happened between 1.30 and 5.19.
02:59And the 19-year-old is still up, baiting his hook, over three and a half hours later.
03:04Author Jason Martell says the bewildered men then make a break for it.
03:09But that's when things get really weird.
03:12Stunned in disbelief, they started to just grab all their belongings, change their clothes.
03:17And as the older man changed his clothes, he was also noticing his shirt was inside out.
03:22It's as if his clothes had been taken off and put back on incorrectly.
03:27And they say they have no idea where these stains came from.
03:32The men believe these dirty shorts and tops might carry evidence that they are victims of an alien abduction.
03:39If that's the case, their lost time would not be surprising.
03:44There are many instances when there's some type of an alien abduction experience where missing time occurs.
03:51A very similar feature happened with the Betty and Barney Hill case.
03:55The Hill couple famously forgot two hours while driving on a New Hampshire road one night in 1961.
04:02With the help of hypnosis, they later recounted being examined and probed by aliens.
04:08In many of these experiences of lost time, there are physical attributes that also take place.
04:16Sometimes the clothes are put on wrong. A shirt is inside out.
04:20Betty and Barney Hill were left with stopped watches, scuffed shoes, and a ripped dress.
04:26Is the clothing of the Ohio fishermen proof of a similar encounter?
04:33Okay, I know what you're thinking. Dirty clothes and a shirt turned inside out?
04:38Doesn't sound all that weird coming back from a camping trip.
04:41Still, the men claimed they were so disturbed that they stayed home for weeks afterward.
04:46Perhaps our experts can shine a light on this mysterious blackout.
04:50First, we ask emergency medicine physician Dr. Ed Hope if there's any explanation for the experience of lost time reported here.
05:02When people blackout or lose consciousness, medically, we think of something happening either with the heart or something with the head.
05:11What's unusual in this case is that both of them blacked out at the same time, which kind of rules out a lot of these causes.
05:19And what about their clothing? Astronomer Mark D'Antonio says an industrial chemist put it under spectroscopic analysis.
05:26One of the findings in the clothing of both these two gentlemen and in Betty Hill's clothes was carboxylic acid.
05:34Carboxylic acid salt is found in food additives, some pharmaceuticals, and soap.
05:39It's not rare, but Tom Wertman argues that the placement of this otherwise ordinary chemical is what makes it noteworthy.
05:47Betty Hill's dress was brand new, and it was in the lower part of the skirt where you would normally never associate that type of a chemical with.
05:56And the chemist found the salt fork abductee's clothes were similarly affected.
06:01She found it on the pockets of their, like, cargo shorts in areas that you would normally never find that type of a chemical in.
06:09Yet there might be a simple explanation. What if they were carrying hygiene products or medication in their pockets?
06:16Tom Wertman points to areas of pinkish discoloration on both sets of garments, which might hold an even bigger clue.
06:23The areas that discolored on Betty Hill's dark blue dress were around, like, the lower part of the skirt area.
06:30And this is where she was claiming that aliens were grabbing at her.
06:35On the gentleman from Salt Fork, the blue jacket had a pink cast to it. So maybe something was touching that jacket.
06:44Tom was so compelled by the Salt Fork incident, he went there, looking for additional physical evidence.
06:50As I'm walking the area, I hit a spot about 100 yards from where they were.
06:55And I looked down, and I was standing in a perfect circle of dead grass.
07:00So I took samples from that region and also control samples around the whole region.
07:05Tom got the samples analyzed, and the findings, once again, appeared anomalous.
07:11One position was much higher iron content than all the rest of the areas.
07:16That area was the circle I was standing in.
07:19Does it mean that possibly there's some type of connection to iron and alien spacecraft?
07:26We can't say no, but one case doesn't prove anything.
07:37Our verdict? If you take them at their word, this remains an unexplained case of lost time.
07:43We can't be sure whether it was caused by an alien abduction or something else altogether.
07:48Unfortunately for these two anonymous men, they may never know for sure where those hours went.
07:56Now, another UFO case. This one not from the woods, but from the desert.
08:01With the establishment of the Pentagon's All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or ARO,
08:06it's clear the government is becoming more aware and worried about UFOs,
08:11especially around military targets, like this one. Take a look.
08:16April 20th, 2021. It's a quiet, crystal clear evening in the skies over a marine base near 29 Palms, California, in the Mojave Desert.
08:25Until multiple reports suddenly come in of a strange set of lights appearing in the sky.
08:31The base's night vision cameras capture this.
08:35Five orbs are hovering in a curved formation in the sky.
08:40They each contain a small bright spot in the center, surrounded by a glowing aura.
08:45It appears to be showing some type of an arc of connected lights.
08:50But is this one object, or is it a collection of orbs staying in formation?
08:55What's unusual about this sighting is that the people who reported it aren't your average bystanders.
09:01Reportedly, over 50 people actually witnessed this strange phenomenon.
09:06A group of marines who are all very familiar with different types of aerospace technology, military aircraft.
09:13Yet, to them, they were fascinated enough to say it caught their eye and it was truly bizarre.
09:19So, if this isn't anything recognized by local military personnel, could it be extraterrestrial?
09:25Turns out, it's not the first time alleged ETs have been reported near a military base.
09:30In 1967, guards outside Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana reported seeing a strange red light over the facility.
09:40The light appeared to be a hovering oval-shaped craft about 30 to 40 feet in diameter.
09:45Then, without explanation, one by one the nuclear missiles became disarmed.
09:51So, was something similar happening over 29 palms?
09:55I think we have enough of a framework there to say that trained military personnel
09:59found this to be a fascinating object.
10:02And, to me, that would merit further investigation.
10:08Because this video was recorded by a military infrared camera,
10:12we can presume it hasn't been doctored.
10:14But what is it that we're seeing here?
10:17What could be behind those big balls of light?
10:20Time to ask our experts to illuminate us.
10:23We begin with military aviation expert Tim McMillan.
10:31From first impression, you get the idea that these five lights are connected to a single object.
10:37This could be some type of triangular craft that has these five lights and different points.
10:42But I don't see the control surfaces, the wings.
10:46It's traveling much too slow.
10:48So, we can really easily rule out airplane.
10:51We took the video to Rich Hoffman of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
10:56After incidents like those over other bases like Malmstrom,
11:00is it possible extraterrestrials really are monitoring our military capabilities?
11:05Hoffman doesn't see a match, at least not in this case.
11:09Throughout history, we've had a lot of military bases that have had UFO reports near them.
11:16And what we've seen from just all those sheer cases is it's almost on the scale of surveillance.
11:23What's curious is these lines that are going up there,
11:26these would indicate some sort of trail that's being left behind them.
11:30And you don't see that on UFO reports.
11:34Instead of UFOs, Macmillan sees a clue that brings these objects back down to Earth.
11:41Looking at the smoke and vapor trail that's being left behind them,
11:45you see that these are actually independent points of light.
11:48And they appear to be in a free fall, dependent on gravity.
11:52And the fact that these are moving slow like this leads me to believe that what we're looking at here
11:57is actually the deployment of illumination flares that are providing light
12:03for some type of ground forces coordinated activity.
12:08The illumination flares, they're very, very bright.
12:11And they're often, quite often, reported as UFOs.
12:19Our verdict, this isn't a UFO attracted to our military.
12:23These are just illumination flares.
12:26But keep an eye out for other unexplained objects around military bases.
12:30Just in case the extraterrestrials are keeping an eye on us.
12:38Bolivia is known for its multitude of mountains, its abundance of alpacas,
12:43and its cornucopia of coca fields.
12:46Well, now we can add aliens to that list.
12:49August 2023, a group of hikers are traversing Bolivia's scenic Rio Pilcomayo,
12:56near the city of Trajia.
12:58One member of the party stops to take some pictures and ends up capturing way more than the breathtaking scenery.
13:03It appears these unsuspecting hikers were not alone.
13:07Pushing in on the image, we see a thin, nearly translucent figure walking along the riverbank.
13:12It seems to be around four feet in size, walking in a strange, inhuman gate.
13:17Eerily, the creature's dead, hollow stare seems to be directed straight at the photographer.
13:22Many internet sleuths believe this photo helps prove the existence of the infamous grays,
13:28the most common type of alleged alien reported by abductees.
13:32What first caught my attention is it definitely looks very humanoid in respect to other aliens that we've seen,
13:39like a short gray with a bulbous head or some type of bipedal humanoid entity.
13:44And it falls in line with other beings that have been reported under either alien abduction
13:50or some type of a scenario where an alien has been seen, usually near some type of a flying craft.
13:56Martell singles out a sighting from 1978 that occurred in this very same region,
14:03where many eyewitnesses claim to have seen a cylindrical spacecraft crash into the side of a mountain.
14:09Now, for South America, this was equivalent to a Roswell-type event.
14:13Hundreds of witnesses saw this and even more heard a sonic-like explosion.
14:18Witness reports of this incident claim the impact was so violent,
14:23it threw people to the ground and shattered nearby glass windows.
14:28And you have to wonder if events like this speak to why we might be seeing entities like this
14:33walking around in this location.
14:38Bolivia is also home to the mysterious ancient ruins of Pumapunku,
14:43thought by some to be as many as 17,000 years old.
14:46Others believe the intricacy of the stone cutting could be the work of an advanced technology,
14:52possibly from another world.
14:54Could our photo be connected?
14:56Let's see what our experts think.
15:03First, could someone in a costume be trying to pull a fast one?
15:07Biologist Stephanie Manka doesn't think so.
15:09It doesn't seem like it's an actual person in a costume doing a hoax
15:13because the body is too thin, the limbs are too thin to be a person.
15:17However, she isn't convinced that this photo is concrete proof of an extraterrestrial species like the grays.
15:24Grays are described as grays for a reason because they are the color gray,
15:29and this one appears to be translucent.
15:32So it doesn't fit with the definition of what people see.
15:35According to the accounts that people have said about grays,
15:39there's been no mention of light bending or other sort of advanced camouflage used by the grays.
15:48Manka also questions the authenticity of the image.
15:52What I personally think happened is that somebody realized these kind of look like legs
15:58and then doctored the photos and added the top part of it.
16:01To follow up on Manka's doubts, we brought the image to our forensic video analyst, Michael Primo.
16:06So the absence of the shadow of this object in the area that it was captured on the shoreline,
16:13as well as the absence in that reflection of the body of water beneath it, is peculiar.
16:20And while believers of this image claim the lack of shadows and reflections
16:24could be aspects of some alien cloaking technology,
16:27Primo believes this picture has definitely been altered in some way.
16:31So we take a look at the information within the picture,
16:34take a deeper dive to try to see if we can detect any evidence of alteration or manipulation.
16:39And there's a test that we run called JPEG-Ghosts that will show us evidence of recompression.
16:44You can see a dip in the compression data.
16:48This valley shows that the image has been processed and the quality has been reduced at least one time.
16:54So does that mean it's a fake? Unfortunately, Primo can neither confirm nor deny.
17:00The challenge becomes with this picture, because it's been recompressed,
17:04we simply don't know if the area in question on the creature was added or removed.
17:09Because this amount of recompression was introduced, it changed all of those pixel regions.
17:14It stripped the VIN number from the vehicle before it was painted, so to speak.
17:19We can't verify one way or the other, but I have my concerns with this picture.
17:28Our verdict? We're going with suspected hoax.
17:31Although there isn't enough technical data to confirm,
17:34we agree with our experts that there's definitely something dubious about this photo.
17:39But rest assured, if there are aliens wandering the mountains of Bolivia,
17:44we'll find them soon enough.
17:46Ever since George A. Romero's 1968 classic, The Night of the Living Dead,
17:53the world has been obsessed with zombies.
17:56They're frightening, kind of fun, and totally fictitious, right?
17:59Well, that's what we thought.
18:01But could this next video prove that real zombies do, in fact, walk and crawl among us?
18:07June 2020, Ignalina, Lithuania.
18:12One homeowner is out in their garden enjoying the summer warmth when they notice a few dead insects in the grass.
18:18A fairly standard sight, but upon further inspection, things get downright creepy.
18:24One of the cockchafer bugs is moving, despite being hollowed out on the inside.
18:30Crawling through the grass all on its own with a gaping hole in its abdomen,
18:35this bug seems like the walking dead in real life.
18:39Field researcher Ken Gerhardt wonders if this beetle is among many in the animal kingdom able to cheat death.
18:46So, in nature, there are occasionally remarkable instances of animals suffering horrific injuries
18:55and then defying all biological laws and living on for a brief period of time.
19:01I think the best example of this is something known as self-amputation.
19:07An example would be a lizard's tail breaking off.
19:10And they're actually able to regenerate these appendages at a later time.
19:15We wonder if this relates to this particular film.
19:18How is it that this insect has endured such a horrific injury and yet it continues to survive?
19:25Some commenters had another theory in mind.
19:28There's also been speculation that this may be the work of a fungus known as Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.
19:35Or cordyceps, the fungal neuro-infection that turns the world's population into zombies in the popular show The Last of Us.
19:44It's actually a mushroom that releases its spores into different types of insects.
19:50And the spores actually grow and replicate inside of the insect.
19:56And ultimately, they release chemicals into the animal's brain that essentially turn them into zombies.
20:04It manipulates their thought process and causes them to climb up into trees to drop more of these spores.
20:11It sounds like science fiction.
20:13But as we can see in this video, this actually may be a fungus that is capable of taking over and reanimating dead tissue.
20:23This isn't the first time we've taken a look at undead wildlife on this show.
20:29Like this fish, seemingly with no head at all, that was filmed swimming through a lake in Bangladesh.
20:36While we were able to reach scientific conclusions with those cases, will our experts have the same luck with this zombified critter?
20:44Is this beetle exhibiting its ability to cheat death by regenerating its insides?
20:54Wildlife biologist Floyd Hayes says to regenerate anything, an animal must first be able to eat the nutrients necessary to grow.
21:01This animal is missing almost all of its internal organs, which means it's not going to be able to digest and process food.
21:09So how on earth is this bug still kicking?
21:12This particular beetle belongs to the genus Melavantha, which is native to Europe.
21:17And it is attacked by two different species of fungi of the genus Cordyceps.
21:23Bingo. Hayes says the missing insides are a telltale sign of this fungal invasion.
21:29You get spores that break through the exoskeleton, get into the interior of the insect, and then they digest the internal organs until there's only the exoskeleton and the brain.
21:44But if you think that makes it a zombie, wildlife biologist Stephanie Manka says there's one important distinction.
21:51This fungus is not resurrecting animals from the dead. There is activity still going on in the brain. There are electrical connections going between its limbs.
22:02At this point, it doesn't have much longer until it's going to climb a tree, and the fungus will protrude out of it and release its spores to infect other insects.
22:12In other words, it's not dead, just almost dead. But Cordyceps can still bend insects to its will. Do humans have anything to worry about?
22:23People naturally wonder, could this happen to humans? It would take a lot of mutations to be able to jump to humans.
22:32It's reasonable to believe that it would take millions of years or more to adapt to do this to human beings.
22:41Part of that reason is the high temperature of the human body, which prevents the fungus from multiplying, as it does in insects, with their lower body temperatures.
22:50For now, fungi, for the most part, are friends.
22:54There's actually benefits to humans taking Cordyceps in capsule form, including reducing inflammation, improving heart health, and improving your immunity.
23:05So we shouldn't be afraid of fungus just because of this.
23:08Our verdict? This is the work of Ophiocordyceps unilateralist, or the zombie ant fungus.
23:23And it's called that for a reason. It has evolved over millions of years to infect the bodies of insects.
23:30And it might be just as long before we need to be worried about our own zombies.
23:35They say dogs experience the world differently from humans. Their senses of smell and hearing are far better than ours.
23:44But a recent video has people wondering if these superpowers go far beyond their noses and ears.
23:51On a sweltering July day in 2020, UK residents Meg Oxtoby and Jeff Parlett are on a hike with their trio of Hungarian Wieslas unaware of what they're about to witness.
24:04We were walking along, just having a chat like we normally do. And then we noticed that the dogs were not moving.
24:14At first, this looks like a photograph. But keep watching. The camera starts moving. And yet the dogs all appear to be frozen in their tracks.
24:23We couldn't believe it. You could see the leaves moving and all the bushes, but the dogs were completely still.
24:31I'm telling you, we are not freezing or slowing down this video. You can tell by the shrubbery right here that it's moving in the wind.
24:40Now check out how this dog has his leg raised and tail curled. And this other dog is frozen in mid-step.
24:52Look, it seems impossible to maintain balance like that.
24:56The three Wieslas stay in that position for four whole minutes before resuming their normal dog activity.
25:05We were completely gobsmacked.
25:07And it doesn't end there. Since Meg and Jeff had their canine conundrum, we've come across another story of animals inexplicably freezing.
25:15In late November 2023, Brianna Lindsey went out to feed her chickens at her Tampa, Florida home when this happened.
25:22It's grub time!
25:24Um, what the fool?
25:28What is happening right now?
25:30I was so confused. I was like, there were so many thoughts running in my head. I'm like, why are they freezing?
25:36The trees are still moving, so time is still relevant. My mind was just blown. I couldn't move.
25:41The hens remain frozen in place for more than two minutes before finally skittering off when Brianna's husband opens the door.
25:49Nick!
25:51What the?
25:53Oh, my God!
25:55After posting that video, I just wanted people to see what I saw.
25:58So I'm like, what is this? Is this a glitch in the matrix? And a lot of seasoned chicken owners are like, it's a hawk.
26:04And then my husband actually did his own research. He's like, wait a minute, there's a hawk outside?
26:10In this case, experts believe the chickens froze because of a survival mechanism that kicked in after they spotted the hawk.
26:18But Vizlas are hunting dogs, the predator, not the prey. So what's up with them?
26:23Ancient cultures from the Greeks to the Romans to Koreans all have myths about dogs having supernatural abilities.
26:32The Mayans believe that dogs, known for being great swimmers, swam the souls of the dead across a shadowy lake to the afterlife.
26:40Forensic investigator Chase Klotsky wonders if something like that is at work here.
26:45Are there, like, forces somehow making them stop like that?
26:50It seems like a theory is that dogs have a spiritual side almost. They sense things like earthquakes, illness, even death sometimes.
26:59Recent studies have explored whether dogs have some sort of sixth sense to communicate telepathically.
27:05Meg and Jeff concur. Their dogs seem to have some kind of canine ESP.
27:09They knew what they were all doing and they knew how long to stay still for. So it's just amazing how they can communicate without actually speaking. That side of it is kind of magical, really.
27:23That was me trying to freeze for just five seconds. It's impossible. I'm too twitchy. So forget about four whole minutes. It's clear these dogs can do some amazing things, right?
27:39But can they really freeze themselves in mid-step? Let's take the video to our experts.
27:43Zoologist Roxy Furman considers whether a supernatural force may have terrified the dogs into a form of paralysis.
27:55Dogs definitely do freeze when they're afraid. So there could be something that's made them scared.
28:00But there's nothing else in their body language that indicates fear. Their ears are up, their tails up.
28:06Wieslas are hunting dogs, but I don't think that they can be that still for the entire duration of a four-minute video without kind of any movement.
28:15It looks like it's been edited in some way to me.
28:18Compare this other video of hunting Wieslas with Meg and Jeff's.
28:23You can see these other dogs don't maintain their posture as well or as long.
28:27So maybe Roxy's right. Meg and Jeff's dog video can't be real.
28:32So there are apps that can be downloaded on these mobile devices that can animate certain areas of a picture while preserving other areas frozen in time.
28:42Although these apps can deceive a viewer, we found no evidence to support that this file was manipulated or slowed down or frozen in any way.
28:52So this is in fact real.
28:54Biology professor Floyd Hayes believes this is just the product of centuries of breeding.
29:01This is a behavior that is selectively bred for in several breeds of dogs, although it is reinforced in dogs by training.
29:09In fact, they actually can be trained to lift a paw above the ground when they are pointing.
29:14Hayes may be onto something here. At the end of the video, we do see the dogs unfreeze as soon as a bird flies away.
29:23But here's the catch. Meg and Jeff say they have never trained their dogs to behave like this.
29:28We teach them, you know, sit and stay. But this, this was something on a completely different scale and something that I can't see being taught to them whatsoever.
29:40Our verdict? This is still an animal anomaly. These three Vizslas really did freeze in place for four minutes.
29:51And if Meg and Jeff truly didn't train them to do this, how they stopped time is still a doggone mystery.
29:57You know, we often analyze videos that at first look like one thing, then turn out to be something different.
30:07In this next story, the closer you look, the creepier and crawlier it gets.
30:12March 2021. Talk to Pau, Thailand. A person is walking along when they stumble upon a cryptic site and pull out their phone.
30:23No, someone didn't just drop a designer chain necklace. This formation appears to be made up of hundreds if not thousands of tiny worms.
30:33They've formed a large braided circle out of their own bodies. And they're in constant movement, crawling steadily in a clockwise direction.
30:42Science fiction writer Benjamin Percy witnessed a similar formation while walking his dog near his home in Minnesota.
30:49I'd never seen anything like it. It at first appeared to be a snake about the size of my arm. And then I begin to think it's something otherworldly.
31:01They appeared to be these sort of translucent worms that had a kind of wave-like motion. It had this kind of hypnotic surging effect.
31:09Journalist Erin McCarthy believes this slithering, slimy circle calls to mind an important mythical creature.
31:18For me, this brings to mind the Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, which symbolizes the endless cycle of death and rebirth.
31:27So, give us some rope here. Could this living ring be signaling something similar to that tail-eating snake?
31:33Throughout the animal kingdom, there are examples of creatures sensing things that are about to occur well before humans are even aware that anything is happening.
31:43The widespread occurrence of animals traveling in circles like this has led some to theorize that maybe the end of the world is coming.
31:52What can worms teach us about the circle of life and death? Well, perhaps quite a bit.
31:57Take the Planarian flatworm, which has unlocked the secret of regeneration.
32:02If you cut off its head, it grows a new one. Simultaneously, its severed head grows a new tail.
32:09But are these worms regenerating anything within their circle? Let's ask the experts.
32:19Wildlife biologist Dr. Stephanie Manka says it's not uncommon for smaller creatures to form something called superorganisms.
32:27Take ants, for example.
32:28Some ants will form, in times of flooding, a raft by entangling their bodies together so that they can all survive together.
32:38And ants aren't the only ones to exhibit this type of behavior. Aquatic salps are another example.
32:46Saps are a group of tunicates, which are closely related to vertebrates.
32:50And they often form colonies, smaller individuals linked into a chain.
32:55And that way they're able to stay afloat in the water more easily rather than sinking to the bottom.
33:01Hayes thinks that's what these worms are actually up to.
33:05So there are two potential advantages for them traveling together in a group.
33:09One of them is they look like a larger organism like a snake, which can help deter predators.
33:13Another one is they're laying down a path of slime on the ground and on each other.
33:19And they could travel on that slime more easily than if each one is traveling alone in a dry environment.
33:25But then why this ring-shaped formation?
33:27Manka says there may be a connection between what we're seeing here and what's known as an ant death spiral.
33:36Ants have trails that leave pheromones, so they end up creating a trail that has a circle.
33:43They keep following the pheromones, which reinforces the circle even more.
33:48And it leads to a death spiral because they don't ever leave the trails and they just end up starving.
33:53But as Hayes looks closer, another clue emerges. These worms might not even be worms.
34:00Although these look like worms, they're actually the larvae of fungus gnats.
34:05And when they're ready to pupate, they travel in a group to a suitable location.
34:10That's likely what we saw with Benjamin's worm serpent.
34:14But with the circle, our experts say these creatures have basically created a real-life Ouroboros, the tail-swallowing snake.
34:21What happened here is probably the lead larvae, in making a turn, saw the larvae from the back and thought that they needed to catch up.
34:30And then that created the circle because they're programmed to follow each other.
34:35The individuals think they're going somewhere when in fact they're going nowhere.
34:39Eventually they become exhausted and they die they don't know better to kick off in a different direction.
34:44Our verdict? These are fungus gnat larvae. And like Ouroboros, they also represent the circle of life and death. In this case, their own.
35:00Finally tonight, throughout history, all kinds of strange things have fallen from the sky.
35:09Dead birds, fish, even frogs.
35:12But what about alien slime?
35:15You never know what you'll find when you start poking around.
35:17It's October 2014, near Romney, West Virginia.
35:23Diane Wingate is checking the blueberry and raspberry patches at her weekend property when she sees something strange and alerts her husband Randy.
35:32There's some kind of jelly fungus here at the base of our raspberry bushes.
35:38It's just really weird. Looks like crystals, but it's soft jelly.
35:42Diane points out a large pile of what appear to be gelatinous and translucent small blobs.
35:49I suppose that's a rare delicacy. Someone's going to come here.
35:52It's not caviar.
35:54Not fish eggs, but it's cold.
35:57Randy and Diane say they have no idea what the strange substance is or how it got there.
36:03When they come back to the property the following week, the substance has vanished.
36:08It seemed obvious. It must have come from the sky.
36:11The way that it landed and the position it was in.
36:15We experienced a lot of flyovers by military and commercial flights.
36:19So we thought, well, maybe, maybe that was it. Maybe it was something from a plane, from an airplane.
36:24The couple posts the video online seeking answers.
36:28And a few years later, they receive a note that changes everything.
36:32We got a letter in the mail from a lady in Yakima, and she explained to us what it was.
36:38She said, it's been around for centuries. It's called star jelly.
36:42Star jelly, a mystical substance long rumored to come straight from the stars.
36:47According to folklore, star jelly are actually pieces of celestial bodies, whether they be meteors or nebulae, that have come apart and fallen to earth.
36:58It typically disappears not long after it's been deposited.
37:01McCarthy says, star jelly stories date back hundreds of years.
37:05In the 14th century, medieval physician John of Gaddiston actually mentioned star jelly in his medical writings.
37:11And this is not the only odd thing that's said to have fallen from the sky.
37:17In a previous story, we told you about birds dropping down from above in Chihuahua, Mexico.
37:22And tales of plagues of frogs sent from heaven by God go all the way back to biblical times.
37:28And even though people have claimed since the Middle Ages that star jelly appears after meteor showers, McCarthy says some other ideas about its origin are more down to earth.
37:38Some have said that maybe this is a fungi that we're looking at or maybe it's the anal secretion of an animal.
37:45Or maybe it's unfertilized frog spawn that had been eaten and then regurgitated by a predator.
37:53We've told you before about one famous case of star jelly from 1994 where gelatinous rain fell in Oakville, Washington.
38:01People nearby complained of flu-like symptoms and several pets that encountered the goo even died.
38:09Lab work couldn't identify the substance, but maybe our experts will have better luck this time.
38:14This clearly doesn't look like the remains of a fallen bird, fish or frog, but could it be their spawn?
38:26This is quite a big pile, but some species of frogs can lay up to 30,000 eggs at a time.
38:32Could that be the answer?
38:33It has a lot of qualities similar to frog eggs, like it looked gelatinous or jello-like.
38:39And when you look in it, you can see like little specks too.
38:43And frog eggs have a center area that's darker.
38:47What throws me off is that it's kind of jagged.
38:51Frog eggs are more circular in shape and it's not in a pond or a wetland area.
38:57It's in somebody's yard and this area seems dry.
39:01Then perhaps this is a more primordial form of life known as slime mold.
39:07These unusual organisms defy all attempts at categorization.
39:12They're not fungus, not plants, not animals.
39:15It depends on the species, but they can look like lots of different things.
39:18They can look similar to fungus.
39:20They can look similar to like algae.
39:21They can aggregate into larger groups, but they still look quite different than what we're seeing in this picture.
39:31So maybe this substance does actually come from the star.
39:35Meteors are a chunk of rock that are coming towards the Earth.
39:39Something like this would not stand a chance making it through the atmosphere.
39:44And think of stars, think of the sun, extreme sources of energy.
39:48This is jelly on the ground. It's not releasing energy. It's just a gelatinous substance.
39:54Then what could this gross goo possibly be?
39:57Hernandez says there's another hypothesis based on a similar substance discovered in 2012 in Dorset, England.
40:06The explanation to that was it was a sodium polyacrylate that was used for agricultural purposes.
40:12Given that it is an extreme absorbent of water, it's able to retain that water for crops to be able to grow.
40:20Diane tells us that a few months before finding this substance, she put some polymer crystals in the yard to help with water retention.
40:28But she doubts that's what this is.
40:31When that got wet, it was round, not cubed. So I knew it wasn't what I put in the ground.
40:36Our verdict? We're calling this an unidentified goo.
40:45It could be related to the water storing crystals that Diane had used earlier in the year.
40:50But the details don't seem to match up.
40:53Meanwhile, scientists haven't identified any DNA in similar substances found around the U.S.
40:58And that is our show for tonight. Thank you so much for watching.
41:03As always, keep those cameras rolling.
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