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00:01Warning. What you're about to see could be disturbing to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:14What if I told you a man once found himself in a face-off with one of nature's most unexpected opponents?
00:22Brig sees this enormous kangaroo holding his dog hostage.
00:28This kangaroo can pretty much eviscerate him.
00:31He realizes he has to do something pretty quick to save his dog.
00:35Or there's a filthy rich serial mogul who declared war on the weather.
00:41Post makes the connection. Maybe if you agitate the atmosphere sufficiently, you can make it rain.
00:48Post hires a team of 50 men to fly dynamite kites.
00:55But they have all kinds of problems.
00:57How about being pushed to the brink of extinction? By a tiny bug?
01:02There are billions and billions of them. And they're hungry.
01:07When they descend on a farm, the scale of destruction is biblical.
01:12These are the unbelievable stories of what happens when humans and nature collide.
01:18The ocean is home to a vast array of incredible creatures. Many are peaceful.
01:37But every now and then, the deep sea reminds us who's really in charge.
01:41In 2024 off the coast of New Hampshire, two fishermen have their boat floating over schools of small bait fish, which attract the larger fish they're after.
01:53But these anglers get a much bigger bite than they bargained for.
01:57It turns out to be a humpback whale.
02:06And it capsizes this $150,000 boat.
02:09Oh, my God.
02:10Sending the two fishermen right into the drink.
02:12Humpback whales are enormous.
02:17They can grow to 60 feet and weigh 40 tons.
02:21That's over two times the size of the boat.
02:24And many times, it's mass.
02:26Close calls between humans and whales happen more often than you think.
02:31But who actually has the right of way?
02:34Legally, fishing boats are required to stay a safe distance from humpback whales and avoid the schools of bait fish where the whales are feeding.
02:45The law is intended to protect the whales, but it turns out it's good for the fishermen, too.
02:51Not all fishermen are following these guidelines because they're after their fish.
02:58And so, situations like this may occur more and more often.
03:04Is this boat bashing on purpose?
03:06A case of sea rage, perhaps?
03:08We might never know.
03:10But for one bird scientist, the question of nature's vengeful intent seems pretty clear.
03:15John Marsloff is a wildlife biologist working at the University of Washington in 2006.
03:24And his specialty is studying crows.
03:27That includes capturing them, tagging them, and tracking them to observe their behaviors and learn more about them.
03:35And he has been working consistently with this one flock of birds, a murder of crows.
03:41And he starts to notice something happening.
03:44Some of these crows seem very wary of specific researchers.
03:50More than that, the crows swoop and dive bomb the researchers who've been directly involved in the trapping.
03:59And they also scold them, cawing at them aggressively.
04:04What becomes really interesting here is that this happens even when these researchers are just going about their lives around campus.
04:13And these crows are formidable.
04:17They have really tough beaks and talons.
04:20So if a crow is mad at you, that is a serious threat.
04:24Marsloff starts to wonder, are these birds recognizing these people's faces?
04:29And are they mad at them?
04:34Marsloff decides to try a particular experiment.
04:38He asks researchers who are trapping the crows to wear a Halloween mask of a caveman.
04:47And other researchers who are not involved in trapping the crows wear a Halloween mask of Vice President Dick Cheney.
04:54As cavemen and Dick Cheney's are released into the wild on campus, Marsloff notices something extraordinary.
05:01The crows continually accost the cavemen who are trapping them and ignore or leave alone the Dick Cheney's.
05:13And this happens even when they try it with a hat on while they're wearing the mask or they'll put on a different kerchief or a scarf just to see if it is definitely the face that the birds are focusing on.
05:25And it is, every single time.
05:28Incredibly, this hostility runs much deeper than anyone imagined.
05:32Birds that have never been part of this research project also start to attack, swooping angrily at the cavemen.
05:41These remarkable animals have been teaching each other.
05:46It goes on right into 2020.
05:48So 14 years after the initial research and after the papers published, the caveman mask is still eliciting this response.
05:55And that means that there are birds in play that are generationally separated from the original flock.
06:02In all fairness, the biologists started this spat.
06:06But sometimes the animal is the one looking for a fight.
06:10In 2016, in the Australian Outback, Greg Tonkins is out with his friends hunting wild boar.
06:19When one of Greg's dogs, Max, gets a scent and runs off ahead and disappears into the brush.
06:28Greg sees something he really wasn't expecting, which is this enormous kangaroo holding his dog hostage on a headlock.
06:41And Greg realizes he has to do something pretty quick to save his dog.
06:46Big male kangaroos are actually quite terrifying.
06:49They've got these just huge biceps, big broad chests, and a kangaroo can punch eight times harder than a human and they can bite as hard as a grizzly.
06:59But the biggest threat is actually the kangaroo's kick.
07:03A kangaroo's middle toes fuse into a single sharp talon, a feature called syndactyly, not unlike the kill claw found on a velociraptor.
07:12He can kick as hard as a horse, and with that sharp nail on the end of his toe, can pretty much open Greg completely up and eviscerate him.
07:21As it happens, Greg is a zookeeper by profession, so he moves in close enough to distract the kangaroo, and it releases the dog.
07:32You might think that the story would end there, but no, the kangaroo turns its attention to Greg.
07:39Now, this kangaroo is in full-blown territory mode and puts up his dukes.
07:45Greg, to not show any weakness, leans back, and he socks the kangaroo straight in the jaw.
07:54Surprisingly, the roo backs off.
07:57And actually, that probably saves Greg's life.
08:01It's unclear if this was a triumph over nature, or mercy on the part of the kangaroo.
08:11But in the end, the kangaroo learns the hard way.
08:14Don't mess with a man and his dog.
08:19The pioneers of the Great Plains fought droughts, storms, and brutal winters.
08:23But in 1874, nature threw something at them they never saw coming.
08:28It is summer of 1874 in Nebraska.
08:34It's a sparsely populated area that survives on agriculture,
08:40and the state is suffering a really crippling drought.
08:47The local farmers are hoping and praying that things turn around,
08:51when all of a sudden there is this strange and disturbing rumbling.
08:55As the rumbling continues, suddenly a haze starts to form over the sun.
09:03The skies start to darken.
09:07At first you think it might be an approaching storm or a tornado,
09:11but it disperses into billions of tiny specks.
09:16These specks are not bits of dust.
09:19They're not raindrops.
09:21They're grasshoppers.
09:23Rocky mountain grasshoppers.
09:25Billions and billions of them.
09:27And they're hungry.
09:31They will eat an entire field of crops in a matter of hours.
09:35It's like a blizzard of grasshoppers.
09:39In some areas, the insects form a carpet a foot deep.
09:46They invade homes.
09:48They eat cloth and quilts, paper, curtains, leather, tool handles.
09:55They will eat the wool right off of a live sheep.
09:59They will start eating the clothes off of your back.
10:03When they descend on a farm, the scale of destruction is biblical.
10:09Shockingly, this isn't an isolated incident.
10:12It's happening all over Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana.
10:17They call it the Great Grasshopper Plague of 1874.
10:24There have been grasshopper invasions before, but this one in 1874 is on a scale that the U.S. has never seen before.
10:35At the peak of the invasion, estimates run as high as 15 trillion grasshoppers.
10:42That's 390,000 grasshoppers for every resident of the United States at that time.
10:51Dazed citizens wonder why this particular year is especially brutal.
10:57Rocky Mountain grasshoppers originate in the Rocky Mountains.
10:59And under normal circumstances, that's where they stay.
11:02But in 1874, conditions are not normal.
11:05There's a very severe drought going on.
11:06And when it's dried, their eggs hatch more successfully, so the population of grasshoppers explodes.
11:13There are also winds that form a jet stream and carry the grasshoppers throughout the Great Plains, leading to a cycle of the grasshoppers overpopulating, decimating food, and seeking more food.
11:28The grasshoppers cause about 200 million dollars in crop damage, which is the equivalent of 5.5 billion dollars today.
11:44Even more dangerous, the excrement from these billions of grasshoppers poisons wells and water supplies.
11:53As this mass infestation continues throughout the summer of 1874, desperate farmers go to war with the grasshoppers.
12:03They try setting them on fire.
12:07They try smoking them out.
12:10They try poisons.
12:11They even try a contraption called a hopper dozer, which is a horse-drawn metal sheet coated with coal tar intended to get the insects stuck to the metal sheet.
12:26But there are just too many of them, and it becomes another failure.
12:30The swarms of grasshoppers return for the next four summers.
12:34But then, a strange thing happens.
12:37The grasshoppers just disappear.
12:38They're not just gone from the plains.
12:43They're gone from everywhere.
12:45By the early 1900s, they're extinct.
12:50While Nebraska farmers learned that bugs can ruin your life,
12:54one ancient king discovered there's a way to use them to your advantage.
12:58It's 67 BCE in what is modern-day Turkey along the Black Sea, and the Persian king Mithridates is on the run from the Roman general Pompey the Great.
13:12Mithridates is an interesting guy.
13:15His father was murdered by poison.
13:18So he spends much of his early life out in the woods ingesting small amounts of poisons like arsenic to build up a tolerance.
13:26At the time, he's probably one of the world's leading experts on human toxins.
13:30Now, with the Roman army hot on his tail, Mithridates uses this knowledge to his benefit.
13:39He instructs his soldiers to gather large amounts of a sticky red honey and place it in jugs all along his escape route.
13:52The Romans encounter these jars, and on closer inspection, they find that it smells sweet.
14:03They sample it, and they find that it tastes sweet as well.
14:07Once they taste it, there's no stopping them.
14:11Soldier after soldier after soldier is consuming handful after handful of life-giving, nutrient-rich honey until the side effects kick in.
14:22What the soldiers don't know is that in Turkey, bees often pollinate rhododendron fields.
14:37And these flowers contain large amounts of greyanotoxin.
14:41The toxin ends up in the honey, which causes hallucinations, diarrhea, dizziness, and loss of consciousness.
14:55After eating tons of this honey, the Roman soldiers are on a pretty bad trip.
15:00They are not what you would call battle ready.
15:05Imagine having to fight for your life while you're vomiting and hallucinating.
15:10This is exactly what Mithridates had in mind.
15:14Mithridates force then doubles back on them and engages them in battle.
15:25The result? It's a slaughter with over 1,000 stone Romans killed.
15:31Mithridates took all those years studying poisons and toxins, and he essentially creates possibly the first biological weapon.
15:40In fact, today, it is one of the oldest hallucinogenic drugs, though very expensive and sometimes hard to get.
15:48In some countries, it sells for $80 a pound on the black market.
15:51Talk about sweet revenge.
15:58The weather is unpredictable, untamed, and for one man, the next great frontier to conquer.
16:05What happens when human ambition takes on Mother Nature?
16:08C.W. Post becomes a breakfast cereal baron in the late 1800s.
16:17He makes a lot of money with products like Grape Nuts and other Post cereals like Raisin Bran.
16:23Start your day a little bit better with Post Grape Nuts Flakes.
16:27Eventually, Post starts to have these obsessions, and because of his success, he does not hesitate to act upon them.
16:33In 1907, Post buys up 200,000 acres of land in order to build this self-sustaining, idyllic little community.
16:44He calls it Post City.
16:47It seems that Post has thought of everything in his perfect city, except for one thing.
16:54There's not enough water, and soon enough, the region is plagued by drought.
16:59This city can't sustain itself. No one can grow enough food.
17:02He remembers that there were stories that after big cannon battles in the Napoleonic Wars, it would start raining.
17:12So, he makes the connection.
17:15Maybe if you agitate the atmosphere sufficiently, you can make it rain.
17:20His plan is as simple as it is bizarre.
17:23He's going to blow up the clouds.
17:27Post hires a team of 50 men to fly dynamite kites.
17:32Each one of these kites is equipped with two pounds of dynamite in extremely long fuses, so that when you light it at the bottom, a few minutes later, the dynamite goes off in the sky.
17:45So he has 50 kites, but they have all kinds of problems.
17:49The cords get tangled. The dynamite explodes too close to the ground sometimes, almost killing his men.
17:55Clearly, this kite approach is too unreliable, so Post has to come up with yet another plan.
18:02He has his men haul the explosives up the Caprock, which is a high escarpment running throughout West Texas.
18:10He uses a total of 350 pounds of explosives, spread out so that each explosive is about 50 feet apart, and they're set off every 10 minutes.
18:22Everything goes as planned, except it does not rain.
18:33Post gets this idea that you really need to replicate battle conditions.
18:38The explosions need to be violent and random. There can't be any pattern to it.
18:44Eventually, his persistence pays off when one of these rain battles actually works.
18:51Post is thrilled, but subsequent rain battles have mixed results.
18:58And so Post thinks they're not using enough dynamite, so he ups the ante from 300 pounds to 3,000 pounds.
19:06During one rain battle, Post detonates over 24,000 pounds of dynamite.
19:17That's equivalent to the most powerful conventional weapons used by the US military today.
19:24By the end of 1913, after middling results, Post fires his last shot.
19:29Overall, Post spends about $50,000 in his rain battles, which is equivalent to about $1.7 million today, or half a million boxes of grape nuts.
19:45For another visionary who dared to do battle with the natural world, Mother Nature's response was much more harsh.
19:52From 1949 until 1976, Mao Zedong is the all-powerful leader of Communist China, and he holds the opinion that humankind was intended to dominate nature.
20:10In 1958, Mao's Great Leap Forward program mandates a massive increase in agricultural production.
20:16If you're in charge of a massive country with a population of 600 million people, your first priority is feeding those people.
20:25Any loss in crop is an enemy to the people.
20:30According to Mao, the number one culprit in grain theft is the evil sparrow.
20:37In order to harness all of the agricultural potential of the People's Republic, he declares war on a two-ounce bird.
20:44He enlists an army of millions of citizen soldiers to kill as many of the sparrows as possible.
20:53People use whatever weapons they have.
20:56Guns, slingshots, they even use long poles to poke at nests up in the trees.
21:01But the most bizarre method is to simply follow the birds around, making a loud noise with pots and pans and anything metal that they can clam together.
21:12So the sparrows, they're too scared to land, and they end up dying from exhaustion.
21:18In just a matter of weeks, the Chinese kill over one billion sparrows.
21:27For Mao, it's proof of his people's revolutionary devotion.
21:30Unfortunately for the great leader, his contempt for nature is only surpassed by his ignorance of it.
21:36Mao is convinced that it is the sparrows eating the grain, but actually it's insects that consume most of the grain.
21:46And the sparrows are the ones eating the insects.
21:50So in Nanjing, 60% of the crops are destroyed.
21:54In another region, 15% of the rice crop is consumed by locusts.
21:58And this happens again and again and again all over sparrowless China.
22:05The result of Mao's war on sparrows is the country is driven to famine.
22:11And the estimates are that 45 million people starved to death from 1959 to 61.
22:18This gave rise in the United States to this practice of scolding children who didn't want to eat by telling them that there are starving children in China,
22:30which was set in motion by Mao's declared war on the sparrows.
22:37Chairman Mao's battle with birds is a stark reminder that when you mess with nature, beware.
22:43Nature has a brutal way of restoring balance.
22:48For all of humanity's progress, nature still holds the upper hand.
22:53And in 1908 in the remote Siberian wilderness, it delivers a blow so powerful it defies explanation.
23:03It's June 1908 in eastern Siberia near the Tunguska River.
23:08This area is incredibly remote. You're more likely to see a reindeer than a person.
23:13A man sits on his porch when suddenly there's a massive explosion.
23:22After the flash, a violent hot wind pummels him and destroys his entire home.
23:31He manages to lift his head to look around and he sees that the forest surrounding his home has been flattened by some invisible, mysterious force.
23:44It turns out this explosion isn't right next door. It's over 40 miles away.
23:50In fact, the blast is so powerful, its impact reaches far beyond Siberia.
23:57Windows 100 miles away are shattered.
24:02Seismic readings are taken as far away as Washington DC.
24:06For days after this event, the night skies across Europe and Asia are glowing with this bright light.
24:15The violent detonation becomes known as the Tunguska event.
24:19And right away the world wants to know what caused it.
24:22Speculation runs rampant.
24:24Some Russian scientists believe that it was a volcano that went off in eastern Siberia.
24:32While local indigenous peoples believe that maybe it was a god or a powerful shaman that had set a fireball to punish them.
24:40Nineteen years later, in 1927, scientist Leonid Kulik is finally able to get close enough to study the scene.
24:48There's an 800 square mile circular area where the trees have been absolutely flattened.
24:5680 million trees are down.
24:59It's not hard for Kulik to find the epicenter because all the trees are pointing away from it.
25:07He suspects that the culprit could be something that came from space and collided.
25:13He expects to find a crater in the middle. He doesn't. It's even more strange.
25:17All the trees in the center in ground zero are still standing.
25:22Of course, they're burnt to a crisp and their bark has been shorn off, but they're still upright.
25:27Every other tree is pointing outward.
25:30Over the decades, a lot of pretty wild theories crop up.
25:34One suggests that an alien spacecraft armed with nuclear weapons exploded over Siberia.
25:43The force of the explosion actually supports this idea.
25:48Scientists estimate that the blast was 185 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
25:56There's also another more natural explanation.
25:59There's one speculative hypothesis, which is that the Earth, a past gas.
26:06That there was a large pocket or reservoir of methane that leaked out into the surface and then was ignited by a lightning bolt.
26:15And then that ignition detonated the entire pocket in one giant blast.
26:19Finally, in 2020, a Russian research team comes up with a very plausible idea, which is that an asteroid came through space, entered our Earth's atmosphere, kind of skimmed along, but didn't impact and ricocheted right off of our atmosphere.
26:37This would have heated up the air. It would have created these sonic shock waves that caused all of this destruction.
26:45It's estimated that the meteor is about 130 feet across and weighs 220 million pounds.
26:55If something like that landed on a major city like London, millions would die.
27:00What's more terrifying, whatever it was, we know we can't prevent it from happening again.
27:07And due to laws of nature, chances are it will happen again.
27:13It's a stark reminder.
27:15You never know when or where nature's fury will strike, whether from above or deep below.
27:23It's a quiet night in 2013 in Sefner, a small town outside of Tampa, Florida.
27:28A gentleman named Jeremy Bush is suddenly awakened by a crash, followed by the sound of his 37-year-old brother screaming.
27:40Jeremy runs to his brother's bedroom, and much to his dismay and shock, there's no furniture.
27:47The bed, the dresser, the drawers, everything is gone.
27:51What he sees is just completely unbelievable.
27:53There's a hole in the center of the room, and he does not see his brother anywhere.
28:00In his desperation, Jeremy grabs a shovel, he jumps into the hole, and he's trying to dig his brother out.
28:06But the walls are still falling in.
28:09The soil is still moving, so the more he digs, nothing's happening.
28:13Unfortunately, Jeremy and his brother are dealing with one of nature's most unpredictable phenomena.
28:19A sinkhole.
28:21A sinkhole forms when you have a layer of soil over a layer of limestone, a porous rock, and a cavern underneath.
28:29When the rain seeps into the soil, it can go down and erode that limestone away.
28:34And when it gets sufficiently weak, it breaks, and that's when the system collapses.
28:40Because of the amount of limestone underground in the state of Florida, plus all the rain they receive on an annual basis,
28:47it's just prime territory for sinkholes, and they have over 27,000 of them there.
28:51One of these sinkholes in China is known to go down as far as 2,000 feet.
28:59In fact, entire prehistoric habitats have been found well-preserved inside of these sinkholes.
29:07On that terrible night in 2013, there's no telling how deep this sinkhole goes.
29:14When first responders arrive, they quickly tell Jeremy that the hole is too unstable to pull Jeff out.
29:21The emergency workers themselves make some attempts.
29:24They jump in, they dig down, but the walls of the hole are collapsing, and they realize it's too dangerous, and they have to abandon the effort.
29:33The ground has literally disappeared beneath him, and he has been buried alive.
29:41In the aftermath, local authorities fill the hole and condemn the entire block.
29:46In 2015, two years after Jeff's death, a strange thing happens.
29:53People notice their dogs are starting to act weird, they're a little afraid to go outside, and then they hear a massive rumble.
30:00Suddenly, their sinkhole appears right in the same spot as the first one, only this time, it's even bigger.
30:10In 2023, it opens up for a third time.
30:14Nobody's injured, but it's even bigger still.
30:20The thing is, sinkholes are known to grow, and chances are, it may come again.
30:27The Earth, it seems, has a way of keeping us on our toes, just when we think we have it all figured out.
30:32It throws us a curveball, or in this case, a sinkhole.
30:40When nature calls, and you're nowhere near a bathroom, it's usually an inconvenience.
30:45But for one man, it comes in, well, unbelievably handy.
30:49A hundred years ago, the most interesting man in the world was probably Danish explorer Peter Freuchen.
31:00He stands six foot seven, he's covered in animal furs, he commands dog sleds across the tundra.
31:09According to legend, he killed a wolf with his bare hands.
31:12For all his experience in the wild, nothing could fully prepare Freuchen for what lay ahead on the icy expanse of Greenland.
31:22In 1926, Peter Freuchen and some guides are attempting an extremely difficult trek across Greenland.
31:33They encounter heavy snows, and realize that their sleds are too heavy.
31:39So they unload a lot of the supplies with the intention of coming back to them when conditions clear up.
31:46Next day, Peter is convinced that he can make it back to where they left the supplies, load it up, and continue on his own.
31:54But when he makes it to the supply dump, he's trapped by a sudden blizzard.
31:59Peter has no other choice than to seek shelter.
32:03So he digs a shallow snow trench, puts the sled on top of it, and crawls in through a small hole.
32:14He is essentially burrowing into a snow bed.
32:19He stays in this shelter for 30 hours.
32:23When the storm subsides, Peter discovers that the exit hole to his shelter is now frozen shut.
32:33He is now stuck inside of an icy coffin of his own making.
32:39And all of his tools are on the sled outside.
32:42If he doesn't get out, he's either going to suffocate or freeze to death.
32:49He notes from his experience in Polar Exploration that when his sled dogs would go to the bathroom,
32:56their feces would freeze solid in the snow as hard as a rock.
33:00Peter now has to relieve himself.
33:03So, he fashions his own fecal matter into a chisel-shaped implement, and he waits for it to freeze.
33:16Miraculously, it works.
33:19He's chipping away, chunks of ice are flying, and his tool is remaining intact.
33:25He continues fracturing the ice till he gets a hole that's almost big enough for him to squeeze through.
33:33He gets one arm out, one shoulder out, but then he realizes he's stuck.
33:40And he's dropped his poop chisel.
33:44In desperation, Peter takes an extremely long exhale, the longest of his life,
33:52and contracts his chest just enough to squeeze through the hole.
33:59His left foot is stricken with frostbite, but he is able to crawl back to the camp, and he survives.
34:09A blizzard alone is a challenge, but in 1923, four natural disasters strike at once,
34:19turning a bustling city into pure chaos.
34:22It's an ordinary day on September 1st, 1923.
34:28The city of Tokyo, going about its business, has no idea what's coming.
34:34A 60 by 60 mile tectonic plate breaks loose under the ocean,
34:41and causes an earthquake registering 8.3 on the Richter scale.
34:47In Tokyo and nearby Yokohama, buildings are level, crushing thousands of victims.
34:54Moments later, a 40-foot tsunami hits, killing thousands more.
34:59And this is just the beginning of nature's merciless assault.
35:05Not only do you have ruptured gas lines, this earthquake happened at about noontime.
35:09A lot of people were inside making lunch and cooking, and so now the fires begin.
35:16It also just so happens there's a typhoon just off of the coast as well.
35:21And now you have very strong winds fueling all these fires.
35:25The fire rips through 45% of the buildings in Tokyo.
35:30Authorities direct about 44,000 people to open ground near the Sumida River,
35:40where these fleeing residents are considered safe.
35:44But nature's havoc is not over.
35:47The flames themselves form into a massive spiral.
35:54In essence, it's a tornado composed of fire.
35:57The Japanese have a word for this rare and devastating phenomenon.
36:03A dragon twist.
36:05The dragon twist grows to 650 feet tall and 1,000 feet across.
36:13And it is heading straight for the 44,000 survivors.
36:18It's an absolute massacre.
36:20Of the 44,000, only 300 survive.
36:27This unthinkable disaster, earthquake, tidal wave, fire, dragon twist,
36:35ultimately takes the life of 140,000 people.
36:40It is the worst natural disaster in Japanese history.
36:45I can't imagine how terrifying that twister looked.
36:51Of course, now that everyone has a high-tech camera in their pockets,
36:55we wouldn't have to.
36:59Humans don't always feel nature's wrath in the form of disaster, tragedy, or cranky kangaroos.
37:04Sometimes it's triggered by something as simple as a wild animal that's just sick of having its picture taken.
37:12Every year, 4 million visitors descend on Yellowstone Park to get a close look at nature and the animals.
37:22And what do people like to do? Take a selfie.
37:26Bison actually account for most human injuries at Yellowstone.
37:32And they hate getting their photograph taken.
37:35Oh, .
37:40Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
37:42But this problem isn't unique to Yellowstone.
37:44I mean, this is happening all around the world.
37:47A woman in a zoo in Arizona gets mauled by a jaguar when she attempts a photo up against its cage.
37:53Then this other guy climbs right into a zoo enclosure with a lion, which promptly kills him.
38:02But the story of one Todd Fastler may take the cake.
38:07In 2015, he's at the Baroda Speedway in San Diego, and he sees a rattlesnake.
38:15He decides, oh, this is a perfect opportunity for an up-close selfie with a rattlesnake.
38:21He doesn't get his shot, but he does get a bite.
38:26The rattlesnake injects the venom, and Todd is in a world of hurt.
38:31Todd survives, but his arm isn't the only thing hurting.
38:36There's also his wallet.
38:38Anti-venom is incredibly expensive.
38:41And guess what's not likely to be covered by insurance?
38:43Anti-venom shots.
38:45So Todd ends up with a bill of over $150,000.
38:51And he didn't even get the selfie.
38:54While some animals avoid the lens, others are more than willing to steal the spotlight and the bottle.
39:01So you're vacationing on the lovely island of St. Kitts.
39:07You're lounging poolside with a tropical cocktail, and you drift off to sleep.
39:12You may not realize, though, that someone is watching you, poised to strike.
39:16It's a vervet monkey, and he's not interested in injecting you from his territory or begging for a bit of food.
39:25He wants your booze.
39:27For years, this island paradise has been plagued by a small army of sneaky, thieving, drunken monkeys.
39:34The vervet monkeys of St. Kitts have a long history of excessive drinking, going back to the 1600s when they were brought to the island by the British as pets.
39:48The monkeys start raiding sugarcane plantations, and sometimes the sugarcane can start to ferment.
39:55Then the sugar eventually turns into alcohol, and the monkeys start chewing on the sugarcane, ultimately becoming addicted to alcohol.
40:05Centuries later, sugar fields are replaced by bars and hotels.
40:10But the monkeys' tradition of boozing is still going strong.
40:14For scientists, the situation on St. Kitts actually creates a rare opportunity.
40:20Where else can you study alcohol consumption in a group of highly social, non-human primates?
40:28And the results of that research are like looking in a mirror.
40:33So some are more social drinkers who do it in moderation and only when they're with other monkeys.
40:39And then there's a small group, about 5%, who are described by researchers as seriously abusive binge drinkers.
40:46They get wasted. They get into brawls. They basically raid outdoor cocktail tables at just about anywhere they can find alcoholic beverages.
40:57Research also reveals something else surprising.
40:59Well, it turns out that the most effective and powerful leaders among these primates are the drunkest monkeys of all.
41:10Whether it's an entire population of plastered primates, a sinister 600-foot wall of fire, or the sinkhole that just won't fill.
41:17These are the tales of man's battles with nature that are so bizarre, they are truly unbelievable.
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