- 22 minutes ago
First broadcast 27th February 2009.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Jo Brand
Jimmy Carr
John Sergeant
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Jo Brand
Jimmy Carr
John Sergeant
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Well, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome to QI, where tonight we're having fun with flora
00:10and fauna.
00:11It's like, like, animal, vegetable, mineral, any, any, without the mineral.
00:15In the flower bed tonight, we have a perennial favourite, Jimmy Carr.
00:24A Harvey Annual John Sargent.
00:30A heavily-scented late-bloomer, Joe Brand.
00:38And a cat having a crap in a flower pot, Alan Davis.
00:47But, um, before we plunge into my arboretum and bisturi, let's go wild with our buzzers.
00:53John goes...
00:57Jimmy goes...
01:01Joe goes...
01:06And Alan goes...
01:13Oh, dear.
01:16Well done.
01:17Now, uh, so let's start on our sofa-bound safari. What does my buttonhole tell you about me?
01:27That you're a closet heterosexual.
01:30How dare you?
01:33It tells us that you are what you are. You are your own special creation.
01:39It's not going to fire water at me.
01:41It's not going to do that. It's a real flower, and it's a real member of a particular family of
01:44flowers, and it has a name.
01:46It's a rhododendron?
01:47It's not a rhododendron.
01:48A camellia.
01:49It is a camellia. Well done. It's exactly a camellia.
01:52And you are la dame, a camellia.
01:53Tell me about la dame, a camellia.
01:55It's a novel.
01:56It's a novel.
01:56Yeah.
01:57It's about a lady...
01:58Do you know what this meant?
01:59...who liked camellias.
02:01Do you know...
02:01Exactly.
02:03It's good, but there is a thing about the red camellia that is very extraordinary, unbelievably shocking to mid-19th
02:10century France.
02:11Periods.
02:12You're so right. Marguerite Gauthier, the heroine of the novel La Dama Camellia, wore, for 25 days of the month,
02:20a white camellia, for five days, a red one, to tell her lovers that she was not available.
02:28That Arsenal were playing away or were playing away at home.
02:34The decorators were in the etc.
02:36I'm not saying that.
02:37Are you saying that you are available or you're not available?
02:40I'm saying I've got a period on.
02:42Oh, right.
02:43You can't have me.
02:44I'm sorry.
02:45What was this in?
02:46Is this in some play?
02:47It's a novel by Alexandre Dumas Fisse, the bastard son of the creator of Three Musketeers.
02:53Does a pink flower mean you've got quite a light flow?
02:59It's an interesting direction in which to go that I hesitate to...
03:03Can I just say, I thought it was so sweet, because no woman in her entire life has ever said,
03:08I've got a period on.
03:12Well, do you know...
03:13I have to say, I've got a period or I'm on.
03:15Oh, fair enough, okay.
03:18I've got a period on.
03:21I've got a period on.
03:22Menstruate is a weight in boxing, a bantamweight flyweight menstruate.
03:27It's the most aggressive of them.
03:29Yes.
03:32You can only fight one week in a month, but then leave.
03:36Anyway, it became a play.
03:38Sarah Bernhardt was in it thousands of times.
03:41It became...
03:41In 1854, Verdi saw the play and turned it into the opera for five points.
03:47Is that what the opera's called, Sarah Bernhardt?
03:51For five points, it's very good.
03:52Camille, Camellia, something, flower, the flower.
03:54The audience will know.
03:56La Traviata audience get ten points, because that's very good.
03:59Well done.
03:59It was La Traviata.
04:00We're not on the lead again, actually.
04:02So, La Traviata, which I've heard of and is a proper grown-up thing,
04:05is about a woman having a period, is it?
04:07No, no, no.
04:08It's the story of a famous courtesan who is in love...
04:10And the real one, there were seven men who were so passionate about her
04:14but couldn't afford her prices.
04:15They clubbed together and they also bought her a chest of drawers
04:19with seven separate drawers in so they could keep their own clothes.
04:23And it was turned into a film as well, which was...
04:26Snow White.
04:26Which is called...
04:29The seven guys with the one girl is a bit...
04:32Very good.
04:35Very good.
04:38And the film based on La Dame aux Camellias is...
04:41Carry on menstruating.
04:44Camille.
04:46Camille?
04:46Yes, in La Dame aux Camellias and La Traviata,
04:49the heroine indicates her availability by wearing different coloured camellias.
04:52The book caused an outrage and made the flower
04:54an overnight gardening sensation in Paris and beyond.
04:58Something more wholesome now.
04:59It's good news.
05:00Daddy is taking you to the flea circus.
05:03Which bit are you most looking forward to?
05:05What do you know about flea circuses?
05:07I had fleas in their flat once.
05:09Did you really?
05:11Rent and kill quoted 600 quid to get rid of it.
05:13I found a bloke in the local paper who did it for 40.
05:15I don't know what you've sprayed.
05:17You're not quite having the same best for a few days.
05:21Do you know actually what the biggest destroyer of human fleas has been?
05:25much bigger than pesticides.
05:27Yes, I know the answer to that.
05:28It's vacuum cleaners.
05:29You're absolutely right.
05:30Yes, it's like woof woof woof woof.
05:32And the fleas don't like it.
05:33I think your vacuum cleaner may be broken.
05:35If it's going woof woof woof.
05:38I think you might want to take that one back and get a new one.
05:40They quite specialise these vacuum cleaners.
05:43And they kill lots of fleas, do they?
05:45Yeah.
05:45But the other thing you've got to know about them is that the back legs of fleas are incredibly powerful.
05:50And if a human being had as powerful legs, they could jump over the Eiffel Tower.
05:56You're absolutely right.
05:57Because 80 times your own height is what you'd be able to jump.
05:59But you may say what happens then if you land on the other side, you'd still be smashed to pieces.
06:05That is the only disadvantage.
06:07Otherwise you could hop about and you'd be happy.
06:10Isn't the other thing that they're amazing for is that they've got two penises.
06:14I don't want to sort of bring it up suddenly.
06:17No.
06:19We're always at home to penis news.
06:21It's not just they hop into bed, they hop into beds a lot of the time.
06:27And so they need this very fancy equipment.
06:30So they can do two lady fleas at the same time.
06:32That sort of thing, yeah.
06:33Or really satisfy one lady flea.
06:36Sort of plaiting them together.
06:38Oh, Lord.
06:38Oh, yes.
06:40Sorry.
06:41Or using both orifices.
06:43Yeah.
06:46In my experience, that would not really please her.
06:48No.
06:49That wouldn't please me.
06:51Medieval representations of Satan have him with two penises for precisely that purpose.
06:55We're talking about very tiny penises then.
06:58So am I.
07:06Can I ejaculate 80 times?
07:09Wow.
07:10I mean, if you had the equivalent flea power, would you be able to come over the Eiffel Tower?
07:16It would serve those damn French's right, wouldn't it?
07:19In the shock.
07:20Tell me it's true.
07:21Tell me it's true.
07:22He's taken my eye out.
07:25Whoa!
07:26It's actually, in fact, it's not two penises.
07:27It's one penis, but a penis that has a kind of accessory.
07:30Rather like a Swiss knife.
07:32A Swiss army knife.
07:34It's sort of to help.
07:35It's a kind of...
07:35To help.
07:36Are they more highly evolved than us?
07:37Yeah.
07:37Is it like the rabbit that the ladies are so fond of?
07:39Oh, yes.
07:40There is a sexual toy called a rabbit.
07:41Yeah, there is.
07:42It's kind of sort of sexual aid.
07:43I assume one is a clitoral exciter and the other is a plunger in and a...
07:50Depositor of secret.
07:51He doesn't take an active interest, but he reads.
07:55You're so right.
07:57I always like to say, Jimmy, the spectator sees more of the game.
08:04Anyway.
08:09These flea circuses, though, we don't have them in our time.
08:13But they were amazingly popular.
08:15They were.
08:16In the 1920s and 30s.
08:19Yeah.
08:19Because they had to find something interesting to do between the two world wars.
08:22Exactly.
08:23They were filling in.
08:24Oh, yeah.
08:25So fleas were sort of very exciting.
08:27And there were a lot more of them about.
08:28There were.
08:29In fact, they died out in the early 60s, probably.
08:31But you will see, there's some film here showing you that...
08:34You're right, these strong legs allowed them to pull.
08:36They were harnessed by little bits of wire.
08:39Sorry, are they real?
08:39Yeah.
08:40They stopped being real.
08:41You're thinking of Michael Bentine's little mechanical ones with little automatic machines.
08:46And you thought you could see the fleas, but there's no...
08:47And you thought...
08:47No, there really were fleas.
08:48There's genuinely fleas.
08:49Absolutely.
08:49People trained fleas.
08:51Well, no.
08:51No, they're not trained.
08:52Unfortunately, they're basically tortured.
08:54You would glue them to musical instruments and various other things.
08:57And then heat the under part where they were.
09:00So that their attempts to make themselves free would look as if they were playing instruments.
09:05That's like Britain's Got Talent.
09:06That sounds horrible.
09:08Almost as horrible as Britain's Got Talent.
09:10You're absolutely right.
09:11But let's see some film, if we can.
09:13Mr. Man in the Gallery.
09:17Here we are.
09:18Why are they performing on his arms?
09:20They get fed with his blood.
09:21Ah.
09:23Let's just show how small they are.
09:24I don't think that man needs to be your face.
09:25I don't think that man needs to be your face.
09:27Oh, it's Ben-Hur.
09:31That's like Robot Wars.
09:34Why have they got a serial killer operating on them?
09:37They've gone comedy.
09:39That reminds me of a very old joke.
09:41Are you ready for a very old joke?
09:42Oh, I'd love to have a very old joke.
09:45How do you build a flea circus?
09:47Don't I?
09:48You have to start from scratch.
09:50Hey!
09:52Excellent.
09:53Is that stuck into the flea?
09:55Is it glued or...?
09:56It's glued or they make little wire harnesses for them.
09:59And as I said, people like Michael Benteen then did these mechanical ones.
10:02He did one in a Royal Variety performance in the 60s.
10:05And that's when I first saw it and I realised there were no fleas.
10:08And like you, I thought there was no such thing and that it was just a sort of joke.
10:11They were all, it was also part of that idea that you'd have freak shows, wouldn't you?
10:15You'd have all sorts of daft things.
10:17It's awful to raise this.
10:19You two aren't related, are you?
10:21Are you suggesting we're some kind of freak show?
10:24No, I just said that.
10:26That should be next to the flea circus, Joe.
10:29There's not a, well, there's a bit of a likeness.
10:32We're brother and sister.
10:33No, that explains it, no.
10:34Flea circuses covered a range of acts including chariot races and fencing matches as well as acrobatics.
10:40And techniques included gluing the fleas to musical instruments and then heating the floor so they appeared to be playing
10:45the instruments as they struggled to escape.
10:48Now, what is the really odd thing about the only fish in the world that lives in a tree?
10:54Jimmy.
10:55It's a squirrel.
10:58I'm 99% sure it's a squirrel and you've got mixed up.
11:01It's possible, yeah.
11:02Is it going to be an underwater tree thing?
11:05Like those little fish that can live in anemones because they're the only ones that aren't poison by them, that
11:09sort of thing.
11:09No, actually, these are trees above the surface, they are.
11:12Steven, is that meant to be?
11:13No, that's a perfect picture.
11:16Because I'll tell you otherwise, I know that's a salmon for a start.
11:21It's not like to live in a tree, I know that.
11:24No, we can actually show you the real fish in the tree.
11:26There we are in the mangrove swamps of Belize and Florida.
11:30Where is it?
11:30I can't see it.
11:31Florida, we can't see it yet, but this is its natural habitat.
11:34And, of course, these pools shrink and it goes up these little grooves made by insects.
11:39It goes up, whole groups of them go up into the tree and we can actually see one poking its
11:44little eye out there in a tree.
11:46And it will live there, but...
11:47And what's the unusual thing?
11:48Unusual?
11:49Can it whistle one shoe while it hums another?
11:52Kind of almost an erotic version of that.
11:55It is the only vertebrate that is hermaphrodite that self-fertilizes.
12:00That's actually how it breeds.
12:01It pleasures itself and makes itself proud.
12:04Why don't we all do that?
12:05In terms of Darwinian natural selection, why don't we all do that?
12:08Because that would be tremendous fun, my teenage years.
12:10It would be fun, yeah.
12:11You're right.
12:11It would be hundreds and thousands.
12:13It would be quite good fun as well to tell yourself you've got a headache, wouldn't it?
12:18No, I'm sorry, I can't tonight.
12:20Isn't it called asexual reproduction?
12:22No, but it's actually hermaphroditic.
12:24It's not like parthenogenesis you may be thinking of.
12:26Oh, oh, oh, right.
12:26I was.
12:28Come on, keep it up.
12:30I was struggling towards that.
12:32You might have been.
12:33He's new.
12:34Yeah.
12:38It's called a killifish, and there are actually 1,270 different species of killifish.
12:43That's not the same one that we've just seen.
12:46That is not.
12:46That's probably a different.
12:47He's sister.
12:48Or a different age of one, but it's certainly a killifish.
12:51Now, while we're at the water's edge, why does a flamingo stand on one leg?
12:57Yes.
12:58I think I've got the answer.
13:00Because it wants to go to sleep.
13:03Yes.
13:04Is it?
13:04You're right.
13:06Ah, well.
13:06That's absolutely right.
13:07I was going to say landmines.
13:14Are they pink because they're on their period, but it's not very heavy flow?
13:19Oh, dear.
13:20No, you're right, though.
13:20What happens is they have, like other animals, the ability for half of themselves to go to
13:24sleep at one time.
13:25So, the half of the leg up is asleep.
13:28That whole half of their body is in a torpid state, and the blood flow is less, and that
13:32leg couldn't sustain them while asleep.
13:33When that has had enough sleep, they then swap over, and that leg comes down.
13:37It must be a terrible in-between moment when they just fall on their arse.
13:39You wonder about that, don't you?
13:42The other theory...
13:42How does that work, then?
13:43Does it go laterally kind of down the middle of their face and their neck, or does their
13:47arse go to sleep and then their face wakes up?
13:50Well, as soon as it's sort of down the middle...
13:52So the phrase, my leg's gone to sleep, that's a whole new thing.
13:55Precisely.
13:56Their leg literally has gone to sleep.
13:58And they are pink because?
14:00It's, at a moment, crayfish, not crayfish, prawns or something.
14:03Oh, it's not prawns.
14:05No, it's a commonly held fallacy that they're pink because they eat pink food like prawns
14:09or shrimps, but actually...
14:10Or angel to the light.
14:11Or angel to the light.
14:13No, they eat a blue-green algae, which, oddly enough, is full of this carotenoid that
14:17makes them pink.
14:18And so in zoos, they give them supplements to make them pink, which...
14:22I tell you, the flamingo version of where is Molly's really different.
14:25Yes, isn't it?
14:26They are interesting creatures.
14:28They can drink boiling water because they...
14:30How did they find that out?
14:32Because they...
14:33Because a very cruel man found that out.
14:35Here you go.
14:36They live near Giza's where the water is at that temperature.
14:39They can eat McDonald's apple pie.
14:42The only species that can.
14:44The only species that can do that.
14:46Which is the hottest substance known to man, isn't it?
14:49Developed by NASA.
14:50Yeah.
14:51So there you are.
14:53That's your flamingo.
14:54I think we've sucked all the nutrient down to the flamingo.
14:57Now, what kind of tricks could you play on a naive rhinoceros?
15:01Ooh.
15:02Yeah.
15:03You could tell it it's a unicorn that just needs to moisturise.
15:09That would do a poor thing.
15:11You could tell it...
15:11You could tell it that you were the wife of a Nigerian ambassador.
15:15And that if it sent you $4,000...
15:19It'd probably go for it, wouldn't it?
15:21I think it might.
15:22So this is a naive rhino as well.
15:23As opposed to, you know, sometimes you get a rhino that's quite worldly wise.
15:27Yeah.
15:27No, it's the zoological orb, natural history meaning of the word naive.
15:31It has a special meaning when applied to animals.
15:33Do you know what that is?
15:34Naive animal.
15:36Just, he's a bit...
15:37He's...
15:37Does it know what's going on with...?
15:39No, it's to do with an animal that is suddenly put into a terrain or an ecosphere, if you like,
15:44which its evolution has not prepared it for.
15:46Like the rhinoceros going to Peckham?
15:48Exactly.
15:50Or the other thing can happen that into, for example, the classic example is an island,
15:54a new species arrives that can cause absolute havoc.
15:58Something like a dodo, for example, or all kinds of birds and animals in Bermuda and various islands
16:03that had literally evolved with no sense of fear whatsoever.
16:07Because a sense of fear uses up energy because you're constantly running and looking and being nervous.
16:11And if you live in an island where all the species are friendly or none of them at least wants
16:15to eat you,
16:16you completely, over the thousands of years, lose any sense of fear.
16:19And so when people first arrived on Bermuda, for example, there were all these birds that would just wander into
16:25their hands.
16:26You could pick them up and put them in a cooking pot.
16:28And the other birds would cluster around quite happily.
16:30The point is you can play almost any kind of trick on a naive rhinoceros, the term is applied to
16:34animals,
16:35that meet threats that their environment hasn't prepared them for, such as when a new predator is introduced to an
16:40island.
16:40Now, as night falls on our expedition, the evening chorus starts up from the waterhole.
16:46It's spring, and love is in the air. What are these toads saying to each other?
16:58Very repetitive.
17:01These are natterjacks.
17:03And natterjacks, like a lot of toads, have explosive sexual engagements, if you like.
17:07Like when suddenly, suddenly it's ready, and the male toad will jump on absolutely anything.
17:14Animal, vegetable or mineral.
17:16But hopefully, a female toad, but very often it will jump on a male toad.
17:21And start humping away.
17:22That's okay too.
17:22Which is fine.
17:23Yeah.
17:26But the male toad underneath often doesn't like it.
17:30Well, you know, reach around.
17:32And it makes, it makes a noise.
17:34And that is the, the noise you hear during the mating season.
17:38There was a boy at my school who used to catch frogs and skin them and let them go.
17:42Oh.
17:43Well, yeah, he let them go.
17:44Look on the positive side.
17:45Why have you always got to focus on the negative side?
17:48As long as it's humanitarian.
17:50He said, it's amazing, you can see all their insides.
17:53Just one word comes to my head, Essex.
17:56I don't know why.
17:57We are.
17:58He says it was at school.
17:59It was a boar stool.
18:02It's school that is cruel.
18:03Well, he said he did that anyway.
18:04So they have to leave a little bit around their eyes.
18:07Oh.
18:07Yeah, you don't want to be cruel.
18:09A lot of them.
18:10So you're saying that these, the sound that we heard there was a lot of frogs going.
18:13Don't bug me, I'm a bloke.
18:16I just can't understand the idea that this toad would have evolved and it would have gone,
18:20well, okay, when the mating season comes round, just go for your life.
18:25Rather than trying to chat a girl up.
18:27It seems extraordinary.
18:29Do you know the difference in a frog and a toad?
18:31Spelling.
18:32Read it.
18:35Very good.
18:38You might as well be right.
18:40There's no definitive difference, to be honest.
18:42Generally speaking, toads have drier skin and they have drier lives.
18:46But essentially, there is no real difference.
18:49My dog once, I used to have an Alsatian, and she came to wake me up one morning.
18:52Which was unusual.
18:54Normally she'd wait for me to wake up.
18:55She came and she put her head under the duvet and pulled it off me like that.
18:59And I said, what are you doing?
19:01And she went to the bedroom door and looked at me.
19:04I got up and she went to the kitchen door, still looking at me.
19:07And led me to a water bowl, which was by the back door.
19:10And she was looking at it and looking at me.
19:14And I looked at it and there was a frog in it.
19:17That's so sweet.
19:18And it must have come in the back door, like the night before.
19:21And then just found itself in the kitchen.
19:24And then it got in the water bowl and sat there all night.
19:27And this huge dog's head.
19:33And he said, I'm going to go and get Alan.
19:35This is the thing.
19:38The thing I love about that is the idea of the relationship with you and your dog.
19:41Being on quite a level.
19:42Yeah.
19:43Come have a look at this, Alan.
19:46Let me share the plat.
19:47The thing was, I had a walled garden.
19:49I don't know how the frogs got in the garden, but they did at the same time every year.
19:53The odd thing you're saying about this, every time this enormous quantity of toads are killed every year on the
19:58roads.
19:58About 20 tonnes of toad lose their lives.
20:01We're trying to make it less with toad tunnels.
20:03Do you know the reason that there's so many down the road?
20:07They all cross at the same time as mating season.
20:09Yeah, they have ancient mating ponds that they have had for, it seems, hundreds and hundreds of years.
20:13And whether there's a road there or not, that's the way they've always gone.
20:16It used to happen in Buckhurstil, a pond in Buckhurstil near the high road.
20:19And people would get out and go out with frying pans.
20:23Yeah, and help them cross.
20:24And then hop into a frying pan and then you'd just flip them.
20:27Because there are scores of them.
20:28It combines fun with doing good.
20:31You couldn't ask for better.
20:33If that is on another toad, then it's all done.
20:37Did you hear a very extraordinary story in Hamburg in 2005 about the exploding toads?
20:44Vaguely, yes.
20:45What happened was, toads started exploding during the mating season.
20:48More than a thousand toads, swollen to three times their usual size, crawled out of the water, making eerie screeching
20:55noises,
20:55and blew up, propelling their entrails up to a yard away.
20:59People immediately thought, well, it might be a virus or industrial pollution.
21:02But it turned out.
21:03Do you know what it was the cause?
21:04Al-Qaeda.
21:05No.
21:07Suicide toads.
21:08It wasn't.
21:09Suicide toads.
21:09They were all fundamentalists and...
21:11They'd go into a busy marketplace and splatter everyone with toad into him.
21:16I'll learn ya.
21:17Toad rights.
21:18It was crows.
21:21It was crows.
21:21Crows had discovered how to fly in and, in one swift, efficient movement, remove the liver of the toads.
21:28They'd just go straight in and pull out the liver.
21:31Are these ninja crows?
21:32I'm sorry.
21:34What on earth are you talking about?
21:35They come in, they've got their little scalp already.
21:37No, they used to have been...
21:38And just...
21:39What in through the mouth?
21:40The birds had worked out how to do that.
21:42With a single strike through the chest, they could remove the liver.
21:44The toads' defence mechanism did the rest.
21:46They puffed themselves up to intimidate their foe, forcing their intestines out of the hole that had been made,
21:51under high pressure and a kind of fatal hernia.
21:54That's extraordinary.
21:55Of course, the other thing about toads is it sometimes does rain.
21:57Rain toads, doesn't it?
21:59That does happen.
22:00It rained fish once in night and in Wales.
22:03Did you know that?
22:04Because what happened was there was like a mini tornado and it just picked a load of fish up out
22:08of the river
22:09and blew them along and then it rained on the town.
22:12So that can happen.
22:13Do you know that joke about a librarian who sees this hen come into the library and the hen comes
22:18up and says,
22:19Book!
22:21It's definitely a hen.
22:22The librarian gives a book and chucks the book under her arm.
22:26And the next day, the hen comes in and goes,
22:28Book! Book! Book!
22:29And the librarian gives us three books.
22:32Puts them under her arm, fits away.
22:33The next day he goes in,
22:33Book! Book! Book! Book!
22:35Five books!
22:36The librarian thinks,
22:37This is weird. I've never ever known of a hen that's this fast at reading.
22:40It's just extraordinary.
22:41I've got to find out what's going on.
22:43So she grabs her Macintosh and follows the hen out of the library into a house.
22:47So she looks in through the keyhole and there's the hen sitting on a bed and there's a frog in
22:52the bed with a little thermometer in its mouth and a flannel over it.
22:56Obviously not very well.
22:57And the hen is tending it and offers a book and each time the frog goes,
23:01I've read it.
23:02Read it.
23:03Read it.
23:04Anyway.
23:05Silly joke.
23:07I know.
23:07OK.
23:08Let's see.
23:10Yeah.
23:12That's a seagull.
23:14Yeah.
23:14And what's this?
23:16That's a seagull coming back from the library.
23:19Very good.
23:19Do you want to hear my library joke?
23:21Go on.
23:21A man walks into a library.
23:23Yeah.
23:23Says, fish and chips, please.
23:24The librarian says, this is a library.
23:26He says, sorry, fish and chips, please.
23:30Excellent.
23:30But the reason I mention my particular joke is actually there's something very odd about this perception we have that
23:36frogs go reddit reddit or ribbit ribbit.
23:39And do you know why it is that all around the world people sort of do jokes or imagine that
23:44frogs make this noise?
23:45Because there's only one species of frog that actually makes that noise.
23:49Do you know where it is?
23:50Is it in Hollywood, California?
23:52Yes.
23:53It's the Pacific tree frog.
23:54And when sound came to movies and they wanted to start doing soundtracks to everything from Sanders of the River
24:00to Tarzan movies and anything that basically was an outside track, they sent their sound recorders out to record frogs,
24:05amongst other things, for their archives for sound.
24:07And all the frogs all the way down the coast of the Pacific sound like ribbit, ribbit, ribbit.
24:12And they don't in Africa, they don't in Europe, they don't in Central America, they don't in Asia.
24:16And so in all American films for about 30 or 40 years when you would hear this ribbit, ribbit noise
24:21and it became the sound of a frog.
24:23But it just happens to be, as you rightly said, five points Jimmy Carr in Hollywood, California.
24:32The most common sound of a toad is, get off, because it's the high-pitched croak of protest it makes
24:37when a male accidentally mounts it.
24:39Now, what's the worst that can happen in the middle of a fairy ring?
24:44Well, I'm not taking that.
24:46You know what, there's a time and place for this sort of thing and it's 10.30 Graham Norton show.
24:51Well, thank you for not saying sand in the Vaseline or something obvious like that.
24:56Oh no, I'll get to that.
24:59I'll talk over it.
25:02Hopefully some sort of flora or fauna, I'll wager.
25:06Oddly enough, it's neither. If it isn't flora, no, but it is a living thing.
25:10It's a living thing.
25:11And if it's a living thing and it's not flora or fauna.
25:14Leprechaun.
25:17Fungus.
25:18It's a fungus.
25:19They're magic, aren't they, fairy rings?
25:21Fairy rings are said to be magic things.
25:23By simple people.
25:24They are, exactly, because fungus grows in these, or can grow in these circles.
25:29And when the mushrooms shrink back, you get discoloured grass in a ring as well.
25:34And you see it in, some of them, the one in France, up to 700 years old.
25:38What's the thing that happens then?
25:39Well, there are myths and legends about it.
25:42For example, Joe Brandy for a young lady.
25:44Well, I don't know why you look at me.
25:47I was trying to be gallant.
25:50It doesn't suit you.
25:52Fair enough.
25:53All right, then imagine a young lady, Joe Brandy.
25:55I'll try.
25:55Yeah.
25:56And apparently, if she goes into a fairy ring on a May Day morning and washes her face with the
26:02dew from the grass inside, she will turn into a hag.
26:06So, are you saying, obviously, I've done it?
26:10I'm saying, whatever you do, don't do that.
26:12It would be a terrible thing.
26:13Don't go into a fairy ring.
26:14Don't do that again.
26:16Don't go into a fairy ring.
26:17Don't do that again.
26:17Oh, no!
26:19You see, that's mean.
26:21There are worse things that can happen to a fair young maiden these days at the swings with half a
26:24bottle of cider.
26:25Yeah.
26:27Anyway, supposedly, you might turn into a crone or get stuck in a time vortex, all kinds of superstitions.
26:32Actually, fairy rings aren't caused by dancing fairies.
26:35They are a fungus.
26:36Now, what use is a frog after a one-night stand?
26:41Yeah.
26:42I think I've got the answer.
26:44I'm getting the spirit of this show.
26:45Yeah.
26:45It's about sex, isn't it?
26:47It kind of is.
26:48I did say after a one-night stand.
26:50There's some sort of natural morning after pill effect.
26:53No, not that.
26:55For 30 years, between 1930 and 1960, this was used by Western science in an absolutely serious way to perform
27:01a very important function.
27:03Can you, can they, do they turn a different colour or something if a woman's pregnant?
27:06It's not exactly that, but that is precisely the use they were put to as pregnancy tests.
27:09Not really.
27:10Yeah.
27:11They're pregnancy tests?
27:12They were pregnancy tests.
27:12A woman pees on that?
27:14No.
27:15No.
27:15A woman's urine is injected into it.
27:18How?
27:19With a needle.
27:20Oh, okay.
27:21I wonder he looks so pissed off.
27:23That's, that's an African bullfrog, I think, but actually they use the clawed toad as much, or various.
27:28So hang on, that frog there's just had another frog on his back trying to bum him, and then suddenly
27:32there's a woman's pee being injected into him.
27:34He's having a horrible day.
27:35Well, the point is that it's a female clawed frog.
27:38If the woman was pregnant, the female frog, within eight to twelve hours, would ovulate.
27:43It's as simple as that.
27:44I wonder if they have like a little blue line on their back, so you look at it like this.
27:47A little plus.
27:49A plus or a minus.
27:50But it was a standard pregnancy test.
27:52The best way to test if a woman is pregnant, is just leave it nine months, see if it gets
27:57a flap.
27:57Yeah.
27:58That's a good test.
28:00If it gets a house, it's twins.
28:01There's a terrible, um, there was a terrible outcome of having these African frogs around the place.
28:06The National Health Service in Britain kept a lot of them, and some of them escaped, and unfortunately, they had
28:11a disease.
28:13They were full of piss.
28:14Called, it was called chytridium mycosis, and it is threatening a third of all the world's amphibians now.
28:21It's spread around the world.
28:22It's actually a deep tragedy, and these frogs have caused part of it.
28:26So our Western desire to know whether we're pregnant before the nine months has caused huge damage to lots of
28:32amphibians.
28:33So there we are.
28:34African clawed frogs ovulate if injected with the urine from a pregnant woman.
28:38And until the 1950s, this was the only available pregnancy test.
28:42From frogs to hogs, why should we feel particularly sorry for the pygmy hog sucking louse?
28:50Yay.
28:51I think we've got to worry about this because the louse goes on to the hog, right?
28:58But the hogs are very small, and they're not very interesting, and they're dying out.
29:03Is that the answer?
29:04Absolutely right, John Sargent, yes.
29:05Oh.
29:05It's an easily forgotten fact that when a species that we care about, as humans we tend to care about
29:10big woolly species,
29:12when they become endangered, we forget that there are many other species that are dependent on them.
29:16And such an example is the pygmy hog, of which there are only about 150 left in the world.
29:20And there is a whole species of louse which is only able to live on this animal.
29:25I can't believe it's able to sustain that louse, because they're about the same size.
29:31You get a couple of those on your back, no wonder they're dying out.
29:34We have lice, of course, human lice, we have head lice.
29:37Well, Stephen, we didn't want to discuss that with other people.
29:39Yeah, we'll go and see a specialist.
29:41And they're quite interesting, they tell us a lot about ourselves.
29:44For example, the bodied louse only lives in human clothing,
29:47and we know that it's only 70,000 years old as a subspecies of louse.
29:52And that sort of tells us that humans started to wear clothing 70,000 years ago.
29:56And we didn't mention this about our fleas, did we?
29:59You know when we're talking about fleas and all that stuff?
30:01Well, they only used human fleas.
30:04Oh, did they?
30:04And the human fleas are now dying out, maybe extinct.
30:07Because of?
30:08Because of vacuum cleaning and all that stuff.
30:10Going woof-woof, yeah.
30:11But that is odd, isn't it?
30:14You're absolutely right.
30:15It is a bizarre thing, though, where we care a lot more about the little fluffy things
30:19than the horrible, that beastie-looking thing.
30:21Yeah.
30:22Because isn't there the thing about the panda?
30:23The panda is the emblem of the World Wildlife Fund.
30:26Yeah.
30:26So a massively disproportionate amount of money goes towards saving the panda,
30:29because it looks like a rat's wife.
30:31Yeah, yeah.
30:33The pygmy hog-sucking louse is the only species of louse classified as critically endangered.
30:38It's co-endangered with the dwingling pygmy hog population in northern India.
30:42Now, whilst the pygmy hog-sucking louse is in decline,
30:45it's up, up and away for ferrets.
30:47So tell me, how does a ferret build an airliner?
30:52Yes.
30:53Really weaselly.
30:54Oh!
30:55Oh, no!
30:56I'm sorry.
30:58You've got that before you.
31:02Oh, dear.
31:04If it's any consolation, I was seconds behind them.
31:08And Boeing used them.
31:10Sorry?
31:10Boeing used ferrets.
31:11To build a plane?
31:12To help build the plane.
31:13Not to build the whole plane.
31:14They don't put that in the ads, do they?
31:15No.
31:16They're not ashamed of it.
31:17And actually they were used for the wedding of Charles and Diana,
31:20for the millennium party in the park, for various...
31:23So they, what, for looking for things?
31:25No.
31:25Their fur?
31:26No.
31:26Is it, you want to get something down a very long tunnel,
31:29you tie it tight to the...
31:30Brilliant.
31:31Yeah, absolutely.
31:31That's precisely what it is, Alan.
31:33Use it for wiring.
31:34It happily goes through the narrowest of spaces and it's encouraged,
31:37comes out the other end and you've got the wire through the space.
31:40It was used by Boeing right up until the 1960s and...
31:43It's a brilliant idea.
31:44Isn't it?
31:45It's very clever.
31:46Anyway, they are now the third most popular pet in America,
31:49after cats and dogs.
31:50They welcome you when you come back from a day's work, like puppies.
31:53They're very like puppies.
31:54Come in!
31:55Come in!
31:56They're thrilled to see you.
31:57They're very pleased to see you.
31:58Do they run up your trousers, though?
32:00Well, the trouser business is interesting.
32:02I mean, there are people who claim that this is a Yorkshire sport
32:05of having ferrets in your trousers,
32:06but no one's quite sure whether it really is.
32:08It's become one, but it kind of started as a hoax in a famous interview
32:12that some old...
32:13It's always in sitcoms in the 70s.
32:15Exactly.
32:15There's always someone with a ferret.
32:16They start ferret up your trousers, that's right.
32:19Lava!
32:21They're used now for pet therapy,
32:22because they are very pleasing, friendly animals.
32:24You mean they sit opposite you on a chair and...
32:27And talk you through your problems.
32:28And how does that make you feel?
32:30Yeah.
32:30And interacting with them apparently reduces your stress hormones.
32:34And it's helpful for the elderly, the depressed,
32:36and children recovering from severe illnesses.
32:38And they're used for that.
32:40So, get a ferret.
32:42And so, once more, we plunge ferret-like into the black hole
32:46of general ignorance fingers on buzzers, if you would.
32:49What's the fastest thing in the natural world?
32:53Alan.
32:54Blue whale.
32:57Every time!
32:59Every time!
33:00It's never going to be blue whale, is it?
33:02It's never going to be blue whale.
33:04Any other thoughts?
33:05The fastest thing?
33:06Fastest thing in the natural world.
33:07Yep.
33:07Cheetah.
33:08Oh!
33:09Oh, crazy.
33:11Oh, I know.
33:11Come here.
33:13It's going to be alive.
33:15Is it something like a cheetah, but that's not?
33:18It's not an animal.
33:18It's a flower.
33:20So you're on a road, and suddenly it overtakes you?
33:23No.
33:23Blimey.
33:24We're talking ejaculation.
33:26We're talking against sex.
33:27It's just sex.
33:28Obsession.
33:29What do they do?
33:30Sorry, the fastest thing on earth.
33:31Is this a personal slight at me?
33:34Because I had a very busy week.
33:37No.
33:37It's not.
33:38It's not that.
33:39It's a flower called the white mulberry.
33:42And it pushes out its pollen at half the speed of sound.
33:48Mach 0.5.
33:50Which is over 350 miles per hour.
33:53Gosh.
33:53It's the fastest thing in biology.
33:56Nothing moves faster.
33:57But what about an aircraft?
33:58In biology.
34:02What about a naturally reared, organic aircraft?
34:06Yes.
34:07Anyway.
34:07It's the Morris Alba.
34:09And what do I have on me that owes itself to?
34:12The flower, surely.
34:14No.
34:14Something owes itself to the white mulberry that I'm wearing.
34:16Is it a silk tie?
34:17Oh, silk.
34:18Silk silk, of course.
34:19There are thousands of them in China, in particular, of course, where much silk is.
34:22The silkworm lives on the white mulberry leaves.
34:24But it pollinates, it pushes out its pollen at this astounding speed.
34:29Stored elastic energy in its statements.
34:32Wow.
34:32So if you've got hay fever, you've got no chance of escaping it.
34:34You really haven't.
34:35It's coming out quite a fight out.
34:36Yeah.
34:37Yeah.
34:40No wonder it's itchy.
34:41Wah.
34:42So there you have it.
34:44What is it?
34:45What a tongue noise.
34:46I don't know.
34:47Just nice.
34:47Just growling.
34:49Not yours.
34:50I want it as a ringtone.
34:51Fingers back on button.
34:55So there you have it.
34:56You can move on then.
34:57So fingers on buttons.
34:58What do you call a slug with a shell?
35:02I'm not falling for that one.
35:06I'll take the bullet.
35:08Yeah.
35:10Snail?
35:10Oh!
35:12Just for a moment.
35:13That's all you're going to say.
35:14Yes, you do.
35:15So you ask, what do I call?
35:17Yeah.
35:19No, you can't get out of it that way, I'm afraid.
35:21No, a snail with a shell is a snail.
35:23A slug with a shell is a slug.
35:24Some slugs have shells, and they are slugs, not snails.
35:27They have vestigial snails, small snails.
35:28It's sort of vitified snails, like the glass slug.
35:31And slugs we think of as being sort of shell-less snails,
35:35but they can have little things on them.
35:37They eat each other's slime as an act of foreplay.
35:40And then afterwards...
35:41So do I.
35:41Yeah.
35:43Carry on with this.
35:44Does the female then bite off your penis?
35:47Huh?
35:49Well, the nibble's not going to hurt you.
35:52Yeah.
35:53We can, but hope.
35:54It's cold.
35:56They're obviously terrible garden pests,
35:58but they are after insects the most...
36:00We used to live in our kitchen when we were students,
36:03and there'd just be trails across the floor in the morning.
36:06We didn't do anything about it.
36:07No.
36:07It went...
36:09It just had bits of cornflakes stuck into it.
36:12Yeah, carry on.
36:12Yeah.
36:14There are 37,000 species of a gastropod.
36:17After insects, they're the most common class of animal on the earth.
36:2037,000.
36:20Mmm.
36:21Okay, write that down.
36:22Yep, if you would.
36:23I'll be testing you next word.
36:24How do peacocks impress the ladies?
36:27Again.
36:29Hmm?
36:29This tracks...
36:30I'm...
36:31Yeah?
36:31By doing the thing.
36:33No, that's not what we're doing.
36:33So what?
36:34I don't know what you're saying.
36:37Should I say to the female peacock cow, do you like your eggs in the morning?
36:41Protected from foxes.
36:46It's good that you've avoided our trap, because you're right.
36:48You'd think it was fanning.
36:50I mean, there they are.
36:50Look at that.
36:51That's an astonishing sight.
36:52That's real.
36:52That's not made up.
36:53Poor.
36:55But some Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have discovered, much to everybody's
37:00surprise, after a long study, that peahens seem to select peacocks according to other
37:07criteria.
37:07There seems to be...
37:08Sense of humour.
37:09Yeah, exactly.
37:10That's it.
37:11That's what it is.
37:12Personality, yeah.
37:12They're not.
37:13It's personality and sense of humour.
37:14I mean, it's not colour and drama.
37:16Were they filling in a questionnaire?
37:17Because often I find they say that, but when it comes down to it, they call it a much bigger,
37:22sort of hunkier guy.
37:24They took seven years to do this and they observed 258 matings.
37:28Lazy.
37:28It seems a very surprising result, but they've been wasting their time growing these tails,
37:32if we're to believe these Japanese people.
37:34So what did they do?
37:35They took their tails off.
37:37How did they experiment?
37:38I don't know how the experiment was done.
37:39They judged tail quality in two ways.
37:42First, by simply measuring tail length, and secondly, by taking photos of each male during
37:46the tail fanning display ritual, counting the number of eye spots.
37:49Next, they examined whether females chose mates with the best quality tails, according to
37:53those criteria, but that may not be the peahens' criteria, of course, exactly.
37:56I think it's dodgy research.
37:57I sort of agree with you, John, I have to say.
37:59I think what we've got to do is to do the whole thing all over again.
38:03And dress them in raincoats.
38:06That wouldn't do it.
38:08Anyway, what happened after Captain Cook shot an albatross?
38:12Ah, that is important.
38:13So this fella shot that fella.
38:14I can see why.
38:15He's looking right at you.
38:17That's Captain Cook, supposedly.
38:18It looks rather like Roy Dutrisse, the actor there, for some reason.
38:21But it's Captain Cook, and the answer is they ate it.
38:24Joseph Banks, the great botanist, after whom Botany Bay, of course, is known.
38:28He sold with them, and he describes in his diary.
38:30He said, everybody commended them, the albatross' steaks, and ate heartily of them.
38:34There was fresh pork upon the table.
38:36So this idea that it was bad luck to eat albatross seems to have come after Captain Cook.
38:40In fact, it probably came from the poem, The Ancient Mariner, the Coleridge poem, with which you're all familiar, of
38:45course.
38:46What do we know about...
38:48Of course you know it.
38:50Come on.
38:50What do you know about albatrosses generally, though? Anything interesting about them?
38:53Yeah, they get caught up in fishing lines all the time.
38:56They do. They're all under threat, of course.
38:57And everyone gets very upset about it.
38:58Because they're all extraordinary birds.
39:00And they fly thousands of miles.
39:03The young wandering albatross will set off and will be in the air for ten years before it lands again.
39:08That one's looking at me.
39:09Yeah, it is, isn't it?
39:10It's looking at the camera, shall we say.
39:12It feels like it's looking right at me.
39:13But isn't that amazing? Ten years without landing.
39:15I mean, it's absolutely stunning.
39:16Why does it land after ten years?
39:18Because it must feel like a bit of a fall. It must go, I think I could go eleven.
39:21Mating. Mating and the eggs can't be laid and hatched and incubated with its mate.
39:25You couldn't lay the eggs on the move?
39:26No, darling.
39:27So do they fly into the water to get food?
39:29Yeah, they dive in and get fish, yeah.
39:30Get other airborne food that they might pass by.
39:32No, no, it's fish. They don't. But they don't actually land, as I say.
39:35And they can go for six days without flapping their wings.
39:38They can glide for that long. They preserve their energy amazingly.
39:42And they're on thermals, aren't they?
39:43Yeah, well, actually, they're not like the higher birds.
39:45Are they on thermals?
39:46No. They're lower. They actually take the wind off the surface of the water.
39:49Try and listen to the headmaster.
39:51Yeah.
39:53And finally, before we stagger back to civilisation, is a mushroom an animal or a plant?
39:58A plant.
40:02Or an animal.
40:08It's not either, it's a fungus.
40:10Which is it closer to?
40:11That makes any sense.
40:12An animal or a plant, do you mean?
40:14Yeah.
40:14Well, there, it's closer to a plant.
40:16Hey, very good.
40:18You'd think it was a plant, so I'll say animal.
40:21Yeah, correct. Absolutely right.
40:22It's recently was discovered that it has more in common with animals than it does with plants.
40:27Yeah.
40:27Now, it's time to have our guests gas-stuffed and mounted in glass cases as we come to the scores.
40:33Taking the laurels of victory this week is the audience with Class 10!
40:41You see?
40:44How about that?
40:46Well done audience.
40:49You see?
40:50It pays to know about opera.
40:52Just that, Traviata.
40:53And there you are.
40:54They win.
40:54But in a creditable second place with minus one, Jimmy Carr.
41:01And in third place with an excellent score for a beginner, minus four, John Sargent.
41:06Wow.
41:10And in his usual fourth place, but oddly not last, with minus 18, Alan Davis.
41:20And in this F-series, finally and fifthly, it's the filterly fabulous Joe Brown with minus 27.
41:37So, that's all from this florid and formal edition of QI.
41:40It's goodnight from Joe, John, Jimmy, Alan and from me.
41:43And I leave you with this floral tribute from Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
41:47A great pick-up line.
41:48Won't you come into the garden?
41:49I would like my roses to see you.
41:52Goodnight.
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