Original subtitles

[narrator] Worldwide, 45 billion cameras record our daily lives.

In our hands, in our cars

-and in our homes. -[cat shrieks]

-They capture things that defy explanation. -[explosion]

[woman screaming]

It really made me ask, "What the heck's going on here?"

Check this out.

[narrator] Experts carry out forensic analysis of these unusual events.

Wow. Now that's a cracker.

[gasps]

[woman screaming]

This doesn't make any sense.

There has to be another explanation.

So what could it be?

[narrator] Coming up... Smashed...

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

[man] Oh my God!

It just broke in half.

[narrator] ...in the Black Sea's version of the Bermuda Triangle.

Is it some quirk of the geography or weather?

Or is there some other factor at play here?

An unexplained blast rocks Tennessee.

[explosion]

Is the Pentagon covering up rogue soldiers?

All it takes is one nutjob with a mine in his garage, and well...

Boom!

[narrator] And in India, locals believe

their monkey god has returned

as a very unusual boy.

I've no idea why this kid would grow a tail like that.

Crazy.

Bizarre phenomena.

[gasps] Oh my God.

Mysteries caught on camera.

This is just mind-boggling.

What's the truth behind this Strange Evidence?

-Now, the Black Sea, Eastern Europe. -[ship horn honking]

January, 2021.

Cargo ship the Arvin heads for Bulgaria when suddenly...

-[metal crunching] -[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

[man] Oh my God!

It just broke in half.

[Captain speaking to crew indistinctly]

You can hear that actually the captain's yelling, "Mayday!"

You hear the people on the ship panicking.

[metal crunching]

[narrator] The 3500-ton rigid steel ship snaps like a twig,

as though punched by some force from below.

The middle of the ship just buckles.

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday! My vessel broken!

This is a seriously dangerous situation.

[Captain speaking to crew indistinctly]

[George Kourounis] "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!"

"My vessel is broken."

[narrator] The 374 feet long Arvin sinks in minutes.

Cargo ships like this are designed to withstand hurricanes.

What's going on?

[narrator] Explorer George Kourounis

discovers that while other ships nearby seem completely unaffected,

The Arvin is yet another mysterious sinking in the Black Sea.

There are parts of the Black Sea that are literal ship graveyards.

[narrator] This 168,500 square mile sea

is one of the most perilous places in the world.

Ancient Greeks called it "Axinos," meaning "unkind to strangers."

[Kourounis] What makes this part of the Black Sea so dangerous?

Why do so many ships tend to sink here?

Is it some quirk of the geography or weather?

Or is there some other factor at play here?

[narrator] For centuries, Turkish and Russian seafarers spoke of white whirlpools

that suddenly opened in the sea, swallowing up ships.

Rumors persist today of a Bermuda Triangle-like mysterious force

that claims ships and planes that pass over it.

Mariners speak of a graveyard in the middle of the Black Sea

known as the Dead Zone.

[Nick Householder] Is there something at the bottom of the Dead Zone

that's capable of reaching up and pulling down a ship of this magnitude?

[narrator] Kourounis finds reports of a groundbreaking expedition

to explore the Dead Zone in 2018.

Scientists using sonar and remote operated vehicles

discovered a huge graveyard of lost ships.

You're looking at a snapshot of a moment in time.

Probably as long as 1000 years ago.

[Katie Nicolaou] It wasn't just modern ships.

We're talking ships all the way back to Alexander the Great.

One of the things that's most unique about it

is that these ships are very well preserved.

[Garbov] We're talking entirely preserved shipwrecks from keel to gunnel.

We're talking about still preserved ropes,

shipwrecks that literally look as if they had sunk yesterday.

It's extremely unusual for ships to be preserved like this under the ocean.

[narrator] Engineer Brian Wolshon discovers

the Black Sea has a unique property

unlike almost anywhere else in the world.

The reason why they're able to be preserved,

even though they're underwater,

is this mix of salt and freshwater that actually makes up the Black Sea.

At the end of the last ice age, some 12,00 years ago,

the Black Sea wasn't much of a sea.

It was a black lake.

[ice crumbling]

[narrator] As the glaciers receded across the entire world,

the massive rise in sea level in the Mediterranean

carved through the land

creating the Bosporus channel.

Saltwater cascaded into the freshwater black lake.

This denser saltwater sunk to the bottom

and created two distinct layers known as a meromictic basin.

The layers don't mix, so the oxygen derived

from the atmosphere and photosynthesis

remains restricted to the top layer.

[Kourounis] With almost no oxygen whatsoever,

the ships simply don't have the opportunity to decompose.

[narrator] But this strange nonmixing of different water layers

can't cause ships to be destroyed on the surface.

[Nicolaou] When you hear the term Dead Zone,

you really think you should stay away from there.

But actually think of it more as a tomb.

It doesn't cause these ships to sink,

it just preserves them if they do.

So it's more of a bottom-of-the-sea problem.

Not a top-of-the-sea problem. [chuckles]

[narrator] Wolshon studies the Arvin's manifest

and wonders if the ship's mysterious sinking

could've been caused by its cargo.

One of the potential explanations for what we're seeing here

could actually be an internal explosion

within the cargo hold of the ship.

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

It was carrying 3000 tons of urea.

Urea is used a fertilizer in farming,

but turned into urea nitrate, it becomes

a common compound in improvised explosive devices.

Standby! Firing!

[explosion]

[narrator] The World Trade Center is remembered

for the attacks of 9/11

where two planes smashed into the Twin Towers.

But in 1993, a truck bomb loaded with 1300 pounds of urea nitrate

detonated in a parking garage under the World Trade Center.

It was the first terrorist attack on the building.

-[sirens wailing] -[horn honking]

The fertilizer-based explosive

with a detonation velocity of about 10,000 miles per hour

opened up 100-foot wide hole through four sublevels of concrete.

Six people are killed and over 1000 injured.

Is it possible that the ship had some type of fuel leak

that mixed with the urea cargo it was carrying that triggered some explosion below deck?

-[metal crunching] -[Captain exclaiming]

[narrator] But with 3000 tons of fertilizer on board,

the blast wave would've blown the ship apart.

What's interesting with that video is when you watch it, you hear the crunch.

[metal crunching]

It's not so much an explosion. It is a compression.

That metal being pressed together as it's bent backwards.

So that's more of an indication that it's not

so much an explosion as it is just brute force.

[metal crunching]

[Nicolaou] What caused the ship to buckle like that?

[narrator] Coming up... A titanic mistake?

Was it unfit to be a seafaring vessel?

[narrator] And locals ask,

who's behind the mysterious Tennessee blast?

Is the town under attack?

[narrator] On the Black Sea,

a 3500 ton cargo ship mysteriously breaks in half.

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

The video shows huge waves crashing over the bow.

Clearly, there's a significant storm.

We've got these huge waves and the ship is

not handling this at all.

[narrator] But similar ships are nearby and unaffected.

Waves this high should not sink a cargo ship like the Arvin.

What you see the ship doing in the video

is actually what you're supposed to do when you're encountering big waves.

They went straight on.

You want to punch the core of that wave.

You never want to go parallel to these waves because if it

crashes over your broadside,

it could cause your ship to flip over.

Was it unfit to be a seafaring vessel?

[metal crunching]

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

It's recognized that a substantial percentage

of cargo ships at sea all over the world

actually do not meet modern safety standards.

Every year, roughly two dozen large ships

either sink or go missing with their crew.

That's far more dangerous than air travel.

[narrator] Everyday there are over 50,000 cargo ships on the seas

carrying food, goods and medicine.

The combined cargo weight of these ships is over two billion tons.

And some have been sailing the oceans for a long time.

In 2017, the 266,000 ton cargo ship Stellar Daisy

sank off the coast of Uruguay.

22 of its crew were lost.

The subsequent investigation into the Stellar Daisy tragedy

revealed that the sinking was not caused by bad weather

but was actually caused by a structural failure within the ship.

[narrator] Kourounis finds the Arvin is over 40 years old

and poorly prepared for the stormy Black Sea.

There is so much pressure to keep these ships running

with hundred percent uptime that quite often

safety and mechanical inspections and standards

are left by the wayside in the interest of profit.

They're picking up a lot of wear and tear.

The saltwater can degrade the ship.

It can break down the metal. It can erode away your ship.

And eventually could lead to stress breaks or catastrophic collapses

like we see on the ship here in the video.

[metal crunching]

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

Investigators discover that the Arvin was structurally unsound

from poorly maintained hatches to corrosion on the decks.

[metal crunching]

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday!

[narrator] The Arvin joined the thousands of ships

in the graveyard at the bottom of the Black Sea.

Four of the 13 crew onboard drowned.

It makes for some disturbing viewing.

[Captain] Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

The tragedy of this incident is really made clear

when we look at the complete sinking of this vessel.

But even more sad is the loss of life,

including the captain and several of the crew.

[narrator] Now, Clarksville, Tennessee.

September 4th, 2021.

A normal Labor Day weekend.

This is somebody's front porch security camera

and its recording a normal evening late at night,

little bit of wind, and then...

[explosion]

Did something explode?

-[explosion] -Did two things run into each other?

[narrator] This isn't lightning.

-[explosion] -And the sound it makes isn't like thunder.

There's something to this sound, that it's...

It's not an ordinary sound you would hear in a quiet town.

The weird sound of this blast

is picked up by another camera across town.

[explosion]

Now we're hearing this boom in another part of town

which tells me that this sound is quite loud and that this boom is large.

[explosion]

[narrator] No meteor strikes were recorded in the area on this day.

-This is no natural explosion. -[explosion]

Is the town under attack?

[narrator] A huge boom echoing around Clarksville, Tennessee

leaves 911 operators flooded with calls.

-[phone ringing] -[woman on phone] We're in the bed and all at once,

something sound like a bomb went off.

[man on phone] It was like a big blast of pressure up against the house.

[woman on phone] It sound just like a bomb, it jarred the whole house.

[explosion]

[shockwave receding]

[narrator] Authorities race to investigate, but only uncover a mystery.

They can find no crater, no epicenter, no bomb damage.

There were no reports of buildings being damaged by the blast.

It has all of the components of a deadly explosion

but none of the actual consequences.

[narrator] Military historian Craig Gottlieb believes this could be

because the blast went off in someone's backyard.

Think about our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"What happened to that munition? Well, we used it in combat.

No? [shushes] It's in my backpack.

I'm taking it home 'cause I think it's cool."

This explosion happened nearby the Fort Campbell military base.

That base was known to store munitions.

A significant number of military explosives have gone missing over the years.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands of grenades, plastic explosive landmines,

and even rockets have disappeared from military bases.

[narrator] At least 1900 firearms are confirmed to have been lost or stolen

-from The US military in the last ten years. -[gunshots]

And the real figure is thought to be much higher.

The US Army and the Pentagon have been accused by the associated press

of trying to cover up the theft of weapons and munitions from military bases.

Many of these weapons were later used in shootings and robberies,

-or found in the hands of street gangs. -[gunshots]

-And these deadly devices can turn up anywhere. -[police siren wailing]

Just last year, in a Mississippi recycling yard,

a couple of workers were on a break,

having a drink of water, and then suddenly...

Boom! There's a huge explosion.

That's when chaos broke loose, you know?

[Craig Gottlieb] An artillery shell goes off.

Uh, I can't remember if I flew,

heard the explosion while it was flying and I hit the ground.

I looked back and blood was just coming out of his legs.

[groans]

Holding his colleague with blood spurting out of his leg,

he bleeds out, dies.

Really, I hope that the military and whatnot, they can get a grip on

missing weapons and missing ammunition and stuff 'cause

there's innocent people out here dying for no reason at all.

Two days later, another shell was found at the same scrapyard,

but luckily this one didn't explode.

It was safely returned back to the military.

[narrator] Cops believed the deadly shells were from a howitzer,

a long-range artillery weapon.

And suspected they'd been stolen from Camp Shelby,

-an army national guard base in Mississippi. -[mortar clicks]

[explosion]

Perhaps this Tennessee boom was a theft gone wrong.

All it takes is one nutjob with a mine in his garage and well...

Boom!

[narrator] Journalist Amy Shira Teitel finds a clue

that this was no ordinary munition.

Local news reports that there was a strange smell in the air that night.

[narrator] Coming up...

One of the world's most hideous killers.

Could we be looking at and hearing the detonation of some kind of chemical weapon?

[narrator] And in India...

Is an eight year old boy a reincarnated monkey god?

People have come from far and wide across India to see this boy and his tail.

[narrator] In Clarksville, Tennessee,

-a mysterious blast panics residents -[explosion]

but leaves no crater or obvious damage.

The only clue, a vile smell.

Could we be looking at and hearing the detonation of some kind of chemical weapon?

[narrator] By 1990, the US had a stockpile of 31,500 tons

of chemical weapons including mustard gas.

[explosion]

[explosion]

Mustard gas causes blisters on the skin, eyes and lungs,

and caused thousands of people to die a slow and painful death in World War I.

In 1993, The United States announced

the destruction of all it's chemical weapon agents.

But by March 2022,

there were still 715 tons left to be destroyed.

There have been countless military bases

that have been shut down throughout The United States.

And it's quite possible, in their haste to close many of them,

that some chemical weapons may have been left behind.

In Oklahoma in 2007,

a young boy scout looking for crystals

accidentally strikes some type of chemical vials.

He was digging in the ground. He smashed them

and it released some kind of smoke.

He was coughing and his eyes were watering and he was sputtering.

[Tracy Walder] The military came to investigate.

In a few weeks, they found more than 130 chemical vials in the area.

[narrator] The vials did not contain chemicals in deadly concentrations

and the boy suffered no lasting damage.

What we see here is a history of chemicals that were not properly disposed of.

Is that what we're seeing in Fort Campbell?

Chemicals that weren't properly disposed causing a large explosion?

[narrator] In Clarksville, the cops could find no trace of chemical weapons

as they comb the city for clues.

So what was it?

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[narrator] The authorities refuse to investigate further.

And Clarksville residents still have no idea

what lit up Labor Day in this normally quiet neighborhood.

No one has come forward.

There's been no further, kind of investigations.

Something did happen, though and I think we need to find out more.

There might be a whole disaster zone

out in the Tennessee countryside just waiting to be discovered.

[narrator] Now, Amritsar, in India's Punjab region.

June 5th, 2017.

[narrator] A man films what at first glance

looks like a normal boy.

But there's a twist in the tale.

Oh! Oh, okay!

[narrator] Locals call him the Monkey Boy.

That's a tail?

Huh.

[Leslie] Why does he have that?

It's just really a jarring sight

to see a tail popping out of his back.

It's like a pigtail but with strands of hair

growing out of his back.

I have no idea why this kid would grow a tail like that.

Crazy!

[narrator] Historian Karen Bellinger

discovers this boy's name is Dulha Singh.

He is eight years old, and he is worshipped as a god.

India is a very deeply religious nation of a billion people.

And if even a small fraction of those people believe

that this boy is the incarnation of a deity,

well, that's going to draw a lot of interest.

People believe him to be the Hindu god Hanuman,

a child of a nymph and the wind deity.

[narrator] There are more than 900 million Hindus in India.

That's 80% of the country's entire population.

Hanuman is one of their most widely-worshipped gods.

Hanuman is imbued with these traits

of great physical prowess and agility.

He is described as jumping so high

he can practically grab the sun.

And people have come from far and wide across India

to see this boy and his tail.

It may sound implausible to us

that this could be a reincarnated god

but India is a deeply religious, spiritual place,

where anything is possible.

[narrator] Coming up, is there more to this tail than meets the eye?

I'm thinking this could be connected to a health issue

that's really prevalent in India.

[narrator] And mysterious orbs plummet towards a terrified crowd.

What are these things? What are they doing?

[narrator] In India, a man films an eight-year-old boy

who appears to have a long tail.

Biologist Roland Kays wonders if this appendage

could be a throwback to the time when monkeys

really did rule the earth.

Humans are related to primates and at some point of time,

we had an external monkey tail.

But there was a genetic mutation

and we lost our external tail.

[narrator] In 2021, geneticist Bo Xia

and his colleagues at New York University

identified that a single genetic mutation

25 million years ago in the TBXT gene

is responsible for robbing some primates of their tails.

Including chimps, gorillas and orangutans.

But a tiny memory of our tail-past still remains.

During the developmental process,

each and every human grows a tail.

[narrator] Short tails temporarily emerge

around the sixth week of gestation.

This tiny extension of the spinal column

contains up to a dozen vertebrae.

Within two weeks, half of them are reabsorbed

with the other half fusing to form the coccyx or tail bone.

In some quite rare instances,

the tail is not entirely resorbed into the body.

[narrator] When that happens,

people are born with a little stump,

which is actually a tail.

The longest vestigial tail ever recorded was seven inches.

But they are extremely rare.

It's believed that there have only been

40 cases ever recorded

[narrator] If we had kept our ancestral tails,

they could have opened up a whole new world for us.

Monkeys use their tails in a number of ingenious ways.

From helping them to climb trees,

freeing up their hands to manipulate their food,

and even comfort each other.

But on a human, tails are seen as an unfortunate deformity.

Tails can have extremely negative effects on health.

Imagine not being able to sit

or lie down on your back for years

because it's too painful.

[narrator] Normally, these tails are cut off by surgeons.

But Dulha, whose extremity makes him a deity,

shows no desire to lose his.

Should this tail be removed rather than revered?

[narrator] Historian Tony McMahon looks closer

and believes this is not the return of an ancient appendage.

[Tony] If this was a vestigial tail,

we'd be seeing bone or flesh there

but all I am seeing is hair.

[Tony] So this is something completely different.

[narrator] Biologist Leslie Samuel

believes this may not be a tail with a happy ending.

I'm thinking this could be connected to a health issue

that's really prevalent in India.

Spina bifida.

It's when a baby's spine doesn't develop

quite the way it's supposed to while in the womb.

Spina bifida is caused by a folic acid deficiency

in the mother's diet during pregnancy.

Approximately four in one thousand babies in India

are born with this condition.

[narrator] Folic acid is found in dark, green, leafy vegetables.

But in poor parts of India,

many people don't understand the importance

of having these foods in their diet.

Lack of folic acid, one of the vitamin B group,

hinders DNA synthesis

and cell division in fetal development.

Severe cases can lead to

an actual disruption to the spine.

So that those suffering from it have trouble walking.

[narrator] Spina bifida occulta

occurs when a vertebrae on the spine is not completely closed.

In a quirk of biology, in this milder version,

often the only side effect is a small dimple

or a tuft of hair at the site of the defect.

The condition is common

and happens to about one in ten people.

It is known as hidden spina bifida

because many of these people who have it don't know,

and end up living completely normal lives.

But for Dulha in Punjab,

he is destined to be revered.

It's a condition that we recognize in the West

and which we know a lot about

because we can go online, on the internet, and read about it.

But in rural India,

it's less likely that people will know what this condition is.

And so they attribute it to other causes.

[Leslie] Stories travel by word of mouth

and with India being a deeply religious country,

we can see how a boy with a monkey-like tail

is gonna stir some imaginations.

[narrator] Now, Zhengzhou, China.

October 1st, 2021.

A man films as a swarm of strange lights fill the sky.

Oh my gosh! That is unbelievable. I got really scared.

It looks like a scene from a science fiction movie.

[narrator] Bystanders are nervous.

[man] I can hear people screaming.

There's something serious that's scaring these people.

[narrator] Then, the lights plummet into the crowd.

I can hear panic coming from the people on the ground.

[people screaming]

They're scared, they don't know what's going on.

What are these things? What are they doing?

[Sarah] Are people on the ground being attacked?

Is this something which isn't friendly?

I mean, what are these lights that we're seeing in this video?

[narrator] Journalist Sarah Cruddas

discovers the bizarre scene in China happens

as sightings increase of similar looking objects

that baffle governments around the world.

Often, when we think of UFOs

or UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena,

we think of one unidentified object in the sky.

But recently, there've been reports of multiple,

of swarms of objects in the sky that cannot be explained.

[narrator] In June 2021,

the US released a report detailing 143 unexplainable aerial sightings.

It suggests we may be facing

a more scientifically advanced adversary.

They made it clear that with our current technology,

none of this seems possible.

It doesn't follow the laws of physics as we know it

and frankly, they're very disturbed by it,

these glowing orbs.

Just imagine what they didn't show us.

[narrator] And it seems,

the Chinese are as puzzled by these objects as the Americans.

China has a real interest in UAPs

because they, like us, have seen a lot of activity.

Two Chinese fighter jets were scrambled

to investigate the presence of a mushroom-like type of object.

When challenged by these two jets,

the object automatically shot up 60,000 feet in altitude

in a matter of seconds.

[narrator] So, what are they?

Mathematician John von Neumann

hypothesized about swarms of self-replicating extraterrestrial robots.

The probes, sent from an alien world,

explore the galaxy, mining the resources,

consuming planets like a hoard of locusts.

And increased sightings of UAPs across China

has put their military on high alert.

[Wise] The Chinese military also feel that

the problem is beyond their normal capabilities.

So they have trained AI

to, uh, look at this incoming data and try to make sense of what they're seeing.

[narrator] Coming up,

death by a thousand lights.

These could be the next weapons of mass destruction.

This is something the government's hiding.

[narrator] And in the Netherlands,

seagulls behaving badly.

Maybe these birds were on their way to joining the Mile High club.

Or is this just one seagull being really, really lazy?

[narrator] In central China,

a swarm of strange lights plummet from the sky.

Former FBI agent Rhonda Glover believes the footage

may be evidence of the Chinese authorities

using clandestine unmanned aerial vehicles on their own people.

In the last two years, we've seen a huge increase in the use of drones

in the military, whether it's for reconnaissance purposes

or for military operations.

Would this explain why these people seem so freaked out?

Do they think that they're under attack?

The Chinese have a vested interest

in developing advanced weaponized drone technology.

This year, they acquired an Italian drone maker

whose planes had combat experience in Afghanistan

and other war zones around the world.

[narrator] China is now developing drone swarms,

where over 1,000 flying devices are able to coordinate autonomously

in synchronized movements as a whole to overwhelm adversaries.

Low-cost, intelligent and inspired by swarms of insects,

micro drones could change the way wars are fought.

I think we're only starting to really come to terms

with how devastatingly effective drones can be

as a weapon, especially used in a swarm.

You can imagine being a defender of some kind of military, uh, situation,

and having these objects coming at you from every direction.

From above.

From all around.

Um, you can't outrun them, you can't shoot down every single one.

They just overwhelm you.

And these could be the next weapons of mass destruction.

[narrator] But when engineer Tim Pickens watches the footage,

he discovers the objects aren't Chinese military drones.

Whatever is seen in the sky, it's glowing.

And we see them fall to the ground,

but they don't explode.

It doesn't make you think this is a weapon.

[Wise] I think most likely what we're looking at

is a drone light show gone wrong.

These drone swarms can essentially create any kind of image you want in the sky.

You can create an animal.

You can create a picture of someone.

You can even do writing in the sky.

Now the thing is, they're preprogrammed with directional coordinates.

So, they don't need a lot of expensive sensors on board to do this.

[Pickens] So, what went wrong with these drones?

Why are there multiple ones flying

and then dropping out of the sky?

Back in 2020,

there was a light show in which 17 drones crashed.

And it turned out that the cause of that mishap was that

a competitor had used a radio frequency jammer

to disrupt communications and actually cause these things to go haywire.

Out of jealousy, because they wish that they had gotten the contract.

[narrator] Computer hackers have found ways to take control of drones.

You could assume that this is what happened here.

That someone has hacked into this drone show.

[narrator] The organizers of the drone displays said the flying light show failed

because of operational errors.

But no further details were given.

No one was seriously injured in this instance.

But next time, spectators might not be so lucky.

Slightly scary, particularly when more and more of them are being used.

I mean, next time you go to a drone display, you're gonna have to wear a hard hat.

[narrator] Now, the coast of the Netherlands, northwest Europe.

April 2021.

A man getting some fresh air notices something strange happening overhead.

And immediately starts filming on his smartphone.

[Samuel] Huh, he's just sitting on it.

I thought that was a weirdly shaped bird to start off.

But it's two seagulls.

[Potvin] At first it sort of seemed like my mind was tricking me, like,

is it just two birds that happened to look like they were on top of each other

but they're actually far away?

No, it's genuinely a bird on top of another bird.

[narrator] Then the bird supplying the free ride seems to have had enough.

And jabs its sharp beak at its passenger.

This is not something you see every day.

Uh, seagulls fly all around with each other all the time

but I've never seen anything like this.

So, is this, like, one catching a ride from the other

or is this just one seagull being really, really nice?

[narrator] Coming up, is this evidence that seagulls are getting smarter?

Maybe what we have here is actually a pioneer

of the future of seagull transport.

[narrator] In the Netherlands, a man films a seagull

as it hitches a free ride through the sky.

Biologist Roland Kays discovers

that even in the dog-eat-dog world of the animal kingdom,

care and concern for others appears in the most unexpected of species.

One of the most famous cases of altruism in animals

is the vampire bat.

Which people think are creepy and yucky,

but actually, they're amazingly nice to their friends.

[narrator] Vampire bats use razor-sharp incisor teeth

to nip a chunk of flesh on their victim.

Anti-coagulants in their saliva keeps the blood flowing

so their friends can feast as well.

Each bat needs two tablespoons a night

and will die if it goes without the red stuff for more than a few days.

[Kays] If a bat has failed to feed

and is hungry,

it will go to one of its buddies and say, "hey, I'm hungry."

And make its little noise and ask for food.

And if that vampire had gotten enough food,

it will turn

and puke up its bloodmeal

into the mouth of the other bat,

giving him some food.

And maybe another night, the tides have turned

and the second bat got a meal and the first one didn't

and it'll share back.

[Samuel] This is adorable.

That's a true sign of friendship.

So, is this just a gull helping out a mate who's had a long day?

[narrator] There are over a billion seagulls on the planet.

Some have a reputation for being particularly aggressive.

Especially when they are on the hunt for food

or protecting their offspring.

News channels in Great Britain

have reported seagulls attacking humans in a ferocious and calculated way.

And that they even prey on people's pets.

In 2019,

a chihuahua playing in a backyard was snatched by a gull

and never seen again.

If gulls get really hungry,

they will even turn to cannibalism.

Kelly Price studies the footage.

Looking closely at the positioning of the two birds.

She thinks this could be a case of avian amor.

There's all sorts of strange animal behavior.

And a lot of it pertains to mating.

Maybe these birds were on their way to joining the Mile High club.

There are many different mating rituals.

That to our eyes seem very strange.

Pufferfish carve beautiful elaborate patterns

in the sand of the seafloor, often several meters across.

These are magnificent structures.

It almost looks like it was made by an alien of some sort.

And all to attract the perfect lady puffer.

In the animal world, as in the human world, there's a lot riding on mating.

Often, the females will evaluate a number of different males.

And the males have their own special ways to try to impress them.

[honking]

Often that ends up with some really incredible looking dances and displays

and beautiful colors.

And probably the group of birds that has taken this to the extreme

are the birds of paradise.

Male birds of paradise practice and refine their moves throughout their life

for the big moment when they perform and attract that mate.

[narrator] If these two gulls are lovers,

is this just a weird way for the male to prove he's tough enough

to carry the burden of parenting a chick?

Could what we're seeing here be

some kind of form or variation on

a mating ritual that seagulls have?

[narrator] Leslie Samuel thinks there could be a much simpler explanation

for what's going on here.

[Samuel] Scientists do report that animals can be lazy.

It could of course be that the seagull is simply a very lazy bird.

Animals are always looking for ways to be more energy efficient.

They have a limited amount of food every day

and they need to conserve that energy while getting through their daily activities.

A good example is the sloth, which,

you know, we take in English to mean lazy.

But actually, sloths are just conserving energy through their slow movements.

[narrator] It takes smarts to get others to take the strain on your behalf.

And scientists at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada,

have found seagulls are seriously clever.

They stamp their feet to imitate rain and bring earthworms to the surface.

They know how to smash open seashells on rocks.

and they discovered how to follow plows to grab grubs exposed in fresh furrows.

Maybe what we have here is actually a pioneer

of the future of seagull transport.

Maybe he's creating Uber for gulls.

[narrator] Sadly, it'll take more than this demonstration of ingeniousness

to sway most people's opinions of seagulls.

[Kays] What's actually happened here, I'll tell you my theory.

I spent enough time around seagulls.

I've been, you know, crapped on by seagulls.

I think seagulls are just jerks.

And I think this is just one seagull being a jerk to the other.

[Price] To me, the bird on top just looks like he's having fun and going for a joyride.

I've seen pigeons taking the Tube,

but this takes the cake.