Original subtitles

Narrator: Songbirds are famous

For their calls,

But one makes a sound

That's had scientists baffled for centuries.

[ beep ]

I'm like, "oh, my gosh."

[ beep ]

How the heck does it do that?

And, in new zealand, inky the octopus

Has made headlines around the world

By going missing from his tank.

He's there one day.

The next day, he's not.

[chuckling] the question is,

Where did inky go?

[ suspenseful music plays ]

Nature is awe-inspiring,

But sometimes it just doesn't make sense.

Man: I have never, ever seen anything like this.

Strange animal behavior,

Unexpected events captured on camera.

[ animals screeching ]

The truth behind them is astonishing.

Woman: My god!

Nature's greatest mysteries solved.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

Deep in the heart of the ecuadorian jungle,

One small songbird is the stuff of legend.

[ beep ]

It makes a call

With a truly mystifying technique.

[ beeping ]

This is one of my favorite studies that I know about.

So it's ecuador, beautiful.

[ beep ]

And scientists are baffled by this bird.

♪

So manakins come from south america.

There are 60 different species

And, as you would expect,

Most of them sing from their beaks.

[ chirping ]

Narrator: But one, the club-winged manakin,

Has a call that's different.

It makes this extraordinary sound

Without even opening its beak.

Narrator: Hold on. What?! [ beep ]

It makes a call without opening it's beak?

It's a sound that you couldn't imagine

Would be produced by anything but his mouth.

[ beep ]

And so there was something going on there.

Narrator: About 20 years ago, dr. Kim bostwick

Journeyed deep into the jungle to see it firsthand.

[ beep ]

I'd woken up pre-dawn, hiked up 1,000 meters

Of tropical forest to see this bird

That I've thought about and looked at,

Listened to the sounds of, for many months.

[ beep ] narrator: Kim had heard the club-winged manakin song

On recordings, but had never seen it in action.

Bostwick: So I get up to the ravine.

I lift up my binoculars and then

"bink-bink-biiink." [ beep ]

He does his thing and it's just like, "flash-flash-flash!"

[ beep ] and I'm like,

"oh, my gosh."

[ beep ]

What did he do? How did he do that?

[ suspenseful music plays ]

Riskin: So one obvious place to look for the sound is the wings.

[ beep ]

He just did something that looked impossible.

Here, this is at quarter speed.

[ honk ]

And there's a wall of sound that just hits you,

This "mehh!" sound, like a foghorn.

[ honk ]

What is he doing in the speed that I can't see?

It was a perfect mystery.

♪

Narrator: If the manakin was making a sound with its wings,

Its secret might be revealed with high-speed filming.

♪

Kim returned to the jungle with a camera

That could shoot 1,000 frames a second.

And the bird comes and he does it,

"tick-tick-tiiing!"

[ click-click beep ]

And, right there in the field, we play it

And what we see is the male's sitting there

And he throws his wings up.

What we see is boom, boom, boom, boom.

Narrator: You're about to see how many movements

The club-winged manakin can make in just a third of a second.

That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,

Nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 --

He just keeps going.

He pulls his wings together 37 times,

All that in just a third of a second.

So, when he does that sound, the "meeep!",

[ beep ] in that time, he's goin',

Bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp bomp

Bomp bomp, beatin' his wings together.

♪

To give some perspective on that speed,

If you see a hummingbird come up and flutter in your face,

His wings are typically going

Between 60 and 75 cycles a second.

This was 107 cycles a second.

Narrator: So was the manakin beating its wings together so fast

That they created this song?

When you watch that high-speed video,

You can see the wings coming together and clapping

And so, if you look at how fast they clap,

That should explain the sound.

[ triumphant chorale climbs ]

Mystery solved! Right?

[ musical powerdown ] no! No!

That doesn't solve the mystery.

It's like a piece, but it's not there.

Narrator: Kim realized this couldn't be her answer

When she analyzed the manakin's song further.

Kim decided to do some audio analysis on a manakin call

And what she discovered was something really bizarre.

[ beep ]

A club-winged manakin's pitch

Operates at a frequency of 1,500 hertz.

[ chiming ] narrator: Sound is produced by vibrating an object

And the speed of that vibration is what dictates the pitch.

The manakin's pitch of almost 1,500 must be created

By around 1,500 individual vibrations.

But, we just figured out that the bird

Only knocks its wings together 107 times a second,

Which would create 107 vibrations,

A frequency of 107.

That's still really fast, but obviously, it's not 1,500,

So something else is going on there.

[ beep ] so now there's this mystery.

If they're hitting 107 times a second,

How can the noise possibly be coming out

At a higher frequency?

If it's not the wings clapping against one another,

Is it something about the feathers

That's making the noise?

Narrator: It's an idea that brought kim to her next hypothesis.

Cooke: Are the feathers rubbing together

And producing sound in a similar way

To how singing insects do?

♪

I delved. I peeked [laughs] into the literature on insects

And went, "oh, my gosh!"

They do so much stuff.

[ chirping ]

What I came away with was that most sounds

Are produced at speeds way faster than anybody moves,

Even insects.

Narrator: Many insects make high-pitched noises

To communicate, often called chirrups.

[ whimsical tune plays ]

They create them by getting body parts to vibrate

Much faster than simple muscular movements would allow.

But how?

Insect body parts are both elastic and rigid,

So they are perfectly evolved to vibrate.

[ chirping ]

Everybody knows about grasshoppers.

Grasshoppers sing by rubbing their hind legs

Against their closed wings.

Narrator: Crickets also create a noise

By rubbing their body parts together.

In their case, it's one wing against the other.

And often, one side is serrated, it's ridged,

So, one part of the body is rubbed

Over this ridged part of the body.

Narrator: The ridged body parts are too small to see,

But it's akin to rubbing your fingernail

Across a comb;

Or looking at a frog,

A wooden one.

When I was looking at the literature,

I happened to come across this

And, with one [chirp] rub of my stick,

I get knock, knock, knock, knock,

Knock, knock, knock. [chirp ]

But the sound you get isn't knock, knock.

[tapping] you get that same little [chirp] tune.

Hear it in there? [ chirp ]

Narrator: Moving back and forth quickly over these ridges

Produces a huge number of vibrations

In that part of the body.

This creates a high frequency of sound waves

And, therefore a high-pitched song.

And, boom, you have this sound that's up here,

Even though the cricket's doing this down here.

[ chirping ]

The question is -- can a bird do something similar?

[ beep ]

♪

♪

[ whimsical-suspenseful tune plays ]

Narrator: The club-winged manakin makes a song with its wings.

[ beep ] the question is --

Does it use the same technique as an insect?

[ whimsical outro plays ] [ chirps ]

♪

The idea that this bird is producing the sound

In the same way is really unlikely

Because insects are able

To contract their muscles at much faster rates

Than a bird's wing muscle, for example,

And also they have these much more rigid body parts.

Narrator: Birds don't have hard bodies, like insects.

They just have feathers, which are soft.

Could the club-winged manakin's feathers be different?

[ beep ]

It is well-known for having some that look unusual.

Now, wings are made up of primary feathers,

Around here;

And secondary feathers, around here.

The manakin's funny-looking ones are secondary feathers,

On the inside edge of each wing.

Here they are close-up.

The spines of feathers 6 and 7

Are much bigger and harder than those of normal feathers.

They look like a club,

Hence the name club-winged manakin.

♪

But kim noticed something new about feather 6.

Bostwick: There's a bunch of ridges right here

In the surface of the feather.

Narrator: Ridges on hard surface,

Just like insects use to chirrup.

If these ridges are being used in a similar way,

What could be rubbing against them?

What I had overlooked for a long time

Was that this feather, number 5,

Is weird in its own way.

It's super-straight and then it kinks over,

Choot!, just a little kink,

And it's got kind of a blade on the underside.

And, suddenly, what it looked like I had

Was teeth on a comb and a plectrum

And, together, they form an instrument.

[ chirp ]

Narrator: Each time the manakin beats its wings together,

The plectrum moves down

And then up, against the hard-ridged feather,

Strumming each of those bumps as it goes

And causing the feather to vibrate.

Kim had found the first bird in the world

That chirrups like an insect. [ beep ]

Not only has it evolved special feathers,

It has also evolved stronger muscles

[ beep ] with which to power them.

Narrator: But does it vibrate fast enough

To get us to our magic number of just under 1,500,

Which is the bird's frequency of pitch?

Remember, the manakin makes

107 wing beats a second,

But produces a sound that's made

By almost 1,500 vibrations a second.

Here's the really cool thing.

There are seven bumps on that feather,

Which means that, every time the wings smack together,

It gets rubbed on the way in seven bumps

And then rubbed on the way out with seven bumps.

So there are 14 bumps every time the wings hit

And that perfectly explains the sound.

♪

Narrator: For every wing beat in and back,

That's 14 ridges and 14 more sound vibrations.

If it's bouncing at 107 times a second,

You would expect the frequency of the sound

To be exactly 14 times higher,

And that's exactly what it is.

It's a beautiful scientific experiment.

Narrator: It's a huge feather in the cap

For this manakin, [ beep ]

But why has it evolved such a complicated system

Just to play a song?

The club-winged manakin may not be

The highest flier or the best flier,

But he is a high flier when it comes to the ladies.

He's turned his wings into a musical instrument

And the females love a musician.

[ click-click beep ]

♪

[ suspenseful chord strikes ] [ crickets chirping ]

[ whimsical-suspenseful tune plays ]

Narrator: April 2016.

The national aquarium of new zealand has been home

To inky the octopus for two years.

[ squawking ]

He was donated by fishermen

Who caught him off the nearby coast.

♪

He was identified as a new zealand common octopus,

But there was nothing common about this guy.

He became a favorite with visitors

For his friendly nature and stunning colors.

But then, something bizarre happened.

Conley: One morning they came in.

He was missing. He was gone.

He was not in his enclosure anymore.

Inky, beloved octopus.

He's there one day.

The next day, he's not.

The question [laughs] is -- where did inky go?

[ suspenseful music plays ]

Narrator: The mystery of inky's disappearance

Captured the world's attention.

Newspapers couldn't get enough of the story.

♪

Now, octopuses do have some special talents.

Could inky have just made himself invisible?

♪

The amazing nervous system of the octopus

Allows it to change color, to change texture,

To camouflage and blend in with its surroundings.

Narrator: They're master body sculptors,

Creating shape and color changes in a flash.

And it can do this with these amazing, color-changing cells

Called chromatophores

And each one of these operates like a pupil of an eye.

It can dilate. It can constrict.

Narrator: These cells are like water balloons

Filled with color pigment.

They can expand and contract in unison,

Altering the octopus' appearance dramatically.

And so this allows the octopus to blend in

With its surroundings, to hide itself from predators,

Maybe even to hide itself from oncoming prey.

[ whimsical tune plays ]

Narrator: Staff check the tank carefully

To see if inky was actually masquerading as some sand

Or another creature, but he was nowhere to be seen.

So, he must have planned his own escape.

Narrator: The question is -- how?

♪

♪

[ whimsical tune plays ] narrator: Inky the octopus

Has disappeared from the new zealand aquarium.

He's definitely not camouflaged, so he must've escaped.

[ suspenseful music plays ]

But how could an octopus escape from a tank,

Let alone an aquarium?

They're invertebrates, which mean they have no bones,

And that allows them to pretty much squeeze through

Almost any size space that they wanna squeeze through.

Now inky's tank did have a lid on it,

But this might not have stopped our houdini-like friend.

Connecting this all back to inky,

Even if he didn't have to open the tank all the way,

He could probably open it a sliver

And push his body through.

Narrator: Finding an escape route through some pipes

Or a gap in the lid wouldn't be impossible for this guy.

Octopuses are really well-known for being able

To problem-solve and figure out puzzles

And be able to open things

That you wouldn't expect an animal to be able to open.

[ tranquil tune plays ]

Narrator: Kaelie sivihok is a handler at birch aquarium in san diego.

She knows not to underestimate them.

♪

She's a very intelligent animal,

So I try and come over and say hello

And interact and give special treats here and there.

[baby voice] you found me. [laughs] yeah.

She can recognize my face,

After being the hand that fed her for a couple years,

And then she can also recognize my smell.

Narrator: Octopuses pick up smell through floating molecules,

Like we do, it's just that theirs are

In seawater, rather than the air.

♪

Kaelie keeps this one regularly entertained with challenges.

We are going to use this puzzle.

So I have prepared a little octo-pop, I like to call them.

This is made of clam juice.

I'm gonna put that in here and, as you can see,

It looks very similar to all the different plastic pieces

That are in here, so she'll have to differentiate

Which is an octo-pop and which is plastic.

[ whimsical tune plays ]

Narrator: The octo-pop is the shape of an ice cube.

It won't fit back through every hole,

So the octopus will have to problem-solve to get it out.

Sivihok: So, as soon as that octo-pop hit the water,

It started to release all of its yummy smells.

Narrator: Each arm of the octopus

Is operated by its own nervous system,

So each one basically has a mind of its own.

So they actually have nine brains.

It gives them advantage when it comes

To this problem-solving because they can manipulate things

On multiple levels without havin' to think about it

Through a central brain.

Sivihok: So, right here is a little piece of clam

That she's got in her suction cup right here,

So, she's found it.

You can see her arm inside of it, though.

See it coming out the other end?

Narrator: Clever stuff,

But what does this intelligence mean for inky's escape?

So an octopus might escape because all those nine brains

Are workin' overtime and they're super-curious,

So they're gonna see what's new.

Narrator: But if inky did escape on his own, where did he go?

♪

♪

[ whimsical tune plays ] narrator: Inky the octopus

Has escaped from a new zealand aquarium,

Sparking fascination around the world.

[ whimsical outro plays ]

[ suspenseful music plays ] one question being asked

Is -- why?

Could he had seen some sort of food that he wanted?

♪

Narrator: Jennifer hofmeister,

From the university of california,

Knows all about octopuses' huge appetites.

They find their food

And determine what food is

Based on tasting and touching

Everything around them.

All of their suckers are covered in taste buds.

It would be like me having taste buds

All over the bottom of my feet

And being able to taste every single thing that I walked on.

Narrator: And they don't just hunt underwater.

[ suspenseful music plays ]

In some habitats, for example, in tide pools,

We know that they can leave the water,

Actually walk on land,

And go into another tide pool to find additional food.

Narrator: Octopuses have gills,

So they're dependent on water to breathe

And, as long as their skin stays moist,

They can breathe out of water for several minutes.

But, when they do venture out, they make sure it counts.

♪

Speaker: [gasp] shorty!

There's an octopus eating a crab!

Hofmeister: Octopus have very high metabolisms

And so we think a lot of what's driving their movement is food.

They see that crab. It's out of the water.

Doesn't bother them.

They're gonna jump right out and get it.

So, because they can crawl, it gives them some

Of that freedom to explore these new habitats.

[ sinister chord strikes ]

Narrator: But would a well-fed octopus in an aquarium

Really be hungry enough to go in search of food?

♪

It's weird in aquaria because they are fed a lot.

You can feed an octopus crabs and crabs and crabs

And I don't think an octopus at an aquarium is hungry.

♪

Narrator: If inky was well-fed,

Why else would he escape?

♪

It seems likely that inky tried to escape,

Not because he didn't like it where he was,

But because he could.

Some have argued that octopuses are as intelligent as dogs.

I mean, my dogs love trying to get out of our yard.

It's a great yard, but they wanna dig their way out.

They wanna eat through the fence.

♪

They see something new. They see something exciting

And they just wanna check it out.

Narrator: But where could inky have gone?

Well, staff believe that, in the middle of the night,

He decided to explore

And photos reveal a possible escape route.

Behind this wooden panel

Is an overflow pipe from the tank,

Which leads to a pipe that goes across the room,

Underneath these floorboards,

And to a 50-meter drainpipe

That leads right to the open sea.

Many staff are convinced

That this is exactly where inky ended up.

Given everything we know about octopuses,

It's not that surprising that inky would be able

To sneak out of his tank, find a drain,

And find his way back into the open ocean.

Narrator: Inky now has twitter accounts and his own children's book,

On top of dozens of headlines.

Everyone loves an octopus houdini.

♪

[ crickets chirping ]