All language subtitles for David.Attenborough.Micro.Monsters.S01E02.Predator.2160p.NOW.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.265-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Our world is not always the same.

Hidden from our view lies
a different world...

...creatures unlike us...

...almost alien...

...yet they are more numerous
than any other group on the planet.

Welcome to the fascinating
world of the arthropods - spiders,

scorpions and insects.

Today, we have new camera
techniques that will allow us

to reveal in greater detail
than ever before their lives -

the way they fight and feed
and reproduce.

This series uses specially
developed 3-D camera technology

to study the micro world
in extraordinary detail,

both on location and in specially
constructed environments.

We'll witness the births,
the challenges they face

and the moments when their lives
hang in the balance.

And that may help us
understand how it is that today

over 80% of all animal species
on this planet are arthropods.

In the series,

we'll see the way they have
evolved from the comparative

simplicity of the millipede
to vast colonies that contain

hundreds, even millions,
of individuals.

We'll witness the most extraordinary
transformations

in the animal kingdom.

We'll meet ants that farm,

spiders that can cast their webs...

...and the bug that wears the bodies
of its victims as a disguise.

Welcome to a strange
and dangerous world.

Ever since they first appeared
on land, the arthropods have

been fighting one another -
for territory, a mate and a meal.

To survive,
every living thing must eat

and around 10% of arthropods
eat other arthropods.

Some of the most remarkable hunting
strategies in the animal kingdom

are happening right under our noses.

These are whirligig beetles and they
live on ponds throughout the world.

They use the water's surface very
like radar to detect their prey.

A stick insect held fast to the
water by surface tension.

Its struggles send vibrations
across the water's surface.

The whirligig senses them and puts
its water radar into action.

It spins at a rate of around
12 times a second.

This spinning motion sends tiny
ripples across the water.

These bounce back
from the stick insect.

The whirligig detects the faint
echoes in much the same way as radar

and it closes in on the victim.

Whirligigs all over
the pond join in.

They too have their own water radar.

The stick insect stands little
chance against this voracious horde.

Whirligigs use
the environment to help them

detect the presence of prey...

...but the surface of water

is not the only media for carrying
messages.

Some predators have developed
more sophisticated ways of hunting.

One group of arthropods,
the spiders,

produce a substance so versatile
and so strong

it's used by 30,000
different species - silk.

They use it for a multitude
of different purposes -

for transport, for spinning
a filament that

catches in the wind and then carries
them aloft, as trap lines,

as lining for their nests, but,
above all,

they use it to trap their prey.

These striking patterns of silk
are made by one of the rainforest's

most effective predators - Argiope,
the St Andrew's Cross spider.

Nobody is sure why Argiope
constructs this conspicuous

white silken cross
at the centre of her web.

Some experts think
that it serves as a warning,

but this fly certainly
didn't notice it.

Argiope wraps her catch
to prevent it from escaping,

using not web silk, but a different
non-stretch kind...

and then she paralyses it
with her toxic venom.

She'll eat it later.

Soon, another potential victim
strays onto the web -

a Portia spider.

But before Argiope can strike,

Portia retreats
to the edge of the web.

And then she does something
very curious.

She plucks on very carefully
chosen strands.

She creates rhythmic vibrations
that calm Argiope.

Instead of attacking Portia, Argiope
returns to the centre of her web...

...and that is exactly where Portia
wants her...

...because Portia hunts other spiders

and has Argiope in her sights.

She moves off the web,
so that she can survey the scene.

Over many hours,
she moves around the surrounding

branches in search of the best point
to launch an attack.

She uses these robotic movements
to camouflage herself from Argiope.

To poorly sighted creatures,
she probably looks like a thread

fluttering in the wind and this buys
time for her surveillance.

Portia has superb eyesight and she
can judge angles and distances

with great precision.

She's planning to
pounce on Argiope.

She has to be exactly on target.

Her venom kills Argiope instantly.

Like most spiders, she can't eat
solid food, so she pumps

her digestive juices into her prey
and then sucks the corpse dry.

Our planet is home to over
a million species of arthropods.

Today, they outnumber other
animal species four to one.

That's part of their fascination -
their variety.

And that variety is
evident in the predators,

the bugs that hunt other bugs...

...and the most ingenious of all
are the spiders.

Most spiders
capture their prey in a web.

Glue on the silken filaments
traps a victim

and vibrations through them tell
the spider that a meal is waiting.

But webs come in many shapes
and forms and different spiders

have favoured different places
in which to construct them.

The inside of a log is a good place
to catch beetles

and even small reptiles.

This tangle of silk is the home

of one of Australia's
most feared spiders -

the highly venomous redback.

Despite its appearance,
this web is actually highly complex

and very finely engineered.

It contains some of the strongest
silk produced by any spider...

...so strong than she can catch

and transport prey far larger
than herself.

First, she winds strands of silk
around the struggling beetle

to immobilise it.

When the beetle tires, she bites.

She must pull her victim up to
the part of the web where she lives.

She starts snipping
and re-attaching the lines of silk.

These lines are under tension,
they're spring-loaded,

and that allows the redback
to haul huge weights around her web.

The tiny male watches as
she retrieves her catch.

Spider silk is as stretchy
as elastic,

but harder to snap than steel.

As day turns to night and the forest
plunges into darkness,

nocturnal predators are coming
out to hunt.

One of them is Deinopis -
the ogre-faced spider.

She is found throughout the tropics

and she uses silk in a very
different way.

She has turned it into a net.

Her sticklike body makes her hard to
spot amongst the branches.

Her huge central pair of eyes
are 2,000 times more sensitive

than ours.

And to keep it that way,
she completely rebuilds her retina

at the back of each eye
every single day.

They enable her to hunt in almost
complete darkness.

She hangs an inch or so
above the forest floor

from a series of silk lines.

She strikes.

She stretches her net over her
prey...

...and then wraps it in silk to
immobilise it.

At last, she begins a slow
process of digesting her meal.

For her prey, at least,
the end is quick.

Her fast-acting venom
kills almost instantly.

But venom can have other uses
and some victims are not so lucky.

Venom can be used for both
defence and attack,

but some arthropods use
it in a more subtle way.

Not to kill, but to control.

In the woodlands of Africa
and South Asia,

lives a creature that has mastered
the use of venom like few others.

Meet the jewelled cockroach wasp.

Her iridescent body stands out
brightly against the forest floor,

though the purpose of her
bright colouration is not known.

Certainly, any bug that does spot
her will do well to steer clear.

She hunts, but not for herself.

This cockroach is exactly what
she's been looking for.

It's much larger
and stronger than she is.

Nevertheless, she attacks.

She won't kill it.
She wants it alive.

First, she injects it with a venom
that paralyses its front legs.

This prevents it fighting her off.

Now she injects a second venom
directly into its brain.

Amazingly, this instantly stops
the cockroach responding to danger.

It becomes completely docile.

She leads her victim to
an underground burrow.

Here, she'll lay her eggs directly
onto the cockroach's body.

She conceals the burrow's entrance
with leaf litter.

This will stop other predators
finding the cockroach or her lava.

The lava spends five days sucking
the cockroach's body fluids,

then it will burrow inside
and begin to feed.

It eats the least
essential parts first

and saves the nervous system
and the breathing system for last.

A process that takes
ten days or more.

And for all that time the cockroach
is alive and powerless to respond.

Over a period of weeks, the lava
continues to grow and develop

until, eventually, all that remains
of the cockroach

is a dead, empty husk.

And from it emerges
a fully mature adult wasp...

...ready to repeat the gruesome cycle
for itself.

We have seen some of the deadly
ways in which arthropods

prey upon one another.

The way these creatures hunt has
shaped their bodies and their lives.

The struggle for survival amongst
arthropods is often brutal,

but that's a key to their success.

The strongest survive to produce
the next generation.

In the next programme, I'll be
looking at how the desire for sex

has shaped bugs into a
bewildering array of forms.

We'll see how courtship is not
always what it seems.

Some males bribe females into having
sex.

And others trick them.

And we'll see the next generation
of micro-monsters take their first

tentative steps into their small
and often dangerous world.

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