All language subtitles for David.Attenborough.Micro.Monsters.S01E03.Courtship.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 utterly 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 3D camera technology

to study the micro world in
extraordinary detail,

both on location and in specially
constructed environments.

We'll witness their 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 this 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 casts their webs...

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

Welcome to a strange
and dangerous world.

The tropical rainforests of Africa
are teeming with a huge

variety of insects.

And with so many bugs around,
you might think that finding

a mate would be easy,
but you would be wrong.

Courtship is often, complex,
protracted, fascinating,

and, for some, even brutal.

This is a Goliath beetle -
one of the biggest of all insects.

I know that he's a male,
because he's got these two

horns on the front of his head,
with which he battles for females.

Goliaths are among the strongest
insects in the world.

This male can lift 850 times
his own body weight -

the equivalent of you or me
lifting ten elephants.

He'll need all his strength
to win the right to mate.

The female has no horns.

She doesn't need them.

It's the males that do the fighting.

They face off - each assessing
the threat the other may pose.

It's a savage battle,

with each trying to hook his horn
under the other's shell.

If one of the males flips
his opponent off the branch,

he'll have the female to himself.

The loser retreats.

And, with the duel over,
the winner gets the mate.

On the floor of the
South American forest,

it's all about touch and smell.

Sight is not much use to bugs that
live in the undergrowth.

This male Chilean rose
tarantula is almost blind.

He searches for a mate using smell,
and, when he's close enough,

by touch.

Right now, he's on the trail
of a female, and he's come prepared.

Before he set out, he wove a
silk mat, deposited sperm on it,

and sucked his sperm
into one of his palps -

a finger-like appendage
close to his mouth.

This female has signalled her
presence to him

by emitting a sex hormone.

And he approaches.

He pushes himself beneath her.

Special hooks on his front
legs hold her fangs aside

to prevent her biting him.

His movements also stimulate
sensitive hairs on her underside.

And, with this, she yields, and
he uses his palps to fertilise her.

When she lays her eggs,
the offspring will all be his.

In North America, there's a male
with far less time to find a mate.

He is a nasonia jewel wasp, and he's
no bigger than a match head.

He only lives for two days,
so his entire,

short life is devoted to mating.

And with so little time,

he has an unusual way to ensure
that he's successful.

When he finds a female, he smears
a sex hormone on her antenna.

If she finds it stimulating,
she'll let him mate.

This female doesn't,

and wipes his scent off as fast
as he smears it on.

He has no time to waste, and moves
on to look for another female.

Here's one.

This female likes his scent,
and he mates.

Success.

But to make sure that she doesn't
mate with any others,

he climbs back onto her
and smears on more hormones.

Now other males will not
find her receptive.

And he will be almost certain
to pass on his genes.

At least some of the next
generation will be his.

In the African rainforest,
a particularly dangerous bug

has evolved a surprisingly balletic
way to win his mate.

There are over 2,000 species
of scorpion.

And while only 20 of them
are dangerous to humans,

all of them are
deadly to other bugs.

These Tanzanian red claws, like all
scorpions, are mainly nocturnal.

Their mating rituals
generally take place at night.

But their bodies fluoresce
under ultraviolet light,

and that makes it possible for us to
watch their most intimate behaviour.

When the female finds a male,
their extraordinary ritual begins.

They dance.

He arouses her...

by caressing her mouth parts.

But while he tries to stimulate her,
she is testing his strength.

She yields.

Now he is leading her.

Eventually, he deposits
his sperm on the ground

and gently pulls her onto it.

He's proved his strength
and agility,

and she has ensured the best
possible father for her young.

Arthropods have many fascinating
courtship rituals...

...from the dance of the scorpion...

...to the Goliath beetles'
battle of strength...

...and the tarantulas'
intimate embrace.

But, for some creatures,
courtship is more violent.

And this happens in even
the smallest worlds.

This dish contains a complete
colony of tramp ants.

They're minute.

Each individual is less than
the size of a grain of sand.

So, to see them properly,
we have to use huge magnifications.

But they're worth watching,
because the dominant male has

a really brutal way of ensuring
that only he breeds.

200 times magnification reveals
the intimate workings

of this tiny colony.

A few hundred ants, all at work.

The winged females are queens,
and they're ready to mate.

And these two males are fighting
for the right to mate with them.

The colony's current dominant male
is the yellower of the two.

He must somehow drive all the
other males out of the nest,

leaving him as the
only male that can mate.

But he's not strong enough to
kill the other males himself.

Instead, he gets other ants
to do his dirty work.

He smears a rival male
with a powerful scent.

This makes it smell like an invader.

The colony's sterile worker ants
attack it on the dominant

male's behalf, slicing it in two.

In this colony, at least,
violence pays.

On the forest floors of India,
another insect is taking

a much gentler, but no less devious,
approach to securing a mate.

These male tropical house
crickets are chirruping by rubbing

their wings together in the hope
of attracting females.

Their calls are so loud that the
females can hear them

from 20 metres away.

This female has made her choice.

But the male has a trick
to increase the chances

of his sperm fertilising her.

He will give her a present.

She sits on top of the male
and tastes him

with her antennae to make sure
she hasn't mated with him already.

He responds by producing a parcel
of sperm, wrapped in a rich syrup.

As he leaves, the parcel
sticks to the female's sex organs.

She eats the syrup...

...and his sperm remains
attached to her sex organs.

This gift of food
distracts the female

as fertilisation takes place...

...and makes her far less likely to
go off searching for another mate.

The male's gift has ensured
that he fathers her offspring.

Throughout the tropics, one insect
has come to symbolise the extremes

that some animals will go to in
order to mate.

Praying mantises are highly
skilled predators...

...and they hunt by sight.

But their hearing is limited
to just one sound.

They can detect bat sonar to
avoid being eaten.

Praying mantises are so named

because of their pius-looking
posture.

But these bugs are neither
meek nor mild.

They are veracious predators.

They'll mostly eat locusts
and crickets

but have been known to eat creatures
far larger than themselves.

This male mantis, climbing up
towards his potential mate,

can have little idea of the danger
that he's in.

Perhaps put off by the unwelcome
advances of the male,

or simply driven by hunger,

the female mantis
begins to eat her suitor.

Holding his upper
body in her left claw,

she starts to chew
through his thorax...

...until the two
halves of his body are only held

together by a thread of flesh.

Eventually, his head drops away.

Remarkably,
this male isn't entirely dead.

He's begun to impregnate her.

The female has removed his head
and, with it,

the brain cells that
control his inhibitions,

but his abdomen has its own
nerve cells.

Cells that control
the act of copulation,

and they allow him to pass on his
genes, even in the throws of death.

In reproductive terms,
this male has succeeded.

But his death is a symbol of how
strangely unfeeling

the arthropod world can be.

Every species of animal must
reproduce.

If it didn't, it would
become extinct.

Arthropods have developed many
different ways of doing so,

some fantastic, some violent,

and their success has led them

to becoming one of the most abundant
forms of animals on this planet.

Bugs will dance, fight

and even sacrifice their lives
just to find a mate.

Courtship is key to their success.

But more important still is
what happens next -

the arrival of offspring.

The birth of a new generation.

In the next programme, I'll meet
the creatures that do without sex

altogether and produce millions
of young in a single summer.

Watch the arrival of thousands
of baby spiders...

...and look at perhaps the most
remarkable

transformation in the animal
kingdom...

The moment when the feeding machine
that was a caterpillar

becomes the breeding
machine that is an adult butterfly.

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