All language subtitles for Natural Curiosities S01E04 - In the Dark CC HDTV x264 AC3 1080p

'The natural world is
full of extraordinary animals

'with amazing life histories.

'Yet certain stories are more
intriguing than most.'

The mysteries of
a butterfly's life cycle.

Or the strange
biology of the Emperor penguin.

Some of these creatures
were surrounded by myth

and misunderstandings
for a very long time.

And some have only recently
revealed their secrets.

These are the animals
that stand out from the crowd,

the curiosities I find most
fascinating of all.

'In this programme,

'I examine the remarkable
lives of two animals

'that have mastered
the problems of life in the dark.'

'The giant squid, which lives
in the deepest oceans...'

..and owls.

Highly specialised hunters
that seek their prey at night.

Some animals acquired
frightening reputations

almost as soon as
they were discovered.

In this episode,

we investigate the stories
surrounding two such creatures...

GORILLA MOANS

..the gorilla and the vampire bat.

Why did they get such
bad reputations?

And were they justified?

When you think of animals of the
night, owls tend to come to mind.

In fact, not all owls
are nocturnal,

but those that are
have a very similar-shaped face,

round and flat.

And their most prominent
facial features

are the large, forward-facing eyes.

These give them
a seemingly wise look and in fact,

owls have often been
revered for their wisdom.

But they have also been linked
with legends of death and evil.

They are birds of the night.

To many, they seem
eerie and mysterious.

'But how good is an owl's eyesight?

'Can they really see what we can't?'

The colour picture that
forms at the back of our eyes

is very much like that
that forms in the eyes of a bird.

We have roughly the same
number of colour receptors.

But when day changes to night,
the picture changes.

Then, different receptors
come into play, called rods.

And owls have a much higher
proportions of rods

in their eyes than we do.

So they're extremely good at seeing
at low light levels.

Aren't you?

The barn owl sets off
to hunt shortly after dusk.

As the light fades,
we struggle to see.

But the owl has no such problem.

Flying low, it keeps its eyes
trained on the ground,

Iooking for any
movement in the grass.

Its eyes now give it the edge
over its prey,

and it can hunt at a time
when few other birds can.

And there's another
important difference

between an owl's eye and ours.

The pupil in the front
of the eye, the hole,

is very much bigger in an owl's.

Ours measures around
eight millimetres across.

An owl's, like this tawny owl,
is around 13.

That means very much more light
can get into the eye,

so the picture formed on the retina
is very much brighter.

In fact, it's about
three times as bright.

OWL SQUEAKS
Aw...

OWL SQUEAKS
Aw...

So, unlike other birds, which cannot
see so well in the dark,

the owl can remain active
throughout the night.

But specialist eyes
create problems.

Squeezing a large eyeball

into a relatively small skull
requires changes.

The shape of the owl eye
is more tubular than round.

This may help to increase
the size of the image on the retina

at the back.

But the owl's eye shape
and size presents certain problems.

It doesn't fit snugly into the skull

and there's no room in the socket
for muscles to move it.

And there's another problem.

A closer look at an owl's skull

shows that its ear openings
are very big.

So the only way for the tubular eyes
to fit into the skull is for them

to be placed in the middle of the
face in a forward-looking position.

This limits the owl's
field of view.

But owls have a trick
that allows them

to dramatically increase
their field of view.

They can rotate their heads nearly
all the way round.

Folklore has it
that you can kill an owl

by walking in circles round
a tree in which one is perched

and so make it twist its head off.

That, of course, is not true.

But owls can certainly
turn their heads

through 270 degrees
in either direction.

If we tried to do that, we'd tear
our arteries and break our necks.

So, how do owls do it?

Recently, scientists have
discovered that it's due

to a remarkable
adaptation of their bones.

Owls' necks, as you can see in this
skeleton of an eagle owl,

have 14 vertebrae. That's twice
the number that we have.

This gives them
greater flexibility.

But only recently, CT scans
have shown researchers

how the owl can rotate
its head without passing out.

Cavities within the neck bones
are ten times larger

in an owl's neck than in ours,

giving more room for
vital blood vessels

that run up to the owl's head.

What's more, the carotid arteries
enter the head

much higher up the neck
and are centrally positioned,

and this may help avoid
damage during twisting.

And the owl's arteries seem
to widen below the brain,

allowing blood to pool.

This may create a vital blood
reservoir that guarantees blood flow

to the brain, should the vessels
below be squeezed

while the head is turning.

So the owl can turn its head
almost all the way round

without risk of injury.

So, owls have successfully
dealt with the problems

created by having large eyes.

OWL HOOTS

But are these eyes really
all they seem?

It was long thought
that owls can see perfectly,

even on the darkest of nights.

But that is not the case.

On cloudy nights and beneath trees
with dense canopies,

they can only discern
the faintest silhouettes.

It's nowhere near detailed
enough to hunt for prey.

But the owl has another
sense to help it...

acute hearing.

In the 18th century,

the great French naturalist
Count de Buffon wrote,

"Their sense of hearing
seems to be superior

"to that of other birds and perhaps
to that of every other animal,

"for the drum of the ear

"is proportionately larger
than in quadrupeds

"and besides, they can open and shut
this organ at pleasure,

"a power possessed by no
other animal."

Well, we know today that
that's true, some owls,

though not all,
but Buffon was quite right

to draw our attention to
the remarkable hearing of owls.

OWL HOOTS

The owl's large ear
openings are not visible

because they're hidden
beneath the face feathers.

And unlike other birds, they have
fleshy outer ears like our own.

In many owls, they're positioned
at slightly different levels

on either side of the head.

And it's these features
that help them

to accurately pinpoint their prey.

Most owls have very similar shape
faces, flat and round.

It's called a facial ruff.

It's formed from feathers that
are particularly dense and bristly,

and they lie flat
on either side of the face,

just behind the opening
to the ears.

It's thought that they deflect
the sound into the ears.

In fact, the facial ruff seems
to be a kind of sound amplifier.

The barn owl has a distinctive,
heart-shaped ruff and its face

acts like a satellite dish, focusing
the sounds from below into the ears.

Its soft flight feathers enable
it to move through the air

in almost complete silence
so that it can hear

the slightest rustle
and approach its prey undetected.

But few have as large a facial ruff
as the great grey owl.

Although it hunts during the day,
its prey is hidden under

cover of snow, so it has to rely
entirely on its ears.

Studies have shown that
owls' hearing is particularly

acute for very quiet sounds.

In fact, part of an owl's brain
that detects sound has three times

as many neurones as its
equivalent in, say, a crow's brain.

The hairs of the inner ear
which detect the vibrations

of sound are particularly
abundant in an owl.

Not only that, whereas
the equivalent hairs in my ear

degrade with age,
in an owl's they are regrown.

So whereas my hearing gets
worse as I get older,

an owl's always remains very acute.

The owl's ears may in fact be more
crucial to its nocturnal

Iifestyle than its eyes.

But by combining all its senses,

it has solved
the problems of living in the dark.

So it seems that the shape of
the face helps both the owl's sight

and its hearing.

So whether or not you think
the owl is wise,

it certainly has
a head for life in the dark.

Next we journey into the darkest
of places to try and unravel

the life of a creature that has long
captured our imagination.

Here in the Natural History Museum
is a specimen of an animal

that has fascinated
humanity for thousands of years.

It is a giant squid.

This particular one was
netted off the Falkland Islands,

immediately put on ice,

and then brought here
to the museum in London.

Few museums have complete
or as perfectly preserved

specimens as this one.

This one measures about eight
metres, the length of a London bus.

But others have been caught
even bigger,

one about twice the length
that weighed around a tonne.

Very few people have ever seen
one of these creatures alive.

That's because they live at
depths of around 1,000 metres

and down there, it's pitch-black.

So how do these animals manage
to hunt in such conditions?

That's a question that has proved
exceedingly difficult to answer.

Sailors a long time ago told stories
of having seen a gigantic,

squid-like creature
known as the Kraken.

It was said to have huge tentacles
strong enough to grip

and sink a ship.

The tales seemed unlikely
and far-fetched, but could the giant

squid perhaps have been the source
of these extraordinary reports?

The first clues that this creature
may in fact be real came from

the tales of sailors
on whaling ships

in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Some of them reported in their
ships' logs that they often noticed

strange, circular scars on the heads
and jaws of captured sperm whales.

The scars suggested
a fierce wrestling match with

some enormous beast.

What creature
could take on a 70-tonne whale?

Inside the stomachs of the whales
were clues.

A number of hard,
indigestible objects like this one.

It looks a bit like the beak
of a parrot.

But in fact, it belongs to
an entirely different

kind of animal - to a cephalopod.

Cephalopods are marine animals
that include the octopus,

the squid and the cuttlefish.

This beak is the mouth part
of one such creature

and is used to tear its prey
into small pieces.

Sailors on the whaling ships
immediately recognised

the beak as being
from a cephalopod.

But its size suggested a creature

many times bigger than
any known species.

Cephalopods have a ring of eight or
ten arms, or tentacles, which they

use to push food into their mouth
in the centre of the ring.

The arms are equipped with
round suckers to help hold

onto their prey.

It is the marks from these that were
found by sailors on the bodies

of sperm whales.

Could a gigantic squid have
caused such injuries,

and how massive must it be
to tackle a sperm whale,

one of the biggest
animals on the planet?

And then in 1873,
fishermen caught what

they called a sea monster off the
coast of Newfoundland in Canada.

After killing it with their knives,
they lost the body,

but they brought the head and
tentacles to the local clergyman.

The clergyman bought it off
the fishermen for $10

and displayed it in his living room
by carefully draping it over

a bath stand, to show off its many
arms and tentacles.

The photograph clearly proved that
here was a gigantic squid with

its beak at the top and over
seven metre long tentacles.

Here last was the evidence
that the monster of the deep,

the Kraken, really does exist.

But the giant squid itself
continued to evade scientists,

even after its discovery.

It's only since the invention
of submersibles that we have

been able to follow
it down into its deep sea home.

Even so, we seem to have had little

success in finding
the elusive giant.

So scientists are now trying
to piece together its biology

by looking at other
closely-related animals.

This is an octopus.

It uses both its eyes and tentacles
to explore its surroundings.

The octopus's brain is
distributed throughout its body

so that its arms can control
much of their own movement.

It also has a highly complex eyes
and sees in much the same way

as we do, with the lens projecting
an image onto the retina behind.

But while our eyes
focus by squeezing the lens to

change its shape, the octopus's eyes

focus like a camera,
with the lens moving in and out.

The giant squid's eyes
have much the same

structure as those of an octopus,
but when it comes to size, it has

the biggest eye in the animal
kingdom, as large as a football.

For seeing in dim light, a large eye
is better than the small one.

So many animals of the deep
have exceptionally big eyes.

But in order to see at all,
there has to be some light,

and the giant squid lives
at depths of 1,000 metres.

Although very little sunlight
reaches the deeper parts

of the ocean, there is
another kind of light there.

It's produced by
the deep sea animals

and it's called bioluminescence.

The light is produced by
a chemical reaction in the same

way as that in a glow stick does.

When I shake and snap the stick,

two chemicals called luciferin and
luciferase react together to produce

a bioluminescent glow like this...

There.

Some deep sea animals use their own
luciferins to produce light, while

in others it's produced by bacteria
living in special light organs.

A flashing light can act as
a lure or confuse a predator.

It's thought about 90% of
deep sea creatures produce

bioluminescence and they use it
in a number of different ways.

All these fish come from
the deep sea.

They all produce light
in one way or another.

This is the football angler fish
and it has a modified

ray from its dorsal fin which has
lots of little tentacles on top.

The tip of each tentacle produces
a little green light

so it looks as though there is
little shoal of small creatures,

maybe shrimps,
hovering above it in the blackness.

When another shrimp thinks
it might join some friends

and come along that way,
the angler fish simply tilts up,

opens its immense jaw
and has its breakfast.

This, on the other hand,

is a stoplight loosejaw,
which operates in a different way.

It produces red light from
two little organs at the front.

Hardly any other species of fish
in the sea can see red light,

so it can hunt that way
and find its prey.

When it does, it opens this
immense loose jaw and engulfs it.

There you are. Back you go.

But what about the giant squid?

Could it also be
producing bioluminescence?

Some of its close relatives
apparently can.

This is the vampire squid.

It has eight arms
lined with tooth-like projections.

When threatened,
it turns itself inside out,

wrapping its body in a dark cloak.

If that doesn't work,
the squid has another trick.

Small lights at the end of its arms

flash like eyes
to distract the predator.

With so many creatures of the deep
producing light, you might think

that the giant squid
would do so as well.

But scientists studying
their carcasses have not been

able to find any evidence
of light-producing bacteria or

pigments in their bodies.

So it seems that the ocean's elusive
giant truly hides in the dark.

Although it may not produce its own
light, the giant squid can surely

see the bioluminescence of others

and this may help it to locate
its prey.

With no sightings of a living
giant squid since it was

first discovered, we seem to be no
closer to discovering the truth.

But in 2004, Japanese scientists
finally made a breakthrough.

Using small squid as bait,

they were able to attract
a live giant squid.

These first images are tantalising,

but they still reveal little
of the animal's true behaviour.

Where does it live
and how does it feed?

Questions such as these
remain unanswered.

In spite of its great size,

the giant squid has proved
remarkably difficult to find.

No doubt scientists will
continue to search for it

and discover more about it.

But my guess is that the giant squid
is likely to remain ahead of

the game, that this
natural curiosity

is likely to see us
before we see it.

Both the owl and the giant squid
live in a world with little light

and both have evolved
large eyes, the better to

see the world around them.

But while we've unravelled the owl's
ways of surviving in the dark,

much about giant squid
still remains a mystery.

This statue in the London Zoo
is of Guy the Gorilla.

He was perhaps the zoo's
most well-known resident

and became one of the world's
most famous gorillas.

In his prime,
Guy weighed in at over 200 kilos.

His neck, as you can see,
was thicker than a man's waist.

He stood five feet four inches tall,
over a metre and a half.

That was with his knees bent.

When Guy arrived here in 1940,
little was known about gorillas.

The reports from Africa hinted of

a creature that was
shockingly brutal.

So it's hardly surprising that

people flocked to see this
fearsome monster for themselves.

But Guy proved to be
a gentle giant who won

the affection of the public.

So how and why did the gorilla gain

this reputation as
a fearsome savage?

Today we know a lot about gorillas
and their way of life.

There are, in fact,
a number of different kinds,

some of which live in the lowlands
and others in the mountains.

The stay in small family groups

and spend much of their days
feeding on leaves and shoots.

Many people, including myself,
have travelled a long way to meet

these close relatives of ours.

Remarkably, despite being
the largest living ape,

the gorilla was one of the last
to be described by science.

In 1847, an American missionary
and naturalist, Thomas Savage,

was travelling back home from Africa

when he stopped off to stay
with some friends in the Congo.

His friends' house was decorated
with African curiosities

and one of them caught his eye,
a skull.

But it was not like one
he'd ever seen before in Africa.

It had two huge eye sockets, a crest
like a Mohawk haircut running

from front to back and another
transversely across here.

These are anchor points for huge
muscles for the jaw and neck.

He knew immediately he was looking
at a spectacular new species

but he had no time
to go in search of it.

He frantically negotiated with some
African hunters and managed to

acquire further skulls and bones
of the same kind of animal.

When he got back to the States,
Savage handed the specimens

to an anatomist friend
who immediately

recognised that they belonged to
some kind of ape.

He gave it the scientific name,
Gorilla,

a Greek word meaning
wild, hairy people.

He then sealed
the reputation of the gorilla with

the convention of adding the surname
of the person who discovered it.

In this case, Thomas Savage.

But many people misguidedly assumed
that the scientific name,

Gorilla savagei, was
a description of the nature

of this newly found ape.

Though gorillas had somehow
remained unknown to science

until Victorian times, other great
apes were already quite familiar.

They were all commonly called orangs
after the most famous of them,

the orangutan, which the Dutch

had encountered in Indonesia
in the 17th century.

Shortly afterwards, the Portuguese
discovered chimpanzees in Africa

and by the time reports
of the gorilla appeared, both chimps

and orangs had been
appearing in circuses

and the courts of European royalty
for over 200 years.

The first gorillas to arrive
in Britain were dead specimens

and unlike these late arrivals,
they will often badly preserved.

They went on display at the
Crystal Palace and their grotesque

appearance was supported by horrific
accounts of their nature.

One of the early collectors
of gorillas was an American

anthropologist called Du Chaillu.

He made numerous expeditions
to Africa and returned with

tales of terrifying
encounters with gorillas.

In this, his bestseller, Exploration
And Adventure In Equatorial Africa,

amongst sensational tales of
cannibalism, charging buffalo

and tropical fevers,
is the very first eyewitness

account of man meeting male gorillas
in their jungle home.

"He was a sight, I think,
I shall never forget.

"Nearly six feet high
with immense body,

"huge chest and great,
muscular arms,

"with fiercely glaring,
large, deep grey eyes and a hellish

"expression of face that seemed,
to me, like some nightmare vision.

"Thus stood before us this king
of the African forest."

To be fair, Chaillu did dispel
some of the more ridiculous stories

and myths about the gorilla,
but his compelling

tales of their fierce nature was
just what the public wanted to hear.

GORILLA CALLS

Du Chaillu's vivid description
of the gorilla in the wild

reinforced its image as a fearsome
beast and confirmed its reputation.

GORILLA CALLS

These displays may look fearsome,
but in fact,

they're only rarely
followed by physical violence.

Du Chaillu's description
may have wowed readers,

but the scientific establishment
were rather less easy to impress.

He was branded a braggart,
a plagiarist and a charlatan.

Some suggested
he never even visited Africa

and that his ferocious creatures
were, in fact, gentle.

But he had his strongest support
right at the top.

Professor Richard Owen, founder of
the London Natural History Museum.

Owen was one of the most
respected figures

of Victorian science, but also
one of the most widely disliked.

He was vehemently opposed to
Darwin's theory of evolution,

which suggested that apes
and humans were closely related.

Du Chaillu's description of
a ferocious gorilla suited Owen,

because it seemed to
support his view that we could not

possibly be related to such
dreadful monsters.

But he could hardly deny
the anatomical

similarity between gorillas
and humans.

This illustration from 1855,
shows the skeleton of a man

and gorilla side-by-side.

It was published by Owen himself

and makes clear the likeness
between the two species.

But Owen was still not willing
to accept that man could have

ape-like ancestors.

In 1860, a great debate about
evolution and man's place

in the natural world took place
in this very room in Oxford.

Richard Owen presented compelling
evidence for the presence of

three structures in the human brain
that were absent in a gorilla's.

According to Owen, this made the
descent of man from apes impossible.

As the only anatomist with access
to gorilla specimens,

he was confident
he was on firm ground,

but he hadn't counted on biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley.

Huxley, known as Darwin's bulldog,
was, in his own words,

waiting for this opportunity to nail
that mendacious humbug, Owen,

Iike a kite to a barn door,
and immediately challenged his

findings, vowing to prove him wrong.

In the years that followed,
Huxley doggedly pursued Owen

and did indeed prove him
wrong on all counts.

He found all three brain
structures in the apes

and proved apes were closer
to men than to monkeys.

Richard Owen had, according to
Huxley, been guilty of wilful

and deliberate falsehood.

Owen and Du Chaillu's misleading
descriptions of the gorilla

failed to disprove
our relationship to apes.

On the contrary,
they became a turning point

in our acceptance
that they are our cousins.

But, sadly, the damage to
the gorilla's reputation had

already been done.

When Guy arrived in London
almost 100 years after the discovery

of gorillas, people still regarded
him as a fearsome and savage beast.

It took the next 30 years of
Guy's life for a more accurate

picture of the gorilla to emerge.

Although gorillas can, indeed, be
dangerous when angry or threatened,

most of the time, they are mild
and peaceful creatures

and nowhere is this shown more
clearly than in a charming story

from Guy's time here at the zoo.

Guy's cage often attracted sparrows
that then became trapped inside.

But rather than kill them,
Guy would lift the tiny birds

carefully onto his hand, examine
them and then release them.

He was, indeed, a gentle giant.

Over time, thanks to the
determination of field researchers

Iike Dian Fossey, people have seen
another side to gorillas.

By the time I met them,
many of us were ready to see them

not as savages,
but as animals that are equally

suited to their environment
as we are to ours.

So, now, at last, the gorilla,
which was once labelled a fearsome

beast, has managed to
shake off its undeserved reputation.

Our second subject, the vampire bat,
has also had an undeservedly

bad reputation and been the
inspiration behind tales of evil.

Bats have had a bad reputation
for a very long time.

As creatures of the night, they are
connected with dark mysteries

and devilish goings-on.

But there was never any real
evidence to support these

claims of their evil nature, that is

until the Conquistadors
returned from South America with

tales of giant bats that
dropped down on you as you slept

and sucked the very
blood from your veins.

Tales of vampire bats.

Stories of giant,
bloodsucking bats have long been

part of the culture
of South American people.

Images of them
with savage fangs are common

and a bat god was
associated with death.

But it wasn't until the 18th century
that a detailed description of a

vampire bat was published in Europe
and it came from one of its victims.

An Englishman by the name
of John Gabriel Stedman came

back from South America with reports
of having been bitten by a vampire.

He described a bat of monstrous size
that sucked the blood of men

and cattle when they're fast asleep.

And he proudly declared that
he'd managed to catch the beast

and cut off its head.

Stedman's descriptions
were detailed,

but nonetheless misleading.

His drawing shows, in fact,
the bat that feeds on nectar

and is only a few centimetres long.

He had been bitten by a vampire,
but he had blamed the wrong bat.

Clouded by their own ideas of
what a vampire should look like,

early naturalists jumped to all
sorts of conclusions and assumed

that it was the biggest and the most
ugly that were the bloodsuckers.

In fact, the name "vampire"
was sometimes given to bats that

Iooked the part, but had never
so much as sniffed blood.

These bats, for example,
drawn by the 19th-century German

naturalist Ernst Haeckel,
belonged to a group called

the leaf nosed bats, because of
these strange protrusions

around the end of the nose.

This gives them a particularly
menacing appearance and some early

naturalists thought the nose leaf
was, in fact, the mark of a vampire.

The leaflike object on its nose
was thought to be so sharp,

the bat could use it
to puncture a victim's skin,

and since many bats
have such nose leaves,

over 100 species were mistakenly
described as vampires.

In fact, the nose leaf is made of
nothing more than soft flesh

and couldn't possibly draw blood.

It's used for echolocation.

Echolocation works like sonar.

The bats produce high-frequency
calls and use the returning

echoes to build up a mental
map of their surroundings,

so they are able to find their way
in the pitch dark and hunt for prey.

Most bats produce these calls
in their throats,

but leaf nosed bats project them
out through their nose in a beam.

By doing so, they can feed
and echolocate at the same time.

So many leaf nosed bats had been
discovered that the arrival

in Europe of a specimen
of another, smaller species

in 1810 attracted
very little attention.

It was simply named
Desmodus rotundus,

on account of it being
a little portly.

Some 30 years later,
when Charles Darwin was travelling

around the world aboard the Beagle,

he observed Desmodus feeding
in the wild for the first time.

He saw it drinking the blood
of sleeping horses and cattle.

He had, at last,
identified the true vampire.

We know that there are only
three species of vampire bats

and they all live in South America.

They're totally unique in being
the only mammals to feed exclusively

on blood, but feeding on blood is
not as easy as you might think.

It's actually
a pretty challenging diet.

Blood is made up of water and
protein and has virtually no fat,

so, vampires find it hard
to get enough energy.

They must consume 50% of their own
body weight in blood each night,

or they'll die within a few days.

Under the cover of darkness,
the vampire sets out to hunt.

The nose leaf and echolocation
help it to home in on its prey.

The bat approaches carefully.

Unlike most other bats,
it can use its wings as legs

and it walks on its elbows.

Once near its victim, it uses
its nose leaf in another way.

It acts as a heat-seeking device,

guiding the bat to
the warmth of its prey.

Today, livestock have largely
replaced wild jungle animals,

but even livestock can be
dangerous to a small bat.

Patiently,
the vampire stalks its prey.

And, at last, it's close enough.

The teeth are so sharp
that a nick is all that's needed.

Blood from the wound doesn't clot,
but continues to flow, and within

a quarter of an hour, the bat can
drink 40% of its body weight.

That is the equivalent to one of us
drinking over 20 litres.

Having had its fill,
it's back to the roost.

Finding a meal every night
is not easy,

but vampires have come up with
a solution to that problem.

Those which have been successful
share the blood they've drunk

with those who had failed
to collect any.

Vampires are most likely
to share with those

they know well from roosting
and grooming together.

It's an act of apparent kindness,

but the colony, as a whole,
benefits.

So, it seems that there is another,
gentler side to these bats

than anyone could have imagined.

Unfortunately, just as light
was being shed on the true

nature of the vampire,
an Irish novelist published the book

that would seal their reputation
for the foreseeable future.

Bram Stoker's classic, Dracula,
leaves little doubt as to

where his inspiration came from.

His story combined European myths
of vampires that come to haunt

the living, with stories of
bloodsucking bats

from South America, and it's
an association that the real

vampire bats have struggled
to shed.

More recently, vampire bats have
made headlines once again.

It's been discovered that
their saliva contains the remarkable

blood-thinning agent
that's been named Draculin.

And it's proving to be
the most successful treatment

for stroke victims.

How ironic that a creature we once
believed to be a deadly threat

may turn out to save
human lives in the future.

Maybe it's time we re-evaluated
the reputation of the much

maligned vampire bat.

Vampire bats and gorillas were long
pursued by unfair reputations,

but while our fear of gorillas has
turned into respect and admiration,

the vampire bat, for many of us,
continues to evoke mixed emotions.