Original subtitles

APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to QI,

for a show all about animals beginning with T.

Let's meet our beastly panel.

An absolute terrier, Jason Manford.

Hello!

Turtley awesome, it's Desiree Burch.

T'mightest of 'em all, it's Hannah Waddingham.

And a pterodactyl who needs a P,

it's Alan Davies.

And their buzzers are all T animal noises.

We've got a toad for Jason.

TOAD RIBBITS

Hannah's got a turkey.

TURKEY GOBBLES

Desiree's a tiger.

TIGER ROARS

And Alan's got a tit.

BUZZER: Hello, I'm Piers Morgan.

APPLAUSE

Right, question number one.

How would you cheat in a turtle race?

Oh, easy.

Wheelies on the bottom.

OK, that is exactly right.

CHEERING Yes!

What?!

1974, Britain hosted the world turtle racing championships, OK?

It was a surprisingly big deal.

The chairman of the

New World International Turtle Track Commission

was a man called Cutler Jissom.

LAUGHTER

He didn't pronounce it that, though, did he?

It's JAYssom.

JIssom. JIssom. Actually.

Anyway, he said of the event,

"Turtle racing stood on the verge of becoming a mass sport."

OK, so there were over 200 competitors from nine different countries

and the occasion was slightly sullied

when the winning turtle turned out to have been

placed on a toy car and mechanically propelled.

LAUGHTER

Yes! Wow.

The other way you could cheat in a turtle race

is if you dust your turtle with the insecticide DDT...

Oh, no! Mm.

It sends the turtle's ticks into an absolute biting frenzy,

they bite like crazy and the turtle goes, "Ah!"

God. That's my impression of a turtle racing.

Very good. Very accurate.

I was thinking a piece of lettuce on a massive long arm.

OK, I'm going to give you a point for that

because that is how a lot of turtle racing was done.

They used to have a stick with a cabbage, you're absolutely right.

Usually the turtles were riderless,

sometimes they had riders. What?

Oh, my God, those poor little things.

The things we did before Netflix.

But there's a very famous photograph of Walter Rothschild.

There's the stick with the cabbage on it.

I was thinking of attaching it to his head.

OK. But instead put a whole man on top of him

and then make him go, that's safe. It's not just any man.

Walter Rothschild was heir to one of the greatest banking fortunes in history,

and he had the largest private zoological collection,

and this was his Galapagos tortoise named Rotumah,

and when he acquired him in 1897,

he was reputed to be the oldest and largest tortoise in the world,

thought to be 150 years old,

and he used to like to ride him around like this.

Rotumah was described as "a most erotic and savage individual".

He died after two years in England over sexual over-excitation.

Oh, God!

Anyway, I had a thought, Jason. Oh, yeah?

Which is, could you recreate the picture for us?

LAUGHTER

Because you, Jason, are both erotic and savage.

Well, I am, to be fair. I've got about two years left in me.

OK, let's have a look. We've got a stick.

Right, OK. I've got the hat.

Is this your finest moment?

This is the moment my dad means

when he says I've not got a proper job.

Oh, here we go, I've got the, er...

..and I'm just going to climb on here...

Oh, yeah. Oh, look!

History, ladies and gentlemen, history!

APPLAUSE

That actually does look quite fun.

Yeah. Do you want to have a go?

No, I don't.

I've actually got a pet tortoise. He's not that size, obviously,

he's this big, he's called Flash.

When we got it, my mum said, "They live a long time, you know."

I said, "I know. When I got it, the pet shop owner said 'You've got to include it in your will.'"

My mum said, "You're pulling my leg". I said, "I'm not."

She said, "What are you going to leave it?"

I quite like the idea of bringing back turtle racing.

The Kentucky Derby has been delayed twice. Once in 1945 by...?

War. War, and once in 2020?

Pandemic. Pandemic, and each...

Doesn't stop the horses running, though, does it?

"Are the horses ill? No. Get them out, then."

Each time the Kentucky Derby has been substituted

by the Kentucky Turtle Derby,

known as "the eight slowest minutes in sport."

Not the same track, then?

LAUGHTER

Sun goes down, they all have a kip. Comes up again, off.

Difference between a tortoise and a turtle?

Is it not like one goes in the water and one doesn't?

Tortoises are a kind of turtle

distinguished by living on land, so that's fair.

Ah, that's what I meant.

Tortoises would drown, wouldn't they, if you put them in the bath?

Yes.

I knew that's what'd happened.

LAUGHTER

"It's drowned!" "It's asleep."

"It's drowned! It's in the bottom of the bath!"

And tortoises are mostly vegetarian.

Can I just ask a question? Why in the turtle racing

does there need to be a person on top of the turtle?

Cos humans are arseholes, essentially,

and they want to dominate the animal.

Yes! APPLAUSE

When you go to the car show and there's the car and someone says,

"You know what we need to do? We need to put a girl on top of it."

"Ah, now it looks like a good car."

This turtle needs a girl on the top.

JASON: MiSHELL.

Wahey!

APPLAUSE

And SHELLey! Michelle and Shelley, yes!

Which brings me to the fact that if you stick your turtle on a toy car,

it'll help you accSHELLerate.

Now, what's the trademark trick of a horny toad?

Do you want toad sex jokes? Is that what we're after?

You know the difference between a horny toad and a regular toad,

don't you? No.

A regular told says "ribbit",

a horny toad says "RUB it".

I'm not thinking about sex, I'm thinking about auto-haemorrhaging.

It's slightly complicated. Come on.

It's called a horny toad, or a horny frog,

but it's actually a lizard,

and it has this way of defending itself against predators.

It can squirt blood from its eyes, five feet, OK,

and it contains an absolutely foul-tasting chemical.

So this toad was rescued by a perfectly nice man

who took this photograph.

He was rescuing it from traffic

and it then did the blood-squirty thing.

Wait till you see this... Oh, good God.

Yeah, it's going to repel a dog.

Just check it out.

It's not really repelling anything. If anything, the dog's just going,

"Oh, you dirty bastard!"

You find these creatures in the desert, North and Central America,

and the other thing they do, apart from the blood thing,

some of them can blow their bodies up twice the size.

Now, why would you do that?

I've been doing that, sustained over the last two years.

Is it so a snake can't eat it? It is.

I don't know how I found that out.

Now for a question about real toads.

OK, can I give a phobia alert here? and to everybody in the audience,

if you are a trypophobe and fear clusters of small holes,

OK, and it is a thing, I need you to look away now.

So you've all heard of toad in the hole,

but how do you explain the holes in this toad?

Is that someone's shoe that went on it?

BLOWS RASPBERRY ..left a mark?

Looks like it's outside a Wetherspoons on a Friday night.

A lot of stilettos have walked over that.

They look more like seeds,

like I would say that's an everything toad,

instead of just the sesame seed

or the cinnamon raisin, it's got all the things on. It's a multi.

Yeah, turn it over, schmear cream cheese.

Is that splatted? It is always like that, this particular toad.

I'll tell you that Desiree's on to the right track.

It is a kind of seed,

as it were. Is it a sexy seed?

Oh! Well, it depends...

It is when you say it!

It depends, I mean, it comes from sex...

Is that the little tadpoles? Is that how they carry the babies?

That is how they carry their babies. All of the babies.

Ugh. I know.

That toad is immediately losing

all of its baby weight, the minute they're gone.

It's like, "Yeah, look at all my holes now."

The new mother doesn't just lose her baby weight,

she loses all her skin and gets a brand-new skin,

which I think... Oh, excellent! How cool is that?

So the way they have sex, I don't know why nobody's ever

made a porn film of this, cos it's fascinating.

Mating can last up to 30 hours,

and bear in mind, they don't have access to films...

LAUGHTER ..or, you know, anything.

It's just elbow grease and determination.

So the male grabs the female from behind...

Yeah, he does. Yeah.

Inside voice.

So what happens is the male grabs the female from behind,

they do loop-the-loops underwater

while he massages her abdomen to squeeze the eggs out,

eventually she lays about 50 to 100 eggs,

which he catches on his belly,

he fertilises them and then he sticks them onto her back, OK?

And what hour are we at when the sticking comes?

Are they doing loop-the-loop for five, six hours?

She's like that, she's like, "Seriously,

"I don't even know your name any more."

She's coming down there like,

"No, Mark, I can feel you're putting them on wrong.

"There's too many on this side. Over here."

"I wanted the horny toad!"

Another skin grows around it for about three to four months

and then... Oh, crikey. Just be ready for this, OK,

before they emerge as complete toadlets.

So, basically, they squeeze themselves

through tiny holes in her back skin.

So one comes out for every hole? It's not just like... Yes.

Yeah. Oh, my God.

LAUGHTER

Oh, Desiree's going to be sick.

Oh, that's gross.

Do you know that when toads are sick, OK, which they are sometimes,

it's called gastric aversion. If they eat something toxic,

they expel their entire stomach from their mouth,

inside out, rub it clean with their hands,

and pop it back in again.

You wonder how any of them get laid.

Let's take a look at the toadlets coming out of the skin.

JASON: No, I don't want to.

Yeah, you do. Is this an actual...?

HANNAH GAGS Wow! Oh, my God!

Incredible.

Oh, my God.

We could have put some lovely music on.

I think they're all going, "Kill people!"

"Kill people." "Brains!"

"Must kill people."

And then they get out and go, "People are enormous!"

"Oh, shit!"

"Form coalition to kill people!"

Would you like to know a surprising trick

to get endangered Puerto Rican crested toads to produce semen?

Oh, yes. I would.

Always. Yeah.

It's what we need in our lives.

OK, so they needed to try and see if they could save the population.

Now, these particular toads, they release sperm in their urine

and they usually pee when they're picked up

but there were ones that didn't do that,

and they are endangered and we need to do something about it.

The scientists discovered

if you hold one of these little frogs in your hand

and you look at them and you bark like a dog,

they pee straight away.

Out of fear? I was going to say, cos they're terrified?

I don't know how... Perhaps they're just kinky frogs.

The project was completely successful.

300 toads were hatched from the frozen sperm.

The first one was called Olaf, anybody, why?

Frozen. Frozen...

..from the movie Frozen. That's so cute.

And look, there's the... Oh, my gosh!

Woof! You didn't think you'd get an "Aw" over tiny frogs. Woof!

There you are.

Put that in the freezer.

Let me get this straight, so they...

..woof, they go, "Ah!"... Yes. ..piss themselves... Yes.

..and then... Collect the sperm. ..spunky monkey?

But the thing about the dog barking,

so I was once in a place called Calaveras County in...

ALAN BARKS

I can do about four breeds. Sorry.

I was once in Calaveras County in California...

JASON: Come here, boy!

..and they have an annual frog-jumping competition,

and I went along and said,

"I don't have a frog but can I still take part?"

Is that you in your costume? That is me.

And it's bullfrogs, and they just lend you a bullfrog.

Love a bullfrog.

You put your hand in a bucket,

you pull it out and hold it under the forearms,

and they stretch out like this, about eight inches or so.

Anyway, what you do is you have three goes to stand behind your frog

and make it leap, and whoever gets it to leap the furthest,

and you do it by barking like a dog.

The world record is held by Rosie the Ribiter.

Yeah!

But they do jump like bastards, don't they? Yes, they're amazing.

My frog did not move, not an inch.

Did you bark like a very small dog?

I don't know what I did wrong. I think I was too Pekingese.

I needed to go a bit more Alsatian, I think was the problem.

What is the most terrifying noise that you can't hear?

TURKEY GOBBLES

Your breasticles just gently drooping over time.

SHE CREAKS

You wake up and you're like, "When did that happen?!"

A scary noise I heard recently

was rhubarb growing. What?!

Yeah, rhubarb grows and it makes, like, a noise.

What, like a squeaking? Like a... HE CREAKS

Are you sure that wasn't her breasts?

Was that just me?

Are you just being nice?

"Hannah, Hannah!

"I can hear the rhubarb growing!"

So when a tiger roars or growls,

let's have a sound of a tiger... TIGER ROARS

..it also emits sounds at a frequency

lower than the human ear can detect. Is there a thing called infrasound?

It is infrasound, absolutely right. You get an extra point.

Lower? Lower, yes. So we can hear from 20...

Not... SHE SHRIEKS

Wow, how high can you go? That was...

Probably that.

We can hear from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz

and anything below this range is infrasound,

and tigers can generate a sound of 18 Hz,

so we can't hear it but we can feel it, OK?

So the sound is just below our hearing range but it still affects us,

it particularly affects those areas that are responsible for emotion,

and unconscious bodily functions like...

Silent but deadly farts.

Heart rate... "Just done one at 15 Hz."

But it affects the things that you can't really control,

so your heart rate and urination.

I just listened to this podcast,

Uncanny on BBC Sounds,

and there was an episode of that

where they're talking about this Room 611 in Belfast,

where people are terrified, it was just a scary room

where there was ghosts and paranormal activity,

but what the scientists said is the lift emits this infrasound

at such a low frequency, you can't actually hear it

but it just makes you... It's like the sound of fear,

like, it's fearful. That's why you feel weird.

So, you know, sick building syndrome, you hear about that,

and again some people think now that that maybe infrasound,

so it's like the ventilation system is emitting a sound that you can't quite hear

but you can absolutely feel it

and it can induce a sense of dread, a sense of nausea.

Cars generate infrasound.

But it's key to communication between rhinos,

and between elephants, and your favourite, the whales,

because, of course, this kind of sound can travel so much further,

that's the whole point of it.

Elephants can detect vibrations through their feet

and they have been shown to start walking

towards the infrasound of a thunderstorm

that is 150 miles away because they want to get to the water.

Wow. That's amazing.

Incredible. I know, it is beautiful.

And also infrasonic growls,

not just made by animals,

there is a human who can make this noise, too.

OK, there's a guy called... Brian Blessed.

LAUGHTER

There's a guy called Tim Storms, he's an American voiceover artist,

and he has a vocal range of ten octaves.

He holds the world... Wow. No!

..world record for the lowest musical note ever sung.

In 2012, he sang a G eight octaves lower

than the lowest G on a piano, OK?

Wow. This is him speaking.

LOW VOICE: This is the voice of Tim Storms.

Nice to meet you.

OK, so this is a little treat.

ALAN BLOWS RASPBERRY

Just did one at about 30 Hz. Uh-huh.

OK. You are definitely going to do something involuntary

because he does a lot of movie trailers, Alan...

Does he? ..and he has done the honour

of recording a trailer for us.

You watch this if you dare.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

In a world where everything you think you know is wrong...

..one man stands alone

against the forces of ignorance.

Alan Davies

is Alan Davies

in QI.

The answer is never "blue whale".

APPLAUSE

TIM RECITES T&Cs

That's very cool!

Has that made you feel a bit funny?

Aw, thank you very much to Tim. Amazing.

Now, a tapir walks into a pub.

What does the barman ask him?

"Why the long face?"

KLAXON Yeah.

It was there, it was there.

I actually get a sense of achievement when that happens.

So, tapirs, found mostly in South and Central America. In pubs.

Yeah, pubs, yeah.

They look sort of like a cross between a pig and an anteater

but they are more closely related to the horse and to the rhino.

Oh! Are they?

The question that the... I can't even do this.

The question the barman would ask is, "Why the long penis?"

"Cos I got it like that!"

You are not wrong, Desiree.

It is 60% the length of their bodies.

That's so stupid! Why?!

Just be ready for these pictures.

Are they going to be blurred...? Jeez! Oh, my God!

What's the thing on the end?! Yeah, well...

It's so long, it needs to walk on its own.

Jesus! Yeah, I'm going to explain that.

It's an umbrella feature, kind of.

Oh. So the guy who took this photograph

is a man on Twitter called Will Spencer...

I'm just quoting... He'll be over the moon to be named.

Well, I just want to quote this, it says,

"The highlight of my life was watching a tapir dragging his penis

"along the ground like a third leg."

I just think, is that seriously the highlight?

Surely he means a fifth leg.

Basically, it's not really convenient

to have such a long schlong because...

A long schlong.

You don't want it because there's a lot of swings and misses, right?

And then sometimes apparently they stand on them...

JASON GROANS Yeah!

..while they're mating and they scream in pain.

There was a story... No, they tread on it.

They don't actually stand on it.

"O-o-o-o-o-o-oh!

"Look at the tapir, spinning on his cock!

"Spin him, spin him, spin him!"

He goes all the way down

into the ground and then he can't get out again.

"Unscrew me, unscrew me."

"They're not coming to this bar again!"

There was a tapir in a zoo in San Francisco who stood on his penis

and he bruised it so badly that it...

Aw! OK, this is so horrible...

..it fell off and he then ate it.

LAUGHTER

Anyway, they need this very long device because, apparently,

the female has a particularly extensive genital tract.

So this brings me to the umbrella thing,

and just again, going to be a close-up picture, OK?

Oh, God. Yeah.

So these long flaps hang over the end of the penis and they rise...

LAUGHTER

So it rises up horizontally during mating,

so it creates a watertight seal so that they can mate underwater

without... How am I going to put this?

..the relevant fluids being washed away.

The guys.

They also must have to have really amazing lower abdominal muscles

cos it would be totally new meaning to not being able to get it up,

like, it's so heavy.

If you're in the water, it's just floating...

LAUGHTER

Sounds like this comes from experience!

I mean, if yours fell off, you might eat it.

What?

I'd have to find it first.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Anyway, let's come on...

Calling it a bloody umbrella a minute ago,

you've ruined Singin' In The Rain for me.

APPLAUSE

They are extraordinary, the males,

they can spray their urine up to five metres.

God, what is wrong with...? I'm not surprised!

It's like a bloody hose!

It is mad, isn't it, when you think...?

Like, these are the sort of things that make me realise

that there probably isn't a great Creator of all animals

and all things because... Unless he was just pissed.

"Right, this one, massive cock.

"Sprays...

"Come over here, stop getting blood out of that lizard's eyes!"

LAUGHTER

"God, God, God! He won't be able to keep that up!

"What about his abdominal muscles?" "He's underwater!"

"What's water?"

"I've just thought of it, I've just thought of it!"

That's the stuff that's missing from that book. Yep.

LAUGHTER

Look at the babies, though,

the babies are very cute, they have speckled and striped... Look!

Aw! And the smiley face! That's cute. Yeah.

Cock's already bigger than mine. LAUGHTER

And with those titillating T animal titbits,

it's time for General Ignorance.

Can you show me how a gorilla beats its chest?

KLAXON

No, not that.

Widespread belief that it does that. How do they do it?

They don't do it with their fists.

With the flats of their hands? Yes, why? Why?

More reverberation. Yeah.

If the palms are open, it is louder,

it also minimises the risk of bruising your chest

cos it's just not hitting yourself so hard.

That does actually hurt.

Maybe it's because they're sinking.

Maybe it's... LAUGHTER

"I thought I heard something."

I thought it was rhubarb.

Gorillas use chest-beating to advertise their size,

so large gorillas produce sounds

with a lower frequency than small gorillas

because they've got larger air cavities, a bit like a drum.

A larger drum will make a deeper noise.

And the wonderful thing is that gorillas can't fake the noise.

It's called "honest signal of competitive ability".

So it is a genuine thing, if you beat your chest,

that is how big you are.

I didn't know they wore gloves. Weird.

LAUGHTER

Gorillas beat their chests with their palms, not their fists.

What do storks do with babies?

TOAD RIBBITS They deliver them!

KLAXON I couldn't help it!

I can't help it, it's like a disease!

I must say, Jason, it's lovely having you here.

There's a legend, of course, that they bring people new babies

that suggests that they are very caring birds.

And the amazing thing about this legend, this myth,

is that it's absolutely global.

It appears in folklore in Europe and the Americas,

in North Africa and the Middle East,

so despite this, unfortunately, they often kill their own babies.

So you often get, in bird species you get babies tussling in the nest,

and one falling out and that's so the strongest survive.

So stork offspring never, ever fight each other,

and the family feeds all the birds exactly the same,

but eventually there's going to be too many, right,

and they're all strong.

So one of the parents, usually the dad,

just breaks the neck of one

and then will often eat the one they've broken the neck of.

I think people need to start rephrasing it

when they say they're animal lovers. Yeah.

You know, there's some right pricks in there.

Do you know what I mean?

I mean, certainly some big ones. And some big ones, yeah.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Right, let's look at the scores.

In first place, trotting into the lead

with five points, this week's winner is Hannah.

Yay!

In second place, with minus five, it's Desiree.

In third place, with minus 12,

it's Alan!

Thank you very much.

And last place... I rode a tortoise for you.

Yeah. Despite your fine riding,

with minus 47, and the tail...

..and your tail between your legs,

at least I think that's what it is...

..it's Jason! Yes!

CHEERING

My thanks to Hannah, Jason, Desiree, Alan.

And I leave you with this from the novelist Anita Brookner.

"It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market.

"Hares have no time to read, they're too busy winning the game."

Goodnight.

APPLAUSE