QI (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 1 - Panimals - full transcript

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening!

Welcome to the QI petting zoo,

where today we are particularly

petting animal pals
beginning with P.

At crossed porpoises, Danny Baker.

APPLAUSE
Thank you. Thank you.

It's that ptarmigan, Phill Jupitus.

APPLAUSE Starts with a P!

Cos it's spelled with a P.

And this should put
the cat among the pigeons.



It's only Teri Hatcher!

APPLAUSE

And our very own prawn star,
Alan Davies!

APPLAUSE

And their buzzers this week
are birds beginning with P.

Danny Peacock.

PEACOCK CALL

Phill Parrot.

PARROT SQUAWKS, TWITTERS

I think that was R2-D2.

Teri, Penguin.

PENGUIN TRILLS

And Alan Partridge.

LAUGHTER



A-ha!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Seeing as it's our P animal show,

there's bound to be at least
one question about pigs,

so what I want you to do is
to look out for one of those

and, if you spot it,

then you have a pig and you can
throw the pig and shout, "Pig!"

For extra pig points. Now...

First question,
complete this sentence.

Donald Trump is the first President
in 168 years not to have...

LAUGHTER

Come on, anyone!

Not to have what?
A trace of common decency?

KLAXON

Empathy? Empathy...

Charm.

These are all too obvious.

I'm going to go with not to have
the ability to pee standing up.

Wow.

So since 1850.

What happened in 1850?

Coronation Street started.

It's all the whole show is about.

Oh, pet, animal!

Pets. He's the first President not
to have a pet in the White House.

He's got Melania.

APPLAUSE

They all had pets. Thomas Jefferson
had two bear cubs.

Benjamin Harrison had two opossums

called Mr Reciprocity
and Mr Protection.

What?! Franklin D Roosevelt had
a great Dane, rather confusingly

called President.

Herbert Hoover's son Allan
had a pair of alligators.

Teddy Roosevelt, I think,

gets the prize for best Presidential
pet owner.

Nine dogs, two ponies, two cats,
a hen, a lizard, a blue macaw,

a garter snake named
Emily Spinach...

..named by his daughter Alice

because it's "as green as spinach
and as thin as my Aunt Emily".

A small bear, a piebald rat, a pig,
a rabbit, a laughing hyena,

a barn owl, a one-legged rooster
and five guinea pigs.

He also had six children.

Seems a lot, and a
badger called Josiah.

He also had a pony called Algonquin.

He was so beloved by the President's
son Archie and that when he was sick

in bed, his brothers Kermit...

Kermit and Quentin brought
the pony up in the lift.

AS KERMIT THE FROG: "We'll bring
the pony up to the room now!"

"Where would you like your pony?"

AS QUENTIN CRISP: I don't think
mother would allow that!

In 1940, Franklin D Roosevelt was
given a Scottish Terrier puppy

that he named Murray the Outlaw
of Falahill

after one of his Scottish ancestors,
and it was known as Fala

and it travelled everywhere
with the President.

He became a celebrity
in his own right.

He had his own secretary
to answer fan mail.

That's him there with
the genius Eleanor Roosevelt,

who really was the power behind

the throne in that
particular presidency.

During the Battle of the Bulge - the
last sort of big German offensive in

the Second World War - the American
soldiers used to ask each other

the name of the President's dog,
and if you got the answer Fala,

you knew it probably wasn't a German
who was masquerading as an American.

Donald Trump is the first President
of the United States

to steer clear of any petting
in the White House.

Oh!

I'm just going to let that
live in the air for a little bit.

Now, who here is afraid of
a tiny dancer called sparklemuffin?

It's going to be an animal,
isn't it?

It is, because
I said at the beginning,

the whole show is about animals.

Is it one of us who's afraid of it?

I think Phill might be afraid of it.
What are you afraid of, Phill?

I'm loosely arachnophobic.

Yes. I don't favour
the eight-legged groove machines.

What is it you don't like
about them? Is it this?

No, I quite like that.

LAUGHTER

I think you may
have cured me, Hatcher.

That's what I'm here for!

That's shock therapy
that I wasn't expecting.

I'm trying to think what I'm
afraid of - hang on a minute.

Anyway, here's the thing.

I think you're going to be cured
of the whole arachnophobia,

because this is
the cutest spider of all time.

The sparklemuffin is a nickname
given by researchers

to a newly discovered species
of peacock spider.

So these are chia seeds,

and a single one
is the size of a chia seed -

that's how tiny, tiny they are.

There are other species -

there is one called a circuit board
peacock spider. It's got

a pattern like an electrical
circuit board, and there it is.

And there's the bat-like peacock
spider, the elephant peacock spider,

which looks honestly like
it's got a picture of an elephant

on its bottom.
They are really, really small,

and not only are they
the only known dancing spiders,

they're also home to
nature's smallest rainbow. No!

They diffract light
from their bottom,

and it's the only
known example of...

TERI EXCLAIMS

You're suddenly excited by this!

No, I was just picturing being able

to have rainbows coming out
my bottom. Yes! Now we are!

It's not even raining!

Let's have a look and see
if we can see it dancing.

MUSIC PLAYS

Oh, my gosh!

It's cute!

Look, check it out! That music
has been added on after, hasn't it?

I'm pretty sure
he's not playing that.

He's miming.
So they've tried to recreate

the colours on
these microscopic bottoms,

and they simply can't
replicate them.

They've used engineers,
biologists, physicists.

I've worked a long time to try to be
able to make my butt move like that.

And have a rainbow come out of it.

Rainbows or no rainbows,
that's awesome.

Being able to move like that.

Half the ones that we know about
have been named by a single person -

Australia's Dr Jurgen Otto -

he works for the Australian
Department of Agriculture.

He says they have personalities

to match their brilliant colours
and intricate dances.

He said, "They display
curiosity and fear,

"they hide behind leaves
when they're scared,

"so I often compare them
to puppies and kittens."

The female has to be a virgin,
that's a pre-requisite for mating,

and then he'll do the dance for her
for a couple of minutes.

Not in Essex!

Sorry, it's an open goal.
I know, I know.

You just lost Billericay,
didn't you?

Sparklemuffin is a tiny dancer with
an extremely attractive backside,

which gets Phill Jupitus into
a highly emotional state.

What's black and white
and pissed all over?

Oh... Er...

A penguin that got into a
pirate's stash of rum.

KLAXON Oh!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Wow!

Wow! Seriously, that was impressive.

Yeah!

No, OK, so it is the giant panda.

In order to introduce
giant panda cubs into the wild,

the researchers at China's
Wolong Nature Reserve,

they dressed as adult pandas,

and they covered themselves
in panda pee.

Why might they do that?

Because they're perverts!

Watching panda porn all night,

which is a very slow watch,
I have to say.

Something to do with settling the
young ones in the wild, is it?

Yes, here's the thing about pandas -
they look very cute,

but let's remember the bear
part of their name.

Yeah. They are still aggressive,
you don't want them to go into

villages and go,
"Oh, those nice people!"

So they wanted them to feel that
they were with actual pandas,

and the way to do that is to
cover them in the panda urine

so they don't smell of human beings.

The extent to which
it's related to the red panda,

that's been debated backwards
and forwards. But it isn't, really.

The giant panda is a bear, the
red panda is closer to a racoon.

But they have recently discovered

why they've got
black-and-white fur. Oh!

The black bits help to camouflage
them in the summer,

and the white bits help to
camouflage them in the winter.

And it was discovered by
a guy called Tim Caro -

he's a University of
California biologist -

and he's the same researcher
who spent ten years working out

why zebras are black and white.
Cheap licence.

It's probably to deter flies
who, for some reason,

it is unclear, do not like
landing on striped surfaces.

"Oh, no, I'm not going down there!"

I've been to Africa, and I saw
plenty of flies around the zebras.

Yes, but they don't land.

Oh, they don't land!

They spin around going,
"Has anybody seen a horse,

"a plain horse?"

That is another thing, if you take a
zebra to a supermarket

and you fire a bar code gun
at it, it says "zebra".

If you are working in
Wolong Nature Reserve

and you're not covered in wee,

you are in danger of
causing panda-monium.

Ohh! Hey!
GROANING

Thank you.

Now for a question
on perilous primates.

Who has got
the most dangerous elbows?

A chimp.

That seems so obvious.
I thought it would go off.

You don't get the buzzer?
You don't get the buzzer?

You want me to tell you?
Yeah.

It's the slow loris.

Oh! It's the only known
venomous primate.

"Come on, Loris, chop chop!"

"I'm not in a hurry."

It has venom...
"I'm not in a hurry."

"I'm actually completely lost.
It's pitch-black."

"But I've got my poisonous elbows
with me wherever I go!"

It has a patch on its elbow,
which...

Does it smoke? No, it literally...

It activates it
by being mixed with saliva.

What? If it bit you, a human being,
it could cause anaphylactic shock,

it can cause death... Wow.
..and they are all endangered.

There are about eight species of
slow loris. Well, good! No!

So it licks its elbow, activates
the poison in its mouth...

And then it bites you. That's
correct. It's a SLOW Loris...

It is a slow loris.
So not only is it slow,

its enemy has to wait for it
to lick its own elbow

before it goes into action.
Yeah. But once it...

We all kind of want to try it!

Here is the really
sad thing about it.

Because they look sort of passive,

they have got those marvellous
big eyes, lots of people want them

as pets, and this is really sad
that people pull their teeth...

Ahh!

I know! ..and they die of infection.

But the reason they have the big
eyes is they've evolved to mimic

cobras. It is an astonishing thing,

and they can not only hiss

but they can undulate
in a serpentine fashion,

because they've got an extra
vertebrae in their spines.

They seem to have evolved
to frighten off people.

They don't want to use the venom
would seem to be the thing.

There's a wonderful description
by a man called John Still,

writing in 1905 in Sri Lanka.

He's the very first person to record
confusing a slow loris with a cobra.

"I saw the outline of a cobra
sitting up with hood expanded

"and threatening a cat
who crouched about six feet away.

"This was the loris who, with his
arms and shoulders hunched up,

"was a sufficiently good imitation
of a cobra to take me in

"as he swayed on his long legs and,
every now and then,

"let out a perfect cobra's hiss."
Wow. Wow.

Wonderful creature.

Now, let's practise a little German.

What type of animal
is a Stachelschwein?

Oh! Yes.

Did you throw a pig at me?!
KLAXON

OK, so not that one.

What about a Wasserschwein?

Is it like a water vole?

Heading in the right direction.
What about a Schweinswal?

These are all sausages.

It's not a walrus
or something, is it?

No, what about a Nabelschwein?
They're all related, though.

No, they're not related at all.

Why do they keep using that word?

Let's go back. Stachelschwein -
or spike pig - is a porcupine.

Ah! A Wasserschwein -
or a water pig - is the capybara.

There it is in the middle. Oh, OK.

And a Schweinswal
- or pig whale - is a porpoise.

I love capybaras.

I don't know if you've seen one,
they're amazing.

Brilliant, yeah.
Largest rodent in the world.

They grow to be
about four-foot long,

and there is a special
Easter feast in Venezuela,

and they eat it
like turkey at Thanksgiving.

Apparently, it tastes
a bit like rabbit.

It's like a big version
of a guinea pig?

Yeah, like a massive version.
But you eat it at Easter.

I've been to Peru,
and I've eaten guinea pig.

Oh, how was it? In Lima, Peru,
there's three of the top 50

restaurants in the world
happen to all be in Lima,

and it's really like a national...

Like, everyone eats it,
even in these three

Michelin-star restaurants,
they make "the best" guinea pig.

And I had a guinea pig as a child,
as a pet,

so I tried it twice and I got to the
third time, and I was just like,

"I can't do it."

They sell them in Chile anyway
on sticks covered in honey,

and there's kids who've been
allowed to stay up and watch this

who are sobbing their heart out.

Some of them are
dipping a guinea pig in... I know!

Holding it in front of the fire.

"How long do you think
it will take?"

The best way to cook it
would be to put it in the wheel

in front of the fire
and just let it go round.

"Run faster!
I want you well-basted!"

Er... A Nabelschwein is actually
what's known as a peccary.

It's a distant relative of the pig,

and again you'll find those
in South and Central American.

The German phrase which I really
like - Innerer Schweinehund -

and it literally means
your inner pig dog.

And it's the tiny voice
that says to you,

"Stay on the sofa,
don't go to the gym."

I speak fluent German.

Do you? No. Oh.

But I have a certificate
that says I do.

Why? I went to
a comprehensive school,

and we only did German
for three months,

and the teacher left, but they asked
if we wanted to do a language exam.

Anyway, I was ill on the one day
that comprehensives were taking

languages. Anyway, I came back
about two days later and they said,

"You've got to be away from everyone
- you have to do it on your own."

And they put me in the library
on my own to do it.

Well, I couldn't make
head nor tail of the paper,

but there was
a German dictionary,

and I got 81%,

and as far as the record shows,
I am fluent in German.

So you behaved like a Schweinehund!
A Schweinehund!

Moving on to palaeontology, we are
going to place a tray of finds -

there are you are, you've got them -

and I would like you
to identify the fossil.

Now, you can use any part
of your body except your hands.

Thank you.

So, how might you
identify any of them?

They told me I wouldn't need
my glasses.

OK, do you want to borrow mine? Yes.
There you go, sweetie.

These are all pebbles from
a standard British B road.

OK. So Phill is heading
in the right direction.

Can I put it in my mouth?
No, you can't.

Teri!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Teri is exactly right,
Teri has got the right answer.

Good, good for her!

So they've got various ways of
distinguishing fossils

from plain old rocks, but one of
the ways you do it is to lick them.

Oh, Jesus!

Pay no attention,
I'm going to lick this long one.

That's actually a British sweet.

You don't have to... OK.

I really want to touch it.

No. No.

That's the ringtone I want!

It's hot in here. It's hot.

It is hot in here, Sandi.

So, first of all,
you can tell by looking

and you can tell a bit
by the texture,

but if all else fails, you can
identify fossils by licking them.

Which one do you think
is the dinosaur bone? Right...

If you look at, you can see A.
B. It's A, the dinosaur bone.

It's stickier than a normal stone,

because it's got calcium in,
it's porous.

Which ones did you lick?

Just the one in the middle.

You just licked the one
in the middle, OK, good.

That's not as hot as when I did it.

No, it's not as hot. It's no way
as hot as when you did it, Teri.

Right, what am I...

B. Try B.

Try B? Yeah, just have a lick of it.

No, don't put it all in your mouth!

Just lick it. Just lick it.
Hasn't anyone ever told you that?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It's dinosaur poo!
Is it?

What's the correct word for
dinosaur poo, or any poo?

Delicious!

It's a coprolite.

Yeah, OK.

So it would stick to the tongue.

You don't necessarily have to
touch them with your hands.

There is a place in the
United States called Big Bone Lick.

It's in Kentucky.
I've never been to Big Bone Lick.

That's so weird!

It's on the top of my list now,
though!

It's the birthplace of
American palaeontology.

So it's an area of
very high mineral content,

and it attracted
bison, mastodon, moose,

musk ox and so on. Peccary. And
unfortunately, also very marshy,

so the animals got stuck there
and they left bones and they were

discovered by 18th-century
American explorers.

I've got so much rock in my teeth,
I can't function.

Are you eating the rock?
I had a bit of it, yeah.

If you want to take the taste of
rock out of your mouth,

I recommend the dinosaur shit.

Anything else I can put
in my mouth, Sandi? What's this?

Which have you got? I don't know,
is this tyrannosaurus penis?

I'll pop it in.

Do you know the phrase,
lick into shape?

Anyone know where that comes from?
Um...

It's bears - there's the clue.

It was a belief in Medieval Europe
that bear cubs were born shapeless

and they had to be made
into ursine form by their mother.

I had a different thought.

OK!

Wow. We'll just leave that
hanging in the air.

If you want to surprise
a palaeontologist,

tell them to lick their own fossils.

Let's put the fossils away. OK.

Which people in this studio
should we replace with pigeons?

Like a carrier, like a
person who brings you...? Like a PA?

Like a sort of runner who brings
you things, like a carrier pigeon?

I love this. No.

So the answer is
the camera operators.

So here's the thing -
birds can't move their eyes.

Their necks have been designed to
keep their heads completely still

when they move, so as they walk,
if you look at them,

their heads and their eyes
move forward

and then they lock into place,
then the body catches up with them.

And then the head darts forward
again, locks onto something new,

and the pigeon keeps going.

And that static image is what a good
camera operator's trying to achieve.

And pigeons have been used
since the early 20th century

as aerial photographers.

The very first person
to attach a camera to a pigeon,

he was a German called
Julius Neubronner.

It's pronounced "Noy-bru-ner."

"Noy-bru-ner." Thank you, darling.

81%!

That's not great with a dictionary -
only 81%.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

So this guy, an apothecary from the
town of Kronberg near Frankfurt,

and he started
receiving prescriptions

from a sanatorium in nearby
Falkenstein using pigeon post.

He used to deliver medications back
by post,

and he thought this was marvellous.
So he got some pigeons of his own,

and then one of his birds
came back rather mysteriously fed,

and he attached a camera because he
wanted to find out where it had been

fed, and it turned out it was
visiting a restaurant on the way,

in a neighbouring town.

Now...
PHILL SNIGGERS

What? Just the elaborate web of
bullshit this show constantly...

How is it working the camera?

Because if it's got the camera,
and it's flying with one wing,

it's just going to go
round and round.

Yeah, IT'S not actually working
the camera, if you can imagine.

Going like that...

It's two chambers...

BAWK!

It's two chambers, Alan,
and one of them has got gas in it,

and that releases very slowly
as the pigeon flies,

and then that would
depress the shutter button.

You only get one picture.

You only get one? It's not like the
pigeon is going, "Smile, everybody!"

"Going in for a closer look!"

No. Pigeons are
perfect camera people,

so it's only a matter of time before
they put our team out of work.

What's the...?

You're going to be out
of focus for months now!

And now it's time for
Alan's pet hate,

the round that we call
General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

OK. What does the S on Superman's
chest stand for?

PENGUIN TRILLS

Love that noise! Well...

Super.

KLAXON

So it's not an S.

Simon.

KLAXON, LAUGHTER

How can they type that fast?!

So in the 2013 film,
Lois Lane actually asks...

I don't know why I'm telling YOU.
I don't either, but...

She actually asks Superman what the
S stands for, and it's not an S,

it's a Kryptonian symbol of hope.

It just looks like an S
by coincidence.

It looks exactly... Apparently.
I should have known that.

You should have, yes.
Let's try one you should know.

Superman's real name is of course...

PENGUIN TRILLS

Jor-El. No, it's Kal-El.

Oh, Kal-El, you're right!

Jor-El's the dad. Look at me,

I'm the least Superman knowledgeable
person on this panel.

How many episodes
did you play Lois Lane?

Clearly not enough.

I guess it was four years times 22,
so what's that? 88.

Something like that.

Just look at this picture of you.

Can I just say, that picture of you
was, at the time on the internet,

the most downloaded image
in the world?

Yeah, it was only because that was
like the beginning of the internet.

No, doesn't she look amazing?
Look at that picture.

APPLAUSE

So why did you reveal it
straightaway?

You should've had us sitting
here for 20 minutes going...

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba,

ba-ba-ba-ba-ba...

Any minute now.

Dial-up AOL... Dial-up, right.

But Lois is not Superman's
only love interest.

Lana Lang. Lana Lang.

Same initials, so he can keep
the tattoo, which I quite like.

Very good. Because the best bit
in the story is his disguise,

isn't it? He only has glasses on,
then he takes them off.

Which of course is why
I really know nothing,

because if I was fooled by
glasses on, glasses off...

Wait, take your glasses off.

Oh, my God, where did Sandi go?

Yeah, exactly.

Somebody bring back Sandi -
she's running the whole thing!

Thank God you're back!

Oh! We were really lost there.

Superman's S stands for s...

hope.

How does the crow fly?

A-ha! Yeah, Alan?

In a straight line,
directly to its destination.

KLAXON

Anybody else? Round and round
in circles.

Constantly lost.

No, they did a study at Oxford
University, and it is true that

crows and pigeons use

natural magnetic
and solar compasses to navigate,

but that's not as important as their
knowledge of human transport routes.

So let's imagine that a crow is
travelling from Portsmouth

to the Peak District.

It would follow the M275...

..then the M3.

It would get on the M40
to Oxfordshire,

take the A46 to Coventry
and follow the M1 for 62 miles.

Really, that's true? Yes, darling,
everything I say is true.

There's a start-up company in the
Netherlands called Crowded Cities,

and they're trying to get crows
to recognise cigarette butts

and drop them into a bin,

and if the camera in the bin
recognises the object

as a cigarette butt,
it gives the creature some food.

Wow. What sort of food?

It'll be, you know, a bit of grain.

You know, I'm just saying that
sometimes when you're abroad

and you've spent
all your loose money...

You get a bit peckish...
And if it's something yummy...

You're going to pick up cigarette
butts and put them...?

Damn straight. OK. And I'll wear
a crow suit while I do it.

Cover yourself in panda pee.

Let's not be silly. Sorry.

OK.

Now, how many tentacles
does an octopus have?

Ooh!

Isn't it eight?

PENGUIN TRILLS, KLAXON

One? No.

KLAXON

Two. Two?

No.
KLAXON

Ten.

Ten? Ten? No.

KLAXON

Is it none? It's none.

So we used to use tentacles
as interchangeable with arms,

but the modern convention is

if an invertebrate structure
has suckers

along its entire length,
that's an arm.

If it only has suckers
at the tip, that's a tentacle.

So octopuses have eight arms,
but they have no tentacles at all.

So the ones that do have tentacles
are things like jellyfish

and sea anemones and coral.

Octopus suckers not only suck
but they can also smell and taste,

and they can stick to
any surface except...

The television.

Themselves.
They never stick to octopus skin,

because that would be annoying.

But enough of
our imaginary menagerie,

it's time for the scores.

In first place,
as proud as a peacock...

Oh, my goodness -
with -7, it's Danny.

Oh, excellent! Thank you.

APPLAUSE

In second place with -18,
it's Phill.

APPLAUSE

In third place, making a fantastic
debut with -38, it's Teri.

APPLAUSE

And in last place,
as sick as a parrot,

with -54, it's Alan.

APPLAUSE

Thank you to Teri, Phill,
Danny and Alan.

That's all from us, so goodnight.