QI (2003–…): Season 20, Episode 2 - T Animals - full transcript

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