QI (2003–…): Season 6, Episode 10 - Flora and Fauna - full transcript
Well...
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're having fun with
flora and fauna.
It's like animal, vegetable and
mineral only...without the mineral.
In the flowerbed tonight,
we have a perennial favourite,
Jimmy Carr.
APPLAUSE
Thank you very much.
A hardy annual, John Sergeant.
APPLAUSE
A heavily scented late-bloomer,
Jo Brand.
APPLAUSE
And a cat having a crap in a
flowerpot,
Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
But before we plunge into my
arboretum and bestiary,
let's go wild with our buzzers.
John goes...
LION GROWLING
LAUGHTER
Jimmy goes...
WOLF HOWLING
Jo goes...
ELEPHANT TRUMPETING
LAUGHTER
And Alan goes...
MONKEY CHATTERING
BANG, CRASH, GLASS SMASHING
Oh, dear.
Well done.
So let's start on our sofa-bound
safari.
What does my buttonhole
tell you about me?
TRUMPETING
That you're a closet heterosexual.
How dare you!
I'm sorry!
It tells us that you are what you
are. Your own special creation.
It's not going to fire water at me,
is it? No, it's a real flower
and it's a member of a family of
flowers
and it has a name.
It's a rhododendron. >
It's not a rhododendron.
Camellia. It is! Well done. And you
are La Dame Aux Camelias.
Tell me about La Dame Aux Camelias.
It's a novel. It's a novel. Yeah.
About a lady.
Do you know what this meant?
Who liked camellias.
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Good. But there is a thing about the
red camellia that is very
extraordinary,
unbelievably shocking,
to mid-19th-century France.
Periods.
You're so right.
Marguerite Gautier, the heroine of
the novel La Dame Aux Camelias,
wore for 25 days of the month
a white camellia.
For five days, a red one, to tell
her lovers that she was not
available...
That Arsenal were playing away!
Playing at home!
At home!
The decorators were in, the...etc.
Are you saying that you ARE available
or you're not?
I've got a period on, John.
LAUGHTER
You can't have me, I'm sorry.
Was this in some play?
A novel by Alexandre Dumas fils,
the bastard son of the creator of
The Three Musketeers.
Can I just say, that was so sweet,
cos no woman in her entire life
has ever said,
"I've got a period ON"!
LAUGHTER
Well...
I either say "I've got a period" or
"I'm on".
Fair enough! OK!
You don't conflate them together.
"I've got a period on"!
And anyway, it became a play.
Sarah Bernhardt was in it thousands
of times,
in 1854 Verdi saw the play and
turned it into the opera...
for five points...?
Is that what the opera's called?
No!
It's called Camellia something...
the flower.
Audience will know.
< La Traviata. La Traviata. Audience
get ten points. That's very good.
It was La Traviata. They're not in
the lead again!
So La Traviata, which I've heard of
and is a proper grown-up thing,
is about a woman having a period?
No, no.
It's the story of a famous courtesan
who was in love - and the real one -
there were seven men
who were so passionate about her but
couldn't afford her prices, they
clubbed together
and bought her a chest of drawers
with seven separate drawers in so
they could keep their own clothes.
It was turned into a film,
which was...
Snow White. She's called.
The seven guys with the one girl is a
bit...
Very good!
APPLAUSE
Very good.
And the film based on
La Dame Aux Camelias is...?
Carry On Menstruating.
Camille. Camille?
Yes, in La Dame Aux Camelias and La
Traviata, the heroine indicates her
availability
by wearing different-coloured
camellias.
The book caused an outrage and made
the flower an overnight gardening
sensation in Paris and beyond.
Something more wholesome now.
It's good news. Daddy is taking you
to the flea circus.
Which bit are you most looking
forward to? What do you know about
flea circuses?
I had fleas in my flat once. Did
you really?
Rentokil quoted 600 quid to get rid
of it.
I found a bloke in the local paper
did it for 40.
I don't know what he sprayed!
The cat was going like this
for a few days.
Do you know what the biggest
destroyer of human fleas has been -
much bigger than pesticides?
I know the answer. It's vacuum
cleaners.
You're right. It's their
woof-woof-woof.
And the fleas don't like it.
Do you think your vacuum cleaner may
be broken?
If it's going woof-woof-woof?
You might want to take that back and
get a new one.
They're not specialised,
these vacuum cleaners.
They kill lots of fleas?
The other thing you've got to know
about them is that the back legs of
fleas are incredibly powerful.
And if a human being had
as powerful legs,
they could jump over the
Eiffel Tower.
You're right. Eighty times your own
height is what you'd be able to
jump.
These flea circuses, though,
we don't have them in our time,
but they were amazingly popular
in the 1920s and '30s,
because they had to find something
interesting to do between the two
world wars.
Exactly. They were filling in.
So fleas were very exciting...
a lot more of them about. In fact,
they died out in the early '60s,
probably.
But you will see, there's some film
here showing you that -
you're right, these strong legs
allow them to pull - they were
harnessed to wire...
Are they real? Yeah.
They... I thought it was... No,
you're thinking Michael Bentine's
mechanical ones with little
automatic machines that...
You thought you could see the fleas
but... No, there were fleas.
Genuinely people-trained fleas?
No. Unfortunately, they were
basically tortured.
You would glue them to musical
instruments and other things
and then heat the underpart where
they were
so their attempts to make themselves
free would look as if they were
playing instruments.
That's like Britain's Got Talent.
That sounds horrible.
Almost as horrible as
Britain's Got Talent.
But let's see some film,
if we can, Mr Man In The Gallery.
There we are.
JIMMY: Why are they performing on his
arm?
They get fed with his blood. Ah!
JOHN: That's to show how small they
are.
He's going to burn them with the
sun.
It's Ben-Hur.
Robot Wars.
Why have they got a serial killer
operating the...
JOHN: That reminds me of a very old
joke.
Are you ready for a very old joke?
I'd love to hear one.
How do you build a flea circus?
You have to start from scratch.
Hey-hey! Excellent.
Is that stuck into the flea or glued
on?
It's glued or they make wire
harnesses for them.
And people like Michael Bentine
invented these mechanical ones.
He did one in a Royal Variety
Performance in the '60s.
And that's when I first saw it.
I realised there were no fleas and,
like you, I thought there was no
such thing and it was just a joke.
It was part of an idea that you had
freak shows. You'd have all sorts of
daft things...
It's awful to raise this. You two
aren't related, are you?
Are you suggesting we're some kind of
freak show...
No, I just...
..that should be next to the flea
circus?
There's not a... There's a bit of a
likeness, we're brother and sister.
That explains it!
Flea circuses covered a range of
acts, including chariot races
and fencing matches as well as
acrobatics and...
Techniques included glueing the
fleas to musical instruments and
then heating the floor
so they seemed to be playing as they
struggled.
What is the really odd thing about
the only fish in the world
that lives in a tree?
Is it going to be an underwater
tree...thing?
Like fish that can live in anemones
cos they're the only ones that
aren't poisoned by them?
These are trees above the surface.
Stephen, is that meant to be
a perfect picture of...? No.
I know that's a salmon for a start.
It does not like to live in a tree,
I know that.
We can actually show you
the real fish in a tree.
There we are in the mangrove
swamps of Florida. Where is it?
You can't see it yet,
but this is its habitat.
These pools shrink and it goes up
these little grooves made by
insects,
whole groups of them go up
into the tree. We can see one
poking its eye out.
And what's the unusual thing?
Can it whistle one tune
while it hums another?
Kind of almost
an erotic version of that.
It is the only vertebrate that is a
hermaphrodite that self-fertilises.
That's how it breeds.
It pleasures itself and...
Why don't we all do that?
In terms of natural selection, why
don't we all, because that'd be fun.
My teenage years... You're right.
..there would've been thousands.
It'd be fun to tell yourself
you've got a headache.
"No, I can't tonight."
Isn't it asexual reproduction?
No, it's hermaphroditic.
Parthenogenesis you may be thinking.
Oh, right, I was.
LAUGHTER
He's new.
It's called a killifish and there
are 1,270 different species of them.
That's not the same one we've seen.
That's his sister! It's not,
but it's certainly a killifish.
Now,
while we're at the water's edge,
why does a flamingo
stand on one leg?
JOHN'S BUZZER
I think I have the answer.
Because it wants to go to sleep.
Yes. Is it?
You're right! Ah, well.
I was going to say land mines!
APPLAUSE
Are they pink because they're
on their period, but it's not
a very heavy flow?
No, you're right. They have,
like other animals, the ability
for half of themselves
to go to sleep.
So the half with the leg up
is asleep.
That whole half of their body
is in a torpid state
and the blood flow's less.
When that has had enough sleep, they
swap over and the other leg goes up.
There must be an in-between moment
when they fall on their arse.
You wonder, don't you!
How does that work? Does it go
naturally down the middle
of their face and neck
or does their arse go to sleep,
and then their face wakes up?
One assumes... I don't know. The
phrase "my leg's gone to sleep"
has a whole new thing. Precisely.
And they are pink because...?
It's...not crayfish,
prawns or something.
KLAXON
It's not prawns.
It's a common fallacy
that they're pink cos
the eat pink food like prawns...
Or Angel Delight. Or Angel Delight.
No, they eat a blue-green algae
which is full of carotenoid
that makes them pink.
In zoos they give them supplements
to make them pink. The flamingo
version of Where's Wally is hard.
LAUGHTER
Interestingly,
they can drink boiling water.
How did they find that out?
A very cruel man found that out.
"Here you go!"
They live near geysers where
the water is that temperature.
They can eat a McDonald's apple pie.
The only species that can!
Which is the hottest substance
known to man. Yeah.
Verified by NASA.
LAUGHTER
I think we've sucked all the
nutrient out of the flamingo.
Now, what kind of tricks could you
play on a naive rhinoceros?
Ooh!
JIMMY'S BUZZER
You could tell it it's a unicorn
that just needs to moisturise.
Poor thing!
You could tell it that you are the
wife of a Nigerian ambassador
and that if it sent you 4,000...
It would probably go for it,
wouldn't it? It might!
So this is a naive rhino? As
opposed to... Sometimes you get a
rhino that's quite worldly-wise.
It's the zoological or natural
history meaning of the word "naive".
It has a special meaning when
applied to animals. Do you know
what that is? Naive animal?
Just, he's a bit...?
Is it very old?
No, it's to do with an animal that
is suddenly put into a terrain
or an ecosphere
which its evolution
has not prepared it for, or...
Like a rhinoceros going to Peckham,
for example? Exactly. ..or the
other thing that can happen,
that into, for example,
the classic example is an island,
a new species arrives
that can cause absolute havoc.
Something like a dodo, for example,
or all kinds of birds and animals
in Bermuda and various islands that
had literally evolved with no sense
of fear whatsoever.
Because a sense of fear
uses up energy - constantly running
and looking and being nervous.
If you live on an island
where all the species are friendly,
none of them wants to eat you,
you completely over the thousands
of years lose any sense of fear.
So when people first arrived
on Bermuda, for example,
all these birds would wander into
their hands, you could pick them up
and put them in a cooking pot.
The other birds would cluster
around quite happily. The point is
you can play almost any kind
of trick on a naive rhinoceros -
the term is applied to animals
that meet threats their environment
hasn't prepared them for,
such as a new predator. Now...
as night falls on our expedition,
the evening chorus starts up
from the waterhole.
It's spring and love is in the air.
What are these toads
saying to each other?
CROAKING
It's very repetitive.
These are natterjacks.
Natterjacks, like a lot of toads,
have explosive sexual engagements...
Not just toads.
..when suddenly it's ready and the
male toad will jump on anything -
animal, vegetable or mineral.
But hopefully a female toad.
But very often it will jump on
a male toad. That's OK, too.
Which is fine. Yeah.
But the male toad underneath
often doesn't like it...
Well, you know, reach around!
..and it makes a noise,
and that is the noise you hear
during the mating season.
A boy at my school used to catch
frogs and skin them and let them go.
Oh...!
Well, he let them GO!
Why have you always got to focus
on the negative stuff?
He was a humanitarian.
He said, "It's amazing,
you can see all their insides!"
Just one word comes to my head -
Essex. I don't know why.
He says it was a school -
it was a Borstal!
Well, he said he did that, anyway.
Said you had to leave a little bit
around their eyes. Oh...!
Yeah, you don't want to be cruel.
So you're saying the sound we heard
there was a lot of frogs going...
"I'm a bloke!"
I can't understand the idea that this
toad would have evolved and gone,
"When the mating season comes round,
just go for your life,"
rather than trying to chat
a girl up...in a froggy way.
Do you know the difference
between a frog and a toad?
Spelling.
LAUGHTER
Very good!
You might as well be right -
there's no definitive difference.
Generally speaking,
toads have dry skin and dry lives,
but there is no real difference.
I used to have an Alsatian and she
came to wake me up one morning.
Normally she'd wait for me.
She came and put her head under
the duvet and pulled it off me.
I said, "What are you doing?"
She went to the bedroom door
and looked at me like that.
I got up and she went to the kitchen
door still looking at me and led me
to her water bowl by the back door.
She was looking at it
and looking at me.
I looked at it
and there was a frog in it.
That's so sweet.
It must've come in the back door
the night before, then found itself
in the kitchen,
and then got in the water bowl
and sat there all night like...
with this huge dog staring at it!
He said, "I'm going to get Alan,
this isn't..."
I love the idea of the relationship
between you and your dog.
You're on quite a level...
"Have a look at this, Alan."
We shared a flat. Thing was,
I had a walled garden,
I don't know how the frogs got in,
but they did every year.
The odd thing, you're saying...
A huge quantity of toads are
killed every year on the roads.
About 20 tons of toad
lose their lives.
We're trying to make it less
with toad tunnels. Do you know why
so many die on the road?
It's mating season. They have
ancient mating ponds they've had
for hundreds of years.
Whether there's a road there or not,
that's the way they've always gone.
You used to have them in a pond
in Buckhurst Hill. People would
go out with frying pans...
They'd hop into a frying pan,
and then you'd flip 'em.
There's scores of them.
It combines fun with doing good.
They land on another toad
and it's all done.
Did you hear an extraordinary story
in Hamburg in 2005?
About the exploding toads?
Vaguely, yes.
Toads started exploding
during the mating season.
More than 1,000 toads swollen
to three times their usual size
crawled out of the water,
making screeching noises,
and blew up, propelling their
entrails up to a yard away.
People thought it might be a virus
or pollution, but do you know
what was the cause?
< Al-Qaeda.
No.
Suicide toads.
It wasn't... They were all
fundamentalists and misguided...
They go to a busy market place and
splatter everyone with toad entrail.
"That'll learn ya!"
"Toad rights!"
It was crows.
Crows had discovered how to fly in
and, in one swift movement,
remove the liver of the toads.
They'd go in and pull out the liver.
Are these ninja crows?
What are you talking about?
They come in, scalpel ready...
No, they use their beak.
And just...? Birds have worked out
how to do that with a single strike.
The toads' defence mechanism
did the rest. They puffed themselves
up to intimidate their foe,
forcing their intestines
out of the hole that had been made
and had a kind of fatal hernia.
The other thing about toads
is it sometimes does rain toads,
doesn't it? That does happen.
It rained fish once in Knighton
in Wales. I do know that.
Cos what happened,
there was like a mini tornado
and it just picked a load of fish up
out of the river and blew them along
and rained on the town,
so that can happen.
D'you know that joke about the
librarian who sees this hen come
into the library,
and the hen comes up and says,
"Book!"
And the librarian gives her a book.
Tucks the book under her arm.
The next day the hen comes in
and goes, "Book, book, book!"
Librarian gives her three books.
Puts them under her arm,
takes them away.
Next day, comes in, "Book, book,
book, book, book!" Five books!
Librarian thinks, "This is weird
I've never known of a hen
that's this fast at reading.
"I've got to find out
what's going on."
So she grabs her macintosh and
follows the hen out of the library
to a house.
She looks in through the keyhole
and there's the hen sitting on a
bed. And there's a frog in the bed
with a thermometer in its mouth,
obviously not very well.
The hen is tending it,
and offers a book,
and each time, the frog goes,
"Read it, read it, read it..."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Silly joke, but...
What's this?
That's a seagull.
And what's this?
That's a seagull coming back
from the library.
Wanna hear my library joke? Go on.
A man walks into a library,
"Fish and chips, please." The
librarian says, "This is a library."
(WHISPERED) "Sorry,
fish and chips, please."
Excellent! But the reason
I mentioned my particular joke
is that there's something very odd
about this perception we have
that frogs go "reddit, reddit"
or "ribbit, ribbit".
D'you know why it is that all around
the world people do jokes or imagine
that frogs make this noise?
Because there's only one species of
frog that actually makes that noise.
D'you know where it is? Ah...
JIMMY: In Hollywood, California?
Yes!
It's the Pacific tree frog.
And when sound came into movies
and they wanted to do soundtracks
to everything from Sanders Of The
River to Tarzan movies, anything
that basically was an outside...
they'd send their sound recordist
out to record frogs and things
for their archives for sound.
All the frogs down the coast
of the Pacific sound like
"ribbit, ribbit, ribbit".
They don't in Africa,
Europe, Central America, Asia...
So in all American films
for about 30 or 40 years
you would hear this
"ribbit, ribbit" noise,
and it became the sound of a frog.
But it just happens to be - as you
rightly said, five points, Jimmy
Carr - in Hollywood, California.
Anyway...
APPLAUSE
The most common tone of a toad
is "get off" because it's the
high-pitched croak of protest
it makes when a male
accidentally mounts it.
Now, what's the worst
that can happen in the middle
of a fairy ring?
Well, I'm not taking that!
You know what, there's a time
and place for this sort of thing -
10:30, Graham Norton Show.
Thank you for not saying
"sand in the Vaseline"
or something obvious like that.
No, I'll get to that! All right.
I'll talk over him.
It'll be some sort
of flora or fauna, I'll wager.
Oddly enough, it's neither.
But it is a living thing.
It's a living thing?
And if it's a living thing
and it's not flora or fauna...
Oh - leprechaun!
LAUGHTER
Fungus. Fungus!
They're magic, aren't they, fairy
rings? They're said to be magic...
..by simple people.
Exactly. ..because fungus
can grow in these circles.
And when the mushrooms shrink back,
you get discoloured grass
in a ring as well.
Some of them... There's one
in France up to 700 years old.
What's the thing that happens, then?
There are myths and legends
about it. For example, Jo Brand,
if you were a young lady...
Don't know why you're looking at ME!
I was trying to be gallant!
It doesn't suit you.
Fair enough. All right. Imagine a
young lady, Jo Brand... I'll try.
Apparently,
if she goes into a fairy ring
on a May Day morning
and washes her face with the dew
from the grass inside,
she will turn into a hag.
So, are you saying
that obviously I'VE done that?! No!
I'm saying whatever you do,
don't do that.
Don't go into a fairy ring.
And don't do that again.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
That's mean! There are worse things
that can happen to a fair young
maiden these days
at the swings
with half a bottle of cider.
Anyway, supposedly you might turn
into a crone or get stuck in a time
vortex, all kinds of superstitions.
Actually, fairy rings aren't caused
by dancing fairies,
they are a fungus.
Now, what use is a frog
after a one-night stand?
JOHN'S BUZZER
I think I have the answer.
It's about sex, isn't it?
It kind of is.
I knew it.
Some sort of natural
morning-after pill effect?
No, not that.
For 30 years, between 1930 and 1960,
this was used by Western science
in a serious way to perform
a very important function.
Do they turn a different colour
if a woman's pregnant?
It's not exactly that, but
that is the use they were put to.
Pregnancy tests. Not really?!
Pregnancy tests? Yes.
A woman pees on that?!
No, a woman's urine
is injected into it. How?
With a needle? How else? Oh, OK.
No wonder he looks so pissed off.
That's an African bullfrog, I think,
but actually they use the clawed
toad as much. So hang on,
that frog's just had another frog
on his back trying to bum him,
suddenly there's a woman's pee
being injected into him.
He's having a horrible day.
LAUGHTER
Point is it's a female clawed frog.
If the woman was pregnant,
the female frog, within 8-12 hours,
would ovulate.
It's as simple as that. I wonder if
they have a little blue line
on their back so you look
at like this...
LAUGHTER
A plus or a minus! But it was
a standard pregnancy test.
The best way to test if a woman is
pregnant is leave it nine months,
see...
if it gets a flat.
That's a cruel test.
If it gets a house, it's twins.
There was a terrible outcome having
these African frogs around.
The National Health Service in
Britain kept a lot of them,
and some of them escaped.
Unfortunately, they had a disease...
They were full of piss.
LAUGHTER
..called chytridiomycosis.
It's threatening a third
of the world's amphibians now.
It's spread around the world.
It's actually a deep tragedy,
and these frogs
have caused part of it.
So our Western desire to know
whether we're pregnant before
nine months has caused
huge damage to lots of amphibians.
There we are,
African clawed frogs ovulate
if injected with the urine
from a pregnant woman.
Until the 1950s,
this was the only available
pregnancy test.
From frogs to hogs. Why should we
feel particularly sorry for the
pygmy hog-sucking louse?
JOHN'S BUZZER
Yes.
I think we've got to worry about
this, because...
the louse goes onto the hog, right?
Yeah.
But the hogs are very small and
they're not very interesting.
And they're dying out. Is that the
answer? Absolutely right.
It's an easily forgotten fact that
when a species that we care about -
as humans we tend to care about big
woolly species -
when they become endangered, we
forget there are many other species
that depend on them.
Such an example is the
pygmy hog of which there are only
150 left in the world.
And there is a whole species of
louse which is only able to live
on...
I can't belief it's able to sustain
that louse, cos they're about the
same size.
It's... You get a couple of those on
your back, no wonder they're dying
out. We have lice,
human lice. We have... Well...
we didn't want to discuss that in
front of other people. Go and see a
specialist. And they're...
quite interesting. They tell us a
lot about ourselves. For example,
the body louse
only lives in human clothing.
It's only 70,000 years old,
as a sub-species of louse.
And that sort of tells us that
humans started to wear clothing
70,000 years ago.
And we didn't mention this about our
fleas. We were talking about the flea
circus...
they only used human fleas.
Oh, did they?
And the human fleas are now dying out
and may be extinct. Because of...
Vacuum cleaning and all that.
Going woof-woof, yeah.
That is odd, isn't it?
Absolutely right.
It is a bizarre thing, where we care
a lot more about the little fluffy
things
than the horrible...that
beastie-looking thing.
Isn't there the thing about the
panda? It is the emblem of the
World Wildlife Fund.
So a disproportionate amount goes to
saving the panda, because it looks
like a battered wife.
The pygmy hog-sucking louse is the
only species of louse classified as
critically endangered.
It's co-endangered with the
dwindling pygmy hog population
in northern India.
Now, whilst the pygmy hog-sucking
louse is in decline, it's up,
up and away for ferrets. So tell me,
how does a ferret
build an airliner?
JO'S BUZZER
Yes.
Really weasily.
Oh! Oh, no.
I'm sorry,
we've got there before you!
APPLAUSE
Oh, dear!
If it's any consolation,
I was seconds behind.
LAUGHTER
Boeing used them. What? Sorry?
Boeing used ferrets.
To build a plane?
To help build a plane. Not the whole
plane... They don't put that
in the ads, do they?
They're not ashamed of it. They were
used for the wedding of Charles
and Diana, for the
Millennium Party In The Park...
Looking for things? Nope.
Their fur?
Nope. To get something down a very
long tunnel, you tie it...
Brilliant!
Absolutely. That's precisely what
it is. You use it for wiring -
it happily goes through the
narrowest spaces, and it comes
out the other end
and you've got the wire through.
It was used by Boeing
right up until the 1960s, and...
It's a brilliant idea! Isn't it?
Very clever.
Anyway, they are now the third
most popular pet in America,
after cats and dogs.
They welcome you when you come back
from a day's work like puppies.
They're very like puppies. Come in!
Yeah. They're thrilled to see you,
very pleased.
Do they run up your trousers, though?
The trouser business is interesting.
There are people who claim this
is a Yorkshire sport,
of having ferrets in your trousers,
but no-one's sure if it is.
It's become one, but it kind of
started as a hoax in a famous
interview...
Always in '70s sitcoms, someone with
a ferret up the trousers.
Ferret up your trousers,
that's right! Ooh, aah!
You'd laugh at home.
LAUGHTER
They're used now for pet therapy,
cos they are very friendly animals.
You mean they sit opposite you...
And talk you through your problems.
"How does that make you feel?"
LAUGHTER
Interacting with them reduces your
stress hormones. Helpful for
the elderly, depressed and children
recovering from severe illnesses.
And they're used for that.
So, get a ferret.
And so once more we plunge,
ferret-like,
into the black hole of general
ignorance, fingers on buzzers.
What's the fastest thing
in the natural world?
ALAN'S BUZZER
Alan.
Blue whale.
Ho-ho-ho! Every time!
APPLAUSE
It's never gonna be a blue whale,
is it? Never gonna be blue whale.
Any other thoughts?
Fastest thing.
ALAN'S BUZZER
Cheetah.
Oh! Alan Davies...
I don't know...
It's got to be alive. OK.
Something like a cheetah
but it's not? No.
It's not an animal. It's a flower.
So you're on a road,
and suddenly it overtakes you?
No. We're talking ejaculation.
Ah! We're talking again, sex. It's
the sex obsession! What do they do?
Sorry, the fastest thing on Earth?
Is this a personal slight at me?
LAUGHTER
Because I'd had a very busy week.
No, it's not! It's not that.
It's a flower called
the white mulberry,
and it pushes out its pollen
at half the speed of sound.
Mach 0.5. Pow.
Over 350 miles per hour. Gosh.
It's the fastest thing in biology.
Nothing moves faster.
But what about an aircraft? Oh.
In biology.
LAUGHTER
What about a naturally reared
organic aircraft?
LAUGHTER
Made out of ferrets.
It's the morus alba, and what do
I have on me that owes itself to...?
Your flower, surely?
No, something owes itself to the
white mulberry I'm wearing.
Silk tie?
Silk, of course. There are
thousands in China in particular,
cos the silk worm lives on the white
mulberry leaves.
But it pollinates, it pushes out its
pollen at this astounding speed.
Stored elastic energy
in its stamens.
So if you've got hay fever,
you've got no chance of escape.
Coming out quite a pace.
Have your eye out!
LAUGHTER
No wonder it's itchy. Wow.
STEPHEN GROWLS
So there you have it. What is...?
JIMMY: What was THAT noise?!
I was just... Nice. I was just
growling. R-R-R-R! R-R-R-R!
I want it as a ringtone.
R-R-R-R!
There you have it. We move on,
fingers on buttons.
What do you call a slug
with a shell?
I'm not falling for that one!
LAUGHTER
Er, I'll take the bullet.
JIMMY'S BUZZER
Snail?
Oh! Just for a moment, I thought
you'd say, "yes, you do"
and then carry on. No.
So you asked what do I call?
A-ha! No, you can't get
out of it that way.
No, a snail with a shell is a snail,
a slug with a shell is a slug.
Some slugs have shells and they are
slugs, not snails.
Vestigial snails, small snails,
snails like the glass slug,
and slugs we think of
as being sort of shell-less snails,
but they can have little
things on. They eat each other's
slime as an act of foreplay,
then afterwards...
So do I.
LAUGHTER
Does the female then bite off
your penis?
Huh?
Well, it nibbles.
We can but hope!
They're obviously terrible garden
pests, but they are,
after insects...
Used to live in our kitchen,
when we were students.
There'd just be trails across
the floor in the morning.
We didn't do anything about it.
LAUGHTER
Just had bits of cornflakes stuck...
Eurgh! Carry on. Yeah!
There are 37,000 species
of gastropod.
After insects, they're the most
common class of animal on the Earth.
37,000? Mmm. Write that down.
Yep, if you would.
I will test you next week.
How do peacocks impress the ladies?
Again...
Hm? This... I'm... Yeah?
By doing the thing, by doing the...
No. So what? I don't know what
you're saying.
LAUGHTER
Do they say to the female peacock,
"How do you like your eggs in the
morning?" "Protected from foxes."
It's good that you've avoided our
trap, because you're right. You'd
think it was fanning. Look at that.
That's astonishing.
It's real, not made up. Phwoar.
But some Japanese scientists
at the University of Tokyo
have discovered, much to everybody's
surprise after a long study,
that peahens seem to select peacocks
according to other criteria.
It seems to be... Sense of humour.
Exactly! That's it!
It's personality and sense of
humour, not colour and the drama of
fanning.
Often I find they SAY that, but when
it comes down to it...
they go off with a much hunkier guy.
They took seven years to do this
and they observed 258 matings.
It seems a very surprising result,
but...
they've been wasting their time
growing their tails, if we're to
believe these Japanese people.
They took their tails off?
How did they experiment with them?
I don't know how the experiment was
done. They judged tail quality in
two ways -
by simply measuring tail length, and
by taking photos of each male during
the fanning ritual,
counting the number of eye spots.
They examined whether females chose
mates with the best-quality tails.
According to those criteria, but
that may not be the peahens'
criteria.
I think it's dodgy research.
I sort of agree with you,
I have to say. We have to do the
whole thing all over again,
and dress them in raincoats.
Anyway, what happened after Captain
Cook shot an albatross? JOHN: Ah...
So this fella shot that fella? I can
see why he's looking right
at him.
That's Captain Cook, supposedly.
He looks rather like Roy Dotrice,
the actor, for some reason.
But it's Captain Cook.
And the answer is, they ate it.
Joseph Banks, the great botanist,
after whom Botany Bay is named,
he served with him and describes in
his diary, he said everybody
commended them,
the albatross steaks and ate
heartily of them though there was
fresh pork upon the table.
So this idea that it was bad luck to
eat albatross seems to have come
after Captain Cook.
In fact, it probably came from the
poem, The Ancient Mariner, the
Coleridge poem,
with which you're all familiar, of
course. What do we know about...?
..Of course you know it!
What do we know about albatrosses?
Anything interesting about them?
They get caught up in fishing lines.
They do. Everyone gets very upset
about it. Hm.
Cos they're rather extraordinary
birds. And they fly thousands of
miles?
The young wandering albatross will
set off and will be in the air
for ten years before it lands again.
That one's looking at me. It is!
It's looking at the camera, shall we
say? Feels like it's looking at me.
Ten years without landing...
Why does it land after ten years? It
must feel a fool. It must go,
"I think I could go 11."
Mating. Mating - the eggs can't be
laid and hatched and incubated with
its mate.
You couldn't lay the eggs on the
move? No, darling. Do they fly into
the water to get food? They dive in
and get fish. And airborne food they
might pass by? No, it's fish.
They dive, but they don't actually
land. And they can go for six days
without flapping their wings.
They can glide for that long.
They preserve their energy
amazingly.
JOHN: They're on thermals.
Actually, they're not like...
JIMMY: They hire thermals?!
No. They take the wind
off the surface of the water.
Try and listen to the headmaster.
LAUGHTER
And finally, before we stagger
back to civilisation,
is a mushroom an animal or a plant?
A plant.
Or an animal.
Or a...
It's not either, it's a fungus.
Which is it closer to?
If that makes any sense.
Animal or plant, you mean? Yeah.
There, it's closer to a plant.
Very good(!) Next to that grass.
You'd think it was a plant,
so I'll say animal.
You're correct. Absolutely right.
It recently was discovered it has
more in common with animals
than with plants. Now,
it's time to have our guests gassed,
stuffed and mounted in glass cases,
as we come to the scores.
Taking the laurels of victory
this week...
is the audience with plus ten!
CHEERING
How about that? Well done, audience.
You see? It pays to know
about opera.
Just that Traviata,
and there you are, they win.
But in a creditable second place
with minus one, Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
In third place, with an excellent
score for a beginner...minus four,
John Sergeant!
APPLAUSE
Thank you.
And in his usual fourth place,
but oddly not last...
with minus 18, Alan Davies!
APPLAUSE
And...
in this F series,
finally and fifthly,
it's the filthily fabulous
Jo Brand with minus 27!
APPLAUSE
So...that's all from this florid
and faunal edition of QI.
It's good night from Jo, John,
Jimmy, Alan and from me,
and I leave you with those floral
tribute from Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, a great pick-up line.
"Won't you come into the garden?
I would like my roses to see you."
Good night.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're having fun with
flora and fauna.
It's like animal, vegetable and
mineral only...without the mineral.
In the flowerbed tonight,
we have a perennial favourite,
Jimmy Carr.
APPLAUSE
Thank you very much.
A hardy annual, John Sergeant.
APPLAUSE
A heavily scented late-bloomer,
Jo Brand.
APPLAUSE
And a cat having a crap in a
flowerpot,
Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
But before we plunge into my
arboretum and bestiary,
let's go wild with our buzzers.
John goes...
LION GROWLING
LAUGHTER
Jimmy goes...
WOLF HOWLING
Jo goes...
ELEPHANT TRUMPETING
LAUGHTER
And Alan goes...
MONKEY CHATTERING
BANG, CRASH, GLASS SMASHING
Oh, dear.
Well done.
So let's start on our sofa-bound
safari.
What does my buttonhole
tell you about me?
TRUMPETING
That you're a closet heterosexual.
How dare you!
I'm sorry!
It tells us that you are what you
are. Your own special creation.
It's not going to fire water at me,
is it? No, it's a real flower
and it's a member of a family of
flowers
and it has a name.
It's a rhododendron. >
It's not a rhododendron.
Camellia. It is! Well done. And you
are La Dame Aux Camelias.
Tell me about La Dame Aux Camelias.
It's a novel. It's a novel. Yeah.
About a lady.
Do you know what this meant?
Who liked camellias.
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Good. But there is a thing about the
red camellia that is very
extraordinary,
unbelievably shocking,
to mid-19th-century France.
Periods.
You're so right.
Marguerite Gautier, the heroine of
the novel La Dame Aux Camelias,
wore for 25 days of the month
a white camellia.
For five days, a red one, to tell
her lovers that she was not
available...
That Arsenal were playing away!
Playing at home!
At home!
The decorators were in, the...etc.
Are you saying that you ARE available
or you're not?
I've got a period on, John.
LAUGHTER
You can't have me, I'm sorry.
Was this in some play?
A novel by Alexandre Dumas fils,
the bastard son of the creator of
The Three Musketeers.
Can I just say, that was so sweet,
cos no woman in her entire life
has ever said,
"I've got a period ON"!
LAUGHTER
Well...
I either say "I've got a period" or
"I'm on".
Fair enough! OK!
You don't conflate them together.
"I've got a period on"!
And anyway, it became a play.
Sarah Bernhardt was in it thousands
of times,
in 1854 Verdi saw the play and
turned it into the opera...
for five points...?
Is that what the opera's called?
No!
It's called Camellia something...
the flower.
Audience will know.
< La Traviata. La Traviata. Audience
get ten points. That's very good.
It was La Traviata. They're not in
the lead again!
So La Traviata, which I've heard of
and is a proper grown-up thing,
is about a woman having a period?
No, no.
It's the story of a famous courtesan
who was in love - and the real one -
there were seven men
who were so passionate about her but
couldn't afford her prices, they
clubbed together
and bought her a chest of drawers
with seven separate drawers in so
they could keep their own clothes.
It was turned into a film,
which was...
Snow White. She's called.
The seven guys with the one girl is a
bit...
Very good!
APPLAUSE
Very good.
And the film based on
La Dame Aux Camelias is...?
Carry On Menstruating.
Camille. Camille?
Yes, in La Dame Aux Camelias and La
Traviata, the heroine indicates her
availability
by wearing different-coloured
camellias.
The book caused an outrage and made
the flower an overnight gardening
sensation in Paris and beyond.
Something more wholesome now.
It's good news. Daddy is taking you
to the flea circus.
Which bit are you most looking
forward to? What do you know about
flea circuses?
I had fleas in my flat once. Did
you really?
Rentokil quoted 600 quid to get rid
of it.
I found a bloke in the local paper
did it for 40.
I don't know what he sprayed!
The cat was going like this
for a few days.
Do you know what the biggest
destroyer of human fleas has been -
much bigger than pesticides?
I know the answer. It's vacuum
cleaners.
You're right. It's their
woof-woof-woof.
And the fleas don't like it.
Do you think your vacuum cleaner may
be broken?
If it's going woof-woof-woof?
You might want to take that back and
get a new one.
They're not specialised,
these vacuum cleaners.
They kill lots of fleas?
The other thing you've got to know
about them is that the back legs of
fleas are incredibly powerful.
And if a human being had
as powerful legs,
they could jump over the
Eiffel Tower.
You're right. Eighty times your own
height is what you'd be able to
jump.
These flea circuses, though,
we don't have them in our time,
but they were amazingly popular
in the 1920s and '30s,
because they had to find something
interesting to do between the two
world wars.
Exactly. They were filling in.
So fleas were very exciting...
a lot more of them about. In fact,
they died out in the early '60s,
probably.
But you will see, there's some film
here showing you that -
you're right, these strong legs
allow them to pull - they were
harnessed to wire...
Are they real? Yeah.
They... I thought it was... No,
you're thinking Michael Bentine's
mechanical ones with little
automatic machines that...
You thought you could see the fleas
but... No, there were fleas.
Genuinely people-trained fleas?
No. Unfortunately, they were
basically tortured.
You would glue them to musical
instruments and other things
and then heat the underpart where
they were
so their attempts to make themselves
free would look as if they were
playing instruments.
That's like Britain's Got Talent.
That sounds horrible.
Almost as horrible as
Britain's Got Talent.
But let's see some film,
if we can, Mr Man In The Gallery.
There we are.
JIMMY: Why are they performing on his
arm?
They get fed with his blood. Ah!
JOHN: That's to show how small they
are.
He's going to burn them with the
sun.
It's Ben-Hur.
Robot Wars.
Why have they got a serial killer
operating the...
JOHN: That reminds me of a very old
joke.
Are you ready for a very old joke?
I'd love to hear one.
How do you build a flea circus?
You have to start from scratch.
Hey-hey! Excellent.
Is that stuck into the flea or glued
on?
It's glued or they make wire
harnesses for them.
And people like Michael Bentine
invented these mechanical ones.
He did one in a Royal Variety
Performance in the '60s.
And that's when I first saw it.
I realised there were no fleas and,
like you, I thought there was no
such thing and it was just a joke.
It was part of an idea that you had
freak shows. You'd have all sorts of
daft things...
It's awful to raise this. You two
aren't related, are you?
Are you suggesting we're some kind of
freak show...
No, I just...
..that should be next to the flea
circus?
There's not a... There's a bit of a
likeness, we're brother and sister.
That explains it!
Flea circuses covered a range of
acts, including chariot races
and fencing matches as well as
acrobatics and...
Techniques included glueing the
fleas to musical instruments and
then heating the floor
so they seemed to be playing as they
struggled.
What is the really odd thing about
the only fish in the world
that lives in a tree?
Is it going to be an underwater
tree...thing?
Like fish that can live in anemones
cos they're the only ones that
aren't poisoned by them?
These are trees above the surface.
Stephen, is that meant to be
a perfect picture of...? No.
I know that's a salmon for a start.
It does not like to live in a tree,
I know that.
We can actually show you
the real fish in a tree.
There we are in the mangrove
swamps of Florida. Where is it?
You can't see it yet,
but this is its habitat.
These pools shrink and it goes up
these little grooves made by
insects,
whole groups of them go up
into the tree. We can see one
poking its eye out.
And what's the unusual thing?
Can it whistle one tune
while it hums another?
Kind of almost
an erotic version of that.
It is the only vertebrate that is a
hermaphrodite that self-fertilises.
That's how it breeds.
It pleasures itself and...
Why don't we all do that?
In terms of natural selection, why
don't we all, because that'd be fun.
My teenage years... You're right.
..there would've been thousands.
It'd be fun to tell yourself
you've got a headache.
"No, I can't tonight."
Isn't it asexual reproduction?
No, it's hermaphroditic.
Parthenogenesis you may be thinking.
Oh, right, I was.
LAUGHTER
He's new.
It's called a killifish and there
are 1,270 different species of them.
That's not the same one we've seen.
That's his sister! It's not,
but it's certainly a killifish.
Now,
while we're at the water's edge,
why does a flamingo
stand on one leg?
JOHN'S BUZZER
I think I have the answer.
Because it wants to go to sleep.
Yes. Is it?
You're right! Ah, well.
I was going to say land mines!
APPLAUSE
Are they pink because they're
on their period, but it's not
a very heavy flow?
No, you're right. They have,
like other animals, the ability
for half of themselves
to go to sleep.
So the half with the leg up
is asleep.
That whole half of their body
is in a torpid state
and the blood flow's less.
When that has had enough sleep, they
swap over and the other leg goes up.
There must be an in-between moment
when they fall on their arse.
You wonder, don't you!
How does that work? Does it go
naturally down the middle
of their face and neck
or does their arse go to sleep,
and then their face wakes up?
One assumes... I don't know. The
phrase "my leg's gone to sleep"
has a whole new thing. Precisely.
And they are pink because...?
It's...not crayfish,
prawns or something.
KLAXON
It's not prawns.
It's a common fallacy
that they're pink cos
the eat pink food like prawns...
Or Angel Delight. Or Angel Delight.
No, they eat a blue-green algae
which is full of carotenoid
that makes them pink.
In zoos they give them supplements
to make them pink. The flamingo
version of Where's Wally is hard.
LAUGHTER
Interestingly,
they can drink boiling water.
How did they find that out?
A very cruel man found that out.
"Here you go!"
They live near geysers where
the water is that temperature.
They can eat a McDonald's apple pie.
The only species that can!
Which is the hottest substance
known to man. Yeah.
Verified by NASA.
LAUGHTER
I think we've sucked all the
nutrient out of the flamingo.
Now, what kind of tricks could you
play on a naive rhinoceros?
Ooh!
JIMMY'S BUZZER
You could tell it it's a unicorn
that just needs to moisturise.
Poor thing!
You could tell it that you are the
wife of a Nigerian ambassador
and that if it sent you 4,000...
It would probably go for it,
wouldn't it? It might!
So this is a naive rhino? As
opposed to... Sometimes you get a
rhino that's quite worldly-wise.
It's the zoological or natural
history meaning of the word "naive".
It has a special meaning when
applied to animals. Do you know
what that is? Naive animal?
Just, he's a bit...?
Is it very old?
No, it's to do with an animal that
is suddenly put into a terrain
or an ecosphere
which its evolution
has not prepared it for, or...
Like a rhinoceros going to Peckham,
for example? Exactly. ..or the
other thing that can happen,
that into, for example,
the classic example is an island,
a new species arrives
that can cause absolute havoc.
Something like a dodo, for example,
or all kinds of birds and animals
in Bermuda and various islands that
had literally evolved with no sense
of fear whatsoever.
Because a sense of fear
uses up energy - constantly running
and looking and being nervous.
If you live on an island
where all the species are friendly,
none of them wants to eat you,
you completely over the thousands
of years lose any sense of fear.
So when people first arrived
on Bermuda, for example,
all these birds would wander into
their hands, you could pick them up
and put them in a cooking pot.
The other birds would cluster
around quite happily. The point is
you can play almost any kind
of trick on a naive rhinoceros -
the term is applied to animals
that meet threats their environment
hasn't prepared them for,
such as a new predator. Now...
as night falls on our expedition,
the evening chorus starts up
from the waterhole.
It's spring and love is in the air.
What are these toads
saying to each other?
CROAKING
It's very repetitive.
These are natterjacks.
Natterjacks, like a lot of toads,
have explosive sexual engagements...
Not just toads.
..when suddenly it's ready and the
male toad will jump on anything -
animal, vegetable or mineral.
But hopefully a female toad.
But very often it will jump on
a male toad. That's OK, too.
Which is fine. Yeah.
But the male toad underneath
often doesn't like it...
Well, you know, reach around!
..and it makes a noise,
and that is the noise you hear
during the mating season.
A boy at my school used to catch
frogs and skin them and let them go.
Oh...!
Well, he let them GO!
Why have you always got to focus
on the negative stuff?
He was a humanitarian.
He said, "It's amazing,
you can see all their insides!"
Just one word comes to my head -
Essex. I don't know why.
He says it was a school -
it was a Borstal!
Well, he said he did that, anyway.
Said you had to leave a little bit
around their eyes. Oh...!
Yeah, you don't want to be cruel.
So you're saying the sound we heard
there was a lot of frogs going...
"I'm a bloke!"
I can't understand the idea that this
toad would have evolved and gone,
"When the mating season comes round,
just go for your life,"
rather than trying to chat
a girl up...in a froggy way.
Do you know the difference
between a frog and a toad?
Spelling.
LAUGHTER
Very good!
You might as well be right -
there's no definitive difference.
Generally speaking,
toads have dry skin and dry lives,
but there is no real difference.
I used to have an Alsatian and she
came to wake me up one morning.
Normally she'd wait for me.
She came and put her head under
the duvet and pulled it off me.
I said, "What are you doing?"
She went to the bedroom door
and looked at me like that.
I got up and she went to the kitchen
door still looking at me and led me
to her water bowl by the back door.
She was looking at it
and looking at me.
I looked at it
and there was a frog in it.
That's so sweet.
It must've come in the back door
the night before, then found itself
in the kitchen,
and then got in the water bowl
and sat there all night like...
with this huge dog staring at it!
He said, "I'm going to get Alan,
this isn't..."
I love the idea of the relationship
between you and your dog.
You're on quite a level...
"Have a look at this, Alan."
We shared a flat. Thing was,
I had a walled garden,
I don't know how the frogs got in,
but they did every year.
The odd thing, you're saying...
A huge quantity of toads are
killed every year on the roads.
About 20 tons of toad
lose their lives.
We're trying to make it less
with toad tunnels. Do you know why
so many die on the road?
It's mating season. They have
ancient mating ponds they've had
for hundreds of years.
Whether there's a road there or not,
that's the way they've always gone.
You used to have them in a pond
in Buckhurst Hill. People would
go out with frying pans...
They'd hop into a frying pan,
and then you'd flip 'em.
There's scores of them.
It combines fun with doing good.
They land on another toad
and it's all done.
Did you hear an extraordinary story
in Hamburg in 2005?
About the exploding toads?
Vaguely, yes.
Toads started exploding
during the mating season.
More than 1,000 toads swollen
to three times their usual size
crawled out of the water,
making screeching noises,
and blew up, propelling their
entrails up to a yard away.
People thought it might be a virus
or pollution, but do you know
what was the cause?
< Al-Qaeda.
No.
Suicide toads.
It wasn't... They were all
fundamentalists and misguided...
They go to a busy market place and
splatter everyone with toad entrail.
"That'll learn ya!"
"Toad rights!"
It was crows.
Crows had discovered how to fly in
and, in one swift movement,
remove the liver of the toads.
They'd go in and pull out the liver.
Are these ninja crows?
What are you talking about?
They come in, scalpel ready...
No, they use their beak.
And just...? Birds have worked out
how to do that with a single strike.
The toads' defence mechanism
did the rest. They puffed themselves
up to intimidate their foe,
forcing their intestines
out of the hole that had been made
and had a kind of fatal hernia.
The other thing about toads
is it sometimes does rain toads,
doesn't it? That does happen.
It rained fish once in Knighton
in Wales. I do know that.
Cos what happened,
there was like a mini tornado
and it just picked a load of fish up
out of the river and blew them along
and rained on the town,
so that can happen.
D'you know that joke about the
librarian who sees this hen come
into the library,
and the hen comes up and says,
"Book!"
And the librarian gives her a book.
Tucks the book under her arm.
The next day the hen comes in
and goes, "Book, book, book!"
Librarian gives her three books.
Puts them under her arm,
takes them away.
Next day, comes in, "Book, book,
book, book, book!" Five books!
Librarian thinks, "This is weird
I've never known of a hen
that's this fast at reading.
"I've got to find out
what's going on."
So she grabs her macintosh and
follows the hen out of the library
to a house.
She looks in through the keyhole
and there's the hen sitting on a
bed. And there's a frog in the bed
with a thermometer in its mouth,
obviously not very well.
The hen is tending it,
and offers a book,
and each time, the frog goes,
"Read it, read it, read it..."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Silly joke, but...
What's this?
That's a seagull.
And what's this?
That's a seagull coming back
from the library.
Wanna hear my library joke? Go on.
A man walks into a library,
"Fish and chips, please." The
librarian says, "This is a library."
(WHISPERED) "Sorry,
fish and chips, please."
Excellent! But the reason
I mentioned my particular joke
is that there's something very odd
about this perception we have
that frogs go "reddit, reddit"
or "ribbit, ribbit".
D'you know why it is that all around
the world people do jokes or imagine
that frogs make this noise?
Because there's only one species of
frog that actually makes that noise.
D'you know where it is? Ah...
JIMMY: In Hollywood, California?
Yes!
It's the Pacific tree frog.
And when sound came into movies
and they wanted to do soundtracks
to everything from Sanders Of The
River to Tarzan movies, anything
that basically was an outside...
they'd send their sound recordist
out to record frogs and things
for their archives for sound.
All the frogs down the coast
of the Pacific sound like
"ribbit, ribbit, ribbit".
They don't in Africa,
Europe, Central America, Asia...
So in all American films
for about 30 or 40 years
you would hear this
"ribbit, ribbit" noise,
and it became the sound of a frog.
But it just happens to be - as you
rightly said, five points, Jimmy
Carr - in Hollywood, California.
Anyway...
APPLAUSE
The most common tone of a toad
is "get off" because it's the
high-pitched croak of protest
it makes when a male
accidentally mounts it.
Now, what's the worst
that can happen in the middle
of a fairy ring?
Well, I'm not taking that!
You know what, there's a time
and place for this sort of thing -
10:30, Graham Norton Show.
Thank you for not saying
"sand in the Vaseline"
or something obvious like that.
No, I'll get to that! All right.
I'll talk over him.
It'll be some sort
of flora or fauna, I'll wager.
Oddly enough, it's neither.
But it is a living thing.
It's a living thing?
And if it's a living thing
and it's not flora or fauna...
Oh - leprechaun!
LAUGHTER
Fungus. Fungus!
They're magic, aren't they, fairy
rings? They're said to be magic...
..by simple people.
Exactly. ..because fungus
can grow in these circles.
And when the mushrooms shrink back,
you get discoloured grass
in a ring as well.
Some of them... There's one
in France up to 700 years old.
What's the thing that happens, then?
There are myths and legends
about it. For example, Jo Brand,
if you were a young lady...
Don't know why you're looking at ME!
I was trying to be gallant!
It doesn't suit you.
Fair enough. All right. Imagine a
young lady, Jo Brand... I'll try.
Apparently,
if she goes into a fairy ring
on a May Day morning
and washes her face with the dew
from the grass inside,
she will turn into a hag.
So, are you saying
that obviously I'VE done that?! No!
I'm saying whatever you do,
don't do that.
Don't go into a fairy ring.
And don't do that again.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
That's mean! There are worse things
that can happen to a fair young
maiden these days
at the swings
with half a bottle of cider.
Anyway, supposedly you might turn
into a crone or get stuck in a time
vortex, all kinds of superstitions.
Actually, fairy rings aren't caused
by dancing fairies,
they are a fungus.
Now, what use is a frog
after a one-night stand?
JOHN'S BUZZER
I think I have the answer.
It's about sex, isn't it?
It kind of is.
I knew it.
Some sort of natural
morning-after pill effect?
No, not that.
For 30 years, between 1930 and 1960,
this was used by Western science
in a serious way to perform
a very important function.
Do they turn a different colour
if a woman's pregnant?
It's not exactly that, but
that is the use they were put to.
Pregnancy tests. Not really?!
Pregnancy tests? Yes.
A woman pees on that?!
No, a woman's urine
is injected into it. How?
With a needle? How else? Oh, OK.
No wonder he looks so pissed off.
That's an African bullfrog, I think,
but actually they use the clawed
toad as much. So hang on,
that frog's just had another frog
on his back trying to bum him,
suddenly there's a woman's pee
being injected into him.
He's having a horrible day.
LAUGHTER
Point is it's a female clawed frog.
If the woman was pregnant,
the female frog, within 8-12 hours,
would ovulate.
It's as simple as that. I wonder if
they have a little blue line
on their back so you look
at like this...
LAUGHTER
A plus or a minus! But it was
a standard pregnancy test.
The best way to test if a woman is
pregnant is leave it nine months,
see...
if it gets a flat.
That's a cruel test.
If it gets a house, it's twins.
There was a terrible outcome having
these African frogs around.
The National Health Service in
Britain kept a lot of them,
and some of them escaped.
Unfortunately, they had a disease...
They were full of piss.
LAUGHTER
..called chytridiomycosis.
It's threatening a third
of the world's amphibians now.
It's spread around the world.
It's actually a deep tragedy,
and these frogs
have caused part of it.
So our Western desire to know
whether we're pregnant before
nine months has caused
huge damage to lots of amphibians.
There we are,
African clawed frogs ovulate
if injected with the urine
from a pregnant woman.
Until the 1950s,
this was the only available
pregnancy test.
From frogs to hogs. Why should we
feel particularly sorry for the
pygmy hog-sucking louse?
JOHN'S BUZZER
Yes.
I think we've got to worry about
this, because...
the louse goes onto the hog, right?
Yeah.
But the hogs are very small and
they're not very interesting.
And they're dying out. Is that the
answer? Absolutely right.
It's an easily forgotten fact that
when a species that we care about -
as humans we tend to care about big
woolly species -
when they become endangered, we
forget there are many other species
that depend on them.
Such an example is the
pygmy hog of which there are only
150 left in the world.
And there is a whole species of
louse which is only able to live
on...
I can't belief it's able to sustain
that louse, cos they're about the
same size.
It's... You get a couple of those on
your back, no wonder they're dying
out. We have lice,
human lice. We have... Well...
we didn't want to discuss that in
front of other people. Go and see a
specialist. And they're...
quite interesting. They tell us a
lot about ourselves. For example,
the body louse
only lives in human clothing.
It's only 70,000 years old,
as a sub-species of louse.
And that sort of tells us that
humans started to wear clothing
70,000 years ago.
And we didn't mention this about our
fleas. We were talking about the flea
circus...
they only used human fleas.
Oh, did they?
And the human fleas are now dying out
and may be extinct. Because of...
Vacuum cleaning and all that.
Going woof-woof, yeah.
That is odd, isn't it?
Absolutely right.
It is a bizarre thing, where we care
a lot more about the little fluffy
things
than the horrible...that
beastie-looking thing.
Isn't there the thing about the
panda? It is the emblem of the
World Wildlife Fund.
So a disproportionate amount goes to
saving the panda, because it looks
like a battered wife.
The pygmy hog-sucking louse is the
only species of louse classified as
critically endangered.
It's co-endangered with the
dwindling pygmy hog population
in northern India.
Now, whilst the pygmy hog-sucking
louse is in decline, it's up,
up and away for ferrets. So tell me,
how does a ferret
build an airliner?
JO'S BUZZER
Yes.
Really weasily.
Oh! Oh, no.
I'm sorry,
we've got there before you!
APPLAUSE
Oh, dear!
If it's any consolation,
I was seconds behind.
LAUGHTER
Boeing used them. What? Sorry?
Boeing used ferrets.
To build a plane?
To help build a plane. Not the whole
plane... They don't put that
in the ads, do they?
They're not ashamed of it. They were
used for the wedding of Charles
and Diana, for the
Millennium Party In The Park...
Looking for things? Nope.
Their fur?
Nope. To get something down a very
long tunnel, you tie it...
Brilliant!
Absolutely. That's precisely what
it is. You use it for wiring -
it happily goes through the
narrowest spaces, and it comes
out the other end
and you've got the wire through.
It was used by Boeing
right up until the 1960s, and...
It's a brilliant idea! Isn't it?
Very clever.
Anyway, they are now the third
most popular pet in America,
after cats and dogs.
They welcome you when you come back
from a day's work like puppies.
They're very like puppies. Come in!
Yeah. They're thrilled to see you,
very pleased.
Do they run up your trousers, though?
The trouser business is interesting.
There are people who claim this
is a Yorkshire sport,
of having ferrets in your trousers,
but no-one's sure if it is.
It's become one, but it kind of
started as a hoax in a famous
interview...
Always in '70s sitcoms, someone with
a ferret up the trousers.
Ferret up your trousers,
that's right! Ooh, aah!
You'd laugh at home.
LAUGHTER
They're used now for pet therapy,
cos they are very friendly animals.
You mean they sit opposite you...
And talk you through your problems.
"How does that make you feel?"
LAUGHTER
Interacting with them reduces your
stress hormones. Helpful for
the elderly, depressed and children
recovering from severe illnesses.
And they're used for that.
So, get a ferret.
And so once more we plunge,
ferret-like,
into the black hole of general
ignorance, fingers on buzzers.
What's the fastest thing
in the natural world?
ALAN'S BUZZER
Alan.
Blue whale.
Ho-ho-ho! Every time!
APPLAUSE
It's never gonna be a blue whale,
is it? Never gonna be blue whale.
Any other thoughts?
Fastest thing.
ALAN'S BUZZER
Cheetah.
Oh! Alan Davies...
I don't know...
It's got to be alive. OK.
Something like a cheetah
but it's not? No.
It's not an animal. It's a flower.
So you're on a road,
and suddenly it overtakes you?
No. We're talking ejaculation.
Ah! We're talking again, sex. It's
the sex obsession! What do they do?
Sorry, the fastest thing on Earth?
Is this a personal slight at me?
LAUGHTER
Because I'd had a very busy week.
No, it's not! It's not that.
It's a flower called
the white mulberry,
and it pushes out its pollen
at half the speed of sound.
Mach 0.5. Pow.
Over 350 miles per hour. Gosh.
It's the fastest thing in biology.
Nothing moves faster.
But what about an aircraft? Oh.
In biology.
LAUGHTER
What about a naturally reared
organic aircraft?
LAUGHTER
Made out of ferrets.
It's the morus alba, and what do
I have on me that owes itself to...?
Your flower, surely?
No, something owes itself to the
white mulberry I'm wearing.
Silk tie?
Silk, of course. There are
thousands in China in particular,
cos the silk worm lives on the white
mulberry leaves.
But it pollinates, it pushes out its
pollen at this astounding speed.
Stored elastic energy
in its stamens.
So if you've got hay fever,
you've got no chance of escape.
Coming out quite a pace.
Have your eye out!
LAUGHTER
No wonder it's itchy. Wow.
STEPHEN GROWLS
So there you have it. What is...?
JIMMY: What was THAT noise?!
I was just... Nice. I was just
growling. R-R-R-R! R-R-R-R!
I want it as a ringtone.
R-R-R-R!
There you have it. We move on,
fingers on buttons.
What do you call a slug
with a shell?
I'm not falling for that one!
LAUGHTER
Er, I'll take the bullet.
JIMMY'S BUZZER
Snail?
Oh! Just for a moment, I thought
you'd say, "yes, you do"
and then carry on. No.
So you asked what do I call?
A-ha! No, you can't get
out of it that way.
No, a snail with a shell is a snail,
a slug with a shell is a slug.
Some slugs have shells and they are
slugs, not snails.
Vestigial snails, small snails,
snails like the glass slug,
and slugs we think of
as being sort of shell-less snails,
but they can have little
things on. They eat each other's
slime as an act of foreplay,
then afterwards...
So do I.
LAUGHTER
Does the female then bite off
your penis?
Huh?
Well, it nibbles.
We can but hope!
They're obviously terrible garden
pests, but they are,
after insects...
Used to live in our kitchen,
when we were students.
There'd just be trails across
the floor in the morning.
We didn't do anything about it.
LAUGHTER
Just had bits of cornflakes stuck...
Eurgh! Carry on. Yeah!
There are 37,000 species
of gastropod.
After insects, they're the most
common class of animal on the Earth.
37,000? Mmm. Write that down.
Yep, if you would.
I will test you next week.
How do peacocks impress the ladies?
Again...
Hm? This... I'm... Yeah?
By doing the thing, by doing the...
No. So what? I don't know what
you're saying.
LAUGHTER
Do they say to the female peacock,
"How do you like your eggs in the
morning?" "Protected from foxes."
It's good that you've avoided our
trap, because you're right. You'd
think it was fanning. Look at that.
That's astonishing.
It's real, not made up. Phwoar.
But some Japanese scientists
at the University of Tokyo
have discovered, much to everybody's
surprise after a long study,
that peahens seem to select peacocks
according to other criteria.
It seems to be... Sense of humour.
Exactly! That's it!
It's personality and sense of
humour, not colour and the drama of
fanning.
Often I find they SAY that, but when
it comes down to it...
they go off with a much hunkier guy.
They took seven years to do this
and they observed 258 matings.
It seems a very surprising result,
but...
they've been wasting their time
growing their tails, if we're to
believe these Japanese people.
They took their tails off?
How did they experiment with them?
I don't know how the experiment was
done. They judged tail quality in
two ways -
by simply measuring tail length, and
by taking photos of each male during
the fanning ritual,
counting the number of eye spots.
They examined whether females chose
mates with the best-quality tails.
According to those criteria, but
that may not be the peahens'
criteria.
I think it's dodgy research.
I sort of agree with you,
I have to say. We have to do the
whole thing all over again,
and dress them in raincoats.
Anyway, what happened after Captain
Cook shot an albatross? JOHN: Ah...
So this fella shot that fella? I can
see why he's looking right
at him.
That's Captain Cook, supposedly.
He looks rather like Roy Dotrice,
the actor, for some reason.
But it's Captain Cook.
And the answer is, they ate it.
Joseph Banks, the great botanist,
after whom Botany Bay is named,
he served with him and describes in
his diary, he said everybody
commended them,
the albatross steaks and ate
heartily of them though there was
fresh pork upon the table.
So this idea that it was bad luck to
eat albatross seems to have come
after Captain Cook.
In fact, it probably came from the
poem, The Ancient Mariner, the
Coleridge poem,
with which you're all familiar, of
course. What do we know about...?
..Of course you know it!
What do we know about albatrosses?
Anything interesting about them?
They get caught up in fishing lines.
They do. Everyone gets very upset
about it. Hm.
Cos they're rather extraordinary
birds. And they fly thousands of
miles?
The young wandering albatross will
set off and will be in the air
for ten years before it lands again.
That one's looking at me. It is!
It's looking at the camera, shall we
say? Feels like it's looking at me.
Ten years without landing...
Why does it land after ten years? It
must feel a fool. It must go,
"I think I could go 11."
Mating. Mating - the eggs can't be
laid and hatched and incubated with
its mate.
You couldn't lay the eggs on the
move? No, darling. Do they fly into
the water to get food? They dive in
and get fish. And airborne food they
might pass by? No, it's fish.
They dive, but they don't actually
land. And they can go for six days
without flapping their wings.
They can glide for that long.
They preserve their energy
amazingly.
JOHN: They're on thermals.
Actually, they're not like...
JIMMY: They hire thermals?!
No. They take the wind
off the surface of the water.
Try and listen to the headmaster.
LAUGHTER
And finally, before we stagger
back to civilisation,
is a mushroom an animal or a plant?
A plant.
Or an animal.
Or a...
It's not either, it's a fungus.
Which is it closer to?
If that makes any sense.
Animal or plant, you mean? Yeah.
There, it's closer to a plant.
Very good(!) Next to that grass.
You'd think it was a plant,
so I'll say animal.
You're correct. Absolutely right.
It recently was discovered it has
more in common with animals
than with plants. Now,
it's time to have our guests gassed,
stuffed and mounted in glass cases,
as we come to the scores.
Taking the laurels of victory
this week...
is the audience with plus ten!
CHEERING
How about that? Well done, audience.
You see? It pays to know
about opera.
Just that Traviata,
and there you are, they win.
But in a creditable second place
with minus one, Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
In third place, with an excellent
score for a beginner...minus four,
John Sergeant!
APPLAUSE
Thank you.
And in his usual fourth place,
but oddly not last...
with minus 18, Alan Davies!
APPLAUSE
And...
in this F series,
finally and fifthly,
it's the filthily fabulous
Jo Brand with minus 27!
APPLAUSE
So...that's all from this florid
and faunal edition of QI.
It's good night from Jo, John,
Jimmy, Alan and from me,
and I leave you with those floral
tribute from Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, a great pick-up line.
"Won't you come into the garden?
I would like my roses to see you."
Good night.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd