Strange Evidence (2017–…): Season 5, Episode 3 - Neanderthal Bigfoot Attack - full transcript

Narrator: Worldwide 36
billion cameras are watching us.

On our streets, at work, and in our homes,

they capture things that seem impossible.

Science says this shouldn't happen.

Do you see that?

Narrator: Experts carry
out forensic analysis

of these unusual events.

Wow, what a blast!

This doesn't make sense.

There has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?



Narrator: Coming up, a
muscular figure chases teenagers

out of the russian wilderness.

[screaming]

it isn't moving like humans do.

It's kind of throwing itself forward.

Very apelike.

I don't speak russian, but
that is the universal language

of terror.

Narrator: A disk of death
brings fear to a british back street.

What could this be?

Narrator: And the girl who cries blood.

This isn't just leaking out.

It's foaming and pouring.

Oh my gosh.



Look at that blood.

Ugh.

Narrator: Bizarre phenomena.

Oh my god.

Agh!

Narrator: Mysteries caught on camera.

[screaming]

what's the truth behind
this "strange evidence"?

Bashkortostan, a vast province
in southwest russia, 2016,

7:30 pm, a group of friends
drive through the countryside

when something moving in nearby undergrowth

catches their attention.

[speaking russian]

they're filming from the back seat,

and a figure appears in the distance.

[speaking russian]

it appears to start chasing the car.

[speaking russian]

narrator: This thing seems
to be naked, covered in hair,

and extremely aggressive.

Holy cow.

It's got giant arms
flailing all over the place.

It is moving quickly.

[screaming]

narrator: The teenagers
scream in terror as it

catches up to the speeding car.

[speaking russian]

[gasps]

it isn't moving like humans do.

It's kind of throwing itself forward.

Very apelike.

[screaming]

narrator: The desperate
driver accelerates away

from the rapidly approaching
creature, his passengers

hysterical with fear.

[screaming]

I don't speak russian, but
that is the universal language

of terror.

[screaming]

narrator: Russia's
landmass is the same size

as the dwarf planet pluto...

Over six million square miles.

And dense forest covers
over 45% of the entire country,

more than the forests of brazil
and the united states combined.

Anthropologist dustin growick
looks at the menacing gait

of the creature and thinks there could

be a violent prehistoric ancestor

hiding in the russian woods.

The way it's moving, kind of hunched over,

doesn't appear to be the
form of a modern human.

So I'm wondering if we're
looking at something that

is more of an archaic human form,

potentially that of
something like a neanderthal.

Narrator: Neanderthals brutally
dominated europe and asia

for over 200,000 years.

Archaeologists have
discovered that neanderthals

had the same size brain as modern humans.

But a team at the university of california

find in February 2021 that
they were wired very differently,

with genes that made their minds more

primitive than homo sapiens.

They may have had much
higher levels of testosterone,

and archaeologists have found they were

aggressive cannibals
who feasted on children,

babies, and newborns.

Mainstream science says they
were wiped out 40,000 years

ago, but here in the russian wilderness,

strange and terrifying stories persist.

There's a long, long history of evidence

that these creatures
could exist in this area,

the very area where
this car chase was filmed.

Narrator: In 2016, two tourists said

they saw what looked like
a neanderthal man run out

in front of their car at night,
as they drove near mount iremel

here in the bashkortostan region.

If I were looking for a
neanderthal population,

the russian wilderness
is a great place to start.

It's expansive.

It's not highly populated.

Great place to hide.

Narrator: In 2012, russian
officials issue a press release

claiming to have evidence
that a neanderthal-like creature

inhabits a cave.

They found unusual hairs in the cave,

and they brought them to a lab for testing.

Narrator: Professor valentin sapernov

says the dna analysis led
him to over 60% certainty

that the hairs belong to a
large ape-like creature closely

related to humans but different.

So this raises a lot of questions

about this creature we're
seeing through the rear view

mirror of this car.

Could we actually be
witnessing a neanderthal

here, alive in modern times?

Compared to modern humans,
neanderthals are more muscular.

They're hairy.

All of which lead me to believe
that what we're looking at here

could potentially be a neanderthal.

Narrator: It would be
remarkable if neanderthals

have somehow survived
for 40,000 years undetected.

But historian dr. Karen bellinger

wonders if this inhuman creature
may not be a prehistoric relic

at all, but a neanderthal man created

recently in a russian lab.

In russia there's a really interesting

scientific experiment which
is called pleistocene park.

And it's basically been an attempt

to recreate the landscape and the wildlife

of the last ice age.

Narrator: Scientists sergey
zimov has been repopulating

the russian wilderness since 1988

with descendants of animals that have been

extinct for over 10,000 years.

We're talking about when predators

such as sabertooth tigers
and the woolly mammoth

wandered the plains.

You know, brutal animal species.

Narrator: Zimov hopes to
use cloned woolly mammoths

to populate his park.

He took a page right
out of the book of the guy

who created jurassic park in the movies.

Well, we know how well
that turned out, don't we?

Narrator: The research has inspired

the ultimate ice age call
back, an attempt to recreate

a living neanderthal.

A research team aimed
to use genome engineering

to alter the dna in a human cell so it

matches that of a neanderthal.

But have the russian
authorities got there first,

hijacking zimov's work to
create neo-neanderthals, potential

super soldiers of the future?

Could the creature that was chasing the car

have been resurrected
from a prehistoric time?

Narrator: But there's a problem
with the neanderthal theory.

Looking at this creature, even on the run

through the window of a fleeing car,

it's obviously much larger
than a typical human.

Narrator: Neanderthals were
much broader than modern humans,

and possessed greater muscle
mass, but they were stocky.

The average male neanderthal
skeleton is just 5 feet

4 inches, around the
same height as napoleon.

Whatever is chasing these teens appears

to be at least 7 feet tall.

Coming up, has a giant maniac escaped

from russia's toughest jail?

He's killed at least 23
people that we know of.

And this footage was shot right near

where those events took place.

Narrator: And why is this girl
gushing blood from her eyes?

It's really shocking.

The poor girl looks terrified.

Narrator: In bashkortostan, russia,

teenagers flee in terror
as an enraged giant

bounds after their car
with an animalistic fury.

But biologist craig szulgit checks

reports and finds these kids could

have captured one of
russia's deadliest criminals.

This region has been terrorized

since 2011 by someone
called the volga maniac.

This is a serial killer
who's killed at least

23 people that we know of.

And it's happened right in this area.

Narrator: And the volga maniac isn't alone.

Russia's serial killers
include andrei chikatilo,

who in 1992 was convicted of sexually

assaulting, mutilating, and murdering

at least 50 women and children.

20 years later, mikhail popkov is convicted

of killing 78 women, who he murdered

as a twisted punishment
for his wife's infidelity.

Black dolphin prison is
a 200-year-old fortress

located near where this footage was shot.

Escape was always thought impossible.

But in 2016, an inmate
serving time for violent robbery

breaks out into the
surrounding countryside.

The authorities claim to have
recaptured him a month later.

It sounds like these guys were right to be

scared of this thing, whether
it was supernatural or not.

Narrator: No escaped convicts were reported

at the time the video was shot, leaving

the exact identity of this
teenager-terrorizing man

beast a mystery.

They may have thought it was a bigfoot.

They may have thought
it was a serial killer.

But I certainly don't
blame them for putting

their pedal to the metal
and getting out of there.

Narrator: Now, tripura, northeast india,

October 30, 2019, a phone
camera records a harrowing sight.

Oh, that looks painful.

This is really horrifying.

There's this poor little girl in india

who appears to be literally
bleeding from her eyes.

Narrator: The eight-year-old
girl stares into the camera

as a crimson tide of frothing
liquid streams down her face.

Ordinarily you see this amount
of blood on someone's face,

you see a cut that it's coming
from, but there's nothing.

Narrator: Local doctors
are baffled by the girl's

gruesome condition.

It's nothing they have ever seen before.

A magician or a special effects artist

may put something under
the eyelid, that's hidden,

like some dye that could leak out.

But this isn't just leaking out.

It's foaming and pouring.

What could it be that is flowing

so profoundly that she
has to actually... she

has to catch it in her hands?

Narrator: Science journalist steve

potvin hears of a hideous
danger reported in a local area.

In that part of the world, there

are these things, ocular parasites,

these kinds of worms that
burrow into people's eyes.

Could that be.

What's causing this?

This young woman has got really

significant inflammation around her eyes,

one worse than the other.

You could see that the skin underneath

is bumpy and inflamed.

Narrator: In 2018, a woman living nearby

feels a strange pain in one eye.

When she goes to the doctor, they

discover a 4-inch parasitic worm has

burrowed into the eye socket.

The mechanism for how this happens

is actually quite disgusting.

Flies land near a eye and
will release worms into your eye

that start to mate.

And that can cause a massive infestation.

And you can imagine just
how disgusting that can be

and also how painful.

That's the type of thing that
we would normally only see

in cows and dogs and animals.

But recently we've also been
seeing this in humans as well.

I mean, this is the stuff
of nightmares for us.

Parasitic worms that burrow into our eyes?

It's horrible.

Narrator: But the girl shows none

of the signs of the excruciating
pain that comes with worms

infesting the eye socket.

Social anthropologist deborah hyde

believes the girl could
have a bizarre and sinister

condition, one that you
catch from the internet.

There was a case of bleeding from the eye

from a girl in india fairly recently.

A man from the indian
rationalist association,

sanal edamaruku, actually
ended up successfully

debunking the case.

He believed that she was
faking it, doing it for attention.

And he also noticed that
the bleeding coincided

with her menstrual cycle, so
she would actually have access

to blood to apply to her eyes.

Narrator: Faking illness for attention

is called factitious disorder.

It's a psychiatric disorder, where

a person has induced symptoms.

And rather than any physical cause,

it's a psychiatric cause, a desire

to be the center of attention.

Narrator: The rise of the internet

has coincided with a massive
surge in factitious disorder.

In this twisted online world, victimhood

is socially desirable.

In 2012, a person claiming
to be a deaf paraplegic

gains millions of fans
through an online blog.

It's later discovered he's
a totally healthy scammer.

In 2014, a young woman named lacey

spears is convicted of murder.

She poisoned her son to
get attention and sympathy

from her online followers.

In 2010, just 7% of indians
had access to the internet.

Today, more than 50% of
the population use the web,

and horrific cases of attention
seeking have increased.

In another case, also a girl in india,

she shocked doctors when
she started pulling needles out

from under her skin, but she'd
actually shoved them in there

herself.

Another child used ants,
pushed ants into her eyes,

and they were still alive
when they came out.

It makes you wonder just how far

people will go for attention.

Narrator: Coming up,
footage of the girl's body

points to a rare and terrible trauma.

We see that the blood is not
only coming from her eyes,

it appears to be coming
from parts of her skin,

like she's sweating it out.

Narrator: And what is this
mysterious disk crashing

towards a british town?

It's basically the uk's answer to roswell.

Narrator: In india, an eight-year-old girl

is filled with blood pouring from her eyes.

Biologist craig szulgit
finds that the girl's

condition is even grislier
than it first appears.

When we look closely, we
see that the blood is not only

coming from her eyes, it appears to be

coming from parts of her
skin, like she's sweating it out.

There is a condition
called hematidrosis, which

is where under extreme stress people can

actually bleed from the skin.

You have a blood supply
around your sweat glands.

In hematidrosis, when a person gets

stressed the blood vessels can rupture,

and that means the blood will
seep out of your sweat glands

and out of your skin.

Narrator: The amount of stress required

to create this reaction is beyond what

most humans ever experience.

We have documented
accounts of this happening

to men facing execution, of those who

are in the trenches in world
war I, and even civilians

during the london blitz, when the city was

being bombed to bits.

Narrator: Biologist jane
lovell finds that the area where

the eight-year-old girl lives is a place

of almost perpetual horror.

It's a part of india
that's right on the border

of bangladesh, and there's
a lot of conflict in that region.

Basically, she's living in a war zone.

The border patrol have
a shoot-on-sight policy.

Thousands have been killed in this region.

Narrator: In 2011, a
15-year-old girl is shot and killed

by border patrol as she is trying to leave

india to get into bangladesh.

Her dress gets stuck in the barbed wire

as she climbs the border fence.

Locals say after she was
shot, she hung from the fence

for five hours calling for
help, but no one dared

get close enough to save her.

Could this young girl's eyes
have seen things many of us

hope never to see in our lifetimes,

things that have caused her body to react?

Living in a war zone as she does,

who knows what this girl
has seen and experienced?

And maybe that's why she's sweating blood.

It's possible that she is living proof

that people sweat blood
still when they're in impossibly

stressful situations.

I'm terrified about what the future

holds for this little girl.

Narrator: Now cambridge,
great britain, August 2020, pm.

Media consultant paul
bryan is filming a storm

outside his bedroom window
when something strange

rips through the clouds.

I saw something out
of the corner of my eye.

I thought maybe it
was like a flock of birds.

It just moved quickly across the frame.

But after I actually
got it onto the computer

and reviewed the footage a little bit,

I realized, yeah, there's no
way this is a flock of birds.

Narrator: The object
seems to flash with lights

and spin rapidly as it
passes over his house.

I went through it frame by
frame, put it in slow motion.

I did everything I could
to get a closer look.

I've never seen anything like it before.

Whoa, what is that?

Narrator: Engineer nick householder

analyzes the exceptionally clear
footage of the unusual object.

Its design doesn't seem to
match any known earthly craft.

It doesn't have a wing of any kind.

It doesn't have any propellers.

I don't see an engine of any kind.

I don't understand what's
keeping this thing in the air.

What?

That just defies physics.

Narrator: The disk immediately
reminds explorer george

kourounis of a bizarre
event that occurred near here

at the height of the cold war.

The rendlesham forest incident, basically

the uk's answer to roswell.

Narrator: December 26, 1980, us
airmen guarding nuclear weapons

at raf woodbridge claim they are ordered

to investigate reports of a
large saucer-like object seen

in the woods.

When the patrol arrives, they
encounter a disk-shaped craft.

And as they get closer,
its legs retract up,

and it maneuvers away through the trees.

The men follow the
craft into a nearby field,

where it shoots up into the air
and the men lose consciousness.

Narrator: Raf woodbridge and its companion,

the us air force base at bentwaters,

were on the front line of
the fight against communism

and had special facilities for
testing top secret weapons.

In 1956, ufos were reported
near cambridge by both pilots

and witnesses on the ground.

All said the craft were
coming from the direction

of bentwaters.

We know that the us military is constantly

testing new technology.

Could this craft be some kind of high tech

military test that wound up
being captured on camera?

Narrator: But bentwaters closed in 1993,

and physicist antonio paris
discovers that cambridge

is britain's major tech hub
and home to some very strange

and secretive companies.

In this area in cambridge, which

is very similar to silicon
valley in california,

a lot of technology companies are building

all kinds of cool stuff.

Narrator: But just like silicon valley,

cambridge is developing
a similar sinister reputation

for exploiting the dark possibilities

of a computerized world.

There are at least 20 secretive

or semi-secretive companies
that operate in the area.

So there's a lot of development
being undertaken here.

Narrator: Britain is the world's
second biggest arms dealer.

The uk has a massive defense industry.

Much of it is centered in this area.

Any one of them could conceivably be

connected with this incident.

Maybe somebody decided to conduct a test,

and maybe things got a little out of hand.

Narrator: Coming up, is this a disk

sent to spy on us in our homes?

This could turn into a robotic army

watching over us from the sky.

Narrator: And in an ancient city,

a man with an uncanny
superpower seems to be

saving strangers on the street.

[speaking turkish]

who was he?

Where did he come from?

And how did he know?

Narrator: In cambridge, England,
media consultant paul bryan

films an unidentified spinning object

racing over his hometown.

It looks like it's just spinning really

fast and moving across the sky.

Narrator: Nick householder
looks at the footage

again, searching for the
craft's propulsion system.

Those flickering lights we're
seeing upon closer inspection

could potentially be
propeller blades that we're

mistaking for lights.

We could be looking at some kind of drone.

Narrator: But this is far
too sophisticated a craft

to be a drone owned by a private citizen.

Space journalist amy shira teitel

believes this could be the secret test

flight of a tech companies
drone, its purpose

to spy on us from above.

According to a patent, drones may

be fitted with surveying
lasers, infrared cameras,

and also chemical sensors.

Narrator: In china, in
2020, a fleet of drones

are launched to enforce
covid quarantine lockdowns.

These craft are equipped with
thermal sensors, loudspeakers,

and chemical spray guns.

China claims just one of these drones

can do the work of 100 police officers,

forcing citizens off the
streets and into their homes.

Civil rights groups worry that this

could turn into a robotic army,
watching over us from the sky.

Narrator: But surveillance
isn't the biggest danger posed

by these sharp-bladed craft.

A leading authority on
unmanned vehicle systems

expects drone delivery services
to be worth over $82 billion

by 2025.

The air above us could soon
be choked with competing drone

delivery companies, each
craft a potential accident

waiting to happen.

Smaller companies' standards
and practices are probably

going to differ from amazon.

We have the potential of
smaller companies trying

to get into the game and flying drones

up to 500 pounds that
could crash into your home.

Narrator: Horrific drone accidents

are already happening.

In 2015, an 18-month-old
toddler had his eyeball sliced in half

by a drone propeller
after the man operating

it lost control of the device.

Can you imagine a sky just full of drones

moving goods all over the united states?

It could be the wild west.

If a drone the size of
the one in this footage

were to come down over a populated area,

it could seriously damage a
house and the people inside it.

Narrator: This fast-moving
object passing so close

to the roofs of ordinary
homes could be the beginning

of a new and deadly dawn, a time when

we no longer look up
to the skies with wonder

but with fear.

It sounds like science fiction.

It sounds like the kind of thing that maybe

residents of the future
will have to worry about.

We are the future.

It's happening now, and we're
going to have to start dealing

with it really, really soon.

Narrator: Now adana, turkey, March 2019,

a shop security camera appears to capture

a man with a superpower.

He seems to somehow have
knowledge of events moments

before they happen.

Oh my gosh.

We have amazing footage here.

We have a man approaching this storekeeper.

He taps him on the shoulder,
but he never looks back, not once.

How does he know that the
gate is about to clobber that man.

Who was he?

Where did he come from?

And how did he know?

Narrator: All talk in the
city is of how this stranger

saved the storekeeper's life.

The man is clearly walking down the street

well ahead of the unmarked van.

There is no way he could have known

the back gate of the vehicle
was dangerously loose.

If that stranger hadn't tapped
the shopkeeper on the shoulder,

he'd be dead now.

Narrator: But as the storekeeper
turns to thank his savior,

he gets the shock of his life.

[speaking turkish]

figure who tapped him on the shoulder

disappears into thin air.

It is as if he knew it was going

to happen before it happened.

Narrator: Coming up, is this footage proof

that time travel is real?

One way this guy actually
has knowledge of the future

is because he is from the future.

Narrator: And has a man's
dead father sent a package

from beyond the grave?

What's moving this?

Something inside of the package
or some kind of external force?

Narrator: In the city of adana, turkey,

cctv captures a mysterious man who

seems to have
foreknowledge of future events,

saving the life of a shopkeeper.

How did this guy know
what was about to happen

before it actually happened?

Narrator: Rumors spread
around the ancient city

that this man is a time traveler.

Engineer tim pickens looks at the evidence.

One way this guy actually
has knowledge of the future

is because he is from the future.

It may sound crazy, but
einstein's theory of relativity

states that time travel is
possible because space-time

is not rigid.

It could be built or
manipulated by gravity.

Narrator: This means that it
may be possible to warp time

to such a degree that it folds upon itself,

creating a closed time loop.

So with a closed loop, you
can actually go forward in time.

But you can also go back in time,

sort of back to the future, if you will.

Narrator: But bending time requires

immense gravitational fields.

To bend time like that, you
need the same amount of gravity

as you would get if you were
standing next to a black hole.

The problem is, if you
stood next to a black hole,

you would be ripped
apart by spaghettification.

Narrator: But astrophysicist
ron mallett from the university

of connecticut believes he
may have solved the problem

and brought us closer to real time travel.

Ron mallett has spent his entire adult

life trying to build a
working time machine.

His motivation of building a time machine

is to go back in time and meet his father,

who died of a heart attack
when he was 10 years old.

Narrator: Mallett has built
a prototype time machine

powered by lasers, which can generate

its own gravitational field.

So he's using these lasers
to create a circulating beam

of light that basically
distorts space-time,

which in theory, could
allow him to go back in time.

That's amazing.

Narrator: Mallett wants to
build his time machine to visit

his long dead father, perhaps
even to save him from the heart

attack that took his life.

Could the mysterious
stranger be on a similar mission,

to prevent the death of a family
member or someone who will

be important in time to come?

It's like the shopkeeper
seems unimportant, but actually

plays a vital role down the
line in the future of humanity.

Narrator: Scientists like mallett

believe time travel could be used

to change events in the past.

Astrophysicist antonio paris asks

if it could be used to
prevent major disasters

and the massive loss of life.

So I can do it to save the world, right?

I can go back and kill adolf hitler,

and we would never have world war ii.

Narrator: But if paris
did kill adolf hitler,

it may not lead to the happy
outcome he might imagine.

Hitler's assassination could
lead to a communist takeover

of germany, a pact with soviet russia,

and the invasion and
fall of western democracy.

There's just no way to
know that what you're doing

in the past is going to have
the kind of consequences

that you want it to have.

Narrator: And physicist
germain tobar has recently

solved equations that prove
that once you travel back in time

it's impossible to alter
events as they unfold.

He found that time loops are self-healing.

So anything you do that changes the future

actually won't have an effect.

Narrator: Tobar's formulation seems

to imply that any action a time traveler

takes while in the past will either be

prevented or instantly reversed
by another event taking place.

If you were to go back
in time and, say, kill hitler,

someone else would take his place,

and mass murderers would
still pop up, and acts of terror

would still happen in the future.

Narrator: If it is mathematically

impossible for the past to be altered,

why would a time traveler
be filmed attempting to do so?

But the chances of it
just being random chance

seem really slim.

You do have to ask yourself, is there

something going on with him?

What?

What might be going on?

Narrator: Science
journalist liberty vittert

asks if the explanation put
forth about the stranger's

foreknowledge of the approaching van

is because of his connections
to a sinister turkish government

operation.

Turkey has a secretive
group called the uncles,

or the nightwatchmen,
who operate on the streets

of turkey's cities.

Human rights watch says
this militia are authorized

to carry firearms and carry
out these brutal beatings

with complete impunity.

Narrator: The uncles,
a 28,000 strong militia,

was formed on the orders
of president recep erdogan

after a failed military
coup against him in 2016.

Well, since the coup
attempt, he's been very, very

paranoid about the situation.

These men are erdogan's personal militia.

They're basically real life creepy uncles.

Narrator: The president himself
has been accused of ordering

the abduction of many
of his political opponents,

with 25 of them going
missing since the coup.

And the way they carry
out these kidnappings

is by bundling people into
the back of unmarked vans.

This video could have been the aftermath

of an abduction operation.

The gate could have been
swinging because the uncles

threw someone in the back of the van

and didn't close it properly
before they sped away.

Maybe this was one of their
members clearing the street so

that there were no witnesses or as few

as possible to what happened.

Narrator: To date, no one in adana

has been able to find
any trace of the stranger

after he disappeared.

No explanation other than coincidence

for this extraordinary piece
of footage has yet been found.

This video certainly
raises questions about who

this guy is, but whoever he is may forever

remain a complete mystery.

Narrator: Now st. Louis,
missouri, July 9th, 2020,

computer programmer jake elking is

checking his door cam footage when he

spots a package on his porch.

And it seems to be alive.

I'm going through it, and
I'm seeing that the package is

spinning in weird directions.

Narrator: The envelope
appears to be darting

across the porch on its own.

There's no wind.

Trees aren't moving.

The shrubs aren't moving.

Nothing.

I'm kind of confused what's going on.

Wait, this is so bizarre.

I've heard of pushing the
envelope, but this is crazy.

Narrator: Is a supernatural visitor

moving this mysterious mail?

You know, my dad liked a
good joke here and there.

And something like that is
something he would totally do.

Narrator: Coming up, is there something

deadly in this delivery?

Whoever opens this mail could
be looking at a death sentence.

Narrator: In st. Louis, missouri,

a mysterious package seems to
be moving quickly across a porch.

Eyewitness jake elking
wonders if the envelope

could be a message from beyond.

My dad had passed away
a couple of years back.

And since then we've
noticed a few strange things

that would occur in the house.

It does make me wonder, because you know,

my dad liked a good joke here and there.

Something like that is
something he would totally do.

Narrator: America has
a weird recent history

of ghostly mail deliveries.

In 2019, a family in new jersey
flees their 100-year-old home

after getting three letters in the mail

whose writer claims to be a ghost watching

them through the walls.

The ghost writer says it plans
to lure the owner's children

to join it in the afterlife.

It looks like a mail order poltergeist.

Whoever opens this could
be looking at a death sentence.

Narrator: But biologist karen bondar

suspects the package's
contents could be making it move.

This piece of mail could
have a live animal inside it.

What if there's a small creature inside,

desperately trying to escape?

Narrator: When the us postal
service is established in 1775,

there are no limits on
what can be sent in the mail.

That lack of rules meant
that everything was getting

posted, even parents
posting infants across town.

Narrator: Incredibly, in 1913, a baby boy

is mailed to his grandmother, who

lives a mile away after his
parents pay $0.15 for postage.

That's the equivalent of $4 today.

Even more incredibly,
the child survives the trip.

A year later, a five-year-old girl

is mailed 72 miles from grangeville

to lewiston in idaho.

Today, if you try and put
your kids through the mail,

you're sending yourself
on a trip to prison.

But mailing live animals is
still common, even though it's

often against the law.

The illegal animal wildlife
trade is alive and well

in the us, and smugglers
will take advantage

of the postal system, often
hiding things in plain sight,

like turtles being smuggled
with a toy shipment,

or parrots being stuffed
inside of car seats.

Narrator: There were nearly 50,000

illegal shipments of wildlife in the united

states between 2005 and 2014.

However, not all live
animal packages get seized,

and many have devastating consequences.

Narrator: In 2016, postal
workers at the beaver county

post office in pennsylvania
are investigating

a suspicious-looking box of
t-shirts from the philippines

when they make a deadly discovery.

They opened the box to find not

one but two venomous snakes.

Bites from some of
these snakes, or spiders,

or insects being shipped around the world

can kill a person in seconds.

And in fact, many in north american

hospitals don't even
have the correct antivenom

for these bites from animals that

come from all over the place.

There are still a lot of people

that misuse the post
office to ship many things

that they should not.

Narrator: When science
journalist jeff wise studies

the footage in more detail, he spots

that it's a time lapse film.

This package is actually
moving really slowly,

but its motion has been
speeded up as an artifact

of the way it was filmed.

Narrator: Entomologist kevin
kasky zooms in on the footage

and suspects one of the
nastiest creatures in missouri

could be to blame.

You can't see what's moving the package,

indicating that they may be
too small to be seen on camera.

This could possibly be the work of colony

ants moving that package.

Narrator: An ant's neck
joint can take almost 5,000

times their own body weight.

That's the equivalent of a
human picking up 28 school buses.

No job is too big or too small
for these mighty mini beasts.

So ants usually find something
out in the environment

and cooperate to bring
it back to their nest.

Here they seemingly
have settled on a package.

Narrator: Missouri is home
to one of the most awful ants

on earth, the fire ant,
named for the burning

sensation its sting
unleashes on its human prey.

A fire ant is the only insect that

actually bites and stings you.

So they bite you, and then they twist

their bodies around
what's called the rosette

that stings really bad.

Narrator: In 2018, a man living nearby

dies after a single fire ant bite.

You can go into anaphylactic shock,

which closes up the throat.

You lose the ability to
breathe, and it could be deadly

if you don't have either an
epipen for the epinephrine

for that or someone can
get you to a hospital quickly.

Narrator: Every year in the
usa, approximately 100 people

die from insect bites.

The footage shows that
these ants are fearless.

Would a human stand a chance if they

decided to infest your home?

If these horrible ants can move mail,

like what can't they do?

Narrator: But for jake elkling, he's

just pleased his security camera caught

this mystery invader before it could

crawl in through his mail slot.

The whole thing really
just left me wondering.

This thing is being moved
around by some sort of intelligence,

be it maybe a colony of ants or who knows,

maybe it's my dad's spirit trying

to get one last joke in on me.