Welcome to the world of amazing mini-beasts.
Hi Henry.
I said welcome to the world of mini-beasts.
What are mini-beasts?
They're animals, like bugs and creepy-crawls.
You may not always see them, but mini-beasts are everywhere.
Everywhere?
Are you sure?
I can't see anything.
Look closely.
You will.
Oh, that's weird.
Weird with a capital W.
It's not weird.
It's just a close-up.
Not weird.
Right.
Come on, Henry.
They're not weird.
Just different.
They look scary to me.
It's okay.
You've just got to get used to them.
Uh-oh.
Yikes.
There's no need to worry.
I think we're being invaded by aliens.
Monsters from another world.
They're...
Beetles, Henry.
That's all they are.
Hey, I bet you didn't know that beetles were part of a family of insects that account for
a third of all living species on this planet.
Excuse me.
That's amazing.
And how many are from other planets?
Don't worry.
Don't worry, he says.
Wow.
I wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night.
It's only a longhorn beetle.
He's just a small guy, really, compared to a big lizard like you.
Now, that one's pretty, at least.
Pretty for a beast, that is.
It's a jewel beetle, one of more than one million different types of beetle on Earth.
One million?
That's amazing.
Uh-oh.
Now it's getting weird again.
Beetles and starfish, crabs and lobsters, mollusks and insects, they're all invertebrates.
Creatures with external skeletons that don't have a backbone or vertebra to give their
bodies support.
With no vertebra, invertebrates can never grow too big.
That's why they're known as mini-beasts.
Is that an invertebrate, too?
Yes, Henry.
It looks like a spider to me.
A big one.
Not just any old spider, a tarantula, one of the biggest of all spiders.
And the hairiest.
What's up, Henry?
Mini-beasts.
I've had enough of all this.
I'm going home.
Put my feet out.
Maybe watch a little TV.
No, we're safe.
They're everywhere.
Mini-beasts are everywhere, Henry.
Especially in homes.
Houses give them shelter, warmth, food, too.
There's lots of wood in houses, and wood's food to many insects.
Like these beetles and beetle grubs.
They're really here, there and everywhere.
Come and get it.
Don't the splinters stick in their teeth?
No, Henry.
They brush after every meal.
Invertebrates sometimes live in funny places.
Fleas live in animal hair.
And these woolly bears live in carpets.
Don't look much like bears to me.
Some live in flour of all places.
They actually live in food.
They live in their lunch?
Excuse me, that's amazing.
They're mini-beasts, Henry.
They have to grab what they can get when they can get it.
Can't they go to the supermarket like the rest of us?
Well, cockroaches can't push shopping carts.
Besides, they're not particular, so anything could be their supper.
Oh, no.
Not the cookies.
Look, Henry.
What?
There's an old friend.
Uh-oh.
We're out of here.
Exit stage left.
Henry, wake up.
We're in the middle of something here.
I was just having a nice nap.
Growing lizards need lots of sleep.
Yeah, right, Henry.
Hey, what happened to that spider, anyway?
He's gone.
But here is one of his relatives.
All spiders are pretty good at taking care of themselves.
But colonial spiders work together to get their lunch.
Their webs catch all sorts of things to eat.
Not lizards, though.
No, not lizards.
Whack.
Ow.
Key wrench.
These guys really do work together.
Uh-oh.
Looks like someone got out of the wrong side of the web this morning.
Hey, these aren't spiders.
No, but they're still mini beasts.
They're leafcutter ants, and they live in huge colonies of up to half a million ants
that work together harvesting jungle leaves.
Each leaf can weigh more than 20 times the ant's own body weight.
Amazing.
What do they do with them?
They carry them back to the nest.
Why?
Their bodies can't digest the leaves directly,
so they feed the leaves to a fungus, a little like a mushroom.
Then eat the fungus.
They're like fungus farmers.
Wouldn't it be easier just to open a can?
They don't have can openers, remember?
I was just kidding.
We're just sense of humor.
Ah.
Nice work, Henry.
It looks just like you.
Thanks.
Gardens are a great place to see mini beasts, Henry,
but gardeners aren't always happy to see them.
My head.
Oh, no.
Where am I going?
Looks like you've got a problem with pests, Henry.
Pests like this pesky locust.
These creatures really are eating machines.
Some mini beasts can do a lot of damage to crops.
A plague like this can cause misery and starvation
for millions of people in places like Africa.
The largest swarm ever recorded had 40,000 million locusts,
and these plagues can keep on moving from feast to feast
for 10 whole years.
That's amazing.
These aren't locusts.
These mini beasts are called aphids.
Green fly, black fly, gardeners hate them.
They damage plants by sucking the sap from them.
They don't even stop eating to give birth to their babies,
and they can have 50 babies a week.
Wow, that's busy, but I can understand that.
I've blown my nose while eating bagels.
It's all in the technique.
What are you talking about, Henry?
Here's another eating machine, a caterpillar.
Some caterpillars can eat their own weight in food every day.
Go, Cat, go!
Caterpillars eat that much in order to become beautiful.
That's beautiful?
You just wait and see, Henry.
Okay, I'm waiting.
Hi, people.
What happened to the caterpillars?
They've been taken away.
Those were caterpillars.
They've become cocoons.
Raccoons?
Hey, they're moving.
They're alive.
They're going to explode into a...
Butterfly, and it's cocoons, not raccoons.
Caterpillars need to grow more than five times their original size
before they can spin a cocoon and change into a butterfly.
Don't tell me.
That's called metamorpasta.
Metamorphosis.
I knew that.
Just testing.
That's what I'm talking about.
Henry, it's time for your special report.
Henry, time for your report.
Come here.
You're ready, aren't you?
Now?
Henry, we're ready for your report on bees.
My report is on the bee and why it hums.
Hums?
Hmm.
Let's start by looking at the world of the bee.
The hive is the bee's home.
In the hive, there are three types of bee.
Right.
First, the queen.
Who lays the eggs, which hatch into larvae.
No, not volcanic larvae.
Insect larvae.
In other words, baby bees.
Then there are the drone bees and the worker bees.
All bees work hard to make honey.
Not money, honey.
That's better.
Now, they put honey in pots.
Henry.
But they've got to make the pots first.
And that's hard work, even for a bee.
What?
Sometimes all that hard work took the steam out of the bees.
And sometimes they got irritated with one another.
I know that feeling, Henry.
To make the bees happy and to stop their complaining,
the queen had a bright idea.
She got the bees to form a choir.
And every day they would sing their hearts out.
And they would forget all their problems.
Only trouble was that the bees were too tired after all
their hard work.
They couldn't remember any of the words to the songs.
So they had to hum along with the tune instead.
And that's why bees hum.
Because they don't know the words.
Oh.
Oh, boy.
Just in case you're interested, bees don't actually hum.
But it sounds like they do.
Because their wings vibrate 180 times a second.
So they can fly and carry all the pollen and nectar they
need to feed the babies back in the hive.
When they get home, the worker bees
mix the nectar with saliva.
Saliva?
As in spit?
Right.
And put together, that makes honey.
Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure.
At least one of us did his research.
So I'll get it right next time.
I'm sure you will, Henry.
Some mini beasts make a big effort
to look after their babies.
Babies.
Sweet things.
Not everybody thinks that invertebrate babies are cute.
Goochie, goochie, goo.
But even so, babies are a big responsibility.
Henry?
Hey, excuse me.
Coming through.
Many, many beast babies hatch from eggs laid in strange places.
This alkali bee has just dug a hole and deposited its egg.
What she doesn't realize is that the bomber fly
has her own devious plan.
Don't tell me.
She drops her own eggs into the same hole.
They hatch and feed on the baby bees.
Oh, I asked you not to tell me.
Sorry, but that's how it is in nature sometimes.
The new bomber fly grows, emerges,
and the whole thing starts over.
It's the circle of life.
While life can be tough, especially on mini beasts,
they still manage to survive and breed again.
It is tough and sad sometimes.
Here's something to cheer you up.
A dung beetle.
Dung, as in?
Yes, Henry.
This beetle has got to fly off and collect a great big pile of it
before a female dung beetle will even think of having babies with them.
Couldn't he just buy her a box of candy?
No.
The dung provides food, warmth, and somewhere for the dung babies to play.
Hey, isn't that...
Yes, Henry.
He's got some.
Wow.
He's even got to find another beetle off just to get his own pile of...
Henry.
The dung beetle rolls it into a ball to get it home.
It's too heavy to go by air.
And he's dribbling through the defense.
Dribble, dribble.
He's over the halfway line.
Look at his fancy footwork.
Can nothing stop this magnificent mini beast?
And he shoots and he scores!
Ah, that's better.
Excuse me.
Can I have a little privacy here?
Oops.
Sorry, Henry.
No peeking.
Mini beasts keep themselves clean too.
They can't afford to be dirty because even a tiny speck of dirt can be a matter of life
or death to something so tiny.
They take a lot of trouble to keep clean.
So do I.
Hmm.
Now, Henry's Amazing Golden Guckle Awards for the all-time best mini beast.
Third place bronze medal goes to the praying mantis.
Second place silver goes to the giant land snail, that mighty marauding,
slime sucking mini beast mollusk.
And the gold medalist and most amazing all-time best mini beast
is the common garden spider, not the tarantula.
Why choose a garden spider?
Because the little male garden spider is so brave.
He has to be extra specially nice to the female when it comes to love
because she's twice his size.
She's a big girl.
Sometimes they get on fine.
Other times, well, she can be pretty grouchy.
And if he can't calm her down, then Mr. Spider ends up eaten.
As William Shakespeare said, true love never runs smooth.
Oh, is that the Evely brothers?
Oops.
She's gone and bitten his leg off.
Now he's only got seven left to run away on.
Mini beasts face other perils besides other mini beasts.
Oh, yeah?
Hmm.
You mean like this?
Hey!
Yeah, like that.
This couldn't hurt anybody.
Excuse me.
Ouch!
OK.
This plant couldn't hurt a fly.
As a matter of fact, it could.
Watch.
This is a Venus fly trap, one of the only types of plant
to actually catch and eat live prey.
I mean live mini beasts.
Hey, fly!
Watch it!
Ouch!
And here's our dung beetle again.
Don't eat that.
I know where it's been.
Boy, mini beasts have it rough.
I'm so happy I'm a lizard.
Hey, Henry, if you're a dragonfly,
what's worse than one bee eater bird?
Two bee eater birds.
When it comes to protein for building strong bodies, arms,
and legs, weevils do a gerbil's body good.
But the gerbil doesn't do much good for the weevil's body.
Gerbils just love weevils.
If they're so good, maybe I should try a nice fresh one.
Excuse me.
Here's lunch.
Bon appetit, Henry.
Wait a minute.
He's keeled over.
I'm not eating that.
Hey, what's up?
He pretended to be dead to fool you.
He won.
You lost.
Oh, shit.
Who's eating who here?
Watch.
Flies aren't doing too good today.
I'm not a dipteran.
Dipteran?
Dipteran.
That's the scientific name for a fly.
It means it has two wings.
See?
I know some big words, too.
Here's a mini-beast trap set by an antlion.
An antlion?
Does it roar like a real lion?
I don't think so.
You don't think so.
So even you don't know everything.
I do know that antlions dig a pit.
If the termite falls down, it can't climb up the steep sides,
and the jaws of the antlion are ready and waiting.
Look out.
It's a tank.
It looks like one, but it's a tiger beetle.
And no, it doesn't roar like a tiger.
Hey, all you mini-beast little guys.
Stay clear.
Sorry, Henry.
I don't think this little guy heard you.
Look out.
Too late for the cricket.
Don't eat with your mouth open.
Some people, no manners.
Some crickets, no head.
Life can be a hard struggle, Henry,
whether you're little or whether you're big.
These tiny mites show you don't have to be big to be deadly.
They swarm over creatures and nibble them day and night.
Now I'm starting to itch.
You're not the only one.
The first itchy creepy crawly is the flea.
It lives on blood it sucks from other animals.
Even birds get them.
Lizards don't get them, do they?
I don't think so.
It's so little.
How does it get around?
It is little, but it can jump the equivalent of 30 times
the human long jump record.
Excuse me, that's amazing.
Amazing and true.
Ouch, I really do itch.
Hey, where's he going?
It's a flea circus.
Now I've heard everything.
You mean to say real fleas work here?
What do you think?
I think you're pulling my flea-infested leg.
Watch closely.
How can you have a circus
when all the performers are too tiny to be seen?
We'll watch really, really closely.
Next thing you'll be telling me is that the toy cannon
over there is loaded.
It isn't loaded, is it?
Me and my big mouth.
Oh, boy.
It's a real creepy crawly convention down there.
Hey, guys, how's it going?
It's been real nice getting to know you.
I'm sure I'll be seeing you around.
And I'll be seeing you around, too.
Bye, Henry, and watch where you're stepping.
Remember, many beasts may be little,
but they've still got their own special place
in this amazing animal world.