All language subtitles for Alien.Abyss.S01E01.Origin.Stories.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-NTb_track3_[eng]

For centuries,

we've fantasized

about alien life
on other planets.

And because life
as we know it needs water,

we imagine seas
on the Moon,

rivers on Mars,

and lakes
beneath Europa's icy surface.

So far, we've discovered
only dust

except
on this watery blue marble

where inner space
hides creatures

as weird as anything extraterrestrial.

There are oceans of oddballs

with strange shapes...

Strange rituals...

and strange bedfellows

right here
in Earth's own alien abyss.

Our oceans
are constantly changing.

For billions of years,

volcanoes, asteroids,
and ice ages

have kept marine life
on its toes.

If you want to live,
you've got to adapt.

No solution is too strange
if you survive.

That's the origin story of
every watery weirdo in the sea,

beginning with
the very earliest.

We've had life in our seas

for 3 1/2 billion years.

But intelligent life...

Not so much.

If martians had visited
the Earth way back then,

they might not even have
recognized it as life.

Lower landing leg.

Turn on your magnascope
to third power.

How primitive.

In the beginning,

all life was too small to see,

except for these living rocks.

Hello.
Take us to your leader.

These are stromatolites,

the oldest surviving
life-forms on our planet.

Colonies of bacteria
that have been around

for three
and a half billion years.

They don't do much
except survive.

Stromatolites ruled the oceans
for most of Earth's history.

Now they survive
in only a few spots

like Western Australia's
Shark Bay.

The bacteria cells stick
to each other

and the sea floor with mucus.

Sediment get stuck in the mucus
too and starts to smother them.

The bacteria live
by photosynthesis.

They need sunlight.

So they migrate upwards out
of the muck and into the Sun,

building rocks at half
a millimetre per year.

Stromatolites and other
single-celled creatures

had the sea all to themselves

for about 3 billion years.

But eventually,
bigger things came along--

things that like to eat them.

Thus began
the familiar food chain.

Stromatolites, plants,

and anything else
that can photosynthesize

get energy from the Sun.

Herbivores like this dugong
come along and eat them.

Then carnivores come along, and...

yeah, you don't wanna see that.

Back to the stromatolites.

Sadly, most of them got eaten

by things like sea urchins.

But a few survived
thanks to their one superpower:

they can live
in extra-salty water.

That's why, today,

you'll only find
stromatolites in tidal pools,

which, thanks to evaporation,
are twice as salty as the sea.

Too salty for their enemies.

The march of
evolution was tough

on single-celled creatures,

but it made life on Earth
a lot more interesting.

It gave us weird beasties

like the red-lipped batfish...

and the tasselled wobbegong.

To make animals like this,

you need over
100 different kinds of cells,

with each kind of cell
doing a special job...

that is, you don't make
the tassels

with the same cells
you use for the gills.

The very first animal

to crack the multi-cell formula
was this.

No, not the frog fish.

That's hundreds of millions
of years in the future.

The thing
he's pretending to be...

The sponge.

Sponges were the weirdest thing

to happen to life on Earth
since, well,

the beginning of life.

An animal with no organs,
no tissues, no nervous system.

But a big leap forward
all the same.

The first creatures
with different cells

for different jobs.

Sponges make egg cells and
sperm cells for reproduction.

Eggs, they keep to themselves.

Sperm, they release in a cloud
to share with other sponges.

They also have an outer layer
of cells similar to our skin,

and, hidden inside,

a layer of different cells

to filter bacteria
from the water.

They are herbivores,

specializing
in microscopic food.

Jellyfish are some of the first
multicellular creatures

to turn their attention
to hunting.

The challenge is how to hunt
with a body that's 95% water.

The solution?
Keep it simple.

Their bells are a jelly
held together

by thin membranes.

A ring of muscles
around the bell

contracts to force out water--

the first jet-propulsion
system.

But their biggest innovation:

microscopic neurotoxic darts.

Nomura's jellyfish
is king of them all.

arguably
the largest jellyfish alive.

It's the size of a fridge.

Nomura's jellyfish
plies the Yellow Sea

between China and Japan,

always searching for food.

This giant beast
is stranger than most.

It has hundreds of mouths

all over the big feeding arms
below the bell.

Its little fishy friends
are safe, though,

as long as they avoid the many
long, thin stinging tentacles.

Nomura's mouths are only
one millimetre wide.

Only zooplankton--

teensy-tiny floating animals--
fit through.

But every one of them
gets stung first.

It's mass murder
on a microscopic scale.

If gelatinous stinging aliens
freak you out,

get ready for some bad news.

Humans are doing everything
we can to make more of them.

We pour nutrients into the sea,
creating plankton blooms.

We catch the fish
that would eat the plankton,

leaving
more food for the Nomura.

We've given them an opportunity
to launch an alien invasion

numbering
in the hundreds of millions.

How can they take over so fast?

Jellyfish can clone themselves.

Their larvae attach themselves
upside down to the sea floor.

But they don't just grow up
to become one adult.

Each larva creates many
identical copies of itself.

In just one generation,

they can launch a clone army.

If conditions are favorable--
and they are--

the jellyfish population explodes.

If this sounds terrifying,

this type of thing has happened
many times in Earth's history.

500 million years ago,

there was such a massive
burst of life

that we named a time period
after it.

The Cambrian explosion...

A time when evolution itself
blew up in all directions.

New animals tried out
wacky new ways to live.

Some of their experiments
really stood the test of time.

The most successful invention
was a basic body plan.

Suddenly, alien animals start
looking eerily familiar.

Meet the bilaterians.

A big word for animals
with a top...

a bottom...

a left... and a right.

Essentially, anything that's
not a sponge or a jellyfish.

Bilaterians include dugongs,
remoras, scuba divers, and...

sharks.

Sharks have been around
for 350 million years

in a form we'd recognized today
as sharky.

You know the drill:

nasty teeth,

slicing fins,

dead eyes,

and that streamline
torpedo shape.

But one design
is just plain weird.

Why, hammerhead? Why?

Separating the eyes at its
wingtips gives the hammerhead

extraordinary
stereoscopic vision,

but it does nothing
for the hydrodynamics.

All the spoiler does
is increase drag

and spoil
the sleek torpedo shape.

Hammerheads are ten times
less energy efficient

than the classic
shark's silhouette.

So why has the weird head
survived?

It acts like a forward rudder.

The slightest twist
creates a very sharp turn.

Perfect to chase down rays,

its favorite...

but very tricky...

prey.

But the strangest shark of all
has almost given up

on swimming.

This is the epaulette shark.

Its other name
is the walking shark.

The ones living on Australia's
Great Barrier Reef

have developed extraordinary
abilities to dice with death.

Their home is shallow
and highly tidal.

It's easy to get stuck
in a small pool

at extreme low tides.

The water temperature
can skyrocket.

Oxygen levels drop by 80%.

The death zone.

Just walk away.

Fins with extra muscles
and a greater range of motion

are almost as good as feet.

But even this
low-tide specialist

can run out of pools,
out of air, and out of luck.

Now it shuts down
much of its brain.

Brains use a lot of oxygen.

Heart rate slows,

blood pressure crashes.

Essential systems only
until tide comes in.

Engage brain...

and walk away, unscathed,

back to the alien abyss.

Feet or fins are not
the only way to walk.

The sea floor abounds
with many peculiar pedestrians.

Animals have adapted all sorts
of appendages to do the job.

Sea stars have
hundreds of tube feet,

which are for breathing,

smelling, and tasting,
as well as walking.

Sea stars don't have brains,

so every tube foot
makes its own decision

on where to go.

It's a miracle sea stars
move at all.

And bristles can be legs too.

Bristle worms
are highly successful

with little more than a head

and a whole lot
of identical segments.

The biggest bristle
is the bobbit,

a bizarre brute up
to three meters long.

You heard right.

If you're swimming
in Indonesia,

beware of three-meter-long
walking worms.

They're killers.

The bobbit is too slow
to run prey down.

And it's oblivious to the ones
that hide.

But it has big ambitions.

It has its eyes set on a fish.

Wait, it has no eyes.

How does a blind,
slow-moving worm catch a fish?

Watch.

The bobbit burrows
tail first into the sand

and deploys
its alien apparatus:

five surveillance antennae,
tuned to any movement.

Razor-sharp, spring-loaded
mandibles primed.

It's barely visible.

The slightest touch
sets off the trap.

The muscle jaws
can slice big fish in half.

The worm retracts
into its burrow,

dragging its prize
to a grizzly end.

Compared to
the ruthless bobbit...

its cousins,
the tube worms,

are, well, feather dusters.

They're bristle worms
that have become builders.

They hide in hard,
protective tubes

attached to
any suitable support.

Instead of spring-loaded
death traps,

they extend crowns
of otherworldly feathers...

a marine multitool
that they use to breathe,

find food,
and gather building material.

The fine feathers
sort the stuff

that floats in the water.

Large bits, they reject.

Small bits,
they funnel to their mouths

to assess as food.

And middle-sized sand particles
are just right

for sticking together
with mucus

to build their tubes.

The Mediterranean fanworm
is the most successful

of them all--
or the most invasive,

depending on
your point of view.

You'd th

living in this idyllic place
would stay put.

But it's the pretty fanworm,

not the vicious bobbit,

that has conquered our planet.

They're incredibly fast growing

and their larvae
can settle on anything...

including passing ships.

They've hitchhiked
from the Mediterranean

all the way to New Zealand
on the other side of the world

and taken over...

at 1,000 per square meter.

Once established,

they're almost impossible
to get rid of

thanks to a few secret weapons
in their quiver.

They absorb heavy metals,
like arsenic, from the seawater

and concentrate it
in their crowns

to deter predators.

Stranger yet,

they have simple eyespots

all over
their feathery mouthparts.

Any sign of danger,

like the shadow of
an approaching camera operator,

and they retreat.

Eyes.

Now that was
a useful development.

All animal eyes have
a common origin

going all the way back
to the Cambrian.

Starting as simple eye spots,

they developed
in many bizarre ways,

from the relatively simple eyes
of the scallop

to the sophisticated compound
eyes of the mantis shrimp.

But the eyes of octopus,
squid, and cuttlefish

are out of this world...

maybe.

Meet the head-foots...

cephalopods, if you want to get
all Greek about it.

The basic blueprint:

tentacles...

and a head with big eyes.

Eyes with freaky features

like the ability
to detect polarized light

or to focus independently
of each other.

Some squid eyes even have
built-in lights

to see in the dark.

Basically, it's the recipe
for a real-life alien.

And some say that how
cephalopods got to be so weird

is a genuine
deep-space mystery.

In 2018,

a few scientists suggested
that octopus eggs

might have come
from outer space,

frozen on a comet.

Sadly, all the other scientists
said they were tripping.

The conventional,
less-exciting wisdom

is that cephalopods
and their eyes

started out much simpler.

More like the nautilus.

These are the most primitive
surviving cephalopods.

They're the only ones that
still have an external shell

and the only ones without
amazing visual abilities.

Half a billion years ago,

2 1/2 thousand nautiloids
ruled the ocean.

Today, just six remain.

The South Pacific's
pearly nautilus is the largest.

Like Captain Nemo's submarine,

the Nautilus sinks
by filling chambers

in its shell with seawater.

It can sink
an impressive 800 meters

before its shell implodes.

But its eyes
are much less impressive.

They are open to the sea

with no lens
or protective cornea.

Unique in the animal kingdom,

the nautilus eye
is basically a pinhole camera.

The image that pinhole pupil creates

is 400 times less bright than
that produced by octopuses,

but at least it was a start.

Later cephalopods,
like octopuses,

added lenses and other features

to make their eyes
state-of-the-art.

They're a very different design
to those of vertebrates,

but just as successful.

They don't have different color
receptors on their retinas.

Instead, they seem to see color

by splitting light
into its components

with their strange,
horizontal pupils.

And instead of changing
the shape of their lenses

to focus like we do,

they move them back and forth
like a camera.

It means their ability
to focus never deteriorates.

But great eyesight
is only one reason

that they're brilliant hunters.

The other reason
is their phenomenal brain,

which is unlike
any other on Earth.

This is a run-of-the-mill
common octopus.

Its central brain has decided

it wants to check out
some other rock pools.

It's instructed
the eight auxiliary brains

to make that happen.

They're all working
on the problem independently,

one brain in each arm.

2/3 of the octopus's
brain cells

are in its tentacles.

They may even be helping
to process visual information

they could be seeing
with their arms.

One thing the octopus
still can't do is breathe air.

It's breathing from water
stored in its mantle.

It has two hearts dedicated
to pumping blood to its gills.

The third heart supplies
the organs.

Maybe they really are aliens...

Or just an incredibly
over-engineered solution

to the problem...

of how to kill a crab.

In the oceans,

problems are just opportunities
waiting to be cracked.

For some of
the most alien life-forms,

no problem is too extreme.

Earth is a planet of extremes.

There are places
where no sensible life-form

should survive...

like hot acid lakes,

or the depths of the abyss.

But even here,
life has found a way.

Quick recap.

If you live on Earth,

you're probably getting
your energy from the Sun,

directly through photosynthesis
or indirectly.

If you're not,
then chances are,

you're an extremophile

on a hydrothermal vent...

places we've only known about
since 1977...

when we started exploring
the deepest parts of the ocean.

Everything down here
is more alien,

even the octopuses.

The water temperature
is near freezing;

the pressure, immense.

Volcanic vents pump out
superheated water

and noxious chemicals.

And vent shrimp wouldn't
have it any other way.

They thrive
in the Goldilocks zone

between boiling and freezing.

In fact, they're unusually
active for deep sea creatures.

The question is,
where do they get their energy?

They get it from
extremophile bacteria

that use chemicals

from the vents
as their energy source.

It's chemosynthesis
instead of photosynthesis.

The shrimp don't eat
the bacteria.

Instead, they receive nutrients
directly from bacteria

actually living inside
their guts and on their gills.

This is life completely
independent of the Sun.

Many scientists now think
life started in this dark,

hot, chemical soup.

It may be that learning
to tolerate the Sun

was the real alien innovation.

Off the coast of Taiwan,

there are very shallow
hydrothermal vents

just below the surface.

They belch out
superheated water

and a lot of gas,

mostly carbon dioxide.

Warm acidic seas,
high CO2 levels.

Sound familiar?

Scientists love places
like this.

It's like studying the end
result of global warming.

Life, on the other hand,
hates it.

Super sulfur vent crabs
are the only creatures

that can hack it here.

Among other things,

they've learned
to metabolize sulfuric acid.

The crabs have evolved
special biochemistry

to cope with CO2 levels
that kill all lesser creatures.

Anything that asphyxiates
becomes crab food.

Most of their meals
are much smaller

than a lost puffer fish.

Plankton dies the moment

it drifts
into this watery hell.

All the crabs have to do
is pick it up.

They thrive in conditions
where nothing else survives.

But that's hardly surprising.

Crabs do well
almost everywhere...

So much so that many imitators

have tried to follow
their recipe for success.

Crabs may look a bit like alien
robots made from spare parts,

but their sturdy design
has stood them in good stead

for 200 million years.

With eight legs,

massive claws,

body armor,

360-degree vision

and amphibious capabilities,

they are the perfect
planetary rovers.

Maybe that's why nature

has thrown up
the crab body plan

many times over.

This is a crab.

Crab. Crab.

Not a crab.

Crab. Crab.

Not a crab.

Yep, that's a crab.

And... not a crab.

This porcelain crab
is an extreme example

of carcinisation.

That would be the tendency
for crustaceans

to become crab-like.

Porcelain crabs are family
of squat lobsters,

squashed up and flattened.

King crabs are relatives
of hermit crabs,

which, by the way,
are also not crabs.

There are many advantages
to being crab-like.

It's easier to hide under rocks
or in crevices

and you expose less of your
vulnerable side to predators.

The crab-eyed goby
is obviously convinced.

It's done some carcinisation
of its own.

But no defense is perfect.

For extra protection,

many crabs augment their armor

with elaborate camouflage.

Others carry defensive weapons.

And the king of
all crab-like things

has become so big,
no one bothers it.

Coconut crabs are the world's
largest hermit crab.

Again, not really a crab.

There isn't a shell big enough
for an adult female to hide in.

Instead, she has hardened
plates for protection.

She can breathe air
through primitive lungs...

so she has no need
to return to the sea

except to release the eggs that
she carries under her tail.

When they're ready to hatch,
the ocean calls her back.

She may be a landlubber
at heart,

but her offspring start life
as beach babes.

They'll have to take
their chances with the tides.

The point where the land meets
the sea is a great place

for extraterrestrial sightings.

In a sense, sea creatures that
come ashore really are aliens.

The action of waves

and the coming and going
of the tides

catch many
a careless creature unaware.

One tidal terrestrial

has not only adapted
to these hardships,

it's based
its entire life around them.

The finger plough snails
of Southern Africa

are confirmed beach bums.

As the incoming tide
flows over the sand,

plough snails emerge...
by the hundreds.

They've avoided the low tide
hidden under the sand.

Emerging on the incoming tide

means they don't run
the risk of drying out.

But they have an unerring nose
for any unfortunate

left stranded
at the high-tide mark.

But how to get
all the way up there

traveling at,
well, a snail's pace.

That requires genius.

These snails have sails.

They unfurl
their freakishly big feet

to catch a wave
all the way to dinner.

Time for a bit
of alien probing.

The long maneuverable proboscis
searches for an opening.

Once it's in,

the snail hoovers up
soft tissue and liquid

up to a third
of its own body weight.

Fully sated, they wait
for the retreating tide

to take them back

to where they started.

The sneaky snails successfully
straddle two worlds.

Why choose when you can have
the best of both?

Mudskippers have raised
this dual-citizenship approach

to an art form.

From Africa to Australia,

these enigmatic little fish
are waiting for low tide.

They all have joints
of a sort in their fins

that function
a bit like elbows.

It's what puts the skip
in their step

and helps them
keep their heads up high.

Some of these proud
land dwellers

spend 3/4
of their time out of the water.

And they're not lying around,
gasping for air.

These little oddballs love
to throw their weight around.

Some fight for mates
and territories.

Some turn into formidable
land-based predators.

Others graze on the nutritious
slime the tide leaves behind.

Lots of highly active stuff
that uses up a lot of oxygen.

The weird thing
about mudskippers

is that they can't breathe air,
at least not directly.

Like all fish, they have gills.

But they can also breathe
through their skin,

like amphibians do.

To do that, they have to
keep it nice and moist.

The inside lining
of those giant mouths...

is especially good
at absorbing oxygen.

Some mudskippers
love air so much

that when the tide comes in,

they take another big gulp...

to fill up their burrows
with a pocket of air.

Incredible as they are,

mudskippers
have never really conquered

anything more than mud.

Leaving the sea for good
would take fundamental changes

to the way animals walked
and breathed.

The first animals to take up
permanent residence on the land

were fish.

Not the modern fish
that we have today,

but ancient animals
called lobe-finned fish.

The most famous
is the coelacanth,

extinct for 15 million years

until someone fished up
a live one in 1938.

The coelacanth
is a fish with arms

and may prove to be
the link between man

and his sea ancestors.

We now know that the closest
living relative of land animals

is the only other type
of lobe-finned fish:

the air-breathing
freshwater lungfish.

Even today, you can see
how its prehistoric relatives

might have crawled
up a mudflat.

Paired fins eventually became

the arms and legs
of land animals.

Lungfish do have gills,

but their environment
is often low in oxygen.

Gills alone won't cut it.

Lungfish must surface
regularly to gulp fresh air

at the surface.

These strange fish
have a pair of lungs

very similar to our own.

Of course,
things were different

when their ancient ancestors
slithered out of the water.

Today's lungfish face a problem
their forebears never did...

Land-based predators.

The shoebill is just
another creature

that evolved
from that pioneering fish.

Once animals
had conquered the land,

there was only one thing
left to do:

head back to the sea.

What a waste of time that was.

Yes, otters are the descendants
of homesick land fish.

5 million years in the sea
have given them webbed feet,

paddle-like tails,
and waterproof fur,

but they wouldn't look
out of place on land.

The reason is that,
in evolutionary terms,

they haven't been back
in the water all that long.

Given more time,

the transitions
get a lot stranger

than these oversized
water weasels.

Whales are most closely
related to hippos.

A penguin is a fat albatross
with tiny wings.

And the dugong
is a cousin of the hyrax.

But the animal voted
least likely to succeed at sea

lives here.

The Galapagos Islands

are famous
for their bizarre animals.

Blue-footed boobies,

giant tortoises,

tropical penguins.

Charles Darwin,
famous scientist, made his name

studying the least-interesting
inhabitant:

the finch.

The coolest,
most alien creatures,

he dismissed as, and I quote,

"most disgusting,
clumsy lizards."

The only thing he liked about
these imps of darkness

was that they tasted good.

Harsh words for the only lizard
to have reinvaded the sea.

Marine iguanas are so
completely bound to the sea

that seaweed
is the only thing they eat.

The bizarre thing is they're
not really much different

to the neighboring
land iguanas.

They're all iguana
and very little marine.

So how does
a cold-blooded lizard

that moves slowly in full sun

turn into
this alien action hero?

The big males feed exclusively
beyond the surf zone.

The water is cold.

Every stroke saps his energy.

Now he fills his lungs
and, battling his own buoyancy,

dives ten meters or more.

Finally, food.

Anchored with his sharp claws,

he grazes quickly
before his body freezes up.

Under water, they're not
as stupid and sluggish

as Darwin thought.

The clever iguana times
his return to the surface

so that he has just
enough energy in reserve

to make it back to shore.

When he reaches
the warm basalt,

it's all he can do to lie,
spent, in the sun.

Now his black body
comes into its own.

It's important to get warm
as fast as possible

because there's one last thing

that makes these iguanas
weirder than any alien.

They can't digest
the only food they eat--

at least, not on their own.

They rely on bacteria
in their guts

to break down
the tough seaweed,

and they only work
when they're warm.

He just musters up the will
to sneeze out some salt

extracted from his blood
by a special gland.

Meanwhile,
his land-based cousins

haven't even left their cactus.

The two species are so similar,

they can breed
to produce hybrids.

Marine iguanas really
are land iguanas

with strange habits
rather than strange features.

Swimming.

Compared to land iguanas,

their toes are
minimally webbed;

their tails, only slightly
flattened into paddles.

Holding their breath.

No special adaptations here.

You can hold a land iguana
under water for an hour

without killing it.

Please take our word for it.

Both types switch
to anaerobic respiration

when the air runs out,

even though land iguanas
seldom need to.

And this trick...

Most lizards
have salt-removing glands.

In fairness, marine iguanas
do have the best salt glands

of any reptile.

The amount of salt they eat

would pickle
any other lizard's kidneys.

All in all, their adaptations
are mostly behavioral.

They time their excursions
with the midday sun.

They leave hot, come home cold,

and spend the rest of the day
recovering and digesting.

Sometimes an alien
is just a normal creature

exploring
a strange environment.

It just needs one...

to take the plunge.

The ocean was the cradle
of all life on Earth,

the place where fundamental new
designs were first tried out.

And it's still the place where
some of the wackiest

evolutionary experiments
get tested.

Animals will do anything
to exploit an opportunity.

You may end up
as one of the ocean's oddballs.

But when you win,

no one cares what you look like

in the alien abyss.