Original subtitles

Humans are always trying to be better, brighter, faster, stronger,

tougher. It is one of the things that makes us human.

But Nature has spent 3.5 billion years producing

ingenious answers to life's questions.

So a lot of the problems we're trying to solve

have already been solved by evolution.

Meaning the animal kingdom is teeming with bright ideas.

'Like how to survive a fall from space...'

Yes, it's gone!

'..avoid ever getting wet...'

I am staggered!

'..or withstand an impact of 1200G.'

Oh, that feels pretty harsh!

'In this programme, we'll reveal some amazing animal abilities.'

That's astonishing! 'I'll discover how those same animals have inspired

'a series of human inventions at the very frontiers of science.'

Yeah, it's driving itself. It's brilliant!

'We'll have to go around the world

'and into some pretty unlikely situations.'

Oh! Oh, my God!

'Because you never quite know what surprises the animal kingdom

'has in store for you.'

It's the waiting that gets you.

It's all part of the miracle of nature.

If you're going to look to nature for inspiration,

and we have ever since cavemen first used warfare and used bone tools

as substitute teeth and claws,

then you're always going to come up against one big, ultimate dream

that happens in the natural world.

Flying.

In 1485,

Leonardo da Vinci designed a flying machine by studying birds.

It's the obvious thing to do, to look to the skies for inspiration

and to admire creatures like these Greylag geese,

who do so gracefully what we can't.

You would think that by now,

more than 100 years after we first invented aircraft,

after airliners and jet fighters and spacecraft,

there wouldn't be much left we could learn from birds

about flying...but you'd be wrong.

And it's all about their bodies and the way they're built.

In general, the bigger the bird,

the bigger the wings it needs to get it up into the air.

It all makes perfect sense.

Until you get to this guy...

..whose big body and relatively small wings make him look

about as capable as graceful flight as I am.

But this bird's unique characteristics have helped

inspire a revolutionary new form of human transport...

..that might just transform the way we explore our planet.

This is Cody, and he is a cape vulture.

And these are not being worn for fashion reasons.

That's a really big beak

and eyes are kind of tempting, apparently.

'But to find out what makes cape vultures like Cody

'so special, I'm going to need to get higher.

'Quite a lot higher.'

It's about 500 metres down there.

And shortly, I shall be jumping off the edge

with nothing but the contents of that man's rucksack.

between me and certain doom.

That's assuming he's brought the right rucksack

and we don't jump off the edge with his flask and some sandwiches.

'Walter Nesser is a vulture expert.

'Unfortunately for me, he also happens to be an expert paraglider.'

Oh, now I feel secure.

That's it. That's it? Yeah.

For the take-off, what I want you to do is cross your arms over your chest

onto these straps here, so you just... Yeah, that's it.

Is everything attached? Yeah, everything.

That's connecting you to this. That's connecting me to this.

Is the first bit the worst and then

suddenly it's all kind of sedate and beautiful?

Yeah, the anticipation is really the scary part.

Yeah, it is pretty bad. Especially when it looks like this.

I mean, this isn't your average paragliding site, is it?

I don't want to wait too long, Walter, I really don't.

Just don't... I just want to... Oof!

All right, the wind is really good, are you ready? No.

Let's go.

Oh! My God!

Whoa!

Wow!

All right, now you can sit back in the harness. Oh, sitting back in the harness?

Quite close to this rocky cliff sides! Look at the drop!

Ah-ha! I don't want to be a vulture!

You doing all right? I'm scared...on an Olympic scale.

All right, have a look up to your left.

Whoa!

There's millions!

How do we get in amongst them? We really need a thermal.

'A thermal is a column of warm rising air,

'created as ground heats up unevenly in the sun.

'Which sounds kind of gentle.

'It's not.'

Wow!

Whoa!

Oh, I love it when it does that.

I love that, Walter, that's nice. Oh, that's nice!

Do you mind if I get changed?

I didn't bring any spare jeans with me!

Holy...!

'But the rewards are worth it.'

Look at them now, they're coming to join us!

We are circling with them, it's astonishing!

We're in the same thermal that they are.

Ah, this is incredible.

This site is home to a third of all the world's cape vultures,

and right now it seems like every last one of them

is flying alongside me.

I wouldn't have believed that those birds I saw

flapping about on the ground so inelegantly

were capable of circling with such grace.

And yet, here they are doing it - elegantly, beautifully.

It sounds impossible, but they make it look easy.

And up here, I suddenly realise something -

that's why we're used to seeing vultures circling in the movies -

it's because they're in a thermal.

So, this is all about being able to exploit the exact same thermals

that we're exploiting now.

Yeah. They've got these reduced spans,

but still with good performance.

And you need to be really manoeuvrable.

So, you need to be able to turn inside this tight bubble of air.

And that could be why their wings are so small -

so they can turn quickly enough to stay inside the column of warm air.

By locking their wings in position, and using the thermal's lift,

they can fly with next to no effort at all.

And by hopping from one thermal to another, the vultures' short,

rigid wings can carry them more than 100 miles in a single flight.

And it's those astonishing abilities

that have inspired an entirely new form of human transport.

This is the Super Aviator.

But it's not what you think.

Despite the name and the aerodynamic appearance,

this is a plane that will never leave the ground.

Got my head in a fruit bowl, that's nice.

Because it's not designed for the skies.

It's built to go underwater.

The Aviator's owner, John Jo Lewis,

has offered to take me for my first flight beneath the waves.

Forward thrust.

Commencing our dive.

We just dived under the sea! Woo!

So, Rabbit. I have to call you Rabbit, yeah? We've got handles and everything.

Yeah, that's right. We try and pick a two syllable word,

and I've been Rabbit for quite a while. OK, Rabbit.

What am I? You're Hamster now. Nice.

Thanks. Actually, you've always been Hamster.

Yeah, OK. That's familiar. All right, so we are now...

Let me get this right - flying

even though we are under water. Exactly right.

And literally, our wings are on upside down,

it's as simple as that.

That's right. Rather than keeping us up like an airplane,

it keeps us down... like a flying submarine.

'And down is where we're going.

'Down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.'

You've put us in a descent down into a valley.

'Which is a little bit nerve-wracking.'

I've just had a drip of water

on my left arm, Rabbit, should I be worried?

No, that's just condensation. I knew that.

I've got a special towel here,

my submariner's anti-condensation towel,

because every time it drips on my left arm, I have an urge to scream.

'Luckily, I soon get side-tracked.'

Oh, look, there's a big ray off to our rear right.

You're kidding! No, it's beautiful.

Wow!

'But we're not here to chase wildlife,

'because Rabbit is taking me down

'to a shipwreck on an artificial reef -

'a sort of sunken playground

'where he can really put the Aviator through its paces.'

And there we go.

This is magnificent!

'Impressive, but it's still not obvious what this submarine

'has to do with a vulture.'

So, what we are is an upside down vulture under the sea.

And the reason we're like a vulture is we have quite a large body

in proportion to which, quite small, stubby wings.

Yeah. They're short which keeps us manoeuvrable and allows us to go

into tight places, manoeuvre around wrecks

and not bump into anything.

In the same way that a vulture needs to have short wings

so it can be manoeuvrable and turn and stay inside those thermals.

You couldn't do this with long wings on your flying submarine.

That's right. That really is what allows us to have

the manoeuvrability that we do

and be able to exploit the wings to their fullest capability.

We've swapped the lift of a thermal for the buoyancy of water.

It's a mirror image of what happens in the air.

Like the vulture, the Aviator needs quite a lot of energy to get

it away from the surface.

But once it's down there, that vulture technology

enables it to simply glide.

And now a big old climb starts.

Steep ride back.

Oh! That feels pretty harsh.

100 feet.

Oh, yeah.

80 feet.

That's a pretty a extreme feeling

when you see the top, the surface of the sea getting closer

and closer. 50 feet. It's like driving into a wall. 20 feet.

I'm prepared to broach.

And there is the surface! That's... Ah!

It feels pretty good.

A submarine based on the way a vulture flies.

Not the most obvious of links, I'll grant you,

but inspirations from the natural world are often unexpected.

Sometimes it's just like a light bulb going on.

Because evolution has given us all of this for inspiration.

10,000 species of bird,

close to 30,000 species of fish,

8,000 species of reptile...

..over a million species of insect...

..and at least 4,500 species of mammal.

Bodies of all shapes and sizes.

Some of these bodies are truly remarkable,

not just for how they look, but for what they can do.

Bodies that could help us humans accomplish things that previously

were just plain impossible.

With the aid of technology, we're now able to propel

our bodies through the air with incredible speed and agility.

But we're still limited by one critical problem - gravity.

Because as pilots throw their planes through ever more violent twists

and turns, it's as if the force of gravity becomes magnified.

Magnified to such an extent that it pulls all the blood

away from their head and they lose consciousness.

And that's not good.

Jet fighters have, of course, continued to advance

and become capable of ever more extreme manoeuvres.

Apart from one part of them -

the pilot, the human element, because the human body, well,

that's stayed pretty much the same.

And who'd have thought that when scientists turned to nature

for inspiration, the one creature that could help us withstand

this high-tech, high speed, dynamic, dangerous environment

would be...the giraffe.

The giraffe has to be one of the most recognisable animals on Earth.

There's no mistaking that distinctive long neck.

But giraffes hold a secret that might just be the key

to the pilot's life-or-death problem.

And it's a secret that's hidden in that long neck.

Because, by rights, when the giraffe lowers its head down to take

a drink, the consequences should be catastrophic.

There is a critical issue here - pressure.

As I shall now demonstrate with this giraffe.

Don't worry, it's not a real one, it's actually a model built

to roughly the scale of a small giraffe.

The important thing is, this represents the heart.

There is actually a pump in there

that is going to pump this, representing the blood,

along these arteries all the way up to the giraffe's head there.

In other words, the same way blood works in the human body.

But the giraffe's head is so high,

it takes far more pressure to get it up there.

That was a human's blood pressure. Straight past that.

In fact, the giraffe has roughly twice our blood pressure.

It's the highest blood pressure of any living thing.

But that high blood pressure is only down by the heart,

where the pump is working furiously.

Up at the head, the pressure is much the same as ours.

And that is how it stays.

Until it decides to lower its head to have a drink,

then everything changes. This is the right place to do this

because giraffes actually do come here to drink.

So, let's give it a go.

As I turn the handle,

all that blood starts going down towards the ground -

just like with the jet pilots.

Straightaway, watching my metre on the blood pressure,

it's rising back up again.

Quite quickly. And now it is rising more because now the head

is getting lower than the heart,

and suddenly, everything has changed.

It's not pumping all the way up there any more, gravity is helping

and it's flooding down to the head.

That blood pressure is going way past

what it should be, and now it's into the danger zone for our giraffe.

And things are looking bad. Very bad.

Obviously, its head doesn't really fly off.

In reality, as the blood pressure rises, the head comes down

and gravity steps in, a giraffe's head would...

Well, it would explode.

But they don't explode every time they come to drink, otherwise

this place who be littered with bits of them.

So, what's happening?

Well, there's only one way to find out -

by attempting to measure the blood pressure,

not of a model giraffe

but of a real one.

This team of vets and surgeons from a Danish university

are already doing just that.

And they hope that what they find out might just help

the millions of us who suffer from high blood pressure.

First, they open up the neck.

Inside, is part of the giraffe's secret.

Its arteries actually contract to cope.

And valves in the neck stop the blood being dragged down by gravity.

To assess just how effective this system is, the Danish team

are aiming to measure the giraffe's blood flow just the same way

I did on my model -

by putting pressure sensors at both the head and the heart.

Safely recovered from the operation, the giraffe is released...

..undamaged, but now Wi-Fi enabled.

This is the first time a giraffe has ever had its blood pressure

monitored in this way.

But what will happen to the readings

when the giraffe bends down to drink?

As soon as the head lowers,

the giraffe's arteries constrict automatically.

And though the pressure continues to rise, the giraffe's blood

doesn't suddenly rush to the head but stays where it's needed...

..leaving the patient completely unharmed.

Which takes us back to jets.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting for one moment

that giraffes would make good fighter pilots.

But they are, as we have seen, very good at controlling

blood pressure and distribution of blood around the body,

and that's very important in here.

Because this capsule is designed to recreate the forces

that a fighter pilot experiences whilst flying.

And those forces are immense.

The faster they accelerate, brake or turn,

the greater the effect of G-force on the body.

At 2G, you feel you weigh twice as much as normal,

and breathing is twice as hard.

At 3G, the effects are tripled,

and blood starts to struggle to get to your brain.

Go further,

and you lose your peripheral vision,

then all sense of colour.

Finally, around 4 or 5G, your vision disappears entirely

and you lose consciousness.

Today, in here, using technology that mirrors very closely

what happens in a giraffe's neck, we're hoping to see 9G.

Five seconds of that is enough to go through all of those stages

to unconsciousness.

And I'm not doing it.

I'm getting out.

The German Air Force, who run this place,

require three months of rigorous medical testing

before they'll approve a pilot.

And this man, Ralph, is the lucky winner.

Ralph has been chosen as the guinea pig for a completely

new form of flying suit.

It's called the G-raff.

A series of valves and chambers stop the blood

pooling by compressing the body,

just like the constrictions in the giraffe's neck.

And the result...

Well, it looks pretty damn impressive.

What?

Oh, this? Yeah, you noticed.

Andreas, I'll be honest, no offence, this is your invention, I know,

I feel a bit silly right now.

But this is the first incarnation of your G-raff suit.

What have I and a giraffe got in common right now?

It starts with some muscles here.

There are fluid muscles to contract the fabric if they are blowed up.

Then we are creating a tension to compress the body.

I've actually got a little thing here, I can inflate myself.

Oh! I can now feel that squeezing down here.

There are various pockets where air gathers,

that then tensions the material, yeah?

Absolutely. And it starts on the feet

and then we bring down... up the blood

back to the right place, to your heart, and especially to your brain.

So, this would be squeezing me like a giant tube of toothpaste.

That's true.

It's like a...I would say,

it's opposite milking, that's what you're doing.

In Switzerland, to milk, it's more or less the same thing

but the opposite way.

Luckily for our pilot, the new version of the G-raff suit

all those tubes and chambers are hidden discreetly away.

They are now so small that a tiny amount of air should be enough

to activate them and stop the blood draining from the pilot's head.

But will giraffe technology be enough

to stop Ralph losing consciousness?

This is the world's largest and most powerful centrifuge.

That arm is capable of spinning that capsule around this cavernous room

37 times in a minute.

Which works out roughly that the capsule itself is travelling

at the best part of 90 miles an hour that way.

But it's not that speed that's important.

It's what that speed generates in this direction, G-force.

And that G-force will pull the pilot's blood downwards,

just as gravity did to the giraffe.

What I've been told is, Ralph,

who's in the pod, is going to fly himself with a joystick.

And he'll subject himself to 9G.

Ralph has monitors taped all over him.

So, just like with the South African giraffe,

they can monitor the blood pressure at both his heart and his head.

Are you ready? 'Yes, I am.'

It will be fine.

I'm glad he's confident,

because he's launching himself into unknown territory.

Three, two, one... Go.

Right now, as he slowly increases and tightens the turn,

the blood is going to have a harder and harder time

getting up to Ralph's head.

And from here on in, it's only going to get worse.

Now I'm going up. 4G.

A little bit more. Just to 5G.

Six.

Now we have seven.

8G.

Now go up to 9G.

9G.

He just did 9, whilst chatting.

But the test isn't over.

With Ralph still at 9G, Andreas takes the controls.

And decides to push it just that little bit further.

It feels fine.

Not only is Ralph not struggling, he appears to be enjoying it.

Wow! Whoa! Nice!

So much so, that he has a little surprise for us.

SPEECH MUFFLED BY NOISE

His face might be ending up stretched over his knees

but he's managing to do a Rubik's cube at 9G.

I can't do those at 1G.

Thank you. It's finished.

THEY LAUGH

I mean, giraffes don't do this.

But it is linked directly to how giraffes' necks work.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

Who knew? Who'd have thought?

If the G-raff suit passes the rest of its testing process

so convincingly then, thanks to the giraffe,

G-force might be one less thing for fighter pilots to worry about.

It goes without saying,

for a species to survive it needs to be able to protect itself.

Turtles do it by retracting into a shell.

Bighorn sheep do it by having specially reinforced skulls.

Because when they fight, it's more like a car crash.

Which is appropriate

because the only time a human being is likely to encounter

that sort of impact is if they are unlucky enough to be in a crash.

Anyone who rides a bike or races a car,

their best hope of protection is a helmet.

I should know, I owe my life to that one right there.

This is a state-of-the-art crash helmet,

the sort worn by Formula One drivers

Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.

Like all helmets, it's made of two layers,

a flexible lightweight shell, and a soft inner foam.

To insure it meets safety regulations,

each helmet is subjected to a drop test.

And not just any old drop.

A drop from the top of the highest helmet drop tower in Britain -

50 feet straight down onto a solid steel pipe.

It's like hitting a lamppost at 60 miles per hour.

And amazingly, the helmet survives.

But is that good enough?

Somewhere in the natural world,

there might just be a better solution.

TAPPING NOISE

And there it is.

It is a great spotted woodpecker.

And it's the biggest head banger on the planet.

It drills a hole up to four inches deep through solid wood

to get at the larvae of wood-boring beetles.

Which puts its head, and its brain, through an astonishing pounding.

The thing is, and this is an incredible figure,

every time the woodpecker's beak strikes the tree,

its head is subject to 1,200G.

Which is enormous.

In a crash, a human could only survive a fraction of that,

even with a helmet.

So how come it's able to do this without its brain turning to mush?

Unlike the crash helmet that has two layers to protect against shock,

the woodpecker has four.

The first is this hard

but flexible beak that absorbs some of the initial impact.

The second is a springy layer that starts at the base of the tongue

and extends right around the skull.

Then the skull itself provides a second rigid layer.

Finally, this filling of spongy bone between the skull and brain.

These four elements combined allow the woodpecker

to withstand impacts that would more than likely leave us dead.

So how can we adapt the woodpecker's astonishing ability?

Engineer John Powell is attempting to recreate those

shock absorbing elements into an innovative new man-made system.

John, I'll be honest, it looks nothing like a woodpecker.

It doesn't look like a woodpecker but we have replicated the entire

woodpecker brain support system in our little cylinder here.

OK. Essentially, we've got this outer carbon fibre layer.

That's the beak that'll flex when it's impacted.

Hopefully not transferring loads through

this isolating layer of cotton wool.

That hopefully is keeping everything away from being transferred

to this inner layer. This is our woodpecker skull.

This is fibreglass, so yet another fibrous material like bone,

but it's more rigid so any impacts that come into the side

are transferred to the centre like the woodpecker brain case,

where they have the outer shell

that doesn't allow anything to transfer to the inside.

So if anything reaches that, this doesn't flex.

This is a bit more rigid. Right, that's the barrier.

What's after that?

We use the beads, replicating that inner bone that the woodpecker has.

That sort of spongy bone stuff? Yes. Where did these come from?

These actually come from airport pillows.

You know those U-shaped pillows you put around your neck? Yeah.

That's what in them.

So now all we need to do is organise some sort of drop test.

To find out just how good this container is,

we are going to drop it with something delicate inside it.

Something like this.

Not this.

This.

A bulb. Now that IS delicate.

We've got glass, thin glass, and the filament inside.

I can't get these things home from the store without breaking them.

I wouldn't expect this to survive a fall from a kitchen work surface

but, today, we are going to drop it from space.

Here is the precious cargo.

John, I mean, this... It's not a specially prepared bulb or anything.

No, this is a regular light bulb we bought from the hardware store.

It's just off a shelf? Yes.

I've delivered it to you safely, we've got that on record.

We are just going to wrap it in a little piece of excelsior here.

Right.

Then it goes in its little home there.

John, all this other stuff that you've put in with it,

the GPS stuff and this unit,

isn't that going to be the equivalent

of putting a light bulb in a tumble dryer full of bricks?

Yes. Right. Which makes it even more challenging. Yes.

The real trick is to get everything not to move.

Everything takes a lot of shock if it can't move.

Then it can't come over towards the light bulb.

How confident are you at this stage?

I'm completely confident that the bulb is going to survive. OK.

The extra added bit, the glory that we're shooting for,

is will the filament in the bulb. I believe it will.

The filament is the most delicate part. It's just a small thin wire.

They can break in your shopping bag!

And often do. Oh, yeah! Hopeful, that's a good word for this mission.

Ambitious and hopeful.

John isn't just in charge of our canister,

he runs this whole space mission.

And he wants to see if woodpecker technology can help him

protect the vital components he attaches to his command modules.

But we can't blame him for this whole crazy light bulb thing.

That was our idea.

OK, so here is how it's going to work.

Still can't quite believe I'm saying this.

Our canister containing the light bulb will be suspended underneath the module.

That in turn will be suspended underneath that weather balloon,

which is filled with helium, which is lighter than air

so that will take the whole lot up.

And up. And up.

Right beyond the edge of the Earth's atmosphere and, well, into space.

I know it sounds silly when you say it, but that's where it's going.

When it's there, down here on the ground in mission control,

which is that van over there,

they will press a button that will release our module

and it will fall all the way back down to Earth with our light bulb.

And then, well, we'll just see what happens.

It's equipped with GPS so they can find it. We'll have a look.

We're going into space. HE GIGGLES

'Commencing launch procedure.

'Ten...nine...

'..eight...seven...

'..six...five...

'..four...three...

'..two...one.'

It's up. It's going that way.

It's climbing.

Bye-bye, light bulb.

Good luck on the way back down.

The balloon carrying our woodpecker canister

rises astonishingly quickly -

around 1,000 feet a minute -

and it's already out of sight from the ground.

Time to get myself to mission control.

Look at that shot. There it is.

Is that curvature of the Earth I'm seeing or is that an optical effect?

That is curvature of the Earth. That IS curvature of the Earth? There it is there. Yes.

So this light bulb that we bought off the shelf in a store...

It was just there next to all the other light bulbs.

That one was chosen.

That one is now experiencing space.

It's the ultimate light bulb adventure. It is.

CLATTERING Oh, the awning...

Er, I think our E-Z UP just flew away.

Down, down, upside down...

Is anybody going to say, "Houston, we have a problem"?

Everybody OK out there? I'm not sure my nerves can stand it.

This is the most tense thing I've ever been involved in.

I'm in the middle of a space mission here and we've got problems!

You all know where that goes!

Everybody OK out here? Yeah, we're fine.

Just 2,000 feet to go till our designated drop point

and then our canister containing our precious light bulb cargo

begins its Mach 1 journey back towards Earth...

and a substantial crash landing, which, hopefully, it will survive,

thanks to a technology derived from that of a woodpecker's head.

If you've just joined us, that's what's happening.

If this works, we'll see the cylinder break away and begin its...

You just say, "Go," and I'll try it.

There it is. Go.

Yes! Yes! There it goes! It's gone!

Within seconds, the canister is going fast enough

to break the sound barrier.

If there WAS any sound in space, that is.

Yet even at 700-odd miles an hour,

the descent is going to take a remarkable 15 minutes -

now THAT is what I call a drop test.

With the canister now out of sight,

the team remotely detonate the weather balloon.

A parachute launches automatically,

floating the transmitters and cameras safely back down to Earth.

The canister isn't so lucky.

As it hits the atmosphere,

the on-board camera is forced back in its housing.

No woodpecker has ever travelled at 700 miles per hour.

No woodpecker has ever plummeted 85,000 feet.

But right now, we're relying on the way a woodpecker

protects its brain to keep that light bulb intact.

CRASH

With the canister down, we head out as quickly as we can to retrieve it.

Unfortunately, those same winds that blew our awning over

have taken the canister way off course.

And when we finally get there,

we find the radio signals seem to make no sense.

As night falls, we're still no closer to finding our canister.

So let me tell you where we are.

The guys are pretty sure that the canister landed in a canyon.

That's good. Less good -

the GPS on board has broken, which is a worry.

It does have a radio beacon - that's great. And they've found a signal.

The problem is, the signal is bouncing around, they think,

off the walls of the canyon.

When I was with them, we went to try and find it,

we were going one way and the next way.

The signal is coming in everywhere. So here's the solution.

They think what we've got to do now

is wait for the battery in the radio beacon to run down a little bit,

so it's a weaker signal - it won't bounce off the walls.

They'll be able to zone in and find it.

But that could take five or six days.

I haven't got time. We've got to move on.

So they're going to look for it and if, WHEN they find it,

they'll mail it on to me, wherever we've ended up.

It's not all over yet.

Now, you might be thinking,

"It's all very well you talking about submarines and jet fighters and space,

"but what has any of that got to do with me?"

Well, more than you might imagine

because quite often these exotic ideas

end up having applications much, much closer to home.

Can we be frank just for a minute? Because this is important.

We need to address an embarrassing social problem.

Has this ever happened to you?

An amazing 19% of us admit to having, at one time or another,

dropped our mobile phone down the loo.

Actually, it's worse than that, because only 40% of us overall

admit to taking our phone in with us in the first place.

So if 19% drop it down...

That's half of everybody who takes their phone into the loo

drops it down there.

I'm afraid to say it seems to be predominantly women.

Must be the whole, you know, sitting-down thing. Whatever!

Anyway, ultimately it leads... well, to this.

Yeah. Telecommunications and toilets.

Not something with which you'd imagine the genius of nature

could really help.

But it can.

And the answer can be found

deep in the heart of the South American rainforest.

This Morpho butterfly is a master of repelling water.

And with good cause.

If just one of those heavy raindrops was to settle on its wing,

it would become so unbalanced, it would fall out of the sky.

And if just a fraction of a drop was absorbed,

it could damage the wing permanently.

Lucky then, that the water just beads up and runs off...

..allowing the butterfly to find safety and shelter.

Despite the shiny appearance of the wing,

this is not some sort of rubberised coating.

It's something far cleverer than that.

But to find out what, we need to look closer.

A thousand times closer.

Because although the wing looks totally smooth,

it's actually covered in millions of tiny waffle-shaped ridges.

This model represents that distinctive pattern,

and this balloon represents a water droplet.

If it lands on the wing, only the tiniest part of it

would ever come into contact with the actual surface

because it balances on these ridges.

In fact, less than one percent of any raindrop

ever even touches the butterfly's wing.

They call this property "hydrophobia" -

literally "water hating" -

and it's a property so impressive

and so potentially useful,

that it's no surprise we've tried to copy it.

This laboratory in Oxfordshire thinks it's succeeded.

They've worked out a way to spray an artificial hydrophobic coating

onto, well, just about everything.

And if you don't believe me, just watch.

We've put together a machine to explore this hydrophobic quality

and all it needs to get it started is a couple of drops of water.

We've created this machine

out of things we thought might benefit from being hydrophobic.

A newspaper that never gets soggy.

An egg carton that never gets sticky.

A teapot that never dribbles.

Kitchen utensils, spatulas, spoons and mixing bowls

that never get dirty.

Gloves that stay dry

whether you're gardening or snowballing.

And summer blockbusters that you can read by the pool.

And, finally, the piece de resistance...

..hydrophobic clothes.

So I've had THIS made.

It's a suit, but it's been hydrophobically coated,

which means, technically, I should be able to spill anything on it.

Coffee.

Red wine.

Mustard - English.

Tomato juice.

Mango juice.

Soy sauce.

You see, it all just flies off. Brilliant.

Right, hope there's nothing else.

Because the thing we really want to repel water is our phone.

Back to the lab.

We've put a standard model into an airtight chamber,

where it's subjected to a vacuum.

Next, it's exposed to plasma rays

to prepare every surface for the hydrophobic coating,

and I do mean every surface, both outside and in.

Moving parts, electrical contacts, circuit boards, processors

all get covered by a thin layer of textured plastic,

a thousand times thinner than a human hair.

Which is all very impressive, but does it work?

Let's start again, shall we?

This is my old phone, and it's ruined.

I dropped it in the loo, You saw me do it.

This is my new phone. It's exactly the same,

but it's been treated with a special hydrophobic coating.

Not a waterproof cover, remember. Water will still get in.

It's just it should then run off every component inside.

Should. That's the theory.

So let's do it again. And I really hope this does work because this is getting expensive.

PHONE RINGS

Hello.

Yeah, can you get me some antibacterial wipes?

Yeah.

No, a lot.

Just imagine if any electrical device could be waterproof.

No more water-damaged phones.

No more flood-damaged televisions.

And no more coffee-damaged keyboards.

And all thanks to the South American rainforest...

and one small butterfly.

It goes to show that sometimes, most times,

there's an animal out there somewhere

that can outperform the best we humans have to offer.

It's not surprising, really.

Evolution has been working on it for 3.5 billion years.

But that's OK - it just means there's always more for us

to learn from the natural world.

Like, what DID happen to that light bulb?

If you remember, a woodpecker had inspired us

to drop a light bulb from space.

But it had landed... heaven knows where.

DOORBELL CHIMES

Hello. How's it going? Very well. Do you have a parcel for Hammond? Yes.

'Well, eventually I get the call saying they've found the canister

'and delivered it to a courier's office near where I'm filming.'

Driver's licence. Does that do?

'I rush straight down there.'

Stickers say, "Fragile, handle with care." It's a bit late!

Right, let's get this open.

It's like the weirdest Christmas ever.

OK, we're in the box.

There it is.

HE GULPS AND SIGHS

I daren't look.

Ooh.

There's the tray containing the bundle.

This suddenly is now the most precious artefact

I shall ever handle.

There it is.

Intact.

From space.

No parachute, no magic.

There is one further test I could do,

cos I did spot over here...

And this does work. Yeah, it does work.

Oh!

Do you know, it might just be intact.

That's not the bulb. That's not been to space. THIS is our space bulb.

If this works, I will be staggered

because when the director suggested using a light bulb, I said no.

Oh...

HE LAUGHS

That is astonishing!

Over there is a very happy man indeed

because I said, "That's just a step too far - it can't possibly work."

That light bulb has been flown up to space and dropped -

85,000 feet, I think, was the exact height - back down to Earth.

It landed... Well, it landed on rocks on a mountain.

It took days to find it.

The only thing protecting it was this whole system,

which was home-made

and modelled on the way a woodpecker's skull

protects its brain when subjected to G pecking trees.

This was subjected to G landing without a parachute from space.

I'm staggered!

Come on, that's worth a round of applause. They're so relieved!

APPLAUSE

That is amazing!

But those amazing, shock-absorbing qualities

aren't just for safeguarding an iconic bird

and a home-made spacecraft.

They might make a difference to motorcyclists all over the world.

There are already helmet manufacturers looking at this,

which means, one day, woodpeckers could be life-savers.

And that, I think you'll agree, is quite miraculous.

'Next time on Miracles of Nature,

'I'll be looking at how animals' super-senses

'might change the way we experience OUR world,

'allowing us to hear through solid rock...'

EXPLOSION

Hello!

'..to see without using our eyes...'

That's astonishing.

'..and to feel something that happened 30 seconds earlier.'

This is what we'll all be in. This is the future.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd