Original subtitles

[Dan narrating]

[mysterious music]

- What if I told you a man once found himself in a face off

with one of nature's most unexpected opponents?

- Greig sees this enormous kangaroo.

- [Greig] Oh God!

- [James] Holding his dog hostage.

- This kangaroo can pretty much eviscerate him.

- He realizes he has to do something pretty quick

to save his dog.

- Or there's a filthy rich cereal mogul

who declared war on the weather?

- Post makes the connection,

maybe if you agitate the atmosphere sufficiently,

you can make it rain.

- Post hires a team of 50 men to fly dynamite kites.

[bombs exploding]

- [Hakeem] But they have all kinds of problems.

- How about being pushed to the brink of extinction

by a tiny bug?

- There are billions and billions of them

and they're hungry.

- When they descend on a farm,

the scale of destruction is biblical.

- These are the unbelievable stories

of what happens when humans and nature collide.

[mysterious music]

- The ocean is home to a vast array of incredible creatures.

Many are peaceful, but every now and then,

the deep sea reminds us who's really in charge.

[tense music]

- In 2024, off the coast of New Hampshire,

two fishermen have their boat floating over schools

of small bait fish,

which attract the larger fish they're after.

But these anglers get a much bigger bite

than they bargained for.

[anglers yelling]

- It turns out to be a humpback whale,

and it capsizes this $150,000 boat.

- [Videographer 1] Oh my God.

- Sending the two fishermen ride into the drink.

- Humpback whales are enormous.

They can grow to 60 feet and weigh 40 tons.

That's over two times the size of the boat

and many times its mass.

- [Dan] Close calls between humans and whales

happen more often than you think,

but who actually has the right of way?

- Legally, fishing boats are required

to stay a safe distance from humpback whales

and avoid the schools of bait fish

where the whales are feeding.

The law is intended to protect the whales,

but it turns out it's good for the fishermen too.

- Not all fishermen are following these guidelines

because they're after their fish,

and so situations like this

may occur more and more often.

[water splashing]

- Is this boat bashing on purpose,

a case of sea rage perhaps?

We might never know, but for one bird scientist,

the question of nature's vengeful intent

seems pretty clear.

- John Marzluff is a wildlife biologist

working at the University of Washington in 2006,

and his specialty is studying crows.

That includes capturing them, tagging them,

and tracking them to observe their behaviors

and learn more about them,

and he has been working consistently

with this one flock of birds, a murder of crows,

and he starts to notice something happening.

- Some of these crows

seem very wary of specific researchers.

More than that, the crows swoop

and dive bomb the researchers

who've been directly involved in the trapping,

and they also scold them,

[crows cawing]

cawing at them aggressively.

- What becomes really interesting here

is that this happens even when these researchers

are just going about their lives around campus,

and these crows are formidable.

They have really tough beaks and talons.

So if a crow is mad at you, that is a serious threat.

Marzluff starts to wonder,

are these birds recognizing these people's faces

and are they mad at them?

- Marzluff decides to try a particular experiment.

He asks researchers who are trapping the crows

to wear a Halloween mask of a caveman

and other researchers

who are not involved in trapping the crows

wear a Halloween mask of Vice President Dick Cheney.

- [Dan] As cavemen and Dick Cheneys

are released into the wild on campus,

Marzluff notices something extraordinary.

- The crows continually accost the cavemen

who are trapping them

and ignore or leave alone the Dick Cheneys.

- And this happens even when they try it with a hat on

while they're wearing the mask,

or they'll put on a different kerchief or a scarf

just to see if it is definitely the face

that the birds are focusing on, and it is every single time.

- [Dan] Incredibly, this hostility runs much deeper

than anyone imagined.

- Birds that have never been part of this research project

also start to attack, swooping angrily at the cavemen.

These remarkable animals have been teaching each other.

- It goes on right into 2020.

So 14 years after the initial research

and after the paper's published,

the caveman mask is still eliciting this response,

and that means that there are birds in play

that are generationally separated

from the original flock.

- In all fairness, the biologists started this spat,

but sometimes the animal is the one looking for a fight.

- In 2016 in the Australian outback,

Greig Tonkins is out with his friends hunting wild boar,

- There's one there. [indistinct]

when one of Greig's dogs, Max, gets a scent

and runs off ahead and disappears into the brush.

- Greig sees something he really wasn't expecting,

which is this enormous kangaroo.

- [Greig] Oh God!

- Holding his dog hostage on a headlock

and Greig realizes he has to do something pretty quick

to save his dog.

- Big male kangaroos are actually quite terrifying.

They've got these just huge biceps, big broad chests,

and a kangaroo can punch eight times harder than a human

and they can bite as hard as a grizzly.

But the biggest threat is actually the kangaroo's kick.

- [Dan] A kangaroo's middle toes fuse

into a single sharp talon, a feature called syndactyly,

not unlike the kill claw found on a velociraptor.

- He can kick his heart as a horse

and with that sharp nail on the end of his toe,

can pretty much open Greig completely up

and eviscerate him.

- As it happens, Greig is a zookeeper by profession,

so he moves in close enough to distract the kangaroo

and it releases the dog.

You might think that the story would end there,

but no, the kangaroo turns its attention to Greig.

- [Jarod] Now, this kangaroo

is in full blown territory mode and puts up his dukes.

Greig, to not show any weakness,

leans back and he socks the kangaroo straight in the jaw.

[suspenseful music]

- Surprisingly, the roo backs off,

and actually that probably saves Greig's life.

[suspenseful music]

- It's unclear if this was a triumph over nature

or mercy on the part of the kangaroo,

but in the end, the kangaroo learns the hard way,

don't mess with a man and his dog.

- The pioneers of the Great Plains fought droughts, storms

and brutal winters, but in 1874,

nature threw something at them they never saw coming.

[suspenseful music]

- It is summer of 1874 in Nebraska.

It's a sparsely populated area that survives on agriculture,

and the state is suffering a really crippling drought.

The local farmers are hoping

and praying that things turn around when all of a sudden,

there is this strange and disturbing rumbling.

As the rumbling continues,

suddenly a haze starts to form over the sun,

the skies start to darken.

- At first, you think it might be an approaching storm

or a tornado, but it disperses into billions of tiny specs.

- These specs are not bits of dust,

they're not raindrops, they're grasshoppers.

Rocky Mountain grasshoppers,

billions and billions of them, and they're hungry.

- They will eat an entire field of crops

in a matter of hours.

- It's like a blizzard of grasshoppers.

In some areas, the insects form a carpet a foot deep.

They invade homes, they eat cloth and quilts,

paper, curtains, leather, tool handles.

- They will eat the wool right off of a live sheep.

They will start eating the clothes off of your back.

When they descend on a farm,

the scale of destruction is biblical.

- [Dan] Shockingly, this isn't an isolated incident.

It's happening all over Kansas, Iowa,

Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

They call it the Great Grasshopper Plague of 1874.

[suspenseful music] [grasshoppers buzzing]

- There have been grasshopper invasions before,

but this one in 1874 is on a scale

that the US has never seen before.

At the peak of the invasion,

estimates run as high as 15 trillion grasshoppers.

That's 390,000 grasshoppers

for every resident of the United States at that time.

- [Dan] Dazed citizens wonder why this particular year

is especially brutal.

- Rocky Mountain grasshoppers originate

in the Rocky Mountains and under normal circumstances,

that's where they stay.

But in 1874, conditions are not normal.

There's a very severe drought going on, and when it's dry,

their eggs hatch more successfully

so the population of grasshoppers explodes.

- There are also winds that form a jet stream

and carry the grasshoppers throughout the Great Plains,

leading to a cycle of the grasshoppers overpopulating,

decimating food and seeking more food.

The grasshoppers cause about $200 million in crop damage,

which is the equivalent of $5.5 billion today.

Even more dangerous,

the excrement from these billions of grasshoppers

poisons wells and water supplies.

- [Dan] As this mass infestation continues

throughout the summer of 1874,

desperate farmers go to war with the grasshoppers.

- They try setting them on fire,

they try smoking them out,

they try poisons.

- They even try a contraption called a hopper dozer,

which is a horse drawn metal sheet coated with coal tar

intended to get the insects stuck to the metal sheet,

but there are just too many of them

and it becomes another failure.

- [Dan] The swarms of grasshoppers return

for the next four summers,

but then a strange thing happens.

- The grasshoppers just disappear.

They're not just gone from the Plains,

they're gone from everywhere.

By the early 1900s, they're extinct.

- While Nebraska farmers learned

that bugs can ruin your life,

one ancient king discovered there's a way to use them

to your advantage.

[suspenseful music]

- It's 67 BCE in what is modern day Turkey

along the Black Sea, and the Persian king, Mithridates

is on the run from the Roman general Pompey The Great.

- Mithridates is an interesting guy.

His father was murdered by poison,

so he spends much of his early life out in the woods,

ingesting small amounts of poisons like arsenic

to build up a tolerance.

At the time, he's probably one

of the world's leading experts on human toxins.

- [Dan] Now, with the Roman army hot on his tail,

Mithridates uses this knowledge to his benefit.

- He instructs his soldiers to gather large amounts

of a sticky red honey

and place it in jugs all along his escape route.

- The Romans encounter these jars and on closer inspection,

they find that it smells sweet, they sample it,

and they find that it tastes sweet as well.

- Once they taste it, there's no stopping them.

Soldier after soldier after soldier

is consuming handful after handful

of life-giving nutrient-rich honey

until the side effects kick in.

[tense music]

- What the soldiers don't know is that in Turkey,

bees often pollinate rhododendron fields

and these flowers contain large amounts of grayanotoxin.

The toxin ends up in the honey,

which causes hallucinations, diarrhea,

dizziness, and loss of consciousness.

- After eating tons of this honey,

the Roman soldiers are on a pretty bad trip.

They are not what you would call battle ready.

Imagine having to fight for your life

while you're vomiting and hallucinating.

This is exactly what Mithridates had in mind.

[suspenseful music]

- Mithridates's force then doubles back on them

and engages them in battle.

- [Dan] The result, it's a slaughter

with over 1,000 stoned Romans killed.

- Mithridates took all those years

studying poisons and toxins,

and he essentially creates possibly

the first biological weapon.

- In fact, today it is one

of the oldest hallucinogenic drugs,

though very expensive and sometimes hard to get.

In some countries,

it sells for $80 a pound on the black market.

- Talk about sweet revenge.

- The weather is unpredictable, untamed,

and for one man the next great frontier to conquer.

What happens when human ambition takes on Mother Nature?

[suspenseful music]

- C.W. Post becomes a breakfast cereal baron

in the late 1800s.

He makes a lot of money with products like Grape-Nuts

and other post cereals like Raisin Bran.

- [Announcer] Start your day a little bit better

with Post Grape-Nuts Flakes.

- Eventually, Post starts to have these obsessions

and because of his success,

he does not hesitate to act upon them.

- In 1907, Post buys up 200,000 acres of land

in order to build this self-sustaining,

idyllic little community.

- He calls it Post City.

It seems that Post has thought of everything

in his perfect city, except for one thing.

There's not enough water.

And soon enough, the region is plagued by drought.

This city can't sustain itself, no one can grow enough food.

- He remembers that there were stories

that after big cannon battles in the Napoleonic wars,

it would start raining.

So he makes the connection.

Maybe if you agitate the atmosphere sufficiently,

you can make it rain.

- [Dan] His plan is as simple as it is bizarre,

he's going to blow up the clouds.

- Post hires a team of 50 men to fly dynamite kites.

Each one of these kites is equipped

with two pounds of dynamite and extremely long fuses

so that when you light it at the bottom,

a few minutes later, the dynamite goes off in the sky.

- So he has 50 kites, but they have all kinds of problems.

The cords get tangled,

the dynamite explodes too close to the ground sometimes,

almost killing his men. [bomb exploding]

Clearly this kite approach is too unreliable,

so Post has to come up with yet another plan.

- He has his men haul the explosives up the Caprock,

which is a high escarpment running throughout West Texas.

He uses a total of 350 pounds of explosives spread out

so that each explosive is about 50 feet apart

and they're set off every 10 minutes.

[bombs exploding]

- Everything goes as planned except it does not rain.

- Post gets this idea that you really need

to replicate battle conditions.

The explosions need to be violent and random.

There can't be any pattern to it.

- [Dan] Eventually his persistence pays off

when one of these rain battles actually works.

[tense music] [bomb exploding]

- Post is thrilled, but subsequent rain battles

have mixed results,

and so Post thinks they're not using enough dynamite.

So he ups the ante from 300 pounds to 3,000 pounds.

[bombs exploding]

During one rain battle,

Post detonates over 24,000 pounds of dynamite.

That's equivalent to the most powerful conventional weapons

used by the US military today.

- [Dan] By the end of 1913, after middling results,

Post fires his last shot.

- Overall, Post spends about $50,000 in his rain battles,

which is equivalent to about $1.7 million today,

or half a million boxes of Grape-Nuts.

- For another visionary who dared to do battle

with the natural world,

Mother Nature's response was much more harsh.

[suspenseful music]

- From 1949 until 1976,

Mao Zedong is the all powerful leader of Communist China

and he holds the opinion that humankind

was intended to dominate nature.

- [Dan] In 1958, Mao' Great Leap Forward program

mandates a massive increase in agricultural production.

- If you're in charge of a massive country

with a population of 600 million people,

your first priority is feeding those people.

Any loss in crop is an enemy to the people.

According to Mao, the number one culprit in grain theft

is the evil sparrow.

- In order to harness all of the agricultural potential

of the People's Republic,

he declares war on a two-ounce bird.

- He enlists an army of millions of citizen soldiers

to kill as many of the sparrows as possible.

- People use whatever weapons they have, guns, slingshot.

They even use long poles to poke at nests up in the trees.

But the most bizarre method

is to simply follow the birds around,

making a loud noise with pots and pans

and anything metal that they can clang together.

So the sparrows, they're too scared to land

and they end up dying from exhaustion.

- In just a matter of weeks,

the Chinese kill over one billion sparrows.

- [Dan] For Mao, it's proof

of his people's revolutionary devotion.

Unfortunately for the great leader, his contempt for nature

is only surpassed by his ignorance of it.

- Mao is convinced that it's the sparrows eating the grain,

but actually it's insects that consume most of the grain,

and the sparrows are the ones eating the insects.

So in Nanzhong, 60% of the crops are destroyed,

in another region, 15% of the rice crop

is consumed by locusts,

and this happens again and again and again

all over sparrowless China.

- The result of Mao's war on sparrows

is the country is driven to famine

and the estimates are that 45 million people

starved to death from 1959 to '61.

This gave rise in the United States to this practice

of scolding children who didn't want to eat

by telling them that there are starving children in China,

which was set in motion

by Mao's declared war on the sparrows.

[birds chirping]

- Chairman Mao's battle with birds is a stark reminder

that when you mess with nature, beware,

nature has a brutal way of restoring balance.

- For all of humanity's progress,

nature still holds the upper hand.

And in 1908 in the remote Siberian wilderness,

it delivers a blow so powerful, it defies explanation.

[suspenseful music]

- It's June, 1908 in Eastern Siberia

near the Tunguska River.

This area is incredibly remote.

You're more likely to see a reindeer than a person.

- A man sits on his porch

when suddenly there's a massive explosion.

After the flash,

[low rumble]

a violent hot wind pommels him

and destroys his entire home.

- He manages to lift his head to look around

and he sees that the forest surrounding his home

has been flattened by some invisible, mysterious force.

It turns out this explosion isn't right next door.

It's over 40 miles away.

- [Dan] In fact, the blast is so powerful,

its impact reaches far beyond Siberia.

- Windows a hundred miles away are shattered.

Seismic readings are taken as far away as Washington DC.

For days after this event,

the night skies across Europe and Asia

are glowing with this bright light.

- [Dan] The violent detonation becomes known

as the Tunguska Event,

and right away the world wants to know what caused it.

- Speculation runs rampant.

Some Russian scientists believe that it was a volcano

that went off in eastern Siberia,

while local indigenous peoples believed

that maybe it was a god or a powerful shaman

that had sent a fireball to punish them.

- [Dan] 19 years later in 1927,

scientist Leonid Kulik is finally able to get close enough

to study the scene.

- There's an 800 square mile circular area

where the trees have been absolutely flattened.

80 million trees are down.

It's not hard for Kulik to find the epicenter

because all the trees are pointing away from it.

- He suspects that the culprit could be something

that came from space and collided.

He expects to find a crater in the middle.

He doesn't, it's even more strange.

All the trees in the center in ground zero

are still standing.

Of course, they're burnt to a crisp

and their bark has been shorn off,

but they're still upright.

Every other tree is pointing outward.

- Over the decades, a lot of pretty wild theories crop up.

One suggests that an alien spacecraft armed

with nuclear weapons exploded over Siberia.

The force of the explosion actually supports this idea.

Scientists estimate

that the blast was 185 times more powerful

than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

- [Dan] There's also another, more natural explanation.

- There's one speculative hypothesis,

which is that the earth passed gas,

that there was a large pocket or reservoir of methane

that leaked out into the surface

and then was ignited by a lightning bolt,

and then that ignition detonated the entire pocket

in one giant blast.

- Finally, in 2020, a Russian research team comes up

with a very plausible idea,

which is that an asteroid came through space,

entered our earth's atmosphere, kind of skimmed along,

but didn't impact

and ricocheted right off of our atmosphere.

This would've heated up the air.

It would've created these sonic shockwaves

that caused all of this destruction.

- It's estimated that the meteor is about 130 feet across

and weighs 220 million pounds.

If something like that landed on a major city like London,

millions would die.

- What's more terrifying, whatever it was,

we know we can't prevent it from happening again.

And due to laws of nature,

chances are it will happen again.

- It's a stark reminder,

you never know when nor where nature's fury will strike,

whether from above or deep below.

- It's a quiet night in 2013 in Seffner,

a small town outside of Tampa, Florida.

A gentleman named Jeremy Bush

is suddenly awakened by a crash,

followed by the sound of his 37-year-old brother screaming.

Jeremy runs to his brother's bedroom

and much to his dismay and shock, there's no furniture.

The bed, the dresser, the drawers, everything is gone.

- What he sees is just completely unbelievable.

There's a hole in the center of the room

and he does not see his brother anywhere.

In his desperation, Jeremy grabs a shovel,

he jumps into the hole

and he's trying to dig his brother out,

but the walls are still falling in,

the soil is still moving,

so the more he digs, nothing's happening.

- [Dan] Unfortunately, Jeremy and his brother are dealing

with one of nature's most unpredictable phenomena,

a sinkhole.

- A sinkhole forms when you have a layer of soil

over a layer of limestone, a porous rock,

and a cavern underneath.

When the rain seeps into the soil,

it can go down and erode that limestone away,

and when it gets sufficiently weak, it breaks,

and that's when the system collapses.

- Because of the amount of limestone underground

in the state of Florida,

plus all the rain they receive on an annual basis,

it's just prime territory for sinkhole,

and they have over 27,000 of them there.

- One of these sinkholes in China

is known to go down as far as 2,000 feet.

In fact, entire prehistoric habitats

have been found well preserved inside of these sinkholes.

- [Dan] On that terrible night in 2013,

there's no telling how deep this sinkhole goes.

- When first responders arrive, they quickly tell Jeremy

that the hole is too unstable to pull Jeff out.

The emergency workers themselves make some attempts.

They jump in, they dig down,

but the walls of the hole are collapsing

and they realize it's too dangerous

and they have to abandon the effort.

- The ground has literally disappeared beneath him

and he has been buried alive.

- [Dan] In the aftermath, local authorities fill the hole

and condemn the entire block.

- In 2015, two years after Jeff's death,

a strange thing happens.

People notice their dogs are starting to act weird,

they're a little afraid to go outside,

and then they hear a massive rumble.

[tense music]

- Suddenly, their sinkhole appears

right in the same spot as the first one,

only this time it's even bigger.

- [Cyrena] In 2023, it opens up for a third time.

- Nobody's injured, but it's even bigger still.

The thing is sink holes are known to grow,

and chances are it may come again.

- The earth, it seems, has a way of keeping us on our toes.

Just when we think we have it all figured out,

it throws us a curve ball,

or in this case, a sinkhole.

- When nature calls and you're nowhere near a bathroom,

it's usually an inconvenience.

But for one man, it comes in, well, unbelievably handy.

- A hundred years ago, the most interesting man

in the world was probably Danish explorer Peter Freuchen.

He stands six foot, seven, he's covered in animal furs,

he commands dog sleds across the tundra.

According to legend, he killed a wolf with his bare hands.

- [Dan] For all his experience in the wild,

nothing could fully prepare Freuchen for what lay ahead

on the icy expanse of Greenland.

- In 1926, Peter Freuchen and some guides

are attempting an extremely difficult trek across Greenland.

They encounter heavy snows

and realize that their sleds are too heavy,

so they unload a lot of the supplies with the intention

of coming back to them when conditions clear up.

- Next day, Peter is convinced that he can make it back

to where they left the supplies,

load it up and continue on his own.

- [Dan] But when he makes it to the supply dump,

he's trapped by a sudden blizzard.

- Peter has no other choice than to seek shelter,

so he digs a shallow snow trench,

puts the sled on top of it

and crawls in through a small hole.

He's essentially burrowing into a snow bed.

- He stays in this shelter for 30 hours.

When the storm subsides, Peter discovers that the exit hole

to his shelter is now frozen shut.

He is now stuck inside of an icy coffin

of his own making

and all of his tools are on the sled outside.

If he doesn't get out,

he's either going to suffocate or freeze to death.

- He notes from his experience in polar exploration

that when his sled dogs would go to the bathroom,

their feces would freeze solid in the snow,

as hard as a rock.

Peter now has to relieve himself,

so he fashions his own fecal matter

into a chisel shaped implement,

and he waits for it to freeze.

- Miraculously, it works.

He's chipping away, chunks of ice are flying,

and his tool is remaining intact.

He continues fracturing the ice till he gets a hole

that's almost big enough for him to squeeze through.

- He gets one arm out, one shoulder out,

but then he realizes he's stuck

and he's dropped his poop chisel.

- In desperation, Peter takes an extremely long exhale,

the longest of his life

and contracts his chest just enough

to squeeze through the hole.

His left foot is stricken with frostbite,

but he is able to crawl back to the camp and he survives.

- A blizzard alone is a challenge,

but in 1923, four natural disasters strike at once,

turning a bustling city into pure chaos.

- It's an ordinary day on September 1st, 1923,

the city of Tokyo going about its business,

has no idea what's coming.

A 60 by 60 mile tectonic plate breaks loose under the ocean

and causes an earthquake registering 8.3

on the Richter Scale.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan] In Tokyo and nearby Yokohama,

buildings are leveled, crushing thousands of victims.

Moments later, a 40 foot tsunami hits,

killing thousands more,

and this is just the beginning

of nature's merciless assault.

- Not only do you have ruptured gas lines,

this earthquake happened at about noontime.

A lot of people were inside making lunch and cooking,

and so now the fires begin.

It also just so happens there's a typhoon

just off of the coast as well,

and now you have very strong winds fueling all these fires.

- The fire rips through 45% of the buildings in Tokyo.

- Authorities direct about 44,000 people

to open ground near the Sumida River

where these fleeing residents are considered safe,

but nature's havoc is not over.

The flames themselves form into a massive spiral.

In essence, it's a tornado composed of fire.

- [Dan] The Japanese have a word

for this rare and devastating phenomenon,

a dragon twist.

- The dragon twist grows to 650 feet tall

and 1,000 feet across,

and it is heading straight for the 44,000 survivors.

- It's an absolute massacre.

Of the 44,000, only 300 survive.

This unthinkable disaster, earthquake, tidal wave,

fire, dragon twist ultimately takes the life

of 140,000 people.

It is the worst natural disaster in Japanese history.

- I can't imagine how terrifying that twister looked.

Of course, now that everyone has a high tech camera

in their pockets, heh, we wouldn't have to.

- Humans don't always feel nature's wrath

in the form of disaster, tragedy or cranky kangaroos.

Sometimes it's triggered by something

as simple as a wild animal

that's just sick of having its picture taken.

- Every year, four million visitors

descend on Yellowstone Park

to get a close look at nature and the animals,

and what do people like to do?

Take a selfie. [observers yelling]

Bison actually account

for most human injuries at Yellowstone,

and they hate getting their photograph taken.

- [Videographer 2] [yells] Oh my God, oh my God.

- But this problem isn't unique to Yellowstone.

I mean, this is happening all around the world.

- A woman in a zoo in Arizona gets mauled by a jaguar

when she attempts a photo up against its cage.

[victim moaning]

Then this other guy climbs right into a zoo enclosure

with a lion, which promptly kills him.

- [Dan] But the story of one Todd Fassler may take the cake.

- In 2015, he's at the Barona Speedway in San Diego

and he sees a rattlesnake. [rattlesnake hissing]

He decides, oh, this is a perfect opportunity

for a up-close selfie with a rattlesnake.

He doesn't get his shot,

but he does get a bite. [rattlesnake hissing]

The rattlesnake injects the venom,

and Todd is in a world of hurt.

- [Dan] Todd survives,

but his arm isn't the only thing hurting.

There's also his wallet.

- Anti-venom is incredibly expensive,

and guess what's not likely to be covered by insurance?

Anti-venom shots.

So Todd ends up with a bill of over $150,000,

and he didn't even get the selfie.

- While some animals avoid the lens,

others are more than willing

to steal the spotlight and the bottle.

- So you're vacationing on the lovely island of Saint Kitts.

You're lounging poolside with a tropical cocktail

and you drift off to sleep.

You may not realize though, that someone is watching you,

poised to strike.

- It's a vervet monkey

and he's not interested in ejecting you from his territory

or begging for a bit of food.

He wants your booze.

For years, this island paradise has been plagued

by a small army of sneaky, thieving, drunken monkeys.

[tense music] [monkey yelling]

- [Dan] The vervet monkeys of Saint Kitts

have a long history of excessive drinking,

going back to the 1600s

when they were brought to the island by the British as pets.

- The monkeys start raiding sugar cane plantations

and sometimes the sugar cane can start to ferment.

Then the sugar eventually turns into alcohol,

and the monkeys start chewing on the sugar cane,

ultimately becoming addicted to alcohol.

- [Dan] Centuries later,

sugar fields are replaced by bars and hotels,

but the monkeys' tradition of boozing is still going strong.

- For scientists, the situation on Saint Kitts

actually creates a rare opportunity.

Where else can you study alcohol consumption

in a group of highly social, non-human primates?

And the results of that research

are like looking in a mirror.

- So some are more social drinkers who do it in moderation

and only when they're with other monkeys,

and then there's a small group, about 5%,

who are described by researchers

as seriously abusive binge drinkers.

- They get wasted, they get into brawls,

they basically raid outdoor cocktail tables

and just about anywhere they can find alcoholic beverages.

- [Dan] Research also reveals something else surprising.

- Well, it turns out that the most effective

and powerful leaders among these primates

are the drunkest monkeys of all.

- Whether it's an entire population

of plastered primates,

a sinister 600 foot wall of fire,

or the sinkhole that just won't fill,

these are the tales of man's battles with nature

that are so bizarre, they are truly unbelievable.