The world is full of creepy crawlers
that make people squirm.
But don't be fooled by their looks.
These animals have serious survival skills.
How does the blue death feigning beetle stay alive
by playing dead?
Why is the giant African snail an invader of foreign lands?
What makes rhino beetles the strong men of the bug world?
Could this master of disguise
be nature's ultimate ladies' man?
Why does this lizard put on a mean snake impersonation?
And what exactly is a horseshoe crab?
Why do many call it a living fossil?
In order to thrive and survive,
these strange-looking creatures
have to be more than meets-the-eye.
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In the hot, dry landscape of the southwestern United States,
there is a creature that is fooling everyone.
It's a pretender.
A fake.
A phony.
But it's odd and tricky behavior is for a good reason.
This beetle is perhaps the best poker player ever.
Pulling off the bluff of its life several times a day even.
The ace up its proverbial sleeve,
if threatened,
the blue death-feigning beetle rolls over on its back
and plays dead.
The ruse has to be perfect
or this beetle might become dinner for a hungry spider.
It seems risky but it works.
Predators like spiders, birds or rodents
prefer their dinner to be alive and juicy when they catch it,
probably because there's nothing worse
than choking down a dry meal
when there might be something fresh further on.
How could this weird and gutsy defense strategy come to be?
Most scientists have come to a simple conclusion.
The blue death-feigning beetle seems to know
what its predators don't like
and perfectly re-enacts the unwanted meal
like a seasoned thespian.
If a plump live beetle is the predator's entree of choice,
there is plenty on the menu.
There are almost 400,000 known species of beetle in the world.
That's about 40% of all known insects on the planet.
That's a big menu!
The blue death-feigning beetle
belongs to a family called the darkling beetles.
It is actually black,
but its blue coloring comes from a wax on its outward shell
that works as a protective shield against dehydration.
That little sheet of bumpy armor changes color
as the beetle excretes that wax
to protect itself from the hot sun.
More wax means more water too,
as throughout the day, the beetle maintains moisture
in that sponge-like shell.
Then it slowly and evenly distributes the moisture
to the rest of its body
so that it doesn't dry out in all that heat
and become what it sometimes pretends to be.
The blue death-feigning beetle is one clever creature.
But don't believe everything you see.
This little bug might be faking you out.
Snails seem like strange but harmless creatures.
Most of them certainly don't look like
they could do a lot of damage.
But let giant African land snails lose
and say goodbye to your garden
and just about everything else in their paths.
This could be the mug shot of a wanted creature.
It was banned in the Unites States
because of its destructive behavior.
Truth be told, it wasn't entirely the snail's fault.
It had an unwitting accomplice.
It all started with a plant-loving granny.
Once upon a time, back in the '60s,
a boy in Florida had a giant African snail
as a most unlikely pet.
The grandma didn't like it eating her house plants,
so she put the snail outside
innocently unleashing a menace.
One of these guys can eat an entire head of lettuce
in a single day.
They're not picky
and will eat as many as 500 different types of plant.
Their veracious appetite is twofold
as what they consume will not only nourish them,
it will build their home.
These giant snails are constantly building themselves
a safe house.
How do they build it?
The shell is made from what they consume,
so they're always on the lookout for anything with calcium in it,
which is the primary building material.
Amazingly, they can even consume concrete.
Being on the lam appears to make the giant snails sweaty,
but it's not.
They need moisture to survive and absorb it whenever they can,
no matter how wet they already are.
Getting so saturated, they drip beads of water.
That moisture also creates mucous
that covers their bodies.
Their slimy layer makes it easier for them
to slide in and out of their shell.
Like most outlaws, the snail always has a fallback plan.
If a drought sets in,
it just moves back to its safe house.
If things are really bad,
it can even stay over there for up to 3 years.
The snail squeezes its whole body into its shell
and creates a calcium disc, like a hatch
to seal itself inside until the drought is over
and it's safe to come out again.
And also like any renegade,
when it is not hiding or eating concrete,
it's out looking for some lovin'.
Long, slow lovin'.
And like a true rebel,
this outlaw doesn't need any commitments
if it just wants to produce the next generation.
The giant African snail is a hermaphrodite
and though, it doesn't happen often,
it is capable of impregnating itself.
But most of the time, it finds a partner.
The two snails will intertwine
and then the magic happens
for as long as 10 to 12 hours.
That slow love can produce up to 200 eggs
6 times a year.
They spend almost as much time breeding as they do eating
and 90% of their eggs will survive.
At the rate they're eating and reproducing,
giant African land snails
could become strange-looking outlaws
muscling their way across America.
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To survive in the insect world,
you don't have to be good at everything.
But it helps if you're really good at one thing.
Some are tricky.
Some organized.
Or masters of disguise.
Some pack a poisonous sting or bite.
Rhino beetles do none of these things.
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But they do one thing really, really well.
They fight.
And fight.
And fight some more.
For these prized pugilists, it's always fight night.
These not-so-secret weapons
are why rhino beetles have flourished around the world.
In parts of Asia,
beetle-fighting is a popular pass time.
All you need are two male beetles,
a female for them to fight over
and a few humans who enjoy a good wager.
But in the wild,
this is not mindless pit fighting.
There is a purpose and a prize.
The beetle left standing gets the girl
and his championship genes are passed on
to the next generation.
It's about survival and the strongest beetle wins.
This beetle has an average weight
of about 0.08 of an ounce.
That ball bearing 2.32 ounces.
That's almost 28 times its own weight.
It's hard to tell if the beetle even knows it's there.
The largest of these pugnacious bugs can lift up to 850 times
its own weight.
That's a strong beetle.
What does all this weightlifting mean
in human terms?
Well, imagine an average-sized male
lifting 15 recreational vehicles over his head.
That's 153,000 pounds.
Even more brain bending.
A rhino beetle can lift and carry
up to 30 times its own weight
without any effect on its speed, breathing or metabolism.
To this day nobody has been able to figure out
how it can do it.
Rhino beetles were once considered
the undisputed champion strong men of the insect world,
until recently.
Now that title is held
by the Onthophagus Taurus dung beetle.
They can lift up to 1,140 times their own weight.
Of course, it's still dung they're lifting.
So they're decidedly lacking in style and flair.
For this reason,
the rhino beetle will always be a champion of the hearts
of many bug enthusiasts.
Feisty to the end.
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Sometimes you have to take a second look
to see a creepy crawler.
If it's not actually crawling,
it might just look like part of a plant,
but it's not a leaf or a wilted snow pea.
This creature is so bizarre,
it's almost easier to describe what it isn't than what it is.
It's not a cricket or a grasshopper.
And it's not an alien invader from an old movie.
It's a katydid.
That's right, katydid.
That's not an official Latin-based genus name.
This name describes the sounds these insects make
when they rub their wings together,
katydid.
Each looks so dramatically different from the others,
it would have been impossible to name them
for their appearance.
So that's how they became the katydid.
They range in size
from the tiny lady bug to the chickadee.
Some eat plants, some eat other bugs.
There are thousands of different species found all over the world
and they all vary from one another.
But they do have a few things in common.
They all hear using sound receptors in their knees.
That's where audio information is collected
before being sent up the leg and into the brain.
And those ears on the katydid's knees
are surprisingly similar to human ears,
and there's another way this master of disguise stands out
from the pack.
It's reproductive tools.
Quick trivia question.
Which member of the animal kingdom
has the largest testes in proportion to its body mass?
It's not a horse or an elephant.
It's this guy.
That's right, 14% of the male tuberous katydid's body mass
is made up of its testicles.
In human terms,
the average weight of a man is 180 pounds.
14% of that works out to 25 pounds.
Wow!
But for the katydid,
size isn't the only thing that matters.
They may be renowned for their natural endowment,
but they are also true romantics.
When mating, the male's pack of sperm
comes attached to what's called a spermatophylax.
It is a generous ball of nutrients
that he offers to the females,
the more of which she eats, the more eggs she lays.
In true date night style,
the male katydid wines and dines his way to his lover's heart
through her stomach.
Introducing the ultimate ladies' man of the bug world,
the katydid.
At first glance,
many animals don't fit into a single category.
Some even seem to be hybrids,
but with no discernible legs or feet,
this critter is clearly a snake, right?
Nope.
It's a lizard, a legless lizard to be precise.
Since the dawn of mankind,
hybrid creatures like this one have inspired the imagination.
In ancient Greece, the chimera, a mythical creature
with the heads of a lion, a goat and a snake
was believed to be an omen for an impending volcanic eruption.
In medieval Europe,
it was thought that the basilisk,
with the head of a chicken and the tail of a serpent
could kill with a glance.
Whether real or imagined,
these creatures still exist in pop culture and fantasy
and incredibly, in the real world.
But this one is no myth.
Throughout Europe and Asia, the legless lizard
was historically known as a joint snake
for its unique ability to shatter part of its body.
They can drop their tails when threatened...
Giving the appearance of breaking or shattering,
which is why it's still called the glass lizard
in parts of Europe and Asia.
The scientific term is autotomy,
a defense mechanism among many lizard species.
But the legless lizard doesn't shed its tail lightly.
It makes up about two thirds of its body.
If it is attacked by a predator,
the tails can break off into many pieces
and each piece will continue to wiggle to divert the predator
away from the more-necessary head of the lizard.
This is a fantastic defense mechanism
that confuses predators, hopefully just long enough
that the head and intact body of the actual lizard
can make a getaway.
The tail does regenerate over time,
but it will be much shorter and more blunt.
A closer look and there are other telltale giveaways
that this is definitely a lizard.
They have moveable eyelids, while snakes do not.
Unlike snakes, so-called glass lizards
have inflexible jaws and no fangs to speak of.
They can eat only small fare
like beetles, grasshoppers, spiders and mice.
Now they certainly won't be seen unhinging their jaw
to devour a whole rat.
To crawl, they have internal free floating remnants
of a hip bone and tiny tips of hind legs,
which they use to help to pull themselves along.
On the world stage of reptiles,
the legless lizard is a bit of a fringe character,
an outlier to the wide diversity of snake species.
But when it comes to survival,
the legless lizard gives its all,
well, at least two thirds, to ensure it wriggles on.
Lurking on the muddy seafloor...
It looks as if it could be from an alien world.
But this ungainly creature is actually a relic
from the ancient past.
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Horseshoe crab fossils have been found dating back
445 million years
before humans,
before flowering plants,
even before the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
They haven't changed much since then,
because they haven't had to.
These arthropods manage to find a sweet spot
where they live free from the type of competitive pressures
that would normally push them to evolve.
As part of that early evolution,
this creature developed an outer skeleton
instead of an internal one.
And it's because of this armored casing
that they don't have many natural predators.
Only sharks and sea turtles have the power to crack through
to get a tasty snack.
If the crab is getting away,
their tail might be a last resort handle of sorts
for the predator to grab hold of.
But that pointy tail has given this creature a bad reputation.
People think it's a dangerous weapon,
but it's not.
The horseshoe crab simply uses its tail
to flip itself back over when caught upside down.
Horseshoe crabs are incredibly useful to humans
especially in the field of medical science.
The famous hard shells contain a polymer called chitin,
which reduces wound healing time by up to 50%
when used as a coating on stitches.
It's not just that super armor that protects horseshoe crabs,
they can sense danger coming a mile away.
Cats may have 9 lives, but these guys have 9 eyes,
many of which run along the spine.
Yet they are almost as blind as a bat.
But each of these eyes has a purpose,
whether it's to orient the crab while swimming,
detect ultraviolet light
or to find that lucky mate when the time is right.
The rods and cones inside these eyes
are 100 times larger than humans,
the largest of any known animal on the planet.
Flip this creepy crawler over and it looks even more alien.
The first pair of appendages are called the chelicerae.
They are like little forks used to shovel food into the mouth.
These fang-like feeding tools mean
the horseshoe crab isn't really a true crab.
It's been fooling everyone.
In fact, its closest living relative is a scorpion.
The rest of its limbs are to help it scurry
across the seafloor and scavenge crustaceans,
playing its part in the food chain.
They also contribute to the circle of life
with what comes out of them, and no, not their defecations.
Over the past 450 million years,
horseshoe crabs have become an incredibly important part
of their ecosystems.
And that's because they have tasty eggs.
Shore birds just love feasting on those eggs
when the crabs lay them on shore in the spring.
Each bird can eat as many as 9,000 crab eggs per day.
Without this nutrient top-up during their migration,
many birds can't make the trip.
Horseshoe crabs give birds a boost.
These helpful creatures might look strange,
but they're actually just proof that Mother Nature got it right
450 million years ago.
Don't let these creatures give you the chills.
They may be kind of freaky-looking,
but they're just keeping it interesting.
These creepy crawlers have hidden skills and strengths
that keep them thriving in the animal kingdom.
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