Hello and welcome to Natural World Facts. I'm here today at Totternhoe Wildlife Trust
Nature Reserve, doing a different sort of video to usual. We recently hit 7,000 subscribers
on the channel and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to all of you for supporting
me and watching my little videos about animals and the natural world. I love making them
and I'm so glad you guys enjoy watching them. What I'll be doing here is a little Q&A, some
of you have sent in some questions. I'm going to be giving you some answers and I hope you
enjoy. It's a lovely day here in the countryside of Britain. Without further ado, let's go.
I've found another kind of little amphibian here. Common Toad, Bufo bufo. Adorable little
things, often mistaken for frogs but identifiable by their rougher texture, whereas frogs are
smooth and often wet. Unlike frogs, toads spend most of their lives on land rather than
in the water, and they only really return to water in Springtime to breed. So to show
you the difference between frogs and toads in the UK, the common frog and the common
toad, I have a frog in my right hand, and let me just grab the toad.
So, if you want to come closer. This is a toad. You can see it has rough, bumpy skin,
quite dark in colour. In my right hand I have a frog, you can see they're much more smooth,
they don't have the bumpy skin, they're more wet whereas toads are dry. You can also see
that the underside of the toad has this dark colouration, this pattern of black and white.
[music]
I've just found something that I think is quite interesting. This is the cocoon of the
woolly bear caterpillar. The chrysalis that surrounds the pupae protects it as the hairs
there are poisonous, so don't want to be touching those. But in not too long, this will emerge
as a little moth. We found this under a chalk rock in the chalk hills here in Totternhoe.
There is quite a lot of life around here, you'd be surprised. I'll show you what else
we find.
One of the first questions that somebody sent in was 'what is my favourite animal?' Obviously
a very difficult question for me. Anyone who knows me will know that I would pick the Greenland
Shark in a heartbeat. It is just one of the most incredible and impressive creatures out
there. I recently did a video about them, they're fascinating. They can live to 500
years old, they live 2,000 metres below the surface of the ocean in the Midnight Zone
where there is no light. They're nearly blind, they all have parasites in their eyes, there's
just so much that's crazy about them and I love that about them. I love sharks in general.
However, my other favourite animal is vastly different, and that is the Harvest Mouse.
I think they're amazing, I think they're adorable, I love the way that they can climb really
thin stems and coil around them with their tail. They just, they amaze me. Harvest Mouse
and Greenland Sharks, two very different animals but two of my favourites.
Just found something else which is quite interesting. It is a red ant nest down here. You can see
that the moment I've lifted up this brick they all go scurrying around trying to collect
the eggs and take them to safety, because these tunnels that they've dug at the surface
here, they go way deeper. There'll be a huge nest down there and that's where they're carrying
the eggs to. Somewhere in there will be the queen and she gives birth to all of those
eggs, and the rest of them are workers. There's an earwig, there's an earwig down there.
Oh my, oh wow, oh wow. This is a massive black ant nest. The ones with these wings here,
those are about to have their nuptial flight, so they've developed wings before they fly
off and found new colonies, and lay the eggs much like these of the workers of those (new)
colonies. So this is a very very old and well established colony.
The moment I disturbed this colony here and moved my hand over the grass to get some footage,
they began climbing up these stems and onto my hand and biting me, because they are just
so well adapted to this environment, the way that they coordinate themselves, and dig these
tunnels and leave scent trails and care for the brood, you see them all carrying the eggs
to safety here. They're just so incredibly fascinating and well adapted and yet so unsuspecting.
So the eggs that they're carrying away, there are two different types. You can see the small
ones there, and the larger ones. The smaller ones are the eggs that will hatch more worker
ants, which are all of these ones you see here. The larger ones are the ones from which
the future queens of future colonies will hatch from, so the larger ants you see with
wings will hatch from those bigger eggs. They only develop them around this time of year
when they are ready to send out those young queens to found new colonies, and this is
how colonies spread and reproduce. As always when it comes to the natural world, leave
only footprints. It's just great to know that all those ants that are on their nuptial flight
will found new colonies which will do the incredible task in this ecosystem of tidying
up detritus, breaking down organic material and returning carbon and nitrogen into the
ecosystem.
I hear crickets. I hear crickets. Two crickets mating, there are two crickets down there
mating.
Okay, I have just found a Slow Worm. I did not expect to find this, this is one of my
favourite animals of all time. As expected, it just excreted on me. That happened the
last time I found them, I found them once before and that was in the Lake District.
I'll put the link below to that video. But Slow Worms, if you haven't seen that video,
just wiping off the poo, are a form of legless lizard. They look like snakes, but they are
not snakes. They have eyelids and very smooth bodies, and you can see its little tongue
flickering there.
This is a little newt. Now, it's a shame to have disturbed him because it looked like
he was hibernating, and they only really return to water when they're breeding. I just think
these are beautiful creatures.
[Music]
One of the other questions was sent in by my good friend and fellow wildlife Youtuber,
Shelby on Safari. She asked my three things; first of all, who is my favourite doctor from
Doctor Who. Obviously she knows I'm a Doctor Who fan and I have to go with David Tennant
on that, he is brilliant.
Her other questions were what inspired me to start this channel, what my goals were
when I set out and whether they have changed or not. I set up the channel with my brother
when I was 8 because I just loved animals, and I loved telling people about animals.
I have always, from a very young age, been going out into the garden and lifting up logs
and collecting woodlice and telling people about it, so I thought 'why not put it on
Youtube?' That's what I did. I just wanted to be out there, I wanted to have my voice
heard, I wanted to educate people about animals and, again, I'm so grateful that I'm still
able to do that and that people watch and people enjoy these videos. My goal was always
just to spread information, get people as excited about animals as I am. Lately I'm
fascinated by the ocean, I'm sure you can tell from all of my videos being about deep
sea animals, but that's just my current fascinating. My goal has not changed, I don't think. Possibly,
my goal is now more oriented towards my future aspirations of actually getting a career in
this, either in wildlife presenting, photography, or just some kind of zoology or conservation
work. That's the dream. And here we are today with 7,000 subscribers. Hopefully, we can
only keep growing. I hope to go into the field of zoology when I'm older, maybe marine biology,
who knows. I just want to work with animals, I want to be out in the field, in nature,
like I am here just walking through this field. And that's why I make these videos, I make
them because I'm fascinated by the natural world and I want to share that passion with
you guys. I want to get you guys just as passionate as I am and I want to tell you all about how
interesting animals can be, and all the crazy facts that are out there.
[Music]
The camera's up there. Can you see my alright? I've got this.
We're just out on a night walk on the wildlife reserve, and we've just come across a skeleton,
quite an old skeleton by the looks of it. This being the spinal column, so it must have
come from quite a large mammal. We're thinking Badger from the colour of the fur which is
sort of a browny-grey. Very big animal, not sure what would have brought this down. Little
pelvic bone there, then a little tail bone. It could be from a fox, either a fox or a
badger I'd say, I don't think there's much else that gets this big.
[Music]
Hopefully you enjoyed coming on this little journey with us around Totternhoe Nature Reserve
and seeing everything that we found out here. Thank you for watching Natural World Facts,
this has been a Q&A for 7,000 subscribers in Totternhoe Wildlife Trust Nature Reseve.
I hope you enjoyed, I certainly did.
[Birdsong]
[El] And here we have-
[Leo] And here we see a young Leo Richards.
[El] Basically this is just you messing around.
[Leo] That's all I do.
[El] Exactly. A very Sherlock Holmes moment.
[Leo] I haven't got a coat to turn up.
[El] Oh yeah, very true.
[Leo] Love a good old log.
[El] And here we have a wild Leo Richards, scavenging for insects to eat for himself.
[Leo] I mean I do like eating snails.
[El] Not a city boy anymore.
[Leo] I'm a Youtuber. I do Youtube things, like walking. Hang on, hang on. Oh, there
we go. Maybe if you go from the front, and then it's like, they all get to see my face,
but like far back. Love this.
Should I do an intro.
[El] Yeah.
[Leo] Something interesting that I keep seeing is that the earwigs are using the ants nest
as shelter, so they're coming from the same holes.