NARRATOR: Thousand Oaks, California, May 2017.
Ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos
visits the Ventura BioCenter to examine
one of Earth's most curious creatures,
the Bombardier beetle.
This little bug is a marvel of evolution,
or some say, intelligent design.
Peter, good to see you.
Giorgio nice to see you.
And this is Tom.
Hello, Tom.
- Nice to meet you. - It's a pleasure.
How's it going.
Tom is our insect wrangler who's
going to help us set up a demonstration
on one of the coolest animals on Earth, the Bombardier beetle.
That's fantastic because about a year ago,
Erich von Daniken gave me his latest
manuscript for his newest book.
And we all know that there are these multiple creatures that
seem to defy Darwinian evolution.
And one creature that jumped out at me,
that I hadn't heard before, was this beetle right here.
This beetle is fascinating from an evolutionary point
of view.
In fact, it's been used by many people
to suggest that evolution doesn't work at all.
And the reason is the enormous complexity of this thing.
This animal is a chemical warrior.
It's able to shoot out boiling hot streams
of a really toxic liquid that have the same sort
of mix as rocket fuel.
That's amazing.
And it could shoot over 500 of these bursts per second.
Wow.
But the process happens so fast, it's
almost in a blink of an eye.
So we have a high speed camera over here that could shoot
about 2,500 frames per second.
And with that camera, we can slow down this process.
And then seeing that process, we can work out
the exact sequence of events.
So let's set this up with Tom and watch this take place.
- Let's do it. - OK, guys.
So what I've got is some nontoxic, very mild adhesive.
And I'm just going to touch it to the beetle's back.
And that will suspend him in the air.
We're going to give him a little bit of stimulation
with these forceps.
It simulates the predator and makes him feel defensive.
Oops, there it was.
NARRATOR: While it is almost imperceptible to the naked eye,
with the high speed camera, the beetle
can be seen blasting rapid fire streams
of deadly chemicals, directed at any would-be predator.
Oh, wow.
- There it goes. - How cool.
It project it in that particular direction.
Right.
You can actually see the squirts, the mist, the vapor.
The appendage which allows this to happen can rotate.
It can move back and forth.
So it can shoot this in lots of different directions.
Yeah, this is really awesome.
NARRATOR: Dr. Ward has set up a computer generated model
of the Bombardier beetle to show Giorgio
the incredible process that is taking place inside its body.
You've got the organs that produce the chemicals.
And two separate chemicals are being made.
We've got this hydroquinone, which
is actually a makeup of the organics of the creature.
It's part of its external skeleton.
The second one is a chemical called hydrogen
peroxide, which is rocket fuel.
Now, if we combine these two together
in a chamber, what we can do is build this chemical material
that's going to get really hot and blast
out the back of the bug.
So one of the coolest things about this whole system,
it's got a one-way valve.
Once this chemical concoction that's getting really hot
starts reacting, the last thing you want
is having it blast back into the interior of your body.
So it can direct it.
It squirts out this super hot, super toxic material
into that predator's face.
And one has to wonder, what was
the evolutionary process of this beetle for that defense
mechanism to even exist?
Yeah, that's the critical question.
If evolution takes place in step by step,
what's the intermediate?
How does this thing not blow itself up as it's
experimenting through time?
And how do you go from just a garden
variety beetle to a super beetle like this?
Mm-hmm.
One has to wonder if this creature, perhaps, was brought
here in its finished form, or at least
the genetic material for this creature
came here as a finished product.
NARRATOR: Could the physiology of the Bombardier beetle
be proof that there are animals on this planet
of extraterrestrial design?
The gases that the beetle emits can burn the skin of humans.
And if the mechanism it holds within its body
was constructed on a larger scale,
it could be a very deadly chemical weapon.
Is it possible that aliens placed certain creatures
on this planet so that humans can learn from them
and recreate their abilities?