(intense music)
- Oh, I can't believe that we just caught this!
Wow, look at its tail going!
Whoa, look at that!
Yes, this is one of the most bizarre creatures.
(drumming music)
(lion roar)
The world is full of amazing animals,
and every year on the Brave Wilderness channel,
we manage to encounter several species
that can be considered oddities of the natural world.
Many of you have written in and asked,
"Coyote, what is the most bizarre creature
"you and the crew have come across in 2017?"
And it's fair to say that there have been many.
Take the python millipede, for example,
in its alien-looking appearance.
Or what about the warty sea cucumber
with its gnarled-looking skin?
I don't think any of us will ever
forget the sapphire crayfish.
A blue crayfish!
Now what I want to do now, is actually countdown
the top five most bizarre animals of 2017.
So if you guys are ready,
let's dive in beneath the ocean's surface,
because the first creature on our list
looks as if it came straight out of a science fiction novel.
(adventurous music)
This large sea star is armed with
hundreds of razor sharp, venom-lined spines.
So it was a risky maneuver,
but I managed to use the edge of my GoPro tripod
to gently coax it from its hold on the rocks
and into our bucket.
(exciting, suspenseful music)
Success!
Wow, look at that animal!
Unbelievably bizarre-looking.
Like a living pin-cushion.
- [Mark] You can really see it losing its shape already.
- Yeah they do, now the body is very gelatinous,
so you'll begin to notice it starts to droop
as I'm hold it up and out of the water.
Now these animals can stay out of the water
for a significant amount of time,
but I am gonna have to keep dunking it down
so that it keeps its structure.
- [Mark] I don't even know what to say about this.
It's like the combination of a sea cucumber
and a sea urchin, a sea star, an octopus.
- It's like many things all at once.
Whew! Talk about one spiky situation!
Boy, was I glad to release that one back into the wild.
Okay, let's jump into our fourth
most bizarre creature of the year.
Now we came across this one in the rainforest of Costa Rica.
I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing!
So if you're ready, let's revisit
one slippery subterranean amphibian.
(adventurous music)
Mark, Mark come here!
- What is it?
- [Coyote] Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!
- What do you got?
(footsteps splashing)
- You are not gonna believe this!
Oh my gosh!
Come on, come on, come on.
Wow, I can't believe that I just caught this creature.
Hold on just a second, peel back my hand.
Look at that. Do you know what that is?
- [Mark] Whoa, it looks like a giant earthworm!
- It is actually an amphibian.
And it is called a caecilian.
Let me get it out of the leaves here.
Oh! I can't believe that we just caught this,
and I bet you the reason that I even saw it
was because there's so much water moving through here.
Let me see if I can just lay it out on my hands.
Wow!
That is one of the most bizarre animals
you will ever come across in the rainforest.
Whoa! It is slippery.
- [Mark] Looks fast. - Look at that,
it just tied itself into a knot,
and actually this end is the head.
Look at that.
The skull is very, very rigid
and that is what allows these creatures to dig underground.
They are fossorial, and the body is
filled with all these tense tendons.
And the way that they travel underground
is almost like a hydraulic piston.
It will drive its head into the soil
using all the power from its body,
and then once it's made some progress,
it will then slink its body forward almost like a worm.
Wow! It is so strong.
It's taking actually quite a bit of strength
just to hold it in position like that.
And they do have eyes.
The eyes are very, very small.
Let me see if I can see them.
But they have eyes, they have nostrils,
and they have these little tiny tentacles right up front.
Actually, I can see that in the light there.
And those are chemical receptors that help this amphibian
sense what it is after when it comes to prey.
And they feed on little earthworms or termites.
Wow, you could literally spend years
searching the rainforest and never come across a caecilian.
So for us to find one in the wild was pretty awesome.
Now Costa Rica is known for having
an incredibly biodiverse ecosystem.
Especially when it comes to amphibians.
And the number of frog species that they have is incredible.
But I think the most impressive frog
that we have ever come across
certainly is one of the most bizarre.
Let's get ready to take a look at the glass frog!
Look at that!
You can see right through the underside of that amphibian.
All right, let me.
Oh no, you need to--
where you goin'?
(sweet piano music)
That's a cool shot.
- [Mark] It's really cool.
- Hold on, I'm gonna bring it back down here.
I don't want it to jump off and onto your camera.
Okay, I'm gonna get back down here.
I'm gonna actually give it a little dip of water here
since we've got it off the glass.
There you go, buddy.
All right, here we go, here comes the hop.
(twinkling music)
They're so incredibly lightweight.
Oh, there's a great shot of the leg there.
Oh, he tucked it back in.
You can see when I get the light right up to the leg,
you can see right through it,
you can see the skeletal structure,
you can see the insides.
Oh, that's so cool.
- [Mark] Coyote, I gotta tell ya what I'm seeing here.
I'm actually looking at the heart filling and pumping blood.
You can actually see the blood moving
in and out of the heart.
- [Coyote] That is so cool.
You can see some of the arteries through there, can't you?
- [Mark] Oh, yeah.
- [Coyote] Can you see on the back side of the leg?
- [Mark] Yeah. - [Coyote] I can kinda see
some through on this side.
- [Mark] You can see the whole digestive system.
You can see all the vascular system.
You can see it all.
You can see everything.
- I'll say, I've been witness to some pretty strange things,
but nothing was more bizarre than seeing
the internal organs of a frog pumping.
That definitely deserved the number three spot.
Now before we get to number one,
we need to revisit a creature
we found on the coast of Maine.
And this was actually a case of mistaken identity.
When I first walked up, I thought it was
a turtle moving through the grass,
but as it turns out,
it was something totally different.
I think you guys all remember this episode.
(adventurous music)
(footsteps splashing)
- Oh, it's a turtle!
(footsteps splashing)
Oh, no, it's a horseshoe crab!
- What? - Look at this!
- Is it alive? - Oh, it is alive!
Look at that!
- Yes! - Wow, I thought
that was a turtle!
Oh my gosh, I just saw the lump,
I thought it was a carapace.
All right, let's do this.
I'm gonna gently lift it up out of the grasses here.
Let's see, oh, it's strong!
Look at that! Wow!
- [Mark] What an alien! - look at its tail going!
Here, back up a little bit, so I'm not sitting in the water.
Whoa, look at that!
Oh my goodness, that is a horseshoe crab!
What a bizarre-looking creature!
Now you may be thinking, Coyote,
is that thing going to pinch and bite you like crazy?
No, they actually just have a little tiny mouth
right in the center,
and they have no stinger, no fangs, no teeth.
Look at that back tail there.
Now they've gotten a bad reputation because of this tail.
People think that that's venomous,
it actually is not.
Ow, ow, ow, but the side little spikes there
are definitely very, very spiny.
Let me see if I can get it to just
lay in the palm of my hand.
Oo, that feels really, really creepy!
Now, it's called a horseshoe crab,
but it's not actually related to crabs at all.
It's more closely related to spiders and scorpions.
This is one large arthropod.
Now, oh, oh wait, it is pinching me a little bit.
They do have these front pedipalps up front that they use
to harvest food off of the basin of the ocean.
Wow! I am so excited right now!
Hold on, I've gotta compose myself
because I did not think we were gonna
come across a horseshoe crab out here!
Now if you look straight on,
where it gets the name horseshoe crab,
let me hold it like that.
Looks just like a horseshoe, right?
- [Mark] Totally.
- And if you look right at the front of the face there,
you see these little spots?
Those are compound eyes.
Actually this animal has nine eyes in total.
The two right here,
five light sensing eyes on top of its carapace,
and then on the underside, two simple eyes
that they actually use to kind of sense their environment.
And scientists think that the eyes on the underside
are actually just left over from
when they were in a larva stage.
- [Mark] So wait, those are eyes on the top of that?
- Yes! And actually it looks like a face.
Doesn't it? You see that?
- [Mark] I always thought that that was just a helmet,
like a shell protection.
- Well, the top of this animal is called the carapace,
just like a lot of other arthropod species.
This is a very dense, very hard exoskeleton.
They don't actually have an endoskeleton,
bones and cartilage, like a human,
but on the underside, look at that,
looks just like a scorpion or a spider.
- [Mark] Whoa.
- Whew, talk about an animal that looks
as if it's from an alien planet.
And the best part is that they don't bite or sting!
That was a good day for me.
All right, Coyote Pack, it's time to dive into
the number one most bizarre animal of 2017.
So without further ado, let's revisit the coast of Maine.
(high twinkling bells)
- [Mark] Blup.
- [Coyote] Ugh.
Wow they really look a lot like earthworms.
- [Mark] Do they smell or anything?
- (sniffing) They smell like mud.
They absolutely smell like mud,
and like most worms, they'll just kinda stay completely
limp in your hand like that.
And oh, I can feel them moving.
- [Mark] They don't seem to move as fast as an earthworm.
- No, all right, I'm gonna just single out the biggest ones.
Now, you may be wondering to yourselves--
oh, that one's putting out his mouth.
Oo that is a rather big one.
Okay, there are one, two, three, four, five
really good-sized bloodworms, but I think the biggest
are these two right here in the middle.
So we're gonna pare this down.
I'm trying to let them get comfortable and expand out.
I also wanna see if there's one that's going to
perform for us with what we're all waiting to see,
which is that weird alien-looking head
that they shoot out of the
front of their face. - I think that one,
that one you just touched. - This one right there?
- [Mark] That one seems to be the most lively.
- Yeah that one also
seems to be the largest in diameter.
All right, we're gonna put these back.
Now, one thing that I must note up front.
I'm not going to intentionally try
to be bitten by this worm, but this is one of the only
venomous worm species in the world.
There. Right there.
You see that?
You see the head come out?
They have a proboscis that they shoot
out of the front of their head which has four fangs.
Those fangs are made of copper,
and they're like this, right?
It's like a grappling hook.
- [Mark] Hold up, hold up.
Like metal?
- Like metal, like the element copper.
And those-- - So it has metal teeth
- [Coyote] It has metal teeth.
- [Mark] Like a Bond villain.
- [Coyote] Like a Bond villain.
You got it. Yes.
This is one of the most bizarre creatures.
I didn't even know these things existed
until we got here to Maine, and somebody said,
"you wanna go lookin' for bloodworms?"
And sure enough, this is that creature.
(building creepy music)
♪ Bloodwormin' on the coast o' Maine ♪
♪ Bloodwormin' even in the rain ♪
Well, there's no question about it,
the bloodworm definitely captivated audiences in 2017.
And it's definitely my vote as the number one
most bizarre creature that we encountered.
Man, that episode sure was fun to make.
Being out there in the mud and the rain.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave!
Stay Wild!
We'll see you on the next adventure.
(exciting music)
Hey Coyote Pack, I have some exciting news.
I'm proud to announce that the crew and I
will be back on tour in 2018 with Brave Wilderness Live,
visiting cities all across North America.
Our first shows are in Anaheim and San Diego, California.
From there we head to Phoenix, Arizona.
Beyond that, we will be visiting San Francisco, California,
Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington,
and Boulder, Colorado,
with many more shows to be announced in the coming months.
Tickets can be purchased at the Brave Wilderness website,
so make sure to reserve your seats today.
And don't forget, subscribe,
so you can join me and the crew
on this season of Breaking Trail.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be Brave!
- [Audience] Stay Wild!
(audience cheering)