[mysterious music]
- We've uncovered the strange, the mysterious,
and the flat-out impossible,
but some creatures stand above the rest,
like a chicken that spent almost two years
walking around without a head.
- Turns out that you don't need a whole brain
to run a chicken.
- He starts to show it around the neighbors like,
"Look, I've got a headless chicken."
- It's featured in Life Magazine,
and he's going in carnivals and circuses.
[chicken clucking]
- Or a world-class team of unlikely athletes.
- These monkeys are taking it seriously,
riding the greyhounds like they're thoroughbreds.
It's insane.
- How about a marsupial with a mean right hook?
- Greig sees this enormous kangaroo.
- [Greig] No, no!
- Holding his dog hostage.
He has to do something quick to save his dog.
- These are the creatures so astonishing,
they're truly unbelievable.
[dramatic music]
In 1945, a farmer in Fruita, Colorado named Lloyd Olsen
is ready for dinner.
The main course: a chicken named Mike.
But what happens next will defy science and belief.
[pensive music]
- So Olsen walks out, hatchet in hand.
He performs the act that he has performed countless times
with many other chickens.
[chicken squawks]
- Something's different.
The chicken is still alive,
and still walking and acting like a chicken,
but Lloyd is holding his head in his hand.
- [Dan] How is this possible?
The answer has a lot to do with the unique attributes
of the gallus gallus domesticus,
also known as the common chicken.
- Chickens are descended from the dinosaurs
from a group called the Theropods,
which include all of those famous meat-eaters,
like Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex.
[chickens clucking]
- Chickens have over 30 different kinds of vocalizations
that they use to communicate with other chickens.
They can remember up to 100 different faces,
human, or chicken, or otherwise.
They actually experience REM sleep
because we can measure their eye movements.
These are pretty smart birds.
- [Dan] Unfortunately, Mike loses
every one of these attributes
once Lloyd Olsen brings the ax down on his feathery neck.
[suspenseful music]
- When Farmer Olsen heads out
for the traditional ax and stump routine
with Mike the chicken,
he ends up conducting what amounts to a complicated form
of brain surgery.
His ax cleaves the skull
in such a way that it leaves the stem of the brain.
If you have that brain stem, the circulatory functions,
the respiratory functions, the motor skills are left intact,
and he is left with this living,
essentially, headless chicken.
Turns out that you don't need a whole brain
to run a chicken.
- [Dan] No head, no problem.
But feeding Mike?
That took a little creativity.
- So Mike, being headless, has no mouth,
and so can't eat in the traditional way,
but after the beheading,
there's a little opening to the esophagus
exposed right there.
Lloyd is able to keep Mike the Headless Chicken alive
by feeding food with an eye dropper through that opening.
- [Dan] Pretty soon,
Farmer Olsen's chicken becomes the talk of the town.
- He starts to show it around the neighbors,
like, "Look, I've got a headless chicken."
I would show it off.
- Lloyd Olsen realizes pretty quickly
that a headless chicken which is still alive,
is an amazing attraction,
and he takes that animal on the road.
So, Lloyd's doing everything he can with Mike.
It's featured in Life Magazine,
and he plays at World's Fair,
and he's going in carnivals and circuses,
they're staying in hotels,
and Lloyd and Mike are living large.
And he's making the equivalent
of like 60,000 bucks a month off this bird that's headless,
but still alive.
At long last, though, things do come to an end.
- After 18 months of touring on the road,
Mike unfortunately chokes to death on a kernel of corn.
- Decades after Mike's miraculous survival,
another creature makes headlines,
not for escaping disaster, but for unleashing it.
[tense music]
- There is a domestic flight that is happening
in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The flight is starting off in Kinshasa,
then heading to Kiri, Bokoro,
Semendua, and Bandundu.
It's not one of these commercial jet liners.
- The Let 410,
i's a twin-engine, passenger-carrying aircraft.
You've got 18 passengers,
and you've got three crew members
that consist of two pilots and a flight attendant.
- [Dan] Unbeknownst to the crew or other passengers,
someone carries a duffel bag onto the flight,
a bag that will soon upend
what should be a perfectly normal trip.
- [Sami] A flight attendant notices something a bit odd.
The duffel bag, that's been under the seat the whole time,
starts to move.
[tense music]
- She goes to investigate.
She opens it a little bit, and lo and behold,
there's a three-foot-long crocodile inside.
- This crocodile locks eyes on this flight attendant,
who naturally freaks out
and runs to the front of the plane.
All the other passengers now are trying to figure out,
"Why is this person screaming?"
And they now see this crocodile,
just sauntering through the aisle,
so they all run to the front of the plane.
[suspenseful music] [passengers clamoring]
- [Jason] As that happens,
it forces all the weight and the center of gravity
to the front of the aircraft.
So now, the aircraft begins to start tipping over
straight nose down towards the ground,
and they are unable to recover from that situation.
[aircraft crashing]
The airplane tragically crashes into a house
about a mile short of the runway.
21 souls perished in this accident,
22 if you count the crocodile,
and one person survives to tell the tale.
In all of my time looking at aircraft accidents,
I have never seen anything remotely close to this.
- That crocodile never meant to hurt anyone,
but the same can't be said for our next beast
with a score to settle.
[pensive music]
- Vladimir Markov is a hunter-poacher
in Far East Russia,
kind of on the border between China and North Korea,
and it's an extremely hand-to-mouth existence.
- [Sami] This is an area which was heavily reliant
on the timber industry.
But by the late '80s, early '90s,
when the Soviet Union starts to crumble and collapse,
it takes this local industry with it.
And so because of that,
Markov literally has to do whatever is necessary
to be able to survive.
- [Dan] Faced with bankruptcy,
Markov is prepared to support himself
by any means necessary.
- Now, poachers normally go after boars or badgers,
but those who are really looking for a big payday
recognize that the real money is in the big game.
- [Sami] And the mother of all trophies
is the Siberian Amur tiger.
[tiger growling]
If you're able to bag one,
the carcass would fetch you about 30 grand.
[tiger growling]
- The biggest market for this is China,
where various body parts can be used for healing properties.
The whiskers are said to make you bulletproof,
and a tiger's penis is used in soup,
which is said to be an aphrodisiac.
- [Dan] Vladimir Markov has this potential payday in mind
when he stumbles on a set of large tiger tracks
one cold December night.
- [Sami] Now, if you're a poacher,
remember that Siberian tigers are badass.
They weigh around 500 pounds,
they're incredibly stealthy, they're incredibly fast.
If they were to jump vertically,
they could clear a basketball hoop with no problem.
So, who is hunting whom?
[suspenseful music]
- [Yohuru] As Markov comes upon a tiger,
he's lucky because he sees that it's distracted,
as it's feeding on a boar it's just killed.
Recognizing that he has one shot to take this tiger down,
he shores himself up, takes aim,
[suspenseful music]
and fires.
[gun firing]
- [Sami] He hits the tiger, but doesn't kill it.
Tiger runs off.
So, Markov has a very, very upset apex predator in the wild.
- [Kavitha] Markov is pretty desperate, so he decides,
"You know, let me make the best of the situation,"
and he drags the boar back to his cabin.
- [Yohuru] What Markov never imagined
is that the tiger is actually now following his scent trail.
[suspenseful music]
- [Dan] When Markov returns to his cabin,
the wounded tiger is already there waiting.
Not only does he attack,
[tiger growling]
he destroys everything with Markov's scent on it.
It is clear;
this is very personal.
- By the time people actually find Markov,
there's very little left of him.
- [Yohuru] We're talking about stumps of bone
sticking out of his boots
and the remnants of an arm stuck inside his shirt,
and most shockingly, his head with no face.
What's so remarkable about this attack for authorities
is that if we're talking about humans,
this would be a case of premeditated murder.
Clearly, the tiger had plotted its revenge.
- As Markov sadly discovered,
it seems that tigers, like humans,
don't always forgive and forget.
- For centuries, military commanders
have outmaneuvered enemies with strategy and firepower,
but one campaign in Australia
would pit them against a threat
no war manual could prepare them for.
- It's just after World War I,
and the Australian government
decides to do something really special
for Australian fighters that come home from the war.
They give the soldiers a plot of land to become farmers,
and the 1920s are a great decade for that.
- [Dan] Soon, these veterans-turned-farmers
are thriving,
until an unexpected rival swoops in.
- The emu is a flightless bird.
They're six feet tall, about 120 pounds.
They're really fast.
They're also really hungry.
- [Dan] What starts as a seasonal migration
quickly turns into a full-blown crisis,
as 20,000 emus wipe out crops and millions in revenue.
- If you're a farmer, what you might do
is you might take your claim to the Agriculture Department.
But these aren't only farmers, they're veterans,
so they decide to go to the Ministry of Defense.
- The farmers meet with George Pearce,
and their plan is to create an army of well-armed men
to go out and significantly deplete the emu population.
- [Dan] This doesn't exactly sit well with the government,
who reminds them that the emu is Australia's national bird.
- [Sami] But Pearce is adamant, and he says,
"No, no, no, no. I have a plan.
We're gonna use machine guns
because that'll make the death quick and painless.
And on top of that, this will be seen as a good act
to aid the veterans that fought in World War I."
- [Dan] Apparently, Pearce makes a strong case,
because Parliament gets on board
and officially declares war on emus in 1932.
[pensive music]
- [Martin] The program gets off to a roaring start
when an Australian artillery officer
by the name of G.P.W. Meredith
goes out into an area called Campion
for the purposes of exterminating
the emu population there.
- [Dan] With a herd of about 100 emus in their sights,
they begin firing.
[guns firing]
Then, the emu do something they're very good at.
- The emu is not a dumb bird.
They're smart, and they split up,
and they start running in multiple directions
in smaller groups at 40 miles an hour.
- These emu are pretty freaking hard to hit.
They blast into a pack of 100, they hit five.
- A handful of emus sadly do get shot,
but some of them take fire and keep going.
It's just so mind-boggling
that Major Meredith compares these emus to tanks.
- [Dan] After the emus outsmart them at Campion,
the army works on a different approach.
- They're going to mount the Lewis machine gun
on the back of a jeep,
so they can travel at the same speed as the emu
and fire from the back.
- Problem with this:
It is rough terrain,
so the jeep is just bouncing up and down the whole way,
bullets fly everywhere, emus are just like, "That's stupid,"
then they scatter once again.
- And again, the outcome is the same:
mission failure.
- [Dan] It's now emus, two; Aussies, nil.
But the soldiers aren't ready to give up.
- Now, Major Meredith and his men
think they've got these emus figured out.
They know the guerrilla tactics of these emus.
They know how they run, they know where they rest,
they know what directions they spread in.
And with this information,
they start carrying out these new missions
and they start to show more success.
- [Dan] Pearce goes back to Parliament three weeks later,
proudly touting that he and his men
have killed almost 1,000 emus.
- Parliament just kind of looks at him and goes,
"Didn't you say there were 20,000 emus?
And you've only managed to kill 1,000 of them?"
- They lambast him with insults,
going so far as to even suggest
that, "Maybe medal should be given to the emu?"
- [Adam] With an unbelievable amount of ammunition
and manpower wasted,
Parliament ultimately decides
to give the victory to the emus,
and the mission is declared an unmitigated failure.
- The military has tried some unusual things,
but perhaps none stranger or more successful
than recruiting a dog off the street.
It's World War I.
In the muddy trenches on the Western front,
a German spy sneaks his way towards the Allied Command.
He's careful to stay low and keep silent.
[pensive music]
Suddenly,
he hears the unmistakable growl of an attack dog.
[dog barking]
- Pretty quickly, he realizes,
"I have to get away from this animal,"
but the dog is having none of that.
And the next thing the German spy feels
is the teeth sinking into the back of his leg,
and pretty soon, the dog is chewing anything it can reach
and barking hysterically.
[dog barking]
- [Dan] For him, the war is over.
For his canine captor,
it's just another in a long series of battlefield triumphs.
His name is Sergeant Stubby.
[uplifting music]
- Your typical military working dogs
would be a German Shepherd or a Rottweiler,
but this is not your typical military working dog.
This is a 25-pound stray American lap dog.
- He's a sort of mixed breed of more likely Boston Terrier.
They're basically meant to pal around with you
and be friendly.
- [Dan] Stubby's unbelievable journey
from stray to terror of the trenches begins a year earlier
in 1917.
- [Sami] You have a young army private
by the name of John Robert Conroy
who's training at Yale University.
This small stray dog comes up to him
with a thumb-like tail.
And it's wagging as it comes up to him,
and for Conroy, it's love at first sight.
And he's like, "I'm gonna call you Stubby."
- [Jason] Even though the camp has a no-dog policy,
the 102nd Infantry 26th, Yankee Division,
decides to bring Stubby on is their official mascot.
He starts picking up tricks.
He even learns how to salute a superior officer.
- [Dan] When his unit is sent into combat
in February of 1918,
Sergeant Stubby goes from mascot to active duty.
- [Jason] Disaster strikes Stubby early,
and he's injured by a mustard gas attack
that he's not supposed to survive.
Lo and behold, not only does this not kill Stubby,
but he recovers with this new superpower.
He's able to sense mustard gas from miles away
where nobody else would even know it's coming.
- [Sami] Stubby's newfound skills are put to the test
during an early morning attack.
While the men of the unit are asleep,
there's a mustard gas attack,
and Stubby is the first one to smell it.
- [Dan] Thanks to Stubby,
all 200 men of the company survive the attack.
Whatever the task, Stubby somehow always delivers,
eventually becoming the first dog in US Army history
to reach the rank of Sergeant.
- By the end of the war,
Stubby has fought in 17 different battles.
He's earned the Purple Heart
and he's earned multiple medals with valor.
- [Sami] He's a part of post-war parades.
Of course, he's the crowd favorite.
And then in 1926,
Stubby passes away in the arms of John Conroy,
and his obituary is printed in both The Washington Post
and The New York Times.
- You could still see Sergeant Stubby today.
He is stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian Museum.
Go see him sometime and give him a salute.
- [Dan] Since Sergeant Stubby's time,
the US military has upheld a unique tradition.
The animal always outranks the handler,
just to keep egos in check.
- GOAT usually means greatest of all time,
but in this story,
the goat isn't a champion in the ring or on the ice.
It's a four-legged military legend.
- It's the beginning of the American Revolution.
The British are attempting to
assert control of Greater Boston Harbor.
- The colonial militia aren't really trained soldiers.
They need all the advantages they can get,
so they're gonna take position on the high ground,
in this case, on Breed's Hill next to Bunker Hill
and try to repel the coming British assault.
- [Don] Being uphill, the Americans have the advantage.
The first wave of Brits sent up the hill are mowed down.
Their superiors send up a second wave.
They're stepping over their dead comrades.
Again, just carnage, a British bloodbath.
[guns firing]
- [Dan] As legend has it, just as all hope seems lost,
something rushes onto the battlefield.
It flashes past the troops,
taking the lead up the hill right into enemy fire.
Who is this brave hero?
[goat bleating]
A billy goat.
- Behind the British line is the 23rd Regiment
Welch soldiers, and they are so inspired
when they see this billy goat charging the hill.
They get themselves inspired.
They leave their positions, they charge into battle,
they charge up the hill.
- Supposedly, the Americans are so taken off guard
by this sudden charge that they are overcome.
- The British sees the summit of Breed's Hill
and they drive the Americans out of their fighting positions.
- Although the Americans will go on
to gain their independence,
their goat actually achieves
a certain amount of immortality.
It becomes the official mascot for the Welch Fusiliers.
- [Dan] A goat has served
with the Welch Regiment ever since,
but it's not the last time their hooved hero saves the day.
- [Don] During the Crimean War,
the 41st Welch Infantry
is suffering in the extreme cold of winter.
- [Dan] A soldier on watch gets resourceful
and decides to wrap the regimental goat
inside his coat for warmth.
- [Martin] Struck by a case of hypothermia,
the man dozes while he's on watch,
but the goat remains alert and begins bleating.
[goat bleating]
- [Garry] That alerts him to the Russian soldiers
who are actually sneaking up on them.
At that point, he's able to rouse his comrades
and repel the Russian force.
A goat comes to the rescue again.
- The goat is hailed as a hero.
They call him Hebe.
- [Dan] After the war, Hebe meets Queen Victoria
and apparently makes quite an impression.
- [Garry] She is smitten,
and when Queen Victoria learns of Hebe's death years later,
she decrees that all of his successors
will come from the royal herd of Kashmiri goats.
- [Dan] These goats aren't just mascots
with an honorary title.
They're actual members of the battalion.
- [Garry] They get an officer's rank,
they get a regimental number,
and they're treated like comrades in arms.
The mascot actually gets officer's pay,
and that pay goes toward his upkeep.
That upkeep is done by the goat major,
an actual member of the battalion as well.
They get two cigarettes a day to eat,
plus a pint of Guinness to wash it down.
- These days, the goat's main duty
is to march at the head of the regiment
at ceremonial parades,
meeting the royals in his finest regalia.
- But goats will still be goats, and in 2006,
Lance Corporal Billy Windsor
actually headbutts one of the drummers in a parade.
He's charged with conduct unbecoming of an officer
and demoted in rank.
- The most recent recruit is Lance Corporal Shenkin IV,
who was chosen from the royal herd of Kashmiri goats in 2018
and trained at the barracks in Cardiff.
- He's already met King Charles III,
and so far at least, no headbutting, no shenanigans.
- Our next creature wasn't charming dignitaries.
It was too busy terrorizing the jungles of Vietnam.
[tense music]
- [Adam] It's early 1966, and the captain
of a company of Marines receives intel
of some strange movements happening in the jungle.
He radios his troops to observe but not fire.
He doesn't want to give away his troops' position.
He thinks it could potentially be the Viet Cong
gearing up for a surprise attack.
[suspenseful music]
- [Martin] The captain then receives this puzzling report,
where the men say, "Nevermind.
We've got a number of apes
that are in front of our position."
This strikes him as an unusual development
because there are no large apes in Vietnam.
They're not native there.
And for there to then be a group of them
directly in front of this Marine position,
is especially curious.
- So the Marines inform their captain
that these apes are getting quite close.
Being a good officer,
the captain comes up with a sort of obvious solution.
Just throw some rocks at the apes, scare them off,
and they'll go away.
Very clearly stating, though, "Don't open fire."
- These Marines follow orders.
They throw rocks,
and the next noises that come out over the radio
are all sorts of chaos and commotion.
[intense music] [soldiers clamoring]
There is gunfire, there is screaming, there is yelling,
there's all of this ruckus,
and then the radio just goes silent.
[tense music]
- [Adam] Frantic, the captain sends out a recon squad of
marines to find out what the hell happened,
and what they find is pure carnage.
- [Sami] You've got marines on the ground that are banged up.
Some of them have cracked skulls,
some of them are unconscious.
And they ask them, "What happened?"
- Everyone reports basically the same thing.
That is, they were attacked by a group of six-foot-tall,
orange-haired apes that had really good throwing arms,
and some of the men
had to engage them in hand-to-hand combat.
- [Dan] After the skirmish,
no bodies of Vietnamese jungle apes are recovered,
but this won't be the only faceoff.
[tense music]
- [Martin] In 1968, there's an incident also near Da Nang
where Marines from my company
of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines
encounter a group of stone-throwing apes
occupying high ground above their positions.
They open fire.
[guns firing]
But the bodies of none of these apes can be found afterward.
There's just the personal accounts of the Marines
who eyewitnessed the incident.
- [Dan] The reports become common enough
that the stone hurling primates earn themselves a nickname,
rock apes.
- [MJ] It's not just the Americans
that are having these experiences.
We have reports
that the Vietnamese also were having similar encounters
with these massive apes.
They referred to them as Batutut, or jungle people,
but the description is the same.
Very tall, reddish-brownish fur, aggressive,
and there's some speculation
that these were maybe orangutans,
but the problem is that orangutans haven't
lived in Vietnam for 1,000 years.
- So you've got all of these soldiers
talking about these mysterious sightings
of these rock-throwing apes,
and yet none of them are able to kill any of these apes.
No body is ever recovered.
So, what is left in terms of an explanation?
- What we end up with
is sort of the Vietnam version of the Yeti.
What makes it all the more puzzling is the fact
that there are so many people that have similar encounters
during a compressed period of time.
So, it's definitely a part of at least the folklore
of the Vietnam experience.
Who knows? It might even be real.
[tense music] [ape growling]
- Whether they're a hallucination
or an undiscovered new breed of primate,
rock apes remain one of the war's strangest mysteries.
- In a war defined by spies and satellites,
one of the most unexpected
secret weapons came from the sea.
- Dolphins are kind of the hippies of the sea.
They're very loving, they're very friendly.
We don't think of them as helping a war effort.
- [Dan] Yet, starting with the Cuban Missile Crisis,
trained dolphins were deployed in Vietnam and Iraq,
taking on missions too dangerous for humans.
- Dolphins show an incredible acuity
in terms of spotting mines below the surface of the water.
Essentially, they use their echolocation
to determine where the mine is.
- If the dolphin finds a mine,
the dolphin will ascend to the surface and tap a buoy,
at which point the animal will be given a reward.
- [Dan] Detecting underwater mines is just the beginning.
Next, the Navy tries using dolphins as assassins.
- So in Vietnam, these dolphins have a hypodermic needle
attached to their snout.
Gas is inside of it.
The diver who gets poked by the gas,
they don't die, they just float to the surface.
- It might seem like the dolphin is being friendly,
but then pop, you get stabbed
with this hypodermic needle,
and you're rocketing to the surface
where they can be apprehended.
- [Dan] Incredibly, dolphins are still being used today,
and the US isn't the only superpower relying on them.
- The Russian Navy has two dolphin pens
near the Sevastopol Harbor in the entrance to the Black Sea.
- Famously, the Russians move these dolphins
to patrol this key tactical harbor in Sevastopol
to protect the ships that are incredibly high value
to the Russian war effort.
- The Ukrainians are using divers
that can conduct attacks against Russian naval bases.
And in response to that,
the Russians have introduced weaponized dolphins.
- They are tasked with anti-diver operations
to stop any potential sabotage.
The belief is that the dolphins would ram
any potential human being below the water,
thinking they were a suspected enemy.
- [Dan] And it's not just dolphins
serving their countries.
Can you imagine a whale in the role of 007?
- [Adam] The Russian Navy has spy whales patrolling
the Arctic, running surveillance,
protecting its ports, protecting its ships,
and letting it know where the enemy is.
- [Dan] But this Russian secret weapon
is about to become not-so-secret,
and you won't believe how.
- [Adam] A bunch of Norwegian fishermen are out,
and a friendly beluga whale
just kind of swims up to their boat,
and they realize it's wearing
some kind of a strappy harness thing,
sort of like a GoPro rig.
- And when they look closer at it,
they find that in Cyrillic characters,
it says, "Property of St. Petersburg."
It provides evidence that the animal
has been equipped with this package of equipment
that was made by the Russian Federation.
- [Dan] As for the fate of the beluga whale spy
that the Norwegian fishermen found...
- The funny thing is that whale essentially defects
and goes to Norway,
where it is renamed Hvaldimir,
as an homage and maybe poking fun at Vladimir Putin.
- While some animals serve in national defense,
others take their talents somewhere
a little more entertaining.
[upbeat music]
- Greyhound racing has been a popular sport
in the United States dating all the way back to 1919.
By 1930, 67 dog tracks have opened across the United States,
most of them in Florida.
- It's a huge spectator sport, not just to watch,
but to bet on as well.
A couple from Miami named Loretta and Charles David
ask the question, how can we make this
already popular spectacle even more spectacular?
- [Dan] Their plan? Simple.
Just add monkeys.
- The idea is take a monkey, put on the back of a greyhound,
and essentially make a monkey jockey.
- [Dan] Making jockeys out of monkeys
isn't as easy as it sounds.
Actually, doesn't sound easy at all.
[upbeat music]
- Greyhounds are naturally predatory.
Remember, when they're running around the track,
they're actually chasing a rabbit to eat it and kill it.
The challenge is taking a small mammal like a monkey
and getting them not just to coexist,
but to work together.
- [Dan] The Davids are up for the task
and move forward to bring this spectacle to the racetrack.
- Loretta and Charles import 12 baby Capuchin monkeys
from Panama.
Each of these baby monkeys cost about $35,000 today,
so this is a huge investment.
- The genius part of this
is that the Davids also get 12 greyhound puppies,
and they raise the monkeys and the puppies together,
basically as siblings.
- After two years of bonding,
becoming buddies, working together every day, training,
it's time for them to hit the track.
- The first race in Florida
is held in January of 1933 in Miami.
The bell goes off and they spring out of the gates.
[tense music]
These monkeys are taking it seriously.
Riding the greyhounds like they're thoroughbreds.
It's insane.
- [Dan] The monkey jockeys become so popular
that the Davids take them on tour all over the country.
Gamblers and track owners are making money hand over fist.
The monkeys, however, quite literally work for peanuts.
- [Kavitha] Despite the popularity of these races,
the Humane Society does step in
and deems the sport cruel to animals.
Because of this, Charles and Loretta
retire their monkeys at the end of the 1930s.
- A strange chapter in entertainment history,
equal parts skill, spectacle, and chaos,
and yet somehow,
not the wildest animal story of the 20th century.
- What begins as an ordinary day for one man
quickly turns into a bizarre test of courage
against a challenger with some serious upper body strength.
[tense music]
- In 2016 in the Australian outback,
Greig Tonkins is out with his friends hunting wild boar.
- [Greig] There's one there, just here.
- 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] No, no!
- Holding his dog hostage in 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 chest,
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.
- [Jarod] He can kick his hard as a horse,
and with that sharp nail on the end of his toe,
can pretty much open Greig completely up
and eviscerate him.
- [Thor] 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 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.
[intense music]
- Surprisingly, the roo backs off,
and actually that probably saves Greig's life.
- Come on!
[dogs barking] Come on.
- After going a few rounds with a kangaroo,
a drink might sound like the perfect way to recover.
Just be careful where you set it down,
especially if there are monkeys around.
[tense music]
- [Jenn] So you're vacationing on the lovely island
of St. 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.
- [Don] 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] [monkeys screaming]
- [Dan] The vervet monkeys of St. 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.
- [Jarod] 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 monkey's tradition of boozing is still going strong.
- For scientists, the situation on St. 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.
- [Jenn] 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.
- [Don] 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.
- If you thought those monkeys were wild,
wait 'til you meet a real swingin' '70s cat
who put Casanova to shame.
- [Dan] When you think of being put out to pasture,
you probably assume your best days are behind you.
But for one retired lion in California,
it means he's about to seriously get his groove back.
- [Austin] In the early 1970s,
a revolutionary idea takes hold in zoos.
Rather than cages,
why not a place where the animals can roam free?
Thus, in California, we have Lion Country Safari.
- [Dr. Thor] The general public is invited to drive past
big predators, like lions and tigers,
within the supposed safety of the family car.
If you tip the attendants well enough,
they will throw meat onto the car itself
so that the lions climb up for a meal.
- [Paul] In addition to being an attraction,
these wildlife parks also have another mission,
which is to breed captive lions
for selling to other parks and zoos.
The problem is, in this California park,
the lions aren't breeding.
- [Austin] What they fail to realize is that
these lions and lionesses, they grew up together.
They were in the same packs and groups,
so they behave as if they were siblings.
There's almost a genetic taboo from them mating.
In essence, the lionesses friendzone the male lions.
- Around the same time,
there's a circus in Tijuana that's going bankrupt,
and they have this very old lion named Frasier.
Lion Country Safari agrees to take him in
so he can retire there.
This lion is 19, and that's like 80 in human years.
He's arthritic, he's so toothless that his tongue
just hangs out of his mouth,
and he's got this patchy mane
that looks like some kind of sad lion comb over.
- [Dan] He may not have the looks,
but what this lion does have is plenty of mojo.
- When Frasier limps his way over
to where the pride is sunning themselves,
suddenly the lionesses all perk up,
like he is the lion that they've been dreaming of.
Soon, Frasier has a whole harem of lionesses.
They go with him everywhere.
They bring him food, they pillow his head when he lies down.
They walk beside him,
holding him up because he's so unsteady.
They also breed with him.
a lot.
[pensive music] [lions growling]
[birds chirping]
- [Austin] Before you know it, there's lion cubs everywhere,
and not like four or five.
Frasier fathers 35 lion cubs.
This is with 11 lionesses in just 18 months.
No zookeeper has ever seen anything like this.
- And of course, this isn't happening behind closed doors,
this is all on display for the public.
And in the freewheeling '70s, Frasier becomes a sensation.
The zookeepers know that they've struck gold,
and so they make him their mascot,
naming him Frasier the Sensuous Lion.
- [Austin] He becomes mainstream famous.
A low-budget movie is made about him.
Sarah Vaughan records a song about him.
People start producing
Frasier for President bumper stickers.
According to some accounts,
Frasier receives upwards of 1,500 fan letters a month,
many of which are from fellow older men asking,
"What exactly is the zoo feeding him?"
- [Dan] Sadly, in July of 1972,
Frasier the Sensuous Lion,
who brought unrelenting joy to countless fans,
and at least 11 female lions, passes away.
- Basically, he died of old age.
He was, after all,
near the human equivalent of 100 years old.
[compelling music]
- From defiant birds to death-defying chickens
and monkeys who mastered the racetrack,
these creatures didn't just surprise us.
They redefined what's possible,
making them the very best of the unbelievable.