Desember 31, 2016
(techno music) - [voiceover] if youthink you're a neat freak, how do you scrub upagainst the grime fighters of the natural world? as we count down the top10 most extreme cleaners in the animal kingdom, we'll discover some very different attitudesto personal hygiene. you'll be swept offyour feet when cleaning is taken to the most extreme.
earth is a planet of extremes. extreme places, and extreme animals. but some animals aremore extreme than others. (dramatic music) join us as we count down to find the most unusual, the most extraordinary: the most extreme. - [voiceover] all around theworld, people and animals
have developed differentcleaning techniques. (chiming bell music) - [voiceover] while somecleaners can be truly obsessive, our countdown begins with a creature that's a little forgetful. in fact, it has the world's worst attitude to personal hygiene. the forests of central and south america are home to a cleaner that's so lazy,
it's named after one ofthe seven deadly sins. meet the sloth. it's number ten in the countdown, because it's the world's least efficient cleaner. scientists have observedthat after a particularly long sleep of, say, 18hours, it might wake up and have a bit of a scratch,often for less than a minute. no wonder it has the world's dirtiest fur. in the dry season, its shaggy outer coat
is brown, but when the rains come single-celled algae start growing in tiny grooves along eachhair and turn its fur green. and since the fur is seldomcleaned, it's home to all kinds of other creatures. one scientist discoveredmore than 980 scarab beetles on a single sloth. another individual carriedmore than 120 moths which all had a disturbing interest
in the sloth's bathroom habits. once a week, the sloth goes to the toilet. the moths are interested in the droppings because they're greatfood for their babies. riding on the sloth meansthat the female moths are ready to fly intoaction when their host finally goes about its business. however, there's a goodreason why the sloth is the least fastidiouscleaner in the countdown.
when you move thisslowly, your best method of avoiding predatorsis to become invisible and turning your fur green is certainly excellent camoflauge. one scientist has even suggestedthat the algae in the fur may provide nutrition ora particular trace element since sloths without algae, don't survive long in captivity. sloths are not the only ones to have found
a great excuse to get filthy. take one inflatablemountain, add chocolate sauce and lots of whipped cream, and you have the ingredients to find thedirtiest kid in america. (circus music) the 12 finalists, called "the dirty dozen" competed in a wild west obstacle course, including a ketchup-covered gold rush, and a bungee-buckingbronco that tossed kids
into chocolate pudding. the aim was to get as dirty as possible because the winner took home $500, a family holiday package and a year's supply of laundry detergent. (thunder rumbles) but no amount of soap will get rid of the ingrained stains inthe dirty fur of a sloth, even when it's washed inthe world's biggest bath.
during the rainy season, therising rivers flood the forest. this is the time whena sloth goes for a swim whether it wants to or not. luckily, the sloth is asurprisingly good swimmer and moves faster in the water, than it ever could on land. however, a quick dip in the river does little to change the sloth's appalling personal hygiene.
it's a shame it doesn'tmeet some of the cleaners coming up in the countdown. they're such neat freaks, that they'd need just a few minutes to have even the sloth looking spick-and-span. - [voiceover] nobody likessharing their breakfast with our next contender: the fly. (fly buzzing) it may seem like a strange animal
to have in a countdownof extreme cleaners, since it's infamous for making a mess, especially when it's eating. imagine if we feasted like a fly. if we were like a fly, we wouldn't have taste buds on our tongue. we'd have to sample foodwith a different part of our anatomy. (squishing noise)
we'd have to stomp on our food because our taste budswould be on our toes. (thumping noise) and since flies have no teeth, we could only eat a liquid lunch, which is why we'd haveto vomit all over it. enzymes in the digestive juices break down the food, so that then, we could suck it back up.
no wonder we don't like flies on our food. (slurping noise) despite their terrible table manners, flies are actually consciencious cleaners. they're constantly scrubbing their body using hairy brushes on their legs. since they taste with their toes, they don't want the remains of their lunch still clinging to their feet,
when they could bestanding on their dinner. and those magnificently complex eyes have no lids, so fliesare constantly rubbing their eyes to keep them clean. the trouble is, whenthey have a good clean, they can dislodge all kinds of unsavory things. flies can carry over100 different diseases, including typhoid and dysentery.
no wonder we don't like themcrawling all over our kitchen. we like to think that wekeep our cooking areas nice and clean, and yet, a recent study into american household hygiene found that the kitchen was thedirtiest room in the house, and the biggest culprit wasn't the fly, but the very thing we use to try and keep our kitchens clean: the dishcloth. because cloths andsponges are usually damp
and rarely washed, thefabric makes an ideal breeding ground for bacteria. in fact, kitchen cloths are the single dirtiest item in the whole house. they're far filthier thananything found in the bathroom, and what's even scarier,is that your toilet seat has 400 times less bacteria growing on it than your computer workstation. so, perhaps we'd be betteradvised to spend less time
worrying about the flies' filthy habits, and more time disinfecting our keyboards. our last two contenders hadstrange personal hygiene, but as the countdown continues,we'll see that some animals try to tidy up their act when they mop the floor with their feet. later, why would anyonepay thousands of dollars to take a bath in fish eggs? - [voiceover] it's amazing thethings you can do with mud.
in aurora colorado, more than 3,000 people use it as a volleyball court. (cheering) while these guys aregetting down and dirty to raise money for child health awareness, the next contender in our countdown of extreme cleaners hasfound another use for mud. it's the pig. pigs love mud,
and while we think it'sdisgustingly dirty, mud solves a big problem for a pig. unlike other domesticated animals, pigs can't reach their entire body for licking and grooming. instead, they cover themselves in mud. that's because when theyget out and the mud dries, they can rub the mud pack off, which cleans their hair and skin,
and carries away any external parasites. while some some humans alsouse mud packs for their skin, the world's mostextravagant beauty therapy can be found at london's saint olga spa. it's home to a traditionalrussian, herbal treatment where people bathe, not in mud, but caviar. once the fish eggs are mixed with avacado and a variety of oils, they're placed
in a nice, warm bath. (relaxing music) - [voiceover] the caviaris said to contain protein and nutrients for your skin, but it doesn't come cheap. a 20-minute soak willset you back over $7,000. although the price does include a nice pair of diamond earrings. while there's no caviar on the menu
in the kitchen of connie precious, this is a luxury resortfor 18 very clean pigs. they are such neat freaks, that it's been no troubleto turn connie's house into a pig stye. - all of our pigs (laughs)that live in the house, they're all pottytrained, they let you know when they have to go. pigs aren't the dirty, greedy animals
that people think they are. - [voiceover] pigs arenumber eight in the countdown because they'resurprisingly clean animals, despite their filty reputation. and yet, things could be worse. while the pig's name is mud, the name of our next contender is "who". so far, we've seen that pigs can be clean and that flies always preen.
and, still to come, whatsix-legged sanitation workers have a ball when they play with dung? and later, imagine howclean your house would be if you hired a cleaner, notwith two arms, but eight? - [voiceover] (spoken) oh, show me a home, where the buffalo roam and i'll show you a housefull of bovine droppings. (buffalo grunts) - [voiceover] every day, inafrica, more than 5,000 tons
of excrement are dropped by the vast herds grazing on the savannah. dinner is served for the extreme cleaner crawling into numberseven in the countdown. africa is home to over 2,000 different species of dung beetle. these are nature's veryown pooper scoopers. they can smell fresh excrement from more than a kilometer away.
competition for dung is tough. researchers observed thata pile of elephant manure, weighing more than a kilogram, attracted 16,000 dung beetles, and it only took them two hours to clean up the whole pile. dung beetles are numberseven in the countdown because it's been estimated that they bury nearly one ton of dungper hectare, per year.
it's a dirty job, butsomebody's gotta do it and there's huge advantages for a beetle that buries dung. underground, your food ballis hidden from other beetles and it's a safe placeto bring up your babies. (mysterious music) for an animal that livesand eats excrement, the dung beetle can be surprisingly clean. a female will stay withher grubs for two months,
regularly cleaning themwith antiseptic saliva, and removing feces, fungi and bacteria. no wonder people turn to the dung beetle to clean up a really big mess. (people shouting) - [voiceover] in australia,there were no big grazing mammals until 1788 when the first english colonists brought withthem five cows, two bulls, a couple of horses and 44 sheep.
unfortunately, they forgotto bring some dung beetles. as australia's cow populationgrew to 30 million, over 360 million cow patswere deposited every day. that's a quarter of amillion pats per minute. the pile threatened to bury the continent. then, in 1967, they imported the first of more than 50 species of dung beetles from africa and europe. almost immediately, australia'spoo problem disappeared.
even in town, there areanimals that make messes. and that's why dung beetlesare becoming city slickers as kathryn mccance, frompoo-lution solutions explains. - this little dung beetleis a perfect example of something that initially,we might think is quite disgusting with their dietary habit, but if you think aboutthe benefits they offer to the community, we reallycan't afford to be without them. it really is nature'ssolution to a huge problem
that the world has with animal pollution. - [voiceover] one of thebeetle's biggest fans is city councilor, terri-anne part. - we introduced 40,000 dung beetles on 31st of october, 1995 andthey're working brilliantly. they have spread from the areas that we've introduced them to, to households. people now tell me thatthey have dung beetles working in their backyards, so they've been
a godsend to us. they have provided uswith a perfect solution. they are, really, little miracle workers. they have absolutely no bad points, and everything they doenhances the environment. - [voiceover] luckily forthe planet, dung beetles specialize in bearing allkinds of animal droppings. dung beetles are found on every continent except antarctica, andhave been busily cleaning
for a very long time. recent research has revealedthat 80 million years ago, dung beetles were busy buryingthe droppings of dinosaurs. this long history of dedicated cleaning is why dung beetles arenumber seven in the countdown. in fact, these six-leggedsanitation workers are so efficient, theycould rival the show's most extreme cleaners,if it wasn't for the fact that no matter which way you look at it,
there's something undeniably dirty about an animal that eats and lives in poo. - [voiceover] all mammalsspend a lot of time keeping their fur coats nice and clean, but even the king of the jungle has some places where his tongue just can't reach, and that's prime real estate for ticks and other blood-sucking parasites. that's when you needto call on the services
of a specialist cleaner. flying into number six in the countdown, is africa's very ownfeather-duster: the oxpecker. these relatives of the starlingpeck at ticks on the bodies of more than just oxen. of the two species, theyellow-billed oxpecker prefers thinner hairedanimals like the buffalo and rhinoceros. while the red-billedoxpecker seem to like mammals
with thick fur, like thegiraffe and antelope. they cling on with large, strong claws and use their flattenedbeaks to comb the hairs for ticks, lots of ticks. a single oxpecker can eat 400 ticks a day. that's about 150,000 in its lifetime. the oxpecker is numbersix in the countdown because not only does it clean up other animal's parasiteproblems, but it also acts
as a hairdresser. in the breeding season, theoxpecker has another reason to comb the fur of big mammals. it collects loose hairsto take back to its nest in hollowed trees or caves. that's because the chicksare raised in the comfort of their very own fur-lined nest. a life of constant cleaningprovides the oxpecker with food and a warmhome, but for some people,
too much cleaning can be a real problem. are you pathologically afraid of dirt or contamination? do you have to wipe surfacesafter someone's touched them? if ritualized cleaning behaviorshave taken over your life, you may have obsessivecompulsive disorder. doctors still don't know thecause of this mental illness, but it's thought that in america alone, more than three millionpeople are affected.
the most famous of themall was an aviation pioneer and movie mogul. howard hughes was amillionaire of many talents, but he was also a man obsessed by germs. by the summer of 1958,his phobias had driven him into seclusion at the beverly hills hotel. there, he spent much of histime, sitting in a portion of his living room, hecalled the "germ-free zone" and unlike most obsessive compulsives,
who carry out rituals by themselves, hughes was so wealthy, he could delegate compulsive behaviour to his employees. among other things, servantswere sometimes required to use more than 15 tissuesbefore turning doorknobs and objects like spoons hadto be wrapped in tissue paper and then sealed in cellophane. just like howard hughes,the oxpecker also seems to be taking its cleaning habits too far.
sometimes, instead of eatingticks, they pick at scabs enlarging the wound, so that they can drink the blood directly. recent research suggeststhat the predominant source of energy for the birdsis not bugs, but blood. so, by feeding on wounds,they can get the food without having to clean the animal, and that's why the oxpecker is only number six in the countdown.
while our last twocontenders have made a meal of cleaning up the environment, coming up, we'll meet at a man who hadto fall into nuclear waste before he could clean up society. and later, how wouldyou like to wash windows that are 90 meters above the ground? - [voiceover] sometimes,people deliberately make a mess on the sea floor, but nobody'sgoing to have to clean up this ship, it's been scuttled
to form an artificial reef,and it doesn't take long for new life to start growing all over it. come back a few monthslater, and it's easy to see that the ocean is full of creatures looking to colonize new surfaces. that poses a problemfor the next contender in our countdown of most extreme cleaners. just like a shipwreck,it spends a long time sitting in the sea, andattracts unwelcome visitors.
it lives in tropical waters,where there are all kinds of dirty hitchhikerslooking for a free ride, and unfortunately, theanimal at number five in the countdown doesn'thave a single limb to clean them off. that's why the yellow-belliedsea snake has come up with a remarkable way of keeping clean. it ties itself in knots. it looks bizarre, but by rubbingscales against each other,
the snake can dislodge eventhe most persistent parasites. humans need a different wayof keeping their skin clean. just like the sea snake,the surface of our body can also be the perfect breeding ground for microscopic life forms. (eerie music) - [voiceover] every day,all kinds of spores and bugs land on our skin. in the right conditions,these could flourish
to cause nasty infections. so, to get rid of them,we get rid of our skin. clusters of dead skin cellsare constantly flaking off our body, carryinghitchhikers with them. you shed more than a milliondead skin cells every hour. that's why 70% of household dust is actually just dead skin cells. so, next time you're cleaning the house, just remember that you'rewiping up tiny, dead bits
of your friends and family. and while the yellow-bellied sea snake doesn't have to worry aboutdusting, to keep clean it does have to get knotted. perhaps it could get someadvice from our next contender, which has come up with someawesome chemical cleansers. - [voiceover] take acamera into any bathroom, and you're likely tofind our next contender. splashing in, to number fourin the countdown is the sponge.
it's a strange animal,that's a long way from home. you can find more than 15,000different kinds of sponges living at the bottomof the world's oceans. they're the simplest of all animals, being little more than agroup of individual cells that get together to pumpwater through their body so they can filter out particles of food. while they have no musclesor internal organs, some sponges can build themselves delicate
skeletons of calcium carbonate or silicon. try using one of thesesponges in the shower, and you'd rip your skin off. instead, we collect bath sponges, that build their skeletonsout of a rubbery material that's much easier on the skin. since sponges have a rigidskeleton, they can't move. which means they face thesame problem as the sea snake. it's just that these guyscan't tie themselves in knots
to scrape off dirty parasites. instead, they keep themselvesclean with chemicals. when scientists analyzedsamples taken from sponges, they discovered thatthey contain a cocktail of fascinating compounds. it seems that whensponges filter sea water, they also collect toxic chemicals excreted by other plants and animals. the sponges modified these chemicals
and turned them into highlytoxic cleaning compounds. each variety of sponge has come up with its very own disinfectantand antibacterial products to keep themselves nice and clean. researchers from the scrippsinstitution of oceanography have discovered that sponges could be the medicine chest of the future. it seems that some of thechemicals found in sponges can also help clean up human bodies.
perhaps a sponge containsa drug that will one day fight cancer, or treat arthritisor alzheimer's disease. while sponges have kept theirdisinfectants to themselves for 500 million years, our next contender has started spraying its cleaning solution all over the place. so far, we've seen sterilizedsponges and sanitized snakes, but can they compete withtechnology that's so clean it's out of this world?
and later, what bug makes its very own underarm deodorant that's like a mixture of bleach and penicillin? - [voiceover] in 1985,hollywood told the story of a tormented young man called melvin. just like the nextcontender in our countdown of extreme cleaners, hediscovered that some chemicals can be used to clean upsociety, when he fell into a vat of nuclear waste.
(man groans) - [voiceover] melvinbecame the toxic avenger. - [voiceover] while poorold melvin had problems, for one animal, lifegot easier when it used toxic chemicals to fightnot crime, but grime. crawling in to number threein the countdown are ants. they have a constant battle to keep clean, because most species spenda lot of time in dark, damp holes in the ground,perfect breeding grounds
for bacteria and fungi. that's why each andevery individual becomes a real-life toxic avenger. for a start, ants groomthemselves more than almost any other animal. they're constantly wiping down the hard, waterproof armor of their exoskeleton. (excited music) - [voiceover] if you takea close look at their body,
you'll see a pair ofglands that are loaded with some remarkable cleaning fluids. you could call it nature'svery own "ant-iseptic". to find out just how powerfulthe ant's disinfectant is, scientists have takenextracts of the fluid and discovered that it cankill harmful yeast cells in just 10 minutes. imagine if we kept clean like ants. it would be like havingsweat that was a mixture
of bleach and penicillin. however, for some people, itseems that being too clean may be bad for your health. there's a theory that nowthat we've found ways of keeping our bodies and homes germ-free, we may be weakening our immune systems. without a steady streamof microbes and parasites to fight, a child'sdeveloping immune system may target the body's own tissues instead.
this notion, called thehygiene hypothesis arose because scientists are unableto explain why super-clean, developed nations areexperiencing a dramatic rise in asthma and allergies. perhaps by separating ourselvesfrom our dirty origins, we're becoming too clean for our own good. but this hasn't stoppedus from spraying chemicals after all, it's a greatway of getting rid of bugs in hard-to-reach places.
that's the same reason why this crow has an interest in ants. simply stir up an ants nest,and they'll start spraying their very own pesticide. jets of formic acid willsend most predators packing, but not the crow. it's bathing in bugs, because their toxic sprayhelps to remove lice and other parasites. however, there is another animal that's
got many more clientsqueuing up to be clean. - [voiceover] at theaquarium of the pacific in long beach, california,curator sandy trautwein is rolling out the next contender in our countdown of extreme cleaners. it's an animal thatstarred in finding nemo and just like in the movie,it really is a neat freak. this is a cleaner shrimp. it's so obsessive that it willclean anything in its tank,
including sandy's hand. (dramatic orchestral music) - cleaning shrimp set up cleaning stations on coral reefs. fish recognize the shrimpas being a benefit to them because the shrimp willclimb on board the fish and pick parasites off them. it's like having a bath under water. - [voiceover] a single shrimp can clean
around 50 fish in an hour,and they're very effective. a recent study showed that cleaner shrimps could remove 75% of the parasites on a surgeon fish in just 48 hours. it's a great system. the cleaner shrimp getsto feed on parasites and dead tissue, whichhelps to protect the fish from disease and infection. which is why cleanershrimps can boldly enter
even the most ferocious mouths. but these shrimps arenot the only cleaners that put their life on the line. meet jason trauba from san francisco. he needs a lot of specialcleaning equipment to keep his clients happy. that's because he specializesin cleaning windows, often 30 stories above the ground. hanging from harnesses and suction cups
means that not everyone is cut out to be an extreme window cleaner. - it takes a certainperson when they come up on the building and look over the edge, you'll kind of know ifthey're gonna be able to do it and there's a lot of training involved. you spend a good week with them, watching every move they make, because it's a life or death situation.
if you fall, it's usually death. - [voiceover] but when youknow what you're doing, this job is not as dangerous as it looks. thanks to all of jason'ssafety precautions, this is about as risky as a cleaner shrimp entering the jaws of a moray eel. compared to cleaning thewindows of skyscrapers, getting a marine manicure from a shrimp is perfectly safe and lots of fun.
just ask this group offifth grade students. (metallic music) - it feels like they're tickling you, and it feels really good. - i like the colors, butthey sort of feel weird. - [voiceover] but not eventhese obsessive compulsive cleaners can compete with the animal that's number one in the countdown. - [voiceover] we've seenthe nine contenders.
they're the best of the best. only one animal is a moreextreme cleaning machine. - [voiceover] our searchfor the most extreme cleaner in the countdown, finishes in japan where animals and humans are inventing eccentric, new ways to keep clean. there's the wash-and-walk attachable laundry tanks, to solve the problems of inadequate exercise and hygiene.
and who wouldn't want a hands-free hair-washing machine? or what about getting yourdog to do the housework by fitting it with foot floor mops? but not even this extreme ingenuity can compete with theinventiveness of the animal at number one in the countdown. japan is home to the northernmostmonkeys in the world. and they just love to clean.
for japanese macaques,cleaning is the social glue that binds the troop together. it's much more than just away to remove dirt and ticks, because grooming establishes a hierarchy. submissive animals willgroom a dominant individual to show their place in the society. the japanese macaque isnumber one in the countdown because cleaning is soimportant, that occasionally, they get a little carried away.
perhaps the expanse of furon a deer is irresistible for monkeys that love togroom, but researchers have observed that one neatfreak has found another use for ticks it finds on deer. if you'd like to be groomedyourself, but you don't have any ticks of your own,you can borrow some. by adopting a deer tick,this macaque has an excuse to get his friendscombing through his fur. japanese macaques alsotake their obsessive
cleaning habits into the kitchen. back in 1953, researchershad been luring macaques out into the open by emptyingbags of sweet potatoes onto the beach. not surprisingly, themonkeys didn't like chewing on potatoes covered insand, so they painstakingly brush it off with theirpaws, and then one day, a female discovered it was so much easier to wash the potato in water.
soon, the whole troop was copying her clever cleaning behavior. only one group of humansare more obsessive than macaques aboutkeeping things spotless. for decades, scientistshave been working hard to find evidence of life on other planets. and at the same time, ateam of expert cleaners has been just as busy making sure that we don't accidentally spreadlife around the solar system.
- [voiceover] five, four, three, two, one, engine start, and lift-offof the delta two rocket, carrying the spirit fromearth to planet mars. - [voiceover] it's essentialthat our spacecraft don't have hitchhikers. according to jason kastner, supervisor of the planetary protectiongroup for the mars missions. - first of all, we want tomake sure that we study planets in their native state.
secondly, we don't want tobring along earth bacteria, or contamination whichmight compromise our ability to search for life on that planet. and finally, if life doesexist there already, we want to take prudent precautionsto make sure that we don't bring it back and adverselyaffect the earth biosphere. - [voiceover] that'swhy the rover vehicles are the biologically, cleanestspacecraft ever launched from cape canaveral asplanetary protection lead,
bob kokal explains. - this is an example of a plate of auger. if i were just to sample this table, if i did your kitchen table at home, if i did a floor, we wouldexpect the plate to be covered with numbers of bacteria. and there are many hundredsof bacterial colonies on this particular plate. after we clean the hardware,what we more typically
find on a spacecraft, if it was an area that we still needed to clean some more, it would be a plate like this one. now, this one probably has approximately 10 bacterial colonies onit, and if we got a sample like this, whichobviously, is much cleaner than the first one, we wouldstill look at that and say, "you know, that's pretty good,but it's not good enough." we would go back anddo some more cleaning.
what we really are always striving for is a plate like this one,and what's on this plate is absolutely no growth at all. in fact, most of the plates that we get, and we do our samples morethan 90% of our samples, in fact, we show no growth at all. so, the spacecraft isactually very, very clean. - [voiceover] japanese macaquesare also very, very clean because they get washed evenmore than the rover spacecraft
and it's not just a quick dip in the sea, these clever cleaners soak in a hot tub. it all started more than 30 years ago when a female macaque isthought to have watched some people relaxing in theregions' thermal springs. unlike any monkey before her,she decided to join them. today, there are separatepools for monkeys and humans. the whole troop hasfound the perfect place to keep warm and clean, evenin the coldest blizzards.
it's giant, intellectual leapslike this that have allowed the japanese macaque toclean up the competition. (new age music) - [voiceover] so, it's no wonder that when it comes to cleaning,the japanese macaque, really is the most extreme.
Tidak ada komentar
Posting Komentar