Grasshopper Mice

Grasshopper mice have captured the interest of researchers as they hunt scorpions whose venom could kill a human and whose sting causes us crippling pain. Not only are these mice immune to the venom, but they can block the pain of the sting. Scorpions are hardly enemies to attack with your eyes closed, and yet footage captured by the team reveals that a grasshopper mouse does just that, approaching it with nothing but its whiskers to home in on, and react to, its deadly prey.



They live in the deserts of western America. To defend their territory, they stake a claim with a warning howl. Enemies in the desert include scorpions, rattle snakes and Harris Hawks who may have a sense of vision eight times as good as humans. The mice are nocturnal, safest in the night-time, but if caught in the day, temperatures can reach dangerous levels of 60 degrees centigrade. If they get caught in the rain, their small bodies mean they chill very fast. The mouse can shake 30 times a second – forces of 70 g are generated: four times more than a shaking dog. Their territories can be over 300 metres wide and marked with a distinctive scent - so they can follow their noses home.

Sengi

The cheetah has long been thought to be the fastest animal on land, but when it comes to a 'truer' measure of speed - body lengths per second - the team's footage reveals that a sengi wins hands down. It isn't just down to lightning reflexes or incredible muscles (though both of those feature in the series) - instead, it's also down to being meticulously tidy. Sengis owe their speed to a network of miniature racetracks they build in the savannah, spending as much as half their waking hours sweeping aside every last piece of debris to create the perfect, pristine racetrack on which to exhibit their cheetah-beating speed.

The Dung Beetle

Dung beetles can sniff the wiff of dung half a mile away. Serrations on their head saw up the dung and their legs, like spades, shape it into perfect balls. They use these balls as both food for themselves and to provide for a growing family. Male dung beetles attract females by building the biggest balls of dung they can. Females lay their eggs inside the balls. Pound for pound, a dung beetle is stronger than an elephant: it can push the equivalent of a truck. They roll their dung balls away from competitors - pushing ‘backwards’, head down with their back legs doing the work. When rolling a dung ball, they travel in straight lines and keep going in the same direction, no matter what is in their way.

Chipmunks

Chipmunks live in the wild woods of North America, have enormous power and flexibility and are able to twist their upper and lower bodies in opposite directions even in mid air. Filming a fight between two rivals using an ultra-high-speed camera shows them twisting around each other while airborne, to avoid suffering a blow. Chipmunks may tunnel 10 metres down to keep their nuts safe and they need to, because as winter approaches, it’s every chipmunk for himself - they have no concerns about stealing each other’s supplies.

Tree Shrew

The tree shrew lives in the tropical rainforest, where there are more tiny creatures in the undergrowth than anywhere on Earth, so competition is fierce. Their ancestors have lived in these jungles for more than 10 million years. They live in the canopies of the trees and are extremely agile, helping them jump from tree to tree in search of fruit to eat. They have one of the largest brains for their body size and also have a very fast metabolism, so need food every few hours. The shrew must also compete with animals such as orangutans, which are 500 times their size, for fruit. Pitcher plants lure tree shrews to visit with their sweet tasting sap that, bizarrely, contains a laxative - the plants need the nitrogen in the tree shrews' dung. Predators of the forest include pythons, which, using heat sensors, can follow the trail of a mammal in the dark.



Marmosets

Marmosets are most at home in the treetops of the forest and are superbly adapted to run through the tree canopy using branches thinner and flimsier than most other tree-dwelling animals. They are daytime animals; at night they retreat to the tree tops and huddle together for safety. They are also known to roam the city of Rio de Janeiro in gangs - sticking together makes it easier for them to look out for each other. In the city, they face unfamiliar predators such as cats and dogs. In Rio, they made the shift to using the thin slippery power cables look like an easy job - the agility and acrobatics they demonstrate is jaw dropping. To capture this behavior meant using a special crane that could be remotely operated and track alongside them inches from the high voltage wires. For super close-ups, details of how they grip the wires and make their death-defying leaps, a family of stunt doubles stood in, filmed in a studio in chilly Cumbria.

Rhinoceros Beetle

The Rhinoceros beetles natural habitat is the forest. For their size, they are the strongest creature on Earth and able to lift 100 times their bodyweight. They can take off vertically and can fold their wings to drop suddenly from the sky to avoid predators. In Tokyo, rhinoceros beetles often find themselves in the city and the lights, which they confuse for moonlight, make it difficult for them to navigate their way back to the forest. In the wild, beetles bury themselves in the ground to sit out dangers that the day brings. Despite its strength, it cannot burrow through concrete, making it a potential target for predators such as crows, which can crack the beetle’s armour with their beaks.

Jumping Spiders

Tiny jumping spiders are very successful visual predators. They don’t build webs but instead stalk their prey and, using a very precise measure of perspective, leap onto their victims, judging the distance to perfection. However, their compound eyes work only in the right wavelength of light. In Tokyo, when bathed in the red light of a traffic light, their distance perception is out of alignment and every jump misses the target. It's only when the lights turn green that everything snaps back into focus.