Narrator: ln a bug's world, life is always in the balance.
There are so many ways to die.
Around every corner, super-strength assassins...
They are just incredibly fast with enormous force.
Narrator: ...bizarre weapons...
They have absolutely insatiable appetite.
Narrator: ...and ruthless personalities.
They are incredibly effective predators.
Narrator: Every day these battles are waged,
hidden from human eyes,
in the secret world of Monster Bug Wars.
The rainforest --
rich, beautiful, frightening.
Monsters live here,
hiding in the darkest, dankest corners.
They're the stuff of nightmares.
When a giant rainforest mantis
confronts a spiny leaf insect,
it's a monster battle.
lt's one of the rainforest's most bizarre citizens...
...a creature so strange, it could be from another world.
ln the bug world, spiny leaf insects are giants,
growing up to five inches long.
They're not only big, they're ugly.
Spiny leaf insect wants to avoid a fight.
lts first defense is the fact that it looks like a leaf.
lf a predator does get past the camouflage
and detect a spiny leaf insect,
it'll then rely on its behavior to try to scare off a predator
by making itself look big and mean and horrible,
like some sort of alien predator from another planet.
Narrator: Nature often saves scariness for the vegetarians.
You see, they need to deter their predators
rather than fight them.
Although it looks like some kind of battle bot,
the creature isn't naturally aggressive.
lts heavy armor and razor spikes are for defense --
an almost impenetrable shield.
And if a predator does try to take a bite,
it'll get a mouthful of those spikes.
The spiny leaf insect also keeps a secret weapon.
Dr. Fry: lf threatened,
the spiny leaf insect will resort to chemical warfare.
lt has glands that'll squirt out
this colorless, but extremely stinky, liquid
that'll deter most predators.
Narrator: A stinking, ugly, spiky giant
should be left alone,
but in the rainforest,
there's one creature who's not so easily deterred.
lt's an evolutionary success story --
the giant rainforest mantis,
a strong-arm assassin and stealthy ninja
rolled into one.
Mantis need to eat all the time, so they're very hungry.
They're looking for prey all the time.
They're on duty all day long.
Turns out that they're one of the top rainforest predators.
Narrator: lt's the T. Rex of the bug world.
With a powerful stance and lethal forearms,
spikes, and lightning-fast grappling hooks
ensure nothing escapes.
Dr. Rayor: The strike could happen anywhere
from .030 to .050 of a second.
So this is like 1 /20 of a blink of an eye.
Mantids engage in aggressive mimicry,
and what this means
is they camouflage themselves so their prey doesn't see them.
Matching in with the vegetation --
in this case, our giant rainforest mantid
is a nice green.
lt blends in.
Prey items that are walking by,
they just don't see the mantid until it's simply too late.
Narrator: This hapless grasshopper never stood a chance.
There's one more thing about the giant rainforest mantis.
lt eats its victims alive.
Dr. Rayor: They're pretty good at orienting their bites
toward the head of whatever they've captured,
and essentially once you've taken the head off of anything,
it stops struggling much more rapidly.
Narrator: The best defense against the mantis
is to avoid it at all costs.
But that's not always easy.
This spiny leaf insect is out looking for a leafy meal...
Unaware it's venturing
into giant rainforest mantis territory.
Dr. Fry: The spiny leaf insect is a browser.
lt's a vegetarian.
Think of it basically as the cow of the insect world.
Just spends most of the day hanging out in the tree,
chewing on the leaves, minding its own business.
Narrator: The leaf insect has attracted the attention of the mantis.
And when these two giants of the rainforest come face-to-face...
Neither backs down.
The mantis is the natural aggressor.
lt's sizing up the monster before it.
Dr. Rayor: No predator wants to be injured by its prey.
lf it's going to attack,
it needs to make a trade-off, basically.
lf it attacks something,
is it going to successfully kill it
and not get injured itself?
Narrator: The giant rainforest mantis has weighed the options.
lt's only a matter of choosing the moment to strike.
But with faith in its heavy armor,
the spiny leaf insect pushes gamely forward.
The mantis' powerful jaws start slicing through its victim.
The heavy armor is holding.
The spiny leaf insect deploys its chemical weaponry.
Dr. Fry: ln a fight, the spiny leaf insect
is going to rely on its armor to hold out
long enough for it to get away.
But it's not very fast.
lt will, however, keep spraying the chemicals,
but unless a predator gets a perfect shot
and gets deterred by that,
it's only a matter of time until it's dinner.
Narrator: The spiny leaf insect has to break free soon
before it's devoured.
Breaching the armor,
the more the mantis eats, the less its victim can fight.
lt's a race through the first course.
Mantis mouthparts work overtime as cutlery.
Mandibles slice and dice, while feelers fork it in.
Another life ends in the rainforest.
What the mantis can't eat, others will.
The giant mantis is happy to share now -- it's full.
And there's a mess to clean up.
ln the miniature world of monster bugs,
life-spans can last just weeks,
perhaps days, even hours.
Death lies around every corner,
and strength is no protection.
What happens when a powerful bull ant
comes face-to-face with a redback spider?
Only one will live another day.
ln the ant world, life is all about the colony.
Ants work as a team -- all for one and one for all.
But for this species, going solo is allowed.
lt's even encouraged.
This is the bull ant.
Growing up to 1 inch long,
it's one of the world's largest...
Big enough to fend for itself.
lts huge jaws are fearsome enough.
They lock like a vice, inescapable.
But it's the other end you really need to worry about.
This lethal stinger delivers venom in multiple doses.
Dr. Fry: The bull ant sting
is one of the most painful things in the world,
and unlike a bee, they can sting over and over and over again.
Narrator: For the bull ant,
the world is a chaotic landscape of sights and smells,
so it needs hyperactive antennae and bulging eyes.
But the bull ant has something else.
Twin claws on every foot
give it the powers of an action hero with attitude.
The bull ant is the pit bull of the insect world.
He's aggressive, fearless, and will take on any opponent,
even those much larger than himself.
Narrator: To the uninitiated,
the bull ant can be mistaken as vain.
lt looks like it's constantly grooming,
but it's actually cleaning its sensors for battle.
lt has to be on guard
every moment it's away from the colony.
There's no backup if it runs into trouble.
And this is trouble --
the deadly redback spider.
From the black widow family,
she's renowned for her super-to xic venom
and lightning speed.
But the redback has something else for the unwary --
a super-engineered web.
lt has a number of lines going down
that are just covered with globs of glue
so that if something walks into these lines,
they tend to break the lines.
And at that point, the spider comes down and nabs the prey.
Narrator: She specializes in tailor-made straitjackets.
With lightning speed,
she spins a suffocating silk suit that's only worn once.
The way the redback gets the silk out of the spinnerets
is on the fourth leg, it has a comb,
and it combs the silk out of its spinnerets.
Spider silk is considered to be stronger than steel.
lt's considered to be the strongest biopolymer known.
Narrator: Few creatures leave a redback's web.
And the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Narrator: This bull ant still hasn't found dinner for its colony.
lt forages deeper into a log...
...unaware of the deadly trap ahead.
Although the redback is venomous,
actually, her most important weapon is her web,
and her web is like kevlar dripping with superglue.
Narrator: One false step is enough.
The redback races to weave a deadly suit.
But she has to be quick.
lf those jaws get her, or that stinger,
the tables will turn.
All the bull ant needs is one single sting,
and the redback spider is dead.
Narrator: The bull ant's jaws are trapped.
A sting shot is its only hope.
But its captor is weaving at lightning speed.
Every second makes it harder and harder to move.
But as it's hoisted up,
the ant breaks free and tries to bite.
The bull ant has these incredible powerful mandibles
that can give a really nasty bite.
lt's like you have a vice that's combined with a saw.
Narrator: The spider needs a better suit, fast.
Again, her wraps subdue the ant.
Only now can the redback get close enough
to inject its venom.
The deadly brew flows through two tiny fangs.
The venom is going to attack the nerves of the bull ant,
killing it almost immediately.
Narrator: All the spider needs to do is wait...
As her victim dies in a silk shroud.
Far from the safety of its colony,
a bull ant pays the price for going solo.
No one heard it scream.
l don't think a redback that had fallen out of her web,
or was out of her web wandering on the ground
had any chance against a bull ant.
But a redback that's in her web,
she has total control of the situation.
Narrator: ln nature's tiny world,
an ant's life means something.
For this skillful redback,
it's a fresh meal before she's ready to kill again.
The world is crawling with bugs.
Half of all known species on our planet are insects.
Some crawl on land. Others lurk beneath it.
Some climb. Others live in the sky.
There is no escaping bugs.
Even the water is not safe.
What happens when a water strider
takes a swim with a water spider?
lt's time to run.
But there's nowhere to hide.
Some call him the Jesus bug
because he, too, can walk on water,
although he prefers to jump at lightning speed.
Dr. Fry: lf something tries to catch him,
his best defense is to just skate across the water.
But he can also use the water like a trampoline
and jump up in the air.
They can travel 1 00 body lengths in a single second.
Narrator: lt's like a 6-foot-tall human
taking off at 400 miles per hour.
More incredible still,
the water strider never gets wet.
Along each leg, thousands of tiny hairs trap air bubbles,
and this makes a waterproof coat.
Also helping to keep the water walker dry
is surface tension on a pond.
Buoyed by this skin of water,
the strider wields a lethal weapon.
lt's a giant proboscis that spears and kills its prey.
lt also doubles as a drinking straw for insect innards.
Like a hypodermic needle on legs.
His bite is main.
Narrator: A small creature that can't handle the water
soon becomes bug slurpee.
Water striders feed on the water surface.
They're basically an undertaker who make the sick and dying die.
Narrator: The water strider
turns any pond into a battleground.
But it doesn't have the field to itself.
The water spider
is just as comfortable on a pond as it is on land.
Water spiders are able to travel across water
much more effectively
than most other spiders or many other invertebrates.
lf they were a car,
they're moving on the order of 300 miles an hour.
l mean, they're just incredibly fast spiders.
Narrator: Though this female is bigger than the strider,
she still doesn't sink or get wet.
She also relies on tiny hairs to make an air suit.
Even more astonishing,
she has tiny claws at the tip of each leg,
giving her incredible grip on the water surface.
And when a potential meal like this fly hits the water,
it telegraphs ripples straight to the spider's sensors.
Dr. Rayor: By putting their feet at the water's edge,
they're responding very closely
to vibrations coming from the water.
They're exquisitely sensitive to those vibrations.
Narrator: There are worse ways to go than drowning.
You can be killed and eaten inside out.
ln a face-off between these two floating attack machines,
it all comes down to who moves first.
The spider is strong and fast,
but the strider is even faster.
lt'll be a case of the quick or the dead.
Narrator: These water striders
are drifting around the pond with the wind.
At the water's edge,
the spider dangles her sensitive feet,
picking up the slightest movement.
The striders, too, are feeling for vibrations.
But they're unaware of the spider hidden against the rock.
Dr. Rayor: They tend to be very nicely camouflaged.
Often, they have coloring that up against rockfaces,
you just don't see them.
Narrator: Unaware, two striders have drifted into easy range.
One uses its lightning speed to escape.
The other is not so lucky.
Deadly venom shoots into the strider.
lt will never know what happened.
Dr. Rayor: The fangs are used to squish the prey up, to some extent.
lt is simultaneously regurgitating digestive enzymes.
So what they're basically doing is they're dissolving the prey,
turning it into a protein milkshake,
and then sucking it down.
Narrator: The strider is turned to liquid.
The water strider was in the wrong place at the wrong time
to mess with a water spider.
Narrator: ln Bug Waterworld,
no one gets wet,
but you can become a drink.
There's no place like home, sweet home,
unless you're a bug.
Keeping a single address is sometimes impossible
when your neighbors are nasty.
And you may have to fight to keep your home.
Who gets the spoils
when a white-tailed spider tries to evict a black house spider?
One thing's for sure --
no one will leave without a fight.
Like us, some bugs invest a lot of work in their home.
This black house spider
has found just the right hole in just the right tree,
then added improvements --
a vast web around the entrance,
superglued to the surrounding bark.
The lightest touch on the silk transmits straight to home base.
Dr. Rayor: Black house spiders
really are completely attuned to vibrations.
They're not using vision
to find their prey or to avoid predators.
lt really is this acute sensitivity
to vibrations in their web.
Narrator: Few creatures see this ambush coming.
A venomous bite seals the deal.
But the spider doesn't stay on the street for long.
lt always eats in.
Not all spiders are homebodies.
Some are drifters,
like this white-tailed spider.
She's not tied down with webs and maintenance.
She's a roaming assassin who prefers to eat out.
Dr. Fry: The white-tailed spider is not fussy.
lt'll eat pretty much anything that it can encounter,
but its favorite meal is the black house spider.
Narrator: Today, the white-tail is ravenous.
She's like a bloodhound,
sniffing scent trails from potential victims.
But she's not using her nose.
She doesn't have one.
The tips of her legs are equipped with scopulate hairs.
Underneath the hairs are chemical sensors
that guide her to her target.
Dr. Fry: Because the white-tailed spider uses its feet so much,
it's absolutely important that it keeps them very, very clean.
Narrator: And those chemical sensors
have just detected a black house spider.
Dr. Fry: White-tail doesn't bother too much with a defense.
This is an animal that's all about offense.
lt goes out looking for trouble.
lt starts the fights and it finishes them.
Narrator: This white-tailed spider is cruising for dinner.
She has no web, no family ties, no fixed abode.
Further up the tree,
this black house spider lives a different lifestyle.
lt's set an elaborate web outside its permanent home.
Now it's monitoring for vibrations,
hoping whatever's coming will be another meal.
But the white-tail has an ingenious plan.
lt'll use the black house spider's own web to lure it out.
The black house is being played like an old fiddle.
Dr. Fry: White-tail is a trickster.
lt'll sit there and pluck on another spider's web,
mimicking a prey trapped in there,
and then nails it like lightning.
Narrator: The black house takes the bait.
lt's expecting an easy meal.
But it finds a mortal enemy.
The black house throws a decoy -- its own leg.
Losing a leg is actually a super strategy
for getting away from a predator.
This black house spider
has sphincters that are able to close off the blood flow
so the spider doesn't bleed to death.
lt's far better off losing a leg than losing its life.
Narrator: The white-tail is left with just a spider drumstick.
Now she retreats to her rival's abandoned house
and seals the door to eat in peace.
Dr. Fry: The white-tailed spider is a wanderer.
lt doesn't stay very long in any one place,
but in this case,
now that it has a nice big meal in its stomach,
it'll sit there and squat
in what used to be the black house spider's home.
Narrator: But the owner's back and fighting mad.
lt plans to repossess its house.
This time, a body strike stuns the black house.
Dropping limbs won't help it now.
Venom rushes into its body, killing it.
There's one final indignity.
The black house spider will be consumed in its own home.
ln bug realty,
you can be evicted and eaten on the same day.
ln the art of war, bugs are true virtuosos.
They have evolved so many ways to kill,
they leave humans in the dust.
But it's nearly always hand-to-hand combat.
And every victory is hard-won.
When a wolf spider meets a Sydney funnel-web spider,
it's a deadly contest between the old and the new.
Although there are almost 40,000 species of spider,
they come in two main categories --
modern or primitive.
Like this Sydney funnel-web, a dinosaur.
lt's changed little over millions of years.
Dr. Rayor: ln terms of temperament,
the Sydney funnel-webs are just ill-tempered, cranky spiders.
Narrator: lt's the grumpy old man of the bug world.
lt's still around today because it's a successful hunter,
and the key to its reign are these...
...two of the biggest, most powerful jaws in spider land...
Backed by super venom.
You don't survive for several hundred million years
without being effective predators
and being good at what you do.
So the funnel-webs may not have many diverse behaviors,
but in fact, what they do, they do very well.
Narrator: But there are downsides to being spider version 1 .0.
lt can hardly see from its eight eyes.
lts lumbering frame isn't very fast.
And its lungs are underdeveloped,
so it's exhausted quickly.
lt mostly lies in wait in moist, shady corners of the forest...
With a small web funnel at the entrance.
Dr. Rayor: What characterizes these webs is it has a narrow funnel,
or a narrow retreat, that the spider lives in.
So it may have a hole in a log that's covered in silk,
and then it runs out from this retreat
in order to capture prey.
The Sydney funnel-web is not only a seriously cranky spider,
but they really tend not to back off.
They're really an ill-natured spider.
Their fangs are oriented parallel to one another,
and so they strike down.
And the way the funnel-web does this
is it rears its carapace up
and then strikes repeatedly down with enormous force.
The force is reputed to be sufficient to kill a mouse,
to crush a mouse skull.
Narrator: This cricket came too close.
And the funnel-web's caveman table manners
make short work of any prey.
While it may be showing its age,
the funnel web is always ready to take on newcomers.
This is spider version 2.0, evolving much later.
The modern wolf spider is faster, stronger,
and loaded with stamina.
The wolf spider is so fast on its feet,
it can cover two feet in a single second.
That would be the equivalent
of me doing a 1 00-meter dash in one second.
Narrator: With state-of-the-art eyes,
nothing escapes its attention.
Dr. Fry: The wolf spider has four large eyes on the top of its head,
but also has four smaller eyes
coming across in a row in the front.
This gives it fantastic night vision,
and some of the best vision of any spider.
Narrator: lt lies in wait for a hapless victim
like this cricket.
He is fast and powerful --
basically, the cheetah of the spider world.
He hits his prey so fast and so hard,
they literally get bowled over.
Narrator: Sharp-eyed, fleet-footed, packing powerful venom,
the wolf spider is a major upgrade
from its primitive cousin.
Though it can out-stalk and out-run any contemporary,
sometimes it has to face off with its prehistoric past
in a test of evolution.
Dr. Fry: The wolf spider's best defense
is his ability to out-run or out-jump pretty much anyone.
Although wolf spiders are faster,
wolf spiders have vision on their side,
l don't think wolf spiders are as intrinsically tough
and ill-natured as a Sydney funnel-web is.
[ owl hooting ]
Narrator: lt's a full moon,
and the wolf spider is on the prowl,
night vision and advanced weaponry ready to go.
Also on the offense -- a funnel-web,
its legs sensing the slightest movement on its trip lines.
Dr. Rayor: The funnel-webs will rear up,
and you can see venom dripping out of the tips of their fangs.
And they will stay in this position for 1 0, 1 5 minutes,
ready to strike
should the potential predator or prey come any closer.
Narrator: The encounter quickly turns into a standoff
as two killers close enough to touch weigh their next move.
Dr. Fry: lt's a tricky standoff,
like two gunfighters waiting for the other one to flinch.
The funnel-web spider has bigger fangs,
but the wolf spider has the speed.
Narrator: One thing is for certain --
the next move will be fatal.
The funnel-web strikes first.
As the funnel-web's massive jaws rip open the wolf spider,
venom floods in.
Today, old beats new.
Ancient history wins the day.
Although dinosaurs never made it to our present day,
it's a different story in the bug world.
Here, living history proves that new isn't always better.
ln a monster bug war, you're either victor or victim.
Camouflage is no defense against a ruthless assault.
A lethal stinger is powerless encased in a silk coffin.
Speed is no match for stealth and cunning.
And sacrificing a limb is no guarantee of success.
When bugs go to war,
only the victor lives to fight another day.