Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Narrator: The Secretary Bird.
The Snapping Turtle.
The Cone Snail.
Three of the fastest killers on Earth!
Wait, what?
Oh, got it.
These are the Animal Kingdom's
swiftest assassins.
The quickest bites.
Lightning fast strikes.
Now you see them, now you're dead.
Blink and you'll miss the Worlds Deadliest.
"Speed Kills"
The African Savannah.
For grass grazers, it's a place of constant danger.
These Thomson's gazelles need to be on alert
at all times, because there's a predator
here that can strike in a flash!
The cheetah.
No list of "speed killers" would be complete without
the fastest land animal in the world.
And thanks to strategically well timed,
surprise strikes, nearly half of their hunts
are successful.
Found in areas of Africa and a small portion of Iran,
the cheetah is born for blindingly fast attacks.
In fact, it can go from zero to sixty miles an hour
in just three seconds.
That's faster than a v-10 Lamborghini Gallardo.
At less than 140 pounds, it's far more nimble than
its larger cousins like lions.
Though the cheetah still can't sprint for long.
Usually less than a minute.
But in that time it can hit such high speeds,
its takedown technique is simple:
knock the prey off balance.
A bite to the throat finishes the job.
Watching them in slow motion,
it's easy to lose sight of how fast these cats can be,
but here's what a cheetah hunt looks like
in real time.
It's clear the secret to the cheetah's success is speed,
stealth, speed and more speed.
Dateline: Oceans around the globe,
where witnesses report small sea creatures
vanishing in shallow waters.
Here one moment, gone the next.
The culprit?
The notorious stargazer, a fish with a super fast death
strike and a mug only Mother Nature could love.
The stargazer's M.O. is simple, yet cunning.
It buries the bulk of its body in the silt,
where it waits to ambush prey.
Only the stargazer's face remains visible and
at a glance resembles rock or coral.
A closer look reveals beady, top mounted eyes and an
upward facing mouth.
The better to see its victims with and
suck them into instant oblivion.
This stargazer was recorded at fifty frames per second.
When slowed down, its entire strike takes just
one, two, three frames.
A blistering 60 milliseconds.
Even if you're too large to eat,
authorities advise caution, as each stargazer is armed
with two spines that inject painful venom.
And for some members of the species,
those spines also deliver a 50 volt electric jolt,
making these venomous villains literally as fast
as lightning.
Bottom dwellers beware.
The shockingly fast stargazer is built to
deliver pain and death in a flash.
It has razor sharp talons, a six-foot wingspan and
strikes like a thunderbolt.
It's not what you may think.
This bald-eagle lookalike rules the skies
over sub-Saharan Africa.
The African Fish Eagle, scourge of aquatic prey that
can reach air speeds up to fifty miles an hour.
Before a fish knows it, it's "fillet of fish."
This fish eagle is on the hunt and finds
a perch overlooking a lake.
Its keen eyes scan the water until they
finally lock on target.
Then, the eagle swoops in and
delivers death from above.
The powerful bird can carry aloft prey
weighing over eight pounds.
In fact, it's such a proficient killer;
it only needs to hunt for about ten minutes a day.
Maybe because this apex predator doesn't
only go after fish.
Sometimes, it prefers a different kind of food.
Food with feathers.
Luckily, Africa has a bountiful
supply of waterfowl.
Lucky for the hunter anyway.
For the flamingos, their distant cousin has
become an angel of death.
There's no outrunning it.
Even when its prey manages to dodge one kill shot,
the second comes fast and furious.
And final.
But there is one animal quick enough,
and deadly enough to give the fish eagle a
serious run for its money.
It is the fastest land snake in the world.
The black mamba, named for the ink-black color
of its coffin shaped maw.
At up to 18 feet per second,
the black mamba can move faster than most
people can run.
And you'd better run, because the black mamba
also has one of the fastest acting venoms
in the snake world.
This mouse tries to escape into its burrow,
but the black mamba is perfectly capable
of hunting in tight spaces.
It makes killing all the quicker.
Think you can hide in the trees?
You may need a plan-b.
The black mamba is not only an adept climber,
its Latin name,
Dendroaspsis, actually means "tree asp."
This chameleon doesn't have anything
to worry about, today.
But these little fledglings never see it coming.
Still, a black mamba is deadliest when
cornered on land.
This reptile senses something right
outside its lair.
Turns out, it's one of the deadliest predators
in all the land, a lion.
The small snake doesn't seem to stand a chance
against the king of the jungle.
But in this case, the mamba strikes first and fastest.
Within a half-hour, the killer cat succumbs to the
black mamba's deadly venom.
Too bad it's too big to eat.
Just ten to fifteen milligrams of mamba venom
can kill a full-grown man in a half an hour and
one bite can contain ten times that amount.
That's called "overkill."
Before an anti-venom was developed,
the mortality rate from a black mamba bite was a
staggering 100%.
These days, just hopes there's a dose of anti-venom
within minutes of you, because if not,
this may be the last smile you ever see.
Swift on land, split second strikes, fast acting venom.
In the world of speedy killers,
the African black mamba is a terrifying triple threat.
But as fast as the mamba is, there's one animal that
makes it look like it's moving in slow motion and
it's ready to attack straight ahead.
Narrator: Twitching antennae.
Bulbous eyes.
Deadly claws.
They look like "creatures from another planet!"
But praying mantises are very much of this planet,
even though they kill with unearthly speed.
They stalk prey in ultra slow motion,
edging ever closer, and once in range,
they deliver death in a flash.
In 1/20th of a second,
a mantis's spiked forelegs dart out
and *** its quarry.
Before its target can process what's happening,
the brain is being eaten.
Mantises also aren't above taking a bite out
of each other's head.
And that's just the appetizer,
because the praying mantis can eat every part
of its kill, from head, to foot, to wing.
Ambushing butterflies is one thing.
But that super speed really comes in handy
when attacking far deadlier insects.
But it's not just bugs on the menu.
This young mantis is about to be lunch
for a much larger frog.
So it's nice to have a mom who's bigger
and faster than your foe.
Frog legs anyone?
Creatures of Earth beware: once the lightning fast
praying mantis gets you in its clutches,
you haven't got a prayer.
As we've seen, the black mamba is fast.
Anything that wants to take on one of these must either
have a death wish, or be really, really fast.
Enter the mongoose, a mammal from the family herpestidae.
One that makes the mamba look like a chump.
The darting mongoose dodges every one of the
serpent's strikes
And when the moment is perfect,
it scores the kill in less than two seconds.
Ranging from Africa to Southern Asia,
mongooses will feed on just about any meat.
But it's a keenness for snake that
makes them notorious.
A cobra nest.
Delicious.
Of course, the grownups are the ones
that pose a challenge.
India.
Home of a dreaded killer.
The spectacled cobra.
They're highly venomous and blindingly quick.
Just the way the Indian Grey Mongoose likes them.
Cobra venom is ineffective on mongooses,
but a bite could still create a lethal infection.
Trapped, the snake goes on the offensive.
The furry speed-demon has perfect reflexes,
matching the hooded cobra's every move.
Then, in an instant, the deadly dance is over.
And just to make sure,
dinner is served.
In sub-tropical oceans, a submarine sonar operator has
to sift through a cacophony of marine sounds.
But a noise like distant cannon fire
drowns out everything else.
No, it's not from an enemy sub.
It's from one of the loudest and fastest guns in the sea:
the notorious pistol shrimp.
Each inch-long crustacean comes equip with
a specialized claw half its body length and
it gives new meaning to the term "packing heat."
In the underwater Wild West, a hungry pistol shrimp holes
up in its burrow and waits for prey to wander in range.
This time, it's an unsuspecting crab.
The bandit edges out of his hideout,
sneaking up from behind.
It's over in 300 microseconds.
The pistol shrimp's claw snaps shut at such high speed;
it shoots a superheated bubble
at over 60 miles an hour.
It creates a similar shockwave to
an actual pistol shot.
But in this case, the bubble implodes,
and for an instant, reaches a staggering
8,000 degrees Fahrenheit!
Guess what else is that hot?
The surface of the sun.
The implosion registers an ear-splitting
218 decibels, as loud as the sonic boom
of an F-18.
With that much power locked and loaded into one
appendage, small prey like this banded shrimp
don't stand a chance.
The resulting shockwave instantly neutralizes the
target and it was never heard from again.
But sometimes, pistol shrimp have even been known
to turn on each other.
It's high noon and these gunslingers are engaged
in a marine mano-a-mano.
They trade shots at point-blank range,
blasting away for supremacy.
But neither can get the upper claw and
the duel ends in a stalemate.
When it comes to underwater shootouts,
nothing has a quicker and deadlier draw,
than the dreaded pistol shrimp.
Narrator: Imagine, diving in the deep, dark ocean,
when suddenly thousands of sharp,
toothy tentacles lash out at fifteen miles an hour!
It may sound like the stuff of nightmares,
but this is the very real death strike of
the Humboldt Squid!
This 6-foot long cephalopod's size
is intimidating.
But even scarier is its ability to attack at
22 feet per second, more than 3 times faster
than the quickest Olympic swimmer.
Its speedy secret is a siphon,
which blasts seawater like a cannon,
allowing the monster to turn on a dime and
obliterate prey in a heartbeat.
Special skin cells allow the jumbo squid,
to flash red and white.
It's because of this they earn the nickname
"diablos rojos," or "red devils."
And like a pack of wolves the frenzied red devils
devour their victim in seconds.
At least they only hunt fish and shrimp, right?
Not so fast.
Humboldt's are notorious for meeting unfamiliar objects
with extreme aggression.
Unfamiliar objects like cameras and divers.
The Humboldt's are so vicious that they'll even
turn on themselves, gruesomely cannibalizing
each other for a free meal.
All the more frightening, these speed demons are
expanding their killing range.
Historically found in subtropical waters,
they've recently been spotted as far north as Alaska.
Warming seas and fewer natural predators may be
factors in their expansion.
Whatever is causing it, one thing is for sure:
when the Humboldt has you in its sites,
it could be all over in a flash.
Beetles.
They've been crawling around the earth since
the Jurassic period.
Today, the order coleoptera accounts for a staggering
25% of all known life forms, minus one.
What the heck was that?
The beetle was ambushed by the fearsome
Trapdoor Spider,
an arachnid whose murderous cunning matches
its incredible speed.
With rake-like fangs, it digs a hole in the dirt.
Then, it fabricates a camouflaged trap door out
of the soil, using its own silk as a hinge.
Trip wires of webbing stretch back to the burrow,
where the sneaky spider waits like a
bullet in a barrel.
The second a hapless bug triggers one of the strands,
death comes blazing!
Like a demonic hand from hell,
the trapdoor spider snatches its prey lickety-split,
injecting it with a paralyzing venom.
Then, it's time to dine in the dirt.
Most of the trapdoor spider's victims face a
swift and certain doom, though sometimes,
even the trapdoor spider jumps the gun.
Then again, when you're as fast as this arachnid,
there's always a second chance.
When it comes to split second kills,
nothing is faster than electricity.
Electric eels aren't actually eels at all.
They're relatives of the catfish and they can
reach up to eight feet long.
Packed with special battery-like cells called
electrocytes, the fish produces two
types of charges.
It uses a low, ten-volt charge to sense its
surroundings in murky water and a 600 volt shock
to deliver death in an instant.
It's enough juice to kill a horse.
Unlike most fish, electric eels breath air,
and at the surface, they often encounter another one
of the Amazon's notorious carnivores: the caiman.
Apparently, caiman aren't so bright.
This time, the caiman lives,
but it doesn't always work out that way.
This fisherman in Brazil just caught an electric eel.
It's not a prize he wants to eat,
but something else does.
The caiman sizes up the meal.
Is it safe?
Or is it dangerous?
Wrong answer.
As soon as the caiman bites, it's all over.
The eel unloads for nearly forty seconds,
until finally;
the caiman pays the ultimate price for his
taste in electric sushi.
This fisherman knows, the electric eel is not
the kind of fish you fry.
It's the kind of fish that fries you.
Narrator: In the swamps and rivers of the
American south, there's a creature
that sits very still,
appearing to live its life at a very, very slow pace.
But don't be fooled.
When it's hungry, it's a speed-eater.
The alligator snapping turtle has a taste for food
so fresh, even the fish don't know they're dead yet.
Growing up to a colossal 220 pounds,
a snapper will spend almost its whole life underwater,
surfacing only to breath every
forty to fifty minutes.
At night, it'll root around in the muck,
searching for plants and carrion to gnaw on.
But during the day, it's all about the ambush.
Alligator snappers even have a built-in lure,
a small bit of flesh that looks like a
wiggling worm in its mouth.
The fish, oblivious to the big, motionless monster,
find the bait irresistible.
And in an instant, hooked jaws either catch
the prey whole, or skewer it.
But it's not just fish who need to worry
about the massive bite.
Anyone daring enough to tempt fate with this mouth
is liable to lose a limb.
[man screams in pain]
So it's easy to see why researchers and
fishermen have learned to respect these jaws.
Because with a bite this fast,
catching a meal is a snap.
It has the fastest moving jaws on Earth,
exerting a force hundreds of times its own body weight.
No, not this guy.
This guy.
The aptly named trap-jaw ant.
It's armed with super-sizes mandibles
that lock in ready position at 180 degrees.
The instant any of the sensory hairs are touched,
remind you of anything?
The jaws snap shut in 130 microseconds,
at an insanely fast 140 miles an hour,
the quickest predatory appendages in
the Animal Kingdom.
And they reach a peak force 300 times the ant's
own body weight.
Compare that to the relative bite force of a
great white shark,
which barely even approaches its own weight.
What a wuss.
The trap-jaw ant's amazing power and speed is ideal
for dealing death quickly, be it to prey,
or even other trap-jaw ants.
Now imagine if they were as big as, them!
Besides being oversized scissors on six legs,
these ants have developed another ingenious
use for their jaws.
When a trap-jaw ant feels threatened,
it can snap its mandibles on the ground or a nearby
object and propel itself out of harm's way.
It's like having an ejector seat built onto its face.
One that can vault it vertically six times
its body length.
This trap-jaw ant is being bullied by two
of its own kind.
But thanks to its giant spring-loaded mandibles,
escape is a snap.
Five ants are bearing down on this lone wolf.
But like a little Evel Knievel,
it makes a jaw dropping backwards jump to freedom.
Of course, it's also been known to backfire.
This ant tries to take a chunk out of a grubworm,
but accidentally launches itself out of biting range.
Just a momentary inconvenience for the
mighty trap-jaw ant.
Speedy escapes and super quick kills.
This is one hair trigger predator we can all be happy
isn't nearly as big as its bite.
Like some busy city freeway interchange,
the warm sub-tropical waters around the globe
are a virtual blur of fast moving life.
It's a fish-eat-fish world and whether predator or
prey, the key to success in this aquatic metropolis
is almost always speed, almost.
As it turns out, one of the most successful killer's in
this underwater superhighway moves at a snail's pace.
This is the cone snail and unlike most creatures
of the reef,
it doesn't race around in search of food or safety.
It doesn't have to.
When this menacing mollusk gets hungry,
it simply burrows itself into the substrate and
extends a long worm like organ called a proboscis.
Inside hides a secret weapon: one that makes
this Sunday driver of the sea one of
the fastest killers in the world.
Blink and you'll miss it.
A small, hypodermic like barb the snail shoots
into prey using quick muscular contractions.
Just like that, instant fish-kabob.
But then, it's not the skewering that
does the most damage.
It's what's contained within the barb,
a potent cocktail of hundreds of different toxins,
more than any other animal on Earth.
Once injected, the fish is paralyzed almost instantly,
at which point the snail can go back to taking
its sweet time swallowing its frozen meal whole.
It's a deadly shell game.
But not just for small fish.
Because of their colorful exteriors,
unsuspecting divers looking for a souvenir may pluck
the cone snail from its home.
It can be a fatal mistake.
With its wetsuit piercing harpoon,
the six-inch long Conus geographus,
is more than capable of delivering a lethal dose
to even the biggest man.
Here's more good news: there is no anti-venom.
So don't be fooled by this tiny tank inching
methodically along the sea floor.
It may not move fast, but when it comes to
delivering liquid death,
the cone snail is no slowpoke.
Narrator: The world over, wild cats are proven killers
and most use the same technique,
go for the throat.
It can be a slow and messy affair.
Much too slow for one cat.
The jaguar doesn't go for the throat.
It goes for the brain, delivering instant death
with just one bite.
The secret to the jaguar's head-splitting talent is its
massive canines, long and sharp enough to pierce the
prey's brain case and turn out the lights
in a heartbeat.
Found silently stalking throughout Central and
South America, Jaguars measure up to eight feet from
nose to tail and weigh up to 250 pounds.
They're fearless of water and powerful enough
to crack a turtle shell.
But despite their imposing bulk,
they're masters of the stealthy speed kill.
The jaguar's patterned coat blends in to the shadows
of the jungle as it prepares to strike.
Today, it eyes the thick skull of the peccary.
Then, with a quick bite, it's goodnight.
Their cousins in Africa and Asia may get all the fame,
but when it comes to the art of the quick kill,
jaguars are the real kings of the jungle.
The black mamba may move fast,
and possess one of the quickest killing venoms,
but there is another snake, one so swift,
it almost seems psychic.
It is the tentacled snake, an underwater killer with
the uncanny ability to sense where prey is going
to be before it gets there.
The secret to the tentacled snake's predictive strike
is one part sensory and one part manipulation.
First, it uses its tentacles to detect the
slightest movement in the water.
Even in complete darkness.
Then, the snake forms an upside down "J"
with its body.
Otherwise known as the kill zone.
Once a fish enters the "J," the snake twitches,
forcing its prey to dart off.
Or at least, try to.
In the time it takes the fish to figure out where
it's going, the snake is already there,
just fifteen to twenty milliseconds,
faster than a bolt of lightning.
A recent Vanderbilt University study shows that
the tentacled snake is so accurate in predicting
where its prey will run;
escaping fish often swim right into its open mouth.
So fast, so cunning, so deadly.
The tentacled snake,
a predator with a strike so swift,
running only makes its job easier.
We've seen how quickly some members
of the Animal Kingdom make their kills.
But the Plant Kingdom has a fast-killing
carnivore of its own.
Enter the Venus flytrap.
Actually, don't enter it,
because you'll probably never get out.
The Venus flytrap may seem like some unholy hybrid
made in a mad scientist's laboratory,
but it's actually an indigenous swamp monster of
North America, where poor soil conditions have stirred
its carnivorous cravings.
When an insect triggers the tiny hairs in a flytrap's
maw, it snaps shut in a startling tenth of a second.
Struggling to escape only tightens the trap,
where enzymes digest the imprisoned prey
over the next ten days.
And while bugs may be the usual quarry,
Venus flytraps have been known to go for larger game.
Usually, their eyes are bigger than their stomachs.
But sometimes, the "eyes" have it.
So watch out Animal Kingdom.
When it comes to split second killers,
the high-velocity Venus flytrap is nipping
at your heels.
Narrator: One mighty stomp and it can all be over.
It's got legs and it knows how to use them,
to dance on your corpse.
It's the legendary secretary bird.
But don't let its odd name fool you.
This fast-striking bird is the boss.
Standing four feet tall, this predator is one of
the few birds of prey that hunts on the ground.
And why not?
Its most effective weapon is a split-second,
skull crushing kick.
The leggy bird flushes prey out of hiding,
then brings the blitz.
Even venomous snakes can't fend off the
boot to the head.
Africans have nicknamed the secretary bird
"the devil horse," though some might say
"devil dinosaur."
That's because scientists have compared it
to "Titanus," a ten foot-tall prehistoric bird
that once terrorized South America.
Now, this distant cousin struts across the
African Savannah like a deadly Broadway dancer,
one built to crush its critics to death.
So beware if you cross paths with the secretary bird,
because it takes the term "stomping grounds,"
literally.
You've seen some of the planet's speediest killers,
but nothing like the deadly dynamo with the most
explosively fast muscle power in the
whole wide world.
It's, a salamander?
These amphibians aren't usually known as the most
impressive killers, but the bugs they eat have
hair-trigger reaction times.
So over 150 million years of evolution later,
a few salamanders have developed a
high-speed weapon: a bombastic, ballistic,
turbo-charged tongue.
This marble salamander is no slouch.
But among the fastest, is the hydromantes salamander
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
You have to slow the action down by forty times
to get a good look.
For the cricket, it's lights out in an instant.
The secret is two rows of muscles that squeeze,
firing a bony tongue like crossbow.
The hydromantes can launch its sticky licker
up to 80% the length of its own body,
longer than any other salamander.
But the master of the projectile tonguing is the
giant palm salamander of Central America.
It's actually just four inches long,
but its tongue muscles make it a titan.
Just to see it, this film had to be shot at
1,000 frames per second.
The termite goes from living to lunch in less
than four milliseconds.
The little salamander might not be the
king of the jungle, but thanks to its tongue,
it's the tsar of speed-eating.
Man: Oh!
[grunts]
[grunts]
Man: Ah!
Ah, you!