Guide To... S1E2 "Natural History" (January 29, 2009)

This is Audible.

Hello, I'm Ricky Gervais.

The English biologist Thomas Huxley once wrote: To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning around.

To some, the wonders and intricacies of the natural world are a miracle, living proof of the existence of God.

To others, the natural world is a wondrous illustration of Darwinian evolution.

To discuss the complexities of plant and animal life, I'm joined by Stephen Merchant, graduate of the University of Warwick, an award-winning award-winning writer.

Thank you so much for having me.

And Carl Pilkington, a man with no qualifications, very little education, but who is now known the world over as a man with a head like a fucking orange.

Natural history obviously takes in everything to do with animals, plants, bacteria, which are in neither group.

I should start by just saying, Carl, that the natural world is so diverse that we don't even know how many species there are.

Conservatively, there's two million species of animals.

I mean, without even taking in plant life, there are at least two million species of animal.

With plants and animals, there could be up to ten million species.

There are thirty-seven thousand different species of spider alone.

What do you think that?

Uh

it's a lot.

It is, isn't it?

But if there's loads of stuff out there that we don't know about and we don't know what it's doing, is it that important?

Is it worth finding them now?

Well, yeah.

Why?

Well, it may give us the key to unlock other mysteries.

A spider won't.

Well, it might do.

A spider won't be unlocking any mysteries.

Well, that's that's different.

Plants are different.

I reckon there's a natural cure for everything out there.

Because there's loads of animals that have toxins that are used in medicine.

Yeah, I know that we use dangerous spiders to get rid of headaches or whatever, or they do in the tribes, right?

Yeah, do you want to just expand on that point?

It's just that's what they do in tribes.

They've got all natural, all these tribes, they've got all natural remedies.

They go, what's up?

Yeah, you've got a sore ankle, chew on this twig.

And it works.

I've seen it.

They sent women out there and they couldn't believe the stuff they can do with twigs and trees and hedgehogs and stuff.

It wasn't an in-depth analysis, was it?

What I'm saying.

They just sent some women out there.

Apparently.

I reckon the stuff that's got venom in it that's useful.

We probably know about all them.

It doesn't make any sense.

We probably know about all of them.

What I mean is the police know about the gangsters, but they go, right, we're aware of them.

Right.

Get on with it.

We'll keep our eye on them.

And it's the same in the jungle.

The spiders, the deadly ones you're aware of, the ones that are just pottering about, you go, don't even worry about them.

Don't even give them a name.

They're not doing anything.

But what if there's another poisonous spider they haven't identified yet lurking in the undergrowth?

I'd be very surprised.

So you'd be very surprised.

I'd be surprised if there was something.

It sounds like laziness on your part.

But they're discovering new species all the time.

We know about all the dangerous stuff now, because we have to.

We live in a wood now.

We do.

We know about a lot of the dangerous stuff.

Whenever they find something new now, it's like a new butterfly or.

Oh, no, well, no, look at AIDS.

When I was a kid, no one had ever heard of AIDS.

Yeah, but that's not a natural thing, is it?

That's not like a spider.

What do you mean it's not a natural thing?

It's not a natural thing.

It's not something that's.

AIDS hasn't been like living under the soil for millions of years going, I'll wait till the 1980s and I come out and kill a load of people.

No, but it is a natural thing.

It's a new thing.

It's new.

Yeah, but loads of animals are new, aren't they?

Not in, I mean,

evolutionary terms.

There's new animals.

I'm sure there's new stuff deep down that's just like, almost like bacteria.

Sat under the soil, it'll never come to the top.

Right?

It's like having an old woman who's a neighbour.

She never goes out, she doesn't bother you.

Let Let her be.

But what if that old neighbour could unlock the secrets to

even to us understanding the complexities of the universe, of the way things have developed and grown?

Because we'd know about it.

Well, why would we know about it?

Because I never understand why it you want to stop researching and studying now.

Why is it that you're happy to just draw a line under everything else?

What if people had said this back in the 19th century?

We've done this.

We've done this.

I think someone in the 1900s

said everything that's going to be invented has been invented.

And then look what happened in that century.

Yeah, and I've said to you, look at the stuff that is being invented now.

The frisbee and stuff like that.

It's all stuff that you kind of go, it's alright, it's a good idea, but we don't need...

Yeah, but the Frisbee wasn't being worked on by the top brains of our generation.

That was some novelty toy that some manufacturer made.

Yeah, but it's like, look at the fuss we made over that fella who came up with a Dyson VAC.

Everyone was like, he's up there with Einstein.

Well, he's not.

It's a good VAC, it cleans up floors well and everything.

Who said he's up there with Einstein?

It's PR people.

In one of those programmes where they did like great inventions of our time, it was easy early on.

You go, Einstein, you know, Newton did this, Archimedes, Dyson.

They started to run out because it is harder to come up with something new now.

Because everything that's needed, remember, the things we've invented are things that we sort of go, we could do with that.

Inventors don't sit there going, what can I make?

I need a toaster.

They've sat there, they've burnt the toast under the grill, and they've gone, I need some sort of device here.

Well, somebody, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what can it do?

I'll just.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

However, there are people who sit around going, Where's a loophole in the market?

Where's a little

year ago?

I came up with a see-through toaster so that you can see how much the toast is cooked.

Right.

I found it about two months after that.

Someone had done it.

So I'd just been beaten to the post.

But all you're really doing, Carl, is modifying an existing invention.

Other examples are being pipped at the post aren't they?

It's got to be one that hasn't been done.

Or it's not your theory.

But also something that unlocks a mystery.

Or helps the world.

What's causing problems in the world at the moment that need sorting?

Well,

cures for things.

Faster transport.

Anything to do with security?

Anything to do with well-being?

Obviously environmental concerns are a big issue.

People trying to design automobiles that can run on different alternative fuels.

I met a bloke on a conference once who sent a drawing to Blue Peter.

It was their designer car of the future.

And he sent them a drawing that was a car and the only innovation was that you can have a shit while driving.

And then

he put shit goes down pipe which becomes fuel.

They must have looked at that and gone what a maniac.

I think that's a brilliant.

I mean, I've driven a long way.

I've driven to Cornwall recently, and I would have loved.

But I think he did it when he was about nine, and he must have thought, oh, I'm being driven to school.

Oh, I need the toilet.

Wouldn't it be good?

Why hasn't that been done?

What?

Well, like Steve says, I've been in the same situation when you're driving and you go, oh, where's the service station?

You see a sight in 36 miles.

So what would you do?

So you suggest, pull your trousers down and shit down in the seat.

That's a toilet.

Yeah, well, what's wrong with that?

Well, you've got your nan in your back.

She's got one as well.

So you are going to Cornwall all shit in.

Well not all the time but it's more useful to me than a lighter.

So also what do you wash your hands or wash your hands or wipe your ass?

At what point does that come from?

Oh the end of the journey.

Oh God.

So you get in, you have a shit at Deptford and you wipe your ass at Polpero.

Yeah, but like I've said to you this isn't like just people going, oh I think I'll have one.

You need one?

Not really, with something to do, innit?

I'm sick of playing Ice Bye, I'm having a shit.

You have it when you really need one.

When you have to pull off a motorway, it's a lot of messing about.

There's probably going to be a queue at the toilet.

No more queues at toilets.

Ten minutes that takes, doesn't it?

Ten hours.

Driving along.

It's just going on.

It's just going on.

Don't even know about it.

Radio's on.

Everyone's happy.

Doesn't matter.

I don't know.

I mean, we all do it as well.

That's the thing.

Anything else you'd come up with?

I mean, so far you come up with nothing.

That was a nine-year-old boy's idea.

I mean, the Brevel Maker wasn't needed.

That's true.

What was the Brevel Maker?

Toasted sandwiches.

There's so many things, chocolate fountains, anything like that.

I just go, what are these?

Who's invented these?

Who's okayed this idea?

And yet I can't have a shit on the motorway.

Think of computers.

What about them?

Well, I mean,

that's

in the last few years,

you know.

A hundred years in our existence, okay, they've been dabbling with anything even close to a computer.

Nothing before that.

Yeah, computers are a good thing, and it baffles me as to how they came about when you think a computer chip is just made out of sand.

Now, for someone to come up with that, you go,

there must have been some sort of alien involved here.

What do you mean?

Why do you think that?

So I love it.

So the frisbee, rubbish.

Anything too clever...

Well, it wasn't an invention, it was an alien.

So there's nothing between frisbee and computer chip.

What I'm saying is, it's not even an idea, is it?

What do you mean?

A computer chip.

Where's that come from?

Oh, it's amazing.

It's astounding, yeah.

So you think it was an alien?

What are you talking about?

It's great.

Because I can't believe that someone would go, right, I want to make something that will hold information and be able to do.

I know, let's use some sand.

We've got loads of that.

You go, What you want, you don't well that's what genius is though.

But there's no alien involved.

No, but when I say alien, I don't mean an alien came down here and said, you know, oh, do you want to buy this?

There could have been

a spaceship

crash, right?

Right, yeah.

And

there's all them rumours, isn't there, in that anger.

They've got the spaceship, they take it apart, they go, Yeah, wheels, we've got them, yeah, yeah, yeah, steering wheel and then they go, hang on, what's this here?

And they find the chips and they break it down and they find these sand.

But that as an explanation to human genius is nearly as ridiculous as the Adam and Eve explaining life on earth.

How could you tell that to someone without going red?

I mean, I always worry about that, where people like people who believe in Adam and Eve, don't they wish there was a slightly better explanation with all the evidence we've got?

Do you know what I mean?

With all the evidence for evolution, that they think the earth is 5,000 years old.

And God made Adam out of some dust, and then he went, Oh, I need a bird.

It's alright, I'll make it out of your rib.

There's loads of things that you go, Oh, this is a bit embarrassing.

I bet Charles Darwin, when he said we've all come from apes, I bet he sat home going,

Should have told about the frisbee first.

But the fact that sand makes computer chips is not the interesting thing.

The interesting thing is how the human being discovered that, what am I talking about?

Sand makes computer chips.

That silicon can have information

put on it.

But we're made out of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon.

Do you know what I mean?

And hydrogen.

It that's that's nature.

You see, nature is amazing.

You can't beat nature, right?

No.

It comes up with some amazing things.

Yeah, but man is nature.

Don't forget that we are we're an animal, we're a brilliant ape.

Now it's it's it's clear to any sensible, reasonable, educated person that that we did evolve from um uh apes, or rather we had uh a common ancestry, and that we're closest to to the chimpanzee.

We're actually ninety-eight point six percent genetically identical to a chimpanzee, Carl.

We're closer to a chimp than a chimp is to a gorilla.

Genetically speaking.

I just find that hard to believe when you're talking about.

Well, I'm telling you, it's true.

So

what are you finding hard to believe?

Well, your eyes,

your own eyes are what sort of comes up with a lot of

thoughts.

No, no, no, no.

One's eyes don't come up with thoughts.

No, but what I'm saying is what you mean is through your own eyes.

You look at things and make up your own decisions.

There was no Darwin or anything.

Yeah.

Arna was sat somewhere, and someone said, Right, we're going to bring a few animals in.

One of them's related.

They're all related.

All right, but they're all related to you, but one's

not so long ago.

And they brought him in and they lined them up.

And there was a chimp stood there

and a gorilla.

And what's another one?

Orangutan.

Right, I go to the orangutan, send that out.

Probably first to go, so he's definitely not linked to me.

See, I disagree, but there we go.

That's just looking at you.

So the air colouring, there's none of that in our family.

Well, there's no air.

I like the fact that it loses out because it's ginger.

So that's gone.

Right, so I'm left with a gorilla and a chimp.

I would go for the gorilla.

Well, it's a good guess, but you you'd be wrong.

So we are much closer to the chimpanzee, okay?

98.6%

genetically identical.

Think of that.

We only differ

on 1.4%

of our genetic makeup.

Because that's a lot of the cheap

animal rights is a hot topic.

It's a big issue.

What rights should they have?

How do they compare to humans?

You know, it's a well-known fact that we test on animals with the assumption that humans are more important.

We test drugs on animals, and we're basically saying if they die, they die, we'll learn something from them.

People do make distinctions between animals, right?

They know that it's probably more acceptable to kill an ant

thank you.

Yeah, exactly.

You know,

I think that comes again from how close are they to humans?

Have they got a face?

But that's furry.

I told you, no, about my dad's mate who

had a monkey and he had to thump it.

What?

Well, there's two things there.

One, why did he have a monkey?

Two, what sort of discipline is thumping a monkey?

What was the monkey doing?

He was annoying his wife a lot and sort of, you know, pinching her ass and stuff like that.

Right, right.

We've never heard this before.

How have we had all these years of monkeys?

Your dad had a mate, you had a monkey.

Yeah, I'm sure I told you.

Why did he have a monkey?

Just for a laugh?

Well, it was back in the day when people did.

They all had like odd sort of pets now, didn't they?

In like about 68.

Oh, 1968.

Oh, when everyone had a monkey.

But he had to thump it.

Now, the weird thing is.

Now, that's weird enough.

Is this the

story?

This is the entire story.

You've got all the information you've got is he had a monkey and you had to thump it.

Yeah, my dad told me about it.

When he found out that I was into monkeys, he said, oh, Benny thumped one.

And.

Benny thumped one.

Oh, my son's into natural history, particularly a simian variety.

Um, I've got an interesting fact for you, Carl.

Sit down.

What is it, Peter?

Um, Benny thumped one.

Brilliant.

But what was interesting is the way that people are thumping other people all the time.

No one bats an eyelid.

Thump a monkey.

People go, you thumped a monkey.

Yes, yes, they do.

They do go.

You thumped a monkey.

So that's what's weird, isn't it?

But this gym doesn't want to be caged and kept in a fucking counterhouse in Mantis.

He was quite happy.

And if it wasn't to live like a human, I mean, in the 70s, you know, there were all the tea bag adverts and all that, and they were loving that.

Now they weren't.

People interfere.

People go, that's unfair.

Now they're in like a cage in a zoo.

It was better when I was pushing the piano up a stairs.

They weren't really.

They weren't really.

They weren't actual delivery men.

They weren't really sitting down and having a cup of tea.

It wasn't a documentary.

A week in the life of the monkey delivery men.

I love that.

Chimps in a zoo now going, okay, now we...

At least we were free.

We need to drive a vert.

And we're on 58 quid a week.

Yeah, they're not meant to be kept in a house in Manchester.

It's cruel to keep a person in a house in Manchester, so it's fucking cruel to keep a monkey.

Are you aware, Carl, that 99% of all forms of life that have existed on Earth are now extinct?

So there's only 1% of everything that's ever been still alive.

Yeah.

But that's just as well, isn't it?

Why?

Well, I think it's pretty crowded now.

So it's just as well.

You see, this is what I'm saying now.

Years ago, they accepted that.

Cavemen wouldn't have been going, oh, we're losing stuff, stuff's dying.

Whereas now, everyone's, oh, the panda, polar bears, not got any ice, and all that.

At the end of the day, the world's only so big, we know it's not getting any bigger.

Right?

Stuff's got to die, isn't it?

You can't keep everything.

Just think of that, though, as a tool of natural selection.

That the species that are surviving today are 1%.

Just how amazing that is to survive and evolve, how perfect everything is on Earth.

It's amazing.

No, but it'll drop off again, won't it?

As we're finding new stuff, other stuff will be dying.

In that 1%, when that was written, when that statement was made, was the dodo gone or was it still here?

It was

gone already.

It doesn't matter though, does it?

A percentage is a percentage.

Yeah.

The dodo went.

The last dodo died.

They said that was the last dodo.

No more dodos.

But we found.

Dido.

Still making great albums.

Great albums.

We lost the dodo, but we've got Dido.

Her recent album's not sold very well, actually.

It's deep.

It's dying out.

Dying out.

Everything has a lifespan.

Dido's dying out.

But, and I think that's life.

So it's not amazing, really.

That's not an either anymore.

No, that's not an either.

That's Life's Gone.

That's Gone.

That was good.

Mr.

Ransom forced to just hang out in the jungle.

Yeah.

It's a shame.

When I went to Natural History Museum, there was a thing called a

Scyther A or something.

It died out ages ago.

No one knows about them.

Which is weird because everyone knows about the dodo.

Well, that's because it died out

in, I think, was it the 18th century or something, wasn't it?

Well, you know, within what might some recent history.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, this thing's sort of.

I don't believe it was far behind it.

It's just timing, isn't it?

Got more press, the dodo.

The sithere, or whatever it's called, it was a big thing.

You've seen it and you still don't know what it's called.

Well,

it's spelt awkwardly.

But it's

they said it was a cross between a moose and a giraffe.

Now we don't need that, do we?

At no point have we said, Do you know what we need here?

Look at us through this.

Well, that's funny because when they first named the giraffe, they called it the camelopard because they thought it was a cross between a camel and a leopard.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, I can tell you that when zoologists examined a platypus for the first time, some of them thought it might have been a hoax, because they thought it could have been different parts of different animals sewn together.

Because the platypus has the fur of an otter, the tail of a beaver, the bill and feet of a duck, and the venomous spurs of a fighting gamecock.

So they assumed that

you weren't afraid of the animal.

Yeah, I remember right.

But they're actually

just to clarify that, it actually is descended from a link between reptiles and mammals almost 150 million years ago, a sort of living fossil.

When I was about 13, 14, I once tried to improve the animal kingdom by making the hardest animal ever, the most perfect animal.

Now, just to clarify, you didn't in sort of Frankenstein's style try and bolt various bits of animals together.

It was a drawing that I sent to Blue Peter.

There was no competition going on.

You just thought they would be appreciated, didn't you?

I thought they'd look at that and they'd go, well, he's a genius.

This is like Da Vinci.

Sure.

And this is the animal.

This is what I thought, the perfect animal.

I mean, when I say perfect, I meant the hardest animal.

This animal, it could take anything.

It was just the strongest, hardest, fastest.

So

I started with the head of a lion.

Of course, that makes sense.

You know what I mean?

It looks good.

Okay.

I popped that on the body of a rhinoceros.

Okay, so it's got the toughness, the armor, if you look.

Oh, it's full strength.

Head of a lion.

Think of that.

So you've got this picture.

Head of a lion, body of a rhino.

Perfect.

Okay.

Hold on, though.

Pop some arms on it.

The front arms were the arms of a gorilla.

The arms of a gorilla.

So

punch, grip.

It could make stuff.

The lion, I mean, that's where the lion falls down because it can't make stuff.

Sure.

It can't climb, you know.

So, okay, then.

Wait a minute.

You think that's got enough weaponry?

Sounds like it.

No.

Pop on the tail of a giant scorpion.

A giant scorpion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So a scorpion that's the size of the...

Exactly.

So the tail was as long as that rhino.

So now this is a scary animal.

And this is where the animal fell down.

I thought, right, legs.

Well, the fastest animal is the cheetah.

The cheetah.

Popped on four cheetah legs.

Four cheater legs.

It would have collapsed.

Crushed and flew.

It would have collapsed immediately.

And you drew this, did you?

Drew it, yeah.

Did you show it to anyone else?

Yeah, my mates went, that's brilliant.

Right.

I said, that's brilliant.

And then just sent straight to Blu Pierre.

Any reply?

No reply at all.

Really?

No reply at all.

What do you think of that, that, Carl?

What would you what?

How would you though?

What would if you were to make the ultimate fighting animal, what would you come up with?

If you had the power, like that fella in Arabian Nights, size of a chimpanzee, you could change into anything, but you could change into, you know, like that.

I don't think I'd go for strength and that.

I'd go for survival.

What would you do?

Cockroach.

I'd have uh

I'd have like uh

an armadillo's body.

Right, okay.

So you've that's that that's as big as you can be now then.

So you you yeah, you can't really pop on a lion's head'cause it'll just lay there going, I can't fucking move.

Right.

I'd have uh

head of an owl.

Right?

The head of an owl?

Yeah, why what why come on?

Why what does that bring to the table?

The head's there to sort of make it look friendly to the human race.

So because if you look half decent to the human race, they'll they'll look after after you.

That's the way it works.

And a cat and a dog and all that.

So the owl makes it look nice.

I'd have,

I wouldn't have legs, I'd go for like the slud juice.

So now you're a really slow-moving, legless armadillo with the head of an owl, slithering along.

How is that going to be friendly?

They'll see the beautiful face, but then they'll be terrified by the sludge.

No, because the head's that nice that they'll forgo the sludge.

But hold on, though.

But wait a minute.

So

it's got this thing that's stuck, right, going at 0.1 miles an hour with a going, whoo, right?

You come over, you kick the head off.

How is this going to be?

No, so the head can go into the thing like a tortoise.

Can it?

Yeah.

Of course it can.

Into the armadillo body.

Well, no, an armadillo doesn't do that.

It just curls up into a ball.

It isn't an armadillo, is it?

So it's.

Why has it got the sludge?

Because what I'm thinking, what I'm thinking is, an armadillo

be good when they're on the feet.

Flip them, they get stuck.

Like a tortoise.

Right.

Slug stuff keeps it down.

So if anything attacks it, it's like a limpet or one of them things that can.

You won't have a limpet then.

But it can't get any, it can barely move.

It can just go.

You can kick it.

It can't get anything.

But how can it escape from danger?

It's going to move very slowly because it's like

it can lock itself in and lock itself in.

Yeah, and then I just scoop it up on the side.

You can't scoop it up.

It locks itself in if it's in danger.

I give it peacock feathers.

This is the worst animal I've ever seen.

Why has it got peacock feathers?

I guess it's just

the worst animal I've ever heard.

Why is it not peacock feathers?

That's the least threatening thing, peacock feathers.

It's like Danny LaRue coming at you.

There's nothing remotely scary about peacock feathers.

To humans, but the humans won't be arming it because they like the owl head.

People will like to have these things in the garden.

They eat lettuce.

They eat lettuce.

They eat lettuce.

Why has it got a beak?

They eat lettuce.

He's telling them what it's going to eat now.

The owl's going, fuck that.

I want a mouse.

I love the fact that he's based what it eats on the fact that how it moves a bit like a slug.

Yeah, it'll eat lettuce.

It moves that and it'll eat lettuce.

Like I said, it's not that weird if that existed.

If that was normal, like when you went out to empty your bin, there was one of them sliding up the wall.

You wouldn't even double take.

It'd just be like, oh, there's the owl-head peacock-feathered thing.

I don't know why it's climbing walls in an effort to find lettuce.

Yeah, why is it climbing up that wall?

Because that's the only way it can see properly.

Because its head's coming out like that.

So even though you've designed this animal, now you're even explaining its limitations.

Well, it's mainly made to be on walls.

What else is living on walls?

Oh, God.

Oh, fucking hell.

What a useless animal that is.

Carl, I mean.

But nature chucks up odd things, doesn't it?

Don't.

Why are we starting on this again?

No,

I'm just saying that is nature.

Now and again you'll get you'll get stuff that oh, is he looking at you?

Yeah, was he

look at his fucking head, look at his stupid round fucking orangey head and duh.

Why aren't you a freak?

You've got a little bald head.

We're not meant to be bald.

Well, I was, I think.

That's the thing.

That's what nature's done.

You see, I didn't do anything with my hair when I had hair.

I didn't style it.

I didn't do anything with it.

And it probably thought, what am I doing here?

Whereas people who love their hair and they comb it and have different styles and look after it, they have air for ages and stuff.

No, it's nonsense.

Absolute nonsense.

What are you saying?

Absolute nonsense.

That's a little bit weird, then, isn't it?

And that's what happens with old people once they lose their

will to live, once they lose the job, they get old.

What's my purpose?

What am I doing here?

And it's like nature goes, you're not needed, and they die.

Maybe that's what happened with the dodo.

What's it doing?

It can't fly, its wings are useless.

Eat it, tastes horrible, kill it.

No, they did eat it.

I think they they did eat it.

Yeah, but it wasn't very nice, was it?

I think they over-farmed it.

I think that's why it was extinct.

Because they did eat it.

No, but they did eat it, but they didn't like it.

Everybody,

you never saw a fully eaten carcass of a dodo.

You imagine they are eaten.

All conjecture.

No, but they didn't eat it all.

Everybody would probably try it and go, it's not for me, though.

But you don't know, you don't know this.

What's this based on?

And also, why would that kid it out?

Because I'll tell you why.

Because if it's not nice, people go, don't get another one in.

And they die out.

The reason we've got loads of chickens and loads of cows is because we eat them.

If we ate polar bears, we wouldn't be short of them.

Because you'd farm it, you'd take more care.

But what's a polar bear doing?

Sat on a block of ice floating about.

It's no use to us, is it?

It sounds harsh.

Once again, you've got his information from a glacier mint advert.

It's no use to us.

We know they're there, and it's all very sad when you see them on the news sort of struggling and all that.

Yeah.

But it's going to make them stronger.

If scientists could

bring back to life the creatures that have existed in the past.

Do you think that's a good idea or a bad idea?

Bad idea.

Bad idea?

Now, leaving aside the horrors of Jurassic Park, do you think for research purposes it might be a useful idea?

I don't think it is.

It's for me, it's like a friend reunited.

It's like people who you knew ages ago getting back in touch and you go, I don't want to get in touch with you.

That was then, and it's the same with a mammoth.

That was then, you had your day, it didn't work out.

Now, to bring it back, it's unfair.

You're messing with nature anyway.

I think I've said to you before about I don't know what they do with them, they're massive things.

I think it's like they're just not thinking about it.

It's like rushing into buying furniture that's massive, and then you get it back and you can't get it through the door.

And I'd be like that with a mammoth.

Oh, I didn't think of that.

But what about if you could say you could feed the third world with mammoth meat?

But what's wrong with

we've got loads of cows and stuff?

Why do they need a mammoth?

No one even knows what it tastes like.

Imagine that.

You bring it back and you've got another dodo on your hands.

And you're going, This is welt.

This is horrible.

Well, they used to eat them,'cause they, again,

what they d what humans found out is they uh they could take down a mammoth, but they got greedy and they found out they could uh they could chase them until they'd go over the edge of a cliff.

And what they did, they went crazy and they used to herd them and they'd all die, but of course then they'd waste the meat'cause they couldn't eat it all.

Yeah.

Well, that's that's uh, I think that's why we shouldn't bring them back because they are too big.

So, even if

you hear a word of what you said then, didn't you?

No, I did.

You can do everyone can eat them, but the problem is they're so big that you couldn't eat it quick enough, so it all went off.

Yeah, but I was saying that they killed too many at once.

Yeah, I know.

No,

they heard that.

But what I'm saying is, why not bring back an animal that's smaller, manageable for everyone?

Yeah,

that's why the chicken is perfect.

Out of all the animals, perfect.

Good Good size, feeds a family of four.

Whilst it's alive, it's giving you eggs.

I agree.

So it tastes nice.

But it doesn't if you think it's not having a good life.

If suddenly somebody said to me, I stopped eating it because I found out about how badly they were treated, like ten years ago, and I at least died organic.

And honestly, eating an animal that's been tortured doesn't taste nice.

Fra Grois would make me vomit.

The thought of it, the evil involved in torturing a goose because the liver tastes slightly better.

I mean, where does it end?

I think if they're looked after, they don't want to die.

Then the ones in a nice, warm little, you know, hut being fed lovely food, you're going, right, we're going to cut your head off, and they're probably like, oh, God,

I'm going to miss this.

I'm loving this life.

Whereas the one sat in its own shirts going, have me first, I'm sick of it.

There's different ways of looking at it.

Good point.

So, what you're saying is, give animals a bad life, torture them, and they'll be happy when you eat them.

Brilliant.

But we've ordered a what's it?

We've ordered a turkey.

Right.

It's way too big.

I don't know what we're going to do with it.

And it's worrying me now, actually.

It'll be nice on Christmas Day, but it's my job to look after the kitchen and everything tidy up.

And I don't know what I'm going to do with it all.

The fact that he's been giving the job to make it worthwhile.

Really?

It's like a little home.

No, but a chicken.

Arthur, you're washing up today, aren't you?

Yep.

Arthur's job.

And that's the problem with a mammoth.

I think the idea of it's probably quite pleasant.

You go, well, that's something new to try out.

But afterwards, when you've got to tidy it up and stick it in cling film, you'll be going, how much of this have we got?

So I wouldn't bring back the mammoth.

Brilliant.

Charles Darwin, of course, once said,

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.

His point being that

creatures and their reproductive cycles are so complicated, so intricate, so bizarre, that that alone is proof of the non-existence of God.

Where do you stand on that?

Um

it's it's pretty weird.

We talked about it ages ago, didn't we?

About the wasp that has a thing growing in it and all that.

Lays its egg in a spider.

Yeah, and then the spider goes mad, doesn't it?

You fucking can't lay your eggs in me, you fucking stripey wanker.

It goes absolutely fucking mad.

It is weird.

You got a wasp out of my ass in a couple of what you fucking.

I don't know how it found out that that's what it had to do.

That's the amazing thing, isn't it?

Well, it didn't, did it?

It just did it.

No, no, but when I say found out, I mean it just did it.

Well, it's like mimicry when they say mimicry, you know, that there's

a poisonous snake, and then a snake comes along that looks a bit like it, that's not poisonous.

But people go, ooh, careful, it's poisonous.

That snake didn't go, I'm going to strain and I'm going to try and look like scary over there.

Some were born that looked a bit like scary, and they survived.

It's just being chosen.

But that's changing now, isn't it?

The fact that,

like, when them frogs came out that are dangerous, they were just dangerous.

What frogs came out?

But there's some frogs in the jungle somewhere that were like pretty dangerous.

You from Mattel?

Dangerous frogs in the jungle.

Yeah, but they, but people didn't know that they were dangerous.

And they were going about killing loads of stuff.

Anyway.

They weren't going.

No, they don't go around killing loads of stuff.

Nature said, this is a bit unfair, make them orange.

So then the frogs that were orange were dangerous, but you got a warning.

It's a bit more fair.

Nature said, if they're going to go about being dangerous, make them orange, make them stand out.

In a jungle, orange stands out in all the green.

Right?

So people went, there's an orange frog.

Stay away.

Then over time, nature went, right,

what's happened there now?

Everyone knows the orange frog's dangerous.

Birds aren't eating it because they know it's dangerous.

People are avoiding it.

They don't even need the poison.

It's just the orange it needs.

So now you've got a load of frogs that are orange, not even deadly.

But people go, is that a deadly orange one?

Or is it a friendly one?

Well, best to leave it.

Again, it explained my point, but took 30 times as long overall.

But let me finish what I was going to say.

But what's interesting with all that is, evolution has taught stuff to lie.

Because that orange frog isn't deadly.

It's going about like it's the big I am.

Yeah.

You could squash it with your hand.

You can't do anything.

But evolution.

It's made it lie.

So lying is part of evolution.

But it's not lying, is it?

What do you mean?

Well,

it's got no.

But the interesting thing about

a toad that secretes a poison is that often it's no good for it as an individual, but it's good for the species as a whole, because some will come along and chew it.

Now that toad might well die, but that fox is sick and it doesn't eat another one.

So, it's sort of saving the species.

Yeah, but at the same time, the dodo tasted rubbish.

Everybody said, No, we don't know that.

We don't know that.

We don't know that.

We're not going to hold it.

I have read it.

I've read that they don't taste very nice.

But it did not.

Why should they taste very nice?

In the same way, that chicken's nicer than duck.

You can't all have nice tasting flesh.

Pork's alright, but I prefer beef.

Point proven.

Good night.

So, what I'm saying is, with the dodo,

it did taste horrible, but everyone wanted to give it a go.

Meanwhile, it's different people trying it, so it died out in the end, anyway.

So, your theory of a frog being poisonous and a fox going, yeah, that's horrible, I won't eat another one of them.

Then you get another fox trying one, and another fox, they don't all have a word with each other, do they?

They're going, I had a rotten frog the other night.

So, it's pointless.

It's a pointless exercise.

What I like is your image of nature.

This idea that sort of in your head there's mother nature sat around like a boardroom table making these decisions.

People are coming in, oi, frog, what's been going on?

Well, I've been poisoning people.

Why?

What about you?

It's just you just picture everything as one large thing.

Your confusion is that you still think of evolution as a will.

You still believe that things are striving to be something else as opposed to surviving if they adapt or change.

I just want to um

go through some of the uh

the wonderful diversity of uh nature, um, some of the incredible feats of the animal kingdom, in a way.

Yeah, that's an interesting one.

Alligators and old people have something in common.

They can hear notes only up to 4,000 vibrations a second.

I don't know what you meant to do with that information.

When does that ever come in, Andy?

When a band's getting together, they don't go.

No, we're after crocodiles and old people.

What sort of tune do they like?

It's pointless.

Not impressed, okay.

Scientists have applied electrode to the pleasure centre in a rat's brain.

The rat pressed a lever 48,000 times over a full day in order to receive that shock that seemed to him pleasurable, choosing the simulator instead of having water or food or sex.

So it chose that virtual pleasure.

Well, not virtual pleasure, it gave it real pleasure, but an artificial stimulus rather than than the real thing, like food or water.

It never ate and had water.

It never ate and it couldn't know, it was addicted.

It just it loved this electrode.

It was giving it, it just made it feel good.

It was getting as much pleasure from that as the real thing, from sex or food.

Yeah, but with any pleasure, you get sick of it, don't you?

If you have too much of it, well, it had 48,000 hits in a day.

But I like having a twix.

But if I have more than four a week, I go, I've ruined that little pleasure I used to like.

So, what I'm saying is, what do you do the second day?

No, you go near the machine the second day.

No, no.

Let it go then.

No, no, no, no, no.

But what you're saying is this, right?

That Twix is failing to give you pleasure on that fifth Twix.

But this succeeds every time because it's literally pleasure.

It hits the part of the brain that says this is pleasurable.

So

my

pleasure nerve

in my head.

It lights up when it twix.

I don't think it ever lights up.

I don't think you've got a pleasure nerve.

But it lights up when I have a Twix.

It lights up

if there's something,

if there's some chicken.

It lights up if there's a.

What a miserable cunt he is.

You know,

all loads of things.

Chicken and Twix.

That's all he lives for.

No.

King yourself, mate.

So, what you're saying is, if I had that device that the rat's got, I'd just sit there hitting it thinking, I can't really bother going to the shop for a Twix, I'll just hit this button.

Yeah.

Think of this.

So aggressive is the horned frog of Argentina that people believe that if the frog bites the lip of a horse, the horse will die.

Actually, the frog's mouth contains no poison.

It earned its fearsome reputation because it attacks animals many times its size.

What do you think of a frog attacking a horse?

I don't know what's going on.

I don't know why that would happen.

Why is it getting upset with a horse?

Of all the things for a frog to be getting cocky with, then two should never even meet.

Why?

Why?

Why?

Because it's not, I mean, fights are normally over something, aren't they?

Yeah.

If you have a fight with someone, you're in my yard, or you know,

you're fighting over something.

A horse.

It goes back to the 1930s.

Yeah.

You're in my yard.

But a horse and a frog.

How did that disagree with that?

I don't understand what they've got in common.

I don't understand it.

I bet that's only happened once.

It's a rare incident, someone's to put that in a book.

I can't imagine it that that's happening a lot, that horses are being bit by frogs all over the shop.

Oh, God.

I saw this trailer

for this documentary that said

the man who's having a baby.

And I turned on, and

it's a woman going through a sex change, and she's pregnant.

That's not a man having a baby.

That's a woman having a beard.

Having a breakdown.

Why is that?

What?

That's a con.

That is pure sense.

It's a man having a baby.

Look, the world's supposed to w no, it's a woman.

It's a woman.

What do you think of that?

What would you do if you're a doctor?

And I came to you and went, Carl, listen, I'm having a bit of a rethink of these.

I don't

the penis, I hate it.

I hate this cock.

But what do you mean you hate it?

I hate it, I don't want it there.

It doesn't look right.

It doesn't look right.

It just sits there resting on these fucking awful testicles that I'm going to get rid of.

I want this thrown away.

Yeah, well, it's, you know, they're not a great look.

I know that.

Everyone knows that.

It's just the way they are.

I mean, if we're all being honest, they're an odd design.

I don't think anyone likes their own, do they?

That's why we cover them.

They're not a great thing, are they?

Well, it's not why we cover them, though, is it?

It's part of it, I think.

I think deep down, I mean, even if, like, I know you ate the Adam and Eve thing, but even if back then he was like, good God, cover him up, and he had a leaf on.

No, but listen.

So, are you thinking fundamentally then that aesthetically the testicles and the penis isn't as good as it could be?

What would you have there instead?

Well, it's designed that way, because that's the way it's got to be designed.

It's more about function than

that's the thing, isn't it?

With modern technology,

you know the thing is the testicles have to be outside because they have to be a few degrees below body temperature.

Yeah.

Otherwise the satoli cells die which sort of feeds the semen and all that.

So they you know to to be functioning and sort of like fertile, they have to be outside which is annoying because I'd put a little rib cage around them like that.

I'd pop a rib cage round those, protect them, wear a cricket box, have that built in so you cannot get a kick in a swift kick in the mollock to make sure they'll sink.

But it'd be better if they could sort of reverse up in a way that

they were hidden away.

So that they would just, then you dropped them.

It's like, right, we need to cool them down, be at it in about half an hour.

Yes.

Drop them down.

Yeah, like the gear on an aeroplane, landing gear.

Yeah, and

the bollocks and the cooling ground.

Or you could just pop them in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Or they could detach and you could pop them in the fridge, of course.

Yeah.

Can you make me some breasts?

Easy.

Okay.

When you say easy, what are you going to do?

What's your plan?

Just uh.

How do you do that?

It's tablets, isn't it?

No, but testerone, right?

Testerone.

Toblerone.

I want to, yeah, I want some toblerone.

Just sort of pointy, pointy tits.

Like Madonna.

Where do you stop though?

Supposing I came to you and said, Doctor, listen,

I like the bollocks, I like the penis, but I don't like them where they are.

I want them in the middle of my chest.

I want breasticles.

Yeah.

The arse, I don't like it around the back.

I can't see what's going on.

Pop that on the front where the bollocks were.

I want my ass where I can look down and see what's going on.

Can you do it?

I think it's just easier to move the head.

Rick, I know you're a big fan of Professor Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist.

He wrote a book, The Ancestor's Tale, in which he predicted a post-human world.

This was his, you know, his kind of hypothesis.

If we were to

well, let me read what he's written.

If nuclear war destroys humanity and most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term is rats.

I have a post-Armageddon vision.

We and all the other large animals animals are gone.

Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers.

They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo, digesting spilled larders, ghost supermarkets and human corpses and turning them into new generations of rats and mice whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside.

When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again and the rodents turn on each other and on the cockroaches scavenging with them.

In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactivity enhanced mutation rates, boost rapid evolution.

With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings.

Ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence.

Within five million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know.

Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats.

Given enough time, will a species of intelligent cultivated rats emerge?

Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs and through the strats of our long-compacted cities reconstruct the peculiar and temporally tragic circumstances that gave ratkind its big break?

Carl, thoughts?

I mean, who knows what's going to happen.

Well, that's about it for the second in the series of The Ricky Gervais Guide to.

That was natural history.

I think we've left no stone unturned there, Rick.

I think that is a definitive work.

If you've enjoyed the Ricky Gervais Guide to Natural History, why not go back and listen to The Ricky Giver's Guide to Medicine if you haven't already?

Or even if you have,

because it'll be revision.

You know what I mean?

There will be a test.

There won't be a test.

There won't be a test.

You can't be bothered.

And next in the series is the Ricky Gervais' Guide to the Arts.

Look forward to that.

So just clarify that's the arts.

Yeah.

Right, just not the arts.

Sorry, just the arts.

Well, yeah, I mean.

You should never go away.

People speak your words.

Just be clarity, be clear.

Well, no, you may be clear.

You're not being cloudy, clear, clarifying.

You're making a dumb bumbling fool.

And we won't even get on to Carl Pilkington.

Dopey type.

Anyway, thank you very much from me, Ricky Gervais.

With me, Stephen Merchant.

Goodbye.

And Carl Pilkington.

Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program.