the rhinoceros it's got its own bodyguards and its skin sweats blood but you won't believe what gives the rhinos horn its point it's one of the fastest healing structures that we know of then the tiger it has fangs that can feel and there are secret messages in its stripes plus they're perfectly designed to turn meat into pure muscle i mean people are scared of bears bears are scared of tigers and find out where it's illegal for two pigs to copulate where you can't push a moose from an airplane and what you can't do with your donkey in arizona that is the weirdest law [Music] this is where savage meets science and wild becomes wow [Music] this is everything you didn't know about animals it's over 2 000 pounds heavier than a military-grade hummer yet still faster than usain bolt and there's a secret in its horn that makes it tougher than the sun it's built like a tank sometimes acts like a puppy and it was once the biggest mammal to ever walk the earth it's the rhinoceros the rhinoceros is the second biggest land mammal next to the elephant but the impressive secrets it hides are second to none they seem to be an enigma in a lot of ways a lot of the things that appear to be the case in rhinos are not necessarily the case when you learn about them to prove it we're examining the most surprising ways in which the rhinoceros is not what it seems starting at the beginning of the rhino's face the whole point of this animal its horn the rhinoceros is the only mammal alive that has a horn on its nose because of the black market trade rhinoceros horn is one of the most expensive materials on earth more valuable than cocaine heroin gold or even platinum [Music] but what makes this sphere so special it's not like it's the only horn around from antelope to zebus a lot of animals have horns and for a lot of different reasons but the one thing almost all of them have in common is a strong core made of solid bone not so with the rhinoceros rhinos do something different in that what they do is rather than have a bony horn core they build the entire thing out of keratin the same material that we have in our fingernails and in our hair the horn is made up of soft tubules of keratin proteins that interweave to create a hard keratin matrix it's more close in consistency to a horse's hoof or a sea turtle's beak than a bull's bony horns believe it or not one of the only other known examples of an animal growing a horn out of mostly keratin is in humans because of a rare skin disorder a french woman named madame dimanche once grew a nearly 10 inch keratin horn on her forehead for some reason she waited six years to have it removed the biggest rhino horn on record was nearly five feet long which would almost be like carrying around one full-grown mary kate or ashley olsen in fact a rhino's horn never stops growing and the horn hides another secret that not only gives it its shape but helps make it strong enough to take on the sun [Music] in the deserts and savannahs where rhinos roam the sun can be as tough as any predator our skin and our keratinized structures are very sensitive to uv light and so is the rhinos horn but only recently professor lawrence whitmer used ct scanners to reveal something inside the horn that makes it tough enough to stand up to the elements so what i've got here is actually the the back horn from a white rhino this is really interesting this was completely unexpected it never been described before and this dark band is actually formed of the pigment called melanin melanin the same dark pigment that gives us humans our tans and what's interesting about melanin is that it's resistant to the ultraviolet rays that come from the sun so even if the sun wears away the soft outer layers of keratin the tough melanin core keeps the horn intact and gives it its pointed shape [Music] it kind of looks like a cross between an elephant and a hippo but that's just another way the rhinoceros is not what it seems the truth is it's more closely related to zebras and horses and the way you can tell is by looking at the toes [Music] these are animals that have an odd number of toes so we sometimes refer to this group as being what we call odd-towed ungulates the foot makeup if you saw the skeleton looks quite like a horse's foot and just like with the horse that odd number of toes makes the rhino surprisingly light on its feet a team of veterinarians in the united kingdom have been studying rhinoceros locomotion and they found that even though rhinos can weigh up to four tons walking on three toes each toe only feels a peak pressure of around 75 pounds per square inch [Music] to put that in perspective when a 110 pound ballerina is on point she's feeling a whopping 583 pounds of pressure per square inch on her toes so a rhino is actually feeling 508 fewer pounds per square inch on its toes than a ballerina rhino swan link anyone [Music] the great thespian ethel barrymore great aunt of drew barrymore once said for an actress to be a success she must have the face of venus the figure of juno and the hide of a rhinoceros her point you gotta have thick skin and at up to two inches the rhinoceros has some of the thickest in the animal kingdom a full inch thicker than an elephant's but in the wild no armor can withstand all blows that's why a rhino skin has an amazing back-up plan rhino skin is one of the fastest healing structures that we know of and scientists have been studying it trying to wonder why they heal so well if you see a rhino fighting together and they get scratches all over their face [Music] the next day it almost completely healed i mean it's amazing this amazing ability may have something to do with the makeup of the skin itself layer upon layer of thick criss-crossing collagen fibers arranged in a lattice structure which as it turns out may provide the perfect scaffolding for new cell growth scientists in china are already using collagen extracted from tilapia skin to accelerate wound healing in lab rats but there's an even bigger secret hiding behind that amazing skin one almost unheard of in the wild they sweat blood i'm not kidding when rhinos sweat they have kind of a red tinge sweat and if you look at it under the microscope you see red blood cells why is that why do rhinos have red blood cells in their sweat nobody knows it's fascinating [Music] the white rhinos head alone can weigh up to 1 000 pounds as much as two full-grown lions but what's hiding out inside that head may be one of the most misunderstood parts of the rhino yet can you guess the surprising weight of a rhino's brain is it a as heavy as a croquet ball b as heavy as a bowling ball or c as heavy as a medicine ball [Music] the rhinoceros its head alone can weigh up to 1 000 pounds but before the break we asked you to guess the surprising weight of the brain inside is it a as heavy as a croquet ball b as heavy as a bowling ball or c as heavy as a medicine ball the answer is a only as heavy as a croquet ball [Music] when we look at the brain and the brain cavity of rhinos it's pretty small [Music] the frame can be maybe not more in a pound for an animal that can be eight thousand pounds that's a body to brain ratio of eight thousand to one if humans have that same ratio our three pound brains weigh just 10 grams about as light as four pennies [Music] a group of rhinos is called a crash no one knows why but before two solo rhinos can make a crash they have to meet each other and while modern man often uses social media to hook up the rhinoceros has a much lower tech solution their profiles are in their poop [Music] rhinos defecate every day and they usually defecate in what's called a midden it's basically a spot dedicated to where they defecate and the average rhino can drop 50 pounds of dung every 24 hours as much as a whole bale of hay but they're not just leaving behind waste they're also placing secret chemical cues other rhinos can smell to gather intel about the owner we can almost view these dung heaps as sort of being like their own little twitter feed or facebook profile where they've actually got um information about themselves that are in these dump piles now they can tell if it's a young rhino or an old rhino or a male from a female or if the female is in estrus or not ready to breed [Music] and so these rhinos will be looking at other dung heaps and getting information about their social network and if another rhino wants to leave the owner a message he just adds to the pile the equivalent of posting to someone's wall over time some of these mittens can reach three feet tall and 16 feet across as wide and almost as high as an above-ground pool smelling these piles a rhino can do everything from finding a mate to avoiding fatal encounters so in a very real way the survival of the species depends on smelling poop with massive nasal passages and an olfactory system that takes up the majority of the brain a rhino's sense of smell is among the strongest in the animal kingdom animals like rhinos live in a different world it's a world of odors that we don't really understand but then the rhino had to develop a strong sense of smell because when it comes to its eyes things are much less acute [Music] they can only see if you know a couple hundred yards and even then not very clearly in fact if the object isn't moving and can't be smelled the rhino may not be able to differentiate it from a tree but they're not flying completely blind they've got some help they've got sort of an onboard sensory system which are these birds that tend to hang around with with rhinos in swahili they're called the rhinos guard their scientific name is the oxpeckers the rhino calls them both their eyes in the sky and onboard parasite control they're eating ticks and bugs and helping keep the rhino skin clean but when their predator comes around they start squawking and flying they're the ones who alert the rhino quite like a car alarm will alert you that someone's stealing your car that means predators rarely have a chance to get the jump on a rhino it's also why there's no such thing as grand theft rhino [Music] the rhinoceros has a reputation for being big and aggressive but is everything as it seems easy one unsuspecting tourist in africa is about to find out [Music] krueger national park a tourist finds the road blocked by an aggressive white rhino he tries to go around slowly but then the animal the frightened charges just barely gets away but not before a hard slam from the raging beast at least it looked like it was raging but what's really going on here and are rhinos really the aggressive animals they appear to be they can be unpredictable and particularly if you get between a rhino and its baby but in all other circumstances they have no desire to hurt you i mean they're herbivores they don't eat meat in fact some rhinos are more playful puppy than raging ball the rhinos actually liked human touch and they love being scratched behind their ears under their eyes and around their mouth they're very gentle that way and rhino skin parts of it are very very soft like the part inside the lower leg where you rub or on the abdomen or under the eye these folds under the eyes it's like petting velvet i mean it's just amazing so who knows that charging rhino might just be coming in for a rub today there are five species of rhinoceros alive on earth the black the white the indian the javin and the sumatran which is the closest living relative of the extinct woolly rhino but 30 million years ago 35 million years after the age of dinosaurs rhinos were much more varied ranging in size from your average german shepherd to this its name is paraceratherium and unlike modern rhinos it didn't have a horn it didn't need one because this beast did and still does hold the title of biggest mammal ever to walk the earth this rhino stood more than 20 feet so they stood higher than two school buses they weighed an estimated 20 to 25 tons which is about the size of four bull elephants now rhinos are among the most endangered animals on the planet but if current conservation efforts succeed millions of years in the future the rhinoceros might look very different than it does now [Music] i mean who knows maybe there'll be several hundred species like there used to be if it gets a little colder we might see the resurgence of something that we had 10 12 15 million years ago which was the woolly rhino and maybe they'll be hornless forms and giant rhinos like giraffe that are feeding off the trees in california or new york it's hard to say what rhinos will look like in the future hopefully still a little something like this the rhinoceros may be one of the biggest [Music] but size isn't everything and some of the most powerful animals on the planet [Music] are no bigger than a baseball these are our top three most amazing small wonders [Music] number three is on the list because it may provide a link to understanding how alcohol consumption started in humans it's the pen tailed tree shrew this rarely seen shrew chronically consumes fermented nectar and at any given second has a blood alcohol level that could kill people it's the equivalent to a human drinking 12 glasses of wine in under two hours i i would be on the ground [Music] number two on our countdown of small time heavy hitters puts even the most macho man to shame it's the honey possum it's just half the size of a mouse but it has in relation to the size of its body [Music] the biggest testicles of any animal on earth if humans had testicles that size i mean they literally would have water melons in their pants [Music] but few animals are as amazing as our number one small wonder in fact if you can get past the freak factor you'll find an animal so powerful it could make life more livable for humans it's the naked mole rat [Music] they can get by on just 33 the amount of oxygen as other creatures their size which may be one reason why naked mole rats never age unlike other animals its size which live just a few years naked mole rats are capable of scraping out a life in the tunnels for over 30 years that makes them the longest living rodents in the world [Music] and not only are they living that long time but they're showing almost no signs of aging in really long periods of drought where they can't find food they can reduce their metabolic intake up to 25 that's just so amazing take a good look these wrinkles could be the new face of eternal youth but not only could they be the key to us living longer they may also help make that quality of life better because they could help eliminate pain in people naked mole rats lack a key neurotransmitter in their skin called substance p it's what communicates pain to their brain it's believed to be an adaptation to living underground where high amounts of carbon dioxide would build up painful acids in a normal mammal's body and so there might be some really key medical breakthroughs in in understanding pain management or developing new pain medicines based on this but as if all these abilities weren't crazy enough the naked mole rat takes it one step further its most incredible adaptation yet they are completely resistant to cancer the naked mole rat has special molecules that prevent cells from overcrowding which may limit out-of-control cancer growth cancer has never been observed in a naked mole rat and these are being examined to understand cancers better and possibly be able to prevent cancers or fight cancers in humans [Music] so take time to appreciate the little things out there they may not always be pretty but they may help keep us alive some say they can stay standing even after they die [Music] they can strip the face off an antelope with their tongues they eat bears all that and some people believe there may be a secret symbol hidden in their stripes the tiger is next [Music] it has the strength of 13 men and the most powerful bite of any cat even its tongue has teeth some species weigh more than three sumo wrestlers combined and they all have special genes that give them super strength this is the tiger in siberia some bears have taken to living in tree nests like frightened birds and it's all because of the biggest cat on earth you think of bears being the top of the food chain but not where there's tigers tigers have been documented killing both black bears and brown bears where they coexist with them but to get the upper paw on something as tough as a bear the tiger must be a mixture of both stealth and size cunning and execution an animal in perfect balance [Music] to find out what makes the tiger such an amazing predator we're taking a look at some of its most impressive yins and yangs beginning with this a tiger must be the perfect balance of both power and precision [Music] this is a gower at up to 2 000 pounds it's like a cow on steroids according to some reports it takes more than 13 full-grown men just to budge this beast or one tiger i think that that really does highlight just how incredibly powerful these animals are in comparison to people much stronger than 13 men in fact a tiger's legs are so strong it's said that they can stay standing even after they die in 2013 scientists looking into what makes this big cat so powerful did the first ever sequencing of a tiger's genome what they found is that tigers have specific genes that have evolved to quickly turn the meat they eat into stronger more powerful muscles so that's the power but where's the precision huge four-inch canines bite with deadly accuracy thanks to a surprising mechanism hidden inside the teeth the canines are packed with sensitive nerve endings that actually feel like fingers they're called mechanoreceptors and they allow the tiger's teeth to find the perfect place for the quickest kill within milliseconds they can perfectly position those canines to deliver that sinking bite this is not a tiger but it's not far off either because even the fiercest tiger is the perfect balance of both kitten and cat tigers share about 95.6 of the same dna as domestic cats of course at up to 700 pounds the tiger is no house cat which is not to say some people don't still try to own them by some estimates there are between 5 000 and 7 000 tigers and other big cats owned as pets in the united states alone more than exist in the wild outside of india the world's second largest population of tigers is in texas a lot of those tigers are in rescue sanctuaries since most people come to realize apex predators don't make great pets [Music] in the sunderbins region of india the people wear masks on the backs of their heads and it's not a fashion statement it's to protect against tigers before this practice human encroachment into wild habitats led to around 100 humans being eaten every year [Music] since the big cats rely on the element of surprise creating the illusion of having eyes in the back of your head has reduced the number of attacks on mask wearers down to zero [Music] but mask or no mask tiger attacks are still extremely rare because tiger moms raised their cubs better than that using the perfect balance of nature and nurture tigers certainly aren't born man-eaters usually tigers will kill and selectively kill the prey that their mother teaches them to hunt and so you know to pray switch to people is a big jump and usually you have to be pretty hard-pressed but it is true that tigers need meat if mom does her job right and her cub makes it to adulthood it will need 6 000 pounds of biomass a year to survive for a human that would be like eating eight full porterhouse steaks every day for a whole year tigers are hyper carnivores so they get absolutely no nutrition from anything but meat once a tiger does leave the nest it's off to live a life of solitude or so it's thought while the general rule is that lions are the only truly social cat newer research suggests tigers might have more family ties than previously believed there was a tigress that was observed her name was padmini she killed a very large prey animal and she and her cubs that were 14 months old sat for hours eating this large ungulate and after a while three other individual tigers came by and started sharing this meat come to find out later on they were her adult offspring that had come back for for dinner essentially it seems even full-grown tigers can't resist one of mom's home-killed meals believe it or not what some people think of as the saber-toothed tiger wasn't a tiger at all can you guess which of these replacement names we should be calling this fanged beast is it a a saber-toothed lion b a saber-toothed possum or c a saber-toothed pig plus the perfect balance of both sex and violence are there secret messages hidden in a tiger stripes some cultures believe so to the chinese the lines on a tiger's head look like the character wayne meaning king but some of the earliest tigers weren't tigers at all [Music] before the break we asked you what name might be more fitting for what most people know as the saber-tooth tiger is it a a saber-toothed lion b a saber-toothed possum or c a saber-toothed fig put away the cat food the answer is b a saber-toothed possum [Music] there's different saber-toothed cats what we truly think of of the saber-tooth tiger was was actually a marsupial so it's related to animals like possums today the tiger plays possum for no one it is a perfect predator at the very top of the food chain but it takes a special mix to achieve that status including the perfect balance of both light and dark tigers are the only wild cats with true stripes and each tiger's stripes are as unique as a fingerprint software engineers have even designed a program that uses photos of a tiger's stripes to create a 360 degree image which can be used to automatically id an individual tiger in the wild the software can also help catch poachers by identifying their illegal furs [Music] but it's not just the tiger's fur that's striped get brave enough to shave a tiger and you'll find that its skin is striped too the tiger's fur grows out of dark strips of pigment called melanin creating the pattern we see on the surface [Music] while having bright orange fur and bold stripes might not seem like good camouflage this is where the balance of light and dark really comes in computer analysis shows that the stripes of a tiger are finely tuned to match the natural light and dark patterns of background foliage it's amazing how quickly those stripes actually help that cat to melt into the background and help break up its outline it clearly has such an incredible role in helping it to be an effective hunter also helping the tiger be an effective hunter the perfect balance of both slow and fast the tiger kills with incredible speed with the strongest bite of all the cats it can clamp down on an animal's throat suffocating it in seconds from there it only gets deadlier because even the tiger's tongue has teeth take a closer look here we see little backward facing barbs like mini fangs they're called papilla and they're perfectly designed to strip the fur off meat but before the tiger can make short work of its meal it must be one of the most patient predators on earth first they find the perfect ambush spot and they will go time and time again to that same area to hunt then like a cobra ready to strike it can hold this position according to some accounts for anywhere between 12 and 48 hours every single muscle is ready to just explode i mean just the sheer amount of strength that that tiger has to have to be able to do that is is incredible anyone that does yoga you know i mean you hold that pose for a few minutes i mean your muscles are burning in fact according to one website the current public record for the longest time a human has held a dancer's pose is just six minutes and 52 seconds that's holding a pose 47 hours and 53 minutes less than a tiger it takes a lot of space to accommodate a cat this big a single siberian tiger needs as much as 600 square miles worth of resources it's almost half the size of the state of rhode island just to kind of put that in perspective that need for so much personal space is one of the reasons we don't usually see tigers hanging out in prides like lions but staying apart is no way to keep the species going so when it comes to procreation tigers maintain the perfect balance of sex and violence [Music] tigers are basically so solitary that the males and females generally it's only mating when they come across each other females want nothing to do with males most of the time but all of her hormones just kind of overrule her her wanting to be solitary for a few day window during that window the female will spray little pheromone laced forget-me-nots wherever she roams letting males know she's receptive male tigers can follow a female scent trail for miles up to 18 miles in one night that's like walking up and down pikes peak in colorado nearly four times in 12 hours just for the possibility of a date [Music] but once two tigers finally find each other it's all worth it [Music] he will mate with her multiple times every day for several days in a row and so they'll stay together they may hunt together they might feed together they'll pretty much do everything together until she's no longer receptive anymore and then all of a sudden you know she just will turn around and she'll swat him in the face then that's it and then he has to get out of there no call you later or even a thanks for the good time just one very painful walk of shame it's got both the power and the patience secret stripes i hate seeking teeth but is this apex predator tough enough to take on another larger-than-life champion one of the most highly skilled athletes of all time tiger woods an epic battle of undisputed champions next the tiger really is a perfectly balanced creature right down to its bones its hind legs are longer than the front which helps propel the tiger up to 10 feet high at the same time its solid four limb bones support large muscles allowing them to wrestle big prey to the ground but as flawless as the tiger seems to be there is another perfectly balanced competitor out there one with a peak body and skills to give the tiger a run for its money it's tiger versus tiger tiger woods weighs about 185 pounds and stands tall at six foot one an average siberian tiger weighs between 400 and 700 pounds and stretched out end to end would stand up to 11 feet tall so that's advantage tiger a tiger can also see six times better in the dark than tiger woods so it would probably win any night tournaments but now the competition really heats up let's take it to the lakes wrong links when tiger woods hits the ball his club reaches a top speed of 130 miles per hour when a tiger hits its prey it's at less than 40 miles per hour advantage woods tiger woods can drive a ball nearly 400 yards a tiger that's like what a foot tiger woods has won 26 of all pga events he's ever entered has a driving accuracy of 46.4 and can sink a putt from six feet or closer with an amazing 100 accuracy a real tiger only catches prey one out of every 10 hunts an accuracy rate of just 10 it's not looking good for the tiger especially since with all of his achievements tiger woods was number one in the world for an incredible 683 weeks but hold up because the actual tiger has been the number one predator in its environment for over 2 million years so according to the laws of nature unless tiger woods uncovers the fountain of youth the tiger is and always will be the most perfectly balanced champion in the land disclaimer never play golf for the tiger according to the internet it's illegal for two pigs in kingsville texas to fornicate on airport property that's unfortunate because i really was hoping to do my peak population study right here in terminal three that's not cool our sources haven't confirmed if that law is true but there are plenty of actual animal laws in the books some of them just make sense these these are not those laws [Music] in oklahoma it is illegal to wrestle bears or trip horses in arizona you can do a lot of things with your donkey but be careful putting it to bed because here donkeys are prohibited from sleeping in bathtubs farther up north in what many consider to be the last frontier locals don't have to worry about falling ungulates thankfully in alaska it is illegal to push a moose out of an airplane [Music] that is the weirdest law [Music] in california it is illegal to trap birds in a cemetery and on the other side of the country in connecticut there's a law that states dogs cannot have tattoos i i don't know what to tell you i can tell you that they just passed the law that mexican wolves are not allowed to cross the i-40 i don't know who's gonna stand there with a sign telling the wolves not to cross but that's like in the state of virginia on sundays it is illegal to hunt raccoons until 2 a.m it's at 2 a.m monday morning or saturday night in the city that houses the pro football hall of fame canton ohio if you lose your pet tiger they'll flag you with a penalty if you don't notify the authorities in one hour an hour you have an hour to report your man-eater to the authorities an hour a lot can be killed in an hour ohio so remember the next time you're hanging out with animals keep it legal [Music] [Music] you