Richard Hammond's Miracles of Nature

Richard Hammond continues his exploration of weird and wonderful animal abilities by focusing on super-senses, and discovers how those same animal senses have inspired some unlikely human inventions. Richard gets buried in a Californian gold mine, attempts to talk to a rattlesnake by telephone, and is taken for a ride by a monster truck that drives itself. Along the way, he encounters elephants who can talk to each other through solid rock; seals who use their whiskers to sense the shape, size, speed and direction of an object that passed over thirty seconds earlier; and a blind cyclist who relies on fruit bats to get him safely down a twisting mountain bike trail.

Richard Hammond reveals secret animal abilities from the natural world, and discovers how those same animals have inspired a series of unlikely human inventions at the very frontiers of science. Unfortunately for Hammond, that journey will involve diving to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, driving a car pursued by geese, and leaping 500 metres off a South African cliff. In this first episode, he discovers how the Cape vulture has inspired a flying submarine; how a giraffe's neck can stop a jet pilot losing consciousness; how a woodpecker's skull can safely protect a light bulb dropped from space; and how a South American butterfly holds the secret to making any mobile phone waterproof.