REVIEW: Chris Packham's Animal Einsteins, Series 1 Episode Five 'Con Artists'

 REVIEW: Chris Packham's Animal Einsteins, Series 1 Episode Five 'Con Artists'

As anyone who has ever owned a pet will know, animals can be very mischievous. Whether it is to steal that piece of bacon or seek your affection, animals can sometimes know exactly how to play the right cards. So it wasn't too surprising to see an episode of Animal Einsteins about (in their words) 'con artists'.

What was perhaps a bigger surprise was what we find out about magpies. Before today we had been led to believe that magpies seek shiny objects, but no. During a game of poker with the infamous species of bird, Chris Packham tells us that this is all an urban myth. In actual fact, they go for darker objects. This is a really neat fact, due to the very nature that it directly contradicts what we thought we already knew, and it makes me wonder what other commonly held beliefs about animals are actually a lie.

Another really cool piece of information concerns how cheetah cubs avoid their prey. They have this very cunning tactic of disguising themselves as honey badgers, and it's actually quite convincing. It's no wonder that other animals fall for it so easily.

The alicon caterpillars are more cunning than you'd probably expect also. These caterpillars disguise themselves as ant larvae, so that the ants take them into their homes. Once inside, these caterpillars produce a sound deliberately identical to that of a queen ant, so that they are treated like royalty, cleaned and given their food portions first. You have got to applaud just how ingenious this plan is. What better way to get the supplies you require than to falsely pass yourself as being of royal blood?

One thing I didn't expect to see going into this episode was otters displaying a roguish side. Otters, as a species, tend to be seen as this innocent and cuddly aquatic species. And yet here they are acting like escaped convicts from Coronation Street. We are shown how a male otter kidnaps a female otter cub to hold as ransom for food, and it's shocking just how dark a turn what appeared to be footage of otters playing in the sea turned out to be. You really wouldn't think otters would have this dark criminal underworld, but they do, and the evidence is right here.

It gets darker than that however, with another marine species that is typically thought of as sweet and harmless. You see, male dolphins, we are told, actually seek to murder their own kind, to lay claim over others' offspring. The plan the female dolphins come up with to counteract these vicious attacks reads partly like the plot to Mamma Mia. They purposefully mate with different male dolphins to produce a number of young dolphins to various fathers, so that the male dolphins never know who the real Dads are. It's a weird move for sure, but there is a real stroke of intelligence to this level of trickery for sure.

The chuff birds, we are informed, do something similar, albeit without the element of murder. Instead, they lure the young of other families over to their own, to help with their own chicks. It's the notion that many hands make light work that takes precedence here, which makes sense, although it does seem cruel to the true families of those chicks, who lose their sons or daughters.

One thing viewers of this show would probably be wise to avoid is mentioning the topic of cuttlefish to any misogynists out there. These cuttlefish have this intriguing ability to trick their rivals by flashing male colours on one side of their body, and female colours on the other. This means that when the cuttlefish are trying to mate, to their male rivals it looks as though it is two females hanging out, but the female on the other hand sees a male cuttlefish trying to attract her attention. This seems a very neat little ruse, and again shows how clever nature is.

As does the fireflies' use of morse code. This is a weird one, as we tend to associate morse code with the Second World War, but here we see fireflies using it to attract mates, to which the females respond with their own signals. It's certainly a different use of morse code than the wartime efforts we tend to learn about at school, that's for sure.

Overall this was another fascinating episode of Animal Einsteins. We are presented with yet more interesting facts concerning nature's clever side, and it becomes strikingly more obvious as this series moves forward that we as humans have grossly underestimated these other species. We may pride ourselves on intelligence compared to other animals on this planet, but from what we are shown here we actually have much tougher competition than we realise.

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What are your thoughts on Animal Einsteins' fifth episode? Let me know in the comments.