NARRATOR: Thousand Oaks,
California, May 2017.
Ancient astronaut
theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos
visits the Ventura
BioCenter to examine
one of Earth's most
curious creatures,
the Bombardier beetle.
This little bug is a
marvel of evolution,
or some say, intelligent design.
Peter, good to see you.
Giorgio nice to see you.
And this is Tom.
Hello, Tom.
- Nice to meet you.
- It's a pleasure.
How's it going.
Tom is our insect
wrangler who's
going to help us set
up a demonstration
on one of the coolest animals
on Earth, the Bombardier beetle.
That's fantastic
because about a year ago,
Erich von Daniken
gave me his latest
manuscript for his newest book.
And we all know that there are
these multiple creatures that
seem to defy
Darwinian evolution.
And one creature that
jumped out at me,
that I hadn't heard before,
was this beetle right here.
This beetle is fascinating
from an evolutionary point
of view.
In fact, it's been
used by many people
to suggest that evolution
doesn't work at all.
And the reason is the enormous
complexity of this thing.
This animal is a
chemical warrior.
It's able to shoot out
boiling hot streams
of a really toxic liquid
that have the same sort
of mix as rocket fuel.
That's amazing.
And it could shoot over 500
of these bursts per second.
Wow.
But the process
happens so fast, it's
almost in a blink of an eye.
So we have a high speed camera
over here that could shoot
about 2,500 frames per second.
And with that camera, we
can slow down this process.
And then seeing that
process, we can work out
the exact sequence of events.
So let's set this up with Tom
and watch this take place.
- Let's do it.
- OK, guys.
So what I've got is some
nontoxic, very mild adhesive.
And I'm just going to touch
it to the beetle's back.
And that will suspend
him in the air.
We're going to give him a
little bit of stimulation
with these forceps.
It simulates the predator
and makes him feel defensive.
Oops, there it was.
NARRATOR: While it is almost
imperceptible to the naked eye,
with the high speed
camera, the beetle
can be seen blasting
rapid fire streams
of deadly chemicals, directed
at any would-be predator.
Oh, wow.
- There it goes.
- How cool.
It project it in that
particular direction.
Right.
You can actually see the
squirts, the mist, the vapor.
The appendage which allows
this to happen can rotate.
It can move back and forth.
So it can shoot this in lots
of different directions.
Yeah, this is really awesome.
NARRATOR: Dr. Ward has set
up a computer generated model
of the Bombardier
beetle to show Giorgio
the incredible process that is
taking place inside its body.
You've got the organs
that produce the chemicals.
And two separate
chemicals are being made.
We've got this
hydroquinone, which
is actually a makeup of the
organics of the creature.
It's part of its
external skeleton.
The second one is a
chemical called hydrogen
peroxide, which is rocket fuel.
Now, if we combine
these two together
in a chamber, what we can do
is build this chemical material
that's going to get
really hot and blast
out the back of the bug.
So one of the coolest things
about this whole system,
it's got a one-way valve.
Once this chemical concoction
that's getting really hot
starts reacting, the
last thing you want
is having it blast back into
the interior of your body.
So it can direct it.
It squirts out this super
hot, super toxic material
into that predator's face.
And one has to
wonder, what was
the evolutionary process of
this beetle for that defense
mechanism to even exist?
Yeah, that's the
critical question.
If evolution takes
place in step by step,
what's the intermediate?
How does this thing not
blow itself up as it's
experimenting through time?
And how do you go
from just a garden
variety beetle to a
super beetle like this?
Mm-hmm.
One has to wonder if this
creature, perhaps, was brought
here in its finished
form, or at least
the genetic material
for this creature
came here as a finished product.
NARRATOR: Could the physiology
of the Bombardier beetle
be proof that there are
animals on this planet
of extraterrestrial design?
The gases that the beetle emits
can burn the skin of humans.
And if the mechanism it
holds within its body
was constructed
on a larger scale,
it could be a very
deadly chemical weapon.
Is it possible that aliens
placed certain creatures
on this planet so that
humans can learn from them
and recreate their abilities?
