"Well... good evening where tonight we're having fun with flora and fauna." "vegetable and mineral only...without the mineral." "Jimmy Carr." "APPLAUSE Thank you very much." "John Sergeant." "APPLAUSE" "Jo Brand." "APPLAUSE Alan Davies." "APPLAUSE let's go wild with our buzzers." "John goes..." "LION GROWLING" "LAUGHTER" "Jimmy goes..." "WOLF HOWLING" "Jo goes..." "ELEPHANT TRUMPETING" "LAUGHTER" "And Alan goes..." "MONKEY CHATTERING" "GLASS SMASHING dear." "Well done." "So let's start on our sofa-bound safari." "What does my buttonhole tell you about me?" "TRUMPETING" "That you're a closet heterosexual." "How dare you!" "I'm sorry!" "It tells us that you are what you are." "Your own special creation." "it's a real flower and it's a member of a family of flowers and it has a name." "It's a rhododendron." "It's not a rhododendron." "Camellia." "It is!" "Well done." "And you are La Dame Aux Camelias." "Tell me about La Dame Aux Camelias." "It's a novel." "It's a novel." "Yeah." "About a lady." "Do you know what this meant?" "Who liked camellias." "Yeah." "LAUGHTER to mid-19th-century France." "Periods." "You're so right. wore for 25 days of the month a white camellia." "to tell her lovers that she was not available..." "That Arsenal were playing away!" "Playing at home!" "At home!" "The decorators were in the...etc." "Are you saying that you ARE available or you're not?" "John." "LAUGHTER" "I'm sorry." "Was this in some play?" "the bastard son of the creator of The Three Musketeers." "cos no woman in her entire life has ever said "I've got a period ON"!" "LAUGHTER Well..." "I either say "I've got a period" or "I'm on"." "Fair enough!" "OK!" "You don't conflate them together." "I've got a period on"!" "it became a play. in 1854 Verdi saw the play and turned it into the opera...for five points...?" "Is that what the opera's called?" "No!" "It's called Camellia something...the flower." "Audience will know." "LaTraviata." "La Traviata." "Audience get ten points." "That's very good." "It was La Traviata." "They're not in the lead again! no." "It's the story of a famous courtesan who was in love - and the real one - there were seven men they clubbed together and bought her a chest of drawers with seven separate drawers in so they could keep their own clothes." "which was..." "Snow White." "She's called." "The seven guys with the one girl is a bit..." "Very good!" "APPLAUSE" "Very good." "And the film based on La Dame Aux Camelias is...?" "Carry On Menstruating." "Camille." "Camille?" "the heroine indicates her availability by wearing different-coloured camellias." "The book caused an outrage and made the flower an overnight gardening sensation in Paris and beyond." "Something more wholesome now." "It's good news." "Daddy is taking you to the flea circus." "Which bit are you most looking forward to?" "What do you know about flea circuses?" "I had fleas in my flat once." "Did you really?" "Rentokil quoted 600 quid to get rid of it." "I found a bloke in the local paper did it for 40." "I don't know what he sprayed!" "I was going like this for a few days." "Do you know what the biggest destroyer of human fleas has been - much bigger than pesticides?" "I know the answer." "It's vacuum cleaners." "You're right." "It's their woof-woof-woof." "And the fleas don't like it." "Do you think your vacuum cleaner may be broken?" "If it's going woof-woof-woof?" "You might want to take that back and get a new one." "these vacuum cleaners." "They kill lots of fleas?" "The other thing you've got to know about them is that the back legs of fleas are incredibly powerful. they could jump over the Eiffel Tower." "You're right." "Eighty times your own height is what you'd be able to jump. but they were amazingly popular because they had to find something interesting to do between the two world wars." "Exactly." "They were filling in." "So fleas were very exciting... probably." "there's some film here showing you that - these strong legs allow them to pull - they were harnessed to wire..." "Are they real?" "Yeah." "you're thinking Michael Bentine's mechanical ones with little automatic machines that... there were fleas." "Genuinely people-trained fleas?" "they were basically tortured." "You would glue them to musical instruments and other things and then heat the underpart where they were so their attempts to make themselves free would look as if they were playing instruments." "That's like Britain's Got Talent." "That sounds horrible." "Almost as horrible as Britain's Got Talent." "Mr Man In The Gallery." "There we are." "JIMMY:" "Why are they performing on his arm?" "They get fed with his blood." "Ah!" "JOHN:" "That's to show how small they are." "He's going to burn them with the sun." "It's Ben-Hur." "Robot Wars." "Why have they got a serial killer operating the..." "JOHN:" "That reminds me of a very old joke." "Are you ready for a very old joke?" "I'd love to hear one." "How do you build a flea circus?" "You have to start from scratch." "Hey-hey!" "Excellent." "Is that stuck into the flea or glued on?" "It's glued or they make wire harnesses for them." "And people like Michael Bentine invented these mechanical ones." "He did one in a Royal Variety Performance in the '60s." "And that's when I first saw it." "I thought there was no such thing and it was just a joke." "It was part of an idea that you had freak shows." "You'd have all sorts of daft things... are you?" "Are you suggesting we're some kind of freak show..." "I just... ..that should be next to the flea circus?" "we're brother and sister." "That explains it!" "including chariot races and fencing matches as well as acrobatics and..." "Techniques included glueing the fleas to musical instruments and then heating the floor so they seemed to be playing as they struggled." "What is the really odd thing about the only fish in the world that lives in a tree?" "Is it going to be an underwater tree...thing?" "Like fish that can live in anemones cos they're the only ones that aren't poisoned by them?" "These are trees above the surface." "is that meant to be a perfect picture of...?" "No." "I know that's a salmon for a start." "I know that." "We can actually show you the real fish in a tree." "There we are in the mangrove swamps of Florida." "Where is it?" "but this is its habitat. whole groups of them go up into the tree." "We can see one poking its eye out." "And what's the unusual thing?" "Can it whistle one tune while it hums another?" "Kind of almost an erotic version of that." "It is the only vertebrate that is a hermaphrodite that self-fertilises." "That's how it breeds." "It pleasures itself and..." "Why don't we all do that?" "because that'd be fun." "My teenage years..." "You're right." "..there would've been thousands." "It'd be fun to tell yourself you've got a headache." "I can't tonight." "it's hermaphroditic." "Parthenogenesis you may be thinking." "I was." "LAUGHTER" "He's new." "270 different species of them." "That's not the same one we've seen." "but it's certainly a killifish. why does a flamingo stand on one leg?" "JOHN'S BUZZER" "I think I have the answer." "Because it wants to go to sleep." "Yes." "Is it?" "well." "I was going to say land mines!" "APPLAUSE the ability for half of themselves to go to sleep." "The half with the leg up is asleep." "That whole half of their body is in a torpid state and the blood flow's less." "they swap over and the other leg goes up." "There must be a in-between moment when they fall on their arse." "You'd wonder." "How does that work?" "Does it go naturally down the middle of their neck and then their face wakes up?" "One assumes..." "I don't know." "The phrase "my leg's gone to sleep" has a whole new thing." "Precisely." "And they are pink because...?" "prawns or something." "It's not prawns." "It's a common fallacy that they're pink because the eat pink food like prawns..." "Or Angel Delight." "Or Angel Delight." "they eat a blue-green algae which is full of carotenoid that makes them pink." "In zoos they give them supplements to make them pink." "The flamingo version of Where's Wally is hard." "LAUGHTER they can drink boiling water." "How did they find that out?" "A very cruel man found that out." ""Here you go!" "They live near geysers where the water is that temperature." "They can eat a McDonald's apple pie." "The only species that can!" "Which is the hottest substance known to man." "Yeah." "Verified by NASA." "the evening chorus starts up from the waterhole." "It's spring and love is in the air." "What are these toads saying to each other?" "CROAKING" "It's very repetitive." "These are natterjacks." "Natterjacks like a lot of toads have explosive sexual engagements..." "It's not just toads." "..when suddenly it's ready and the male toad will jump on anything." "vegetable or mineral." "but very often it will jump on a male toad." "That's OK too." "Which is fine." "Yeah." "But the male toad underneath often doesn't like it... a reach around." "and that is the noise you hear during the mating season." "You're saying the sound we heard there was a lot of frogs going..." ""I'm a bloke!" rather than trying to chat a girl up...in a froggy way." "Do you know the difference between a frog and a toad?" "Spelling." "LAUGHTER" "Very good!" "You might as well be right - there's no definitive difference. but there is no real difference." "I used to have an Alsatian and she came to wake me up one morning." "Normally she'd wait for me." "She came and put her head under the duvet and pulled it off me." "What are you doing?" "She went to the bedroom door and looked at me like that." "I got up and she went to the kitchen door still looking at me and led me to her water bowl by the back door." "She was looking at it and looking at me." "I looked at it and there was a frog in it." "That's so sweet. and then got in the water bowl and sat there all night like... with this huge dog staring at it!" "this isn't..." "I love the idea of the relationship between you and your dog." "Alan. but they did every year." "The odd thing you're saying..." "a huge quantity of toads are killed every year on the roads." "About 20 tons of toad lose their lives." "We're trying to make it less with toad tunnels." "Do you know the reason there's so many?" "It's mating season." "They have ancient mating ponds they've had for hundreds of years." "that's the way they've always gone." "You used to have them in a pond in Buckhurst Hill." "People would go out with frying pans... and then you'd flip 'em." "There's scores of them." "It combines fun with doing good." "They land on another toad and it's all gone." "Did you hear an extraordinary story in Hamburg in 2005?" "yes." "Toads started exploding during the mating season. propelling their entrails up to a yard away." "but do you know what was the cause?" "Al-Qaeda." "No." "Suicide toads." "It wasn't..." "They were all fundamentalists and misguided..." "They go to a busy market place and splatter everyone with toad entrail." "That'll learn ya!" "Toad rights!" "It was crows." "remove the liver of the toads." "They'd go in and pull out the liver." "Are these ninja crows?" "scalpel ready... they use their beak." "And just...?" "Birds have worked out how to do that with a single strike. forcing their intestines out of the hole that had been made and had a kind of fatal hernia." "What use is a frog after a one night stand?" "JOHN'S BUZZER isn't it?" "It kind of is." "I knew it." "Some sort of natural morning after pill effect?" "not that." "this was used by Western science in a serious way to perform a very important function." "Do they turn a different colour if a woman's pregnant?" "but that is the use they were put to." "Pregnancy tests." "Not really!" "Pregnancy tests?" "Yes." "A woman pees on that!" "?" "a woman's urine is injected into it." "How?" "OK." "No wonder he looks so pissed off. suddenly there's a woman's pee being injected into him." "He's having a horrible day." "LAUGHTER would ovulate." "It's as simple as that." "I wonder if they have a little blue line on their back so you look at like this..." "LAUGHTER" "A plus or a minus!" "But it was a standard pregnancy test." "There was a terrible outcome having these African frogs around. they had a disease..." "They were full of piss." "LAUGHTER" "..called chytridiomycosis." "It's threatening a third of the world's amphibians now. and these frogs have caused part of it." "So our Western desire to know whether we're pregnant before nine months has caused African clawed frogs ovulate if injected with the urine this was the only available pregnancy test." "how does a ferret build an airliner?" "JO'S BUZZER Yes." "Really weasily." "no." "we've got there before you!" "APPLAUSE" "Oh dear!" "I was seconds behind." "LAUGHTER" "Boeing used them." "What?" "Sorry?" "Boeing used ferrets." "To build a plane?" "do they?" "They're not ashamed of it." "They were used for the wedding of Charles for the Millenium Party In The Park..." "Looking for things?" "Nope." "Their fur?" "you tie it..." "Brilliant! and it comes out the other end and you've got the wire through." "It was used by Boeing and..." "It's a brilliant idea!" "Isn't it?" "Very clever." "after cats and dogs." "They welcome you when you come back from a day's work like puppies." "They're very like puppies." "Come in!" "very pleased." "though?" "The trouser business is interesting. but no-one's sure if it is." "but it kind of started as a hoax in a famous interview... someone with a ferret up the trousers." "aah!" "You'd laugh at home." "LAUGHTER cos they are very friendly animals." "You mean they sit opposite you..." "And talk you through your problems." ""How does that make you feel?" LAUGHTER" "Interacting with them reduces your stress hormones." "Helpful for and children recovering from severe illnesses." "get a ferret. fingers on buzzers." "What's the fastest thing in the natural world?" "ALAN'S BUZZER Alan." "Blue whale." "Ho-ho-ho!" "Every time!" "APPLAUSE is it?" "Never gonna be blue whale." "Any other thoughts?" "Fastest thing." "ALAN'S BUZZER" "Cheetah." "Oh!" "Alan Davies..." "I don't know..." "It's got to be alive." "OK." "Something like a cheetah but it's not?" "No." "It's not an animal." "It's a flower." "and suddenly it overtakes you?" "No." "We're talking ejaculation." "sex." "It's the sex obsession!" "What do they do?" "the fastest thing on Earth?" "Is this a personal slight at me?" "LAUGHTER it's not!" "It's not that. and it pushes out its pollen at half the speed of sound." "Mach 0.5." "Pow." "Over 350 miles per hour." "Gosh." "It's the fastest thing in biology." "Nothing moves faster." "But what about an aircraft?" "Oh." "In biology." "LAUGHTER" "What about a naturally reared organic aircraft?" "LAUGHTER Made out of ferrets." "and what do I have on me that owes itself to... surely?" "something owes itself to the white mulberry I'm wearing." "Silk tie? cos the silk worm lives on the white mulberry leaves." "it pushes out its pollen at this astounding speed." "Stored elastic energy in its stamens." "you've got no chance of escape." "Coming out quite a pace." "Have your eye out!" "LAUGHTER" "No wonder it's itchy." "Wow." "fingers on buttons." "What do you call a slug with a shell?" "I'm not falling for that one!" "LAUGHTER" "I'll take the bullet." "JIMMY'S BUZZER" "Snail?" "you do and then carry on." "No." "So you asked what do I call?" "you can't get out of it that way." "a slug with a shell is a slug." "not snails." "and slugs we think of but they can have little then afterwards..." "So do I. LAUGHTER" "Carry on with this. after insects... when we were students." "There'd just be trails across the floor in the morning." "We didn't do anything about it." "LAUGHTER Just had bits of cornflakes stuck..." "Eurgh!" "Carry on." "Yeah!" "000 species of gastropod." "they're the most common class of animal on the Earth." "000?" "Mmm." "Write that down." "Yep!" "LAUGHTER is a mushroom an animal or a plant?" "A plant." "Or an animal." "Or a... it's a fungus." "Which is it closer to?" "If that makes any sense." "you mean?" "Yeah." "it's closer to a plant." "Very good(!" ") Next to that grass." "so I'll say animal." "You're correct." "Absolutely right. as we come to the scores." "Taking the laurels of victory this week... is the audience with plus ten!" "CHEERING" "audience." "You see?" "It pays to know about opera." "they win." "Jimmy Carr!" "APPLAUSE John Sergeant!" "APPLAUSE" "Thank you." "but oddly not last..." "Alan Davies!" "APPLAUSE" "And... it's the filthily fabulous Jo Brand with minus 27!" "APPLAUSE" "So...that's all from this florid and faunal edition of QI. a great pick-up line." "Won't you come into the garden?" "I would like my roses to see you." "Good night." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"