Page 49 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #12

THE OCTONAUTS

Left: Kwazii
the pirate cat
encounters
a coelacanth.
Right: A spinner
dolphin features
in one episode.

Wonders of

the deep

Meet ive marine creatures that
have starred in the series.

Conesnail
A venomous marine gastropod
(left), whose harpoon-like barbed
needle shoots a venom strong
enough to kill a human. It is
indigenous to the reefs of the
Indo-Pacific region.

Albino humpback whale
When the crew encounters a
sunburned whale, the Octonauts
smother him with the mucous
of mushroom coral – a natural
sunscreen. The size of a bus,
Daddy?” he says, sternly. “We should put humpback whales weigh in at
our rubbish in the bin.” And that’s just a mind-boggling 40 tonnes.
from watching the cartoon.
Siphonophore: David Shale/npl.com; Cone snail: Norbert Wu/Minden/FLPA; octopus: Michael Stubblefield/Alamy; cookiecutter: Bill Curtsinger/Getty
The impact Octonauts has had on my Mimic octopus
son’s development is huge. The learning A distinguished performer, this
occurs seemingly by osmosis. Adam wily mollusc (left) can disguise
explains: “We like to deliver a fact in the itself as other animals, such as
middle of an adventure. Often, you’ll be when it pretends to be a group of
learning a fact about a great white shark venomous sea snakes to scare off
while one of our main characters is being a moray eel. It was discovered as
chased by one. And we find that actually recently as 1998, in Indonesia.
kids remember the facts better when we
do it that way, as opposed to a character Coelacanth
looking at the camera and lecturing.” If you thought this Cretaceous
creature was extinct, you’re not
Fishing for ideas alone. The Octonauts’ encounter
Adam’s own children inspired some of the with this most endangered of fish
stories. “My favourite episodes are the ones was a spooky surprise. Deep sea
that they actually helped me to write,” he dwellers, coelacanths live up to
enthuses. “My son, who was probably about 700m below the surface.
10 or 11 at the time, kind of understood what
I was doing. He said to me, ‘hey, you should Cookiecutter shark
do an episode about what we learned today A shark that eats its own teeth?
about sperm whales. They have to learn How revolting, thinks Kwazii.
to dive really deep to get their food.’ And Scientists believe they do this
I replied, ‘well, that could be interesting. in order to recycle calcium.
What if there was a sperm whale who was The cookiecutter (left) name
afraid to dive really deep in the ocean?’” derives from the shaped wounds
This conversation led to a script Adam they leave in their prey’s flesh.
then wrote about a sperm whale named
Simon, which is his son’s name. In turn,

December 2018 BBC Wildlife 49