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[1983] S02E05: Secret Weapons

This time, Nature explores the somewhat hidden world of critters' chemical defenses, including:

• aposematism
• poisonous secretions (millipedes)
• poisonous sprays (vinegaroon)
• poisonous, scalding-hot projectiles (bombardier beetles)
• a hemispherical shell and feet that use oil to adhere to leaves (Florida tortoise beetle)
• tangled fecal fortress that provides camouflage (Florida tortoise beetle again)
• smearing insect-repelling camphor oil onto itself (bee assassins)
• eating and storing pine resin to ward off attackers (sawflies)
• storing poisons acquired while pupae (monarch butterflies, crimson-speckled moths)
• mimicking visual signals to kill others of their species for steroids (Photuris fireflies)

Although I said the dual narrator stuff didn't work as well last time, it dovetailed nicely here, since it had an almost Bill Nye-esque quality due to Thomas Eisner, who demonstrated many of the defenses listed above in a laboratory. That bombardier beetle shooting hot chemical quinones at interlopers seemed unbeatable, but in the end, it was eaten by a spider -- it was too wrapped up to get free.

I feel like most people who see these will run for the flyswatter, not the electron microscope. But just remember: every time you're poisoned in the middle of Veridian Forest, that weedle is just carrying on Eisner's work by using pikachu's face as indicator paper.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/13194ec2.jpg

Didn't know much about the professor, but apparently he's known as the father of chemical ecology and even won some awards for this enlightening episode (perhaps explaining the two-narrator structure). He also discovered, on the last day of shooting the show, an unseen phenomenon: horsefly larva eating recently hatched frogs by dragging them down into the mud to dine on their bodily fluids. Ain't nature beautiful?

RIP