Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00In the jungle, you can never lose vigilance. Snakes,
00:00:03scorpions, and other venomous animals can be found here every meter,
00:00:07and it's very difficult to spot them. Many of them are very well
00:00:11camouflaged, adapted to the local colors, to
00:00:14bushes, to other objects in the jungle.
00:00:17So you have to keep your eyes peeled and watch out not to step on anything.
00:00:21Right next to the path, a green garden
00:00:25lizard is perched. It's interesting that this lizard,
00:00:28although not a chameleon,
00:00:32can change its color. I ask Gajanai,
00:00:35"Is this lizard common in these areas?" Yes,
00:00:39these lizards are the masters of the Sinharaja forests. It seems
00:00:42he has bitten off more than he can chew. Yes,
00:00:46some insect got caught. If he were bigger, he'd swallow
00:00:49me too, because at first I didn't even notice him. Lizards,
00:00:53many lizards are insectivores, so they
00:00:56camouflage themselves, they sit motionless, like this one merging
00:01:00completely with the leaf, and thus motionless they wait for
00:01:04an insect, like this purple flower, an insect flies
00:01:07to drink nectar, and the lizard then
00:01:11*thwack* with its long tongue sticks it and eats it. Very good tactic.
00:01:29And...
00:01:30fantastic.
00:01:34Of course, you must always, even at any given moment,
00:01:37not lose your vigilance,
00:01:39because snakes, leeches, especially
00:01:43other animals can be hiding everywhere.
00:01:46So before taking a step, you always
00:01:49the snake. Well, have to look
00:01:49around carefully.
00:01:56It's good that in these jungles there are at least small paths
00:02:00that I can walk on, because if I had to go directly
00:02:04through the Sinharaja rainforest, it would simply be
00:02:06impossible. Look at how the palms
00:02:10protect themselves, with spikes, they prick right through. As soon as I touch them,
00:02:13they stick right through and pierce
00:02:15the skin.
00:02:22Look, what a beauty on a fern
00:02:24leaf, another garden
00:02:28green lizard. Long fingers, and such long
00:02:32fingers are, of course, necessary for this lizard to be able to run
00:02:35on tree leaves, because look at the fern, fern leaves
00:02:39are very small, and to stay on them, the surface area needs to be quite
00:02:43paviršiaus plotas būtų ganėtinai
00:02:44large.
00:02:50Look here, it's
00:02:52a snake.
00:02:55Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, I see it. It looks
00:02:59like a green branch. So well camouflaged.
00:03:03It's a pointed-nosed whip snake. It's
00:03:05non-venomous, small, but very thin. At first I thought it was just
00:03:09a stick, but it turns out
00:03:12it's not.
00:03:18Aha, here we have
00:03:20a snake.
00:03:25I'll help you in a moment. Oh,
00:03:27look...
00:03:30"Although it's not venomous, it's so good,
00:03:33it wrapped around my finger. Well, it's trying to eat my friend, but
00:03:37it didn't pierce the skin. The main prey of
00:03:40this snake are small lizards
00:03:44and even sometimes
00:03:48frogs. Oh, the teeth are well embedded, you can see them in the skin, you can already see them.
00:03:51Look, as soon as I approach with my hand, the snake makes
00:03:54an S shape, and when it makes an S shape, it's ready to
00:03:58attack."
00:04:03"Ah, it seems it has calmed down a little.
00:04:06Look how it breathes air.
00:04:08Snakes don't have noses, they don't have noses,
00:04:12they smell with their tongue. Specifically,
00:04:15with their tongue they collect droplets of air,
00:04:19then they pull their tongue into their throat, and in the throat,
00:04:22snakes have a so-called Jacobson's organ.
00:04:26It is with the help of this organ that the tongue then cleans itself
00:04:30and understands what is in the environment. It senses
00:04:33taste, it senses smell, and that Jacobson's organ is very,
00:04:37very strong and smells all the
00:04:40air in a very large radius. This is how snakes find
00:04:43both prey and other
00:04:46animals."
00:04:49Well, let's let the snake
00:04:51slither away.
00:05:04We sit down for a short rest. There's a bench here in the middle of
00:05:07the jungle. Well, but we're not sitting here two of us, we're
00:05:11three. Do you see our third friend? Okay,
00:05:14look around.
00:05:17Aha, yes, this one.
00:05:20It's called a kangaroo
00:05:22lizard.
00:05:25Gajanai, why is it called that?
00:05:29It's due to its unique behavior and long legs.
00:05:32It hops like a kangaroo. Yes, otherwise it wouldn't be a kangaroo
00:05:36lizard. It's also very common in these
00:05:39forests.
00:05:42Okay? But how well it camouflages and how much it trusts its
00:05:45camouflage. Now an ant is even walking on it, but it
00:05:49doesn't move because it's afraid to show itself to us. Yes,
00:05:52little lizard, oh,
00:05:54it jumped off.
00:05:57"So how many different species, how many different species of lizards and snakes
00:06:01live in the Sinharaja
00:06:02forests?"
00:06:05"Here we find about 10-12 species of lizards, and about
00:06:0915 species of snakes."
00:06:12"Are there any large snakes living here?"
00:06:16"Yes, perhaps we'll manage to meet a Python or even an Indian
00:06:19Cobra? In Sinharaja there are only five species of venomous
00:06:23snakes. Four species are deadly
00:06:25venomous. So in total nine species of venomous
00:06:29snakes, and that is our
00:06:31record."
00:06:35Let's look for those venomous
00:06:37snakes too.
00:06:47And in one place in the Sinharaja jungle we saw a small
00:06:51body of water, just some kind of puddle, maybe a flowing stream was
00:06:55there, but it had a lot of small fish. We'll try to
00:06:58lure the fish, and when the fish swim over, maybe a snake will too.
00:07:02So I have a piece of biscuit. Let's see if the fish
00:07:05react. As soon as I threw a piece of biscuit,
00:07:09dozens of fish immediately swam up, the water just started
00:07:12boiling. But at that moment, another
00:07:16unexpected guest arrived. Look, a water
00:07:19snake came right up to the fish, right up to the little fish
00:07:22to hunt.
00:07:23Fantastic!
00:07:30Whoa, whoa, whoa, look how it catches, look how it
00:07:33hunts.
00:07:36"Is this snake venomous?" "No, it's not venomous. It can
00:07:40bite, but generally it's not dangerous."
00:07:46Although not venomous, it's truly an impressive snake,
00:07:49the Sri Lankan water snake. Well, it would probably be
00:07:53very difficult to see it if it weren't for these biscuits, I wouldn't have
00:07:57seen them. Water snakes are characterized
00:08:00by not being venomous. They are usually
00:08:03found in streams, in stagnant bodies of water in reeds,
00:08:07where they hunt small fish, and they don't have
00:08:10venom, which means they, like pike, catch a small fish and
00:08:13swallow it. Meanwhile, in the ocean coastal
00:08:17areas there are still quite a few marine
00:08:21snake species that live in the water and they are
00:08:24very venomous. In this case, it was ideal conditions for it, because dozens
00:08:28of small fish had gathered in one place,
00:08:31exactly the size that this snake
00:08:34feeds on.
00:08:38Oh, it caught it! It caught it!
00:08:41Oh, look! "It caught
00:08:43a fish. Fantastic! We just
00:08:47witnessed a snake hunt, a successful snake
00:08:50hunt, a water snake hunt, which hunts
00:08:54fish. However, such a commotion and boiling water attracted
00:08:58not only the fish and the snake, but also another
00:09:01uninvited guest, a catfish."
00:09:05And here an impressive
00:09:07drama unfolded.
00:09:09The catfish grabbed the snake which had caught
00:09:12the fish. Then a fight ensued in the water. This was quite
00:09:16a sight, an absolute chaos.
00:09:21The water was simply boiling. The catfish was spinning.
00:09:24The snake wrapped itself around the catfish. Then
00:09:28the catfish grabbed it with its jaws,
00:09:31bit it firmly and swam into the depths of the water. We didn't
00:09:35see the snake or the catfish
00:09:36anymore.
00:09:40Drama, a drama in nature. To us it's drama, but here in the jungle,
00:09:44it's just another minute in the wild.
00:09:48Here every minute, every second, a struggle for survival takes place, and only
00:09:52those who are the strongest and best
00:09:54adapted survive.
00:10:03Another lizard in our Sinharaja
00:10:07collection.
00:10:10This species with a lump
00:10:12on its nose is one of the rarest here in Sinharaja. Usually,
00:10:16distinctive anatomical characteristics in animals appear for
00:10:19beauty, to show the richness of their body,
00:10:22strength, power, and the female. Usually,
00:10:26such male antics, such male body parts are very responsive, and thus they
00:10:30attract them.
00:10:34This lizard, similar to a chameleon, can change its
00:10:38color. So if it lands somewhere on
00:10:41a green surface, it turns
00:10:44green. If it goes onto a brown trunk, it can turn
00:10:47brown. This is simply natural body adaptation, so
00:10:51that this lizard can camouflage itself and avoid predators.
00:11:01"And another sweet creature in the Sinharaja
00:11:04jungle. Look here, on the stump.
00:11:08What a beauty.
00:11:10A millipede. All black, with colorful
00:11:14legs. As soon as it heard
00:11:16some movement, felt it, it immediately curled up into a ball.
00:11:20Up, up,
00:11:23attached.
00:11:25A beauty.
00:11:28Up and it curls up. Look at those
00:11:30legs. Up, up, up,
00:11:33it flew off.
00:11:36And at the end it has something that looks like a stinger, but it's not a stinger, but just
00:11:39a tail. Oh, black as coal,
00:11:43gleaming. Because it's not a predator. They
00:11:47a pliešūnai, jie dažniausiai
00:11:50usually feed on plants, mostly on
00:11:53rotten wood and various plants. So
00:11:57there, okay, let's put the millipede back where it
00:12:01was. Let it
00:12:03continue its journey. Maybe it will start marching again, let's see.
00:12:31"In Sinharaja, workers are laying a road with a
00:12:34tractor. And what do you think? Right nearby there's
00:12:38a snake.
00:12:40And already four people, four workers, had gathered
00:12:44around this snake. One of them, with a machete, of course, tried
00:12:47to cut it in half. So we saved it just in
00:12:50time. What a beautiful snake. At first glance
00:12:54it seems that... it should definitely be a venomous snake, because such
00:12:57patterns are usually characteristic of venomous
00:13:00snakes. But some snakes pretend
00:13:03to be venomous, just to prevent other animals
00:13:07from catching and eating them. And
00:13:11indeed, even I, looking at it, immediately thought, 'Oh, I shouldn't get close
00:13:15to this one.' Although it's not a venomous snake,
00:13:18this snake is quite aggressive, this species,
00:13:21and if you provoke it, it bites quite
00:13:25hard, because it has sharp teeth, and those
00:13:28teeth will sink into your flesh, and there will definitely be a lot of
00:13:32blood. And then, of course, there can be an infection, all sorts of things. So
00:13:36it's better not to let it get too close, because now it's
00:13:39agitated, so it can be unpredictable."
00:13:55Another beauty of the Sinharaja jungle, already towards evening.
00:13:58I thought we wouldn't find anything, we walked more than 15 km,
00:14:02but here, look at what
00:14:05a beautiful
00:14:06snake.
00:14:12Undoubtedly, this is the most beautiful snake of all those
00:14:15seen today.
00:14:18A deadly venomous snake.
00:14:22In Lithuania, we only have one species of viper, while here there are
00:14:26several different species of vipers, and this is the only
00:14:29viper in the Sinharaja forest and indeed in all of
00:14:32Sri Lanka, which is sometimes found on trees, not even
00:14:35sometimes, usually on trees, on branches, climbing on
00:14:38grass, because this species of snake feeds not only
00:14:42on rodents or frogs, but especially loves
00:14:46lizards. This is precisely the place where lizards are most often
00:14:49found on branches, catching insects, not seeing
00:14:53such a snake, which is perfectly camouflaged and simply
00:14:57eats them.
00:14:59Wow, especially impressive head, what
00:15:03patterns! Pay attention to how it has
00:15:06coiled its neck and nape into an S
00:15:09shape, which means it is ready to attack at any moment,
00:15:13to attack prey.
00:15:16It's very clear when you look closely, the pupil of the eye
00:15:20is elongated, which is characteristic of venomous
00:15:24snakes and... especially vipers. And the head itself
00:15:27is triangular in shape, which is also one
00:15:31of the characteristics of vipers. Even more interesting
00:15:34is that it is an endemic species found only
00:15:37in Lanka. Well, we naturalists like such curiosities as
00:15:40endemic species, meaning species not found anywhere else,
00:15:44only in a specific region. A creature of amazing beauty,
00:15:47venomous, deadly
00:15:49venomous.
00:15:52Well, what is characteristic of snakes is that they swallow their prey whole,
00:15:56they don't chew it. And that means that the snake's head has to
00:16:00open very wide. And for it to open so wide, usually
00:16:04the bones of the snake's head, skull, and jaw
00:16:07all dislocate, dislocate, so to speak,
00:16:11on the skin, and only when it has swallowed everything, do
00:16:15all the bones return to
00:16:16their place.
00:16:22Well, we're getting unexpected guests, monkeys,
00:16:25macaques are coming, and now we need to scare them
00:16:28away as quickly as possible, because they saw that we are near the snake
00:16:32and will try to catch and eat it. We don't
00:16:35want that at all, because this snake is quite rare,
00:16:39and... and... and... well, simply finding it just because we are here
00:16:42would not be some natural selection, but simply we would have betrayed the snake's
00:16:46location. These macaques are perfectly
00:16:50adapted to hunt vipers, and they know how to
00:16:54catch them without being
00:16:55bitten.
00:17:00Run, run, run, run, run aside, go eat
00:17:02bananas. It seems we chased
00:17:05them away in time. Although we really didn't plan to
00:17:08move this viper, we wanted to leave it as
00:17:12it is. But since the monkeys came, now we have no choice
00:17:15but to rescue this snake and hide it from the monkeys.
00:17:19We carry
00:17:26the snake has been moved onto a fern, on the other side, where
00:17:30it blocks the view
00:17:32for the monkeys. Well, it seems we just need to
00:17:36move on from this place and hurry, before the monkeys
00:17:40see where we put it, because if we stay here any longer, the monkeys will
00:17:43surely try to see what we are doing here and find
00:17:46the snake again. So let's continue our journey into the Sinharaja jungles and leave this
00:17:50wonderful green viper to continue hunting, hunting
00:17:53lizards and other
00:17:54animals.
00:18:01On the first day in the Sinharaja jungle, we managed to find several
00:18:05different snakes and lizards. I certainly had many impressions,
00:18:09but they were not enough. After consulting with my friend Gayanu,
00:18:12we decided that we don't want to rest and we are going on
00:18:16a night walk through the outskirts of
00:18:19the Sinharaja jungle and will look for nocturnal
00:18:22snakes.
00:18:28At dusk, many other animals are still visible, snakes,
00:18:31lorises, sometimes such primates appear here. So I think
00:18:35we'll go for another walk for at least a couple of hours at night around the village and
00:18:39see what we can
00:18:40find here.
00:18:44Still, we didn't go directly into the jungle at night, it would still be
00:18:47dangerous. At night you don't see or hear all the animals that are
00:18:51around you. So we decided to walk along the village paths,
00:18:55small roads, where snakes are sometimes found. Well,
00:19:02the last thing I'd want is probably to step on
00:19:05a cobra, which are also found here, and not
00:19:08infrequently. Local residents occasionally even observe them
00:19:12in the village, let alone the jungle. And especially
00:19:15late evening and early morning are the times when
00:19:19cobras are
00:19:20most active.
00:19:24It seems we found something. Let's
00:19:26go see. Darius found
00:19:28something.
00:19:31Oh, I don't know what's worse, stepping on
00:19:34such a scorpion or stepping on a cobra. Probably
00:19:38the outcome would be similar. A black
00:19:40scorpion.
00:19:45"Is this scorpion common here, is it
00:19:48venomous?" "This species is found in the Sinharaja
00:19:51forests. The sting of these scorpions is venomous, but
00:19:55not deadly."
00:20:00"Is it only active at night?" "Yes, they are nocturnal
00:20:03animals."
00:20:07Okay, what is it waiting for, what is its prey? It
00:20:11likes small insects, various flies. You can see it's
00:20:14ready to hunt. I'm very happy that it's an insectivore.
00:20:31Wow, a snake.
00:20:33Okay, just run over by a car.
00:20:41"What species is this? It's a common armored
00:20:44keelback. These reptiles often become prey for other snakes,
00:20:47especially cobras
00:20:50and kraits." "Indeed, cobras hunt such keelbacks."
00:20:54"Yes."
00:21:02Well, another animal, this time a little spider, a cute little spider, about
00:21:06the size of my palm, so completely adorable, makes you want to
00:21:09pet it, right? So, there are certainly
00:21:12plenty of spiders here, and at night everything always looks much scarier and
00:21:16bigger.
00:21:23Leeches. Leeches, of course, are that good
00:21:27thing that is found both during the day and at
00:21:29night, and people love
00:21:33them very much.
00:21:39We found some abandoned garden, you can see there are still many
00:21:43seedlings left, but there are a lot of fallen dry
00:21:46leaves, well, all sorts of branches and other things.
00:21:50These are usually very good places to look for snakes, because
00:21:53snakes like such messes, let's call them that. There are
00:21:57many places where they can hide, rest, hunt, and so on. So
00:22:01we'll try to stay here a little longer and maybe we'll find
00:22:03something.
00:22:11Yes. Yes.
00:22:15Junk, junk
00:22:15camera.
00:22:21"Aha, we found it, we found it, it looks like
00:22:23a snake.
00:22:27About this long, very
00:22:30thin, thinner than my finger, but incredibly
00:22:33long. It's a cat
00:22:36snake, but it's very
00:22:38slow.
00:22:44In an attack pose.
00:22:48What a beauty." It's moderately
00:22:52venomous. Okay, so it's one of those where you might
00:22:55die or you might not die. Moderately
00:22:58venomous. Its full name is Forster's cat
00:23:02snake. Well, the little snake has calmed down. A couple
00:23:05of minutes passed since we found it. At first it still tried to escape, but even that was
00:23:09quite clumsy. Now it's completely settled on our
00:23:13stick and is just watching what's
00:23:15happening here.
00:23:21The little snake is already crawling on the leaf surface. We released it, but
00:23:25you see, it's not even rushing. It immediately settled into a hunting spot. It seems
00:23:28as if we weren't even here, it pays no
00:23:31attention.
00:23:36Well, yes, and you always have to look around to see if there are no leeches on you. This one
00:23:39is a bit fatter. Today a couple of fat ones
00:23:43sucked my blood. So you either just
00:23:46throw it off or spray it a little, and it should fall off by itself.
00:23:50Oh, I already feel another
00:23:52one.
00:23:56Oh, another
00:24:07one slithering.
00:24:11Another venomous snake, I still don't know what kind, but the patterns
00:24:15were impressive. Black, vividly black,
00:24:18vividly white.
00:24:23Look at this little zebra, I'm joking, of course, it's not a little zebra, it's
00:24:26a snake, and one of the most venomous in Sri Lanka.
00:24:29And so tiny, look at my palm. Well, I don't want to get
00:24:33too close, but it's very, very tiny,
00:24:36smaller than a mouse, but the amount of venom
00:24:40is simply enormous. Wow, it's hiding under the
00:24:43leaves. We managed to see it at first, but it quickly
00:24:46hid. We cleared the leaves and found it hiding.
00:24:50Fantastic.
00:24:54This snake is deadly venomous and is found only in Sri Lankan
00:24:57forests. It likes damp tropical
00:25:00forests.
00:25:03You can see that this little snake is still small, a juvenile. How much more will
00:25:07it grow? It should reach two feet in length.
00:25:10This is the Sri Lankan
00:25:11krait.
00:25:20We walked for hours in the night jungle, not even entirely in the jungle, but on the edges of the village,
00:25:23truly a fun evening. Very hot, I have
00:25:26to say, but productive. In two hours we managed to find three
00:25:30different snakes, admittedly, one was run over and dead on the road,
00:25:34but two were really very interesting Sri Lankan snakes, as
00:25:38well as a scorpion, also a toad,
00:25:41we saw other animals, so I think that's
00:25:44really enough for me, and now it's time to go rest, because tomorrow morning
00:25:48I'm getting up early again and... again back to the jungle from early morning
00:25:52to try to find other reptiles that are found here in the Sinharaja
00:25:56forests.
00:27:02All the snakes we find here in Sinharaja are alive. Yesterday we found
00:27:06one run over on the road. Meanwhile, this morning we managed to
00:27:10find a snake that was simply dead in the middle of the jungle.
00:27:13I don't know what actually happened to it, maybe some scared bird pecked at
00:27:17it. However, in any case, this is a new species of snake
00:27:20for us in the Sinharaja
00:27:22jungle.
00:27:26This is the Sri Lankan wolf snake, also an endemic
00:27:29species. Very interesting appearance. You see, the snake's
00:27:33head and body seem to be separated by a white stripe.
00:27:36The venomous krait, which we found tonight, does not have
00:27:40such a stripe. This means that this snake pretends to be very
00:27:43venomous to protect itself from
00:27:53specific. You just have to walk very slowly,
00:27:57travel through the jungle and constantly look around, first under your feet,
00:28:00and then at eye level. "You have to look very carefully
00:28:04at objects on leaves and
00:28:05bushes."
00:28:12Another little lizard in our collection, in the Sinharaja jungle
00:28:16collection. This one looks quite brown, but
00:28:19it is certainly not a Lithuanian lizard, which also lives in Lithuania,
00:28:23ovoviviparous and also brown. This one is completely
00:28:25different.
00:28:31"It's a skink." In Sri Lanka, several species of these lizards
00:28:34live. In Sinharaja, we find four to five species
00:28:38of skinks. "Great, they are probably
00:28:41insectivores." "Yes, but sometimes they also hunt
00:28:45small snakes."
00:28:48Let's leave this little lizard to bask in the sun, let's not disturb it, and let's continue through
00:28:52the Sinharaja
00:28:52jungles.
00:28:59More lizards on our path, this time they are kangaroos.
00:29:02If translated literally,
00:29:05it's a very beautiful male, a male, and
00:29:09nearby is a female, so the male is all tense,
00:29:12showing off all his beauty, such a greenish head, and
00:29:16his whole pose, his stance, you can see that he is very confident and shows
00:29:20the female that he is a suitable
00:29:22for mating.
00:29:24Meanwhile, the female is right here next to my finger.
00:29:28It seems that this pair has already bonded
00:29:31and will have
00:29:32offspring.
00:29:36Well, in some parts of the jungle the passages are simply
00:29:40terrible. And to get down from
00:29:44them...
00:29:48Well, yes, not everywhere there are paths and tracks,
00:29:52especially if you want to reach more interesting
00:30:17"Gajanai, you caught a lizard!" "Yes,
00:30:20I caught it." "Did you catch it on a leaf?" "Yes,
00:30:23I saw it on a leaf. It's a medium-sized lizard, one
00:30:27of the rarer reptiles in Sri Lankan
00:30:29forests."
00:30:36This horned driedžas,
00:30:39means he has horns, you can look, just
00:30:43don't let him run away.
00:30:47A small, small driedžas, small, small, but he has a big
00:30:51horn, like a unicorn on the tip of his nose he has
00:30:54a horn, so this is a certain group of driedžas that have
00:30:58horns or bumps like that.