Naturalist Nick Baker hunts down the planet's strangest animals, beginning with the horned lizard, an American reptile which blows up like a spiky balloon to protect itself and can also squirt blood from its eyes. He also explores the flora and fauna of the Sonora desert, such as the cholla cactus, which stores deadly poison in hundreds of hooked spines

The naturalist travels to Peru in search of the vampire fish, a parasitic creature that lurks beneath the surface of the river and feeds on the blood of other fish. It is alleged the candiru fish is attracted to urine and is allegedly capable of swimming into the human urethra, where it becomes lodged. Nick is joined by a local expert as he observes the creature, before investigating a suspected case

Naturalist Nick Baker continues to seek out the world's strangest creatures, going on the trail of an armour-plated mammal known as the pink fairy armadillo. The team travels to the Mendoza province in western Argentina in the hope of glimpsing the rarely seen animal, following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, who visited the area on his Beagle voyage 172 years ago

The naturalist seeks out the giant saggy-skinned frog of Lake Titicaca in South America. He begins his research at London's Natural History Museum, hoping to find the amphibian whose natural habitat is two miles up in the Bolivian Andes. The team follows in the footsteps of Jacques Cousteau, who visited the area in the early 1960s. However, finding the creature proves a mammoth task as altitude sickness slows the group down

Nick Baker travels to India to seek out the gharial crocodile, which may be descended from the baryonyx, a dinosaur with an elongated jaw whose diet also consisted of fish. The rare creature can grow up to six metres in length, and has developed a fleshy growth called the ghara, located on the end of the snout in adult males. However, the function of the odd protrusion remains a mystery

The naturalist goes in search of the basking shark - the second largest fish in the world and as long as a London bus. Cornwall is statistically the best place to spot the creature in the UK, but bad weather forces Nick and the team to follow the warm water as the shark moves north over the summer, when they are subjected to a series of bumpy rides off the coast of western Scotland

The naturalist travels to Manitoba in Canada to track down the star-nosed mole, whose 22-tentacled snout enables it to assess and devour small pieces of food in less than a quarter of a second. Nick and the team face hot, mosquito-ridden conditions as they attempt to trap the creature in its marshy habitat