Deep Look

No one said life in the wild would be easy.

Yikes!

These four miniature hunters use stealth, speed and lethal weapons to dispatch their prey in the most creative of ways.

First up, check out these mysterious littletowers poking up from the forest floor.

A cunning, patient andruthless surprise lurks inside.

[suspenseful music] The world is a very differentplace when darkness falls.

Most of us head for home for cover.

Because as the shadows creepin ... they hide things ... Frightful things.

What is that?

That little tower?

Look, theres another one.

They blend in so well.

That was a California turret spider.

Its lair is like the turret of acastle, rising above the forest floor.

[suspenseful music] Its lined the inside with pearly white silk.

And coated the outside with mud, moss or leaves.

The turret leads down to the spiders burrow, that can descend six inches underground.

The spider spends its days down there.

As the last rays of the sun die out, it rises ... to wait ... motionless ... Until some unsuspecting creature happens by, like this pill bug.

Every step it takes creates tinytremors, betraying its location.

[suspenseful music] Whew!

That was close.

Turret spiders actually have pretty poor vision.

Instead they rely on feel ... ... bursting out in whichever direction the vibrations seem to come from.

So, sometimes ... ... they miss.

They belong to a group of spiders calledmygalomorphs, along with their morefamous cousins: tarantulas ... and trapdoor spiders.

[dark music] They pack oversized fangs ... thatswing down like a pair of pickaxes.

They were hunting this way... long before spiders startedbuilding intricate aerial webs, like this orb weaver spider.

Instead, a female turret spider might live for 16 years and never stray from her turret.

[suspenseful music] She only ventures into the world for a split second.

[violent cymbal crash] Just long enough to drag her next victim down to its demise.

Our next creature is straight out of science fiction.

The wormlion ambushes its prey from the bottomof its tidy and terrifying sand pit.

You never really know where trouble is lurking.

When one wayward step ... ... means disaster.

This small hole in the sand is really the lair of a wormlion.

And its ferocious.

You find them in dry, dusty soil in the mountains of Northern California.

The ground is cratered with danger.

Sure, its a tiny little wriggly thing.

But wormlions set a fearsome trap thats straight out of science fiction.

To build it, they slink below the surface pushing through dirt, sand and rocks.

Theyll fling them out of the way asthey get settled into their shallow pit.

Oops, try again.

Then it just lies in wait.

Its almost invisible ... camouflagedby the sand stuck to its body.

This ant is totally clueless.

[fast string instruments] The wormlion strikes like a cobra, injectingvenom into its prey to paralyze it.

It constricts the ant, draggingit under, until its all over.

When the wormlion is done feeding on the juicyinnards, it flicks the empty carcass away ... and tidies up it pit for its next meal.

Ehhh, careful!

After a couple of years of the good life, this wormlion will leave this dusty ditch behind and take to the skies.

Because really, its not a worm at all.

Its a fly larva.

Itll turn into this: a fly that lives for less than a week.

Its only job is to mate and lay eggs.

But for most of its life, itssitting pretty in its pit, waiting for lunch to fall right in its lap.

The assassin bug kills its victim by stabbing it over and over.

But does this perpetrator have an accomplice?

Sticky droplets at the sceneof the crime could be a clue.

Just beneath the petals of thisflower, a brutal murder is in progress.

This was the victim, a fewminutes earlier: a caterpillar.

Before it got whacked, it was onits way to becoming an owlet moth.

And this is the perpetrator.

Pselliopusspinicollis, aka the assassin bug.

It dispatches its victims with this sharp weapon.

When its not using it, it keepsit folded up, like a switchblade.

Lets review that crime footage again, shall we?

Yep, the assassin bug is definitely thehit man.

But did it have an accomplice?

The scene of the crime is this tarweed.

Pretty,right?

But what are these glossydroplets all over the place?

A few nights back, this midge got trapped in them.

So did this other tiny fly.

Turns out, the tarweed lured them with these sweet, lemony droplets.

This plant is an insect graveyard.

Those bodies are a bribe for the assassin bugs, so theyll take care of theplants caterpillar problem.

See, the caterpillars eat its flowers.

Noflowers, no pollen.

No pollen, no reproduction.

Now that theyre on the tarweed, the assassinbugs mate ... and lay an egg or two right nextto the cadavers, so their offspringhave something to eat when they hatch.

Then they get to work onthat job for the tarweeds.

The bigger caterpillars put up a fight.

The little ones, theyll try to make themselvesscarce, ... dangling down on a line of silk.

But plenty of them end up like our murder victim.

Sucked dry.

With the caterpillars out of theway, the tarweed mastermind can hang onto its flowers and spreadits pollen for one more day.

Dragonflies are masters of the aerial attack.

But their babies grow up underwater, where theyuse a lightning-fast killer lip to nab their prey.

For over 300 million years, theselethal hunters have ruled the skies.

Theyre the order Odonata.

Thatsdragonflies and damselflies to most of us.

Before the dinosaurs even existed, they had a two-foot wingspan,like a small hawk.

Today theyre moremodest in scale, but no less deadly.

Take their eyes.

Each tiny hexagonal cell picks up light from a different direction, which gives dragonflies an almost-360-degree range of vision.

Four wings help them hover, or turn on a dime.

That means this hunter ... rarely misses.

The weird thing is Odonata spendmost of their lives in a placewhere these killer piloting skills dont help.

This is where their mothers lay their eggs.

When they hatch, the babies called larvaeor nymphs spend months or years underwater.

Their wings are still growing, sothey arent any help in scoring ameal like this tasty mosquito larva.

Its a larva-eat-larva world down here.

[whipcrack] Did you see that?

Lets slow it down.

[whipcrack] The nymph has a killer lip, called a labium.

Remind you of this creepy thing?

[whipcrack] [groan] [whipcrack] For this skimmer nymph its shaped like a spork.

Only dragonfly and damselflynymphs have this special lip.

This kind of dragonfly nymph, adarner, has an extra surprise.

Theres a pair of pincers right at the end.

It all happens in a fraction of a second.

[whipcrack] [whipcrack] Think of the lip as a knife, forkand plate all rolled into one.

When the meal is over, it folds upneatly, ready for the next occasion.

These baby skeeters dont stand a chance.

[whipcrack] And thats good for us.

Lets hope it stays this way for a few million more years.