NARRATOR: This time on Stranger Than Nature...

NARRATOR: This time on Stranger Than Nature... Fish are raining down from the sky in the Australian outback. More are rising from the grave. MAN: I've seen them here hatch out of the ground. NARRATOR: Is it a visit from the supernatural? In South Africa more than 50 killer whale look-alikes wash ashore. WOMAN: It's almost unreal what I saw with these whales packed one next to each other. MAN: I wasn't even sure that they were whales. NARRATOR: Have they talked themselves into mass suicide? At the very top of Italy, a vertical dam wall becomes a hangout for some death-defying goats. WOMAN: I couldn't believe my eyes. They were like suspended in midair, like Spider-Man. NARRATOR: Find out the answers to some of the world's weirdest mysteries on Stranger Than Nature. Lajamanu, the Northern Territory, Australia. A town with just 1,000 people, two days from the nearest city. It's completely remote, and the weather swings from one extreme to the other. February 26, 2010, is typical. In the height of the wet season, it's hot and humid. Suddenly, a storm erupts. CHRISTINE BALMER: I was cooking tea, and we had a heavy downpour of rain. It was really, really loud. I heard yelling and screaming. I hadn't experienced a storm like it before. This is the area over here where I witnessed the local indigenous people catching what I thought was hail. NARRATOR: It's not hail. Hundreds of silver fish are strewn across the town. Eyewitnesses claim they came out of thin air. MAN: The places where they were, they couldn't have come from anywhere else but above. They were on the roof, they were in the water tank, they were on the machinery. They were just places where they couldn't get, unless they fell from the sky. NARRATOR: Other witnesses add an even weirder twist to the tale. MAN: I didn't see them fall out of the sky, so I can't say they didn't, but I've seen them here hatch out of the ground after it rains, a couple of weeks after it's rained. NARRATOR: The fish are found hundreds of yards from the nearest stream or creek. MAN: There can be fish out in the front of the shop, and we're 200 meters from the creek. NARRATOR: Can fish really rise out of the earth? Can flying fish really fall from the heavens? There will be a full investigation. It kicks off in the regional weather center where Emile Jansons gets an unusual call. EMILE JANSONS: There was a reporter who was chasing a story on falling fish in Lajamanu. My first reaction was complete surprise, I thought it must have been a hoax and decided that this was something I should definitely follow up on. NARRATOR: Lajamanu is 400 miles inland towards the center of Australia. It hunkers on the edge of the Tanami Desert. The nearest large lake is 300 miles away. *** Creek, south of the town, is the only natural water source. Many of the fish are found on the town's sports ground, the Oval, less than 1,000 feet from the creek. The first stage of the investigation is to identify the type of fish. Local resident Christine Balmer recognizes the finger-sized species. CHRISTINE: Some of them were quite small, like three or four centimeters. I did witness ones that were like 10 centimeters. And they were all the same fish, spangled perch. NARRATOR: Spangled perch are freshwater fish found in waterholes, lakes and creeks across northern Australia. How they get from the lake, or even the nearby creek, to arrive on the town's sports ground is a mystery. Emile can immediately point to a potential perpetrator. EMILE: If you're looking for a meteorological suspect, there's really only one, one culprit that could actually do this, and that's the tornado. NARRATOR: Tornadoes generate some of the most powerful and destructive forces on the planet. Wind speeds can rise to 300 miles an hour-- powerful enough to haul cars into the air. And when Emile does a crosscheck on the records for Lajamanu on the night it rained fish, he finds uncanny conditions. EMILE: We had an active tropical low in the region, the atmosphere was very unstable, and the wind profile was just set up perfectly to get a tornado. NARRATOR: For a tornado to flood the sky with fish, it would have to kidnap its victims from beneath the surface of the water and release them unharmed after a journey across country. On the other side of the world in London, British Natural History Museum's fish expert Oliver Crimmen is a leading authority on showers of aquatic animals. OLIVER CRIMMEN: I've looked at reports of rains of fishes from around the world throughout history, and we find them occurring in Europe, a lot in the tropics, in India, in Australia a great deal. Really, throughout the globe, fish falls can happen. NARRATOR: It's not only fish that appear out of thin air. In 2007, hikers in Argentina are bombarded by an aerial barrage of venomous spiders, each one the size of a person's palm. Also in 2007, in Jennings, Louisiana, live earthworms pelt a policewoman as she makes her way to work. Tangled in large clumps, they hit the ground still wriggling. And in 2009, frogs, tadpoles and fish shower down on central Japan. Many strange appearances of animals are never explained, but Oliver knows of one case where there is undeniable evidence of fish falling from the sky. OLIVER: One Friday afternoon in 1984, the phone rang, and the reporter from a local newspaper had been contacted by a local man reporting fish found on the ground inexplicably. NARRATOR: A deluge of fish drops on a London suburb, East Ham, a few miles from the River Thames. OLIVER: Two types of fish were involved, flounders and smelt, very different shapes, similar weights. NARRATOR: This time it's clear what the culprit is. OLIVER: A small tornado moving over water will pick up water and fish and transport it either a little way from the sea or from a river estuary. NARRATOR: A tornado moving over wide, open water is called a waterspout. Occasionally, observers catch them forming inland as well. OLIVER: Now, a small waterspout is quite a short-lived phenomenon, and particularly if it moves from the water to the land, it will lose energy and drop its load. NARRATOR: Other cases of raining fish are close to rivers or open ocean. Lajamanu's nearest large body of water is 300 miles away. For a fish to complete this journey, a whirlwind would have to be a whopper. EMILE: We really are looking at a supercell tornado, which can easily exceed 200, 300 kilometers an hour. NARRATOR: Conditions may have been perfect for a powerful tornado that day. If it's a tornado, something is not adding up. Many of the fish found on the ground are still living. WOMAN: I couldn't believe it. It was alive and some of them was big, some of them was medium size, some of them was really small. And they were swimming around. Some of them, we kept them in the sink. CHRISTINE: My son found live fish in a puddle at the front of his house, which we videoed. NARRATOR: For Emile, this is the final blow to the tornado theory. EMILE: The fish would have to rise up within the storm to a level which is well above the freezing level, so 40,000 feet, we're talking temperatures of -20, -30 degrees Celsius. At that kind of temperatures, it's a very harsh environment for a fish to survive, I would imagine. To land on the ground kicking and happy is just a little bit hard to believe. NARRATOR: If no tornado is uploading fish and showering them on Lajamanu, the team must consider other suspects. The town's general store manager Stuart Shearer sets the investigation on a different trail. STUART SHEARER: I've seen them here hatch out of the ground after it rains, a couple of weeks after it's rained. There can be fish out in front of the shop, and we're 200 meters from the creek. NARRATOR: The seemingly newborn fish Stuart sees emerging from the earth are the same species as those found in town after the rain-- spangled perch. NARRATOR: Lajamanu's reputation for extreme weather may offer a clue. EMILE: Lajamanu is a location which has a very seasonal climate, so it's one of extremes. During the wet season everywhere the billabongs fill up, all the river courses start to run and the grass grows, and it's lush, and it's quite beautiful. And then rapidly, once that rain stops, everything just bakes, dries out, grass turns brown. So it's really quite a landscape of extremes. NARRATOR: Even during the wet season, when the rain vanishes, so does the creek. In order to survive, the fish go into torpor, a type of hibernation. Just like squirrels and groundhogs, several species of fish are believed to be able to hibernate. Lungfish burrow deep into mud to survive the dry season. They slow their metabolism down 60 times and can survive buried alive for up to three years only to re-emerge after heavy rains. Oliver Crimmen confirms this theory is a possibility. OLIVER: The spangled perch is able to survive in low-oxygenated water. There's even been speculation, the jury is still out as to whether it can estivate, that is, fully hibernate. EMILE: They go into a kind of stasis underground. They burrow into the mud and will just rest there until the next rainfall. NARRATOR: If the spangled perch have been hiding underground only to spring into action after heavy rain, this could explain how they're found alive. But many of the fish end up on the town's Oval or sports ground almost 1,000 feet from the creek. That's a really long way for a fish to travel. There is one way that fish can trek over land. EMILE: Flash flooding as a theory has some support in the observations that we received from the location. A flash flood occurs when the rainfall rate is much greater than the rate at which it can soak into the ground. Where you've got the right topography and the rainfall is funneled into gullies, you can often get quite a large flash flood, which just comes roaring through the river system, able to transport all kinds of things, including fish. NARRATOR: Lajamanu is occasionally ravaged by flash floods. But only after several hours of torrential rain. CHRISTINE: I don't think it could come from flash flooding, because we actually had no instant flash flooding. The creek was not full at the time. It did have some water in it, but there is no way that those fish could climb uphill on red dirt and be so many up the other end of the community. NARRATOR: The investigation stalls until biologist Peter Whelan has a sudden inspiration. PETER WHELAN: One day on a trip, I was coming from Alice Springs, and I saw something flapping on the road. And there were some fish, so I thought, well, how does this happen? And then I could see how the storm had come the night before, and there'd actually been water running, and there was still some slight amount of water running across the road. So the fish had obviously, to me, had come up and followed the stream upstream, and then when the water supply had suddenly stopped, they were left stranded in the middle of the road. NARRATOR: Incredibly, spangled perch, just like their walking relatives, climbing perch, possess an uncanny ability for any fish. PETER: Spangled perch will travel in very shallow water. As long as they can keep upright and keep their gills orientated right, they can travel in their own depth of water. Spangled perch are even sometimes seen crossing roads. They've adapted to really move rapidly in times of rain to new places looking for food. NARRATOR: Two weeks into the investigation, the riddle of the flying fish of Lajamanu is still unresolved. Let's review the evidence. Did a tornado pick up loads of perch from a nearby lake or waterway and then drop fish from the sky? EMILE: It's a very harsh environment for a fish to survive. NARRATOR: Could a flash flood have washed the fish into town? CHRISTINE: I don't think it could come from flash flooding, because we actually had no instant flash flooding. NARRATOR: Did the spangled perch emerge after a period of living underground? OLIVER: The jury is still out as to whether it can estivate, that is, fully hibernate. NARRATOR: The only thing for real are the fish themselves. NARRATOR: Peter Whelan has developed an interesting theory about cross-country travel. PETER: There would have been a sudden downpour, there would have been sheet water flow off the Oval. And when I saw that *** Creek is very close to the Oval, it's quite plausible that the fish swum up *** Creek and onto the Oval, and suddenly when the storm stopped, sheet water flow stopped, and there they are, the fish are flapping on the Oval. NARRATOR: Even the spangled perch's incredible ability to swim in just two fingers of water can't explain the most puzzling aspect of the case. MAN: The places where they were, they couldn't have come from anywhere else but above. EMILE: There's no reason why fish can't get sucked up into a thunderstorm. The physics all make sense, it's just the likelihood of having that right tornado, and the fish in the right place, and then somebody there to actually see it when it falls out. These three players don't really come together very often. So it is quite a rare event to have a report, and especially a report which can be verified. NARRATOR: The jury is still out. This case will run and run. Until the evidence is conclusive, the flying fish of Lajamanu remain a mystery. This case remains under investigation. South Africa, Kommetjie, May 31, 2009. The rising sun is painting the sea and sands of the town beach gold. It is one of the world's leading surf resorts. But this morning, a dark shape catches Sean McGuiness' attention. JEMIMA McGUINESS: Early in the morning, Sean got up to make us some coffee, when he noticed something on the beach. SEAN McGUINESS: Jemima, bring the children, come have a look! JEMIMA: When we got there, we could see a whale lying on the beach, flapping its tail. NARRATOR: Racing down to the sand, Jemima makes a massive discovery. 55 live whales line a mile of the shore. JEMIMA: It's almost unreal what I saw with these whales packed one next to each other, making a moaning, groaning sound, flapping their tails hard down on the sand. NARRATOR: It's so unusual that the event draws photojournalist Chad Chapman to the scene. CHAD CHAPMAN: There was probably 500 or 600 meters worth of beach full of whales and a very beautiful sunrise coming up in the mountains. It was just complete bewilderment, because it's not the long beach that I've seen before, it's not the Kommetjie beach I've seen before. NARRATOR: Kommetjie is a haven for whale spotting, but these animals are baffling, unlike any the locals have seen here before. JEMIMA: They were medium-sized, and they didn't have the black and white markings of an orca, but I knew they weren't any of the big whales. CHAD: I wasn't even sure that they were whales, they looked like big dolphins to me. NARRATOR: Marine dolphins fall into 33 species. The animals on the beach resemble the world's deadliest dolphin-- the orca, also called killer whale. But these animals are only half the size of orcas. It takes a specialist to identify them. They bring in whale biologist Dr. Meredith Thornton as an expert witness. MEREDITH THORNTON: The first reports, that was before I got down to the beach, were on the radio and so on, and people were saying that they were killer whales. But as soon as I got there, and I saw that it was a false killer whale. NARRATOR: Her discovery is remarkable. First of all, false killer whales aren't native to these waters. Fishermen in the Pacific named them because they confused these animals with true killer whales. Although both species are dolphin, they display key differences. MEREDITH: For me, the most distinguishing feature is their pectoral fins, which are the flippers, and those are kind of "S" shaped when you look at them, and they're very distinctive for the species. NARRATOR: False killer whales roam deep in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. MEREDITH: False killer whales do occur in the open ocean, and so coastal environments are strange to them. It's shallower, there's more, a bigger surf area, they're just not familiar with such shallow depths. NARRATOR: Now that they've identified the species, the search is on to discover what's driving 55 false killer whales onto shore. One theory-- they're escaping a predator. There's one animal in the waters off Kommetjie that is both strategic and deadly enough to terrify even a large group-- the orca! NARRATOR: Dave Hurwitz runs whale watching tours. He's witnessed groups of killer whales, also called orcas, hunting prey in the waters off Kommetjie. DAVE HURWITZ: I'd been spending about two hours tracking the dolphins and the orcas, when I noticed, just about 15 meters next to my boat, there was a dolphin moving on its own. I focused my camera on that dolphin, didn't know what was going to happen, and next minute the orca actually came up, at about 45 degrees and took the dolphin in its mouth in one bite. NARRATOR: The orca is a fierce hunter. It stalks prey from seals to blue whales and is the largest predator of warm-blooded animals. They also attack false killer whales. Like lions, they hunt in coordinated groups. Up to 50 will surround their victims before striking. Dave was on his boat that day. DAVE: There's quite good vantage points from above the beach. We would definitely have seen either the orcas consuming the false killer whales, or you would have seen some activity, like a blood line in the water. NARRATOR: No killer whales are sighted in the bay. In fact, they find no predators at all. It is safe for the animals to swim back into deeper ocean. The mystery intensifies. Most of the false killer whales have returned to shore. Members of the group are doing U-turns and racing in again. False killer whales form extremely close bonds. Pod sizes vary from 10 to 100, and in this group they travel and hunt together, keeping in constant contact with clicks and whistles. They follow a leader even if it's unwell. MEREDITH: If that animal is sick and it comes ashore, the others will follow. It could just be that any one of the animals could have been sick and then all the rest of the school ended up trying to help them, because if they communicate that they're in stress, other animals will come closer, and then literally just get into trouble themselves. NARRATOR: The whales are out of their element. After five hours, their protective blubber is overheating. They're suffering acute dehydration. They're also suffocating. MEREDITH: It was just an impossible and an unfortunate situation. NARRATOR: The volunteers' best efforts helped 14 whales to make it back into deeper water. Sadly, 41 are humanely put down. JEMIMA: It was really quite sad to see these animals that had been alive, and some of them had been swimming, just lifeless. NARRATOR: The investigation can now determine if the unknown killer causing the mass stranding leaves physical traces. Full postmortems will uncover any disease weakening the animals. It would take only one sickly whale to explain why the whole pod beached. The results are conclusive. MEREDITH: When we did the autopsies on 41 of the animals, we didn't come across anything that looked like one of them was clearly very ill. NARRATOR: Meredith can rule out disease. The forensic probe leads them to the next probable cause. MEREDITH: There's a possibility that the animals could have been chasing prey close inshore. We did find some evidence that there was hake in the stomachs of these animals. NARRATOR: False killer whales feed on hake, tuna and cod. Fish stocks are declining. The theory goes that a desperate pod of hungry false killer whales might chase a shoal of fish inshore and strand. Let's review the evidence. They're not being chased by a predator. DAVE: We would definitely have seen the orcas consuming the false killer whales, or you would have seen some activity. NARRATOR: They don't appear to be following a sick leader. MEREDITH: We didn't come across anything that looked like one of them was clearly very ill. NARRATOR: The postmortem reveals they've consumed a quantity of fish. MEREDITH: We did find some evidence that there was hake in the stomachs of these animals. NARRATOR: A hunt for food led 55 whales into an area they were unfamiliar with, but they should have been able to escape. The mystery is why they beached. NARRATOR: These mammals use a hugely effective navigational tool called echolocation. MEREDITH: False killer whales use echolocation as a form of seeing what's in their way, so they can use it as a way to navigate or a way to find prey. NARRATOR: Dolphins and whales possess natural sonar. They emit a high-frequency signal. When it hits an object, it bounces back. False killer whales are able to travel the vast ocean listening to the returning echo. The whales are great navigators, so there must be something specific to Kommetjie Bay that's robbing them of this skill. It turns out, a stranding like this has happened before. MEREDITH: We've got three sort of hot spots along the coast where more than one stranding has occurred. We've had two mass strandings of false killer whales here at Kommetjie, and then two a bit further north. NARRATOR: In 1928, more than 100 false killer whales ran aground in Kommetjie Bay. The disaster eerily resembles the scene over 80 years later. Back then, none of the whales survive. They are buried where they beach. The investigation focuses again on the bay. This time from a whale's eye view. Whatever's interfering with the whales as they approach the bay should also be picked up by ship's radar. DAVE: So we're coming along here with a ship at night. We can't see the horizon, we can't see the coastline at all. Our radar is showing the mountain here, the mountain in the background, so that would appear as if we're entering a bay. And if these animals are swimming along happily, and they came along under the water, their signals were going out hitting the sandy bottom, which is a very, very gradual slope, it's not going to come back to them, so they can just keep on swimming. And suddenly they find themselves in very shallow water, they panic, and they go into shock, they don't know what to do, and that's the situation where you're finding 50 or 60 animals in distress right along the coastline. NARRATOR: The whales' radar has been tricked, and they're going to strand on the beach. Yet the pod's sonar should alert them as they approach the shore. One previously unrecorded factor must be disorienting the pods of whales. MEREDITH: I think in a surf zone where there are a lot of bubbles, micro-bubble formation, I think that the echolocation signals become confused, because the signals can bounce off these bubbles, and just become lost, and so the animal wouldn't know exactly what was going on. NARRATOR: Whales do beach unexpectedly, and most of the time their strandings remain a mystery. But here, close inspection exposes a fatal combination of gently sloping shallows and surf. This discovery yields valuable insights for future inquiries. JEMIMA: Unfortunately the outcome was unhappy and very, very sad. But I just think that if we are better prepared for something like this should it happen again, then we've learnt something out of the experience, and then you will come away a winner. We did the best we could. NARRATOR: Case closed. Valle Antrona, the Italian Alps. June 2011. Hikers enjoying the beautiful scenery around Cingino Dam stop in their tracks. They can hardly believe their eyes. MARYANN HUCKYALE: My father-in-law dropped his knapsack, and he pulled his camera out quickly, and I was really quite surprised and shocked. NARRATOR: Something or someone is on the distant dam wall, and they're moving. MARYANN: There they were, and it was just a fantastic moment. NARRATOR: The creatures on the wall are identified as Alpine ibex. Their death-defying climb is unlike anything witnessed before. Ibex are native to the slopes of the Alps, inhabiting the surrounding forest. At 7,500 feet above sea level, they're used to altitude. But the sheer drop of the Cingino Dam is more vertical than most rocky hillsides. Here, they defy gravity. MARYANN: It was incredible. They would hop from one little ledge up to another little ledge, like as if it was nothing. My father-in-law was videotaping at one point, and one of the ibexes got scared, and so it jumped down. It was like watching somebody ski down a very steep mountain. It was just incredible. NARRATOR: Even an experienced climber would struggle to scale this wall. The scene is so unnatural. There's only one question on Maryann's mind. MARYANN: Why are they up there? NARRATOR: Alpine ibex are cousins of the common domestic goat. Their most obvious difference is their large, curved horns. The ibex has adapted to the high life on steep, rocky terrain. But the man-made dam, with its concrete and stone wall, seems a greater level of challenge. Cingino Dam holds water for a hydroelectric power project built in the 1920s. The retaining wall rises over 160 feet... ...towering higher than the Statue of Liberty. Reports of the Alpine ibex's mysterious exploits spread. Fascinated groups travel to the dam to witness the goats in action. MAN: I think it's incredible. MAN [TRANSLATED]: It all looks slightly surreal as a situation. MAN: They are glued to it, I don't know, I have never seen something like that. MAN [TRANSLATED]: To see them, you wonder, how can they stand there? How do they do it? NARRATOR: National Park technician Radames Bionda has the answer. NARRATOR: A combination of factors enable this incredible creature not just to survive, but to thrive on sheer slopes. Short legs and low-slung body mass give the ibex a low center of gravity. The length of its bones and strength of muscle in its legs are precisely engineered for climbing. But what makes the ibex a true extreme off-roader are its hooves. These are naturally evolved climbing boots-- a sharp, thin external rim grips on the slimmest of rocky outcrops, with a large soft central area to stick onto smooth and slippery surfaces. Mountain goats all over the world are famous for their climbing skills. They're adapted to scale all kinds of terrain. In Montana, a mountain goat solos a sheer face then stretches across a gulley like a free-climber. In Morocco, the Tamri goat routinely climbs to the treetops to pick the juiciest berries. In the Hindu Kush of Pakistan, markhor goats also effortlessly scale bushes and trees in search of a nutritious meal. But regardless of species, even the most agile-hoofed creature needs a toehold. BRUNO BASSANO [TRANSLATED]: Not even an ibex can climb a vertical concrete wall. But where there are rocks embedded in the concrete, this allows them to get a foothold. NARRATOR: These special adaptations explain how the ibex are surefooted on bare rock, but not why they climb this particular wall. One slip and they are dead meat. MARYANN: The first thought I had was that they were probably trying to get warmth from the sun against the rock. NARRATOR: The dam faces southeast. It's a natural suntrap. Are the ibex seeking heat? Stefano Grignolio from Italy's University of Sassari, is an expert on Alpine ibex. STEFANO GRIGNOLIO [TRANSLATED]: It's a species that's developed a physiology and anatomy that are very well adapted to the cold, so much so that it doesn't even have working sweat glands to cool it down. It's impossible that the ibex are on the wall at Cingino to find warmth. NARRATOR: These hardy creatures are so used to the cold, they're unlikely to be looking to bask in the sun. Something else is driving them up there. NARRATOR: Ibex rely on their climbing skills to escape predators, seeking refuge on hard-to-reach outcrops. It's their best defense against wolves, jackals and eagles. Radames Bionda has been watching the ibex population here for years. NARRATOR: Perhaps they're fleeing human assailants. People have always been one of the Alpine ibex's main predators. The horns and meat were so popular, ibex were nearly hunted to extinction. Something had to change. Emergency laws were established. Hunting was banned and conservation areas created where ibex still range. Protection from poachers, plus a reintroduction program set Alpine ibex numbers soaring again. BRUNO: Poaching has been greatly reduced in the last few years. So the animals aren't there to avoid man as a predator. NARRATOR: Today they're more likely to be shot on film than with a gun. What is driving so many goats to the wall? Maryann witnesses a behavior that may provide the answer. MARYANN: They were eating something, and, but I couldn't figure out what. BRUNO: They're excellent at making the best of the vegetation present, but there must be at least some grass and vegetation. On the dam wall nothing can really grow. NARRATOR: No plants grow here to satisfy their vegetarian diet. This scenario is unlikely. Let's review the evidence. Alpine ibex are congregating on Cingino Dam's near-vertical wall. They're not seeking warmth from hot rocks. They're not seeking sanctuary from predators. Yet the ibex look like they're risking their lives. Why? Maryann becomes a lead witness. MARYANN: As we got closer, it became more and more evident that they were actually licking something off of the stones. NARRATOR: Licking a bare wall seems like an unrewarding activity, but Radames Bionda has an idea why the ibex might do this. STEFANO: The goat family in general have an extreme need for salts, mineral salts. They utilize throughout the year all the sources of mineral salts that they can find in nature. NARRATOR: How could a stone wall offer a salty solution? The last piece of the puzzle is put into place by dam supervisor Luciano Rametti. LUCIANO RAMETTI [TRANSLATED]: During the chemical reactions when concrete is made, salts are produced, and then, due to the damp and over a long time, they're brought to the surface. NARRATOR: The mystery is solved. Ibex are licking salt formed by the concrete in the dam wall. They're driving themselves up the wall to satisfy their need for salt, or perhaps they just like the taste. Either way, the salt-seeking ibex of Cingino Dam show nature at its most ingenious. MARYANN: They're just amazing to watch, they are so agile, and they're beautiful, and it's so nice to be so close to nature. NARRATOR: Case closed.