Spy In The Ocean | Preview (BBC One)

In this brand new four-part series, an amazing new generation of spy creatures set out to explore the ocean, encountering the ingenious and emotional animals that have made this habitat their home.

Image from previous series

In this first episode, we see the spies search for intelligent life and mind-boggling ways of thinking. The largest and most ambitious spy creature ever built has a close encounter with the owners of the largest brains on the planet: sperm whales. Spy whale is the same size as a newborn whale calf and can swim and dive like the real thing.

It is also equipped with an array of specialist cameras and a hydrophone that can capture their calls. To reveal the greatest mind in the invertebrate world, spy octopus builds a relationship with a coconut octopus, a creature who not only a central brain but also a brain in each of its arms.

It uses its combined brainpower to steal the coconut shell carried by our spy and then uses it as the door to its secret hideaway. It even improvises a shield and throws missiles at a rival.

In Thailand, spy macaque swims with freediving monkeys and captures behaviour that has never been seen before: macaques catching fish with their bare hands. In Japan, spy puffer fish encounters an artistic genius, a male Japanese puffer fish that crafts exquisite sand sculptures to woo a mate. Spy puffer becomes the artist’s assistant as it finds shells to help it complete its masterpiece.

In the Caribbean, spy hermit crab loses its camera shell to a real hermit crab during a house swap. The thief becomes an unwitting camera operator and gains a crab’s-eye view as the crabs line up to exchange shells in order of size. Also in the Caribbean, spy pig joins a colony of wild pigs as they cleverly take to the ocean to find food.

From fish that use teamwork to solve problems, to a rare social gatherings of whales in deep conversation, this action-packed first episode gains startling new insights with feats of intelligence surprisingly similar to our own.

Spy In The Ocean begins Sunday 3rd June at 7pm on BBC One.