Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan: Season 2

Dominic heads to Kenya – the heart of safari country – to track down the incredible giant spitting cobra. Capable of blasting cornea-melting venom and delivering a bite lethal enough to kill more than 20 people, this might be his most dangerous mission to date. But the cobra isn’t his only worry on this adventure. While on his search, Dominic and cameraman Frank have their closest call ever when a six-ton elephant charges and almost tramples them after they stop to help perform life-saving field surgery on the wounded animal.

Dominic endures the scorching heat of the vast Australian Outback to locate one of the rarest bats on the planet – the ghost bat. The creature gets its name from its translucent white wings that make it look ghostly as it flies through the moonlight. To find them, Dominic has to crawl on his belly to fit into incredibly tight and pitch black spaces. One wrong step can mean disaster. The Northern Territory’s premiere bat expert, Dr. Damien Milne joins him on this dark search.

Dominic touches down in Costa Rica, home to more than a half-million known species of animal, including the extremely endangered, but incredibly beautiful, Lemur Leaf Frog – a thumbnail-sized master of camouflage. Dominic has to trek through the most remote stretches of Costa Rican jungle filled with predators to find the elusive creature. Meanwhile, he engages in a bit of fun playing on the monkey bars with a monkey and surfs the challenging Costa Rican coast.

Dominic is in Zambia on a mission to find one of the most feared snakes on the planet, the enormous and deadly gaboon viper. Armed with an incredibly fast strike, the gaboon viper wields the longest fangs of any poisonous snake – two-inch long swiveling switchblades that deliver more venom in one bite than any other snake on Earth. He and local snake expert Morgan, travel by boat up the mighty Zambezi River, navigating his way through dangerous pods of hippos and Nile crocodiles, and through the Zambian forest – home to a group of very rare white rhinos and villagers who make their homes along the remote edges of the Zambian forest. While there, Dominic learns about the ancient relationship between the people and the termites that build spectacular 20-foot mounds nearby.

Dominic sails the mighty Amazon River on a mission to find the largest beetle on the planet – the titan beetle. This massive insect can grow up to seven inches in length and wields mandibles so strong and sharp, it can snap a pencil in half. To find this rare and elusive beetle he has to venture into the remote corners of the Brazilian jungle. Along the way, he wrestles with a mighty green anaconda he encounters on the river. Dominic also visits a remote village in the rainforest, where he befriends a group of small children and gets his face painted with the seeds of the achiote fruit, an ancient practice.

In his first underwater mission ever, Dominic heads to Australia’s legendary Great Barrier Reef to track down perhaps the most venomous creature in the ocean, the deadly box jellyfish. Responsible for more deaths than sharks and crocodiles combined, this creature is armed with potent venom that can stop the human heart in seconds.

Dominic is in New Zealand on a mission to find one of the largest and heaviest insects on earth, the very rare and very cool giant wetapunga – the largest species of Wetas, found only in New Zealand. In a Wild Things twist, Dominic will be accompanied by his best friend and fellow hobbit, Billy Boyd. He and and Billy have not been in New Zealand together since they acted in The Lord of the Rings Trilogies. Together, Dom and Billy meet the incredible creatures endemic to the island and have a bit of fun in Hobbiton.

Dominic is in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, the most bio desert in all of North America – it’s also one of the hottest. He’s come here to explore more than a hundred thousand square miles of wild desert, on a mission to find one of America’s most mythic creatures, the Gila Monster. It’s the largest of its kind in North America – a gorgeous ground dwelling creature that packs one of only two venomous lizard bites in the whole world! On his trip around the desert, Dominic runs into other fascinating and dangerous creatures including the biggest species of rattlesnake in North America and a Black Widow Spider.

Dominic faces one of his most challenging missions ever when he travels to the Land of the Rising Sun in pursuit of the giant Japanese salamander. Measuring over five feet in length and tipping the scales at a whopping 50 pounds, these massive amphibians live and hunt in cold, fast-moving remote mountain streams.

In the season finale, Dominic travels deep into the wilds of Thailand, searching for one of the most unique and endangered primates on the planet, the Slow Loris, the world’s only venomous primate. It’s a nocturnal, tree dwelling creature with enormous eyes that can see in the dark, and has one of the sweetest faces on the planet… but don’t let that fool you.