Man vs. Wild: China

Weaver ants are incredibly aggressive insects and were used to protect fruit trees from invading insects. On top of that, their larvae make for a great survival meal. They pack a nasty punch with their bites, but in a survival scenario you should seek them out for the food energy their larvae can provide. Pound for pound, they provide more protein than beef.

China is rife with unexplored cave systems. During World War II, Chinese resistance fighters used caves to hide U.S. airmen they'd shot down over the jungles.

Breathing in spores in the air from bat guano can lead to a deadly lung disease called histoplasmosis. It should come as no surprise that it's also known as "cave disease."

In a survival situation you should cover your mouth with a shirt or bandana when exploring a bat cave to keep from breathing in the airborne spores.

Bats have been around for more than 50 million years for a good reason: They don't need vision to hunt in the dark. But it's not a sense of smell that allows this; it's a biological sonar system called echolocation. When a bat hunts, it emits a hig-pitched sound and then listens carefully to the echoes that return. The bat's brain then processes the returning information to judge exactly how far away its prey is.

The Chinese cobra has a potent mix of hemotoxic and neurotoxic venom, enough to kill 10 adult humans. Like all snakes, they try to avoid people, but are ready to strike when confronted. And like all cobras, they can spit venom up to 7 feet.

The antivenom is widely available in China, but if you get bitten in the wild you'll likely be dead within a 12-hour window.

Toads, birds and bats should all be cooked before eating because they can carry a number of diseases. Frogs on the other hand, are typically fine to eat raw. Look for frogs that aren't brightly colored; if they're colorful, they could be poisonous.

Toads typically have warts and scales on their backs, and you should stay away from them. If you manage to catch a frog, you should skin it and gut it to get to the edible, raw interior meat.

At night, the floor of a jungle becomes an expressway for insects, scorpions, snakes and even larger predators like panthers. The same goes for areas near rivers and dense brush. The safest place to be is up off the ground. A makeshift sleeping pad, or hammock suspended between trees is a good way to get off the ground.

Finding a tree where you can fashion a sleeping platform is a good move as well. Bamboo is extremely strong and flexible and should be a part of any jungle bed. Use the bamboo along with strong jungle vine to weave a comfortable sleeping palate.

Rats, like many mammals, carry a great deal of nutrients in their skin. If you're in a survival scenario, you want to take advantage of every bit of food energy you can, so leave the skin on the rat while you roast it. The hair will simply burn off and the rat will swell up from the heat.

This will also make the creature easier to gut, with a simple incision causing the guts to pop out. Once it's gutted, you can remove the skin to get to the good meat, but make sure you eat the skin as well for its nutritional value. Chinese hunters that catch rats are given the heads and brain as prizes.