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The Living Planet a Portrait of the Earth 8 Sweet Fresh Water

by: Attenborough, David, 1926-; British Broadcasting Corporation. Television Service; Time-Life Films; Time-Life Video

Publication date: 1984

Topics: Rivers, Stream ecology, Watersheds, Rivers, Stream ecology, Rivers, Stream ecology, Watersheds

Publisher: New York, NY : Time-Life Video

Language: English

Title from data sheet

Intended audience: Ages 16 through adult

Issued also as videorecording

Host David Attenborough follows the Amazon River, the world's largest river system, from its source in the Peruvian Andes to its huge coastal delta in Brazil. Great waterfalls such as the Angel Falls in Venezuela and Iguassu in Brazil demonstrate the power of rivers to shape the landscape

Addeddate: 2015-08-01 00:13:29

Boxid: IA1130119

Identifier: thelivingplanetaportraitoftheearth8sweetfreshater

Lccn: 85700248

Ocr: The pond skater sits on a leaf but he could equally well sit on the water for the surface forms a spring it pack form that supports many small creatures. Water molecules are bound to one another by force akin to magnetism. They're not attracted to molecules of air above. So those on the surface have their forces concentrated sideways giving the surface especially strong tension and the pond skater hunt on it. It's lost its prey under the leaf. This time there is no escape the pond skater stabs its victim unsexy dry. It's crucially important for the pond skater to keep meticulously clean and went to surface of its body and the fine hair is on its feet. Repel water but any dirt on them that is workable. Would break the surface tension room. They're aggressive insect each with its own territory. Among the little pad. Intruders are immediately chased away and fights between rival was a common. The surface tension. Film is not only the puns cases platform of their sounding board through sense organs on their feet they can detect the vibrations caused by the struggles of an insect that has fallen on the surface and by bouncing up and down. They communicate to one another sending keep out signals the rivals and come hither signals to potential mates. Where they get beat was used by basins of the circus. On in a slightly different way by gyrating they create ripples and by monitoring the returning echoes they detect the presence of other creatures and obstacles around them. They have excellent eyes which are partition so that the lower half. Peers downwards to see what's happening in the water beneath. Hanging from below the surface is another hunter its tail has two tubes which penetrate the surface still and collect their so that it can believe that it's under and its head has ferocious jaws with which it sees it to pray this is the larva of the giant diving be called and its quarter tadpoles. It has to come to the surface even when it's adult so that it can collect their to sustain it on it's hunting for is down into deeper waters. On. The water both women. Patrols the surface looking for pray not from above like the pond skater but from below the two kinds of insects between them managed to collect most of the creatures that are trapped in the surface film. The counter before lives on plant to the water's edge but it is perhaps the most versatile of all water walkers. It can run over water like a pond skater. He can also produce a substance which like camp. Greatly reduces the tension between water molecules in the merchant says it's put says from its pale and with the tension reduced at the back in the pulling hard at the front it shoots across the surface so fast but the only way to see it clearly is instill a motion. And as a final demonstration of the stuff you tell us if it can like most good Beatles fly. One particularly ferocious Hunter lives. On the edge of lakes and ponds in your own the fishing spider. It uses the surface tension film in the same way as other spiders he was their weapons but its front legs resting delicately on the surface it's the word for tell tale by brain. But he also has an expense. Site and conceive potential préval Oh the surface. The stickleback sees only the site. That is a greatly A slow down version of the killed in reality the pounce is rapier Swift and the stickleback had little chance once its trade was in range. Makes any punches fed by streams or cut off from the main course of the river are comparatively small but where the rivers flow into basins created by geological felt the water accumulates in immense Lakes. This is Lake press pack in Yugoslavia not the largest of lakes but even so twenty miles long as the rivers which feed it entered its still waters they lose that impetus and drop their sediment so such lake some potentially that is her time now and that animal inhabitants no longer have asked by a perpetual current Hamdan by a shallow bottom or now banks can qualify and they do fish swarm in their waters. Thanks. Up. And fish eating birds like pelicans comments form correspondingly. So. A. Land based creatures Haunted Mansion. These may be its most certain parts for the lack of strong currents in a really deep lake can leave the bottom waters starved of oxygen but in the shallows especially when they're warmed by the summer sun algae and other plants flowers small invertebrates proliferate and those who thought even Billy's badge or of one. Hundred. But in one way these large lakes are very special. This town with this think of red spots. Lives in Lake are read a few miles away from a post by but no one else in the world. Isolated in the lake community is a fish become better in bread small Congress sticks that could be lost in bigger populations become fixed and the fish evolved into new species. A similar thing has happened to the shrimp. And among the many different species of water snake seven and. You need to lay cock. In. The heart of Russia. Live a stretch of fresh water so few and so ancient that these processes have produced new spin on the scale and he called anywhere else in the. Lake Baikal. The lake lies in the Great Depression. Fall by faulting in the earth's crust it's four hundred miles long and five thousand feet in the deepest of forming. The up. In the depths of the lake a thousand feet down. Lives a unique kind of salmon. The moment in time as they move up into the shallows and feed on cat is fly larvae and stand up as I hear they're caught in great numbers for their delicious eating. But this is only one of by cows especially habits of the one thousand two hundred different kinds of fish and other animals and five hundred plants that it contains over eighty percent are unique that a unique mollusks unique platforms and even one unique mammal the by cows feel. This tiny smile is almost certainly descended from the ring seal of the Arctic Sea Today the lake is over a thousand miles away from that scene it's likely that the ancestors of these creatures. Arrived here during the I said when the journey may have been shorter and easier since then cut off from other ring seals they've developed on their own. They Armisen has no great lake on it. Cause so even in its middle stretches it still carries mug from the end of the Rio Negro which joins it here is clear for you does come from the northwest where the rocks a hard and bad the two immense rivers flow for miles along hard one another in the same bed. Scarcely mixing as well as sediment they also carry abundant Newton on life on their banks flourishes as never before. Heard of Kathy bother wade through the shallows cropping the logs or implants. Oh they're excellent sermons with webs between their toes and they have that placing of eyes ears and nostrils that So bankable to mammals that regularly swim on the top of the head so that as the animal lives submerged they can see hear and smell what's going on above water around them. John autopsies have a similar head design and sometimes lift themselves above the surface to get an even better view of their surroundings. This Amazonian species is the biggest of all the worlds autos six feet long and the most powerful swimmer it's well equipped with large webbed feet of flattened pale and sensitive Whiskas a panel lays claim to a stretch of river by making territorial patches on the banks. Marking them with their own personal style. Thanks. There are authors in many of the great rivers of the world and they are the most wasteful us with your. The new. In India they share the harvest the fish with the got the are most members of the cockade I'll family went and out feed largely on Karyn but the governor all its own efficient and has long narrow jaws started with abundant peace with which he catches them underwater. Host a bird also pay my share of the river fish this is the hooded McGann's outside one of the group of ducks called saw Bill. Its beak like a governor I was Jaws is long and narrow so it's the mall isn't a snap together on the water and it also has a not edge to get a grip on the slippery fish. But their feathers cap so much air but the pair have to work very hard to get down to any depth. Coming up again. Is easy enough. But the meal was only a mouthful and the McGann's I must look for another one. On the bottom. More danger for a fish a worm perhaps. Know the deceiving tongue of a turtle. And. Then the sky. Above. The. River. More trouble for us. To show. You. Another one left for next time. The Fish Eagle is not a diver but upon sub with a marvelously coordinated action. Aerial onslaught on the fifth continues not only throughout the day but at night. N O goes fishing for good. For those who drank the water and it has spines on the underside of the post which give it a firm grasp on the fifth. In the. Last pages. Of the lives of these great rivers often flow out of control that tributaries far away in the mountains. Fed by the heavy storms of the rainy season. Paul so much water into them but they burst their banks. The Amazon rises every year a flood pens of poses of square miles of forest in some parts of March was forty feet. Some of these trees are flooded for a ten months every year they need only a couple of months underlay also water for them to grow and for their seeds to germinate since about we still don't know exactly how they manage. As the floods well out over the land from the river travel with this is going to be their best feeding time in the whole year. And so it is for other creatures to. Among the fallen tree leaves that cop at the bottom line is the mark I'm not a total marvelously camouflaged waiting with a decent sized fish. And there are plenty already here. Sheltering like that. Among the still on what Italy. But Anya here too. These are not the flesh eating that he and I used for something different. For. As the river becomes older and older. Its riches increase still sell. All over the world as rivers approach that and they begin to deposit the sand and mud that they've got it from so far. I carried for so long in many parts of the world reads go thickly on the shows and banks and their stems correct even more settlements as a result waters swell to. Living in these dense reed beds requires considerable skill a little bit and somehow or other disabled to find its nest. Given out of sight somewhere in this seemingly uniforms stretch of rain. It's regurgitates let's help come for supplies of fish and fronts for its young. Val world is anything a few of us will spend for the nimble climate from an early age and they leave the nest within a few days of action. There they wait almost invisible for their parents to return which we stocked crops. The read plug waters of a river delta are full of potential riches not only for birds but for human beings the reads them selves are used for many purposes but it's not an easy life here from land on which to live is hard to find in the delta of the Danube the fuselage sandbanks how tightly packed with dwellings earth has to be careful concerted piles to prevent a slight change in the current from washing it away and there's the ever present threat of a rise in the water level because not only by heavy rainstorms upstream but an unusually high tide backed by a storm sweeping up from the sea witch hunt caused devastating floods. In the twin joined our toes of the Tigris and Euphrates in Iraq the Marsh Arabs have become specialists in an amphibian life. Their houses seem to have solid enough foundations in fact they are floating on rafts a release. Some are the most elaborate constructions. Yet all the is soaring arches and loose or Sammy. From bundles of rain and reads provide food for the livestock so gathering them is a daily and never ending chore. The Her just have to be as much at home in the water has a zero on their second pack. For. The rewards of this precarious existence are of course the abundant fish which live all around the houses and even underneath them. Sold a fish on the Marsh Arabs and the pelicans flourish in one integrated community. The river has finally delivered the minerals it eroded from the mountains and the nutrients it collected from the fires. They sustain plants which of the food for small animals which are eaten by bigger fish which are ultimately gathered by great flocks of birds. That's from the topics to the Arctic either glossed over don't. Smoke you. Can. You. Cross the world in the topics on the Delta in Papua New Guinea. Magpie who's. In Australia. Scarlett in Venezuela. Almost any doubt in the world and equally widespread still. The in. School. Bob. Is great. For hundreds of miles along its lower course the river has been so broad this is been impossible to see from one side. Now instead of receiving more to the truth it splits. And on the last. Stanza great and striving. For the river is so deep the cargo ships overseas was a highway that can take them for a thousand miles in the heart of South America. Vital Statistics are astounding at any one time. Two thirds of all the river water is flowing between its banks here is its mouth. It's two hundred miles across and mayors of channels and islands one of which. Is a little bigger than the whole circus and the river maintains its identity until far out into the sea it was because of this that was discovered in fourteen ninety nine a Spanish sea captain sailing well beyond the sight of land suddenly became aware that the water he was crossing was fresh and not solved. West discovered this immense river. Indeed it's not until one hundred miles beyond the edge of the constant the particles of water which fell on the Andes complete four thousand mile long journey and mingle with the salt water. But farther along the coast where the fast of the rivers flood is not so great there is a halfway house here the water is neither fresh or salt but brackish it's neither land sea but banks of the half the time submerged and half the time expense and that intermediate ever changing tone is where we will be next. I. The. I. A strange. The. Shape catching the clouds. High. About the jungles of Venezuela. It's some across a been called in to a multitude of grotesque shapes the sculptor and agent which is continuously working on much of the landscape of our planet. Rainwater. It washes over the rock eroding it can make it permeates the cracked freezes and ships it off and breaks and Sprint. As the water flows downwards it stomps on a long journey that will take it from the rain drenched mountains to the sea and here with a leap of over three thousand feet the highest grade by. Anyone It forms the angels for. Our. Journey begins not far from that. Powering waterfall on the high more than a power to fifteen thousand feet above the sea. Water is a very extraordinary and very precious substance it's the only substance on earth apart from Mercury which remains liquid at normal temperatures and pressures and because of that it's an essential part of the bodies of all living organisms. Animals and found without it life would come to an end and this meticulous water is a very rare kind ninety seven percent of the water on earth is faulty the sea but this was the still from the surface of the sea by the heat of the sun rose into the sky is very Perkins thence to form clouds and then fell again as rain and snow to form streams have your fresh sweet water but this particular strain is on its way to the sea a very long way away because these are the Andes and this is one of the ministry. There can claim to be a source of the biggest live on a the analysts. The difficulty of living in this young violent robots are formed the old its waters of Lake with how the Rocky Mountains but as yet they have gathered few minutes and they rush down the valley. That's tremendous to hold anything. Lives here has to be a prodigious control. Their parents were. They exploit the spoils and it is with consummate skit patterning with possible strokes with an large waves and so they had always upstream bracing themselves against the rocks with their stiff little tail and using small only spurs on the wrists of their wings just to get in touch. Her pair only suspect of the river working their way I think until they reach the fun to their territory when they abandon themselves to the flood and the specs downstream to begin all over again. I said permit for the votes is a kind of mudslides. Most is primitive ancient plants that appeared on a Long before flowering plants and this torrent Moss It's found in young rivers and streams all over the world and wherever it grows. Whether in the end is all here in Europe. It provides shelter for a multitude of insect lobby. In some of these creatures will become transformed and fly briefly about the river to mate but most about lives are spent underwater some are streamlined against the current. The Candice fly larvae live in protective to the hollows. Them of a read or a construction of bits of wood stuck together with silk. Some weight themselves down so that the current doesn't shift them by building their shoulders from heavy grains of sand. The lover of the black fly holds on to a pebble with its back and while it grabs that food particles of a swept past it with the antennae on its head. It grips the rock with a ring of hoax but even if it loses its home. All is not lost. It has a lifeline the silk which it has attached to its chosen pep talk. Having hold itself back it now has to get a new grip. First it spins a tiny pad of so from the spinner it just beneath its mouth then it picks is its hopes into that. The next with which it collects its food a modified antennae and the lava brushes off what they can't. With alternate six of its most part. Not all caddis larvae live in solid tube this one builds a construction that serves both as a home. Understood governing device. It uses its silk to produce a funnel shaped scaffold of crisscrossing threads. Under-rating its body is a way of aiding its breeding for the movement. Speeds the flow of oxygen banning water through the funnel. It holds on with the hoax of the back. Chris leaving its jaws and front legs free to do the construction work. This black fly law but wasn't saved by its lifeline. I. See. But the cat is fine art itself. Ferocious and out for trapper though it is is also an address. Book. The Dipper relishes it. Details live both in the rivers of North America and you're. Under water they're swimming technique is quite different from the parent ducks in the ending. Its feet are not when like a duck so it propels itself with its wings flying under water. Are. In similar cold fast flowing streams in North America lives a kind of giant Newt the hellbender when it's young. It also like a dipper takes in technology but it can grow to over two feet long and then hit six months bigger pray. A crazy fish would suit it admirably. I know I was scape the crayfish saved itself at the last moment by convulsive snap of its tail but the hellbender doesn't give up easily. Both animals and try to keep out of the current and her bitterly creep into crevices. But that sometimes is a mistake. Screens that tumble down the sides of the valley and C.D.R. rivers have their own population. In Malaysia the big headed turtle embers around the waterfalls using its tail as a prop. Of in West African or told stands nowhere else lives the extraordinary Harry from of. Its so-called has often the mints of skin on its francs which Actors Guild was helping it seemed to absorb oxygen from the water. Quick and almost as unusual it has clause that help it grip the slippery stones. Of. The men as sources of the Amazon began as numberless reveal it's on the eastern flank of the Andes. Now five thousand feet lower down each is goes beyond recognition and cut it sounds like bad Whitewater humbling down the valley oil going to use the bomb was sort of a market to be very happy with my pleasure. And I didn't get bigger bigger become Animal. Society my little. It's a bit less but during the race but it is more to life. Yeah I'm the shit I'm. Going to boulder the size of the. Speed of a tortoise is not the river's only way. And in this empty rainy season part of it but you can see the. Signs. Five months of that have been arrested some high up and it's cause i'm which the river house with enormous at the rock. With such to become common way. Young vigorous Rivers transform the land demolishing the mountains breaking down the debris into smaller and smaller particles and carrying them away downstream. This river in China is perpetually expose her to that it's called upon to hold the yellow it carries a big a load of time when any of us. Getting each cubic yard of course a contained over two thousand pounds of solid pope arrives. With those in the full bigger of that you are terrifying the stuff they will Great told that they cut the way it was bank undermining which crash into the world and especially. When the river encounters a band of unusually hard rock such as a name. LOL about the mother. Its progress is temporarily slowed it spreads out across the barrier and then tumbles over the frontage so a form some of the loveliest Cascades the use of the four was a big question on the border of Brazil and part of why they can't compare in height to the Angel Falls but in terms of the volume of water that passes over them they are incomparably bigger. The fully waters pound away at the base of the falls under cutting the back out until blocks split off the face so the full said that they worked their way up river leaving downstream but people and animals live even here within the full system. That's on the rock face behind the cascade. Every evening they congregate high about the question after day of hokey but insects they're ready to release. And we're safe behind a screen. Appallingly. Some dive down with such speed so they shoot like through before. The announced. The river has left the mountains far behind and the strangest kind of a considerably bigger broader and is more his county not only sand and gravel that rich Nugent sort of washed him from its vegetation covered back and after it's gone over its last. I'm told. It becomes a very different indeed. It's middle aged and less violent. All sluggish and Richard. On the banks of the Amazon to betray is the jungle stands thick. Birds like the sun buttons talk in such of a male. Huge fish cruise through the slow water as. The Arab PYNE One of the largest of freshwater fish grows over six feet long the Amazon contends Oh but please. House and different kinds of fish that's more than live in all the Atlantic. Rain is almost certainly evolved in the seat but this species has managed to make the change to freshwater and lives high up. Many other fish have evolved in fresh water and have become suited to all its variations of depth speed and chemical composition to muddy water and appear to stretches that AFIC with plants in places where there are not that is. Take for example just one family the cats. That all bottom dwelling fish with Steelers or Bob was on their snouts that have sense organs on so the fish can feel and taste their way through the thick muddy water or night. That a small ones. Immense one some that give electric shocks and others that swim upside down those that live in fostering waters have suckers on their chins or on the sides with which they cling. To work. In South America alone there are one thousand two hundred different species of cats. In these crowded waters. Many Fish give special protection to their young for the first few weeks about line. This fish the Diskos goes even further. It provides special food the parents exude a nutritious skin and the young grains over their friends. Here. After a week because after feeding small particles floating in the water. These are now a month old and have already assumed the disc like shape of their parents. They're becoming independent but they strayed past the lair of an electric eel. Iraq has been a point site but it detects the presence of objects around it was shorter that bring this charge is the kind of radar. It rises for a gulp of air this time the young discuss seem to have escaped detection. But the ill can also produce a major electric shock which comes its prey. Astonishingly it releases its can perhaps so small a fish is not working and the young discuss apart from the marks of the evil jaws on its banks. Seems no worse off. One Amazonian fish put its eggs we on the reach of any water living predator on lead. Overhanging a river. A pair of stretching Texas are courting. They could have their bodies and for an instant leap clear of the water. Sometimes a third fish joins in. The bigger of the two was the man. For a moment the fair hang on belief supported by the function of the males floppy fin. Again and again they jumped. In this one moment the female lays her eggs and drops off and the male fertilizes them and follows each time they leave behind a does not. So eggs. With. A few insert our legs drop off a leaf but they're not wasted. Eventually as many as two hundred acres are safe to pay for out of harm's way and the river can be an exceedingly dangerous place. Look around you the most savage of all the Amazons fish swimming Kathy bath suddenly realizes their presence and tries to recreate but it's too late. The splashing the taste of blood spreading rapidly through the water. Attracts more and more the show until there are hundreds of the fish all possessed by a friend's It's a flesh none are much more than a foot long but their teeth are sharp enough to cut clean through barrels. Quote within minutes there's little left. Has the river get older it slows down a mine obstacle in its path is now enough to deflected the water flowing around the outside of a band has to travel farther and speeds up and cuts away at the bank on the inside of the bend where the current is slow the water can no longer support it slowed the settlement and drops it to form a show so the Ben becomes more and more exaggerated as the elderly reverse swings from side to side in a series of loops and mandates in places one band may approach another until the neck of land between the two is so narrow it collapses then the river takes the shorter course and the Meander is that isolated as a curving lake there are water at last is still plants no longer have to fight against the current and the lakes become clogged. With vegetation. These are early largest floating leaves of all the leaves of the famous John Allen's and Lily. Covering the water with leaves of this size is a very aggressive act for it comes out the light in the water below. Making it very difficult for other plants to grow there and the upturned remains of the great paths as they grow. Cluster one side all other floating plants. And to prevent these leaves being destroyed by being eaten by fish and they're protected with very effective and ferocious spines underneath as you can see most clearly on this half open bad. It can develop from the size of a Super eight to a huge animal disk six feet across in only a few days. Growing at a rate of one square inch in a minute the flowers developed with similar spin each opens first in the evening and remains with its purple spread them powerfully fragrant all night by the morning however it's closed again but during the night it's taken prisoners inside the flower are because. Sometimes there are as many as forty of them in a single blue and they're not there just by accident they've been attracted by special sugary outgrowths in the centre of the flower and while they're trapped in there during the day they will feed on those this evening the flower will open for the second time the Beatles will be released and they'll fly off carrying with them. Pollen to cross-pollinate another live law and then after just two nights this bloom by now. Turn purple. Well CUMPLE and died. Really immense leaves strengthened by air fills ribs bunnies can support the weight of a small child and water birds can. Walk over them with complete confidence and safety. This one the Jakarta has greatly even gaited toes that can spread its weight so effectively that it can trade on very much flimsy leaves and those of the Amazon living without submerging them. It seeks insects and there are painted to choose from.

Rights: The Living Planet a Portrait of the Earth 8 Sweet Fresh Water Search Educational Film Journals at Media History Project for references to this film