Internet Archive's in-browser video player requires JavaScript to be enabled. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature.

The Living Planet A Portrait of the Earth: 9 - the Margins of the Land

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

Publication date: 1984

Topics: Intertidal ecology, Mangrove ecology, Intertidal ecology, Mangrove ecology

Publisher: New York, NY : BBC/Time-Life Films

Language: English

Intended audience: Ages 16 through adult

Host David Attenborough talks about the animals and plants that make their homes in the shifting world of mud and sand in tidal areas. He visits a mangrove swamp in Bangladesh where the tree roots help to expand the coastline and he discusses the varied community of animals that inhabit the swamp

Addeddate: 2015-08-08 01:15:28

Boxid: IA1130120

Identifier: thelivingplanetaportraitoftheearth9themarginsoftheland

Ocr: Third. It. Was around. The spinning. The seas. In the North America. The particular shape of the slope of the sea produces. Living in this in between World which is neither seen or land. Demands very special town. This is a battleground. Many places the sea is forcing women to retreat cutting back its cliffs leaving islands and towers as markers of the territories of the land of law. The day breed is swept away. Strewn on beaches. Father down the coast as standard gravel one. In some places the land is advancing in the tropics. Mangroves are moving out into the sea. Gathering much than building new territory for land living. Even in the mouths of risk where fresh water. Liaison with sediment mingles with the salt water of the scene. New Land is being created of a sort. Of. Club. Hyman and they're scary in the West of England and you might think that this mud is not the most attractive stuff in which to live. Certainly and animals that do live in it. Have to face some severe problems for one thing part of the time that out of water like this part of the time they're underwater the fonts in this of the water to various fresh water comes down from the land the tides bring in salt water and then there's the nature of this extraordinary sticky mud itself it's so glutinous. That little oxygen gets into it but the rewards for enduring these unconscious in conditions are high. And it will particles deposited every day on the surface of the mud are cautiously sucked up by the searching siphon of scrubby Kaleri little mollusc whose main body enclosed in a shell is hidden within the mud for safety a tiny crust a silly co-wrote film half an inch long. Grazes on the bacteria which proliferate in millions breaking down the rotting bits of organic matter in the mud. Rag worms live in borrowed some more tackle corrodes fear Mal gave bacteria. Almost anything that's around. The puppies are flecked with floating mucus. It's produced by spa shells no bigger than grains of wheat. The mucus attracts bacteria and the splash Els the lot. The peacock fans out its tentacles from the top of that stew to gather food particles before they settle. Between the threads on each parliament of the fan transport the catch down to the mouth of the senator. While it feeds it also disgorge is a cement of modern WILL cause and build up the margin of a just you. The cockle lies with its shell agape filtering the water by sucking it in through one syphon. And blowing it out to another. Muscles use the same technique connecting within the show substantial quantities of the abundant and surprisingly nutritious drifting particles. When the tide goes out they can't their shows printed together to keep in them oyster I'm talking about their attacker but some creatures know how to deal with that. Each individual is To Catch A has its favorite technique for dealing with muscles. If yours is the same laws that used by its parents and has been learned from them though a bird needs several years of practice before it becomes really excellent some hunting the shallow waters looking for muscles that have not yet chucked the show. Others to come on the texture or some kind of them off or away from the main flock so they got a little privacy and there they skillfully placed the muscle in such a position that they can cut it open along that scene. Other individual goods. Regularly resort to say how much their way in through the shell itself. One of the tried to treat still took. Spa showers are exposed to as many as thirty five thousand buried within a single square young holding is not feeders together constitute a rich prize and there are a bunch of players. Fanning follows on migration depends. But at all times of the year. Waiting birds come to the Esther is to feed. The Godwit equipped with long legs and a long bill can wave in water several inches deep we collect food before it can be reached by other bit. The current you prefers to work out of water. It's long bill enables it to probe deep into the mud for the worm and serves equally well as a better forces. The done then there's a small a burden goes to smaller pray rag worms an insect club it feels for its food but it short bill. The ring the cover with a very short though can only collect food from the surface and located by sight. It usually works alone so that it probably won't be disturbed by other pattering feet I'm withdraw before being spotted. The sliding action Avocet collects creatures that live in the liquid mud. That. Bill so that he's sensitive as soon as they close on something edible that the Jungle is up into it's not. You you you. Want it is a food taken by waving bad semester this is. Some species consume every day about a third of their own weight and they get a single as the cat's afoot example who consume the face of a buck off a tumbler and many of the series supports pens of awaiting but have used places I returned. To. Have the river brings more and more particles of my just so the flap grow bigger and the higher if. They develop a slimy skins and that's home by microscopic. They start the process of consolidation but big appliance. Like this stuff but I know the process really speeds up. As the high tide brings in more mud possible they call go around the stands of the glass let. We'll back to see when the tide for so with these two tied the facts go higher and higher. First work is a plan for these cold yesterday as you know in the tropics the colonizers of mud are not small but treat Mangan said. This month is the pulverized remains a rocky road in the Himalayas that has been carried down by the Ganges for a thousand miles and dumped on the edge of the Bay of Bengal this is the biggest in the title for most of all this and about four thousand square miles. Hero many animals but usually live in brine and five. X. is did. Woodpeckers the Indian golden Band-Aid. And wild boar. But mango forest can also harbor creatures that live. Know what else it on. The proposed his monkey eats almost nothing but mangrove leaves it developed that specialism on the island of Borneo and has never spread overseas. Trap to bite down specialized equipment. Mangoes themselves however I distributed widely to the tropics for they have a vault from many different time family and today there are some forty different species on. The farms of this pioneering go a poem native by the wind the sea however doesn't immediately leave the pantry. It starts to grow while it's still attached. Producing a green to a foot long with the sharp end. If it calls when the tide a little it floats horizontally and buoyant salt water and may be carried for miles before being strangled if the tide is out then it stabs the mud and stays in that position when the time to turn quickly it puts out who cooks from the bottom and leaves from the top and within a few days it's HER me of have. Just started in cold water after is there's a lot of organic matter in this one but because it so sticky it isn't stirred up so there's a little oxygen in it and the process the rotting produces within the mud itself and acted smelly poisonous chemical hydrogen sulfide. So these routes don't go down far into the mud. Instead they support the trees by their sheer number but what about the other things that normal routes to for normal trees like gathering nutrients and water and oxygen. Well these routes deal with Allegiant problem like this. He. Has his pastor a very fine route which don't go more than an inch or so below the surface of the month but then it's on the surface of the mud that the bulk of the new things I found as a water. Well as thirty others here The trouble is that it's solid team some mangoes deal with that problem by having a special membrane around the cells in the roof hands which filters off the salt. Others actually absorb the salt but then eggs. Creature from the leaves all concentrates it in the leaf and then the leaves are shit and oxygen Well there are several different solutions about problem this man Grove has Pause Actually in these profits which absorb the oxygen directly and this one has roots which actually grow up wards so keeping pace with the rising surface of the accumulating Monday but hey it's not only plants in the man goes once that have difficulty in getting oxygen so do animals and this time low tide is a period of particular difficulty. Many of the mollusks like cockles and mussels elsewhere simply shut their shelves to keep what my say they have to wait for the food and oxygen burning water to return for them this is a period of complete activity but for other creatures it's just the opposite. The mud skipper of course is a fish there are several different kinds. This one lives near high watermark and is the thought that spends less time out of water. It has to keep its skin moist for it absorbs all to Ginger It also keeps you know full of water swimming over it. GILL. It feeds on the little crabs that grates on the mud. And having got one it needs another mouthful of water. A second kind lives close to the low water mark so it's only off the water for an hour or so each day it. The liquid mud for small car stations and we're. In between these two kinds of lives the largest of the three it is a vegetarian. Collecting algae another microscopic plants from the mud. And it to nip back every now and again a foot away. It God's it's grazing rights with vigor. Building walls around its territory. And when neighbors meet as trouble. I. Don't clear him Bob their tether to form a patchwork of walled poems these plants are very flat so when a male starts to advertise to mate he has to be a bit of a gymnast. When a female is finally in high school to hear kind of pond he can continue his courtship at close quarters in the mall conventionally fish fashion with fixed waggling tail and enormous excitement. They will spawn in the borrow at the bottom of the pond. This crab is too big to be intimidated by months get because even when it does one death through their televisions. It's sizzling mouth parts not only sort out its food but help it to breed on top of the show there's a puddle of water and as its mouth parts move they circulate this down into a deal chamber within the shell out again and up to the reservoir on the top. Eventually the oxygen in the water is exhausted and the crab has to return to the sea to play golf and get a fresh supply. Close by the edge of the sea the tiny soldier crabs feed with fanfic haste it's not someone else's like a the steal that much it's just that they have to eat an enormous quantities to expect a few particles necessary to keep alive they have to work at it pretty well. Non-stop and have no time to waste. High up beyond the reach of all of the highest tide lives the large mangrove crap it keeps moist by boring it's whole as much as six feet deep to eat them that water the lure that tempted out is a new phone and mangled bodies. I quickly back. Safety. Among the absorbing roots of the mangroves fiddler crabs are busy the females collect mud with both consist working with the famed frantic speed just a soldier camps. The may also need to munch just as much mud as a female of the bay have to work with one hand only for one of their paws is so big that it's useless to feed. They use it instead to wave at passing female. But it's also a weapon to brandish it right. Unless where the equipment all gets a Nazi hammering even before you can get out of his hole. And the coils long enough to reach down into the bottle to get as opposed to tweet where he's least expected it. The purpose of the wave is to encourage a female to follow a male into his barrow. Is it possible perhaps just to take a moment or so off from munching mud. I float tied there's lots for birds to eat on the mango mud just as there is on Esther's elsewhere. Turns hawk for fish because they're easier to catch now in the shallow waters. King fishes pounce on the fiddler clams. Great white heron stalk and stab. At. The returning tide signals all change for everyone. This African mango snail cops now get growing on the mud but it mustn't stay then when the tide comes in what it would be attacked by fish so it takes refuge up in the trees it's P.D.S. climb is barely faster than the rise of the tide so we'd have to set off in good time and had some sort of internal alarm clock that tells it when it should do. The soldier crabs are so well adapted to that life. Scavenging on the exposed mud the babe become breathers a bad and without It's they were drowned as a tide advances it's construct itself a little blue which traps a bubble of air with which the crab can breathe while the tide is in. The mud skin. Those territorial walls built with such labour a breached by the incoming wave your. High up on the mugs get this out there and fire. The incoming tide brings a new branches into this one shows a fish arrive searching for more force that may have been deposited by the river while the tide was out. In the swamps of Southeast Asia. Watch a fish feed on insects with a phone number so. You need me they also have a way of collecting insects from above the water. And the roof of their mouth so that the sucking crust of the typo produces from droplets like. One of the. Cobra short of getting a prize. So in company it may be better to try a direct assault on. The larger fish are themselves food for altered. But these hunters have broad appetite I will enthusiastically tackle snails crabs and even muscle. Thanks. That's great capital swimming for many miles up in the fresh water or down into the sea and even out to offshore islands and they have an enormous appetite for play. Thanks. The largest of all living reptiles is found among Mangere B.S. trying to calm it down amongst the grows to thank you three feet long. Likely campuses that lived when dinosaurs dominated the earth it's an ocean going creature and as a consequence it's the most widely distributed double covered on living from the Bay of Bengal. Two rolls in the straight to the Pacific even reaching such isolated makers from as those on the islands of Fiji. I. So. I thought my goodness Patmos consoles father Paul but I wanted to see the must not go higher and higher. Rain water washes them clean them and eventually they become trying so tower part is beyond the reach. The banks of much of the rivers lay down around them even when they're not big enough to rise above water. Protect the land against the attacks of the sea for Toll waves Comcast all across fallow water but if a current sweeping down the coast. Carries away the sediment and the sea floor clean then waves arrive at the coast full of power. Whether this deeply into the sea then the pedestal because the price is not miles to condense. The creatures that live here like Ollie type pieces. Constant pressure by Tuesday. Of the high water mark where the physical problems of simply being dried out I love the low water mark there are biological problems of animals to creep up from the seats upright upon the in spite of creatures is a play. Those two sets of problems. Produces a series of horizontal band along the coast. Each dominated by the particular species which best deal with the problems at back. Particular level such bad can be seen on Coast all over the world but here on the West Coast of America they are strikingly clear. The bottom ban the bomb is only fully exposed when the moon the sun on in such an alignment the base pull together the tied with balls a long way to drive. The organisms here can a little rate a brief exposure to the air but I have no special the vice president and so from being dried out. The C.S. chin in water nor the way I think rusting L.D.. But also of water it can do nothing but simply hung on the rocks alongside them. Giant sea anemones group their tentacles and many with both of them for and nothing to feed off. Sea squirts can only filter for their food market. Star fish and meat and this peace feeds on mustn't it envelops them with its side he's evolved. Lonely wrenches apart their cells and feeds on the first within the Lolo was a kill animals that Pfizer stablish itself but like so many of these low level preaches they can't feed out of water so a little higher up where the rocks are regularly post like a longer conditions favor the muscle and they form a dense fan. Hopefully no advice office but beyond their reach higher ups. The mast muscles provide shelter between them for months about the kids more stopping to small to tackle a muscle. From the station when calls another months. It's. The muscles hold on to the rocks with bundles of plates but they can't withstand the pull of the rockets of the waves and in the winter storms heaps of them may be ripped away. In more. Where the waves beat for the particular muscles give way to boost next bomb attack which costs the rock with a lot especially for. They feed by holding out to town like on which cats particles in the way when they crash. But as the waters flow gently back. On the most famous prominences of all activity five points of looking I'll go alone as a seat palm which gives only on the. Is northwestern coast for the Ultimate is. The cult of leaves of the puppets robberies him is a device which enables the palm to harness the power of the waves and use it to a parent must apply. Surprisingly and in the spring. An individual plan may achieve The typical of getting hold of an individual muscles in the muscle back as this one. When it's mature it will produce. But only when it's out of water as it is not so instead of us pause being distributed wise to those of other parts. Of the the palm down the groove in the lead and into the muscle bad. When these storms with also. They may catch underneath these problems of the plant and rip it off but the hope was the muscles say firmly that the muscles come away with the feeling the barrel. And. Bring other nearby Some get a hold on the bare rock so by the fact the price of one palm on the muscles one. Next year as it will be a whole group of moms going. To bed. But muscles Europe was a soccer mom. Everyday if our not to dry out. On his line. They managed to collect from my new posters of their required to grow and reproduce. With high tide which in some cases for an hour or so once a month. Level on the. Organism. Was a precise combination of pounding by the way exposed and the time for the press but. Claim permanent occupation for the attacks of the way the route the and. Down the pub and cuts which way is. A great person to join. Penetrate. I. Suffer most have a failure. Forms of Grace prophecy freezing up the south with the flu or for them to go find them away. Sam stand to have lines of weakness horizontally and vertically so the rockets cut away in huge blocks. The rule the world work for. The sea. Having demolished the cliffs then worked on the day during storms that picks up the boulders and wholesome of the cliff face. A comma times it lowers the rocks over the sea bed and costs them up on shingle bank every movement ships grinds the fragments until eventually they're reduced to sand grains and now even a gentle current has picked them up and carry them for miles down the coast eventually told bans on them in banks and strand in the lead of islands point sheltered bank. Every wave of retired stirs up the surface. So plants find it's impossible to get any grip on it as they can't control was a mud flats so a breach like this look as lifeless says in a pub marked the last. But is the sand grains are not too small and compact. Then each will retain around it then some of my strength when the tide and then that microscopic space animals can do. These plans whose voters in fact centigrade and that pioneer snake like animal a worm that could sit. While these and have a pulse of the fans on a fairly I dipped and rising gliding. I'm calling as they search for the few edible fragments of accounts between the grain all pussy one another. This one is only a temporary lodger in the fact that the law but of a mullet. Hi Jim lives here it's like the one that's common ancestor was a pun but it has one even dated pentacle with what you think is itself. A nematode worm produces a glue from a grand on its tail which helps it to maintain its position. And this is another mom Bob Look at the beginning of its life that in the sea but settles down into the sand to continue its develop little the tiny tube of mucus were to carries about with it and playing the steward before guarded saying. When it goes up it does the same sort of thing on the largest scale about the fact it's a worm called the sound nice. No it's not going to build the two but it adds a long pass force to the top. These slow down the water so that suspended food particles for one can be gathered by the waving tentacles in this shifting sand but tubes need constant renewal and this is how the sand Mason does it speeded up hundred twenty five times. Why. Why. Why. Although plants can grow on these particular moving found those a lot from the rocky part of the coast by wave washed up here and there are plenty of speeches on the beach. These are found hoppers. They've been hiding below the surface to avoid being baked and dried out by the phone but now this tuned we have. We. Are many beaches the numbers are astronomical that can be as many as twenty five thousand of them in one square yards of beach sand. With some hope of Favre rotting vegetation walked and say OK Frank. The remains of a squid is a banquet hall goes. Occasionally when there's a chance to make it better to cut off a length hole is a way to consume it in the privacy of a bar. The solicitor lived close to the high time for the incoming water also bring words of another team that's kept. This telescope on a South African Beat long term but a plow snail. All it can fake tits power like foot by pumping in water and it uses it not so much of the power as a fighter for the waters pick it up and wash it swiftly and Sean together with protection. The power snails detect its presence from the taste of decay in the surrounding water the an advance on it with great speed. The of. The of. To avoid being swept up the beach and. They eat fast and then one there's even some food they bought it. They wait for the pipe to time for that they can write back on this surfboards to deeper water and safe. But. If you think his convention above the limits of the highest tide and so the one group animals however is compelled to do so by the nature of their ancestry had on this one's the hostility they staged an astonishing invasion. The smallest of the sea going to last only a couple of. Hours I descended from living and life. They lay eggs can only develop. So every year I got females having method it must make their way on to Brian. They arrive at a rate of up to five thousand. They use only one or two of the many thousands of beaches that seem to be suitable and what is more they only to subdue so on just a few nights in the year between August. Efficient water barely strong enough to lift the sound and it has to bracket. Self up to beat. This last predicts may be an advantage for the tackle for since it only occurs one of two nights of the year. Their eggs can support a large permanent population of predators so that they might take the curtains were to lay over several months you have even a so for reasons that we still don't understand. Less than one in a hundred of the eggs. Produces a hat thing which reaches the scene. These female name one hundred sex so. It's. That stunk. He carefully filled in the hole. All right. A few Carthew Monday I'm about to come down from the Protestant Sunday but they make little impact on the millions of a little less. Next night many thousands more rates around so. On other beaches or secret other that a decision on. This is the largest. Of all the marine turtles this magnificent creature is the giant lever back to home and it's a most mysterious animal. It's a solid true wonder of the oceans and individuals almost anywhere in the topics but they go much farther than that they build a quarter the far south as Argentina as far as the British Isles and North America but it's a creature of mystery because although we know what it feeds on which is see a change in fish and oddly enough jellyfish we know but little else about it we don't know how long they live we don't know how male finds feel we don't know indeed how females navigate to find traditional nesting sites like this one. Indeed we didn't actually know where the main nesting sites were until about twenty five years ago and then it was discovered that some nested on the Syrian coast of South America and some less it here on the east coast of Malaysia of course the people here have always known about the purples and they've always planted there was this. Today however there are more people than ever here and the eggs are plundered more seriously so on down to this this huge an extraordinary creature is in danger. But maybe the leather back Turtle have other breeding grounds that we don't yet know about. Maybe it goes to small tiny coral islands away in the emptiness of the ocean to find beaches far away from man and that indeed is where we ourselves will be going in the next press. The the. Earth. The.