Original air date: 15 March 1984
Attenborough only showed up on filming locations around the Amazon. Any other filming locations were filmed without his participation.
Selected material:
The versatile camphor beetle (30′-30’40)
“The camphor beetle (top left, 30′) lives on plants at the water’s edge, but it is perhaps the most versatile of all water-walkers. It can run over water, like a pond skater. It can also produce a substance (top right, 30’20) which reduces the tension between water molecules. In emergencies it squirts this from its tail, and with the tension pulling hard at the front, it shoots across the surface (bottom left, 30’27) so fast that the only way to see it clearly is in slow motion. And, as a final demonstration of its versatility, it can, like most good beetles, fly (bottom right, 30’39).”
A fishing spider (30’45-31’30)
A spider (in Europe) that uses water tension like most use their web and catches tiny stickleback (arrow pointing at it)
A piranha eating a fruit
Usually we hear of how ferocious piranha are so seeing them as vegetarians is not to be expected (44’20)
Introducing next episode:
“…But along the coast, where the thrust of the river flood is not so great, is a halfway house. Here the water is neither fresh nor salt, but brackish. It’s neither land nor sea, but banks of mud and sand that are half the time submerged and half the time exposed. And that intermediate, ever-changing territory is where we will be next time.”