Original subtitles

The sun.....

giver of light and life, shines most powerfully at the Equator

Here, it powers an extraordinarily rich zone of life.

Brilliant and bizarre species from 3 continents ..... 3 oceans.

...more than a line on a map...Equato is a powerful force of nature.

EQUATOR

Rivers of the Sun

At the Equator, the sun rises over the greatest rainforest on earth.

Amazonia is unified by over a thousand rivers of the sun ...

they flow like blood through its body ...

they are its life force.

Sunlight and water create the energy to sustain life on a vast scale.

But all that life, all that richness comes from the miracle of the leaf.

This one vast rainforest, may contain half of all the world's species

Here predator and prey

act out the ancient struggle to eat and avoid being eaten...

But the jaguar's forest is only one part of Amazonia.

There's also a rich and remarkable waterforest.

...Much of Amazonia floods for half of each year,

creating a world that is strange ... and unique.

An animal looking like a cross between a fishand a cow

drifts slowly through a river meadow.

River wolves streak through the water forest...

they hunt fish among the branches.

A fish that is like a monkey.

And a survivor from the ancient past.

Pirarucu is an armoured dinosaur among fish.

This lightning fast hunter

has survived in this region for 100 million years.

Pirarucu has endured great upheavals during Amazonia's past...

and must now accept great changes that will soon take place.

In November storm clouds gather...

The Equator offers its greatest gift to Amazonia... rain.

The rain comes as the sun's energy focuses more strongly on Amazonia...

intense heat brings a change

in weather patterns across the entire region.

Out in the Atlantic Ocean,

the sun warms surface waters that evaporate into clouds.

At the same time,

strengthening trade wind spush the clouds inland,across the Amazon basin.

As the heavy air moves

over the vast forest, it gathers up even more moisture from the trees ...

clouds fatten and it rains...

Finally, the super saturated

air encounters the 6,000 meter barrier of the Andes Mountains...

As the clouds rise, they cool,

releasing their water as rain and as snow...

all this then flows down the mountains ... back to Amazonia..

The vast river system receives 20%

of all available freshwater in the world...

and nearly all of it comes in the wet season.

Amazonia covers the northern

third of Latin America ...and is almost perfectly flat.

All the water that enters the vast drainage basin at this time,

fills rivers faster than they can drain away...

and so Amazonia slowly begins to flood.

The rainy season will last for half a year.

It will transform the lives of the

creatures here like nowhere else on earth.

Where a beautiful butterfly basked and glided among the sunlit branches,

fish dart in a flooded woodland...

Fish migrate from rivers and streams

to feed among branches of trees that may be 15 meters underwater...

and will be for months.

Flood waters greatly expand the feeding prospects for fish,

but they have forced the land animals to flee...

Just as the jaguar has moved on, so has its prey.

Along with the giant rodents and other mammals,

many lizards, birds, and insects have departed.

But now there is new prey... and new predators.

The flooded forest has become the realm of river wolves.

Giant otters now occupy much of the jaguar's hunting ground...

and it is vast.

Hundreds of thousands of square

kilometers of rainforest are submerged...

Just as plants and animals must find

strategies for surviving in dry forest,

so they must have ways to survive the flood.

As the waters rise,

insects from the forest floor climb desperately to safety.

Up here,

there are few places to hide and even fewer places to overtake.

Any struggles are quickly detected.

High above the water, clinging to a tree,

this insect should be safe enough...

One-meter long Arowana, are as agile as monkeys... in fact,

they are known as water monkeys.

They usually hunt small fish, but during the flood,

water monkeys also feast on insects.

They patrol close to the surface,

scanning the branches for possible prey...

During the wet season,

water monkeys live in one world, and hunt in another.

Arowana have a brilliant strategy

for reaping the rich insect rewards of the flooded river.

Just as water monkeys benefit from this

'time of plenty', so do other fish.

When the forest floods, strange sounds are heard...

It is the sound of trees in fruit.

These exploding nuts are from rubber trees,

one of amazonia's most famous.

As they ripen, under the heat of the glaring sun,

their surface skin shrivel... releasing the nuts.

Nuts are spread far and wide by flood waters.

Even when soaked in water for a long time,

the nut's waterproof shel prevents rot...

and protects them from predators.

But the Tambaqui has found a way to crack this problem.

The Tambaqui, uses its funnel shaped nostrils to help it find ripe nuts...

that are its passion.

Its powerful jaws and teeth are perfect nut crackers.

Nuts are rich in protein, fat and minerals...

they are excellent food if you can get them...

Tambaqui eat nuts from several kinds of trees.

They are so dedicated to nut cracking

that small fish accompany them to dine on the crumbs.

Most trees produce fruit and nuts during the wet season,

so Tambaqui do most of their feeding at this time...

later in the year they must use other strategies to survive.

Another dedicated fruit and nut eater lives high up in swamp forest trees.

Uacari is one of the few monkeys in the world with teeth and

jaws strong enough to crack nuts and seeds.

They form most of its diet.

In Amazonia, a fish and a monkey

have both become specialized to gain the riches of the nut harvest.

Another mammal living in the flooded forest is the three toed sloth.

Sloths devour the leaves of Cercropia trees.

The tree is protected by stinging ants,

but they are no deterrent to thick furred sloths.

The leaves offer little nourishment,

so sloths must spend most of their time eating...

and use as little energy as possible,

apart from holding on... as this baby is doing.

Sloths are not good walkers and rarely move from their home tree...

but when a sloth does need to move,

it much prefers to swim.

During the floodthe waters are safe,

there are no enemies...

This is the best time to move from tree to tree to seek new food

or maybe to strike out in search of a mate.

It has been 2 months

since the waters began to rise and the forest trees became submerged.

They will remain submerged for months to come.

Normally, trees would die after just a few weeks of flooding.

Because their roots cannot receive oxygen.

But the roots of these Amazonian trees can survive

being submerged for much longer due to a special adaptation...

When their roots become waterlogged,

a membrane forms on the outside of the root.

But inside, there is partial cell death and that creates air spaces.

These spaces act as air holes to transfer oxygen and remove toxins.

This strategy allows the trees to succeed in 2 very different worlds...

Amazingly, there is greater diversity of trees

where the forests are submerged than anywhere else in Amazonia.

The coming of the floods and submerging of the forests,

is the trigger for another important event.

It's the time when many fish begin breeding.

This discus fish uses its narrow body to penetrate

deep within the foliage to lay eggs where enemies won't find them...

It constantly watches over the precious brood

for two days until hatching.

Of all tropical fish,

Discus are among the most beautifu and highly prized

because of their rich colours and patterns ...

but during spawning,

their bodies lose the rich pattern and become darker...

as they prepare to give their offspring a precious gift...

A day after they hatch, the fries start swimming...

They keep very close to mother and father...

so close, some appear to be mouthing the bodies of their parents.

In fact, the first meal for young Discus is a mucous secretion

from the skin of their parents called "Discus milk".

This special meal gives the young a great start in life...

At breeding time, some fish go to extraordinary efforts

to find a safe place to lay their eggs.

Close by overhanging leaves, pairs of Copella arnoldi, gather.

These tiny fish have a huge challenge ahead of them.

The male has the long tail...

the female is ready to spawn, the eggs visible through her skin.

The pair move together near the surface ...

sometimes pausing, sometimes darting back and forth with urgency.

What is about to happen is a most remarkable spawning achievement.

Prompted by the male, the two fish leap together high out of the water,

where they cling to a hanging leaf.

They hold on for about 3 seconds before first the female,

then the male drop back,leaving behind a small cluster of eggs.

They are called jumping characin...

and each leap adds more eggs to the cluster.

The males fully expanded pectoral and abdominal fins act as suckers,

allowing the pair to hold on to the leaf.

They continue until there are about 50 eggs,

all covered with gel to keep in the moisture...

but the performance isn't yet over.

The male chases the female away ...

then begins the job of preventing the eggs

from drying out in the hot sun.

He does this by splashing them!

As he 'smacks' the water surface with its back fin,

water splashes onto the leaf above.

He is amazingly accurate and continues until the eggs hatch

By the next day,

they have already developed eyes and the following day,

prompted by the water splashes, the eggs begin to hatch.

The fries enter the river within the falling water

drops of their father's splashes.

As they hit the water, the young fish seek out

a hiding place among the leaves...

Young copella arnoldi have inherited a bizarre

but successful strategy for spawning above the waters

of the flooded woodland that now becomes their protector.

Amazonia is not one continuous forest;

close to the rivers,

there are broad grassy plains that are rich in sediment.

In the wet season, these plains are transformed

into fields of floating aquatic plants of many kinds.

Once the waters have risen,

plants grow quickly in the intense heat of the Equatorial sun...

but without doubt, the most spectacular is the Queen

Victoria water lily with leaves of 2 meters or more in diameter.

Their leaves expand over the water surface pushing others aside...

as if each mighty leaf is striving

to take as much of the sun's energy as possible.

The fringes are raised

to prevent flooding and armed with toxic spines...

probably as defense against animals that would eat them.

It takes one month for plants to grow out of the submerged

plain and for new leaves to completely open...

As Amazonian flood waters expand dramatically and spectacularly,

so do the leaves of Queen Victoria water lilies...

with help from the Equatorial sun.

"Water lettuce” has a different growth strategy

to the water lily... during the wet season,;

it expands by producing new young 'heads'at a spectacular rate...

...but water lettuce has no protective spines and no toxins...

and that makes it most appealing to Amazonia's largest herbivore.

The Amazonian manatee or 'fish cow',

is related to the elephant...

One thing the 300kg manatee share

with its land bound relative is a voracious appetite...

each animal consumes 30kg of water plants a day...

fortunately there is plenty of water lettuce.

As flood waters rise, a few small plant heads appear... Soon,

those heads double and redouble again and again.

And Within weeks, cover vast area.

Water lettuceand the other floating

plants of Amazonia grow mainly in the wet season...

SO manatees must eat huge amounts of food now

in order to build up enough reserves to survive the coming dry season.

Another reason for the manatee's

enormous appetite is that water plants contain so few nutrients...

that close to half of all they eat remains undigested...

The manatees give the undigested material

back to the river ... as feces.

But in Amazonia, Manatee waste is not wasted... far from it...

their feces rain down like riches from above.

Many fish feed on the waste directly...

and it also helps support the lives of thousands of other species.

Most nutrients in manatee waste

dissolve to fertilize the water and helps the growth of more plant life...

But in addition, manatee grazing

creates gaps in the layer of floating plants.

This allows the intense heat and light

of the Equatorial sun to penetrate ...

Sunlight and nutrients can now trigger the growth

of vast amounts of plankton...

which is the basis of another aquatic food chain.

...SO fish cows, simply by eating and digesting,

help maintain More than 3,000 species,

or nearly a third of all freshwater fish in the world.

Those fish include the beautiful...

like Cardinal Tetra and Angel Fish...

there are the bizarre...

like the surface hugging Hatchet fish

and there are the bountiful, like catfish.

Catfish are the largest fish family in Amazonia.

Nearly 1500 species or half of all fish here are catfish...

and their shape is as varied as their size and their lifestyle...

A streamlined shape reduces water resistance.

A sleek body can flee quickly from enemies...

Armored scales, offer protection from enemies...

Sail Fin pleco hide among submerged trees...

Leaf catfish drift undetected...

And Imperial Zebras feed hidden among rocks.

Catfish, more than other fish,

exploit the great variety of environments in Amazonia...

which means that catfish, more than any other fish,

end up on the menu of the river wolf.

Giant otters are dangerous and aggressive

and often hunt in family groups...

A giant otter brings its catch to a favorite eating place...

To fuel its active and energetic lifestyle

an otter eats 10% of its own body weight ...

or 3kg of fish each day.

It eats everything, even crushes bones.

But even the otter's powerful jaws cant crush a big catfish's skull...

this will feed others.

What an otter discards... a school of piranhas quickly devour.

Like catfish, piranha are a large family of fish,

there are over 30 species here...

the red piranha is the most common, and most feared...

But even they are on the river wolf's menu.

And what's left of the pirhana...

other pirahana will dispose of.

As predatory king of Amazonia,

the giant otter can choose from a huge variety of fish...

but below, there are other predators also eager

to take advantage of this variety and abundance.

The one meter long peacock bass is a top hunter in the flooded woodland.

To hide from predators some fish use camouflage...

one of the most effective is the leaf fish.

But there is a double advantage to its disguise.

By drifting like a fallen leaf, it not only hides from its enemies;

it may also hide from its prey.

There are many predators among the fish of Amazonia,

but there is none so expert as this ancient hunter.

A fully mature Pirarucu is 3 meters long and weighs 200kg.

It is one of the largest fresh water fish in the world

and a masterful predator.

It quietly stalks the unwary...

and then snatches its prey with blinding speed.

Nothing is safe from its enormous mouth..

Victims on the surface are sucked in with a rush of water

and air that'sthen expelled from its gills..

This ancient predator has survived for about 100 million years ...

during this time, it has endured and survived

great upheavals of the land and ...

enormous disruption to the flow of the rivers of Amazonia.

The flooded forest is also home to another relic of those upheavals.

The Amazonian stingray has venomous stinging spines on its tail,

its ancestors once swam in the Pacific ocean...

The 20 species of stingrays still found here

provide a clue to how Amazonia was created.

It is thought that the rivers of Amazonia

once flowed west into the Pacific Ocean

but tens of millions of years ago

enormous geological forces buckled and pushed up the land,

cutting off the sea and creating the Andes Mountains...

The young mountains dammed the rivers of Amazonia which formed

a vast low lying network of lakes and wetlands to the east..

Where stingrays and other marine species became trapped.

Around 5 million years ago,

further upheavals sloped the land eastward

until the waters finally burst through into the Atlantic,

creating the new Amazon River.

But even to this day, the flat lands of Amazonia drain slowly,

until finally, after months of flood,

the region enters its dry season.

It has been 4 months since the first rains fell...

water levels have now begun lowering as flood waters slowly find thei

way back into rivers that haven't been seen for half a year.

The creatures of Amazonia must now

confront a new and even more difficult challenge...

if you are adapted to wet, how do you survive the dry?

By September, the long dry season is now entering a critical phase.

As the hot sun dries up the pools, many river dwellers suffer.

The small pools are now stagnant and have little oxygen in the water.

This causes great stress to the many fish confined here.

As the water evaporates,

many fish die.

During the floods a water monkey,

or Arowana, lived in two worlds, hunting insects among the branches...

now it dies just another fish out of water

At the end of the dry season,

scenes of death are attended by black vultures...

Although there is water, it has little or no oxygen left,

in pools and ponds across Amazonia fish die in huge numbers.

To survive, species must somehow survive seasons of wet and dry...

and finding a deep pond will certainly help.

The giant Pirarucu uses an ancient strategy

to endure the harsh dry season..

It is one of the very few fish

that can take air directly from the atmosphere.

Pirarucu can breathe...

in fact, without air, it will soon drown.

Long ago, the ancestor of the Pirarucu evolved a lung like organ.

It gulps air from the atmosphere that is absorbed

into its bloodstream as if through a lung.

This remarkable ability helps Pirarucu to withstand

the long dry season...

an ability that was developed during the drastic

changes of Amazonia's long history.

During the ancient past, other Amazonian fish developed

strategies to help survive difficult times ...

and during the dry season, these become very useful...

During the flood, the Tambaqui gorged on nuts,

using powerful jaws to crack them open.

Now there is nothing to eat...it rest on the bottom of the pond.

The Tambaqui can survive these months of starvation

because it has converted the nutritious nuts into fat...

beneath its skin, the lower third of its body has a thick fat layer,

and as it waits out the long dry season,

it slowly consumes its fat reserves.

In the Tambaqui's deep pond,

a similar strategy is used by a much larger animal.

The Amazonian manatee is the only manatee in the world

that lives in freshwater throughout its life.

But in the dry season, very few floating water plants grow.

There's very little to eat.

Like the Tambaqui, manatees gained weight during the wet season.

But now, during the dry,

they must live off their fat reserves.

While most manatees are losing weight,

this one's belly is swollen...

it's a female and she is pregnant

and will give birth when the rains return.

As the water in the rivers of Amazonia recede,

numerous lakes become isolated from the main flow.

In one of these cut off or 'oxbow' lakes,

a family of giant otters enjoys easy hunting

because the fish are confined and have nowhere to escape.

This Giant otter family group has been hunting together

in the deeper parts of the lake.

During the hunt, some family members

drive fish toward others that lie in wait.

Some months ago,

the giant otter family set up their burrow or holt

on the edge of the lake... and now, 3 new members are to be seen.

After 2 months in the burrow,

they are old enough to come outside and splash about in the shallows.

The pups will grow up with not only their parents to look after them...

but their extended family of older brothers and sisters

will also continually looking out for their safety.

The otters share the lake with some unfriendly neighbours...

The caiman, the South American alligator,

grows to 2 meters and is dangerous

If this one gets too close, without the otters noticing,

it could take one of the pups.

It's been spotted.

Most of the family takes to the water to chase it away...

and the mother quickly moves the pups back

to the safety of the burrow.

Having chased off the one that came too close,

the otters now evict all caiman anywhere near their part of the lake.

They make snorting sounds as a warning to the caiman...

Their whining sounds are a contact call between members of the group.

They have little fear of the caiman and harass it until it leaves.

The otters claim priority over the lake...

they move about freely and hunt wherever they like...

As the day ends, the family gathers...

Caiman are no longer a threat and it's safe

for the 3 pups to come out and join their older brothers and sisters.

The otters like many other species

time their breeding to the seasons of wet and dry...

during the dry these pups are dependant on their mother,

but in a short time, they will be big enough to hunt for themselves,

and that time will coincide with the return of the wet.

Finally in November, the cycle of equatorial sun

and wind draws the long dry season to an end.

At first, the rainwater from the Andes Mountains

fills the Amazon River and its many tributaries.

The flow into the low lying vast flat Amazon basin continues.

Then slowly the waters overflow the river banks

and once more huge areas of forest, become flooded.

Again for half a year, the greatest wetland in the world

will sustain the lives of those adapted to the cycle of change.

As waters rise in the forests, a great array of fish enter ...

they are eagerly pursued by their predators.

The hunting pack of the river wolf family has increased in number.

The 3 youngsters that grew up beside the lake are now active hunters.

But the offspring of other predators are still

far too young to leave their parents care.

If these young 10 cm long Pirarucu survive the perils of growing up,

they will grow into 3 meter giants, like their red scaled parents.

Both parents care for their large family

that numbers around a thousand.

Though the Pirarucu is the largest fish in the Amazon,

their small offspring are vulnerable.

They rise to the surface as one.

Already they can breathe air, just like their parents.

When moving off to feed, young fish gather like an obedient

class of school children...

they come together as an orderly group, no one falling behind.

They feed as a wall of wide open mouths...

They move out of formation only to breathe.

By swimming in a line,

they don't disturb the water current ...

and so can feed more efficiently on plankton.

Young Pirarucu are inheritors of a way of life

that their ancestors have known for more than 100 million years...

feeding on plankton, and protected by their parents,

young Pirarucu grow very quickly.

Before long, the young reach a size where they need more substantial food

The parents now lead the young Pirarucu

into the fields of floating plants,

here vast numbers of shrimp are to be found...

As young fry swim among water plant roots,

shrimp rise to the surface,

some leap for their lives...

but to no avail.

A loud cracking sound is heard as young Pirarucu

consume a hearty shrimp meal.

At about six months, surviving Pirarucu will begin

independent lives as hunters in these rivers of the sun.

During the flood,

the sun promotes the most rapid growth of water plants...

and manatees time their breeding to take advantage of the increase.

This female must eat well;

she has a 2 month old calf to feed.

The calf is a meter long and weighs around 30kg.

It feeds on very rich milk from nipples located

just behind the mother's front flippers...

it suckles liquid sunshine from the equator..

Like all creatures, manatees have found ways to adapt their lives

to the seasons of change that rule the rivers of Amazonia...

The sun dominates the change of seasons

and forges powerful connections between animals,

plants and the greatest river system on Earth.

And here, life has found many different ways

to survive and thrive in Amazonia's seasons of contrast.

Flood and dry, fortune and famine...

two amazingly different worlds,

created by the power of the Equatorial sun.