.
million people from coast to coast.
This week we visit the world's greatest wetland, the Pantanal of Brazil.
Hi, I'm George Page for Nature.
Wetlands are among the richest and most productive of all environments,
home to both land and aquatic animals.
The Pantanal is in the southwestern corner of Brazil,
which long ago was covered by an inland sea.
Today it occupies about 40,000 square miles
and drains the center of the entire South American continent
south of the Amazon basin.
The Pantanal is a unique environment,
supporting a wide variety of creatures,
and it has become the last stronghold for several rare species.
It's October, the end of the dry season in the heart of South America.
Oppressive clouds build up day after day,
but no rain falls.
The rhea, a South American relative of the ostrich,
searches for seeds and grasses on the parched land.
The giant antelope, the Pantanal,
hunts ants and termites across this low-lying savanna
in southwestern Brazil.
A vast floodplain almost the size of France,
it was once an ancient sea.
This is the Pantanal.
During the dry season,
life concentrates around the permanent waterways,
a dense strip of forest lines these flowing oases.
Water hyacinth, known locally as aguapay,
and some other water plants, shelter masses of water
and fishers.
Cormorants are common here,
even though it's more than 800 miles from the sea,
their usual habitat.
A striated heron.
The anhinga catches fish by stabbing them with its dagger-like beak.
If this hasn't killed it,
it will pound the fish on a log or a branch.
Then it tosses the fish into the air,
then swallows it in its beak and swallows it head first.
As the sun's rays pierce the river canopy,
the heat becomes intense.
The cormorant spends much of its time swimming and fishing underwater.
During the heat of the day,
it emerges from the river to dry its waterlogged feathers and to preen.
In some of the most remote places in the world,
the river widens to create quiet backwaters
filled with luxuriant vegetation.
These provide a haven for many of the Pantanal's aquatic inhabitants.
This is a South American crocodile, or caiman.
Known to Brazilians as a jacaré,
it is one of the most famous creatures of the Pantanal.
It is also known as a jacaré,
and is known as a jacaré.
Its beautifully shiny hide is highly prized for leather goods,
making the caiman the target for vast armies of poachers.
The caiman makes for the bank to bask in the sun.
Like all reptiles, it regulates its body temperature
by controlling its exposure to the sun's warming rays.
In ancient times, rarer creatures are found in these quiet backwaters.
A tapir, a true relic of ancient times
and one of the oldest mammal species on the earth today.
It weighs about 500 pounds
and is related to the rhinoceros and the horse.
It grazes on vegetation both above and below the water.
Its prehensile snout is extremely sensitive
and acts as an extra limb,
which it uses to get its shoots and leaves that it can't reach with its teeth.
The first storm of the rainy season gathers.
The atmosphere is changing.
The rains start in late October
and become more frequent as the months go by.
It can rain as much as two inches in an hour.
The rivers swell.
Fish, unable to see clearly in the muddy water,
become easy prey for the caiman.
As the rainy season progresses,
the whole character of the Pantanal changes.
The rivers overflow
and there are shallow pools of water everywhere.
The Pantanal becomes a marsh.
The dry savanna is transformed
into the largest freshwater marsh in the world.
New vegetation springs up from the seeds
which have lain dormant throughout the dry season.
The fish move into these rich new feeding grounds
and the caiman follow.
Other reptiles leave the rivers too.
This yellow anaconda is about 12 feet long
and moves effortlessly through the water.
It's an opportunistic hunter,
capturing whatever small mammals, birds,
or reptiles cross its path.
During the dry season,
the anaconda is confined to the permanent waterways.
As the land becomes flooded,
it moves away from these in search of food,
but it's never found far from water.
The rains continue falling over the Pantanal
and when the conditions are just right,
the frogs begin to breed.
The males call at night,
staking out their territories and attracting females.
The rains also bring out the apple snails,
so called because they can grow
to the size and shape of an apple.
During the dry season,
they've lain dormant in the ground
where they buried themselves
when the last year's floods dried up.
They emerge now to mate and lay their eggs.
The female climbs up a plant stem.
It's the only time in her life
when she voluntarily leaves the water.
She doesn't climb until she's far enough above the water
for her eggs to be safe from the rising flood.
She secretes two egg-like blobs of sticky mucus,
which she drives up the groove in her foot
by contracting the muscles on either side.
The first egg is now carried up the same groove.
Each egg is slightly pink
because of its high albumin content.
The protein-based mucus protects it from drying out in the heat
and helps to glue the eggs into a cluster.
They appear at about 30-second intervals,
and she lays between 100 and 150.
She deposits the eggs so that each fits
into a neat and stable geometric pattern.
This ensures that the cluster will hold together
while the baby snails are developing.
When she's finished, she secretes more white blobs of mucus,
which secure the cluster to the plant stem.
Then she simply withdraws her foot and drops back into the water.
Morning.
The water level is still rising.
Over the past few months,
rain has fallen over the Bolivian foothills
and the surrounding high ground which borders the Pantanal.
These waters pour into the Pantanal's main river, the Paraguay,
which bursts its banks and floods the surrounding land.
The Pantanal changes character again
as these new flood waters flow across it.
It has become a broad, shallow river
covering an enormous area.
The moving water displaces many of the inhabitants.
The praying mantis takes refuge from the still rising water.
Small frogs do their best to hang onto lily pads.
A variety of aquatic plants flourishes in the flood.
This freshwater turtle lives mainly on apple snails,
which feed on the vegetation.
It rises to the surface to breathe,
but spends as little time there as possible
before continuing its search for food.
This caiman lizard is no threat to the turtle.
It's also looking for snails.
It's an excellent swimmer
and spends most of the day in the water.
It's called the caiman lizard
because of its resemblance to that South American crocodile.
It can grow to six feet,
one of the world's largest lizards.
Although at home in the water,
this giant anteater has struggled a long way
through floods and tangled vegetation.
It's exhausted.
When the rising waters have covered most of the land,
only small islands of raised ground remain.
These islands are known as Kapow,
and they soon become refuges
for animals fleeing the swirling waters.
The exhausted anteater finds a safe place to rest
at the base of a giant fig tree.
It does sometimes use its powerful tail
to lash out at attackers,
but it's more commonly used to protect itself when resting.
It has incredibly dense fur and leathery eyelids
to protect it from ant bites.
The giant fig tree provides both shelter and food
for these howler monkeys,
also displaced by the flood.
They will remain here on the Kapow
until the flood waters subside.
As the flood continues to rise, the vegetation flourishes.
Marsh deer, which have spent the dry season
near the permanent water,
now move in to feed on the lush new vegetation.
These deer, the largest in South America,
are superbly adapted to living in the marsh.
They have specially evolved feet.
Between their toes they have a membrane,
a sort of webbing, which helps to spread their weight
and enables them to move securely in the slippery conditions.
They are always on the alert for predators.
This jaguar does not appear to be interested in the adult female.
She snorts to warn her fawn. It panics.
Then its mother panics.
Now, in water over its head, the fawn has to swim.
But it reaches shallow water and escapes.
Frustrated, the jaguar moves on.
And the mother rejoins her baby.
The jaguar is the largest predator in the Pantanal
and is entirely at home in the water.
This marshy wilderness is one of the last strongholds
of this magnificent cat.
He moves on through his territory.
It's mid-March. The floods are at their peak
and the Pantanal is at its most beautiful.
Music
In April, the flood starts to recede and the floating vegetation is stranded.
As the water continues to recede, the snail kites arrive
from their breeding grounds in Argentina to feed on the apple snails.
Since the snails live at the bottom of the channels,
the drop in water level makes them more easily accessible.
At this time of the year, they become an important source of food
for many of the animals and birds.
This female is competing with the male for the best perch
from which to hunt snails.
He chases her away. Unlike many birds where male and females share territories,
this rivalry is normal between snail kites.
Finally, she's driven off.
And the male continues his search for snails.
These perches form a very important part of his territory.
They provide the best vantage points from which to hunt.
Success.
The snails are caught in the mass of storks and catch the fish that try to escape.
The wood stork fishes with its bill open.
When it touches a fish, it snaps shut automatically,
one of the fastest reflex actions known in nature.
They are so easily caught at this time of year, many birds converge on the Pantanal.
Wood storks carry food back to their breeding colony,
which may be as much as 20 miles away.
Pantanal is among the world's most important breeding grounds for birds.
This colony alone has about 20,000 pairs.
Wood storks are the dominant species, but herons, egrets, and spoonbills nest here also,
in safety in numbers.
The young wood stork.
Both adults feed the young.
There are so many birds in this area that sometimes their droppings kill the vegetation.
And egrets nest. The chicks are encouraging the parent bird to feed them by pecking at the upper part of the bill.
The chicks are old enough to be mobile, but can't fly yet.
The rosiest spoonbill feeds its young in a different way.
The young spoonbill takes small crustaceans and aquatic insects from inside the parent's beak.
This young egret has fallen out of its nest and become an easy meal for an opportunist like the crested caracal.
Young birds must be fully fledged by the end of August, when the floodwaters and their food supply will have dried up completely.
Those that hatch late will not survive.
Only diminishing pools are left now.
The caiman have concentrated at these pools to feed on the stranded fish.
Another pool inhabitant, a freshwater crab.
This young caiman is about three years old and four feet long.
He's been hunting in the territory of another larger caiman and is in great danger.
The big caiman will not hesitate to kill the smaller one if he encroaches on his territory.
He decides to take his meal elsewhere.
This one is almost nine feet long, weighs more than 300 pounds and is probably over 50 years old.
All other caiman give way to him.
His teeth have penetrated his nostrils because they continue to grow throughout his life.
Another caiman leaves the water to bask in the sun, but is in for a surprise.
This heliconid butterfly is trying to drink the saline solution from its eyes.
The butterfly searches for another caiman.
It inserts its proboscis into the corner of the caiman's eye and drinks.
The butterfly is trying to drink the saline solution from its eyes.
Finally, the caiman is driven into the undergrowth by a butterfly.
September and the floodwaters have gone, leaving only a narrow channel threading its way through the parched landscape.
Only the deeper depressions still contain water.
As it gets hotter, the fish trapped in the watery outposts will die by the thousands from lack of oxygen and provide easy meals for wading birds and carrion feeders.
The caracaras must wait for the dead fish to be deposited at the water's edge.
There are dead and dying fish everywhere.
This caracara is so stuffed that it doesn't object when a second bird steals its fish.
In the intense heat, a cormorant cools itself by fluttering its throat.
A jabiru stork, the largest in South America. It's about five feet tall.
Its red neck can expand as a warning when it's angry or upset. The skin on its neck is filled with small capillaries which help keep the bird cool.
Unlike the wood storks, it does not breed in colonies but builds an enormous solitary nest. It's reused year after year and may be 50 years old.
To feed its young, the jabiru carries food in its crop, sometimes over great distances.
The youngsters are half grown.
Jabirus live throughout Brazil and the name jabiru means blown out with the wind.
It's derived from an Amazonian Indian word and describes the bird's unusual neck.
The parent regurgitates a whole fish and the youngsters fight for it.
The jabirus are not the only occupants of this nest.
Monk parakeets take advantage of the stork's annual nest improvements and find plenty of room to nest within the huge structure.
This bird is preparing the lining for its breeding quarters by stripping the leaves off twigs.
As many as 20 pairs of monk parakeets can live in a jabiru nest.
Six months ago, the Pantanal resembled an inland sea. Now, once again, it's a prairie.
The ants return to colonize the dry soil.
They're followed by the giant anteater. When it discovers an ant's nest, it uses its powerful claws to rip it open. It pushes its snout into the opening and laps up the ants with its long, sticky tongue.
The anteater has no jaws. Its nose and mouth are fused together to form a long, tubular snout.
Coatis also move back onto the savanna. Relatives of the raccoon, they're omnivorous and travel in family groups.
They all continuously to keep in contact with each other as they range over large distances, searching the dry land for food.
A vast natural grassland.
The Pantanal was bound to attract man's attention as a good place to raise cattle.
But man, his cattle, and the wildlife have thrived side by side for the past 150 years.
It's only in the past decade that new activities, such as draining the land for crops, pollution of the waterways, and caiman poaching, have posed a threat to the Pantanal.
Many private landowners have banded together to preserve this irreplaceable natural heritage. And since less than 2% of the Pantanal is protected in refuges, its future is in their hands.
Nature is made possible by public television stations, your gas company, and America's gas industry, developing new sources of gas energy and ways to use gas more efficiently for more than 160 million people across America.
Music
In the wild, they are flying rainbows.
In our homes, they are the third most popular pet.
Part of their charm is that they love attention.
And parrots will do almost anything to get it.
Our singing star is Flo, a yellow-naped Amazon parrot who lives here in New York City. Flo can imitate any sound, but she especially loves to sing. Anything from grand opera to her new favorite, Aretha Franklin.
But parrots are much more than mere mimics. Believe it or not, their intelligence has been compared to chimps and dolphins. But they go one step further. They talk to us in our own language.
I love you.
Thank you.