"Life" on Discovery Channel

[hyla]

Hello,

I was just curious if anyone else saw this amazing documentary tonight on the Discovery Channel. It was the first of an 11 part event that took 3 years to film! It features extremely rare footage caught on camera of all kinds of fascinating creatures. Tonight there were some amphibians including a strawberry poison arrow frog. It was filmed carrying its tadpoles, one by one on its back from the forest floor up 100 ft to a bromliad growing out of a tree. It then placed the tadpole into the center of the bromliad where a pool of water collected. It laid an unfertilized egg into the pool of water to provide food for the tadpole. It did this with all of its young and put them each in a separate bromliad! Sorry so long, but it was unreal. There was also another neat little guy, called a pebble frog whose defense was to basically tense up and roll down a huge cliff out of harms way. It was beautiful to watch and I cant wait to see more next Sunday!

[John]

Amazing documentary. It's a shame that they took David Attenborough out and used Oprah Winfrey (what???) as the narrator. And then there were the adverts (there were no adverts/commercials in the original).

[Kurt]

I was a little disappointed with it. I felt reptiles and amphibians should've had their own seperate episodes, that way much more detail could be shown. I don't remember any salamanders or caecillians in the episode. They should've been there. Come to think of it where were the turtles? There was sooooooooo much that I felt should've been included. Hell, there should be an entire series on amphibians alone.

[John]

Actually I kept cringing in the first 10 minutes or so, because Oprah kept talking about amphibians as if they were reptiles. I can't remember if that was word for word Attenborough but I doubt it.

[John]

The original version: "David Attenborough" David Attenborough: Life (Blu-Ray) at BBC Shop

Be advised that the "Region 2" Blu-Ray discs may not be playable on other Region players (such as the US which is in Region 1). Thank Sony for that.

[John]

I just re-watched the first 10 minutes of the original BBC version to compare (just talking about the Reptiles and Amphibians episode). The Oprah narration is very different in places, has significantly less detailed information, and, for lack of a better way of putting it, is dumbed-down. There is also some missing footage. Draw your own conclusions.

[hyla]

I did not see the original so I cannot compare the two. I do agree having Oprah as the narrator was an odd choice, I doubt she appreciates half the animals she was speaking of. All I know is it was awesome seeing it at my parents house, their 50in flat screen in HD made all the difference! I must be good at persuading b/c my father even forfeited watching the end of Cavs game just so I could see it!

[John]

Hehe. The images are hard to pass up - it really is beautiful.

[Jace]

I managed to catch the "Reptiles and Amphibians" section, and though there were a lot of great shots-I admit, I was partial to the African Bullfrog segment-I agree with Kurt. They could have easily done an hour on each one and they still would have left out so much information. However, some of the shots were truly amazing, though it was weird hearing Oprah speaking. Almost ruined it for me....until I turned the sound down!