no show for amazonia pedants Re: "Amazonia" on PBS

[swaldron@slip.net]

I had a mixed reaction to that one...it had its moments. I hate to be
critical but man, when a show is grandiosely entitled "Amazonia"- it had
better to rise to the occasion. they seemed to have put all efforts into
production and none into research. I guess my opinion was really soured
when they took a terrestrial, leaf litter specialist poison frog
(Epipedobates trivittatus) and filmed it on an arboreal bromeliad. They
were focusing on the Brazilian Amazon, specifically the Amazonas but
strangely implied that everything west of Manaus was not Amazonia. The
cinematography was really nice but yeah a lot of it was staged (a lot of
the underwater shots) I could get over that if the diversity of organisms
covered for such a long show (2.5 hours) wasn't so shockingly low...seemed
like the first hour was wholly devoted to giant otters and nothing really
novel about them...just big otters playing, catching fish, sunning,
swimming, catching fish....and then the usual line up afterwards: breeding
macaws, hunting jaguars, goofing monkeys, etc. Like most nature shows its
best to turn off the volume, put on some good music...


>On Thu, 24 Feb 2000 20:58:17 EST, Piabinha@aol.com wrote:
>
>>they did not say the tributaries in question, the only mention was the
>>"birth" of the amazon being the confluence of solimoes and negro,
>
>So they hadn't done their homework. Already in Peru the Amazon is called
>Amazon.
>After passing the Brazilian border the name changes to Solimoes, that's
>right but the
>Amazon already has been born.
>
>Greetings, Matthijs
>
>e-mail: emwee@chello.nl
>
>
>
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                              Steven J. Waldron

                             http://WWW.ANURA.ORG
               "Natural History, Captive Husbandry, Conservation and
                           Biophilia of Tropical Frogs"

                    




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