David:

(If this is taking too long to load or is playing too jerkily, go here.)

Oprah:

Actually, it’s even worse than this in the version I saw in “Challenges of Life” episode: they cut the sound effects (stopwatch and slamming noises), altered and dumbed down the narration further, and cut the scenes of the flies suffering at the end. Apparently, in addition to subbing Oprah for David, they rewrote the script in many places and replaced it with a hack job a freshman biology student appears to have penned. (Sample dialogue: “The thing about mating is, that it has some fairly predictable consequences.” ) Worse, they replaced the beautiful soundtrack with the cheesiest Musak they could find, changed the sound effects, and cut, changed the tone, or destroyed the narrative of some of the most poignant scenes (possibly for time since Discovery Channel, unlike BBC, has commercials). The American title sequence was so bad (and sooooo different from the moving yet understated British opening to Planet Earth with the sun dawning over the planet in an inky black sky) that I thought it was yet another preview or commercial. Shame on you, Discovery Channel. SHAME.

They even changed their facts in some places. In the American version, Oprah claims some grebes are Western grebes, and that they are monogamous but switch partners every season. In the British version, David says the very same grebes are Clark’s grebes and that they mate for life. So which is right? I’ll put my money on David. How many more inconsistencies are there? I only noticed these because I happened to have seen a preview of the British version of this scene.

Completing the Failure Trifecta, Netflix ONLY offers Americans the corporate pablum Oprah version. That’s right, America. You aren’t even considered bright enough to be given the option of watching the grown-up British version. Shame on you, Netflix. SHAME.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m exaggerating for effect? A (non-random) sampling of customer comments from Netflix:

Oprah Winfrey narrating Life in place of Sir David Attenborough is like having Donald Trump narrate for Jacques Cousteau. The one with the original audio will be out later, and I’ll be waiting for that one. (From a one-star reviewer)

This would be a 5+ Rating if it wasn’t dubbed over by Oprah Winfrey without any way to change it back to the original Attenborough. Epic Fail to not include the original language, and epic fail on NF for choosing this version over the original. (Yet another one-star review)

I too would give it 5 stars only if Oprah hadn’t ruined it. I’ve since purchased the Sir David Attenborough’s narrated version so that I could enjoy the rest of the series and would agree with many others, Oprah shouldn’t be narrating anything regarding the natural world – corporate explotation in my opinion. (You guessed it — one-star review)

Please bring the David Attenbourgh version to NF. I’m sure the Oprah version was cheaper (no one is buying it), but there was a reason for that. I had real trouble with the fact that the narrator cannot pronounce the words correctly.

What the heck??? I thought this was supposed to be narrated by Sir David Attenborough? Instead Oprah Winfrey sounds like she is narrating for a group of children… this is insulting. I had to turn it off, and I am going to order the Original BBC version.

You cannot substitute David Attenborough. His love and knowledge for nature is unmatched. You can’t have someone like Oprah narrate this. It’s an attrocity. I couldn’t finish watching the last bit of it because I wanted to punch Oprah.

It was so unwatchable and so unrecognizable as the original, high-quality product I’ve come to know and expect from the Beeb that I’m sending my DVD back and refusing to watch further until the powers that be at Netflix release the Attenborough version from its corporate prison. Come on, Netflix. Do the right thing.

Here’s a further taste of the delights that await us (with the correct Attenborough narration):

Life – Venus Flytraps: Jaws of Death – BBC One from Paulo Martins on Vimeo.

Is it just me or do those hairs remind you of the time-delayed booby traps laid for Indiana-Jones style adventurers in gold-laden caves? You know, the kind where you rest your arm on a stone projecting from the wall, and 10 seconds later it starts moving into the wall as the ceiling sprouts spikes and assumes skewering speed? Yeah. I really did feel bad for the little flies after they got trapped, though. Although their slurping of nectar with that repulsive labellum-tipped proboscis really was revolting (where has that been?) and I have no qualms about mercilessly swatting them around my home, they are living creatures too, and their little cries of despair were truly pitiful. Perhaps I’d make a good Jain after all.

Venus flytraps are in the Droseraceae, the Sundew Family, along with the sundews and a curious little package called the waterwheel plant, which is essentially an aquatic flytrap, but sadly does not occur in the western hemisphere. This family is in the Caryophyllales, a group of related plants that have evolved many ways of living in nutrient-poor and/or hot, dry soils. These include clever heat-beating photosynthetic adaptations (C4 and CAM for you biogeeks in the know), salt-secreting glands, and insect carnivory. See here for an idea of their place on the tree of life (click on the arrow to the left to back out and get a bigger picture).

In case you’re wondering, the title of this post is both a reference to the infamous “Uma, Oprah” David Letterman debacle at the 1995 Oscars and to the bird Upupa epops, the hoopoe (pronounced hupu), which happens to have the favorite scientific name of my friend and birdsong enthusiast Nathan Pieplow, who blogs over at earbirding.com.

If you think this is bad, wait till you see the video. A scavenging nemertine worm, cousin of the famed "screaming eels". That fish on the left looks like it has suddenly realized it's headed for the fish stick factory. Photo by Henry Kaiser, National Science Foundation

In case you missed it in the last few weeks, BBC’s new “Life” series (narrated by the great D.A.!) released an amazing clip of a starfish and marine nemertine (aka ribbon) worm feeding frenzy in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. They won’t allow video embedding, but go here for the superlarge youtube video in all its glory. Be warned that the seal noshing is a bit . . . graphic. If you imagine the seal made from the same stuff as gummy bears or laffy taffy, that might help a bit.

Here is another BBC article describing the video. When will we in the United States get to see “Life” in its full glory? Come on BBC, throw us a frickin’ bone. We still haven’t got “Creation” yet either, though word is it’s coming in January.

A brief perusal of the wikipedia article on nemertines reveals some compelling details; these worms have probosci that may have poisonous stylets used to attack and kill their prey. This little detail was a particular gem:

The proboscis is wrapped around the prey, which is normally other invertebrates such as crustaceans and annelids and can be many times larger than the nemertean itself, and the prey is then stabbed repeatedly with the stylet until dead.

Awwwwww. The article also sedately notes the worms are documented to reach 30 meters; some reports have indicated they may reach 50 or 60 meters. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s almost 180 feet. A blue whale reaches about 90 feet.

It seems these worms used to be thought of as closely related flatworms, like the cross-eyed Planaria of biology lab fame. Now scientists understand these worms are more complex than once thought, and more closely related to the annelid worms (which I’ve written about here before) and mollusks. Here’s a nice tree showing the relationship. And just look at all the weird, wonderful life on that tree! Have you even heard of half of those?

Finally, just to recap, I [heart] David Attenborough.

The man himself! How can I lure him to Colorado? Sadly, we have no birds-of-paradise. We have do have birds-of-ridiculous-mating-displays, though, aka sage grouse. Wildscreen's photograph of David Attenborough at ARKive's launch in Bristol, England © May 2003. Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5, click image for link.

I just watched the first half of Attenborough in Paradise the other night, and his seeming ability to casually drop Alfred Russel Wallace quotes and ad lib arresting narration is astounding. David, I salute you.

Why do I suddenly feel . . . melancholy? Image by Anastasia Shesterinina, distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. Click image for link.

Oh, Sir David Attenborough . . . how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Blue Planet . . .  Planet Earth . . . Life in the Undergrowth . . . and a gem I just recently encountered, his 1979 BBC debut, Life on Earth. I haven’t seen it, but apparently someone rummaging through a British charity store recently encountered one of only about 100 copies of its score the composer ever pressed, and they’re now being offered for sale on CD online.

Listening to the meditative and elegant sample tracks of Gymnopedie for Jellyfish, or Arabesque for Flatworms, I am transported back to the nature documentaries that aired on the lazy Sundays of my childhood, in which the pace was slow as molasses and many long moments passed narrator-free so as to better contemplate the mystery of nature. Behold: the brook trout spawning, or the grizzly grabbing salmon.  It was a simpler time, when the TV’s four channels (CBS, ABC, NBC, and PBS, which in my little remote corner of rural southeast Tennessee went snowy all night, to return to the air early the next morning preceded by the Star Spangled Banner and space shuttle lifting off) were inhabited by the likes of Marty Stouffer’s Wild America and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom(I briefly considered naming this blog wildkingdoms.com, but it turned out the domain was already taken). How I miss them sometimes.

I also briefly considered buying the Life on Earth soundtrack, but after doing the Dollar-Pound conversion and learning it’d cost me $21 to buy and ship to Colorado, the cheapnik in me won out. And Life on Earth itself remains out of grasp for now too. Though it has been released to DVD in the UK, the US has not been so fortunate. That is a shame, because the British Film Institute ranked it 32nd in the top 100 British Television Programs of all time, ahead of Walking with Dinosaurs and the 1995 Colin Firth-Jennifer Ehle Pride and Prejudice (Why is that ranked only 99th? Why? Why?) Wikipedia has some sort of conspiracy theory about Life on Earth never being released here because of its (gasp!) explicit evolutionary content, but plenty of other evolution-based programs have been put on DVD here no problem so I have a hard time buying that. Here’s a clip (featuring a very young David Attenborough) on the making of it to give you a taste for what you’re missing:

In any case, we will hopefully soon have the next best thing because we still have D.A. with us, and he has done a bit of a re-do of Life on Earth that is currently airing on BBC One: Life. Though all my British readers may be having a “Duh!” moment here, most of us in America are quite ignorant of it — or at least I was until about two weeks ago. Let’s hope this Life does find a way — to jump the pond.

Have any British readers seen it yet? Any early reviews? And Discovery Channel, if you are reading this, please leave David Attenborough’s narration intact in any US broadcasts. No Sigourney Weaver, Morgan Freeman, or (god forbid) Tom Cruise. Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Now you have to admit — that orange ostracod is even more amazing than the depth-charge wielding copepod. I mean come on! Had you ever imagined a creature like that could exist? Most ostracods are considerably smaller and are called seed shrimp because of their resemblance to something like a bell pepper seed. The males should get some sort of award for virility; many species have two penises and sperm that can be up to six times the male’s body length when fully uncoiled. The ostracod in this film appears to be  a female, given the clutch of round objects residing in its posterior.

The filmmakers here seem to subscribe to the Star Wars school of foley-artistry: no sound in space? No problem! We’ll just give the spaceships cool sounds anyway (good call). Bioluminescence is silent? No problem! We’ll just give flashing creatures Super Mario-grade sound effects . . .  No offense meant, though, Blue Planet dudes at BBC. I worship your work. Unlike Macgillivray Freeman, who in my opinion have largely squandered the IMAX format with their insultingly stupid and poorly written scripts, in spite of brilliant cinematography . . .

Annnnyway . . . .Copepods and Ostracods are actually fairly closely related, both being Crustaceans. Check out the copepod taxon here, but make sure to check out the next highest taxon, Crustacea, to see how copepods and ostracods fit into it. Jumping down the ostracod hole will take you here.

Mmmmmm. . . carcassy. . . .

Love that crab at the end.