PLANET EARTH Freshwater

The commotion（混乱，骚动） attracts dorado（剑鱼）, known locally as the river tiger. They patrol the feeding shoals, looking for a chance to strike. And waiting in the wings, ready to pick off any injured fish, are the piranhas. The feeding frenzy quickly develops. Piranha can strip a fish to the bone in minutes.



Great numbers of fish sustain vast flocks of water birds（成群的水鸟）. The rose-eared spoonbill（篦鹭） is just one of the 650 bird species found in the Pantanal. They nest alongside wood stocks in colonies（殖民地） thousands strong. Spectacle caiman linger below, waiting for a meal to fall out of the sky. When rivers finally reach the sea they slow down, release their sediment and build deltas.



In Bangladesh（孟加拉） the Ganges（恒河） and Brahmaputra（布拉马普特拉河，中国境内为雅鲁藏布江，孟加拉境内为贾木纳河） rivers join to form the world's biggest. Every year almost 2 thousand million tons of sediment eroded from the Himalayas is delivered to the ocean. At the delta's mouth - the largest mangrove forest（红木林） in the world, the Sundarbans（孙德尔本斯，意思为美丽的森林，位于恒河三角洲）. These extraordinary forests spring up throughout the tropics in these tidal zones（潮汐带） where rivers meet the sea.