Intro
– It’s the most amount of frogs I’ve ever seen in my life.
Deep in the rainforests of Costa Rica,
life can be difficult.
From the heat of the dry season
to the relentless rain of the wet season,
conditions here can be brutal to film in.
For the Planet Earth III crew arriving at the start of the wet season,
it’s tough.
Gliding Frogs
But for these gliding tree frogs that they’re here to film,
the start of the wet season triggers their explosive mating events.
Dry Pond
This year, however,
the most important ingredient has been sorely lacking –
rain.
It’s insane. I’ve literally never seen the pond so dry before.
Gliding tree frogs really need intense rain.
They need hours and hours of rain, in the afternoon, in the evening,
to trigger their breeding.
They need to come down to the pond to breed
because they need to lay their eggs over a water source.
So what we have to do now is just wait for the rain
and wait for the pond to fill up and wait for the frogs.
And so the wait begins.
So it’s day 10 and there’s still hasn’t been any rain.
So the pond is completely dry and there’s no mating.
It’s quite frustrating, waiting every day.
There’s not much to do apart from just wait.
Wait for the frogs to arrive, wait for the rain to arrive.
There’s not a cloud in the sky.
I mean, it’s crystal. It’s beautiful, really,
but not for what we want.
No, I am getting a little bit concerned.
Finally, 24 days into the shoot…
Rain
It’s raining!
The rains have finally arrived.
So this is great and it’s really heavy.
If this lasts overnight then tomorrow, it’s on.
So fingers crossed, tomorrow might be our day.
Frog Calls
5am,
a chorus of frog calls.
They’re here.
Carefully, the team make their way to the site.
The pond is definitely full.
Amongst calls from a plethora of frog species,
including the gliding tree frog itself,
the team set up. And time
is of the essence.
Equipment primed and in place,
the shoot can finally begin.
Mating Explosion
[Brandon] These mating events are just like absolute chaos.
There are thousands and thousands of frogs piled on to just a few leaves
where it’s the most dense.
We have frogs on the camera lens, we’ve got frogs, like,
on our jib, on all our equipment.
So they are literally everywhere.
It’s really an amazing spectacle to witness.
The males vastly outnumber
the females and scramble in search of a suitor.
But large clusters, known as mating balls, are created
by all this attention.
One slip can be a one-way ticket.
For these caiman lurking below,
it’s an easy meal.
The less patient also have ways of snapping up the frogs.
But in the leaves above, the action continues.
Successful males and their partners head to a nearby leaf,
where the female lays her eggs
and the male then fertilises them.
Once the tadpoles have had time to mature,
they emerge,
ready to take the plunge.
The seasonal pond now provides
a home for thousands of future gliding tree frogs.
For the crew,
the wait and the wet have been worth it.
I feel relieved. We’ve got everything we need today.
The frogs were great. It’s so incredible to see.
We had a really great mating event,
they gave us enough time to get everything we needed.
It’s the most amount of frogs I’ve ever seen in my life.
These gliding tree frogs have ensured
that future generations will return for their own mating events here,
at this pond,
securing their species’ survival for years to come.
