Nice piece in the Times today about the process that went into filming the state-of-the-art nature footage featured in the Discovery Channel's new series "Life," which debuts Sunday. "In that first episode viewers see a strawberry dart frog's tadpoles come to life, then watch the mother carry each baby up a rainforest tree to a safe perch inside a bromeliad plant. Then they see the mother lay eggs to feed the newborns until they can move on their own, weeks later. Without any dialogue the shots tell a gripping story about a mother's commitment to her offspring." The National Geographic clip above, from 2008, shows the same. The Discovery version (which will by narrated by Oprah Winfrey, who will hopefully refrain from the funny-style inflection and corny jokes) was shot by a guy named Kevin Flay, who used a camera slightly larger than a tube of lipstick.

"Mr. Flay mounted the Iconix camera on a tripod and a track to capture the mother making her way across the canopy floor. Then he had to find a way to show the frog making the arduous climb up a tree to find a new home for her tadpoles. 'For that, we decided we needed to take some sort of crane device,' he said, 'just to help give the sense of the epic journey the frog was taking.' After the cameras were set, 'it's just patience-waiting for the frog to do the right thing for you, he said."

Like feed her own eggs to her young. Ewww, gross! But, also, Wow, cool!