Pond Animals

Pond Animals is one of the ten direct-to-video programmes produced by Dorling Kindersley Vision as part of the See How They Grow series. It was one of the earlier five programmes, released on VHS on 31st May 1993. This programme looks at the life-cycles of four animals from freshwater habitats.

## Sections

Click here for the full transcript of Pond Animals.

### Frog

The programme opens with a female frog heading down to a pond where she has recently laid a clump of frogspawn. Two weeks later the embryos inside turn into tadpoles and begin to hatch out. After two weeks the tadpoles have feathery gills and after another two weeks, the gills have been covered over by skin. The tadpoles all flee when a goldfish approaches them. At three months old, the tadpole has grown both front and back legs, but still has the tail. At fourteen weeks old, the tadpole has grown up into a miniature frog. Finally, the adult frog is shown sitting by the pond, watching a mouse go for a swim before diving into the water himself.

### Duck

The second part begins with a mother duck emerging from a duck house to swim in a pond. Inside the house are several ducklings and one unhatched egg. The last duckling is shown hatching out. At one day old, the ducklings are taken out onto the water for the first time. They continue to explore the pond on their second day as well, learning to forage for food and taking the time to groom themselves after their swim. At three weeks old the duckling’s feathers are starting to come through; finally, they are shown at seven weeks old when they are fully-grown adult ducks.

### Salamander

The third part opens with a female fire salamander walking through the forest to the pond where her tadpoles live. These salamanders give birth to live young, which have all four legs and gills. As they grow, their gills get smaller – the undersides of their bodies are partly transparent. They also get more colourful. After a few months, they are even more colourful and lose their gills so they must gulp air at the surface. The young salamander finally crawls up onto land. Finally, the salamander is shown at a year old and nearly fully grown. It avoids a hungry legless lizard before finding and eating a worm.

### Dragonfly

The last section starts by looking at several species of damselfly and dragonfly living around the edge of a pond. After showing the bodies and behaviour of the adult damselflies, a female one is show laying her eggs in reeds. A year passes before the eggs hatch out in larvae; they moult as they grow and eventually the time comes for their final transformation. It climbs up a reed before splitting its skin and climbing out. After emerging, the adult damselfly waits for its wings to dry out before flying off to explore the pond. The damselflies are later shown flying away when a duck approaches and then they disappear completely when it starts to rain.

## Species list, in order of appearance

### Filmed in studio:

The section each species appears in are bracketed:

* European common frog, *Rana temporaria* (Frog)
* Common goldfish, *Carassius auratus* (Frog)
* House mouse, *Mus musculus* (Frog)
* Mallard, *Anas platyrhynchos* (Duck, Dragonfly)
* Common fire salamander, *Salamandra salamandra* (Salamander)
* European legless lizard, *Pseudopus apodus* (Salamander)
* Red worm, *Eisenia fetida* (Salamander)
* Common blue damselfly, *Enallagma cyathigerum* (Dragonfly)
* Large red damselfly, *Pyrrhosoma nymphula* (Dragonfly)
* Four-spotted chaser dragonfly, *Libellula quadrimaculata* (Dragonfly)
* Banded demoiselle damselfly, *Calopteryx splendens* (Dragonfly)

## Credits

* Special thanks to:
	+ The Natural History Museum
	+ PJ Wisniewski and the Endangered Species Breeding Unit
* Narrator - Johnny Morris
* Script - Sally-Anne Gordon
* Research - Patrick Renouf
* Lighting / Camera - Andrew Smith and Tom Gordon
* Set Construction - George Lyndsay
* Music - The King of Tack & The Sultan of Swing
* On-Line Editors - Richard Buss and Steve Whettam
* Title Graphics - Paul Bebbington
* Animation Sequences - Ealing Animation
* Dubbing Mixer - Richard Buss
* Production Assistant - Adam Gordon
* Producer and Director - Tom Gordon

## Appearances in other DK Vision media

The clip of the adult fire salamander encountering a European legless lizard was used in the episode Poisonous Animals of Amazing Animals season one.

A clip of the domestic duck and ducklings appears in Eyewitness Virtual Reality: Bird, in the Domesticated Birds section of the Aviary.

## Home media releases

The UK VHS release of Pond Animals shows a common frog sitting on a lily pad at the bottom of the cover, with a duckling to the above-left, a cluster of tadpoles directly above and a banded demoiselle perched on flowers to the above-right of the frog. On either side of the title are above views of spotted salamanders. Above the 'See How They Grow' logo is an artwork showing the life cycle of a frog, while two artworks of ducks at different growth stages is at the bottom of the cover.

The Sony Wonder VHS release is much less cluttered, with a sitting common frog on the bottom of the cover, with three ducklings on the top-left and a spotted salamander on the top-right of the screen. Above the 'See How They Grow' logo is a series of hand-drawn artworks showing a duckling growing up into an adult duck.

Pond Animals has also been released in multi-episode formats. In the USA Pond Animals was part of a Volume One release that also combined Farm Animals, Pets and Insects and Spiders.

## Further information

Duck is almost unique among all the segments in See How They Grow, as the fully-grown animals are filmed outside and not in an indoor set (the only other time this happened with in the Calf segment of Farm Animals.

Frog and Duck were both originally book titles; Frog was published in 1991 while Duck was published in either 1991 or 1992.