Amazon: Land of the Flooded Forest.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

Columbia TriStar Home Video 58 minutes / $19.95

For six months of the year, the forests on either bank of the Amazon River are inundated by floodwaters, turning them into a strange amalgam wherein fish swim among the treetops and animals forage for food beneath the surface. Each species has learned to live within this strange environment, their normal existences turned upside down. Nevertheless, it is an eerie sensation watching fish leaping from the water to snatch insects or fruit from tree limbs that, before the flooding, would be 50 feet above the forest floor.

Next to Australia, the Amazon Basin probably contains the most varied assortment of creatures on Earth, from the world's largest rodent to the smallest monkey. This National Geographic...