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I finally picked this up yesterday because I kept seeing bits and pieces of it every time I went into the Electronics department of any store. In case you don't know about it, it's a documentary series about Earth/Nature put out by the BBC (very National Geographic).
Although it is very beautifully filmed with high tech cameras I found a lot of it to be quite disturbing. I would not let small children watch this. I have only made it through the first episode myself before I had to turn it off. There is quite a bit of nature vs nature and most of the time animals attacking and eating each other is to be expected. The great white shark sequence is absolutely astounding.
The one part of the first episode I find to be truly disturbing is the herd of elephants migrating to the water holes through a sandstorm. In this sequence a baby elephant gets separated from its mother. It starts to track her footsteps but is going in the wrong direction to its presumable demise. It really depressed me quite a bit knowing that an endangered species is about to lose another of its members and the camera crew filming this could not somehow turn the calf around or get it back to the rest of the herd. It may have been different had a predator been chasing it because then it's truly a survival of the fittest thing.
The argument can be made that they don't want to interfere with nature, but humans too are a part of nature. It sickens me that they did not have the slightest inclination to do anything. Sometimes humans need to step in, we've destroyed most of the planet so we should help when we can regardless of whether it interferes with nature or not.
The argument can also be made that if the camera crew hadn't been there at all the elephant still would have been in the same situation. But the camera crew WAS there. Sorry if I sound like an "animal activist", this is just going to bother me for quite a while.
Although it is very beautifully filmed with high tech cameras I found a lot of it to be quite disturbing. I would not let small children watch this. I have only made it through the first episode myself before I had to turn it off. There is quite a bit of nature vs nature and most of the time animals attacking and eating each other is to be expected. The great white shark sequence is absolutely astounding.
The one part of the first episode I find to be truly disturbing is the herd of elephants migrating to the water holes through a sandstorm. In this sequence a baby elephant gets separated from its mother. It starts to track her footsteps but is going in the wrong direction to its presumable demise. It really depressed me quite a bit knowing that an endangered species is about to lose another of its members and the camera crew filming this could not somehow turn the calf around or get it back to the rest of the herd. It may have been different had a predator been chasing it because then it's truly a survival of the fittest thing.
The argument can be made that they don't want to interfere with nature, but humans too are a part of nature. It sickens me that they did not have the slightest inclination to do anything. Sometimes humans need to step in, we've destroyed most of the planet so we should help when we can regardless of whether it interferes with nature or not.
The argument can also be made that if the camera crew hadn't been there at all the elephant still would have been in the same situation. But the camera crew WAS there. Sorry if I sound like an "animal activist", this is just going to bother me for quite a while.
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