Why do bother watching nature documentaries? I know they’re rubbish and yet each time I’m like “maybe this one won’t suck”
Right off the bat it’s projecting vicious intent onto nature. Nature isn’t just shit that happens, oh no, it’s A BRUTAL WAR OF DYNASTIES!!!1!!!
“Look at this centipede from the Devonian, but invertebrates wouldn’t be the ones to win the game of survival” WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT GAME? INVERTS ARE STILL HERE, THEY’RE THE MOST COMMON AND THRIVING LIFEFORM ON THE PLANET.
And of course the whole thing chooses to fixate on competition and ignore how much of nature revolves around cooperation and symbiosis.
I am begging the media (especially media that sells itself as educational) to stop speaking about nature the same way a 1930s German pseudoscientist would.
Americans can’t make good docs. Most of the time they underestimate the audience and dumb down the content. And they always feel like they’re somehow competing with “real films”, so they play it up like there’s supposed to be ACTION and INTENSITY while… doing an interview or filming a bug or whatever.
Wolves spotted? Better identify the alpha even though that isn’t the current science! Can’t have people thinking that pack dynamics are just an extended family cooperating and sharing territory and resources, gotta reinforce the idea that wolves fight for dominance in the wild!
Other pack animal spotted? Better identify the alpha even though that term was never meant to apply to this species!
The only good nature shows are produced by the BBC, which is generally good outside of news.
Coming soon to BBC: Actually clownfish never change sex that’s ridiculous nothing changes sex ever it’s simple biology.
I tried watching Nature’s Greatest Events last week and it was horrifying. It showed a cuddly polar bear mum and cubs struggling with breaking ice sheets as summer approached in Antarctica. Attenborough remarks how climate change and shrinking ice is making it difficult for polar bears to hunt.
The documentary was shot a decade and a half ago. I hope things aren’t much worse them but I felt really really guilty watching that.
But how would we pretend that capitalism is human nature if peoples know that cooperation is just as natural if not more than competition!?!!
“Look at this centipede from the Devonian, but invertebrates wouldn’t be the ones win the game of survival” WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT GAME? INVERTS ARE STILL HERE, THEY’RE THE MOST COMMON AND THRIVING LIFEFORM ON THE PLANET.
Bonies think they rule the world when the entire ecosystem would collapse if invertebrates disappear.
I love that graphic. I assume it’s by number of species? If it was by number of individuals I guess protists would be a lot bigger
Here’s a cool one that does it by biomass:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in-one-graphic/
shit that thumbnail is small, if you don’t want to open the article you can open the image in a new tab to see it full size
I’m actually amazed how high up the ladder humans are on that one.
Even using ‘mass’ as a metric of success isn’t fair to birds, who evolutionarily must keep a very low weight.
Do hollow bones make you a less successful species?!
