Random Shocking Facts About Nature Documentaries That Prove They Are Deceiving You (12 items)

• 

  (#9) Most Of The Sounds Are Flat Out Fake

  The fact is, audio technology has only come so far in its time on the planet. Also, it’s actually super hard to mic a bear. As a result, to help the audience feel like they’re right their with the bear, the filmmakers might have to fudge the details.

  The world of fake sound effects is still alive and well, even in the world of nature documentaries. When you hear a bear slapping his paw into a stream or you hear the rustling of grass as a cheetah moves stealthily, that’s probably the work of a sound guy.
• 

  (#2) Can’t Find A Zoo and Your Subject Is MIA? F*ck It, Just Use CGI

  The 2009 documentary Turtle: The Incredible Journey seems to follow one female turtle as she moves through the slow stages of life. The documentary’s hair-raising action and passionate tale of one turtle’s life got rave reviews, especially for a film classified as a documentary. 

  Of course, when prompted the film’s director not only admitted that a) it’s not the same turtle throughout the film, b) a lot of the film was shot in an enclosed tank, and c) computers were used to spice the film up.

  In fact, one special effects employee listed the following work on Turtle: “Besides final modeling and texturing and animation of three photorealistic 3-D hero turtle characters indistinguishable in every way from real turtles, I modeled textured and animated blue sharks and composited and supervised almost 100 photorealistic documentary realism shots.”

  To be fair, the CGI in these films is often so good that it can fool actual wildlife experts.
• 

  (#8) Sorry, But That’s Not A Real Family of Animals You’re Watching

  When nature documentarians don’t have the time or money to chase down the real thing, some of them will create a narrative using footage of several different creatures edited into something coherent. 

  Sometimes footage that purports to be the story of one animal, or a small group, is actually footage of several lookalikes passed off as the same creature.
• 

  (#11) Not Showing Hyena Theft Is A Lie Of Omission

  No matter how unobtrusive a film crew attempts to be in the wild, they’re still stomping all over someone else’s neighborhood and, as a result, there’s inevitable interaction that goes undocumented.

  One of the most constant annoyances in the African wilderness, says filmmaker Sarah Peat, is the hyena. “The thing we have yet to outwit is a hyena, because they constantly nick our kit … They take the motion detectors and they took five trail cams … Hyenas just yank them out of the ground and take them off and play with them for a bit.”

  Why hasn’t the world been gifted that footage?
• 

  (#5) Some Docs Actually Bring In Trained Talent

  Some of the most fascinating footage in nature documentaries comes when an alpha predator is filmed scavenging a meal. Of course, when the camera crew gets out into the wild, some of these predators are too preoccupied with the intruder in their midst to act natural and get their hunt on.

  That’s when documentary crews bring in trained, captive animals to trot around in front of the camera. These animals are enticed to hunt or inspect “fresh” prey with candy, like M&Ms.
• 

  (#7) Documentaries, Sponsoring Animal Murder Since The Dawn Of The Camera

  Several wildlife experts (including the guys who did Wild Discovery) admitted to staging their action scenes, even at the cost of a wild animal’s life.

  In one example, a photographer for LIFE magazine once transported and unleashed a captured leopard on a group of baboons whose biggest crime was chilling out in the wrong place at the wrong time. After releasing the leopard, the photographer wrote, “most of the time the leopard would chase the baboons and they would run off and climb trees. I had photographed all this. But for some reason one baboon didn't get off. It turned and faced the leopard, and the leopard killed it. We didn't know that this was going to happen. I just turned on the camera motor, and I got this terrific shot of this confrontation.”

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking