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

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  (#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.
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  (#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.
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  (#1) Disney’s ‘Lemmings’ Actually Offed The Poor Creatures To ‘Prove’ A Fake Point

  There’s a common misconception that, at some point in their lives, lemmings are compelled to walk forward for a really long time. They just gotta walk and walk until they tire out. If they hit a cliff, they theoretically keep going, resulting in tons of unintentional lemming suicides across their habitat. The phenomenon was even filmed in one segment of Disney’s nature documentary, White Wilderness.

  Here’s the thing though. No animal is so stupid they’d just walk off a cliff, not even lemmings. In fact, to get the footage, Disney filmmakers actually imported lemmings to shoot in Alberta (where lemmings don’t actually live), then edited about a dozen lemmings to look like a horde of the critters, then herded them off a cliff to make it look like they did the deed themselves.
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  (#6) Nope, That’s Not The Inside Of An Ant Hill

  For photographers who get the semi-onerous task of filming insects in their natural habitats, there are some things the audience demands that simply aren't possible. 

  For example, when you see the inside of that wasp’s nest or ant hill, it’s likely a homegrown nest shot in a super controlled environment. Says cameraman Martin Dohrn, “Is it cheating? It is and it isn’t … If you want to film inside a nest, it's an important part of the story. You need to see how the queen is groomed by the workers. You couldn't possibly explain any behavior without that.”
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  (#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?
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  (#4) The Polar Bears In ‘Frozen Planet’ Had An Obstetrician

  During the nature documentary Frozen Planet, one particularly gripping scene shows the birth of a wild pair of cubs in the middle of a forbidding Arctic winter. 

  Unfortunately, after the documentary aired, it turned out the birth was actually filmed at a zoo and made to look real with added fake snow. This fact hadn’t been disclosed to the audience, which David Attenborough shrugged off by saying filling the audience in “ruins the atmosphere, and destroys the pleasure of the viewers.”

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