On Nature Shows
My wife and I are currently watching two British nature documentary series, "The Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth", both narrated by David Attenborough.
I find them at the same time utterly amazing and... depressing.
There is so much variety, so much beauty, so much majesty, so much extraordinary.
Yet, there is also so much pain, so much suffering, so much struggle, so much death.[1]
It has been interesting watching the "diaries" segments included with each episode, where the photographers and teams describe how they captured the difficult shots on film -- often a process taking up to a month of simply waiting.
In those segments, more than once I have heard one of the teammembers share my amazement and sadness. For example, they were delighted to actually observe (with night vision cameras) a pride of 30 plus lions take down an elephant, but they were all too sad to watch the elephant struggle as it died and was then eaten. Or those filming the great white sharks -- they cheered each time a seal outmaneuvered the monster. They couldn't watch when a wounded seal hid under their boat. Yet they were exhilirated by the shot of a shark breaching the surface by two meters to snag a meal.
Most of the time, they mention how they will not interfere, just observe. But in a few cases, they broke their own rule. They found a baby emperor penguin trapped in a hole in the ice, so they rescued it. It happily wobbled back to its waiting and concerned mother.
Why save the baby penguin and not a baby whale being slowly drowned by killer whales? I don't see the distinction. Is it because one is cuter than the other?[2]
I suppose I can understand the reasoning behind not helping prey escape from predator. But some of the animals were just struggling from other matters, like getting lost in the desert in a sandstorm or falling into a pile of bat dung. It seems cruel to me to just let the animal suffer. Yes, nature is cruel, but in this world where many environmentalists are vegetarians, why the heck not help a poor bat-dung-trapped bird?
How is it cruel for humans to hurt animals, yet not be cruel for animals to hurt animals?
What depresses me the most is not that animals eat other animals. Heck, I eat animals. It is the slow suffering that saddens me. Yes, sometimes, the predators take out the already-dying,[3] but, as often, they take out the young. Many animals slowly kill or, worse, play with their prey, all the while, the prey scream and cry out for someone or something to save them.
I find them at the same time utterly amazing and... depressing.
There is so much variety, so much beauty, so much majesty, so much extraordinary.
Yet, there is also so much pain, so much suffering, so much struggle, so much death.[1]
It has been interesting watching the "diaries" segments included with each episode, where the photographers and teams describe how they captured the difficult shots on film -- often a process taking up to a month of simply waiting.
In those segments, more than once I have heard one of the teammembers share my amazement and sadness. For example, they were delighted to actually observe (with night vision cameras) a pride of 30 plus lions take down an elephant, but they were all too sad to watch the elephant struggle as it died and was then eaten. Or those filming the great white sharks -- they cheered each time a seal outmaneuvered the monster. They couldn't watch when a wounded seal hid under their boat. Yet they were exhilirated by the shot of a shark breaching the surface by two meters to snag a meal.
Most of the time, they mention how they will not interfere, just observe. But in a few cases, they broke their own rule. They found a baby emperor penguin trapped in a hole in the ice, so they rescued it. It happily wobbled back to its waiting and concerned mother.
Why save the baby penguin and not a baby whale being slowly drowned by killer whales? I don't see the distinction. Is it because one is cuter than the other?[2]
I suppose I can understand the reasoning behind not helping prey escape from predator. But some of the animals were just struggling from other matters, like getting lost in the desert in a sandstorm or falling into a pile of bat dung. It seems cruel to me to just let the animal suffer. Yes, nature is cruel, but in this world where many environmentalists are vegetarians, why the heck not help a poor bat-dung-trapped bird?
How is it cruel for humans to hurt animals, yet not be cruel for animals to hurt animals?
What depresses me the most is not that animals eat other animals. Heck, I eat animals. It is the slow suffering that saddens me. Yes, sometimes, the predators take out the already-dying,[3] but, as often, they take out the young. Many animals slowly kill or, worse, play with their prey, all the while, the prey scream and cry out for someone or something to save them.