Documentaries you wished existed

Thanks Ashanti. You may like this film: .

I think it led to meerkats becoming one of the most popular animals in the world, rather than being an obscure mongoose.

 

This!

@Chlidonias definitely needs his own wildlife-travel documentary. Ones that I've seen seem to be based on looking for a certain really difficult species but seeing lots of other cool stuff on the way.

 

I have seen a documentary on coyotes. I tried to find one on the internet, but they all required an account for a website.

 

An in depth, HD, beautiful documentary about the Ethiopian highlands and the wildlife of Ethiopia.

 

Excuse my late reply, I only just spotted this.. There isn't a meerkat documentary I haven't seen haha, this one is among my favourites, mostly because nostalgia.

 

There should be a series where my friends and I look for cryptids and mythical creatures, but really it's just a way for us to get paid to go on vacations. We'd be all like "A sea monster was spotted near this 5 star resort in Hawaii! Lets investigate!".

In all seriousness... Speaking of meerkats, I'd totally be down for more series done in the style of meerkat manor. That show was oddly entertaining.

I'm also down for more documentaries about other mongoose species.

I have a fascination with the relationship between humans and other animals, both in the working/material sense and the cultural one. How animals get used by people and how they're portrayed in different cultures, stories, and popular media. I think that would be a super cool series.

Documentaries about specific conservation issues. A lot of conservation documentaries are general, like, you have a rainforest documentary that talks about all of the things hurting rainforests, or a tiger one that talks about the things hurting tigers. But I'd like to see one that focuses on invasive species, another on the pet trade, another on overfishing, stuff like that.

A series on conservation solutions. A lot of people watch documentaries on conservation issues and end up with a sense of doom and dread because most, if not all, of the program is talking about the threat and little to no time on the solutions. A series about what's being done to fix it, I think, could motivate more people into caring and being involved.

A documentary series about mythical creatures. Their origins, history, ancient and modern depictions, and if relevant, possible explanations.

 

Then you should definitely watch the final episode of Blue Planet II, this series will start airing in the US this Friday and all 7 episodes will be among the best nature documentaries you have seen, but the last one specifically focuses on threats and conservation.

 

I would like to see a 10-part series where in each episode, the host is looking for one of the rarest animals in the world!

Also a 10 hour documentary on Dugongs

 

I saw the trailer, it looks so amazing! I can't wait to see it! The first Blue Planet was fantastic, but I got a feeling that the new one might be even better!

 

I have recently been watching and enjoying the series Big Cats on the BBC; it is similar in many ways to an earlier series on the same channel, called Shark. I would love to see a series in a similar style about the mustelids. For the sake of simplicity, the series would be entitled Weasel.

The three episodes in the series, their rough subject matter and the eight main sequences (most series on the BBC seem to have roughly eight different sequences) to them are:

Diversity Of Forms - Looks at different groups and body-forms utilised by the mustelids
1. Long-tailed weasel: an archetypal thin-bodied species that hunts among rocks
2. Wolverine: one of the largest mustelids, capable of killing large animals
3. Hog badger: another large species but more of a burrower and an opportunistic feeder
4. Steppe polecat: an open-country species that uses burrows to both hunt in and escape predators
5. Japanese marten: some mustelids sought refuge from danger in the treetops and became arboreal
6. Zorilla: other mustelids avoided danger by weaponising their scent glands
7. American mink: a semi-aquatic hunter that must be ready to exploit any opportunity for food
8. Giant otter: some mustelids have become specialists of hunting in water; these have become the largest of the family

Mustelids Around The World - Explores how mustelids have managed to exploit so many habitats
1. Least weasel: a small thin body is extremely vulnerable to heat loss and forces hyperactivity
2. Saharan striped weasel: perhaps the most desert-adapted of all the mustelids
3. Tayra: an intelligent forager that collects and stores plantains for ripening
4. Malayan weasel: an elusive rainforest hunter that uses its bold colour to warn off predators so it can hunt by day
5. African clawless otter: must weigh up the risk-reward of catching big crabs against suffering painful pinches on sensitive fingers
6. Yellow-throated marten: a sociable hunter that forms groups to chase and kill musk deer
7. Marbled polecat: an open grassland species that can hunt in association with red foxes
8. European badger: a population on an Irish island have become dwarfs that emerge by day and feed by hunting rabbits and beachcombing

Conservation And Research - Informs of the importance of mustelid conservation
1. Asian badger: this is a keystone species, whose setts are vital landscape features for other carnivores including several other mustelids
2. Honey badger: some mustelids cause conflict with humans; work is being done to address this
3. Sable: demonstrates the ability of a mustelid population to rebound when no longer hunted
4. European mink: some mustelids need help to recover; in this case through captive breeding and reintroduction
5. Indonesian mountain weasel: some species of mustelid are among the least-known mammals on the planet
6. Hairy-nosed otter: researchers are trying to find out more about some of the most elusive members of the family
7. Vietnam ferret-badger: even now, new species of mustelid are still occasionally discovered
8. Egyptian weasel: this species is unique among carnivores; it lives only in association with humans and feeds both on human food scraps and the other animals that live around humans

 

^^ I love the idea, DesertRhino. It's clear you put considerable thought into it; I like the various themes you chose to explore, as well as the mascots you've chosen for each theme. I would definitely tune in to a program like this. It reminds me a bit of the setup for Life of Mammals and Life of Birds, two of my most favorite series.

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I don't know about the rest of you, but I sometimes find myself enjoying the very last episodes of BBC series (such as Frozen Planet or The Hunt, for example) the most, where they shed light on prevalent and ongoing conservation issues, focus on the lives of the people living in the (usually remote) filming locations, or show lots of captivating behind-the-scenes footage. I often feel that these episodes have the most impact on me, more so than even the most emotionally-driven storylines from the main part of the series. I don't know, maybe it's because I get to see the human side of the whole thing: the grueling work that goes into not only capturing the animal of interest on camera, but simply finding it; the fascinating different cultures the film crews get to experience (such as those people from Siberia, I believe it was, who live in mobile homes that are carried across the land by their reindeer); or the general good feeling that's elicited when you see locals being educated about environmental crises and working together to turn things around (the forest restoration efforts in Madagascar come to mind).

Anyway, I bring that all up just to say that I personally would love to see a documentary made about trying to find/film elusive and/or rare animals in the wild, such as the okapi or the saola, and all of the complications that would surround it. I know, it may not be very feasible (and probably wouldn't be the most exciting documentary ), but seeing as a program that extensively covered the life histories of these animals in the wild would be even far less likely, I'll have to settle for that. I just think that, despite the fact that a program like this would contain very few shots of the animals themselves, one could put a cool narrative behind it - this epic search in an unforgiving land for an almost mythical creature. Of course, the ultimate hope would be that we'd at least get one shot of the animal on camera, if only for a few moments, but even without that, the documentary could still be effective in highlighting research on these animals, their plights and the threats they face, etc.

 

Thanks for mentioning this! You're right, I hadn't heard of it (curse my North American-ness, lol). I'll be sure to check it out!

 

Thanks for bringing it to my attention! It sounds amazing.

 

Hello DesertRhino150. 'The Velvet Claw' was a TV series about carnivores. Episode 6 covered the mustelids. You can download the series via: ❄️ Movie titles The Velvet Claw [HDR] (1992) | Download High Quility Movies Free, hd mp4 movies download free, mp4 hd movies free download, hollywood

 

The Velvet Claw is a wonderful series (one of my favourites) - a couple of years ago I found and purchased a VHS version of it from Amazon, and have watched the whole series through several times since.