My Thoughts on "Really Wild Animals: Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features"

Note:

 

This was originally written on Saturday January 21, 2023, and was originally posted to DeviantART the next day, Sunday January 22, 2023. This was one of the first things I wrote that year, and now I'm kicking off this year by reposting it here on this blog. I mean, it wasn't my first post of 2024, that honor goes to the third part in my series on the Israel-Hamas war 🇮🇱. But, it is the first non-political or non-historical post of this year. Last year in January, I also wrote a journal for DeviantART about the obscure cult gothic Canadian cartoon series 🇨🇦, Ruby Gloom right after I wrote this journal about Really Wild Animals: Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features. So, expect that real soon. 

As for Really Wild Animals itself, this was only one that I actually watched as a kid. I hadn't watched any of the other ones until I was older in my 20s, the ones that people uploaded to YouTube. And after watching some of them, I've got to say, this one is probably my favorite. Not to say the other ones are bad, it's just that this one speaks to me in a way that other ones don't. It's just the nostalgia factor, but it's the subject matter itself. You can't go wrong with dinosaurs, reptiles, and insects, and other creepy crawlies and also bats 🦇, even though bats 🦇 are where COVID 🦠 came from. But, those were Chinese bats 🇨🇳🦇, the ones shown in this episode are from South America. So, I think we're fine...for the most part 😬. 

There was another documentary film made by National Geographic for kids, I actually mention it here in this review, it was called Creepy Creatures. I don't know if it ever aired on TV, but it definitely was released on VHS 📼. It was like a Halloween special 🎃, and it was hosted by a talking cat 🐈‍⬛ who turned out to actually be a witch 🧙 voiced by Kathleen Turner, I don't know if any of you have heard of her before. I hadn't heard of her until I saw that special. It's pretty much the same as the Creature Feature segment in this episode. Like, they talked about nearly all the same animals, and even used the same stock footage. The only difference is that it was narrated by talking cat 🐈‍⬛ (who was secretly a witch in disguise 🧙) instead of a talking planet 🌎. 

But, thinking about it again, I'm surprised that National Geographic never really kept pursing children's programming after this. Like, they had a Net Geo Kids magazine, but not a Nat Geo Kids TV channel or a Nat Geo Kids programming block, where they made cartoons and other programs that were both for entertainment and education. What I'm saying is that National Geographic didn't have its own equivalent to Discovery Kids (which morphed into the Hub which then morphed into Discovery Family). 

They didn't have cartoon shows like Growing Up Creepie 🕸️🕷️, or Kenny the Shark 🦈, or Grossology 🤮,  or Tutenstein,  the animated version of The Future is Wild, or Bindi the Jungle Girl, Time Wrap Trio, or even Dinosapien. Some of these shows were more educational than others, but they were entertaining shows to watch, and weren't boring or embarassing to watch, and were just as good as anything on any of the other competing networks, which were Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel. 

National Geographic never really pursued anything like that after Really Wild Animals, or any of these kid-friendly programs they made in the 90s. And that's a shame, because I feel like they could've put out some really good cartoons and live action shows too if they put their minds to it. Ones that could actually compete with the stuff that Discovery Kids was putting out during the 2000s. 

It's sort of the same way I feel about Nick at Nite, or Nick @ Nite, sorry, I had to do the stylizing there. Like, Nickelodeon really pursued adult programming, and never really tried to turn Nick @ Nite into anything more than what it was, a dumping ground for re-runs of old sitcoms from the 80s and 90s and probably 2000s at this point, and also syndicated shows. They never tried to turn it into their equivalent to Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. I mean, there were some efforts to take it in that direction, such as with the claymation animated series, Glenn Martin, DDS, and the rejected pitch for a Hey, Arnold spin-off called The Patakis, which was supposed to focus on Helga and her family, but older, hence why it was purposed to go on Nick @ Nite instead of on the main Nickelodeon channel. But, nothing really beyond that. 

They never really did anything to help Nick @ Nite go into something beyond just being a place to watch old sitcoms like George Lopez. And that's a shame. Nickelodeon had an opportunity to break into the adult cartoon market, and they squandered it. Nick @ Nite really just wasted potential that was never fully realized by the powers that be at Nickelodeon and Viacom (before it merged with CBS and became Paramount Global). All of their more adult oriented cartoons either went on MTV, a channel originally meant for music, and Spike TV, a channel that's for, who knows what? Spike just seems like the place Viacom dumped anything that didn't fit on any of the Nickelodeon channels or on MTV. Oh, and it was more overtly geared towards for men ♂︎ like their 20s and 30s. 

Neither of those channels really seemed like the most ideal and most obvious to put adult cartoons at. But, that was the only place they could really put them before they didn't put any work or invest in reshaping and retooling Nick @ Nite into the Nickelodeon version of Adult Swim, when they easily could have. I know the age of old school TV is kind of over, and these studios really aren't prioritizing old school television as they've dumped all of their eggs 🥚 into the streaming basket, even if streaming isn't anywhere near as profitable as old fashion TV. 

But, if this were the 2000s and not the 2020s, and I somehow ended up in-charge of programming and creativity at Nick @ Nite, I would've taken more of an effort to facilitate the development of adult cartoons and shift the block away from just being sitcom graveyard, and make an exciting place that people would actually want to stay up late at night to watch. Like, instead of airing shows like Daria, or Beavis & Butthead, or Downtown, or Æon Flux on MTV, maybe air them on Nick @ Nite instead, and then greenlit other original animated shows for adults. 

I probably wouldn't greenlight Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, that show's a little bit too much even for a programming block like Nick @ Nite, and it sucks. One of the worst cartoon shows, and one of the worst TV reboots or revivals ever made. No wonder it only had like three or four or five episodes, one of those. It was short-lived, and most of the episodes didn't even make it to air because how graphic they were in their sex and nudity, and also violence. Adult Party Cartoon was not only more sexually charged that original Ren & Stimpy, but it was also ten times more violent and disturbing.

Plus, John K. is huge creep, and I wouldn't want to reward him by greenlighting a show where he gets to air out his most perverse sex fantasies. John K. is good example of a type of creator or "auteur" that you shouldn't give complete creative freedom and control to. There's a reason why he was fired on the original Ren & Stimpy. Or did he quit? I'm not sure. Either way, he was a complete asshole on the production, and was difficult to work with, and he's allegedly a rapist and child molester. Like, this guy was dating an underage girl who was like 16 years old or something, and then he publicly said in a podcast that he likes drawing girls ♀︎ that are younger like 16 or 17. He actually said that. This man ♂︎ is a menace, and he deserves to be put in jail for the rest of his life. But, at least he's been blacklisted from the industry. That's something. 

But, I would've considered greenlighting The Patakis. I haven't seen Hey, Arnold, like I haven't watched a full episode, nor have watched either of the two movies, and I'm not even sure if The Patakis would've been any good had it been developed into a full series. But, it would've been worth a shot. I'm sure the fans of Hey, Arnold would've been happy. 

BTW, the way I feel about Nick @ Nite is not just limited to Nick @ Nite. I feel kind of TeenNick or TEENick as it was called back in the 2000s. TeenNick was sort of a kind of wasted potential too, maybe not to the same degree as Nick @ Nite, but still a lot of wasted potential. I feel like they could've developed animated shows for TeenNick or TEENick that weren't for kids or adult, but for teenagers. A little bit more mature and edgy for kids, but not quite as mature or edgy for adults, a middle ground. Nicktoons but with a little bit more hot sauce 🥵. Sort of like what the PG-13 rating was supposed to be when it was originally created. 

They had the chance to grow the audience of TeenNick by not strictly airing live action shows meant for teen girls ♀︎. They could've brought in teen boys ♂︎ and teen girls ♀︎ who liked animation and wanted something a bit more mature than they were getting on Nickelodeon or on Nicktoons Network (now just called Nicktoons), but wasn't as adult as the stuff you would see on Adult Swim for example. Just like how Cartoon Network started developing and airing more cartoons with TV-PG ratings instead of the typical TV-Y7 or TV-Y ratings in the 2010s, Nickelodeon could've done the same but on TeenNick or TEENick. 

But, just like with Nick @ Nite and adult cartoons, the thought to make cartoons for teens and air them on TeenNick never came into the minds of the top leadership at Nickelodeon or the people running TeenNick itself. Instead, they just kept it as the dumping ground for all teen-oriented sitcoms and other teen-oriented live action shows that they aired on the main Nickelodeon channel, but then moved over to TeenNick after they were canceled or had ended. They even aired Degrassi on there, which wasn't even a Nickelodeon show originally. 

All I ask for a wider variety of content (sorry, Patrick Willems, but that was the only word I could think of put there to convey my point) for all the major demographics, kids, teens, and adults. Like, I wish that Nickelodeon had made more cartoons for the 13-17 year old crowd and the 18-30 year old crowd, just like Cartoon Network had done with the cartoons on their main programming block or on Adult Swim. They had the potential to compete with Cartoon Network in that market, but they just never pursued it. Instead, they just played it safe and never took any risks like that. 

But, anyway, I think I've rambled on enough. This started out about National Geographic and its lack of edutainment programming for kids like Discovery Kids (before it became the Hub), and then it just devolved into a conversation about Nickelodeon and it squandering its programming blocks and its sister channels. So, I think I'll let you go on with the main review. 

 

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(This is the DVD cover 📀 for Really Wild Animals: Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features.) 

 

This was a long time coming, and it's something that I've been putting off for a while, but I thought that I would take a trip down memory lane, and talk about Really Wild Animals: Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features. For those of you who aren't familiar, Really Wild Animals: Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features is an episode of a short-lived semi-animated series on National Geographic called Really Wild Animals.

It was basically a show that was meant to educate kids about the different animals that live on the planet, or lived on the planet in the case of this episode. I think it was shown on TV, but most people who grew on this show watched it on VHS tapes 📼 that had the individual episodes on them (since the episodes were all 40 minutes long each), either at home, or in the classroom at school, or at the public library. I had this episode on DVD 📀, but I don't know if the other episodes were ever released on DVD 📀, or if this was the only one.

The show was hosted by Dudley Moore, who voices an anthropomorphized globe 🌎 named Spin. The Wikipedia page calls Spin 🌎 a globe, but in the show, and in this episode, he's treated as if he is the actual Earth 🌎, and is just able to talk and spit animal facts. Like, when Spin 🌎 talks about the formation of the Earth 🌎 and the formation of life, he talks in the first person, as if he's talking about his own birth and his own childhood.

So, I think Spin 🌎 is an anthropomorphized Earth 🌎 and not just some globe that you might find in a classroom. Spin 🌎 also went through a pretty drastic design change, as in the earlier episodes, he had eyes with white irises and black pupils, and he wore a hat, but in later episodes, he just had the black pupils, and didn't wear a hat. I mean, he would still hats, but not in his normal look, usually only in his costume changes for a specific skit or section.

Dudley Moore really carried this show with his voice acting performance as Spin 🌎, and I think this show would've been a lot less without him as the host and the narrator. I don't even know if he's still alive or not, but he is pretty great in this show. In addition, the show also has a musical element 🎵, like each episode has at least two original songs 🎵 that have to do with the subject matter of that specific episode.

This episode is unique compared to the other episodes of Really Wild Animals because it is really two segments in one. Rather being one segment focused on a singular central topic, this episode has two: there's the dinosaur segment 🦖🦕, which is the main attraction, and there's the "creature feature" segment 🦇🪰🕷️🪲. The dinosaur segment is definitely my favorite of the two segments, though I do still like the creature feature segment a lot.

The dinosaur segment uses a lot of footage from stop motion animator and visual effects supervisor, Phil Tippett's dinosaur short films from the 1980s and 90s, Prehistoric Beast and a TV dinosaur documentary, Dinosaur! I guess, the footage was public domain by then, so there were no issues with credit, but I'm not really sure. Phil Tippett certain didn't pursue any legal action for them using his stop motion dinosaur footage in this episode, so maybe he was okay with it. Or maybe they did get permission from him to use his footage, and he was probably credited, I'm not sure. Considering that this guy apparently minted one of his dinosaur stop motion scenes as an NFT, I'm guessing he's not super protective of his work.

BTW, if you aren't familiar with Phil Tippett by name, he's the guy who worked Jurassic Park. He was going to be the lead special effects guy on the movie, and was going to do all the full-sized dinosaurs in stop motion, or "go motion," as he referred to it as because it had a different motion blur, which allowed for more life-like movements. But then, Steven Spielberg decided to use CGI instead when he saw the tests that ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) had made, pretty much changing the entire film landscape with a single decision.

But, Tippett stayed on the project, and helped the animators at ILM with the dinosaurs, like he was a supervisor who helped them give the dinosaurs more life-like movements and behavior because of his experience animating dinosaurs in stop motion. His team even did the animatics for the movie in stop motion, and some of his animators even participated in the CG animation process because ILM helped build them a special device called a "dinosaur input device," which was like a stop motion puppet, like it could be moved and manipulated like one, but all the movements were translated into the computer, in the CGI model. So, essentially, they were animating CGI dinosaurs without a keyboard ⌨️, and using a device mimicked the feel of a stop motion puppet.

That wasn't the only thing Tippett has done in his long and distinguished career in stop motion animation and special effects. He also did stop motion work on other movies prior to Jurassic Park like Robocop, Robocop 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Howard the Duck. He even has his own special effects studio called Tippett Studio, and they have long since transitioned to pure CGI work, providing CG work on movies such as Evolution, Starship Troopers, Cloverfield, Virus, The Haunting, My Favorite Martian, and many others. The thing he's probably most known for nowadays is that crowdfunded stop motion animated live action hybrid movie, Mad God, which was released by Shudder in 2021, and has been in the works for a very long time, since the early years of Tippett's career, and was finally finished thanks to crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

I know I got sidetracked explaining who Phil Tippett is to those that don't know who he is, but speaking of Jurassic Park, this episode uses a lot of footage from other dinosaur movies such as the original 1925 Lost World movie (the silent one based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel 📖), Planet Dinosaur, and also the original 1933 King Kong, among others I'm not familiar with, and plenty of stock footage from old silent movies that I've never heard of as well. 

It's funny how they use Planet Dinosaur to explain that dinosaurs and humans didn't actually live together at the same time, when that movie actually takes place on another planet that just happens to have dinosaurs on it. It's a lot like Planet of the Apes, only if it actually was another planet and not a post-apocalyptic Earth 🌎. A better film to use as an example would've probably been One Million Years B.C., since it actually does show humans and dinosaurs living together at the same time in a prehistoric Earth 🌎. One dinosaur movie I'm surprised that they didn't mention was Jurassic Park.

I mean, this episode came out in 1995, 2 years after Jurassic Park, you'd think that they would at least mention it in passing considering that was still a fairly new movie at the time, it was really popular, and it is arguably what kicked off the dinosaur-mania of the 90s; a time when dinosaurs were all the rage, everyone and their mother was obsessed with them, and there were more dinosaur-related projects being greenlit and made than any other time in history, even the 1950s and 60s.

Maybe, it was a legal thing that they couldn't mention Jurassic Park or use any footage from it, and using footage from stop motion films that barely anyone had heard by that time from a guy who worked on Jurassic Park was the safer bet. Maybe, it was because this episode features the paleontology advisor on Jurassic Park, Jack Horner's rival, Robert Bakker, and he didn't want any footage from Jurassic Park to be used in any program that featured Robert Bakker. I don't think Jack Horner would have any control over that, nor he have any say, but that could be the case.

Even that supplementary dinosaur documentary that they put on the special features for the DVD 📀 about Sue the T. rex didn't mention Jurassic Park despite it also being made after that movie came out and took the world by storm. All that documentary did was show footage from older dinosaur movies from the 50s and 60s like The Valley of Gwangi, Dinosaurus!, the 1925 Lost World movie, and others that I don't know the names of but have seen footage from before. It uses footage from the same Phil Tippett dinosaur films. It's like it was made by the same people who make Really Wild Animals, or they were only allowed to use the same footage as each other, or they just borrowed from each other because hey, they're both National Geographic programs.

The science in the dinosaur segment is pretty outdated by day's standard, like rewatching it several times in the past few months, made me really see how outdated a lot of the science is. Like, they keep saying that dinosaurs are reptiles, and they keep comparing them to modern reptiles like alligators 🐊, snakes 🐍, and Komodo dragons.

Even though nowadays, we know pretty definitively that dinosaurs were not reptiles at all, and were closely related to birds, in fact, birds and dinosaurs are one-in-the-same, which is why you hear so many paleontologists and ornithologists say that birds are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are birds. Well, actually nowadays, they refer to dinosaurs as "non-avian dinosaurs" to distinguish them from modern-day birds, so your average laymen doesn't get confused. Sure, some reptiles like crocodilians 🐊 are distantly related to dinosaurs. They're part of the same group, the archosaurs, which mostly went extinct except for the crocodilians 🐊 and the birds. But, dinosaurs are not reptiles, besides the distant relation to crocodilians 🐊. They certainly had no relation to snakes 🐍 or lizards 🦎 as this episode suggests, not even a distant relation like with crocodilians 🐊.

And the weird thing is that they do pay lip service to the then still controversial theory that dinosaurs were related to birds, though they phrase it more as the birds being the direct descendants of dinosaurs, which is not really the case. Birds and non-avian dinosaurs lived at the same time as each other, and it's more accurate to say that birds are close relatives of dinosaurs that branched out and became their own lineage. It's kind of a misnomer to say that birds literally descended from dinosaurs, especially at this point now that we know what we know about dinosaurs and their close relation to birds.

But, this is kind of the inherent problem with making anything that's about dinosaurs or involves dinosaurs. No matter what you do, no matter how accurate you try to make the dinosaurs, it's probably going to become outdated within a few decades or even a few years because we're always learning new things about dinosaurs that either reinforce our theories about them, or they completely disprove our theories and pretty much negate everything that came before as far as depictions go.

They also didn't show any feathers 🪶 on any of the dinosaurs, not even on the dinosaurs that most paleontologists agree had feathers 🪶 like the Struthiomimus or the Dromaeosaurus. That might not seem like a big deal for them not to have feathers 🪶, but a lot of paleontologists and paleontology nerds consider that to be a big deals, especially now that we know that a lot of these dinosaur species had feathers 🪶, especially the theropod dinosaurs. Speaking of Struthiomimus, they also depict it eating eggs 🥚, which there is little-to-no evidence for in the fossil record.

There's sort of been this reckoning when comes to depictions of certain Ornithomimosaurs like Struthiomimus or Ornithomimus, or even the Oviraptor, which is not a Ornithomimosaur, but is also characterized as an "egg-eater 🥚." In fact, Oviraptor's name literally means "egg thief 🥚," that's how ingrained that depiction and perception is. Well, since there's been new evidence showing that Oviraptors and other similar dinosaurs didn't steal eggs 🥚 from nests and eat them, and that they were actually caring and brooding parents, there's been an effort by paleontologist and paleontology enthusiasts to debunk that misconception about Oviraptors and other dinosaurs that were also originally thought to be egg-eaters 🥚.

They also say that dinosaurs roared, which a lot of paleontologists nowadays don't think they did. In case of a dinosaur like the Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex), some paleontologists think that they made these low frequency noises with their mouth rather than actually roar, and these low frequency noises were so powerful that you could feel them in your body as the T. rex as it was vocalizing. So, you would feel them rather than hear them, besides maybe the sound of their footsteps, which likely shook the ground as they walked because of their size and weight.

But, not every paleontologist agrees on that, and still thinks that T. rex and other dinosaurs might've still roared and made loud vocalizations since birds today make noises (they chirp, or caw, or squawk, or shriek), and vocal cords don't fossilize. The jury's still out on that one, and it's still very much up for debate. We may never actually know for sure if dinosaurs actually made sounds or not, and if they did, what kind.

The only dinosaur that we know made sounds and we know what kind is the Parasaurolophus, which made a really eerie and haunting horn noise with its signature head crest. Paleontologists found this out after the sound was recreated in New Mexico, at Sandia Labs. You can hear the recreated vocalization on YouTube or at the Natural History Museum in Albuquerque since they play it on loop constantly in one section of the museum. But, word of warning, it is a pretty creepy sound. It always creeped me out when I was a kid whenever I visited the museum.

This isn't a scientific inaccuracy or anything, but this episode seems to be on the side of T. rex being a hunter rather than a scavenger. Nowadays, we've kind of accepted that T. rex was both a hunter and a scavenger, just like well, most carnivorous animals ever. But back then, in the 90s, it was pretty controversial. Paleontologists were debating back and forth about whether T. rex was exclusively a hunter or exclusively a scavenger.

That's been the main disagreement between Jack Horner and Robert Bakker for all these years, about whether T. rex was a hunter or a scavenger. Jack Horner staunchly believes that T. rex was a scavenger, while Robert Bakker staunchly believes that T. rex was a hunter. And since Robert Bakker is the only paleontologist that is prominently featured in this episode, and he's the only one giving facts about the T. rex, the episode pretty much takes his side of the argument by default.

Also, this episode presents the K-T extinction as if the cause was inconclusive or still up for the debate. Like, they talk about the asteroid impact ☄️ and talk about the basic theory of how it killed off the dinosaurs and other animal species that went extinct during that time, how the dust and debris from the impact went up into the air, and blocked out the Sun ☀️, killing the plants 🌱, then killing the herbivores that fed on the plants 🌱 and the carnivores that fed on the herbivores.

But then, they say that the climate might've just gotten colder 🧊🥶, and the dinosaurs and other species couldn't adapt fast enough. That suggestion is probably ridiculous now, especially now that we know that were dinosaurs that lived in colder climates 🧊🥶, such as the Narnuqsaurus and the Edmontosaurus, but it still wasn't completely certain that an asteroid ☄️ was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs at that time.

There was still a little room for debate, a shred of doubt, which is why you had some paleontologist suggest that an ice age 🧊 killed the dinosaurs, or volcanoes 🌋 killed the dinosaurs, or even disease 🦠 killed the dinosaurs. Now, everyone accepts that it was an asteroid impact ☄️ that killed the non-avian dinosaurs and other Late Cretaceous species that couldn't survive in such drastic and apocalyptic conditions.

Like, it's pretty much the common consensus of the vast majority of paleontologists at this point. I know, some people like to say that "science isn't ruled by consensus," except that it totally is with certain theories. The only people who say that are climate change deniers who try to discredit the scientific community's acceptance of man-made climate change. No one actually says that or makes that argument in good faith.

But, when you put aside the outdated or inaccurate science, this segment is still a lot of fun and entertaining to watch. I still get a lot of nostalgia from watching it, because it was such a huge part of my childhood. It was one of the many things that I kept watching over and over again, much to dismay of my sisters and my mom. I actually really liked the songs 🎵. I didn't used to like the songs 🎵 as a kid because I wasn't into musicals (and I'm still not to this day), watching recently, I really do enjoy the songs 🎵. That goes double for the songs 🎵 in the Creature Feature segment.

So, what about the Creature Feature segment? Well, as the name might suggest, this segment is mostly about animals that people usually think are creepy, monstrous, or gross 🤢, and showing that they are mostly misunderstood. They talk about bats 🦇, flies 🪰, spiders 🕷️, and dung beetles 🪲. They talk about other creepy and "weird" animals too like ants 🐜 and vultures, but the bats 🦇, flies 🪰, spiders 🕷️, and dung beetles 🪲 are the main attractions; the ants 🐜 and vultures are the supplements. The ant section 🐜 is pretty brief, and is framed as a trailer in-between the bat movie 🦇 and the fly movie 🪰.

The vulture section is also pretty brief, and is framed as a western 🤠, like it's narrated either by someone with a strong Texan accent or by someone putting on a strong Texan accent, and the vultures are kind of portrayed as cowboys 🤠, like sheriffs who are patrolling the land. Only instead of protecting a small frontier town by going after outlaws, the vultures keep the African plains clean by eating animal carcasses. This segment has more of a framing device as oppose to the dinosaur segment which had no framing device; unless you count that little line that Spin 🌎 says about going back in time as the framing device.

The framing device in this segment is that Spin 🌎 is going to the movie theater 🍿, and all the different sections are movies that he's watching. The bat section 🦇 is framed as a vampire horror film 🧛🩸 since they mainly focus on vampire bats 🦇🩸, the fly section 🪰 is framed as a sci-fi horror film about a mad scientist 🧪creating a monster Frankenstein-style, the spider 🕷️ section is framed as a film noir detective movie 🕵️, and the dung beetle 🪲 section is framed as a romance movie 🥰. I really like how they managed to make the two segments in this episode feel as different as possible. And I think a lot of the movie genres that they framed the animal sections in were all really clever.

I especially how they decided to frame the spider section 🕷️ as a film noir detective movie, like that works so well, especially with the Black Widow Spider 🕷️ which is the kind of spider 🕷️ they mainly focus on. And come on, The Widow's Web 🕸️ is just a really awesome title, like it sounds like it could be a real film noir detective movie 🕵️. The vampire bat 🦇🩸 section being framed as a vampire horror film 🧛 akin to Dracula, is a little bit too obvious and on the nose, but it still works.

It's really fitting that they framed the fly section 🪰 as a sci-fi horror movie, since one of the great sci-fi horror movies ever made was The Fly 🪰, a sci-fi horror film that's either about a scientist switching his head with a fly's head 🪰 like in the original 1958 movie, or about a scientist turning into a fly-human hybrid 🪰 like in the 1986 David Cronenberg remake. It's like flies 🪰 are just intrinsically tied to science fiction, which is also in of itself pretty fitting considering that fruit flies are commonly bred in labs 🔬🧪🥼 and used for genetic experimentation 🧬. The dung beetle section 🪲 being framed as a romance movie 🥰 is pretty unorthodox and weird because no body thinks of dung beetles 🪲 as being romantic 🥰 because well, they're dung beetles 🪲, but again, it still works.

The fly section 🪰 and the dung beetle section 🪲 are probably the two grossest sections 🤢 of this entire segment. Mostly because flies are gross and annoying, especially houseflies 🪰, which that section mainly focuses on, and because the dung beetle section 🪲 has a lot of poop 💩 in it, if the name, dung beetle 🪲 wasn't any indication. So, definitely don't eat anything while watching this segment unless you want to lose your appetite 🤢. It also goes without saying that if you don't like spiders 🕷️, like if you have arachnophobia 🕷️, then you should probably skip this segment all together, or just skip the spider section 🕷️. I mean, if you have ophidiophobia 🐍, then you shouldn't watch the dinosaur segment 🦖🦕, or at least, just skip the snake section 🐍. My grandma probably wouldn't be able to get through the snake section 🐍 of the dinosaur segment because she has really bad ophidiophobia 🐍.

Speaking of food though, a weird thing I noticed is that both segments of this episode feature fake advertisements for food. Like, the dinosaur segment has "Mondo Meal 🐍," a takeout food delivery service for snakes 🐍, and the creature feature segment has the "Spider Snack Bar 🕷️," a movie theater snack bar for spiders 🕷️. And they're both performed by Billy West, the unsung hero of the voice acting world 🎙️. He's a regular staple of this show, and often provides additional voices, a lot of which go uncredited.

Another thing is that there another Nat Geo special that was released around the same time as this episode that was very similar in subject matter. It was called Creepy Creatures, and it was hosted by Kathleen Turner who voices a black cat 🐈‍⬛ in the special that later turns out to be a witch 🧙, and it was also about shedding light on misunderstood creatures considered to be creepy, monstrous, or gross 🤢. Some of the narration in that special was line-for-line similar to this creature feature segment in this episode of Really Wild Animals. It even uses a lot of the same footage that this segment uses. The similarities are really apparent during the spider section 🕷️ of that special.

The version that's on YouTube even had a promo for Really Wild Animals, right at the beginning since it was recorded off a VHS 📼 and VHS tapes 📼 usually have previews and promos before the main feature presentation; so do DVDs 📀 and Blu-Rays 💿. I really don't know how they could've happened, unless the people who made that special were the same people who made this episode, or the people who made that special figured they could just copy the Really Wild Animals team's homework since they're both National Geographic. But, I guess if you liked the creature feature segment of this episode, and wish the whole thing was about that, then this Creepy Creatures would probably be up your alley.

Unlike, the dinosaur segment 🦖🦕, a lot of the science in this segment is still fairly accurate as far as I know. Like I said, this segment mostly sets out to dispel myths and misconceptions about the animals selected. So, it would be kind of embarrassing if the science in this segment was outdated and inaccurate. The section they do the most debunking in is the first section, the bat section 🦇. Like, they debunk the idea that bats 🦇 are blind, or dirty, or are related to birds, or bite humans in the case of the vampire bat 🦇🩸. They say that not only do vampire bats 🦇🩸 not bite humans, but bats 🦇 in general are not blind and have great eyesight as well as having echolocation, they're "remarkably well groomed," and they are mammals and not birds.

Okay sure, bats 🦇 don't bite humans and drink their blood 🩸, and they groom themselves and aren't "dirty," but they doesn't mean they aren't disease-ridden. Like, it's still not great idea to get near a bat 🦇 unless you really know what you're doing. Need we forget that COVID-19 🦠 came from bats 🦇? And were there really people out there who ever thought that bats 🦇 were related to birds? Like, I would think that it's pretty apparent that bats 🦇 are not related to birds since they look nothing like birds and have nothing in common with them besides the fact that they fly; or I guess, glide in bats' 🦇 case since bats 🦇 don't technically have powered flight the same way birds do. In fact, it's a lot easier for people to think pterosaurs are related to birds (and by extension, dinosaurs) even though they weren't, since a lot of pterosaurs had beaks just like birds do.  

But, regardless of whether or not this segment is still scientific accurate or not, it is still fun to watch. I love the creativity, I love the references to all these film genres, and I like how they managed to differentiate it from the dinosaur segment. I get as much of a kick of it now as I did when I was a kid. It is kind of gross in some parts, especially the fly section 🪰 and the dung beetle 🪲 section, but if you look past the gross stuff, you'll probably enjoy this segment as well.

The episode as a whole is really good, and it is a great introduction to this series. It certainly was for me, since I have watched other Really Wild Animals episodes that people have uploaded to YouTube. Speaking of YouTube, that's probably your best bet if you want to seek this out and watch it since the full thing was uploaded to YouTube, and the DVD 📀 is well out of print and probably very hard to find unless you go to eBay, or go to a natural history museum and see if you can find it there.

I bought my copy at the natural history museum in Albuquerque a long time ago, probably in the early or mid 2000s when I was a kid. I no longer have my copy, which is why I had to watch it on YouTube, and then download it onto my laptop 💻. I also highly doubt that this show, let alone this particular episode, is available on streaming, despite Disney now owning 73% of National Geographic and having an entire National Geographic section on Disney+. It doesn't really seem like something that they would even give the time of day to. In the words, of a certain anthropomorphic Earth 🌎, spin you later 👋.