If you ask anyone in dinosaur related circles about any interesting ecosystems lost to time, they mention how they’re never portrayed in documentaries about paleontology. This has made we wonder what cool locales today have been under the radar in the wildlife documentary space. The most immediate would be the deep sea or caves.
- Microscopic life in soil
- Microscopic life in water
- Sky islands
- Peatlands
- Cloud forests
- Desert oases
- Intertidal hydrothermal vents
- Fungal biomes
- Extremophile habitats
- Rainforest canopies
- Antarctic dry valleys
- High altitude ecosystems
- Seamounts
- Mangrove forests
- Urban ecosystems
Biodiversity hot spots get a lot of attention and “boring” places are overlooked. Places like the boreal forest of Canada and Siberia have low diversity and may be logistically or politically difficult to visit. The Great Basin desert and thornscrub of western Texas and northern Mexico don’t have charismatic desert species like the saguaro cactus or Joshua tree so they don’t get much attention. The steppes of central Asia have a lot of interesting species but travel there is difficult due to politics and a lack of infrastructure, and it’s more exciting to film in the dramatic landscapes of the Himalayas.
Intertidal zone?
valdivian rainforests
This is a good documentary that has great coverage of mangroves:
I think some of the habitats that I (and others) mentioned above, HAVE been covered by various documentaries at various times, but I was addressing
In the sense that, if you look at wildlife clips on Instagram or Reddit or whatever, what do you tend to see? Lions, maybe bears from Alberta, etc. Not so much the habitats that were mentioned. Due to
Etc.
Mudflats and similar non-glamorous benthic substrates.
Although I have seen a good documentary about Pallas’ cat.
I don’t think of those as documentaries in the sense that the OP was asking. I define documentaries as having more substantive information and usually the length of a television program.