Or do you suspect cruelty in some cases, e.g. staging predation to make filming easier?
I guess I’m a bit cynical about it because of the perverse incentives of the media. So if a film company self-reports ethicality, I’m not going to take them at their word.
There is one opinion piece about it by Chris Palmer, who lists some real examples of bad (abhorrent if you ask me) practice and also some hypothetical cases to ponder, but the real ones he cited were a long time ago. I wonder what it’s like today.
One of my friends who works as a herpetologist once told me that no shot of a snake in a documentary film is ever authentic and unstaged. He said almost all of them have had a black bucket over them to blind them in sudden light when it’s removed, so that they stay still.
He also said that the prey you see raptors swooping down to catch can sometimes have their eyelids superglued shut.
This was a few years ago, but I can’t imagine that these sorts of practices have entirely stopped.
The predation between invertebrates must be staged. The whole thing is often in a vivarium or aquarium so the prey must have been put in there. I don’t know whether that is unethical. Considering the billions of aphids that are killed by pesticides in the wider environment, I can’t get uptight about a few being placed where a camera can show a ladybird eating them.
Hell of a thing to claim without evidence, a specific documented case, or a reputable source Considering this is an ethics discussion, perhaps it would be best to stick with verifiable cases.
Geez, who woke on the wrong side of the bed? This is not a peer-reviewed publication, and I am repeating what I was told by someone I consider a reliable source. I am most certainly not going to pretend I haven’t heard it just to make myself feel better.
Pardon me if I came off a bit blunt, it’s nothing personal. But please remember this forum is for nature discussions, not rumor-mongering. You don’t have to pretend you didn’t hear it, but you don’t have to share it either. This is a pretty sticky topic by its nature, already. I could see discussion of a specific verifiable event as relevant to the discussion, but you made an unverifiable accusation of misconduct without naming a responsible party, providing any evidence that what you said was true, and relying on something you heard from ‘a friend’. You’re right, this isn’t a journal or a courthouse (what you said would be hearsay in the latter case), so nobody’s going to clap you in irons, but it doesn’t hurt to think about what you say before you post it.
To me, your first post @screedius did come off as a bit of a criticism of another user. The forum guidelines ask us to: Criticize ideas and opinions, not people.
If you think that hearsay is a problem, it’s fine to write a general post about it. However, much of the forum content is hearsay to some extent - people relaying things they’ve heard from experts about species, etc. There’s no requirement that users source every statement that they make. @mftasp 's comment above acknowledged the source so that users can judge for themselves and is well within the norms of posting on the forum in my experience.
I can certainly verify that many photos/videos of snakes (not sure about documentaries specifically) are taken after the snake has been covered with some object for a min or two to give them a chance to calm down/assume a coiled position so that they will stay still for a bit. I don’t personally see this as unethical. It’s likely less stressful for the snake than being handled directly. Filming most animals is going to require some alteration to their behavior/stress - there’s just no way around it. The same goes for pretty much any interaction of a human with a wild animal that has enough sensory perception to understand that a human is present. Whether or not that stress is justified is a fair question, but I think that a general justification would be that nature documentaries increase human appreciation and care for nature and as such some small negative impact is worth it.
With all due respect, I did not say anything about another user. I took issue with the statement that a documentarian would glue the eyes of an animal shut to prevent it from escaping a staged predator prey interaction. That would absolutely be unethical, but there’s no evidence that this has been done by any major wildlife documentary makers. It was a baseless accusation.
Again, I apologize if I came off as brusque or rude initially, but that is not a hypothetical question. The OP is asking whether you suspect animal cruelty in real-life cases. If you say ‘yes’, you should have a good reason for it. You did not have a good reason. You based your opinion on something someone said–a herpetologist by your description, which is not someone who necessarily has any experience or expertise in documentary making to know what the common practice of the industry would be.
I can see that we’ve spent more time on this than the actual topic, however, and it is not my intent to derail it any further. Let’s move on.
There are some real instances of questionable behavior we can discuss. For instance, there was a real case of a BBC documentary faking footage of a volcanic eruption for “Patagonia: Earth’s Secret Paradise” from 2015. That is not animal cruelty or illegal as far as I’m aware, but it does seem to cross the line from enhancement into something else that feels more dishonest.
Having read the article the OP linked, I am reminded of one show that I saw some years ago during Shark Week. If only I could remember the name of it. It was about an ocean explorer who beleved that Megalodon was still extant, and was searching for evidence. After the last commercial break, there was a disclaimer on-screen stating that the following was a dramatization based on some people’s theories. Well, I’m sure you can guess what the “dramatization” consisted of.
How many viewers understood that the disclaimer meant that the supposed Megalodon discovery footage was fake? Yes, the filmmakers technically were up-front about it; but it was arguably still deceptive. Leaving the mystery open by ending the film without a Megalodon discovery would have been less dramatic but true to what really happened.
It was called “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives.” They billed it as a made-for-tv film, in teeny tiny print in July of 2013. I was a shark week fanatic growing up and have never missed an episode. Taking it all with a few dozen grains of salt, some lime, & a splash of tequila, of course. I remember Discovery Channel lost a boatload (haha) of supporters over this and I don’t think the network will ever recover completely from it. Especially after the “Mermaid: The Body Found” mockumentary fiasco a couple of years prior.
Considering this is an ethics discussion, perhaps it would be best to stick with verifiable cases.