Nature Documentary

We are standing in the plains of Medialand. We can see Snarkus majoris, the Common Troper, stalking another cliché. Watch as she creeps silently towards the overused plot device. Soon... there she goes! She leaps onto the cliché and sinks her snarky teeth into it. Look at it writhe! It can't escape! Soon it will be another entry in the Troper's Lair.

Documentaries in which animals are filmed in their natural habitat. Or not, as the case may be. There are two variants: one where a narrator explains what's going on over a clandestinely filmed scene. The other is where the host goes out and wrestles the animals to show off the beauty of the unspoiled nature.

Perhaps the Ur Example for television was The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, which ran on American Television for a decade and inspired an entire genre of underwater adventure documentaries (as well as a lot of affectionate parodies). All modern TV nature documentaries owe something to Cousteau.

---

Examples of Nature Documentary include:

Advertising

• Years ago, the Little Caesar's pizza chain had a commercial which started as an apparent nature documentary. The dialog went something like this:

Narrator: In the wild, life is a constant battle to find enough to eat...
<scene cuts to a hippo carrying a pizza box in its mouth>
Narrator: ...fortunately, mother nature always provides.

Film

• March Of The Penguins
• The True Life Adventures and People And Place series Walt Disney produced in the 1950s. They are rather infamous nowadays as Documentaries Of Lies, particularly due to the faked lemming suicide scene in White Wilderness.
  • Well, it is kind of hard to be rough on them, seeing as they were meant for children and all.
    • Lemming suicide is meant for kids?

Live-Action TV

• Crocodile Hunter
• Nature on PBS
• Planet Earth, Life in Cold Blood and the many David Attenborough shows.
• Animal Planet is an entire channel devoted to Nature Shows
  • Or, was.
• Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
• Walking with Dinosaurs and its spinoffs/sequels differ in that the creatures are mostly CGI, with animatronics thrown in.
• Big Cat Diaries
• Earthflight
• Last Chance to See with Stephen Fry.

Western Animation

• Spoofed in The Ren and Stimpy Show as Untamed World
• This is what The Wild Thornberrys were supposed to be making.