Animal cruelty in the making of Nat Geo series (NSFW)

[Amy Dickens]

I hope this is the right forum for this discussion. If not mods please move for me.

The YouTube video below seems to show clear evidence of staged predation in a well known wildlife documentary series.

Firstly, do the professionals here agree with the evidence shown in the video (as well as the additional evidence cited in the video description)? Is it possible those scenes were actually captured in the wild?

Secondly, I posted this to a documentary group on Reddit and many of the comments were along the lines of: "well all nature documentaries are fake anyway". Do many documentary films fake scenes in this way? Is it an accepted thing in the industry?

Thanks for your time.

Amy

[Aapo Lettinen]

most predatory animals are normally shot by strategically placing carcasses so that they come feeding to the perfect spot where they are wanted for composition. Normal way in wildlife photography. for example dead fish placed in river so that the predator can catch it, or dead mouse placed on ground so that a bird can catch it. For example wanting a shot where owl catches a mouse they place dead mouse on the ground to exact spot where they get perfect shot and then edit the result so that people don't notice the mouse was already dead when the bird catches it.

if wanting a bear "to find some food" one can hide salmon pieces on ground to the perfect spot and they start digging there.

deer carcasses or reindeer carcass might be needed for the story. again the prey is already dead and just placed to the spot where the predator can be perfectly photographed.

these "preys" are already dead, it is pretty uncommon to use live prey which the predator would actually kill by itself as that is almost impossible to arrange ethically. have sometimes seen animal docs use cockroaches or other insects killed live and sometime mouse etc small animals but most people don't want to write that kind of scenes for the exact reason that it is unethical to shoot and pretty horrible to watch

[Brian Drysdale]

The BBC flagship nature series do show animals catching their prey in the natural world. Big cats, wolves, are commonly shown chasing down and killing their prey, snakes are also shown dashing at and catching baby Marine iguanas in the Galápagos islands and bears catching salmon in the rivers as they make their spawning run.   

[Aapo Lettinen]

3 minutes ago, Brian Drysdale said:

The BBC flagship nature series do show animals catching their prey in the natural world. Big cats, wolves, are commonly shown chasing down and killing their prey, snakes are also shown dashing at and catching baby Marine iguanas in the Galápagos islands and bears catching salmon in the rivers as they make their spawning run.   

yes but the difference is whether the prey was already there or if people are releasing domesticated/purposefully breed prey for the predator to catch just to get the images. For example releasing domesticated "pet rabbits" for them to be catched and killed by the predator to get "cool shots". If the prey animals are "real inhabitants of the natural place" then of course no problem at all. If it is a dead animal thrown there by humans to get the shots then it is more of a matter of "was it humanely killed" and "was it raised as human food so it would had died anyway, just the bear eating it instead of a human".

I think the biggest issue is filming scenes in commercial animal parks pretending it is a real wildlife scene and feeding live prey to the predators there in the enclosure to get shots of them "hunting". So the predator is "jailed" there and someone is throwing a live prey animal in and then the predator catches and kills it. Everything just for the filming, neither the predator nor the prey would be there without the cameras present and people paying for the kill so that it can be filmed. Kind of the same than making a drama movie with a scene where a dog is killed and then the film crew would kill the dog for real... totally outrageous and people would boycott the whole movie

[Amy Dickens]

7 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

most predatory animals are normally shot by strategically placing carcasses so that they come feeding to the perfect spot where they are wanted for composition. Normal way in wildlife photography. for example dead fish placed in river so that the predator can catch it, or dead mouse placed on ground so that a bird can catch it. For example wanting a shot where owl catches a mouse they place dead mouse on the ground to exact spot where they get perfect shot and then edit the result so that people don't notice the mouse was already dead when the bird catches it.

if wanting a bear "to find some food" one can hide salmon pieces on ground to the perfect spot and they start digging there.

deer carcasses or reindeer carcass might be needed for the story. again the prey is already dead and just placed to the spot where the predator can be perfectly photographed.

these "preys" are already dead, it is pretty uncommon to use live prey which the predator would actually kill by itself as that is almost impossible to arrange ethically. have sometimes seen animal docs use cockroaches or other insects killed live and sometime mouse etc small animals but most people don't want to write that kind of scenes for the exact reason that it is unethical to shoot and pretty horrible to watch

Interesting. So you believe most of the predation or feeding scenes we watch are faked by feeding the animals. Another question: if scenes are faked, should there be a note in the credits or is it okay to let the viewers think the scene was real?

[Amy Dickens]

5 hours ago, Brian Drysdale said:

The BBC flagship nature series do show animals catching their prey in the natural world. Big cats, wolves, are commonly shown chasing down and killing their prey, snakes are also shown dashing at and catching baby Marine iguanas in the Galápagos islands and bears catching salmon in the rivers as they make their spawning run.   

Yes, but I think the scenes shown in this video are very different. The BBC would never engineer a situation where one animal kills another one. Or if they did they would keep very quiet about it because the viewers would be very upset if they found out. The scenes you mention all happened naturally and the camera crew may have spent weeks or months waiting to capture the perfect scene. Maybe that's the difference between National Geographic and the BBC?

[Amy Dickens]

5 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

yes but the difference is whether the prey was already there or if people are releasing domesticated/purposefully breed prey for the predator to catch just to get the images. For example releasing domesticated "pet rabbits" for them to be catched and killed by the predator to get "cool shots". If the prey animals are "real inhabitants of the natural place" then of course no problem at all. If it is a dead animal thrown there by humans to get the shots then it is more of a matter of "was it humanely killed" and "was it raised as human food so it would had died anyway, just the bear eating it instead of a human".

I think the biggest issue is filming scenes in commercial animal parks pretending it is a real wildlife scene and feeding live prey to the predators there in the enclosure to get shots of them "hunting". So the predator is "jailed" there and someone is throwing a live prey animal in and then the predator catches and kills it. Everything just for the filming, neither the predator nor the prey would be there without the cameras present and people paying for the kill so that it can be filmed. Kind of the same than making a drama movie with a scene where a dog is killed and then the film crew would kill the dog for real... totally outrageous and people would boycott the whole movie

Very good points. And in the video it looks like the prey does not die quickly, so the filmmakers are causing unnecessary suffering. Obviously captive animals need to eat, but I think the prey should at least be killed humanely. Sone people say: well it happens in the wild anyway, but I think at least in the wild the prey has a chance to escape. Do you think these methods are common and the video just shows examples that were badly done so we can see they were fake? Or do you think most of the wildlife footage we watch is actually filmed in the wild?

[Aapo Lettinen]

5 hours ago, Amy Dickens said:

Interesting. So you believe most of the predation or feeding scenes we watch are faked by feeding the animals. Another question: if scenes are faked, should there be a note in the credits or is it okay to let the viewers think the scene was real?

No there should not be note for audience if it is a wild animal in real nature setting and only its food was faked when it is eating it. As long as it is something the animal could actually find in the wild.

It depends on the animal and environment too. For example with bears and wolves or wolverines in a forest setting it is impossible to get any footage at all if one does not arrange some regular feeding place where the animal starts to come expectedly because it knows it may find food there. Without food it does not have any reason to come there at all, you can wait the whole year there without single clip shot because the animal is 10 miles away where its food is.

In savannah type of environment it is easier to find animals far away so it would be possible to just spot existing carcasses and wait until some lions or hyenas show up. Placing a similar carcass there on purpose does not differ in any way if a naturally died one could not be found.

The animals go where the food is. Without food, no animals

[Aapo Lettinen]

5 hours ago, Amy Dickens said:

Very good points. And in the video it looks like the prey does not die quickly, so the filmmakers are causing unnecessary suffering. Obviously captive animals need to eat, but I think the prey should at least be killed humanely. Sone people say: well it happens in the wild anyway, but I think at least in the wild the prey has a chance to escape. Do you think these methods are common and the video just shows examples that were badly done so we can see they were fake? Or do you think most of the wildlife footage we watch is actually filmed in the wild?

The example video has portions which look like being shot in enclosure/cage like the lizard eating snake scene. Some others like the cobra vs mongoose might be real natural setting but would be possible to fake that way too. The cat catching the bird, not sure. I only know about stuff which they shoot in certain European countries and they would not use live pigeon for that scene if faking it but there is lots of countries where people would not care using live prey in cage/enclosure setting to get some intensive predation scene.

If it is just one scene where the predator is already eating the prey animal and never showing it catching it, then almost certain the prey was already dead and just placed there for the predator to find. 

It is common to get more material for scenes by shooting animals in enclosure/cage/animal parks for closeups and then cut to other similar looking animal in wild for rest of the footage. It is usually mentioned in the credits if some scenes are shot in captivity. I guess it depends on the country if it is legal to give captivity animals live prey or not, here it is avoided and people would complain about it but most countries don't care about animals as much and enclosure-shot live predation scenes could surely happen there

[Aapo Lettinen]

Don't know about this "it was staged so it's fake and should be mentioned" thing really.

Almost all animal material is shot in slow motion because they look stupid and move too fast at normal speed. And usually 100% of the soundtrack is faked. All the animal sounds added in post and it may not even be the same animal species. 50fps to 120fps been the norm on stuff I have worked on in the past. For example flying birds look "sped up" if shown at their real speed, same with small animals etc

[Brian Drysdale]

This explains how the BBC filmed a rattlesnake hunting in the wild: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/lifeincoldblood/techniques.shtml Also, some studio filming (although not furry prey).

Edited December 13, 2025 by Brian Drysdale

[Aapo Lettinen]

2 hours ago, Brian Drysdale said:

This explains how the BBC filmed a rattlesnake hunting in the wild: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/lifeincoldblood/techniques.shtml Also, some studio filming (although not furry prey).

yes the article mentions using trained animals in real natural setting, that is common too if there is budget for it. One of the coolest examples was on the French movie "Seasons" where they raised young deer and lynx together for their whole life so that they could film very coordinated "chase scenes" in forest, the animals were playing "catch me if you can game" they were taught from early on and were friends rather than enemies. 

"Nature movies" are a bit different than "nature documentaries" but using trained animals to safely reconstruct a scene which could happen in real life is fine as long as they are treated well .

(Lynx stuff from about 2:00 onwards and the chase scene from about 4:15 onwards)

 

Edited December 13, 2025 by Aapo Lettinen

[Amy Dickens]

6 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

No there should not be note for audience if it is a wild animal in real nature setting and only its food was faked when it is eating it. As long as it is something the animal could actually find in the wild.

It depends on the animal and environment too. For example with bears and wolves or wolverines in a forest setting it is impossible to get any footage at all if one does not arrange some regular feeding place where the animal starts to come expectedly because it knows it may find food there. Without food it does not have any reason to come there at all, you can wait the whole year there without single clip shot because the animal is 10 miles away where its food is.

In savannah type of environment it is easier to find animals far away so it would be possible to just spot existing carcasses and wait until some lions or hyenas show up. Placing a similar carcass there on purpose does not differ in any way if a naturally died one could not be found.

The animals go where the food is. Without food, no animals

I would not like to drive around the savannah with a dead GNU for the lions. Sounds dangerous!

[Amy Dickens]

6 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

No there should not be note for audience if it is a wild animal in real nature setting and only its food was faked when it is eating it. As long as it is something the animal could actually find in the wild.

It depends on the animal and environment too. For example with bears and wolves or wolverines in a forest setting it is impossible to get any footage at all if one does not arrange some regular feeding place where the animal starts to come expectedly because it knows it may find food there. Without food it does not have any reason to come there at all, you can wait the whole year there without single clip shot because the animal is 10 miles away where its food is.

In savannah type of environment it is easier to find animals far away so it would be possible to just spot existing carcasses and wait until some lions or hyenas show up. Placing a similar carcass there on purpose does not differ in any way if a naturally died one could not be found.

The animals go where the food is. Without food, no animals

Should there be a note if tame or captive animals are used?

[Amy Dickens]

6 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

The example video has portions which look like being shot in enclosure/cage like the lizard eating snake scene. Some others like the cobra vs mongoose might be real natural setting but would be possible to fake that way too. The cat catching the bird, not sure. I only know about stuff which they shoot in certain European countries and they would not use live pigeon for that scene if faking it but there is lots of countries where people would not care using live prey in cage/enclosure setting to get some intensive predation scene.

If it is just one scene where the predator is already eating the prey animal and never showing it catching it, then almost certain the prey was already dead and just placed there for the predator to find. 

It is common to get more material for scenes by shooting animals in enclosure/cage/animal parks for closeups and then cut to other similar looking animal in wild for rest of the footage. It is usually mentioned in the credits if some scenes are shot in captivity. I guess it depends on the country if it is legal to give captivity animals live prey or not, here it is avoided and people would complain about it but most countries don't care about animals as much and enclosure-shot live predation scenes could surely happen there

And if it's legal where the shoot occurs is it then legal to show the film even in countries where filming it would not be allowed? I would think Nat Geo would have some sort of ethical guidelines for the companies they hired to produce content for them. Or maybe they turn a blind eye if the content is cheap and gets views?

[Amy Dickens]

5 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

Don't know about this "it was staged so it's fake and should be mentioned" thing really.

Almost all animal material is shot in slow motion because they look stupid and move too fast at normal speed. And usually 100% of the soundtrack is faked. All the animal sounds added in post and it may not even be the same animal species. 50fps to 120fps been the norm on stuff I have worked on in the past. For example flying birds look "sped up" if shown at their real speed, same with small animals etc

Yes I know much of wildlife is shot in slow motion, and that the sound is added in post. But I'm not sure that's in the same ethical category as faking a predation scene where one animal kills another, then pretending it was real.

[Amy Dickens]

3 hours ago, Brian Drysdale said:

This explains how the BBC filmed a rattlesnake hunting in the wild: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/lifeincoldblood/techniques.shtml Also, some studio filming (although not furry prey).

Very interesting. At least they are up front about the techniques they use.

[Aapo Lettinen]

6 minutes ago, Amy Dickens said:

Should there be a note if tame or captive animals are used?

animal wranglers listed in end credits. usually also the places where the animals were raised and hired for the scenes.

Like mentioned before, all natural documentaries have at least the soundtrack entirely fake or mostly fake. From 95% to 100% made in post with often no sound captured on set at all or only unusable reference which was only used to find out what approximately needs to be replicated. Usually this is because of practical reasons, it is not possible to get good sound if the animal is 200 yards away and there is background noise. People would think the image is fake if the post sound would NOT be added. Same thing than adding foley in movies, it looks ridiculous if using the original sound with the flappy studio set prop doors and wrong kind of floors and humming of air conditioning and stuff

[Amy Dickens]

36 minutes ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

yes the article mentions using trained animals in real natural setting, that is common too if there is budget for it. One of the coolest examples was on the French movie "Seasons" where they raised young deer and lynx together for their whole life so that they could film very coordinated "chase scenes" in forest, the animals were playing "catch me if you can game" they were taught from early on and were friends rather than enemies. 

"Nature movies" are a bit different than "nature documentaries" but using trained animals to safely reconstruct a scene which could happen in real life is fine as long as they are treated well .

(Lynx stuff from about 2:00 onwards and the chase scene from about 4:15 onwards)

 

That's quite amazing! But if they got the lynx to actually kill the fawn I don't think they would have featured it in the behind the scenes.

[Amy Dickens]

8 minutes ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

animal wranglers listed in end credits. usually also the places where the animals were raised and hired for the scenes.

Like mentioned before, all natural documentaries have at least the soundtrack entirely fake or mostly fake. From 95% to 100% made in post with often no sound captured on set at all or only unusable reference which was only used to find out what approximately needs to be replicated. Usually this is because of practical reasons, it is not possible to get good sound if the animal is 200 yards away and there is background noise. People would think the image is fake if the post sound would NOT be added. Same thing than adding foley in movies, it looks ridiculous if using the original sound with the flappy studio set prop doors and wrong kind of floors and humming of air conditioning and stuff

Agree. But in this case I don't think wranglers or locations are credited. And I still think adding sound or using a rescue animal for a close up is very different from putting 2 animals in a situation where the one kills the other.

[Aapo Lettinen]

17 minutes ago, Amy Dickens said:

Yes I know much of wildlife is shot in slow motion, and that the sound is added in post. But I'm not sure that's in the same ethical category as faking a predation scene where one animal kills another, then pretending it was real.

People usually want to add the "animals not harmed when making of this film" sticker to the end credits to make the viewers happy. So they try to fake scenes rather than "making them for real" if it is better for the animals.

For example on one natural documentary there was a scene where a forest vole lives in tunnels under snow, then if comes to the surface and owl catches it and eats it. They did not want to harm the animals making the owl catch a live vole... so the under snow tunnels were shot in "studio setting" in animal park where the voles normally live in their enclosure, and the shots where the vole comes out of the tunnel shot there too. Then vfx composition of the vole running on the snow and owl flying towards it in the background, cut out just before it hits because the owl is actually flying towards a frozen mouse hidden in snow to the same spot  and the live vole was never there in the first place, it was like 100km away the whole time. Then showing the owl eating the dead mouse which some animal photographer got from their home, I think they freeze all the mice found from mouse traps they use anyway and when going filming they take bunch of the frozen mice with them. so they were dead anyway and just used to feed the owl rather than thrown away. 

Edited December 13, 2025 by Aapo Lettinen

[Amy Dickens]

11 minutes ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

People usually want to add the "animals not harmed when making of this film" sticker to the end credits to make the viewers happy. So they try to fake scenes rather than "making them for real" if it is better for the animals.

For example on one natural documentary there was a scene where a forest vole lives in tunnels under snow, then if comes to the surface and owl catches it and eats it. They did not want to harm the animals making the owl catch a live vole... so the under snow tunnels were shot in "studio setting" in animal park where the voles normally live in their enclosure, and the shots where the vole comes out of the tunnel shot there too. Then vfx composition of the vole running on the snow and owl flying towards it in the background, cut out just before it hits because the owl is actually flying towards a frozen mouse hidden in snow to the same spot  and the live vole was never there in the first place, it was like 100km away the whole time. Then showing the owl eating the dead mouse which some animal photographer got from their home, I think they freeze all the mice found from mouse traps they use anyway and when going filming they take bunch of the frozen mice with them. so they were dead anyway and just used to feed the owl rather than thrown away. 

That makes sense. Why cause unnecessary pain if it can be avoided. I wonder if the owls need to be trained to take dead prey or if they need to move the dead mouse around like it is alive?

[Aapo Lettinen]

30 minutes ago, Amy Dickens said:

And if it's legal where the shoot occurs is it then legal to show the film even in countries where filming it would not be allowed? I would think Nat Geo would have some sort of ethical guidelines for the companies they hired to produce content for them. Or maybe they turn a blind eye if the content is cheap and gets views?

Not legal expert of all the different World countries so no idea. In most cases it would be more of the viewers objecting showing such content than it actually being illegal.  But the animal rights and human rights are pretty much an European thing I think, travel 2000km to any direction from Western Europe and they are pretty much non existent. There is maybe 10 countries in the World where animal cruelty would concern viewers and all the rest don't care much unless it was some holy animal (maybe it is because they are used to people treated worse than the animals in those films)

[Brian Drysdale]

1 hour ago, Amy Dickens said:

Very interesting. At least they are up front about the techniques they use.

The BBC has video diaries that are transmitted in the UK after the main documentary. These show the techniques and filming difficulties on most of their major natural history series e.g. "The Blue Planet" "Frozen Planet" "Planet Earth" etc

[Mark Dunn]

This isn't really within the scope of this forum IMO.

OP has joined the forum very recently hasn't posted on any other threads and seems to have joined the forum to campaign on this issue alone. I'll apologise if corrected.