*** SPOILERS ***
I was really depressed after watching this, but felt better after reading reviews of people who felt the same way. There is very rare footage of snow leopard cubs, but the mother dies trying to hunt for them. At the end, it leaves it totally open as to what has happened to them, but unless the crew intervened, they definitely died. I understand that nature documentaries are meant to simply document wild animal behavior without intervening, but sometimes you wonder why. If I see a starving animal, and I am able, should I not feed it? Of course we can't save all the animals in the wild, but why not spend the money on enriching their habitats and helping them, rather than just recording their tragedies? I certainly hope the cubs were at least taken to a zoo, but it just seems like they left them to die. I was curious so did some research, and found that nature documentarians themselves have in the past been guilty of animal cruelty (as have other filmmakers with animal stars), and Disney themselves has had horrible controversies in its history (throwing lemmings to their death in White Wilderness apparently misrepresenting supposed animal suicidal behavior). Although I appreciate the educational aspects of the DisneyNature films, and purchase them all for their cultural significance, I found this ending to be one of the more unsavory of the lot, with little effort to disguise their callousness or lack of concern for the animals which they filmed and made a profit from. If Disney is going to keep making documentaries this way, I would really like to see some kind of code of standards that they follow and proof that they uphold those standards no matter where they are filming and no matter what the laws are where they are filmed. As a biologist, I have a deep love of nature and all living things, and with the kind of profits and influence Disney has in the world, I would like to see them dedicate some of their power to solving natural problems in the world, or to helping individual animals and species to live longer healthier lives in nature.
I was really depressed after watching this, but felt better after reading reviews of people who felt the same way. There is very rare footage of snow leopard cubs, but the mother dies trying to hunt for them. At the end, it leaves it totally open as to what has happened to them, but unless the crew intervened, they definitely died. I understand that nature documentaries are meant to simply document wild animal behavior without intervening, but sometimes you wonder why. If I see a starving animal, and I am able, should I not feed it? Of course we can't save all the animals in the wild, but why not spend the money on enriching their habitats and helping them, rather than just recording their tragedies? I certainly hope the cubs were at least taken to a zoo, but it just seems like they left them to die. I was curious so did some research, and found that nature documentarians themselves have in the past been guilty of animal cruelty (as have other filmmakers with animal stars), and Disney themselves has had horrible controversies in its history (throwing lemmings to their death in White Wilderness apparently misrepresenting supposed animal suicidal behavior). Although I appreciate the educational aspects of the DisneyNature films, and purchase them all for their cultural significance, I found this ending to be one of the more unsavory of the lot, with little effort to disguise their callousness or lack of concern for the animals which they filmed and made a profit from. If Disney is going to keep making documentaries this way, I would really like to see some kind of code of standards that they follow and proof that they uphold those standards no matter where they are filming and no matter what the laws are where they are filmed. As a biologist, I have a deep love of nature and all living things, and with the kind of profits and influence Disney has in the world, I would like to see them dedicate some of their power to solving natural problems in the world, or to helping individual animals and species to live longer healthier lives in nature.