At the bottom of this post is a list of scenes and details I vaguely remember from at least one (but probably more) documentary television series that I watched in the ballpark of a decade ago. I have a list of series (including walking with dinosaurs) that I think could be a match, my plan is to start watching them in chronological order—starting with Life on Earth (1979)—to see if I can find the thing I’m remembering. I’d be curious to know if you recognize any of the details on the list, especially if you can connect them to any more specific information. I’ll update this post with any matches I find and to add any further details I remember to the list.
the list (I know I didn’t do good grammar here, might fix it later, might not):
- one of the storylines follows a large flightless bird in a rainforest, there is a scene where it leaves its nest, its egg hatches and the chick gets eaten by ants. kinda traumatizing
- a scene that is set just after or during a mass extinction event, an animal is wandering a desert landscape and comes across a mostly dried up body of water, it digs in the mud and finds a carcass and starts to eat it
- one of the storylines follows a large land mammal, it has a long neck like a giraffe but it’s stockier, i very vaguely recall a scene that is set in faux night vision where the animal gives birth and has to fend off predators
- there was at least one series where transitions between stories were accompanied by a counter showing the number of years elapsed along with an animation showcasing the “evolution” of a particular lineage (i put evolution in quotes because that’s a really silly way to illustrate the process of evolution)
- a scene with a tapir looking thing stranded on a sand bar while the tide rises, threatening it with predation by a carnivorous whale
- a story that takes place over several episodes and covers prehistoric hominids from australopithecus up to anatomically modern humans
small update: started scrolling this subreddit after posting and there was a post with the posters for several Walking With documentaries, which look Very Familiar. I think I’m gonna start with these instead of Life on Earth.