Week 13

This week, I watched several episodes of the programme Dynasties, narrated by David Attenborough. In each episode, a team visit different areas of the world and spend several months there observing and filming wild animals to show their ways of life and behaviour. I watched episodes including a group of Chimpanzees in West Africa and a group of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica.

The episode on the Emperor Penguins in particular has captured my attention. This is due to the harsh conditions shown and it shows how many of the individuals lost their lives at different stages of reproduction in the cold. It was difficult to watch the chicks being left when their parents went off to hunt and the parents coming back to find that their chick had passed away whilst they were gone.

There is a section at the end of each episode that is about the film crew and what they went through in order to get the footage. This section of the Emperor Penguin episode caused debate. This was due to a large number of penguins and their chicks falling down a large ditch and being unable to get out For this reason, the crew dug a pathway for them to escape or else they wouldn’t survive. This has caused some people to argue that the crew should have left them alone as this was just nature. Others argued that they didn’t physically pick the penguins up and move them out of the ditch and it was still the penguins choice whether of not they would use the path, therefore, it is acceptable. David Attenborough has since agreed with the crew in what they did, even though they technically weren’t allowed to interfere.

I agree with the fact that they should have dug the pathway. It was very difficult to see the mothers abandoning their chicks in order to get out and survive themselves. I believe that even though they wouldn’t have survived if the film crew weren’t there, they were there and were right to intervene to allow them to survive. Also, like other have argued, the penguins still got out themselves whether they had help or not.