When Animal Planet Made Up a Bunch of Stuff | Billiam

yeah this is billiam if you look back on cable tv it's pretty funny to see how many different cable channels eventually had to move away from the niche audience that they were aiming for cartoon network had a live action era the history channel airs a bunch of alien and historical conspiracy nonsense and people have spent more years complaining about how mtv doesn't air music then mtv actually spent airing music now sometime toward the end of the 2000's animal planet had dropped the little cute elephant in its logo in favor for the word animal with the sideways m and their new tagline was anything but animal related it was surprisingly human which is really funny considering this was the sort of garbage they were airing what we were looking at was a mermaid over the years animal planet has aired a number of mockumentaries some of which are actually intellectually engaging and fun and others of which are just outright deceiving so let's take a look at what happens to educational tv when education doesn't quite cut it for the ratings and oh god looks like billiam hasn't been cutting it for the ratings for the billiam channel so uh yeah i'm just gonna put on a new episode of learning and junk for you uh yeah i'm gonna go get some sleep y'all have fun [Music] all right uh lab coat still fits haven't washed this or ironed it since july of 2020. so i'm sure many of you will remember this dragons yeah like the big lizards initially broadcasting on animal planet in 2004 dragons a fantasy made real is a speculative history of the dragon man dragons a fantasy made real explaining how dragons may operate biologically and how all the varieties of dragons depicted in cultural myths fit into the dragon genus hey if dragons were to wear genus would it be like this or like this this was a big deal at the time or at least i thought it was a big deal i'm pretty sure i got this from the scholastic book fair maybe i stole it from my school's library who gives a sh it's this epic breakdown of all of the dragons that haven't existed throughout the ages framing this scientifically influenced exploration of the dragon myth is the fictional story of dr jack tanner dr jack tanner paleontologist an overnight celebrity dr jack tanner works at a museum in london but he's not respected by his colleagues because well he thinks dragons exist yeah that's a good reason he sees a few scratches on a t-rex head and he's like only a dragon could have done this porch precise aim [Music] perhaps my childhood obsession clouded my thinking but he just may have a chance to prove himself because he gets an opportunity to investigate a preserved body in romania it may just be a dragon maybe it's to prevent a backdraft of fire from burning the throat boy when you say it out loud does it sound like stupid i love this guy so much he's definitely the kind of little dweeb who would have an internal monologue and he has an internal monologue out of nowhere the dragon man is thrown a lifeline yeah the dragon man he's the dragon man another find not montana this time but on a romanian mountain this investigation holds big weight for dr tanner who has to reclaim his reputation so he and two assistants who are like loki judging him head off to romania to investigate this body by one chance in a million it's not a hoax maybe then i get my reputation back so the film uses the fictional body as a way to interweave cgi scenes going through the dragon's evolutionary history from the prehistoric age where we see frodo dragons fighting t-rex to post max extinction he uncovers a false palette which helps crocodiles hunt underwater so he assumes dragons must have been aquatic at some point which could explain how they survived the mass extinction event which killed the dinosaurs and serves as the origin for the sea serpent myth slowly dragons evolve and make their way back onto land these dragons live in forests and helps to explain the chinese depiction of dragons eventually evolving to look like the european dragon of myth honestly i find this to be a lot of fun the actual adaptations an animal would have to have to be a dragon are actually bonkers and i'm happy that they take the time to explain this to the audience there's no way the dragon can fly with the proportions that were given i mean look at the computer it's saying no fly but they explain how they're able to overcome stuff like this from being able to fly with internal sacks filled with hydrogen instinct takes over he empties his stomach and spreads his wings ah they ignite the hydrogen and oxygen by chewing platinum it's a really cool explanation they also make a big deal out of the fact that dragons are often depicted with six limbs no vertebrae on land has over four limbs so it's weird there's a pretty cool making of documentary that explains the complicated processes they went through to create a biologically convincing dragon however not not everything in the special is amazing i particularly like this uh fight that they constructed between a dragon and a tiger using exclusively stock footage i mean the documentary presentation definitely confused me as a kid i understand that they were trying to tell me it was fake but like it's a documentary why would why would it be fake just give me a break i was eight but also it can be argued most of this is not presented as a documentary the framing device with jack tanner is shot like a traditional narrative it avoids documentary presentation which makes it less deceptive which is something we should take a moment to appreciate because uh that won't be the case for long while the special does not try to overtly convince the audience that dragons exist i mean the title was a fantasy made reel and it opens with this line this is the natural history of the most extraordinary creature that never existed the creative team working on this project extensively worked with biologists artists and animators to bring this fictional creature to life in a convincing way i think they know that the problem-solving process they went through to create a convincing dragon is actually interesting which is why the story with dr jack tanner works all he's doing is autopsying a dragon and going through and explaining how it works but also it works just because you know i'm so invested in the story of dr jack tanner he explains how dragons work with such dramatic flair i love his music with the discovery of the dragon dr jack tanner gets his reputation back he gets another assignment and goes off to do whatever god speed dr jack tanner dragons is an incredibly imaginative and cool thing produced by animal planet it was one of my favorite things that they made for years however i didn't really understand that animal planet was about to go through some big changes only on animal planet go to dragons are coming dot com hey do you like saving money not really okay but if you're not like this big dummy i suggest you check out today's sponsor honey you know like many of you these days i'm doing most of my shopping online i mean i don't really know if i ever want to be within 10 feet of them all again unfortunately honey makes saving money online easy honey is a free browser extension which can be installed in two easy clicks and while you're casually making purchases online honey is scouring the internet for the rarest of coupon codes that way you don't have to waste your time testing expired codes or you know having to go out and search through all the different sketchy couponing websites out there just why don't you like saving money i've never claimed to be smart check this out i wanted to get a tapestry from my office from vapor95 honey just pops up while i'm checking out and it does a little scan and bada bing bada boom would you even be able to tell i saved 5.99 on this by looking at it honey supports all different kinds of stores from tech gaming clothing and even food delivery and viewers of billiam have saved a collective six thousand seven hundred dollars by using honey hey honey i'm a viewer of billiam does that make it six thousand seven hundred and five dollars and ninety nine cents hell yeah it does you can't even tell it's a discount tapestry you know what i think i will sign up for honey so take it from me well us if you have a computer you should be using honey so get honey for free by going to joinhoney.com billiam once again that is joinhoney.com thank you again to honey for sponsoring this video by 2007 animal planet ratings were tanking and executives believed it was time for a major overhaul i mean something terrible happened to the cute little elephant in the logo and now we get like anathrial planet with the tagline surprisingly human and while animal planet definitely had programming that was closer to reality tv than a traditional nature dock before this all of their marquis shows after the surprisingly human change were totally reality based i mean it wasn't all bad there was river monsters starring jeremy wade he would travel the world to catch and release rare fish to show us while also interviewing local people about the folklore associated with the fish that was a good show but if you ever had animal planet on like late into the night towards the end of the decade uh you might just have caught a little show called lost tapes do you believe lost tapes lost tapes is a found footage horror show documentary about cryptids in cryptozoology cryptozoology is the study of animals believed to be non-existent by the wider scientific community but are argued to exist by enthusiasts who believe in these animals called cryptids coming face to face with bigfoot after decades of village and searching was obviously a precious highlight in arch buckley's life the big cryptids are like you know bigfoot and the lochness monster and the chupacabra and while there were many shows about cryptids and cryptozoology i think lost tapes had the best idea for any of them so many cryptozoology shows have two distinct parts to them let's take history channels monster quest for example which was airing around the same time as lost tapes half the show is really interesting folklore and interviews with local people who have allegedly seen these monsters monster quest would have these really nice 3d models of the creatures and would often do these cool reenactments to set the mood there's a lot of interesting things to learn by watching these shows even if you don't personally believe in cryptids existing except for mothman i know all of you believe in mothman as well i i wouldn't accuse you of not believing in mothman i mean even if you don't believe the animal exists cryptids are a part of culture and folklore all around the world and learning about that aspect of it is very interesting however most of these shows do the mistake of resorting to doing the expedition where camera crews actually go out into the wilderness and stuff and try to locate these creatures something unknown has spooked the deer the team realizes what they are seeing are more dear but the effect of the eye shine is startling uh this sucks for two reasons the first being that most likely none of these creatures actually exist except for mothman [Music] last summer i read hunting monsters by darren nation if you're interested in cryptozoology in any form i highly recommend it essentially the book argues that cryptozoology is valuable from a cultural standpoint but not really from a biological one the most effective arguments nash uses in the book against the existence of many of these creatures is simply going back and actually reading the historical eyewitness accounts that many cryptozoologists point to as historical recordings of these monsters existing let's take the loch ness monster for example there is a long history of people claiming to see monsters in loch ness but the same really could be said for any body of water around the world if you actually go back and read the kinds of things people were describing having seen in loch ness there's no way you can believe they're describing the same animal but now this image is in the public conscious and suddenly when people describe seeing a monster in lake loch ness they describe something that resembles a plesiosaur despite nobody having described the monster that way before and despite popular images of nessie being confirmed to be a hoax the modern belief by people who believe in the loch ness monster is that nessie is a plesiosaur that somehow escaped extinction or finding for the past 66 million years and now because this is the pattern people are conditioned to recognize when they're in loch ness if they see you know an animal or a fish or a log under the water this is the pattern their brain will trick them into seeing it's the same thing as looking up in the clouds and thinking you see stuff and let's take something like bigfoot long before bigfoot was described as an ape there were stories of wild men all around the world which have now been appropriated as evidence for bigfoot and some cryptozoologists point to the fact that gorillas weren't discovered in africa until the 1860s as evidence for how bigfoot may have evaded discovery for all of this time but that just isn't true yes european explorers doubted that gorillas existed but locals in africa just knew they existed because they were around but also at the time european explorers believed there was a giant non-existent mountain range extending from the east to west coast of the continent a giant 4 600 mile mountain range that just didn't exist so i don't think it's entirely unlikely that they could have missed some monkeys now let's look at the patterson gremlin film there are many ways people have tried to analyze whether or not this is a person or you know bigfoot over there but one thing people point to a lot is how odd it is that bigfoot has breasts like if they were going to build a bigfoot costume why include titties that's just kind of weird and yeah yeah it is but a year before roger patterson shot his famous bigfoot footage he drew this image in a book about bigfoot that he wrote yeah it's almost like he recreated this exact scenario in his film this is a recreation of another drawing presented in the book this was used in hunting monsters oh bigfoot titties why are cryptozoologists so horny and so patterson just likely created or commissioned a costume based on this drawing and if you think that's odd i think we've learned plenty of people would spend good money on a fursuit i think roger patterson was you know just kind of horny america's wilderness is shrinking all the time if bigfoot were real we'd be finding hair samples that hold up to repeat scientific analysis we have not we'd find paleontological evidence of other apes existing in the americas but besides the members of wall street bets we have not and also we'd be finding sasquatch bodies everywhere [Music] all right all right we're just gonna we're just gonna cut this out if bigfoot's real i gotta rewrite the whole video and like just and the second reason why these shows suck is because on the off chance if they did happen to find bigfoot or another cryptid you would know about it before the episode aired do you really think history channel is going to hide the ecological discovery of the [ __ ] millennium in season 2 episode 3 of monster quest no they would promote the [ __ ] out of this because it would be a once in a lifetime ratings it would be a cultural moment bigfoot exists i guess i just don't see what's interesting about watching a tv show that's an hour long and it's essentially just a bunch of guys out in the woods going i think there's a squatch in these woods [Music] i think there's a sasquatch in these woods we got we got to call bigfoot we got to do the big foot noise he like knocks the branch up against the tree and he goes whoa kids you hear that i i think that's a big foot calling we gotta do the big foot call to get bigfoot to come out here and you know visit us [Music] well you know that his real name's actually sasquatch [Music] the last tape solves this issue conceptually uh so like half of it is a documentary exploring the folklore surrounding these creatures and possible scientific explanations for how they could exist and the other half of it is just you know bonkers found footage horror show with absolutely no regards for trying to seem real and i say it conceptually solves this problem it doesn't actually solve this problem because uh the show is very bad like it's really bad it was huge like a like a giant bat or a moth so all episodes begin with this disclaimer the presence of hidden creatures is the subject of continued debate the following story is inspired by the possibility of their existence then we get a little montage of the monster of the week into the intro which takes a really combative stance on the whole cryptozoology issue there are creatures science refuses to recognize refuses to recognize like bigfoot walks into a lab and the scientist just goes nah you're not really what we're looking for these days just get out of here also i hate this next line but if our eyes see it if our cameras capture it does it exist don't say that when you're about to show us a bunch of fake stuff our cameras implies the show's cameras and the show's cameras is you know it's all fiction what in tarnation so each episode opens up by introducing us to whatever poor soul happened to come across one of these creatures this week these people go through a lot bigfoot episode lost tapes bigfoot okay so rachel h glenn is working for the department of fish and game and looking for black bears in the woods between august 2nd and august 14th she also noticed strange unidentifiable sounds in the area and the distinct feeling she was being watched by what or whom she did not know bigfoot there's black bear poachers and they don't like her because she doesn't want them to poach black bears early on lost tapes was trying a little more than necessary to be convincing by not showing you the monster so bigfoot is captured mostly through his you know signature noises like the whoo and like you the branch knocking in between scenes of the story we get little factoids that help inform the scenes we see it's all done through stock footage and news reports and narration we learn about the noises that are attributed to bigfoot we learn about american black bear poaching however like many cryptozoology shows they often present evidence without challenge like some bigfoot enthusiasts point to gigantopithecus this region the caves have produced teeth of a primate gigantopithecus which may have gone extinct as recently as 10 000 years ago like by the time this lost tapes episode aired this data was already outdated gigantopithecus is now believed to be much much much older it's a fair presumption that this was an erect bipedal animal no that is that is absolutely not a fair presumption to make we've only discovered some teeth in a jaw bone also they don't bother telling you that the gigantopithecus specimens were found in india in china and not the pacific northwest this of course is an exact description of the living sasquatch yeah it's kind of funny how your description worked out that way rachel is told to get out of there because the poachers in the area there's a lot of them and they want to hurt her the poachers try to kill rachel so they can poach some bears but some mysterious hero [ __ ] up the poachers rachel is saved was it bigfoot i just love this line at the end every year more bigfoot sightings are reported across the world there is no final conclusion as to whether he is a benevolent soul or a monster of the woods it's just like yes that's the undecided thing about bigfoot not if he's real but is he a good guy [ __ ] brilliant and you may be getting blair witch vibes from some of these and that's good because they do an episode that is literally copying blair witch's plot you know it's the dover demon episode so the dover demon is a creature apparently seen in dover massachusetts in the 1970s and apparently it was an interdimensional creature i don't know i don't know how they came to this conclusion it wasn't an alien it wasn't some kind of mutant animal why are aliens being ruled out it's almost as if the dover demon popped in to our reality and popped out like what do you know about aliens so this guy wants to make a dover demon hoax tape for the 30th anniversary of the original sighting he and his friends go out into the woods to film but oh my god the actual dover demon comes themselves to you know mess with them a lot check this out they get a great scare out of the costume chad check this out what about night vision what no that that's not an alien that looks a lot more interdimensional to me so the dover demon and the jersey devil's eyes shine in the dark so in both episodes they explain how yeah real animals actually do this their their eyes will reflect light in the dark as well there's like one season one episode that was most likely 100 real i mean i have no reason to believe this other than the fact that it covers mothman mothman apparently is like some sort of moth or moth like alien that appeared in point pleasant west virginia but perhaps the most intriguing of these reports surrounds the appearance of a mysterious moth-like creature oh there were a lot of sightings of mothman see mothman is real people kept seeing him for like a year straight but around the same time a local bridge crashed it was a horrible tragedy but of course that doesn't stop people from blaming the innocent mothman for the tragedy so this lost tape is apparently someone who was there the night of the claps who saw mothman before the bridge actually went down the bridge collapsed the fbi blames him for it he's obsessed with capturing mothman on camera how's the wife how are things between you and nancy i love my wife oh look at this happy little montage of his nice life i couldn't even imagine what kind of handsome creature could come between a couple this happy they said the devil would be handsome this is where i've seen multiple sightings of the creature it's not some creature it's just this dude whose life is totally falling apart not because of mothman but because his obsession with mothman yeah i get it this is important get some help roy they look at his camera footage and he sees after the bridge collapsed he pulled somebody out of the river he saved them is that what this is all about did you blow up that bridge so you could look like a hero so your wife wouldn't think you were such a loser what the [ __ ] you don't have to murder him like that damn just a majestic moth or is it some kind of bat in june 2009 two adventure seekers mack barrett and tyler crenshaw decided to try the unusual sport of catfish noodling if you're a creative lost tapes is a great morale boost nothing makes me feel like i could work on a tv show than watching lost tapes besides the narration and the found footage all of the show is just pulled from stock footage and images and the found footage segments itself are so cheap yeah arkansas style hogging baby like maybe it's filmed in two or three locations max and it's totally something they could have shot entirely in one day the local people talk about a creature that lives here he feeds on the catfish where it is he can take a man under i'm gonna say this now one of these days i'm just gonna drop my own lost tapes episode it'll just happen and y'all will thank me for it all right now we get to the most controversial documentary that animal planet has ever produced mermaids the body found this is awful in the same vein as the dragon documentary it's basically exploring how mermaids could biologically operate and how their evolution may have happened if they were real they're they're not real the documentary presents itself as an expose about a group of ex-noaa scientists who retrieve a mermaid body that washed up on the shore along with the us navy's attempt to hide it it's a conspiracy theory thing i know this because i was part of the team investigating that beaching and what the navy did that day and i believe i know what it is that they took well the framing device for animal planets dragons is this fun story about some weird larper turning out to be right about dragons existing mermaids leans all into the hoax and a lot of focus is put onto this conspiracy theory that they completely fabricated i know what they reported to the navy was accurate how do you think people would respond if they knew we were killing an unknown species that was most likely the only surviving relative to humans please know this was fabricated these are actors they have been in other things so so let's talk about the form aspect about it first before we get into the hot cakes so alongside interviews with confirmed to be actors playing scientists are these animated portions which speculate how mermaids may have come into being biologically uh fortunately these are clearly not real i mean just look at this a hand dolphin is is more smooth than these mermaids the mermaids are like so where did mermaids come from where on the human family tree do half people have fish come into well let's talk about aquatic ape theory or rather the aquatic eight hypothesis in science a theory and a hypothesis refer to two different things a theory is an explanation for a natural phenomenon that has been widely accepted by the scientific community and usually that happens after years of data and findings proving to be true and holding up the critique a theory and a hypothesis are not the same thing and theories and laws are categorically two different things like newton's laws of motion are essentially just math equations laws are mathematical truths about the world that hold up to be true like every single time like it is mathematically true that i've had too many white claws but hey ain't no laws when you're drinking claws baby that was a lie basically the hypothesis ponders if many traits that are apparently distinct to humans but not other apes such as near hairlessness are a result of adaptations created so we could better hunt along the shoreline you know like the little piece of skin in between fingers is apparently webbing for swimming and also apparently humans gain excess body fat to regulate temperature while in the water like hairlessness is not a trait exclusive to aquatic mammals apes have this little webbing in between their fingers as well it's like somebody just looked down at their hands and was like whoa that's webbing but other apes don't have that i'm not going to check but i bet they don't but above all else there's just no empirical data backing these ideas the aquatic ape theory and i was i know it's always been controversial controversial is such a misleading way to present this aquatic ape hypothesis isn't rejected because it just can't be true it's that evidence appears to suggest we adapted these traits presented for other reasons figuring out how mermaids are related to humans could be an interesting thought experiment if it were presented similarly to the dragon's documentary but when the world needed him most he vanished and if they weren't explaining this through an existing pseudoscience with a following that animal planet viewers have now been exposed to and to some apparently convinced of this is a picture from the 1987 aquatic ape conference so yeah as you can see it's just a this is just a bunch of morons from what i've read mermaids are not really linked to aquatic ape hypothesis or at least in the defining text that i sort of did some research into so not only did they want to do this speculative history about mermaids that don't exist but they also managed to elevate a pseudoscience while doing it without having any regard for what the pseudoscience is actually trying to explain and holy [ __ ] look at those disgusting horrific apes that looks like the neanderthal vampire demon from the end of buffy the vampire slayer really any of the demons you would see on the set of buffy the vampire slayer the way they build evidence is incredibly deceiving the show appropriates a lot of historical evidence to explain that mermaids exist so often it's difficult to tell where they're actually referring to a real thing or when they're just completely fabricating historical evidence you know because it's a mockumentary and it's not real take the use of the bloop the bloop is a real audio recording and at the time where it was captured in 1997 it was the loudest sound ever to be recorded underwater and for years nobody knew what it was it was just a slightly terrifying thing with absolutely no explanation but then in 2005 six years before this documentary came out noaa scientists recaptured the sound closer to the antarctic and discovered that it was caused by ice quakes an iceberg cracking and breaking away from antarctic glaciers which is happening more and more as a result of climate change however here it's still presented as a mystery despite the fact that it had an explanation at this point the second real life event they appropriate as evidence for mermaids is the very long recorded history of wales being beached due to sonar systems built by the us navy the mermaid body is supposedly discovered during one of these mass beaching incidents so despite the fact that the bloop's origin being demystified at this point they try to make a claim that it's some super secret sound weapon being developed by the us navy to be used underwater so watch this part they play an actual audio excerpt from the bloop with this disclaimer on the screen it's a real audio recording so even if you knew this was a fake show you know they're weaving in some real stuff but then the title fades out and they start playing a new sound there was another sound on the recording uh an animal call and we realized that this was a bloop signature the same creature that noah had recorded back in 1997 and they play a supposedly real audio recording of whales along with an undiscovered species later revealed to be the mermaid screaming at the pain caused by the sound which has been attributed to some secret weapon built by the navy so the second half of this audio recording is not real at all so as soon as that title fades out they play a fake sound and that's just one of the most blatantly deceptive things i've ever seen and so while they do use these actual historical recordings to provide evidence for mermaids existing they also occasionally mischaracterize what those things are take the cave of swimmers which is actual neolithic art that depicts people swimming but they present it as something completely different in the show oh look they drew mermaids on the cave painting that would be really interesting if that's what it was like in real life and then on top of it they just completely fabricate evidence that is totally non-existent the video recording on the beach that initially captures footage of the mermaid actors hired as eyewitnesses and this series of incredibly wonky fake images showing apparent ancient mermaid weapons now going online and trying to find the actual images and sounds referenced in this documentary is not easy because people have taken excerpts from this documentary and re-uploaded them to the internet without context while searching for audio of the bloop the fake recording of the whales and mermaids popped up without context and while looking for images of the cave of swimmers people have re-uploaded this image of the mermaid cave paintings without disclaimer claiming that it came from a mockumentary and i know this isn't empirical data but if you go down in the comments for some of these re-uploads people are believing it i had tons of responses of people who were convinced as children had parents or family members who were totally convinced and even one story of somebody who had a teacher who put this on for their class that's terrifying and you can't say animal planet is totally blameless because they have also re-uploaded excerpts from this documentary to their youtube channel without any disclaimer but it's up to you to sort out what's real and what's fake we're just we're just trying to get you you know it's a little prank we're seeing what you believe and what you don't believe you know we can get away with a lot like dragons before it i i think there's a lot of fun to be have with this biologically backed thought experiment that's figuring out how mermaids could possibly work but unlike dragons which did confuse some kids mermaids is outright deceiving i mean dragons was called a fantasy made real and they aired making of documentaries but there's something so boring about the way that mermaids is presented that just sort of makes it convincing like i hate the way this guy delivers his lines like what what i'm about to tell you is crazy what we were looking at [Music] was a mermaid i think it's safe to say animal planet received a lot of backlash from this special like a lot of backlash noah released an official statement refuting the claims mermaids existed because online chatter on twitter showed a lot of people were questioning whether or not the documentary was real but you know that refutation really doesn't mean anything when you know government cover-up was such a heavy part of the dock it got even worse when in 2013 animal planet released a follow-up interview style sequel with mister we got a uh uh you'll never believe this [ __ ] a mermaid they're real you know as a whistleblower you've shied away from public debate alongside new footage and details about continued interference from governmental organizations to cover up the existence of mermaids these are the only known photographs of barnum's real mermaid wow animal planet is owned by discovery inc and later that same year on animal planet's sister channel discovery channel during shark week discovery aired two fictional documentaries one which fabricated footage showing megalodon the giant shark still existed and what about a voodoo shark in louisiana let's save shark week for another video the mermaid's follow-up aired alongside a rebroadcast of the original program and was the biggest ratings hit in animal planet's history and over on discovery channel shark week in its 26th year had its most viewed premiere with the megalodon special although discovery communications originally defended its use of mockumentary the show is based on real scientific and evolutionary theory and real life phenomena rooting our story with facts encouraged a sense of intellectual possibility no no sprinkling real facts amongst all of the fake stuff is exactly what makes it deceiving an aquatic ape hypothesis is not in fact real scientific theory in 2015 under new leadership discovery did make an effort to cut this fake stuff out of the lineup i mean the advertising leading up to mermaids offered no indication that this was a mockumentary and as late as 2016 people were writing about the lasting damage caused by these fake science docs this kind of presentation hurts scientific education and understanding if government lies about mermaids why wouldn't they lie about climate change or you know vaccines creating a narrative which promotes scientific distrust can you know create scientific distrust especially when discovery communications claims to be the number one non-fiction media company in the world they leveraged that credibility to trick people and especially now when there is a lot of scientific distrust it's kind of hard for me not to be angry about it but i'm not even gonna try to argue the mermaid's documentary is direct causation to believing in more harmful scientific conspiracies but they knew exactly who they were marketing to listen i'm not saying that every anti-vaxxer believed the mermaid doc just that everyone who did believe the mermaid duck is probably an anti-vaxxer and uh for those of you who think that joke hit too close to home and you're about to yell at me for how stupid i am don't bother i got a group of people who'd love to hear your thoughts about that now despite discovery communication making promises not to air more mockumentaries like mermaids in 2015 they aired another one cannibal in the jungle about an investigator looking into a 1967 cannibal case on the indonesian isle of flores only to discover a tribe of pre-human hominin species the homo floresiensis has survived its assumed extinction and is terrorizing those who come out into the jungle of course the story itself is fake but a lot of the information about the homo floresiensis is actually accurate and uh or at least as accurate at the time or believed to be accurate at the time and uh yo let me tell you about the homo floresiensis this dude i mean like he's cool [Music] all right i'm gonna be honest with you guys i'm a big fan of homo floresiensis floresiensis over here is like the coolest member of the homo family tree a lot of researchers believe uh homo floresiensis evolved from a secluded population of homo erectus or you know possibly another homo species we have even yet to discover they were bipedal evidence to use fire and stone tools and also they were like three to four feet tall and had these huge hobbit-like feet so they've been nicknamed hobbits there's also evidence that they hunted these little elephants called stegadon so if you're wondering what happened to the animal planet logo well florenziensis over here got him god damn it floresiensis but also their story is all the more interesting because all around the indonesia region in this area are these folk tales of short bipedal ape-like creatures you have the arang pen deck up in sumatra and in the isle of flores where the floresiensis was discovered you have the ebu gogo which is the basis for cannibal in the jungle these cryptids rightfully received a lot more attention with the discovery of homo floresiensis in 2003 however the direct connection between these creatures and floresiensis seems a little more unlikely when the bones are more accurately dated to be fifty thousand to a hundred thousand years old rather than fifteen thousand but homo sapien remains have been found in the area and they are believed to be up to forty six thousand years old so it's not totally impossible these are the basis of the creatures so the movie tells the story of an investigator who wants to clear the name of uh this american who was charged with cannibalism and murder in the 1960s by the indonesian government the man claimed i did not eat those people instead those little ape men in the jungle they ate the people and of course the indonesian government was like no that's just the stupidest [ __ ] we've ever heard get the [ __ ] out of here i mean stay stay in the country but we're gonna arrest you and put you in prison get the [ __ ] out of here get out of the courthouse but you're staying in the country you're going to prison but they never bothered checking his camera and there he is the little guy himself floresiensis where you've been floresiensis however i i find cannibal in the jungle to be a lot more interesting than the mermaids documentary because well it's just the idea proposed by lost tapes realized it's actual scientific information combined with this you know folklore lesson and then a found footage horror movie that was a goddamn ape except unlike lost tapes which were typically under 20 minutes uh cannibal in the jungle unfortunately is like an hour and a half they should have gotten this thing down to under an hour i think i just want more cryptozoology lessons combined with found footage horror it's a really good combination of things even in this presentation the cannibal in the jungle although not factually perfect is not trying to deceive its audience with conspiracy like mermaids was it's silly edutainment with the focus on the tainment the key difference between the two is the fact that mermaids was advertised like it was trying to convince its audience it was real but cannibal in the jungle in its press release stated it was a scripted feature inspired by scientific evidence i'm sure some people were convinced by watching this as i was as a kid watching the dragons documentary but that is not due to outright deception if there's something to be taken away here i think it's that reenactments and fiction can be used alongside science to divulge educational information in a really interesting way however animal planet has also used its credibility as an educational network to deceive its audience and that in no way is okay all right this video is 42 minutes long and i realized that i forgot to record an ending bit um i i don't want to set up the camera again so i'm just doing this uh video is going up tonight hopefully so anyways i'm tired i'm stressed i'll see you soon the date's february 3rd we've autopsied the creature and discovered many things about it including that bigfoot does in fact have big feet but still one quick hey kids kids kid one question still remains about the creature was bigfoot a good guy ah billy i'm alive i just have one question why should i have to wear a mask for others it's my freedom and i should be able to give a disease to whoever i want

Channel: Billiam

Views: 1,684,743

Keywords: Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Nostalgia, Commentary, Review, Dragons, Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, Mermaids, Mermaids: The Body Found, Lost Tapes, Cryptozoology, Hunting Monster, Monster Quest, The Cannibal in the Jungle

Id: mPjQ2-Xrau8

Length: 43min 15sec (2595 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021