BBC will not show dying penguins as they look ‘like little people’
OVER the years, wildlife shows have shown us elephants starving to death and gazelles being chased down by lions.
But the death of a penguin, it seems, is just a step too far.
For it has been revealed that despite filmmakers witnessing scenes of ‘death and destruction’ at a penguin colony, the long-awaited series Planet Earth 2 did not feature any penguin deaths because they look ‘too much like humans’.
As such, it was considered that viewers would find their deaths far too upsetting.
A source close to the BBC programme said they had to take extra care when it came to ‘anthropomorphic animals’, with penguins deemed to resemble ‘little people’.
Last night’s opening episode showed the harsh reality of the animal kingdom, with Sir David Attenborough narrating as baby iguanas were strangled to death by snakes and crabs were blinded with acid.
But when the world’s biggest colony of penguins on Zavodovski Island, near Antarctica, was featured there was a limit imposed on how gruesome footage could be.
Planet Earth 2 producers have described a scene of ‘death and destruction’ when they arrived on the remote island, which is home to chinstrap penguins.
In the behind-the-scenes section at the end of the episode, producer Liz White said: ‘It was absolute carnage. It was quite heartbreaking, they are trying so hard to get up the beach with broken legs and bleeding, it’s very sobering really.
‘The beach in the afternoon was just a scene of death and destruction.’ Yet the most extreme shots used within the episode were close-ups of one penguin with a bloody stomach and another with a broken leg, with wide-angled shots showing penguins being pushed into the rocks by waves.
A show insider has revealed the reason the BBC did not explicitly show them dying is because viewers ‘resonate’ with penguins so closely.
Describing the care needed around footage of ‘more anthropomorphic animals’, they said: ‘Penguins are particularly hard because they’re like little people. They look like little men dressed up in dinner jackets.
‘Because they have a particular resonance with people, you have to be very, very careful... It was important to show what’s at stake and how difficult it is, and a bloody one and one with a broken leg was just about enough.’
The six-part series, which follows on from Planet Earth in 2006, has taken 117 filming trips over three years.
Dramatic footage of the battle between a cuckolded penguin and his rival was caught in new National Geographic series Animal Fight Night. The two males are shown using their flippers ‘like baseball bats to club each other’, before engaging in a bloody beak fight.