Trivia / The Future is Wild

• Accidentally Correct Zoology:
  • An extinct flightless caracara from Pleistocene Jamaica was described in 2008, making the Carakiller this.
  • Moreover, the discovery of Gigantohierax just as the show came out (2002), a giant, possibly terrestrial eagle from Cuba that could very well have hunted baboon-like American monkeys on the island (Paralouatta). Before there was already a known flightless bird of prey from Cuba (Ornimegalonyx, discovered in the 1950s) but it was an owl so likely didn't hunt monkeys due to being nocturnal.
  • When the show came out, fans assumed that the four-winged Great Blue Windrunner was inspired by Microraptor, a four-winged gliding dinosaur also published in 2002. However, according to Dougal Dixon, the Windrunner was thought up alone by the show's ornithology consultant Phil Currie, without Currie being aware of Microraptor.
  • The Spitfire Beetle arguably counts too, being a beetle that uses mimicry to prey on vertebrates that would normally eat them. In 2011, it was discovered that Epomis ground beetles do exactly that, only with frogs instead of birds.
• Development Hell:
  • A VR game based on the series and featuring new creatures and settings was announced in 2017. However, nothing more has been heard about it, and it is unknown if the project is even still active.
  • According to Dixon, a second season started development but was canceled because Discovery Channel wanted to switch the network's focus from documentaries to reality TV.
  • A movie adaptation by Warner Bros. also went into pre-production, but Warner abandoned the project after the release of Avatar, feeling it could not compete with it.
• Science Marches On:
  • The Snowstalker using its saberteeth to "stab" prey and follow them as they bleed out without fighting further seems based on a theory that Smilodon did this, as it was believed its fangs were too brittle and it was too slow to chase. Current thinking is that Smilodon hunted by ambush and grappled its prey to the ground before biting it safely (given the Snowstalker's stocky physique, it makes sense if it likewise wrestled its prey). The old theory may in turn have been inspired by Komodo dragons, which were thought to just bite their prey and follow them until they died of blood loss and bacterial infection, but this was also disproven (it was discovered that Komodo dragons are actually venomous, and that they don't "let go" their prey if they can; rather, reports that they did were misinterpretations of cases where the prey escaped a first encounter and was later eaten by dragons, not necessarily the original one).
  • Babookaris are an obvious reference to the savanna theory of human evolution, which posits that most human features appeared as a result of our primate ancestors adapting to live in the savanna. Chief among these adaptations is bipedalism, which is now known to have appeared before our ancestors moved into the savanna (fortunately, the show never references this directly and the Babookaris are not bipedal).
  • Similarly, and while not officially stated, the wing claws of the Carakillers look like an obvious reference to the theory that terror birds re-evolved wing claws, which was debunked a couple of years after the show came out.
  • It has since become consensus that all dinosaurs had multiple air-sack based respiratory systems similar to birds, that made them more active than traditionally thought and helped them reach gargantuan sizes both by making them lighter and giving them more efficient lungs. Tortoises aren't likely to evolve something like this, as they aren't fleet-footed like primitive dinosaurs, nor have incentives to become so (though it begs a mention that there have been also massive mammals like Paraceratherium, Palaeoloxodon, and baleen whales, despite mammal lungs being fairly simple and inefficient).
  • The new Pangaea 200 MYH is based on the idea that the Atlantic will simply continue expanding and the Pacific contracting until all continents are reunited on the Pacific side. Current thinking is that the Atlantic behaves more like an accordion, and eventually will reverse course and close on the same side.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • The series was originally intended to be a straight adaptation of After Man, but, at the time, the adaptation rights were being held by another studio (this ended up being a "Shaggy Dog" Story anyway, as the adaptation never went into production and the rights eventually reverted years later), resulting in a Spiritual Successor with no official connections to After Man being made in its place.
  • One noticeable consequence is that the series refrains from using the same animal ancestors as Dixon. This is confirmed in the case of the Gannetwhale being a gannet descendant rather than a penguin, as seen below, but it is probably also the case for why the 5 MYH shows no deer or wolf analogues (which in Dixon's book were niches held by rabbit and rat descedants), American primates are discussed but not Old World primates (extremely diversified in the book, while the show has them on the verge of extinction), and cat-like predators are descended from martens instead of less specialized, already terrestrial weasels. The Deathgleaner can also be seen as a forerunner to, and more plausible substitute for, the flightless predatory bats, one of the most memorable creatures in the book.
• Short Run in Peru: The Nelvana series first aired on Discovery Kids in the States in 2007, eventually coming to its home country of Canada on Teletoon in 2010.
• What Could Have Been: The Gannetwhale was originally going to be a whale-like penguin, like the Vortex and its ilk from Dixon's After Man. However, After Man's rights had been acquired by a different studio and the show's lawyers adviced against using penguins to avoid plagiarism suits. Given that the episode where it appears takes place in the Arctic, this may have also been done to avoid Misplaced Wildlife.

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