History Literature / TheFutureIsWild

It began with a TV SpeculativeDocumentary miniseries produced by Britain and the United States that aired on Creator/AnimalPlanet and Creator/DiscoveryChannel in 2003. Each of the 13 episodes covered a different environment from one of the three time periods, as well as the animals that inhabited such places. A companion book co-written by consultant Creator/DougalDixon (who also wrote its [[SpiritualSuccessor Spiritual Predecessor]] ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'') and producer John Adams was released alongside the show. The series was a huge hit with viewers, spawning various pieces of merchandise and even theme park exhibitions in Japan and France.

** The Ratch is a rodent-descendant from either 20 or 50 MYH only appearing in artwork for the prototype game. It is supposedly a scavenger, but instead of robust bone-cracking molars it has a pair of very long, thin looking fangs with no apparent purpose... that are impossible to evolve in rodents as they have no fangs at all. Indeed, Dougal Dixon's previous stab at a predatory rat descendant in ''Literature/AfterMan'', the wolf-like Falanx and relatives, used piercing incisors to dispatch prey like the Pleistocene ''Thylacoleo''. Adding insult to injury, the Ratch has a full set of four upper incisors like primates (yet none in the lower jaw?), when real rodents only have the two used by the Falanx. The Ratch is also supposedly specialized in retrieving "bodies from the mud" yet it has no obvious adaptations to a muddy environment like short legs, flat feet, rotund body, or hairlesness; it rather looks like a skin-wrapped, woolly bear.

** The idea of the world 200 MYA being claimed by the invertebrates is highly implausible given that there are still ''fish'' around, as internal skeletons give colossal advantages toward large-bodied animals in any environment - namely in beating the SquareCubeLaw. The odds of the Megasquid evolving are less likely than fish evolving a new variety of terrestrial forms as they did in the Devonian. Similarly, Solverswimmers would likely be replaced by shark-derivatives past a certain size, as no marine arthropod has gotten anywhere close to the larger specimens seen in the show.

** The idea of the world 200 MYA being claimed by the invertebrates is highly implausible given that there are still ''fish'' around, as internal skeletons give colossal advantages toward large-bodied animals in any environment - namely in beating the SquareCubeLaw. The odds of the Megasquid evolving are less likely than fish evolving a new variety of terrestrial form as they did in the Devonian.

** The show has cetaceans entirely extinct by just 5 million years in the future, due to human activity. Yet the announced game revolves entirely about a cetacean descendant 195 million years later, the Titan Dolphin.

** The South American rattleback is also supposed to be a rodent, but its face looks a lot more like a reptile, never mind a mammal, since it's covered in scales (though they are established to be modified hair just like the scales of pangolins), has no ears or whiskers, and most glaringly of all ''no cheeks''.

** The South American rattleback is also supposed to be a rodent, but its face looks a lot more like a reptile, never mind a mammal, since it's covered in scales, has no ears or whiskers, and most glaringly of all ''no cheeks''.

** 100 MYH, Antarctica is centered around the Equator and covered in rainforests, while Australia is a high, mountainous patch of land near the Arctic.

** The Amazon grassland is shown as being a relatively barren wasteland with few animals and little available food, but in reality tropical prairies and savannahs have nigh universally been the home of huge herds of huge animals (see: African savannah, Great Plains, Pampas). Strangely, the episode never mentions the Pampas or has any descendants of Pampas-dwelling animals despite the fact this is already a huge South American grassland environment.

** The Ratch is a rodent-descendant from either 20 or 50 MYH only appearing in artwork for the prototype game. It is supposedly a scavenger, but instead of robust bone-cracking molars it has a pair of very long, thin looking fangs with no apparent purpose... that are impossible to evolve in rodents as they have no fangs at all. Indeed, Dougal Dixon's previous stab at a predatory rat descendant in ''Literature/AfterMan'', the wolf-like Falanx and relatives, used piercing incisors to dispatch prey like the Pleistocene ''Thylacoleo''. Adding insult to injury, the Ratch has a full set of four upper incisors like primates (yet none in the lower jaw?), when real rodents only have the two used by the Falanx. The Ratch is also supposedly specialized in retrieving "bodies from the mud" yet it has no obvious adaptations to a muddy environment like short legs, flat feet, rotund body, or hairlesness. Instead it looks like a skin-wrapped, woolly bear.

* InformedSpecies: The South American rattleback is supposed to be a rodent, but its face looks a lot more like a reptile, never mind a mammal, since it's covered in scales, has no ears or whiskers, and most glaringly of all ''no cheeks''.

** The Poggle is the last placental mammal, a rodent descendant. Its homeland is Australia, which was the last continent to be colonized by placental mammals back in their heyday.

** The forests of future Antarctica are dominated by petrels. These are highly specialized seabirds that had literally countless opportunities to become terrestrial since they're usually the first birds to arrive to newly formed oceanic islands, yet never did. More likely, Antarctica would come to be dominated by descendants of terrestrial birds and bats blown away from other continents by storms, much like it happened historically in islands (and is already the origin of the insects portrayed in this segment).

** It's stated that mammals will inevitably become extinct because when the planet gets warmer, their advantage of being warm-blooded will become moot. This ignores the fact mammals were still very diverse during the warmest periods in Earth's history and that warm-bloodedness does more than just allow an animal to survive better in cool temperatures. It's also said that mammals are doing very badly ''today''; while some mammal ''species'' are doing so, you could say that about virtually every group of animals alive today, and saying the entire group is doing very badly is incredibly disingenuous and blatantly false (after all, humans are mammals).

** The Ratch is a rodent-descendant from either 20 or 50 MYH only appearing in artwork for the prototype game. It is supposedly a scavenger, but instead of robust bone-cracking molars it has a pair of very long, thin looking fangs with no apparent purpose... that are impossible to evolve in rodents as they have no fangs at all. In fact, Dougal Dixon's previous stab at a predatory rat descendant in ''Literature/AfterMan'', the wolf-like Falanx and relatives, used piercing incisors to dispatch prey like the Pleistocene ''Thylacoleo''. Adding insult to injury, the Ratch has a full set of four upper incisors like primates (yet none in the lower jaw?), when real rodents only have the two used by the Falanx.

** It is unusual that the gryken, a large, ground-dwelling mustelid, evolved from a highly specialized arboreal mustelid species (the European tree marten), rather than one of the many mustelid species that already live on the ground and are adapted for winding through tunnels, such as weasels, minks, or stoats. Especially because the following Amazon Grassland episode states how specialized forest animals will struggle to adapt as the forest rapidly disappears. It almost seems like the producers picked the ''least likely'' mustelid for the gryken's ancestor.

** In a similar, but inverted case, the Deathgleaner is a diurnal predatory bat filling a niche like that of a desert vulture or hawk, unlikely to be opened for bats in a world where better-suited birds are still common. Using skin for sustentation, bat wings have much poorer thermoregulation than bird wings; they overheat in the sun (which is why most bats are nocturnal, a lifestyle for which birds are generally more poorly suited than mammals, and diurnal species live under the shade of rainforests), and also deal worse with the cold, which is why there aren't bats in the Arctic. The show {{handwave}}s this by having the Deathgleaner live in a cold northern desert and be active during the day (i.e. making the best of both bad situations) but it is still unbelievable that a generalist predatory bird wouldn't have beaten bats for that niche after birds of prey went extinct. On top of that, the Deathgleaner cannot attack its prey directly from the air (for example like fishing bats can) but has to land and clumsily move on the ground first, where its hypothetical ancestors would have been themselves vulnerable to predators Unsurprisingly the only bats that resorted to this evolved in New Zealand, which is devoid of native land mammals (and too cold for large predatory reptiles), unlike the North American continent in the show.

** The Spink. Eusocial bird? Maybe. Eusocial flightless burrowing bird? Less likely. Eusocial flightless burrowing bird with proportions completely different from any real bird? Getting increasingly unlikely. All of that happening in under five million years, from the starting point of a quail, an animal that does none of those things? Er... Not to mention rodents have already evolved eusocial burrowing forms multiple times, and they are still around when the Spink lives and even coexist with it, so even in the case of current burrowing rodents (like prairie dogs) any current generalist species of mice would have most likely beaten up birds for that niche before they even started. The concept would have made more sense in a much later time like the 100 MYH segment, particularly in an island-continent with no native land vertebrates like Antarctica.

** The primary reason giant flying insects do not exist anymore is not as much because of greater oxygen levels, but due to competition with vertebrate flying animals. Thus the niche of the Falconfly would likely be taken by a bird or large carnivorous bat, but that's a lot less interesting. Hell, the original petrels the show has branching into insectivorous and nectarivorous species (along with [[AllThereInTheManual every other bird niche in Antarctica]], implicitly) already are vicious predators of vertebrates.

** Carakillers are shown having re-evolved a dinosaur-like wing claw. However, while this is not unlikely, as ratites, hoatzins and even domestic chickens possess small wing claws, the carakiller is shown dispatching prey with its feet and beak: making such hypertrophied wing claws on tiny vestigial wings redundant and unnecessary (the show may have followed an old idea that terror birds had such a claw, but a 2005 study found this was a misconception and it is now discredited).

** Among the species that live in the modern Amazon rainforest, peccaries are mentioned as one of the animals that are too specialized for the jungle habitat to survive its transition to grassland. However, peccaries are actually highly adaptable and all three species ''already'' live in dry, grassland habitats (and can even adapt to live in urban environments and deserts). If anything, they should be one of the current rainforest denizens ''most likely'' to survive.
** The Amazon grassland is shown as being a relatively barren wasteland with few animals and little available food, but in reality tropical prairies and savannahs have nigh universally been the home of huge herds of huge animals all the way from dinosaur times to the present day (see: African savannah, Great Plains, and Pampas). Strangely, the episode never mentions any the Pampas or has any descendants of Pampas-dwelling animals despite the fact this is already a huge South American grassland environment.

** It's mentioned that, although the cryptile can survive on the salt flats, it has to lay its eggs in soil, or else they would cook, and females regularly have to risk their lives to deposit clutches of eggs in grykes. However, it could just as easily evolve to give live birth, something which has occurred countless times for lizards, thereby bypassing the issue completely.

** The great blue windrunner is able to fly in the thin air of the Great Plateau by using its back legs as a secondary pair of wings. This couldn't actually work in real life because birds can't pivot their legs horizontally like that, they would pop right out of the pelvic sockets. Also, the windrunner would actually be better protected against UV radiation if it had dark feathers, rather than light, as melanin would absorb much of the radiation before it gets to the skin. Birds are also naturally resistant to UV radiation due to producing a chemical known as gadusol (this was lost in mammals, probably because they spent so long as nocturnal animals to hide from dinosaurs). After all, a number of birds frequently soar higher than the Himalayas already, and have no special adaptations for it.
** It's stated that mammals will inevitably become extinct because when the planet gets warmer, their advantage of being warm-blooded will become moot. This ignores the fact mammals were still very diverse during the warmest periods in Earth's history and that warm-bloodedness does more than just allow an animal to survive better in cool temperatures (and that mammals have more unique traits to help them survive than just being warm-blooded of course, such as, for example, suckling). Strangely, birds, which are also warm-blooded, are never mentioned to be inevitably outcompeted. It's also said that mammals are doing very badly ''today''; while some mammal ''species'' are doing very badly today, you could say that about virtually every group of animals alive today, and saying the entire group is doing very badly is incredibly disingenuous and blatantly false (after all, ''humans'' are mammals).
** It's stated that gannetwhales replaced the extinct toothed whales (specifically dolphins) in niche, but in practice they are far more similar to pinnipeds, since they are found in polar climates, return to breed on land in colonies, and have a nearly-identical body shape and swimming style (minus the obviously avian head). Strangely, pinnipeds are only mentioned in passing while the narrative focuses otherwise exclusively on them being the replacement to whales.
** It is very unusual that the gryken, a large, ground-dwelling mustelid, evolved from a highly specialized arboreal mustelid species (the European tree marten), rather than one of the many mustelid species that already live on the ground and adapted for winding through tunnels, such as weasels, minks, stoats, or even a badger. Especially because the following Amazon Grassland episode states how specialized forest animals will struggle to adapt as the forest rapidly disappears. It almost seems like the producers picked the ''least likely'' mustelid for the gryken's ancestor.

** The desert hopper is a rabbit-sized snail that stands and moves around on in an erect, upright posture, like a bird, but only with one foot. Monopods like this are bio-mechanically unlikely for a number of reasons (it's more energy intensive to move compared to two or more legs, it's hard to balance, it puts a lot of pressure on the body since the animal is constantly slamming up and down with no support from another leg etc.), and the episode never explains how a land animal with no bones could be standing upright, never mind hopping, on top of that. A likelier scenario given the desert setting could see future snails not jumping or hopping per se, but maybe looping or inching along like modern-day inchworm caterpillars in order to minimise contact with the hot sand; rolling motion or non-drying mucous coverings could also help.[[note]]Even today there actually ''are'' desert snails, though few if any hop.[[/note]]
** The forests of future Antarctica are dominated by petrels. These are highly specialised seabirds that have had literally countless opportunities to become terrestrial since they're usually the first birds to arrive to oceanic islands, yet never did. Even more unlikely that the large, fish-eating, soaring, monochrome polar petrels are shown evolving into tiny, nectar-drinking, fluttering, colourful, jungle-dwelling ''hummingbird'' equivalents, rather than something already in that niche (say, a finch) just flying over from another landmass at the first opportunity, which happened untold times on islands historically. More likely Antarctica would come to be dominated by terrestrial birds and bats blown by storms, much like other islands.
** The primary reason giant flying insects do not exist anymore is not as much because of greater oxygen levels, but due to competition with vertebrate flying animals, which are far superior in aerial movements at larger scales. More likely, the niche of the falconfly would be taken by a bird-or-prey or large carnivorous bat, [[RuleOfCool but of course that's a lot less interesting]] (since those things already exist today).
** The falconfly is portrayed leaving behind chunks of meat for its underground larvae. However, the stock footage used for the larvae is clearly that of a beetle grub rather than a wasp larvae, which, unlike beetle larvae, do not have discernible faces.
** The toraton is a giant tortoise filling the niche of a sauropod, and growing to sizes as large as the largest of them. However, this is a bit of a problem as sauropods, like most dinosaurs, had relatively lightweight pneumatized skeletons with efficient respiratory systems, which allowed them to save on weight and get more oxygen to sustain their enormous bodies (hence why no other land animals ever reached even remotely close to their sizes). Tortoises, lacking both features, would be unable to reach such sizes as they are too dense and heavy to grow much larger.
** It's mentioned that the toraton is too large to mount one another during mating, as the adults are too heavy, so instead they mate back-to-back with a cloacal kiss. Strangely, it does not mention the fact male turtles have very large and mobile penises, so a cloacal kiss would be unnecessary (although perhaps they thought that would be too "vulgar"?).

* ArtisticLicenseBiology:

** Similarly, the Deathgleaner is a diurnal predatory bat filling a niche like a desert vulture or a hawk, a highly unlikely niche for a bat to occupy in a world where ''birds'' are very much still around and would be too much competition for bats for them to fill the niche in avian presence. Bat wings have much poorer thermoregulation than bird wings and tend to overheat in the sun; in consequence, most bats are nocturnal (which also limits competition with birds) and the few larger, diurnal species live mostly in rainforests where there is abundant shade and humidity to take the edge off the heat. Bizarrely, the show does reference the poor thermoregulation of bat wings, but as a reason for the Deathgleaner to switch from being active in the cold desert night... to the hot desert day. Which it would be even less suited to. (On the other hand, the desert it lives in is supposed to be cold even in the daytime due in part to latitude and the ice-age climate, something like the Gobi desert today.)
** Squibbons are said to continue the trend of cephalopods evolving "bigger and better brains"...except there's one little problem: a cephalopod's brain is ''wrapped around their esophagus'', and a bigger brain would literally ''choke them to death''. This constraint is probably one reason why modern octopuses rely on a decentralized nervous system with accessory "mini-brains" in their arms to boost their intellectual abilities. However, octopi had been evolving for millions of years to that point -- see the swampus -- and presumably by that point they'd have adapted.
** The Titan Dolphin shown in the prototype VR game is a completely ''absurd'' depiction of cetacean anatomy: it is terrestrial and walks on its forelimbs like a theropod dinosaur, ''meaning that its torso is entirely ribcage and it has no space for internal organs whatsoever.'' The original art instead shows something more like a slug- or seal-like ambush predator.
** How cephalopods managed to circumvent the osmotic balancing issues to evolve terrestrial forms with the terasquids goes totally unmentioned, especially since the Swampus is mentioned to have never overcome them, still needing to return to brackish water periodically (hence why no freshwater or terrestrial cephalopods, living or extinct, are known, but both freshwater and terrestrial gastropods are very numerous). Instead only their evolution of weight-bearing limbs and a lung are mentioned (both of which are not strictly required for terrestrial life, since terrestrial vertebrate species with neither exist).

** Some of the predictions are, to say the least, less than likely. For instance, it's quite unlikely for all mammals to be simply outcompeted into total extinction by other vertebrates in the way depicted in the show, and certainly quite impossible for arthropods and cephalopods to totally displace vertebrates in general in all large animal niches. The {{Doylist}} explanation is that the show didn't want to render fur in CGI.
** The Megasquid is easily the most controversial creature in the entire show, as it is a terrestrial eight-ton animal ''with no bones or internal skeleton'' that supports its weight with muscle power alone. This is extremely unlikely due to the sheer stress force of its weight without any rigid structures, with the largest land invertebrate ever being 6-foot giant millipedes (and even those had ''exoskeletons'' for support). The megasquid would more likely be crushed under its own mass. Strangely, squid actually ''do'' have a hard internal support structure (known as a pen or gladius) which could have easily evolved into a more complex skeleton, but it goes unmentioned.
** The megasquid and the squibbon are shown being primarily plant-eating. However, all known cephalopods, living or extinct, are exclusively carnivorous. How they evolved to digest vegetation is not clear, especially because earlier episodes show sea slugs and spiders not being able to change their diet from carnivore to herbivore even after 100 MY (despite the fact plant-eating slugs and spiders exist today).
** The Spink is one of the least likely. Eusocial bird? Maybe. Eusocial flightless burrowing bird? Less likely. Eusocial flightless burrowing bird with proportions completely different from any real bird? Getting increasingly unlikely. All of that happening in under five million years, from the starting point of a quail, an animal that does none of those things? Er... Not even mentioning how rodents, which have already evolved eusocial burrowing forms more than once, are still around when the Spink lives and even coexist with it.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: In the American version, when describing the evolution of the carakillers, an image of a pterosaur is shown and erroneously described as a flying dinosaur. Not only are they a separate group of reptiles altogether, but birds are the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs such as ''T. rex''.

* GoryDiscretionShot: The carakillers killing the babookari and the sharkopaths killing the rainbow squid both omit actually showing the killing blows in favour of POV shots of the predators attacking the screen.

** 100 MYH, rising oxygen levels in the atmosphere have allowed the return of giant arthropods which existed 300 MY before the present day, and similarly concludes with a destructive flood basalt eruption just like the end-Permian extinction event.

* AfterTheEnd: The premise is about how life will evolve millions of years after humans have disappeared (either dying out in the UK version or traveling through space in the US version).

** The Megasquid is easily the most controversial creature in the entire show, as it is a terrestrial eight-ton animal ''with no bones or internal skeleton'' that supports its weight with muscle power alone. This is extremely unlikely due to the sheer stress force of its weight without any rigid structures, with the largest land invertebrate ever being 6-foot giant millipedes (and even those had ''exoskeletons'' for support.)
** The Spink is one of the least likely. Eusocial bird? Maybe. Eusocial flightless burrowing bird? Less likely. Eusocial flightless burrowing bird with proportions completely different from any real bird? Getting increasingly unlikely. All of that happening in under five million years, from the starting point of a quail, an animal that does none of those things? Er... Not even mentioning how rodents, which have already evolved eusocial burrowing forms more than once, are still around when the Spink lives.

** The forests of future Antarctica are dominated by petrels. These are highly specialised seabirds that have had literally countless opportunities to become terrestrial since they're usually the first birds to arrive to oceanic islands, yet never did. More likely Antarctica would come to be dominated by terrestrial birds and bats blown by storms much like other islands.
** The toraton is a giant tortoise filling the niche of a sauropod, and growing to sizes as large as the largest of them. However, this is a bit of a problem as sauropods, like most dinosaurs, had relatively lightweight pneumatized skeletons with efficient respiratory sytems, which allowed them to save on weight and get more oxygen to sustain their enormous bodies. Tortoises, lacking both features, would be unable to reach such sizes as they are too dense and heavy to grow much larger.
** Carakillers are shown having re-evolved a dinosaur-like wing claw. However, while this is not unlikely, as ratites, hoatzins and even domestic chickens possess small wing claws, the carakiller is shown dispatching prey with its feet and beak: making such hypertrophied wing claws on tiny vestigal wings redundant and unnecessary.

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: In the American version, when describing the evolution of the carakillers, an image of a pterosaur is shown and erroneously described as a flying dinosaur. Not only are they a separate group of reptiles altogether, but birds are the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs such as T-rex.

** Terabytes have it in the literal and trope sense. Most of the castes are overspecialized in their job to the point where their legs are vestigal or even completely absent. As such, they require a transporter caste to carry them around.

* FloodedFutureWorld: The 100 million years segment takes place in this sort of world, where the ice caps have melted completely and shallow seas are much larger than they are today.

** 5 MYH, the interglacial period has ended and the icecaps have grown exponentially once more. Great herds of woolly, snow-dwelling grazers have evolved, and vicious sabre-toothed predators that hunt them as well, just as in the prior ice age. Likewise, giant predatory birds have once again evolved in South America.

* NoFlowInCGI: This common problem was a reason for showing so few mammals, and having them die out in the end. Hair is hard to animate!

* PunnyName: Sharkopath, Squibbon, Carakiller, Bumblebeetle, Babookari, Swampuss, Flish.

* StockSoundEffect: Bear cub cries for the young Snowstalkers.

* ThreateningShark: 200 MY in the future and they are still there! The consulting scientists state that sharks have been able to survive and evolve throughout hundreds of millions of years simply because [[ImplacableMan they're the perfect killing machines and most likely will be around for a very, very long time]].

* ViewersAreGoldfish: The TV adaptation's 100-million-years-from-now segment explains that all mammals but one are extinct. Then the 200-million-years-from-now segment states that ''all'' mammals are extinct by then ... and goes on to list several ''human''-era mammal types that are no longer around, just in case viewers forgot the previous segment of the program.

* WickedWeasel: The gryken and the snowstalker are larger descendants of modern mustelids 5 MYH, turning into sabre-toothed apex predators that ambush their respective prey. The snowstalker is like a miniature polar bear with huge fangs that evolved from the wolverine, while the gryken is a descendant of the pine marten that EatsBabies. They're both presented as vicious, threatening hunters, but of course [[NonMaliciousMonster they're just animals]].

** The Titan Dolphin shown in the prototype VR game is a completely ''absurd'' depiction of cetacean anatomy: it is terrestrial and walks on its forelimbs like a theropod dinosaur, ''meaning that its torso is entirely ribcage and it has no space for internal organs whatsoever.'' The original art instead shows something more like a slug-like ambush predator.