Documentaries in which animals are filmed in their natural habitat. Or not, as the case may be. There are two variants: one where a narrator explains whats going on over a clandestinely filmed scene. The other is where the host goes out and wrestles the animals to show off the beauty of the unspoiled nature.
Perhaps the Ur-Example for television was The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau which ran on American Television for a decade and inspired an entire genre of underwater adventure documentaries (as well as a lot of affectionate parodies). All modern TV nature documentaries owe something to Cousteau.
The rise of CGI special effects lead to a genre of Speculative Documentary films focusing on the lives of extinct animals, life on alien planets, or life from Earth's future. While the footage in these films is (mostly) created by computer animation, they otherwise follow the formula of regular nature documentaries.
Commonly parodied in various media as the Wildlife Commentary Spoof. Super-Trope to Narrative-Driven Nature Documentary.
Examples:
- Animal Planet is an entire channel devoted to Nature Shows..or, was.
- An Arctic Tale
- David Attenborough:
- Blue Planet
- Life On Earth
- Life In Cold Blood
- Planet Earth
- Planet Earth: Dynasties
- The Blue Planet
- Zoo Quest (1954-1963), Attenborough's first series, may be the Ur-Example of an unfaked TV Nature Documentary.
- The Life of Birds
- The Life of Mammals
- Life in Cold Blood (focusing on herptiles)
- Life in the Undergrowth (invertebrates)
- Prehistoric Planet
- Big Cat Diaries
- Blackfish, a 2013 documentary covering the deaths of trainers at Sea World by the captive Orca Tilikum.
- The undersea documentaries of Jacques Cousteau
- The Silent World, featuring pioneering underwater photography
- World Without Sun, in which Cousteau and company spend a month under the Red Sea in an underwater habitat
- Crocodile Hunter
- Dinosaur Planet
- Growing Up Creepie, on vermin.
- Earthflight
- Encounters at the End of the World
- Forgotten Bloodlines: Agate, a CGI-heavy documentary about life in Miocene North America.
- The Future is Wild
- Island of the Sea Wolves
- The Jeff Corwin Experience
- K2: Siren of the Himalayas:
- Kratt Brothers
- Last Chance To See with Stephen Fry.
- The Last Lions
- March of the Penguins
- Meerkat Manor
- Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
- National Parks Adventure
- Nature on PBS
- Nature Cat
- The Private Life of the Gannets, an Oscar-winning 1934 short that is one of the earliest examples
- Savage Kingdom
- The Secret Land, a 1948 documentary about a massive U.S. Navy expedition to Antarctica
- Serengeti
- Sharks 3D
- Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures series were some of the first popular nature documentaries. They are rather infamous nowadays as Documentaries Of Lies, particularly due to the faked lemming suicide scene in "White Wilderness".
- The Living Desert was a 1953 installment of True Life Adventures focusing on the wildlife found in the deserts of the American West.
- People And Places was a spin-off series focusing on exotic cultures around the world.
- Planet Dinosaur
- Walking with Dinosaurs and its spinoffs/sequels differ in that the creatures are mostly CGI, with animatronics thrown in.
- The same about Planet of Dinosaurs, though without CGI.
- Both are justified of course; unless you want to do an entire documentary about birds (which many people have already done anyway) you're not going to have any luck finding dinosaurs to document these days.
- When Nature Calls, a ABC program that's part wild animal footage, part Gag Dub.
- Gunda: Nature documentary set on a farm, with production credits to Joaquin Phoenix.
- The Wild and the Brave, 1974 Oscar-nominated documentary about a Ugandan national park
- The Wild Thornberrys, though Nigel's nature show is inside.
- Winged Migration: Documentary feature about the migrations of birds.
Use as a trope in media:
- Spoofed in The Ren & Stimpy Show as Untamed World.
- This commercial
for the Little Ceasar's pizza chain starts as an apparent documentary, with the narrator explaining that a baby hippo eats over sixty pounds of food day, which is a constant challenge for the mother. Then it cuts to a hippo carrying a pizza box in its mouth.
Narrator: Luckily, nature always finds a way. - Parodied in the Futurama episode "Naturama", with the show's characters appearing as animals on Mutual of Omicron's Wild Universe.
- This is what The Wild Thornberrys were supposed to be making.
- Skipper tried to use one in The Penguins of Madagascar to force Rico to throw up a time bomb after he was forced to take gag medication. Specifically, it was a documentary aptly titled "Carnage of the Penguins," which showed penguins getting torn apart and eaten alive by leopard seals. Everyone else threw up, but Rico just watched on with a smile and popcorn.
Kowalski: Ohhh, that image will haunt me.
Notable or frequent nature documentary narrators:
English language:
French language:
