Amayzine

4x The most bizarre things we learned from Our Planet

screenshots from Netflix docu our planet
Favorite streaming service Netflix is used for the fun series, Netflix Originals movies, or classic films they put online. Now I also found their documentaries to be a recommendation: but the series Our Planet I can keep watching. Reason number one: the voice of David Attenborough never gets boring. That man really has the most soothing voice ever and I can keep listening to it. I must honestly admit that his appearance is a big mystery, but you might know his voice from Planet Earth by the BBC, which here and there also resembles Our Planet a lot. Our Planet consists of eight episodes, which I personally blasted through in no time, each with a different theme. And wow, what an incredibly beautiful planet we have. This documentary series knows how to present that very well. Just like Planet Earth did a bit; the world as you’ve never seen it before. But also the world we should be a bit more careful with. Did you also enjoy Our Planet? These were the four most bizarre things I learned from it.

1. Global warming is no joke.

That scene in episode 2; if you've seen it, you probably know exactly which one I mean. They film a group of walruses sitting on a rock, some on top of the rock and some below. Now it turns out walruses can see very little outside (I learned that here too) and because the ice has melted so much, they are forced to come together on this rock. A walrus that has settled on top wants to go back down but can't judge the depth well and thus falls down to its death. My god, I was really inconsolable after this scene. The creators were too; they said this scene was the hardest of the whole series.

2. The waters on Earth are still very unexplored.

Okay, confession time: I have quite a bit of thalassophobia. Pardon? Yes, that's the fear of deep waters. That's why you won't see me swimming in the sea anytime soon, because the thought of everything happening beneath me makes me really scared. Fortunately, it's a common phobia, I hear. But also in Our Planet, it becomes very clear how little we know about everything that happens underwater. Hello, we even know more about the moon than our own planet? In fact, we have only discovered 5% of the ocean. FIVE. Just imagine what kind of creatures live there that we don't know at all. Mind. Blown.

3. We are indeed ruining a lot of the Earth.

Often when I read things in the news about what humanity is doing to nature, it seems like a far-off show. But when you see a timelapse of the greenery in Borneo that has halved in the last 50 years, or the Great Barrier Reef that has been declared dead, you do swallow hard. Sir David Attenborough (because yes, this man has been knighted in England) himself says: “What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future life on earth.” That sounds pretty heavy. But that's also a bit the tone of Our Planet: it often sketches a kind of doomsday scenario of what happens if we keep going like this. Not always very uplifting, but for me at least definitely an eye-opener.

4. Animals are so interesting.

I was already a fanatical Animal Planet viewer as a kid, but Our Planet is definitely next level. Because of the bizarrely beautiful images (and that voice of David Attenborough), I can even be captivated for a quarter of an hour by the mating ritual of a bee or a mating ritual of a bird (the animal kingdom has a busier dating life than I, that has also become clear to me). Of course also by the elephants and flamingos, but all animals suddenly become particularly interesting when they are presented like this.

Written by: Wieke Veenboer