Biology of The Future is Wild
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- Опубліковано 12 тра 2024
- A breakdown of the biology of ‘The Future is Wild,’ an incredible and nostalgic series that detailed speculative lifeforms which might evolve millions of years in the future.
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Imagine a world where evolution has written a new chapter in the story of life. That was the tagline of ‘The Future is Wild,’ a miniseries that aired in the early 2000s exploring the speculative lifeforms of the far future. And it was… amazing. The fictional world is fantastically detailed, and an impressive team of real scientists came up with the creatures that inhabit it. And I think these creatures definitely deserve a second look, even if you’ve never heard of them before.
For this extra-long entry into the archive, we’ll be exploring this hypothetical future - having fun incorporating contemporary scientific discoveries that might provide new insight into these speculative lifeforms, and just appreciating the richness of the world the series created.
Prepare to jump forwards several million years - to the first era of The Future is Wild…
0:00 The Future is Wild
1:30 Snowstalker
2:38 Gannet Whale
3:41 Shagrat
4:43 Cryptile
5:51 Gryken
6:44 Scrofa
7:32 Babookari
8:37 Carakiller
9:13 Southern Rattleback
9:55 Northern Rattleback
10:43 Spink
11:20 Deathgleaner
12:02 Toraton
13:09 Swampus
13:50 Lurkfish
14:39 Ocean Phantom
15:41 Reef glider
16:39 Spindle Troopers
17:38 Spitfire Bird
18:40 Great Blue Windrunner
19:58 Poggle
21:04 Flish
22:03 Sharkopath
22:37 Rainbow Squid
23:26 Megasquid
24:39 Squibbon
25:25 The Future is Wilder?
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#CuriousArchive #TheFutureisWild #SpeculativeBiology - Розваги
I actually like the old-school CGI, they gave the animals a lot of character in spite of the technical limitations. I wonder if this kind of low-poly 3d models will eventually become an art-form like pixel art.
I like it too! I could see that being the case one day, its definitely visually distinctive
its already become one in my weird online social circle to an extent. i'll see people on purpose doing low-poly 3d models for the "vibe" and shit.
People have been making PS1 style horror games, you could say it already has begun
@@Nenerii eh but most ps1 style games usually look like bricks or legos, and these are just models but in kinda low quality resolution
There is a bunch of these animations in the B-movie animations. I also love stop motion.
It would be a dream if more documentaries like this could be made, especially with today's technology. I guess only time will tell.
Yes please! Animal Planet be slacking. Maybe Netflix could do it?
YES! It would be amazing if they did a newer version of it with better graphics
Yeah it would be really cool
They were talking about a vr game for this series set in a different time than the show
That would be great, hopefully one day!
20:38 I've read that the real reason that mammals are extinct in the documentary was the difficulty of animating fur at the time. Nowadays, they would probably have included more future mammals.
We need a reboot of this series that accounts for the scientific discoveries made in the 20 years since this documentary came out!
I think afterman is canon to this series too and in the future is wild VR game the titan dolphin exists, I think it was retconned.
Worth reexploring now
when i first heard of it i also just hated how dominating animal groups like mammals and birds just kinda disappear for no reason
like they never say there was a mass extinction or anything why are mammals gone
I remember being so attached to the screen for this. And I was just a kid and my parents asked if I even understood any of it and I was so deep into the rabbit hole I started creating my own weird future creatures and such. Loved it so much.
Parents rarely give their kids credit for their passions. They typically discourage them from learning anything that isn't approved by themselves or what they learned as children. Yet who has the greater capacity to learn and understand things that previous generations shun? Offspring are a cornerstone of evolution, a fact which humans struggle painfully to understand.
@@tinobemellow i hope one day society learns this and accept it.
@@tinobemellow I agree that parents (and adults in general) tend to underestimate children but I also think it’s a good idea to ask if a child understands particular topics so that you can help fill in any gaps in knowledge. It’s good to be interested and aware of what your kids are interested and aware of :) can be a bonding opportunity!
@@tinobemellow as a person with good parents I have no opinion about that
I know that feeeel! I even created my own future animals with plastiline. I remember a giant snake.When I grew up I knew about titanoboa and was glad that I wasn't that far away from reality
I love how The Future Is Wild is basically showcasing a bunch of zoologists fan-creations, and it’s great.
Can u believe it ! Is like darwinian craziness abt the past is not enough now they will bother us abt the future too! And ppl will act like if it is science again! Not just imagination
@@noneedtoread9256 take your pills old man
@@noneedtoread9256 That's great, grandma, let's get you to bed.
@@noneedtoread9256 Yeah, I can believe it. What I can't understand is people believing in the magical man in the sky theory wrote in an ancient book by people who only wanted power, money and controling people.
@@diegopugaquintanilla4344 from dragon ball pic on ur profile, I should look an old man to you, because you must be a lil kid
I absolutely love the squibbon.
Firstly: I am fascinated by cephelopods.
Secondly: This is the first time I saw a hypothetical creature evolve to sentience without, for absolutely no reason, morphing into a humanoid form.
You're a kid now! You're a squid now!
In all seriousness, apparently The Future is Wild was very popular in Japan. I think it later inspired Nintendo a decade later to create its own race of intelligent humanoid squids that live in the post-humanity future
1/10 because they didn't develop a penchant for the arts and a big nose
One day they’ll be unearthing the fossils of strange bipedal mammals
Interestingly, there is a speculative creature called the dinosauroid, a humanoid being that is based on evolved dinosaurs
One might say there might be a squidoroid, a humanoid creature based on a squid...
a speculation that might have inspired the creation of mindflayers...
@@Araneus21 I wonder how far reaching this series was in pop culture
I loved Future is Wild when I saw it as a kid. The only thing that upset me was that they had mammals die out completely, and then birds too. But later I learned they only did that because fur and feathers were still very costly to animate back then.
I owuld love to see a new version of Future is Wild, with modern technology and different takes.
I figured it was the higher energy requirements we have
@@Starvinooxygen especially.
Mammals guzzle oxygen. It's likely that with widespread deserts and overly hot seas, atmospheric oxygen will take a dip, putting a damper on mammals enough to be outcompeted
the fun choices of speculative biology
the threat of setting the rendering computer on fire is certainly one way to force choices of what way the narrative is going
This may be silly, but the thought that mammals only got cut for asking too much pay... is comforting.
Huge respect for the cameraman who travelled into the future to record this documentary
yeah
What I love most about this is that the animals all have colloquial names. I love speculative biology as much as everyone else here, but one of my biggest gripes is that most people only focus on the scientific names of species. Scientific names are just too foreign sounding and too similar to each other for most people to remember them easily, so coming up with names that actually invoke some meaning is fantastic
Can u believe it ! Is like darwinian craziness abt the past is not enough now they will bother us abt the future too! And ppl will act like if it is science again! Not just imagination
@@noneedtoread9256 oh no. i can't tell if you're serious or not, and i'm almost not even sure which would be worse.
@@noneedtoread9256 how can you explain the useless bones that are not connected to the rest of the skeleton of a wale?? why would gawd give a whale these bones unless the early ancestor of the whale had four legs??
@@ManiyaVinas it is already explained that the one you called useless bone. It actually has very important role. Is not my mistake that you don't update your info. Go and check latest studies what they are saying
Agreed I actually invented a game with my friends where I give the absurd name of one of these weird speculative creatures and they have to describe its features, habitat, behaviour etc, -the closest to the real description wins. It's pretty fun to see what people come up with when all they have to go by is "Bladderhorn" or "Coconut Grab"
THIS show is the ground zero of most spec evo (even if some books were earlier). It's strange that there are pieces of art where you can go "what the hell is this and why is it so interesting" as a middle school kid and your interest in a whole field lies then decades dormant because this was literally unprecedented and unpostcedented in mainstream media.
This and alien planet created absolutely key captivating moments of my love of spec evo
unpostcedented lol yeah it sucks. even regular old dinosaur documentaries don't look as good as they used to be
"Unpostcedented." Remind me to use that one.
@@jordanbriskin238 easy enough to discern with context clues. I've never even thought of this word before.
squids or octopus evolving near human level intelligence is actually the least weird part of the documentary, the more we learn about actual squid/octopus the more we question intelligence in general. its honestly fascinating.
I mean if you lok. at the tree octopuses are on the tip on one side and the opposite side is us
@@talkingweevil3172the spectrum is probably much more vast too
@@jrizo8849 ya Ofc
I guess in this timelines, squids and octopus will become the next intelligent civilization like humans did millions of years earlier. My concern is that earth will be uninhabitable in 1 billion years from now, so they have limited time to evolve into a type 1 civilization.
@@fireblaze1994 And then they became squid kids, Get it lol
Nice to know I wasn’t the only kid given to existential dread by the concept of the silver spiders and the poggles.
Same. Plus I'm an arachnophobe, so it made it worse
As the person that animated and rendered the silver spiders I am quite pleased that they freaked you out :).
They were originally brown, in a vfx team meating the producers asked us what we could do to make them more interesting and less like normal spiders. I was actually joking when I said "Make them chrome" and entireley suprised when they weent for it.
@@SuperRyge that's awesome! I'm pretty sure you've given some kids nightmares tho xD
The Snow Stalker is a very realistic theoretical future animal. There were prehistoric mustelids that came close to the size of bears and large canines in size. A huge polar sabertooth wolverine is something that could exist.
That's what every animal was supposed to be
I saw this on Animal Planet as a kid. I was enthralled by it. The carakillers and babookaris were my favorite animals. The carakillers were actually pretty scary to kid me. You can imagine how horrified I was when the mass extinction 100 million years in the future happened. The book further terrified me when I learned that the earth would eventually end. Yeah I have an interesting story with this series.
Seeing the last mammal die by a colony of spiders made me so sad at 8 years old lol
I’m happy that everyone had that existential crisis about the last mammal on earth when they were young too lol
There was a book?
The Snowstalkers scared the hell out of me as a kid I remember having the whole DVD set and I would watch every single one except for the Ice age episode because it scared me so badly mostly tho because I was like six years old LOL 😏
Wait, a book?!?
The spec biology is really really neat, but I also like the speculative geography and geology as well! Love the idea of the Mediterranean Sea becoming huge salt flats like the ones in present-day Death Valley. Really neat to picture this stuff!
I never saw the TV series, but I did read the book. And one of the things you can absolutely respect about The Future is Wild was that even though they never claimed to be anything more than speculation, their speculation was still grounded in scientific theory. The fact the Megasquid's maths actually checks out and it could support itself using the those muscles is one of the small details that helped separate this series from "oh in the future there'll be flying sharks and laser shooting frogs" sort of drunken rambles.
Man, what a trip down memory lane. Me and my siblings were enthralled by The Future is Wild when we were younger, even those of us who had less interest in science fiction and strange creatures. I remember the Lurkfish scared me, because when it shocked the Swampus there wasn't any visible method of attack, it just... spasmed and died. I don't remember it's name, but the flat, eel-looking thing that could spit out its jaws to catch prey scared me too, so much that I would refuse to watch the episode and the part of the intro it appeared in! I think that was more because it was so bizarre and startling to me, not because of any unknowns like the Lurkfish. I also thought it was so weird that it was one of my oldest brother's favorites.
My favorites were the Ocean Phantom and the Spindle Troopers. I just thought they looked so cool, and their symbiotic relationship was a completely new concept to me. They were strange and not quite earthly, but close enough to what I already knew to be utterly captivating. Looking back now, The Future is Wild really helped shape some of my interests and those of my siblings. Nowadays, the ocean holds some of my favorite creatures, jellyfish and siphonophores and coral and whales and all kinds of weird fish, and both my brothers love strange, alien creatures, some of the past and many of the future.
I am so glad I subscribed to this channel. Not only do you bring new and fascinating things to light, you've concisely covered things I already knew, and reminded me of why I love those things so much. Thank you for all your hard work!!
I think it was called a Slickribbon, a descendant of cave worms. And I agree, that thing looked freaky.
There's actually a shark named ''Goblin Shark'' that protrudes it's jaws in the moment of the attack, that's a freaky shark...
@@dionettaeon honestly i think it's like anomalocaris redux
@@davidegaruti2582 See your point, though I think Opabinia would be a closer fit.
I like how most of these creatures are somewhat possible in a small sense or intermediate sense, but the fact that they used uncertainties to be more creative with future evolutions is what amazes me in this series
Yup. If you didn't use anything you weren't 100% certain about most of the animals would just end up looking more or less the same as modern ones, since those are really the only ones we can truly be certain make sense.
I think TierZoo could (and should) make a similar series where he predicts how different species could evolve in the future.
To be fair though his evolution knowledge isn't actually very good he's far better at raging the animals like his channel is based on which I woukd personally prefer to watch.
I remember watching this back in the day, and couldn't find it anywhere, thank you for bringing this out! I was fascinated by the squids being terrestrial and super intelligent
I would love if they did a remake of this with new ideas and speculative ideas! Overall great video too!
Same here!
There's apparently a VR game in the works with some interesting concepts produced so far. You can find most of the concept images and stuff on google.
@@geckoguy4141 what's it called? i wanna check it out
@@tobenamed610 I think it's just called, "The Future is Wild VR."
Guys! There was a TV show made that was based on the documentary broadcasted on Discovery Kids. Please look it up, it is not a joke.
Feel like the show needs a reboot, somethings are off even for speculative zoology. Also I think the worlds need more fleshing out with more animals and plants in each time zone
There are a few channels that have running series
@@cosmicrider5898 which ones?
@@cosmicrider5898 don’t just stand there, tell us!
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 alien biospheres by bibilarion (spelling?)
My appologies my favorites are artifexian(more conlang less speculative) ua-cam.com/users/Artifexian,and biblaridion (more speculative , but also a good bit of conlang)
ua-cam.com/channels/MjTcpv56G_W0FRIdPHBn4A.html
Project rose( only speculative biology)
ua-cam.com/channels/8bL-lETKMgWrTM-egjA_PQ.html
Ben G Thomas( is good palentological bioligist, for real life examples)
ua-cam.com/users/BenGThomas
"This thing looks like [thing you know] but it's actually [another thing you know]" - TFIW in one sentence. Loved that show as a kid, still constantly think back to it as an adult.
I love the idea of Future=Past. History does seem to repeat itself.
Other creatures included:
Roachcutter-A flutterbird in tropical Antarctica that feeds insects that evolved from a seabird ancestor
Falconfly-A descendant of wasps that lives like the modern sand wasp, hunting birds with its lance-like middle legs then taking the carcasses to multiple nests all over the forests
Spitfire Beetle-A beetle that mimics a flower when four of them work together, the only creatures that can hunt Spitfire Birds without issue
False Spitfire Bird-A bird that looks like a regular Spitfire Bird but is using Batesian mimicry as a defense
Silver Swimmers-The bottom of the food chain in the global ocean, evolved from the larval form of crustaceans through neoteny, taking on a variety of forms and niches
Bumblebeetle-A short-lived insect of the Rainshadow Desert of the new Pangaea that has to find rotting Flish carcasses to lay its eggs in before its life ends
Grimworm-The larva of the Bumblebeetle with jaws like those of leechs to shear through flesh, which they eat a lot of before metamorphosis
Desert Hopper-A snail that has become human-sized, lives in a dry desert, buries itself in sand to avoid heat and hops around like a pogo stick with its one foot
Death Bottle-A flowering desert plant that relies on the Bumblebeetle to spread its pollen and seeds, while also feeding on lifeforms that fall into a spiky trap it creates in the sand
Terabyte-A super evolved termite with multiple castes that lives in the central desert of the new Pangaea, some carry water, some dig their mounds, some serve as troop transport
Garden Worm-A strange worm that relies on photosynthetic symbiotic algae for most of its sustanence, often having to avoid predators with surprising defenses
Gloom Worm-An aquatic worm that lives in freshwater caves underground, feeding on luminescent bacteria colonies growing on the rocks
Slickribbon-A predatory worm that feeds on other worms using extendable mandibles
Forest Flish-A relative of the Ocean Flish that lives in the northern rainforest, a pollinator that lives like a hummingbird
Slithersucker-A slime mold that preys on Forest Flish by hanging from trees and snaring them in a sticky trap
Actually, according to the narration, the desert hopper is only 30 cm (1 foot, more or less) tall, so you couldn't really call it human-sized.
Well, based on where the Desert Hopper lies evolutionarily speaking, it's like scaling a snail to the size of a man. And 30 cm is way too small if you look at the animation.
I've always wanted to see science fiction that explores the idea of earth in millions of years. Your channel has been wonderful for that!
Some of the more extreme examples, like terrestrial and arboreal cephalopods, are a bit out there, but most of these creatures seem not only entirely possible, but actually relatively probable. Very cool documentary!
The time frame is probably the biggest issue
I'm getting so much nostalgia from my childhood with this video! This documentary series was actually one of the many documentary shows and movies from the late 90's and early 2000's which strongly contributed to me pursuing a career in paleontology. It further contributed to my profound interest in studying ecology, evolution, speculative biology, and even geologic processes such as plate tectonics. As such, I will forever cherish "The Future is Wild" alongside the other documentaries from my childhood even with all of its questionable predictions.
I remember when this came out as a kid. I watched it that night in complete and total awe, and went to bed imagining what kinds of amazing creatures are possible. It also helped me to better understand ancient life. I miss this kind of programming so much.
now we have even better thanks to UA-cam
This also had a kids 3d animated spin off series. It was about people time travelling and having adventures involving these creatures. I don't know if it was any good, but it is nice that it exists.
i can't remember jack about that series, but i do remember it was fun as hell to watch
I personally liked it back then but that might just be cause the concept was really neat. I do recall they gave the animals voices on occasions, which is kind of a weird choice. But hey, it was to get some introspection into how they operated as a species.
Ha! I knew I remembered a spinoff of sorts. Wasn't sure if anyone else had watched it but looks like I wasn't alone. I do remember really liking the show tho
I Found it some time ago and i have to Say it aged with grace.
Aside from original music and visuals the characters Were thought out and the story was actually quite logical.
Wich i cannot Say about many other animations of that era.
And of course the main thing was showing this fantastic enviroment and placing the cast in the context of it.
It is still a series for Kids but an adult can watch it too without mental depriviation from non logical story and bullshit character decisions.
Also the chemistry between the cast is Nice.
Over all watching it is a pleasant expirience, Worth a shot
WHAT IS THE SPIN-OFF CALLED??
I always love your speculative evolution stuff and hearing you talking about The Future Is Wild made my day. The Megasquid was always one of my favourite animals from this series!
You have no idea how long I've been looking for this. It was a special on the Discovery Channel way back in the day. Thanks for posting this!
If you haven't already, how about looking at "Alien Worlds" on Netflix. It goes over different planets with different conditions like higher oxygen levels, thicker atmosphere etc.
@Minh Nguyễn Yeah that is a major issue with it, you do have to watch the same snippets a lot over the span of an episode
I think a lot of the aliens in it are kind of lazy.
I saw it, it’s awesome so far.
I also saw an episode of Cosmos: Possible Worlds where Neil deGrasse Tyson explains an idea from some scientist. (I forgot some parts of this) Somewhere on Saturn or it’s moons are giant Jellyfish like creatures that propel themselves by gas, and then there are flying predators to hunt them down. He said that it is theoretically possible if there was life there.
The first two ep. ( the one with the flying fishes , the attack zeppelins and the radialli simmetric creature ) where good , the third and fourth where kinda bad tbh
We need more of this, speculative lifeforms can be far fetched most of the times but man it's entertaining and fun to think about. Heck it's what got me so interested in wildlife, animals and plants as a whole when I was a kid
I remember another one similar to this that is about possible lifeforms out in space. It even speculates on lifeforms that could survive on planets that would be totally inhospitable to us like gas giants or planets that have a frozen surface with a sea under the ice.
I loved this series, one of the best speculative future docs out there (Life After People was another great one) but I would love to see this redone with better CGI and covering more points in time than just the 5, 100 and 200 million years they hit
The coolest parts for me in this video (never saw the show) were birds taking up mammal niches and the squids. They could probably do even more with the “what ifs”, like what if all mammals went extinct. Seeing what else would fill which roles and how they would change to fill said role would be fun
When I was a kid, I had never heard of this series, but I HAD watched the cartoon show on Discovery kids based on this series, which had the same name. My friend, meanwhile, had heard of this series, but HADN'T heard of the kids' cartoon. So we ended up having a long conversation about how much we loved all the cool different animals that appeared in both shows, and it took us a long time to figure out that we were even talking about different shows, and an even longer time to explain what these other shows were. This just before smartphones became commonplace, so we couldn't just pull up a quick UA-cam clip or Wikipedia article. It was a little breakdown in communication that was fun to work through.
Must've gotten a little awkward when you mentioned the human time traveling teens.
I remember I watched this in my high school biology class. After watching this we did a project where we had to choose an animal and predict how it might evolve in the future. I choose an otter and my reasoning was that it had to develop longer legs for walking on land because its habitat dried up. It could also use its opposable thumbs to catch small prey. I have no idea if that's plausible, but it was certainly fun.
Small prey? Look up River Otters in the Amazon.
Your bio teacher sounds like a g
I remember watching this in high school biology class one time, when a substitute teacher was there. We only had time to watch one episode, which was a severe bummer at the time... I forgot what it was called and only found the series in full on UA-cam recently, over a decade later hahaha.
must've been fun lol
This is truly jaw dropping. I'm watching the ocean phantom segment, and I've just noticed my jaw has been "on the floor" the whole time. I am glad to find something this exciting and genuinely interesting.
They do need to bring this series back. I bought every Walking with Dinosaurs and similar docu-series like this as a teen and young adult.
Walking with Monsters: Time Before the Dinosaurs, Walking with Dinosaurs, Allosaurus: A Walking with Dinosaurs Special, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, Walking with Apes, & Future is Wild are the ones I own (might've gotten some of the names wrong been awhile since I've seen them.)
Wow, there's a blast of nostalgia. Such a great and thought provoking series. If I remember correctly, the narration at the start states that humanity's descendants have left the planet behind, but are now sending probes back to survey and study the changes in their former home.
Holy hell, I remember the Squibbons! As I watched this video it dawned on me that I had actually seen that particular episode of this show as a kid and loved it. Thank you so much for making a video on a show I had completely forgotten!
That reef glider is an image that always stayed with me, but I'd never have been able to remember where I'd seen it, so it was absolutely brilliant to see bits of this show again
I won the book they made of 'The Future is Wild' at my grade school's end-of-year ceremony thing for being the highest scoring student in English class in my grade year - I loved it, but I had no idea it was a TV series until much later, when I was just starting college, and then I watched it for the nostalgia and old-school, somewhat limited CGI, which I find incredibly charming in its way.
TFIW is no Serina or All Tomorrows, but I feel like this series really got people and especially kids thinking about speculative evolution, and some of the future animals. I give it credit for having several very familiar orders of animals - birds, mammals, aquatic fish - be obliterated and allow really weird new creatures to take their niches. Also I wonder if the flying tribbethere species from Serina were in/directly inspired by the Flish, now that I think on it...or everyone who does spec-evo just really wants fishbirds.
I used to watch this series when I was about 8 years old, & it feels good to see these amazing creatures 10 years later.
Thanks for bringing nostalgia.
I would have never thought the quality of the first one would be considered "dated" as the narrator said in the beginning , I didn't even know when it was actually made exactly, I just seen it as realistic slightly animated example.... It's so cool though how they were able to depict these animals and interesting to know how drastically things could change millions of years from now😳
I was thinking about this yesterday and wasn't even looking for a 'review' of this program! Amazing timing. Those giant squids always reminded me of the opening of the original pokemon show when a giant Tentacruel smacks that skyscraper
The best documentary so far. Yes, it's just a bunch of biological concepts, but it so well made for the year it came out. I think I'm studying bio right now, because I watched it as a kid
Given that both the ability to predict future evolution and animation technology has vastly improved, I would very enthusiastic about a revisit to this concept.
I remember only ever watching these videos on UA-cam in the past decade, though apparently it did air where I live back in the early 00s, so I may have seen it on TV as a teenager. I'd have wanted to anyway! I enjoyed the entire series and I enjoyed your video too. I've always loved fantasy creatures on shows on films, particularly the peculiar creatures in 'Alice in Wonderland' (the bird glasses always fascinated me lol) so seeing something more scientific, what could evolve here in the future, is amazing. A few years ago I began writing a sci-fi/fantasy story where I was inventing my own creatures living on a distant planet in our universe, so these on the show were likely in the back of my mind and inspired me, especially to keep them looking realistic when creating them and the environments they'd live in.
I know this video is one year old but I have to comment, this video helped me find the lost cartoon that was stuck in my head. the toraton was a creature that was inside my mind for years, I remembered watching something about it and it was a 3D animation show when I was a kid. thanks to you, I found my lost memory about this. thank you so much!
Does anyone else remember the children's animated show based on The Future is Wild? It was a team of humans and a squibbon going through all these time periods and locations, encountering a different one of these creatures each episode.
I remember this show ! I thought for a while my overtop imagination made this up!
Oh yeah, I remember that too! I think it was a bunch of kids/teens too. The show would also do this weird thing where they’d have cutaways to the animal that was being studied for that episode where they were talking and having weird sitcom like escapades.
I still have the augumented reality cards of the future is wild that you could pop off creature from thee show with your webcam
I thought that's what this guy was talking about though?
Do you know what name is
I'm incredibly impressed at how well CA summed up so much in this time frame. For the unfamiliar there were whole speculative ecosystems skipped in this summary, so the actual series is still very much worth a watch. The Future Is Wild paired with After Man were my entry points to speculative evolution from a science perspective rather than fantasy.
I had a lot of fun watching this documentary back in the day, even now I find it fascinating as a concept and a very good challenge for biology experts. We need more of this. Reminds me of that book called "All Tomorrows", another fascinating experience of the future but with humans (maybe NOT as science-based) but still worth a read.
I just discovered this channel and I just love it. I love how “academic” you sound as you talk about this stuff. I’m a writer and I love world building, so this is incredibly useful 👏 thank you for this amazing content
Man, I remember this series blowing my mind when I was a kid. I had the whole thing on DVD and used to watch it all the time. I'm pretty sure this and other nature shows like it only propelled my interest in the natural world into overdrive, leaving me with the fascination of the topic that I have today.
"The Future is Wild" book version was one of my childhood books ! I am so happy that you made a video about it !
I completely forgot this show existed for over a decade. I loved this show when I was a teen. What a great throwback
I've been looking for this series, I just couldn't find it, thank you!❤
Still have all 13 episodes saved on my computer....it was an interesting adventure, and very well detailed. Dougal Dixon inspired a generation of scientists, writers, and sci-fi fans for sure
I don’t know if this would be up your alley but could you do one of these on the robotic animals of horizon: zero dawn. The story is basically that humanity created a nano machine bio weapon that self replicated by consuming biological matter. To preserve the remaining flora, fauna, and humanity, they built giant bunkers like arks governed by ai set to start trying to recolonize the planet with plants and animals after the nanomachimes die off in a couple hundred years. The ai’s use machines based off of biological animals from the present and the past, but with some evolutions and machanical body part for increased efficiency. I think it is an interesting take on how an ecosystem could coexist with nature and machine.
HZD is possibly the closest thing to my concept I wanna see realized some day, about a biosphere and technosphere being mixed together, with autonomous machines finding uses and niches among the organic life, and organic life finding uses and niches for the roaming robots as well.
I could watch it again and again in childhood. It was one of my favorite mini-series ever. I shared also very similar sentiments towards various creatures like a narrator.
I remember this show. It is actually my favourite since I was a kid. Thanks for making a video for this. I forgot about it but thank you.
Glad you did a breakdown of this show because I could never find episodes all these years later. I will say I remember thinking, and still do, the ridiculousness of the show not including crocodilians as they’ve remained relatively unchanged for millions of years and would more than likely be here millions of years after us.
To be fair, showing something relatively unchanged wouldn't be all that interesting if they couldn't come up with a weird direction for it to evolve like they did with the sharkopath.
@@SophisticatedGoat222 I think a fun direction could be to make them turn into dinosaurs/raptors. Like a reverse evolution.
@@JBrotsis1 Except that crocodiles evolved before the dinosaurs, so it wouldn't be reverse evolution but possibly a kind of progression.
@@JBrotsis1 They did a reverse evolution by giving those vulture looking birds finger claws.
All of them including American are on youtube now
So, fun fact, I was living with the family of one of the professors who was on this series, in the summer of 2020. I found this out when I was watching a _different_ discussion video during that summer, and while I also suddenly remembered that I had actually seen parts of one of the episodes, the video showed clips of the people talking on the show, and BAM, there was the face of someone who was literally a stone's throw away from me! I told them about it, and it was wild. They still have old VHS tapes from the show.
Fun stuff aside, this show is such a unique exercise in presenting specbio content to a wide audience with a great deal of passion. It means a lot to me, who dabbles in specbio myself. It's surprising I didn't remember it stronger given how into the subject I am.(I mean, I'm on this channel, aren't I?!)
Sure bud.
What's specbio
@@vincenttrigg4521 it's just shortening the term "speculative biology" since that can be unwieldy to repeat over and over in succession. Speculative biology being theorizing about lifeforms like the ones on the video, figuring out how they could have continued to adapt and change in a somewhat "believable" way.
That is one cursed profile image.
I’m not joking when I say, wholeheartedly, that tFiW is one of, if not, the best spec evo project. Period.
Ohhh, I loved that series! Had the DVDs for years until they broke. I'm very happy to see it on youtube!
Ah, I remember reading the book and watching these documentaries back in elementary school. I loved it so much, it provided the spark for my passion for creating my own fantasy creatures.
This is what got me into speculative evo/biology/zoology back in the day, along with Alien Planet. The 2000s were a great time for this sort of thing.
The 2000s sure were. They took a really unique approach to looking at ideas and telling fictional stories using real science.
Thank you for reminding me this show.
I have seen only a snippets out of it as a child, but it left me astonished non the less.
Especialy the swampists and windrunner. ❤
Around the time that "The future is wild" aired back in the day, I remember there being another speculative biology series that I also really adored. It was about ecosystems on other planets and how the organisms there might have adapted to very different environments and maybe even to regular coronal mass ejections from their star. Pretty cool as well. ^^
I think that was called Alien Planet? I remember my friend insisting it was real and that scientists had actually found complex life on other planets.
Ah yes, the show that fascinated me as a kid, could not remember what it was called for years until I turned 15 and then rediscovered it on YT with all the episodes up (until most were deleted, that is) and then became enraptured with it once again. Seriously, this show holds a very special place in my heart and I still get chills of nostalgia every time I hear the intro theme.
This series was awesome. I remember catching a glimpse of the Ice Age desert episode as a kid, and the Spink and Deathgleamer really stuck in my mind. It took me about a decade to finally find what the show was and was amazed by all the creature designs. If I had to pick a favorite from each era, it would have to be the North American Rattleback, Great Blue Windrunner, and Forest Flish.
I have never come across the topic of speculative biology before finding your channel and my god have i been missing out. I didn't think that this subject was going to be as interesting as it actually is.
I loved this series as a child! I even revisited it somewhat recently, and it’s still very fun, even if the CGI is kind of weird
The Future is Wild was imported in France when I was a kid. I lived next to an amusement park called « le Futuroscope », and when I first went to it they adapted this world into a VR Ride!
It was really cool and there was merch too : a book, website, and AR Cards of different creatures that would fight and interact with each other.
This universe is still so cool and I still love it! Great video, I feel like a kid again
Damn you’re pumping out videos like a factory and that alone makes me happy because I have 30 minutes of interesting content to watch now
I remember watching this on DVD like when I was 6, and it was until I rewatched it again a while ago that I saw the amazing work this people made. I think this was the one thing that introduced me into Science Fiction.
Dude! Thank you so much for making and posting this video! I saw this when it came out and i think about that "jellyfish" ALL THE TIME! for like 24 years lol. And the show in general, super dope! Great job 👌 10/10
I was always moved by this moment when Squibbons attack the Megasquid to save their 'tribe member'. This was so strong parallel to the similar scene in one of the episodes Walking with Beasts when Australopithecus tribe did exactly the same to save one who get attacked by wild cat.
You would say that... someone with your profile name must appreciate squids! (≧∇≦)
I loved the walking with series so much.
Crazy thing is as a kid I watched both series and remember drawing the same parallels
THE OG SPECULATIVE EVOLUTION SHOW! So excited to see you do a video on it, this is the show that got me and I think a lot of people interested in this topic
i have been looking for this show for YEARS!!!!! Im so happy you made this video!
I wish they'd do a higher resolution re-release of this series if possible, that would be really cool to see.
honestly i could totally see cephalopods taking over if there’s a mass mammal extinction. squids/octopi(pode?) are insanely smart already, imagine what they could do if they became pack creatures??
I think the main reason the octopi haven't advanced further is their extremely short lifespan. Hardly any time to learn new things - and pass them on. Poor critters 😢 Are they social beings btw?
@@jwwebnaut7045 i’m honestly not sure about that. i know they can be pretty friendly with humans in captivity and in the wild, but the key word is can.
Imagine seeing the SWAMPASS in real life?!
@@lucidinterval8012 😱😱😱 SWAMPASS caught LIVE on CAMERA ?!
@@jwwebnaut7045lifespan is something that actually evolves quickly, i mean look at us humans it was near impossible for someone to reach 80 years of age 5000 years ago
Most speculative evolution: Horrifying alternate realities with otherworldly life-forms.
Meanwhile Serina: kanarie
This is one of my most favored childhood memories for and i also agree that this is very underrated of documentary on what we could hope to have in the far future of our world man.
I remember this. I am glad you did the video.
Great job! 🎉
I've thought about this series from my childhood all my life. I'm 35 now, and I remember being awestruck at the show, and my love of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals could never have prepared me for how cool this show was. I have never been able to forget how simply thrilling it was. I hope a revival happens too!
oh man I loved this show, it felt so forgotten I thought I have dreamed it all up or something. after many years it made me interested in videos like this
ah yes, when history becomes myth, and myth becomes legend
I remember loving the book version of this as a kid. Never discovered that there was a show until decades later
I’m into speculative biology right now, and this is just a goldmine of inspiration waiting to happen!!
I remember seeing this in biology-class and being spell-bound. I LOVED this series! I remember they also made a Flash animated-series on the HUB network of this show.
Too much of these were cut from the US release. This is my first time learning of the Mediterranean environment
I remember being a kid and trying to record this series on VHS from Animal Planet. Being around the age of 10, I was never able to record it all. One of my favorite creatures was the Toraton. Those things look awesome.
This was one of my absolute favorite shows I remember watching this really late at night I was mesmerized
I loved this show as a kid. Thank you for bringing back some great memories!!
I absolutely adored this series, and I wasn't even a kid when it came out. It led to my own interest in Speculative biology. I'm watching with my little Toraton figurine beside me :)
My mom and I used to watch this on tv when I was a kid. We both loved this series!
one of my fav docs from back then; along with all of the "walking with..." series - i felt like this was a natural extension of those!!! Going to go watch it now :)