I finally got around to watching The Future is Wild (television series), and I've decided that this is most certainly the best part. To save you the trouble of watching the whole thing, I've extracted the clip and put it on loop:

Diving, Baby Octopuses (http://www.lifetrance.com/graphics/octodive.gif)

Enjoy :)

-Brandon

werid...

...

:lol:

Footage documenting the only-seen-in-April Delaware River Flood Octopus?

Melissa

"The future is wild" series seems to be very fond of the idea of cephs ruling the earth. In this particular episode an amphibious ceph, called the Swampus has a symbiotic relationship with a plant (resembling a bucket), which it uses as a nursery for it's young. In return the Swampus kills everything that comes near it.

a couple of million years later The "rainbow squid" has mastered the art of blending into the environment, by projecting the scenery on one side of the animal to the other, Making itself completely invisible. It plucks birdlike fish (don't ask) out of the air with it's tentacles and grows to 120 feet
http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/futureiswild/poll/gallery/rainbowsquid_h.jpg

The most fanciful adaptation, was that of the Megasquid
An 8-ton mammoth squid, that lumbers through the forest.
However a squid is still a squid and therefore has no skeleton to hold it upright. That's why it's arms have changed into 8 muscular columnshttp://animal.discovery.com/convergence/futureiswild/poll/gallery/megasquid_h.jpg

Still, the leading role is reserved for the simian ceph: the squibbon (notice how cleverly named it is?) the series ends with them destined to become the next high intelligence on the new earth, equalling or even surpassing their human predeccessorshttp://animal.discovery.com/convergence/futureiswild/poll/gallery/squibbons_h.jpg

Personally, I think the producers might have gone a little too far with that one, but I must admit it was quite edearing to see a couple of squibbons playing with seeds and rescuing their sibling from the clutches of a megasquid.

I wonder will the show it in HK?

That megasquid looks like something you might see in an old Godzilla movie.

Yep.

That clip is so funny, I've got to see that movie!

its a tv show not a movie..

I feel that the producers believe that if cephs manage to survive on land and become social, there will be no limits to what they can achieve

The entire "Future is Wild" miniseries can be ordered online. A friend got it for me for my birthday. I found the entire series rather enjoyable. I imagine a lot of it might have gone a little like this in the planning stages:

PRODUCER: Hey, our SFX guys came up with this, so I'm asking you science guys if it might be possible, I mean, it'll look soooo cool..!

SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR: Well, I suppose, under extremely specific circumstances that nobody can completely predict with any real chance at accuracy... if certain factors don't come into play while others do... if these other species go extinct... umm... I guess, uh, maybe it might turn out like that in the time period you've come up with... although really this is just specula-

PRODUCER: GREAT! I'll call the SFX guys and tell them to get rolling on the CGI! It's the big thing with the kids these days! And you'll tell how these critters got that way, right!?

S.A. : Well, I guess-

PRODUCER: The ratings are gonna be great! Don't like this name, though. Squimps. Squorillas... naw, not cute enough... how about... SQUIBBONS!!

S.A.: Great. Yeah. Squibbons. Just make sure that on the check my name is spelled correctly this time...

Personally, I thought where they take bat evolution in so short a time seems morphologically unsound. For creatures that have barely changed in about 55-60 million years (I speak of insectivores - macrochiroptera came along considerably later), they seem to evolve a helluva lot in brand new ways over the next twenty million. What's with the long goose-like necks and disproportionately tiny heads? Vampiric behavior makes some sense, especially feeding on future descendants of modern avian life, but to live this way, modern vampires must live in regions where there are huge amounts of easily-attainable prey (livestock, poultry). Vampires were relatively rare before Europeans arrived with their style of agriculture. This program shows them living in a frigid desert region where their prey seem to stand a good chance of escape just by burrowing. This is all provided that we haven't killed them all off long before this, of course.

I did really dig the Rainbow Squid, however.

There have been a lot of really good, well-researched shows using cutting-edge SFX recently. In particular, I look forward to what Nik will be bringing us soon, but much as I like watching my copy of "The Future is Wild", that miniseries is purely to be taken as entertainment.

It reminds me of those Dougal Dixon books like "Life After Man" only with better art.

My favorite critter from Dixon was the giant baleen-beaked creatures that evolved from penguins after the demise of whales and dolphins.

I remember those from my misspent youth. The baleen penguins were pretty rockin'.

Rockin' baleen penguins? Never heard of that one before...

Rockin' baleen what?!?!?! :lol:

Having actually corresponded with Dr. R. McNeil Alexander of the Univerisity of Leeds and Dougal Dixon, author of After Man: A Zoology of the Future about their work with "The Future is Wild" I would have to say that they came up with the ideas on their own. Alexander informed me that the idea of the Swampus came to him while watching an octopus crawl across a rocky intertidal to get from a tidepool to the sea. Dixon takes an interest in evolution and sees great potential in the future of bioforms. He mentioned involvment by Professors William Gilly and Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University. The biomechanics and such were worked out a while before filming started. Its sci-fi, but good sci-fi at least.

The aforementioned "baleen penguins" are the Porpin and Vortex, both animals being future forms of penguins featured in After Man .

John

My show-biz cynicism must have been showing. Still, love the Rainbow Squid.

Too bad the rainbow squid was eaten by bioluminescent sharks. It should've fought back!

Sharkopaths!

Yeah, the names lacked some imagination... :lol:

What bugged me is that the rainbow squid was overspecialized in eating only "flish". I mean, the oceans circa 300 million A.D. are crawling with all sorts of horrible life forms, so food should be more plentiful.

No clue if there will be cephs, but I just found out discovery is doing a hypothetical-biology thing called "Alien Planet"

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/alienplanet/alienplanet.html

is the URL, but flash is broken on my laptop so I can't see anything there; I saw the description in an ad on imdb.com: http://imdb.com/title/tt0453446/

It's tomorrow night in the USA on Discovery...

The concept of "The Future Is Wild" seemed a good one to me and after reading about it on these pages, and others, I forked out £30 to buy the three disks with an hour on each one representing the three periods. My mistake; to be honest I was really disappointed, the animation was really quite inferior to "Walking With Dinosaurs" which predated it by two or three years.

I really got the impression that despite the much vaunted 'science' behind the project the producers just thought up some really quite ludicrous creatures (squibbons anyone?) and then back-peddled trying to fit them into plausible scientific principles. Goodness knows what the rejected creatures were like.

It was enjoyable enough as a one watch wonder, but no more than that. I regret my £30, silly me....

Note to producers: stick to the past in future, it's much more interesting. I know, I've been there.

(Oh Ok, the Rainbow squid was cool though).

[QUOTE=monty]No clue if there will be cephs, but I just found out discovery is doing a hypothetical-biology thing called "Alien Planet"

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/alienplanet/alienplanet.html[QUOTE]

I REALLY have mixed feelings about this one, mostly since this is based on the book Expedition: Being an Account of Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV by Wayne Douglas Barlowe. Its a great book, with a sad storyline about a terrible future for mankind and a ray of hope in the voyage to this other world.

I am a HUGE Barlowe fan, but I'm worried that Discover is going to take the "fiction" out of this sci-fi work and instead worry about the plausibility of these beasts versus the story behind this work.

Thanks for the link. I have to admit that I would like to see it.

John

30 pounds?? Phil, you got ripped! :shock:

Even with my problems with this miniseries it's kind of fun to watch - but that's because it was a birthday gift! I would not have bought it for myself, especially for that much.

30 pounds?? Phil, you got ripped! :shock:

Tell me about it! At the time I bought it I thought the programme was not going to be shown over here, so it was either that or not seeing it at all. Being dominated by cephs and being discussed in detail on these pages swung it for me at the time.

Since then it has been shown in an extended weekly 30min format on BBC2 and has been released on DVD in a box that has more features than the initial release. Typical. I'm not making that (expensive) mistake again.

Does anyone know if 'Dinosaur Planet' was any good? I'm reluctant to buy it as I have never seen it and really don't want to repeat the above mistake. On the other hand, it could be a minor classic..?!?