For my first blog post, I thought I would initiate a continuing series (hopefully) in which I fact-check the claims made in the popular cartoon The Wildlife Thornberrys. I loved this show as a child (teenager, who am I kidding), and I have read that the creators tried to keep the show as accurate as possible. I will start with Season 1, Episode 1, and will eventually try to make it through all 5 seasons and the movie. For each claim, I have included the running time, who said it, whether it is true or false, and what evidence I have to back up my “rating,” which will only come from credible websites (always linked). With that said, let’s begin!
Season 1 Episode 1:
Flood Warning
Episode Summary (from Wikipedia):
| “The Thornberrys are in Africa near Mt. Kilimanjaro to film lions. Debbie pleads with her mom to let her drive the commvee while she films and Marianne reluctantly consents. Debbie loses control of the commvee and it falls down a muddy river bank. Before they can get it out a storm erupts and the commvee is washed away. That night while camping near the river Debbie goes off on foot in pursuit of the commvee while Eliza goes off in pursuit of her and Darwin and Donnie go off in pursuit of her. Soon all become prey to a lion and two lionesses. Eliza will have to outwit them…” |
Claim #1: Mt. Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest peak.
Time: 01:11
Speaker: Nigel
Rating: TRUE
Evidence: “Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa at 19,341 feet (5,895 meters), but it isn’t a mountain in a traditional sense. It is a giant stratovolcano that began forming about a million years ago and is composed of many layers of hardened volcanic ash, lava, pumice and tephra — fragmental material that is the fallout from a volcanic eruption.” – Kilimanjaro: Facts about Africa’s Highest Peak
Claim #2: The scientific name of the lion is Panthera leo
Time: 01:36
Speaker: Nigel
Rating: TRUE
Evidence: “The lion (Panthera leo) is the second-largest living cat after the tiger – with some males exceeding 250 kg (550 lb). Wild lions currently exist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia with an endangered remnant population in Gir Forest National Park in India, having disappeared from North Africa and Southwest Asia in historic times.” – Encyclopedia of Life – Lion
Claim #3: Lions can “take down” a buffalo with a “single bite” of their jaws.
Time: 01:45
Speaker: Nigel
Rating: FALSE
Evidence: This claim requires a closer look, as it really depends on our definition of “take down”; does this mean kill or physically take down to the ground? Lions are certainly large, powerful animals, and cat’s are known for their killing bite. However, while a lion might be able to kill smaller animals with a “single bite,” this is not the case for a water buffalo (Syncerus caffer), which can grow to nearly 2000 pounds (Animal Diversity Web). While it might be theoretically possible for a lion to take a buffalo down to the ground with a single bite to a leg, this is also unlikely, and clearly not the message Nigel intended to convey.
Claim #4: Female lions do most of the hunting.
Time: 09:56
Speaker: Eliza
Rating: TRUE
Evidence: “Lions are opportunist [sic] carnivores that usually hunt in groups; males hunt less frequently than do females, but males are stronger and can gain access to kills made by females (Bertram 1975a; Scheel and Packer 1991).” – Mammalian Species: Panthera leo
Claim #5: Lions sound like bears.
Time: 14:31
Speaker: n/a
Rating: FALSE
Evidence: This isn’t so much of a “claim” as an error! In this scene a lion is roaring in frustration as he chases Eliza into some thorns, but the sound they use is that of a Brown Bear (Ursus arctos), and not a lion. The first video plays some bear sounds, and the second, a lion roar.
Now, listen to this clip from the episode, and decide for yourself!
Claim #6: Female lions are the best hunters in the world.
Time: 15:00
Speaker: Eliza
Rating: FALSE
Evidence: “Serengeti research has shown that individual lions succeed in their hunting 17% of the time, whereas group hunts succeed 30% of the time. (Urban and West, 2002).” – Animal Diversity – Lions. This is in contrast to predators such as African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus), which can be successful up to 100% (!) of the time, but on average are successful in 44% of hunts (Hayward et al. 2006).
Claim #7: Chimpanzee runs on all fours.
Time: 18:43
Speaker: n/a
Rating: TRUE
Evidence: In this scene Darwin the Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is seen running into the bushes. Doing so, he is on all fours. This is how chimps run, and they do not typically walk on two feet, as he does in most of his scenes. “Chimpanzees are known as “knuckle walkers” or, more formally, quadrupeds. This means they walk on all fours, using their knuckles for support when they are on the ground and even when they are up in the trees. Chimpanzees have longer arms than legs, which makes walking on all fours easier.” – Jane Goodall Institute – Getting Around
http://tinyurl.com/m6xvr8o … yes I know this is a gorilla.
Claim #8: Beetles have pupils.
Time: 20:44
Speaker: n/a
Rating: FALSE
Evidence: Donnie attempts to catch a beetle, and the camera zooms in to show us its face. The beetle has clear pupils, but in reality, beetles have compound eyes, made up of thousands of tiny lenses.”The arthropod (e.g., insects, crustaceans) eye is built quite differently from the vertebrate eye (and mollusk eye).” – The Compound Eye
Claim #9: Peruvian fishermen invented a boat made of reeds called a “cabillito.”
Time: 21:22
Speaker: Nigel
Rating: TRUE
Evidence: “Centuries before the Spanish arrived and long before the Incas extended their empire from the mountaintops to the coast, fishermen here [Huanchaco, Peru] were building boats from the totora reed that grows along the shore.” – The New York Times
Claim #10: Nairobi is a 4 hour drive from Kilimanjaro.
Time: 21:22
Speaker: Nigel
Rating: TRUE
Evidence: Interestingly, it is indeed ~4 hours to get from the town south of Kilimanjaro, Moshi, to Nairobi, up in Kenya! – Google Maps
Well, that about wraps it up! Episode 2 will be next, but don’t expect it too soon.
All the best,
John
John P. Vanek 