Growing Up Safari. Out today. (****4/10)
Growing Up Safari is one of three DVDs released by Alliance Films on Tuesday August 19th. These DVDs are part of the Growing Up series from Animal Planet, a series that follows the development of young animals from infancy to the point where they are re-integrated with their adult populations. Growing Up Safari follows the story of young rhinos, hyenas, zebras and giraffes as they grow up. These four animals are certainly not as cute as those on the Growing Up Wildcats DVD. Rhinos are kind of cute, because as babies they’re just so strange looking. But hyenas have a bad rap simply because they’re pretty ugly creatures, baby zebras look exactly like adult zebras, only smaller, and baby giraffes are so gangly and awkward that it’s hard to consider them cute. It’s also hard to use the word “cute” to describe something that comes into the world seven feet tall.
Also ruining the “cuteness” factor for the giraffe - the fact that after it’s unceremonious introduction to the earth - a drop of ten feet to the ground - it is then covered, head to toe, in a life-giving but certainly disgusting waterfall that consists of like sixty gallons of giraffe afterbirth. There was something about seeing this that I found…disconcerting. As in all the other Growing Up DVDs, we see death, birth and disasters befall these tiny animals, and at times the series can really tug at the heart strings, as when we see the caregiver of a young hyena named Homer have to deal with the loss of his young charge. But again, I watch these episodes feeling like I’m not really learning much about the animals themselves, but more that I am learning about the people who raise them. Which is still interesting, but not as interesting as the animals are.