Nature: Super Hummingbirds (2016)
Season 35, Episode 1
7/10
Fantastic Photography but Poor on Evolution
25 November 2016
This documentary gets a 10 for the photography and a 10 for the science that the scientists are shown conducting, but a big 0 for the frequent references to "design" or suggestions that the creatures are somehow deciding to adapt themselves to their environments in particular ways. This kind of casual misrepresentation of evolution does a profound disservice to one of the most powerful scientific ideas in the history of humankind. David Attenborough, by way of contrast, always gets this kind of thing right, referring to evolution as a process that operates blindly on creatures without conscious intent or goal. Many of the American produced (or dubbed) nature documentaries take the inaccurate approach of Super Hummingbirds, which is a travesty.

This is very persnickety of me, but I also did not care for the narrator, Patricia Clarkson. She had a whispery, rather precious delivery that I found very distracting.
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