I have watched this many times. It evokes raw emotion from the viewer. You are exposed to the brutality of life in wild Africa. The commentary is powerful and submerges you into a world where survival of the fittest is a fact of life. Anyone who is fascinated by the apex predators of the wild will enjoy this. The closing scene is amazing and makes my heart pound every time I watch it. Be warned there are some very disturbing scenes contained in this documentary. So if you , like myself enjoy watching wildlife documentaries with your children, this may be inappropriate for younger kids. It is very emotionally charged. Kudos to National geographic for yet another masterpiece. The images, commentary, and music come together to submerge the viewer in a wild world.
National Geographic Specials (TV Series)
Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas (1992)
User Reviews
Review this title4 Reviews
Are animals capable of hate and love? Or are we emotionally alone?
Johntechwriter15 July 2022
This haunting 1992 documentary about the never-ending struggle between Africa's two apex predators might be too violent for today's TV programmers, but the violence has a purpose and its protagonists represent the most vile (in humans' judgment) and the most noble (ditto) of African carnivores. Another thing we learn from this documentary: how good National Geographic was in earlier days. You can have your NatGeo.
The setting (if memory serves) is a large game preserve in Botswana. This part of it is the hunting domain of a large pride of lions. But even Africa's most powerful predator has enemies, and for the lions it is a clan of hyenas that raids its kills and if they find a lion wounded or alone, will tear it to pieces.
Both highly intelligent, their lives revolve around whose strategy works best in getting food. The lions tend to do the actual killing, but the hyenas stalk them and when they can, get away with as much of the kill as they can before the rest of the pride shows up and scares them off. In this cat-and-mouse existence there are skirmishes and occasionally outright battles.
The entire film is shot at night, the preferred hunting time of both species. The film makers go back and forth between the communities, identifying important individuals, like the huge male who rules the pride, or an equally fearless female who governs her matriarchal society of hyenas and even whose pups are shown deference by others.
The scientists who study animals have by tradition been scornful about attempts to interpret the actions their subjects as indicative of their having thoughts and emotions like ours. Anthropomorphism, they call it. This mindset reminds me of, as a boy when fishing with my father, I'd notice the worm squirm as I baited my hook. "I'm hurting it!" I'd cry, but my dad would say no, they can't feel pain. And he was a medical doctor.
Assigning feelings, personalities, relationships, what have you, to animals is much easier to do now because on YouTube we see uploads daily that illustrate all these feelings and relationships are grounded in reality. Whether it's a fisherman saving a bear cub from drowning and its mother thanking him, or an orca or dolphin saving a drowning fisherman, which has been documented repeatedly - or as in a recent YouTube documentary a female snorkeler, a scientist used to working with big fish, was saved by an orca that inserted itself between her and a huge tiger shark that had begun its attack. Inconvenient though it may be to those who raise animals for food, or those whose belief systems place humanity on a plane no other creature could reach, or even aspire to - nevertheless, it's just a fact that we have far more in common than we thought. Another example: it's now known that horses, and even cattle, form deep friendships and mourn when separated from their pals.
Audiences back in the early 90s were privy to very little of this, and the anthropomorphism dogma ruled American and European cultures. (The first peoples knew about animal relationships all along.) The story that this beautifully written and narrated (by Powers Booth) film conveys is on several levels but the theme is consistent: Animals have feelings and complex relationships, and until we acknowledge that, we will not be capable of knowing ourselves. Nor after seeing this can we conveniently label lions to be the good guys and the hyenas to be the villains. The world of tooth and claw, where life can go on only by consuming other life, where there is no mercy for the injured, is troublingly like our own. Not so long ago it was exactly like our own. But now that we are civilized (ha ha), we think we can set ourselves above our fellow apex predators. Until, that is, we watch this film. Lions, hyenas, us . . . We're all cut from the same cloth with the exception that our intelligence gives us more tools and choices. Let us hope we can learn to use them more wisely in the future than we did in the past.
The setting (if memory serves) is a large game preserve in Botswana. This part of it is the hunting domain of a large pride of lions. But even Africa's most powerful predator has enemies, and for the lions it is a clan of hyenas that raids its kills and if they find a lion wounded or alone, will tear it to pieces.
Both highly intelligent, their lives revolve around whose strategy works best in getting food. The lions tend to do the actual killing, but the hyenas stalk them and when they can, get away with as much of the kill as they can before the rest of the pride shows up and scares them off. In this cat-and-mouse existence there are skirmishes and occasionally outright battles.
The entire film is shot at night, the preferred hunting time of both species. The film makers go back and forth between the communities, identifying important individuals, like the huge male who rules the pride, or an equally fearless female who governs her matriarchal society of hyenas and even whose pups are shown deference by others.
The scientists who study animals have by tradition been scornful about attempts to interpret the actions their subjects as indicative of their having thoughts and emotions like ours. Anthropomorphism, they call it. This mindset reminds me of, as a boy when fishing with my father, I'd notice the worm squirm as I baited my hook. "I'm hurting it!" I'd cry, but my dad would say no, they can't feel pain. And he was a medical doctor.
Assigning feelings, personalities, relationships, what have you, to animals is much easier to do now because on YouTube we see uploads daily that illustrate all these feelings and relationships are grounded in reality. Whether it's a fisherman saving a bear cub from drowning and its mother thanking him, or an orca or dolphin saving a drowning fisherman, which has been documented repeatedly - or as in a recent YouTube documentary a female snorkeler, a scientist used to working with big fish, was saved by an orca that inserted itself between her and a huge tiger shark that had begun its attack. Inconvenient though it may be to those who raise animals for food, or those whose belief systems place humanity on a plane no other creature could reach, or even aspire to - nevertheless, it's just a fact that we have far more in common than we thought. Another example: it's now known that horses, and even cattle, form deep friendships and mourn when separated from their pals.
Audiences back in the early 90s were privy to very little of this, and the anthropomorphism dogma ruled American and European cultures. (The first peoples knew about animal relationships all along.) The story that this beautifully written and narrated (by Powers Booth) film conveys is on several levels but the theme is consistent: Animals have feelings and complex relationships, and until we acknowledge that, we will not be capable of knowing ourselves. Nor after seeing this can we conveniently label lions to be the good guys and the hyenas to be the villains. The world of tooth and claw, where life can go on only by consuming other life, where there is no mercy for the injured, is troublingly like our own. Not so long ago it was exactly like our own. But now that we are civilized (ha ha), we think we can set ourselves above our fellow apex predators. Until, that is, we watch this film. Lions, hyenas, us . . . We're all cut from the same cloth with the exception that our intelligence gives us more tools and choices. Let us hope we can learn to use them more wisely in the future than we did in the past.
Epic wildlife documentary
paul-975-64457617 April 2020
The best one-off wildlife documentary I have ever seen.
It watches like an epic movie, yet this is real, making the disturbing scenes even more upsetting and therefore evoking emotions you wouldn't have thought possible from a documentary.
A gripping epic tale of true enemies, the ending is some of the most dramatic filmography I've witnessed surpassing even the best Hollywood productions.
If only a digital copy was available. If National Geographic are reading this, please consider a remaster.
It watches like an epic movie, yet this is real, making the disturbing scenes even more upsetting and therefore evoking emotions you wouldn't have thought possible from a documentary.
A gripping epic tale of true enemies, the ending is some of the most dramatic filmography I've witnessed surpassing even the best Hollywood productions.
If only a digital copy was available. If National Geographic are reading this, please consider a remaster.
He who greets with Fire!
hamilt-3762931 May 2020
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