Top 10 Biggest Beasts Ever

Synopsis: The documentary counts down the top ten biggest beasts in Earth's history from prominent animal groups.
Viewed on: Youtube

Here we have another program put out by National Geographic. They keep delivering the goods in terms of entertainment.and man did this one deliver. I'm a sucker for top ten lists, so this doc was a must watch for myself. The basic premise of the doc is that besides the obvious countdown element, the creatures involved would be the biggest icons of their species or animal family tree. The reason being is if we had just the biggest animals ever, they would all probably just be whales. Another disclaimer for the terms of the "biggest" beast, the contest will be determined by measuring length.

If you're looking for a doc that's thoroughly entertaining this is it. The animation effects were fantastic. They was a fair bit of them and varied. This doc being a top ten list allows itself to be stacked with multiple scientist interviews with showcasing of some fossils which is always great to see. There was even a scene where a scientist goes out to the field to show you where baby Megalodon teeth are found in Panama. Its also very refreshing to see the list go through giant animals of different species like mammals, insects, reptiles and so on which kept the program engaging enough to stay watching.

There is also much here in terms of education. Every creature on the top ten brings up an interesting question regarding how they got so big, ate, moved, or how they attacked prey. For example, with the Griffinfly, a prehistoric giant insect, the question of how it got so big was solved by researchers because they were able to determine that the Earth was much warmer back then and contained different amounts of oxygen. These scenes help teach fundamental aspects to why these creatures got so big.

Now focusing on the bad, there really isn't all that much to say. Some of the animation scenes, like the Titanoboa segment, are recycled from other docs which I didn't like but this top ten documentary was able to add additional educational content that those other docs didn't have so I'll let it slide. Besides that this is a long doc, and about an hour and half is a serious investment of watching for a popular science doc. As I love this subject matter, the running time didn't bother me but I can say that a few scenes seem to drag after a while and it could bore the average viewer.

I really couldn't go into much more detail in this review without spoiling the countdown. But as I already mentioned there's plenty of entertainment value is this program so check it out.

My Score: Tyrannosaurus Recs