Human Planet, Episodes 3 and 4

Episode 3 - Arctic
This episode is about tribes living up on the arctic circle. There aren't many people living up there, so we spend a lot of time shuttling between two tribes and we even make a pit-stop in decadent modern society where northern Manitobans keep a neighborhood watch against polar bears. As a damning indication of their wimpy modernity, they do not kill the bears, but merely scoop them up and deposit them a few kilometers away, as you might do with a troublesome raccoon. Degenerates. Anyway, back in real rugged nature, natives talk about their beloved sledge dogs and herd reindeer. The sledge dogs are adorable and lovely and are also apparently the legacy of one native dude to his family. In another land (greenland) they hunt Auks with little butterfly nets. The camera indistinctly shows a native man doing something deft with his fingers to render the birds flightless. I would have liked to see if he was killing them outright or perhaps merely tearing off a wing. Anyway these Auks are made into a fermented meat gum which apparently tastes like very strong Gorgonzola. I'd love a piece. We also see the sledge-dog-owners hunting narwhal which is high in vitamin C. This gives us a rousing story of the camera-crew being rescued from an ice floe after the ice-peninsula they were on started drifting away. Human superpower: the ability to claim to enjoy foul, fermented bird-meat.

Episode 4 - Jungle
We wander the jungles of Africa and South America, watching kids eat horrifying tarantulas. Protein is scarce here, not vitamin C, so we must eat what insectoid decomposers we can find here on the forest floor. We stop by a tribe of folks who have gone pet-crazy, adopting pigs, lizards, and monkeys as pets and pseudo-children. This leads us to the bizarre sight of a woman breastfeeding a baby monkey which is far more hard-core than most American naturalists, I suppose. Anyway, we're then off to the tribes which hunt the birds of paradise, their beautiful feathers adorning the headdresses of important men. Another male beauty display is shown. We then very briefly visit a tribe who takes their music from the forest. It sounds enchanting and wonderful. I wish we'd spent more time there, but we are off to an even better prize: a treehouse built 40 feet up. We see the construction of the house and we visit a bit with the natives who built it. This episode had a lot of fun treasures (after the horrifying intro of lusty spider-devouring) and also contains a rare acknowledgement that the native peoples are perhaps a bit mean to animals (but not very, we are assured.) Human superpower: crazy tree-climbing by all involved, one time while being industriously stung by bees.