Walking With Monsters (2005) Accuracy Review | Dino Documentaries RANKED #10 

Although not perfect in accuracy, it really put the spotlight on the Paleozoic, loved the strange and alien like atmosphere it gave and soundtrack was amazing. Definitely need more Paleozoic documentarys.

One issue I have with WwM is that they portray anomalocaris as armored, inparticular with a pretty goofy metal clang sound effect. They were mostly soft boddied, which is the reason the animal had to be puzzled together.

I remember first watching this documentary as a kid. I spent hours searching for it online. I'm glad 7 year old me got to see a Dimetrodon gore a baby Edaphosaurus. Such educational memories.

The "you know how catgirls like to lick themselves?" hit me like a fucking truck

If anything the comparison to crocodiles was most likely to do a “Wildebeest river crossing with crocodiles” scene with them. They had to use puppets because animating water, no matter how muddy, is a headache. Another thing about the “walking with” series is how much dander relying on modern animals behaviours for some of the drama in the series like dimetrodon being based more on Komodo dragons with the cannibalism and the hatred of faeces. Also the original paper for the Dimetrodon was actually was actually misinterpreted I was actually meant to be about the fact that the animals ended up having a sails broken and scarred during fights, but by the time it was clarified, there was a massive wave of artwork of a new take on a paleo-staple.

A shame that this third series didn’t get to have 6 full episodes like previously.

I absolutely love Dimetrodon. Such a fascinating creature. I also have a nostalgic connection to it: One of my favorite toys growing up was a Jurassic Park Dimetrodon action figure, which is still proudly on display in my room nearly 30 years later. As much as *Jurassic World: Dominion* got wrong, I actually squealed with glee to see a pack of Dimetrodon make an appearance.

The Spider was the creepiest and I can’t even look at it even though it’s not really a spider anymore but still

15:45 anomalocaris is also double its actual size here, they say it was 2 metres long, when in reality it was only 1 metre.

I love how they took "sea scorpion" literally and turned it into a flat-out scorpion that lives in the ocean.

Fun fact: mesothelae actually exists, it’s a suborder of spider, but most are extinct. Also I think they called the big spider mesothelae because during production they found out it was a eurypterid, but it was too far into production to change so they went with mesothelae

Yeah WWM definitely deserve this ranking,cause it's just so great,and reasonable accurate,and this was a great RRW video

I think you should have discussed that the documentary says that Scutosaurus, an Anapsid, is distantly related to turtles. This was based on an idea that turtles are Anapsids, amniotes with zero holes behind their eyes, and this is seen in turtle skulls. However it's now been closely proven, through genetic studies, that Turtles are actually Diapsids, and that they evolved these features independently from Anapsids, meaning that Scutosaurus wasn't related to turtles. Now to be fair, this is not entirely proven since we still don't know a lot about how turtles evolved. Plus their placement in the reptile tree is an absolute taxonomic mess that really deserves its own entire video.

That was such an ominous conclusion but also a pretty apt descriptor... That said, there is at least _Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure_ to look forward to before getting to the true dark ages, assuming you're covering it.

When you mentioned that hairs were found in the poop of gorgonopsids my immediate thought was "Ass hair!"

walking with monsters is also one of my favorite shows. And most of the problem you pointed out, I also noticed

The Permian period is easily my favorite part of this documentary, mainly because it did a great job of portraying the bleakness of the world the animals lived in and foreshadowed the inevitable doom of the Permian extinction. It's also helped a lot by the eerie, haunting music, further driving home how absolutely screwed the animals are. It's really tragic and unsettling, to say the least.

Random thought, since a lot of ancient creatures live in a time with higher oxygen levels. If we were to clone any of them in today’s time would they be able to survive with their same genetics? Or would they suffocate/be stunted in Growth

You could also call them Proto-Mammals for their reptile like features, but in reality they would give rise to mammalia

This documentary was fantastic. When I saw the giant scorpion "break" the camera lens (yes I know it's fake), I was hooked. That was such a clever touch. I've watched this documentary at least 6 times

I love your accuracy reviews, I learn so much! Thanks dude for all the awesome videos.

Really enjoyed this video. I remember watching the whole trillogy (Walking with Monsters, Walking with Dinos and Walking with Beasts, correct me if there are more, cuz I don't remember) when I was a kid, and it's what really got me hooked into this whole "ancient animal" kinda shit. Really glad to see that they were rather accurate to some degree, even though they're very old!

Thank you for talking about this one, this was essentially all I had as a kid, so it's nice to see others talk about it.

Personal favorite of the walking with series, happy to see how well it hold up, can't wait till you get to prehistoric park.

Dude, your SO underrated! And your dino docu rank series could be perfect for fact checking when it comes to creating things dino related!

What's your favourite creature in this amazing series? For me, Dimetrodon and Inostrancevia are tied. The way they made them is amazing.

I still use the term “mammal-like reptile” and refer to basal synapsids as reptiles. The original use of the term “reptile” was to reference any of the more basal amniotes that were neither mammals nor birds. Granted, the term is paraphyletic that way, but so is “fish,” and nobody is complaining about that. And don’t we already have Sauropsida and Diapsida to define the crown-group reptile clade?

Re: function of dimetrodon sails? I think it's important to remember that evolution will usually use one feature for multiple purposes. Are claws for climbing, marking territory, digging, agility, injuring prey, restraining prey, tearing open kills, defense, holding on during mating, or intraspecific conflict? The answer could be any combination in any proportion. So too with sails. If evolution gives them a feature like this for heat management, you can only get what is gonna put on that giant billboard it just gave itself. Probably something to do with reproduction.

You should really really watch Walking with Cavemen. I know it's technically not creature based anymore but personally I feel like it's the best documentary of them information wise. Also the acting of the respective people and cinematography is quite nice

I can’t wait for dinosaur planet that was one of my favorite documentaries growing up in the late 2000’s-early 2010’s

This was definitely my favorite of the series. It didn't get everything right, and there were some mildly annoying bits when they rushed through too much stuff to fit it all into only a few episodes. But it's the only thing I've found that focuses on the Paleozoic animals, and they've always been my favorites because they're so alien to us, and because they're where everything began. It's great to see a documentary on them, and even a _relatively_ accurate one at that.

I used to have the discovery channel version on DVD it was called before the dinosaurs and then I didn’t know that there was a BBC version and the BBC version is obviously much better but no matter how in accurate it is I still love the show

12:57 you absolutely should have put this in outdated. Anything that is not settled before production BEGINS or changes after production has started should fall into outdated rather than wrong. If you expect shows to pivot and change over every new development in science few documentaries would ever be finished and those that were would be more expensive then they needed to be.

i love that at 2:59 he says cat girls instead of just cat, truly a fellow man of culture.

Nice! Monsters Resurrected is going to be... fun.

aww no coverage of cavemen, for shame it's actually an under appreciated documentary

9:13 Here's your explanation, wise guy! I paid the suckas off, couldn't have them portraying my cousin Jaekelopterus as the biggest and best instead of me!

Arthropods definitely benefit from high partial pressure of oxygen but nowhere near to the extent often assumed. Even large modern day insects can comfortably fly at oxygen levels where humans would be dead and birds would drop out of the sky. The coraqllary here is that the insect size limit is somewhat *insensitive* to oxygen concentration. There are other reasons to think this is the case. Many modern insects breath via a complicated mix of ram ventilation, simple gas diffusion, and abdomanal pumping, and more (unlike spiders, which have limited or no active breathing mechanism but also are more reliant on pumping hemolymph around to oxygenate tissues). Additionally, arthropods seem to be perfectly capable of reaching Carboniferous sizes today, given Carboniferous levels of competition from vertabrates. The coconut crab is easily bigger than any Carboniferous insect or arachnid shown and second only to the enormous arthropleura, something that was probably a significantly less active animal than coconut crabs. Oxygen probably played a role in making it so that these animals didn't have to spend as much effort on breathing to sustain their metabolism but even large modern dragonflies can continue to fly at pretty low oxygen levels. We also see fossil evidence of big insects at times when oxygen levels are below or at modern levels, when if the oxygen determinist position were correct, we would see oxygen depletion necessarily lead to mass extinction of every moderately sized insect species. Think about if we approached other questions this way? Why were there really big Saurischian dinosaurs in the mesozoic and really small placental mammals while it's the opposite today? Certainly many environmental factors could account for this but one very important factor is just going to be what group of animals was poised to take given niche. Bugs were there first and had a lot of advantages. That's what let them take control of the Carboniferous so effectively. Not merely the oxygen levels.

Out of the Walking With series, Walking with Monsters was my favorite. I watched it numerous times when I was younger, and learning about the creatures that lived before the dinosaurs fascinated me.

This is easily the best of the walking with trilogy

I'd rank WWM lower than WWD, the narration was too sensationalistic for my liking especially in the first episode when they pushed the "vertebrates vs. arthropods" angle (I found the show to be less sensationalistic when they dropped the "vertebrates vs. arthropods" angle), Anomalocaris being already known to be not arthropods at the time, the very inaccurate evolution segments, the slapping modern animal behavior on prehistoric life is at its worst in WWM (Dimetrodon=Komodo dragons, really?), amongst others (the only evidence Brontoscorpio was aquatic as depicted in WWM is that it may have been too big to molt on land , ironically). Though in fairness to the Anomalocaris thing, it's because the one shown in the series is based on "Anomalocaris" saron (now known as Houcaris).

Dinosaur documentaries: *exist and showing the real world of the past and making it accurate as possible* The Jurassic world trilogy and Colin Trevorrow: I'm about to end this whole scientifically Accurate's career

The finale to the Walking with Trilogy, man do I remember when this came out. I can still recall watching this live on TV, good times. Personally, not as good as the last two but still a solid documentary and I agree with your grade good sir. Another job well done Red Raptor Writes, keep up your informative content, stay safe and have a great day.

I remember watching this documentary a lot as a kid. I freaking loved it

A fun little detail is how they accurately portray hynerpeton with 7 digits on its limbs but say nothing about it

I loved Planet Dinosaur as a kid, I don’t know what your gonna do with it but I’m excited

I adored this entire trilogy as a kid. I know it’s outdated now, but I’ve been meaning to rewatch just for the cool factor

REAL Spider-Man movies? Sam Raimi himself said the MCU films are better and more accurate. Nostalgia isn’t everything.

Thank you for finally making this here,have a cookie🍪

12:37 I thought the spider was doing something else to the lizard...

for your next Dino Documentaries RANKED Could you do Clash Of The Dinosaurs Please?

I've been waiting for this one

The gorgonopsid is one of my fav prehistoric animals. It’s so interesting in appearance

I'd love to see you do walking with Cavemen, it was honestly cool

This will forever be one of my favorite documentaries

We need planet dinosaur, The world needs it. (Also second)

Interesting review. I also am a fan of this mini-series, but I think it could have been a little bit better at the time.

The fact I watched this before walking with dinosaurs is nostalgic

I grew up with this as my intro to Dinosaurs as a whole and I have heavy nostalgia for this series and its my personal favorite even though WWB is more accurate. (also the ending gives me chills lol)

wait, the big sail lizards aren't lizards but early mammals??? dang the toys had me fooled

paleozoic aka underated

3:38 That Dimetrodon looks so adorable. Tell Me You don't wanna Hug it

You'll eventually review Prehistoric Park, right? It may not be part of the "Trilogy of Life" but some still consider it a spin-off like Sea Monsters, Chased by Dinosaurs & Ballad of Big Al?

The fact that you skipped cats entirely and went straight to cat girls licking themselves is what just made me subscribe. I feel like it's important to make sure you understand it was specifically that.

I watched this when I was like five and the sea scorpions gave me nightmares for years

Probably my first introduction into the nightmare that is Arthroplura and the model used looked amazing

I was hoping for 6 episodes, but I think it was really hard to get 30 minute episodes in the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian

Please review The Mammoth - Titan of the Ice Age for the list. I only made it about 10 minutes in, because they had what they called saber-toothed tigers hunting mammoths in South Korea. Not only does that mean they had smilodon hunting the completely wrong prey in a place they never lived, the cats shown were very clearly NOT smilodon. They had tails as long as a lion's FFS!

This show and Primeval made gorgonopsid a GOAT

I think that the evolution transition things aren't supposed to be literal, and it just shows that these types of creatures evolved into what they became, if that makes any sense. So I dont think they were saying that some creates directly evolved into this or that.

You say that this documentary series made the animals behave in a more natural way. This is my basic objection, it didn’t portray them behaving in a natural way. they just transported African Savannah characteristics to the Paleozoic. Those animals were cold blooded. Cold blooded animals on land tend not to be as active, and when they are, they are for brief moments. Others can be active, but they are most likely either aquatic or insects. Also, the style of fights, crazy vocalizations and things like that are principles from a few highly competitive modern ecosystems with energy hungry endotherms. those vocalizations were really out of place. Also, stem mammals wearn’t reptiles, they chosen an actual reptile to represent the ancestor of mammals, Hynerpeton couldn’t probably raise itself up and Arthropleura was much slower. The end of the Permian looks too much like the Savannah in the dry season to discount. The same issues of course accompany walking with dinosaurs, but in the Paleozoic they are much more evident. no wonder why people view those animals as monsters, instead of what they really wear. No wonder also why people find reptiles and ectothermic animals in general stupid and boring, if they are represented in media just like large placental mammals in psychology and behavior. Then when they see them in real life, they get disappointed. It could be a nice educational opportunity to showcase how those animals really lived and still live today, but it got derailed. Also, what is this about vertebrates defeating invertebrates all the time?Invertebrates still eat vertebrates today. We can see patterns of changes in dominance of life forms only in retrospect. At any particular snapshot of time, they are just a pool of various branches of life coexisting.

It should've ended with a re mastered version of the opening ceolophisis shot from WWD to wrap it up with a nice bow

I live about 40 mins away from the museum that has the Megarachne fossil

What is that documentary called where the spino is killing those dinosaurs!?!? I’ve been looking for that for ages. 6:45

10:11 the way he says it is so hilarious to me and I don’t know why

Would one of those "few others that preceeded Haikuicthys" be Pikaia?

dis is my first documentary yeah

Infamous truly needs a remaster and you should review 'Walking With Cave Men'

The past is hard to understand since a lot of the evidence is long gone by this point.

This paleozoic documentary was my childhood i watched it when i was six. Good memorys

5:11 That's me! I was younger then, of course, but I'd like to think I still look good!

I think more people should check out 'Sea Rex : a prehistoric adventure'. It's highly underrated I M O

5:19 just like How Honey Badgers aren't actually Badgers, or Snow Leopards that aren't actually Leopards or Shoebill Storks that aren't actually Storks

Between the Amphibians and Lizards, should be a toad like amphibians where the adults live on land and the babies live in the water to which the Walking With Monsters skipped in away, they went from amphibians to Lizards cutting out the middle man in a manner of speaking.

10:32 It would have made more sense if they said is was archaeothyris (a basal synapsid) instead of petrolacosaurus (a basal diapsid reptile).

I respect your opinion on Walking with Cavemen.

I loved watch this when I was young

I need to mention that, an even earlier creature than Hylonomus is suspected to be the earliest fossil of of an amniote/reptile, Cassineria, although its status is still in dispute.

Perhaps there was a fossil of howelli devour the corpse of a larger predator, and because of their similarities they were mistaken for a mother with its children.

12:18 Five year old me when I saw that spider kill the poor lizard

Dinosaur revolution and Monsters Resurrected will be kickers to be sure.

I was pretty bummed to find out Megarachnia wasn't a giant spider.

actually i loved this one way more than the other two . At one point you get tired of always seeing dinosaurs documenteries

Can’t wait for you to do March of the dinosaurs with scar the edmontosaurus and patch the “troodon

Loved this documentary as a kid

About that Archosaurs problem, it’s not a problem. They said “Crocodilians”, not “archosaurs”, so no, it’s not a problem, because it’s correct.

The dimetrodon spines protruding out of the sail is inaccurate It has proven to be false The dimetrodon had fully covered sails

This documentary made appreciate the Paleozoic so much more

Why did Dino docs go downhill from here, what changed?

I for one am glad that our knowledge of the past keeps evolving and getting clearer. If it wasn't for people like the BBC taking the time to make movies about the past our vision of the past would be only from books with little thought given to what reality was actually like.