Animals in the Womb
‘Animals in the Womb’ aired on channel four on Thursday 21st December at 9pm. The lives of an Asian elephant, a dog and a dolphin were followed from conception to birth, with revolutionary ‘4D’ technology used to illustrate each stage with images of foetuses moving inside the womb.
Public appeal was obvious with plenty of cute pictures of baby animals waving, blinking and yawning at the audience. However, this wasn’t merely ‘soft science’ –there was a strong informative foundation behind the pink dolphins and waving puppies.
I was impressed by the depth, quality and scope of the information the programme provided, from embryology to evolution to behaviour, all delivered in ‘everyday’ terminology that the layman could understand. The programme kept the audience awake by switching between species, rather than just recounting the lifecycle of each in turn. Computer imaging was also used to good effect, bringing the science alive.
However, I felt that the length of the programme was slightly too long; lay audiences may loose interest after the first hour. It would also have been nice to see a human foetus for comparison of the different stages of development. This may have related the programme to the audience more closely.
Despite these criticisms, viewing ‘Animals in the womb’ was a refreshing and rewarding experience. The programme was informative, appealing and exciting – exactly the way science communication in the public sector should be!
2 comments:
wasn't there some controversey relating to the press released advertising this...? they sent out pictures of these "4d images" of animals in the womb and newspapers printed them as real photographs rather than fabricated illustrations.
I didn't realise that, but funnily enough I did find an old thread from a discussion forum while I was google searching the program which had somebody warning against the danger of not accurately explaining that these were 4D images and not photographs! I didn't know thst the press actually got picked up on it though.
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