By Jeff Pfeiffer
You have to hand it to Animal Planet. They can do “cute and cuddly” better than anyone else, with shows like Puppy Bowl, Growing Up … and Cats 101. But they do realize that the animal kingdom is vast and varied, so they also don’t shy away from the types of creatures that you will never see featured in “365 (fill in the blank) a Year” calendars, like the ones in these current and upcoming series:
Monsters Inside Me is a gruesome-sounding new series debuting June 30. The stars? Parasites! The show features true stories of people inhabited by hatching worm eggs and other nasties. The premiere episode, “Sleeper Cells,” follows the parasites that are just as nefarious as a terrorist sleeper cell. These are sneaky creatures that lie dormant in the body, sometimes for years, waiting for the right time to strike. And when they do, no body tissue or organ is safe from their appetite.
Night is an excellent ongoing Wednesday night series that plays on a couple of human fears — the dark, and the unexpected and sometimes deadly animals that come out during that time, from caimans and snakes to panthers.
The series Your Worst Animal Nightmares premieres May 27, and also airs on Wednesdays. It delivers what it promises, with truly nightmarish real-life tales of fatal and near-fatal human encounters with kayak-attacking sharks, decapitating crocodiles, toxic spiders and more. The focus of the six-part series is on the infamous animal attacks that have taken place over the past 50 years in Australia, which for some reason seems to have an unusual amount of highly deadly creatures living there on both land and in the sea. It’s very likely that the Australian Tourism Board is not involved with this frightening program.
River Monsters is a recent series continuing on Sundays. Host Jeremy Wade seeks out the world’s deadliest, largest and strangest freshwater fish in the world, some of which have attacked humans. In addition to the usual suspects like piranhas, Wade also encounters alligator gars, massive catfish and others. I can’t think of many fates worse than being eaten alive by a damn fish.
__________________________________
River Monsters: Credit: Animal Planet
Night: Credit: Gilles Mingason/Getty/Animal Planet
