Original subtitles

Hello there.

I'm Ryan Reynolds.

Yeah, hmm.

That Ryan Reynolds.

I'm a film actor,

occasionally I dabble in television

and other industries.

I'm also a father.

But I'm ready to move on from all of that crap.

So what's next?

Wildlife, that's what.

Nope, not these blowhards.

They don't need my help.

I'm here for these guys.

Nature's benchwarmers.

I'm talking grade-A freaks

and their freakin' bizarre, weird, freakshow lives.

Get ready for the Underdogs.

♪ I wanna be your underdog ♪

These guys are the grossest, weirdest...

♪ I'm not number one, but I'm second to none ♪

...the most unlikely stars in the great movie of life.

♪ Heroes are overrated when you are the outlaw ♪

Now it's their time to shine.

♪ Cuz I wanna be your underdog ♪

Wherever there is blatant mischief,

wherever there is abject cowardice,

wherever there is unbearable sexual tension...

that's where you'll find the underdogs.

You tell 'em, Green Day.

♪ I'm not a loser ♪

♪ I'm not a loser ♪

♪ I wanna be your underdog ♪

I'm Ryan Reynolds.

♪ I wanna be your underdog ♪

And I endorse these weirdoes.

Wow.

The miracle of birth.

The sound design is a bit much. Oof.

Can't imagine what the closed-captioning

would be on this.

For the youngster, this is the start

of a life of limitless possibility.

And for the parent, the formation of a bond

more powerful than any force on--

Wait, wha--? Where's she going?

N-n-n-no!

Where is she going?

Don't worry. She's coming back.

I'm pretty sure.

I have no i--she's probably not coming back.

But I'm hopeful.

I'm not hopeful.

But before you judge, being a parent is super hard.

Suddenly you're responsible for a tiny, helpless life-form,

and it's frankly terrifying.

If you're searching for a guide on how to do it right,

look no further than Mother Nature's underdogs.

Because no matter how terrible you are,

you can't be as bad as them.

The first challenge for parents is finding a suitable nursery,

and these barnacle geese are willing to travel a long way

to find the perfect spot.

As a new parent,

people always tell you to follow your instincts.

And instinct has led these guys here, to Greenland.

Sure, it's a barren land of rocks, ice and darkness.

But geese have been coming here to raise kids

for thousands of years.

It worked for their parents,

so Larry and Joan are gonna give it a go.

Larry has found them an awesome nest site.

Just out of reach of predators.

And the view?

Well, that's to die for.

There's really just one tiny thing.

Minuscule, really.

Larry's nest,

where his tiny, flightless chicks will be born...

...is approximately 800 feet off the ground.

Oh, and there's one other thing.

It's hardly worth mentioning.

There is a risk of the occasional

avalanche/flood combo.

It's a flavalanche, if you will.

At this point, some parents might question

their choice of home.

But not these guys!

They've laid their four precious eggs

right on top of this razor-sharp precipice.

Larry!

Classic first-time parent.

♪ You've got to accentuate the positive ♪

But instinct told him to find the highest spot for his nest.

And instinct can never be wrong.

Right?

♪ Don't mess with Mr. In-Between ♪

So, your nursery is prepared, and the baby will soon be here.

It's a great time to start your search for suitable childcare.

You just gotta be careful who you choose to babysit.

Welcome to Penang, Malaysia.

These reprobates are a troop of dusky langurs.

They left the jungles behind and moved into the city.

But you know what they say,

you can take an animal out of the wild,

but you can't take the wild out of the animal.

But not everybody's misbehaving.

This first-time mother has put aside her days of hedonism

to focus on her newborn.

Oh, oh, and before you ask,

she did not get overly friendly with an orangutan;

all baby langurs are orange for the first few months.

Now the time has come to introduce her precious infant

to the rest of the family.

There's one thing that these guys like

more than all-out anarchy.

It's babies.

♪ Crazy ♪

♪ I'm crazy for feeling so lonely ♪

You know the feeling when all your relatives

wanna come around and hold the baby

with their unwashed, germy hands?

Well, if you think you got it bad,

just be grateful you're not a langur.

♪ Crazy for tryin' ♪

'Cause when I say they love babies,

I mean they really love babies.

Like obsessed.

♪ ...for loving you ♪

♪ ...for loving you ♪

Just baby, baby, baby. All the time, baby.

Baby-grabbing maniacs.

When they get a whiff of that new baby smell,

mom's got zero chance of keeping a hold of him.

Uh, they know to support the head, right?

While most parents step in

when an irresponsible horde of relatives

starts manhandling their newborn,

this mom is having something of an epiphany.

Learning a lesson every new parent must:

it's okay to take a little time for yourself.

I'm talking to me right now, not you.

Even when that means passing

your precious little nugget off to grandma.

Hey, grammy!

She may be a little much,

and thinks she knows best all the time.

But free childcare is, in fact, free childcare,

so, whatever gets mom a little me time, right?

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, grandma passes him to... I think that's Uncle Mike.

Didn't know he was out on parole.

And Uncle Mike passes him to whoever that is.

Doesn't seem totally trustworthy.

Probably on a watchlist.

But all mom sees is the chance for some sweet, sweet freedom.

But then, whoever that is crosses a line.

When I say crosses a line,

I mean literally carries the baby

across a high-voltage power line.

I mean, what the

is natural selection doing all day?

Right?

And mom decides that's enough family bonding for today.

And goes to get her baby back.

For langurs, it takes a village to raise kids.

But every parent has their limit.

Boundaries, Uncle Mike.

Boundaries.

So, you've got the nursery

and the childcare sorted, that's great!

But kids are expensive.

So unless you've got a very old, very rich relative

about to kick the bucket,

you're gonna need a plan on how to pay for it all.

In order to manage a home efficiently,

many a housewife keeps track of the family's money

and plan its spending and saving.

You mean a budget?

Sounds impressive.

You know who is excellent

at balancing the books?

Harvest mice.

Yeah, not my first guess either. Not my 50th.

Mrs. Ticklemouse here has got eight babies,

hidden away in her cozy nest of grass.

And she knows exactly how much she needs to gather

to make sure they're warm and well fed.

Oh, jeez!

Oh, National Geographic, you little vixen,

that scared the...

Well, don't worry, she's fine.

She's gonna get up any second now.

You see, there, she's moving.

Oh, I get it, it was a misdirect.

R.I.P.

Meet the real experts at accounting,

Mr. and Mrs. Burying Beetle,

plus their entourage of hitchhiking mites,

who aren't in this section

but are too gross not to acknowledge.

♪ In the cool of the evening ♪

♪ When everything is gettin' kind of groovy ♪

Right now, I'm afraid to say

that they're doing the no-pants dance on Mrs. Ticklemouse.

Wait.

National Geographic, you guys devoted a whole channel

to Mother Nature, and it's just absolutely disgusting.

Mmm.

And like nature's nastiest undertakers,

having made sweet, sweet love on the corpse,

they then bury it.

Because... gross.

And why do they do this?

Because the body of Mrs. T will provide all the resources

their growing family needs to support itself,

if they budget properly.

Mrs. Beetle lays the exact number of eggs

that they think the corpse can sustain.

And three days later, they hatch,

into these adorable bundles of joy.

Mom and dad get to work feeding them,

by--mmh--regurgitating Miss--huh--

Mrs. Ticklemouse

directly into... into their mouths.

I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, I'm a big boy.

A little heads up would have been nice.

I don't really see any terrible parenting here.

I see attentive parents, plenty of food,

lots of skin-to-skin contact,

you know, this is textbook stuff.

I mean, you don't throw rocks from glass houses.

But there's a problem.

These little tikes have gotten greedy.

There's only so much of Mrs. Ticklemouse's fetid corpse

being masticated and then regurgitated

into your child's welcoming mouth to go around.

Luckily mom and dad have a way to get the budget

back on track.

And I'm afraid to say,

well, it's eating their own children.

Starting with the greedy ones.

Which weirdly doesn't bother me that much,

I don't know why that one... mm-mm.

If it seems extreme,

that's because it, well, it's, it is, it's, it's extreme.

But with one less mouth to feed,

the other kids have a better chance at survival.

And their parents might even be able to afford college.

Does it count as good parenting?

I'll let you decide.

So how's Larry facing up to the prospect

of first-time fatherhood?

He's literally crapping himself.

It's happened to many a new father.

Fortunately, Joan is a natural.

She's been sitting on their clutch of four eggs

for 10 days now,

lovingly turning them every hour,

keeping them warm and safe,

despite Larry's questionable real estate decision.

But Joan is hungry.

So, while she pops out to feed...

...Larry is in charge.

Larry, whom she trusts implicitly.

I mean, how hard could it be?

All he has to do is guard the eggs for a couple of minutes

while Joan is away.

You're doing great, Larry.

You got this.

You stick with it. And yep, he's gone.

This is probably not good.

Larry?

Larry, come back!

Yes! Yes!

Oh, come on, Larry. No.

You dumb bag of.

Oh, scrambled eggs!

What an idiot.

I thought the whole point of this insane location

was to protect them from predators.

Unfortunately for Joan, and my mom in real life,

geese mate for life.

So she's stuck with him.

And so are his chicks.

Welcome to the world, little guys.

Mom and dad are gonna take care of you.

Love you, feed you,

introduce you to the world.

Well, that was wildly irresponsible.

And wherever that chick is, uh, it's no doubt thriving.

Okay, no one's defending

accidentally kicking your kid off a cliff.

But the stats say a 50% survival rate

that's, is pretty decent for a barnacle goose.

I mean, if Larry were a human,

I mean, he'd be rotting in jail, of course.

♪ You've got to accentuate the positive ♪

Let's just hope he doesn't make any more mistakes.

♪ ...the negative ♪

♪ Latch on to the... ♪

Don't put off weaning

just because it's messy.

The sooner you start, the less trouble you'll have.

The next major milestone a parent faces

is weaning.

But while some of us spend hours

prepping nutritious offerings

perfect for delicate little tummies,

some parents have other ideas.

This is Kimmy.

She has one of the smallest brains relative to size

of any mammal.

It's the size of an underdeveloped walnut.

But that's okay, that's okay,

because most of the time she only has to do three things:

eat leaves,

uh, digest them,

and sleep...

for 22 hours a day.

That is aspirational, by the way.

But due to a wild tequila-soaked night

a while back--I'm kidding, koala's don't drink tequila.

I think, but it would explain the rampant STDs.

Kimmy now has another thing to do:

take care of this little baby walnut brain.

And after a few months in the pouch,

it's time for his first solid meal.

♪ If you go down in the woods today ♪

♪ You're sure of a big surprise ♪

♪ If you go down in the woods today ♪

♪ You'd better go in disguise ♪

But Kimmy, she doesn't bother with spoon-feeding

or finger food.

She's been preparing something very special

for baby's first meal.

And if you thought regurgitated Mrs. Ticklemouse was bad,

just wait.

Junior just has to put his head down and prepare to eat...

mm-hmm, yep.

Mm, that is... Okay, that's poop. Yep.

♪ Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their pic- ♪

Apparently that's a bit graphic for National Geographic?

But I'm told there's a method to this madness.

Eucalyptus leaves are toxic

and would kill her little junior, big time.

But mommy's little gift has a secret ingredient.

Kimmy's "baby food" actually contains a special bacteria

that can digest the toxins

that will give junior the best start in life.

Just maybe don't try it at home.

Human baby food may also look like poop,

but I assure you it's not.

I mean, I mean, it's, it's, it will be turned into poop,

but no, you know, you don't--

that's what diapers are for.

You can see how completely we depend on others

when we're very small.

Of course, as we grow older,

most of us begin to strike out for ourselves,

we begin to develop something called self-reliance.

So there comes a time

when kids must learn to go it alone.

And equipping them with the life skills they need

is a tall order for any parent.

So this meerkat mom of tw-tw-twenty?!

She doesn't bother.

Because the beauty of having so many kids is that the siblings

can teach each other the ropes, right?

My brothers were amazing with rope.

Oh, they knew all kinds of knots.

Anyway, yep, they seem perfectly well adjusted.

Next to go through mom's school of hard knocks

is four-week-old Olin,

and he's about to get the shock of his life.

For the past month, mom has been nurturing him

and taking care of his every need.

But it's time to confront reality, junior.

You're a man now.

Mom's ripping off the Band-Aid

and leaving his education to his brothers and sisters.

Which I can tell you from personal experience,

well, that's a terrible idea.

Lesson one, choosing the right friends.

Olin needs to learn to pick out

the right kind of pals to play with.

Well, this guy looks friendly.

Friendly.

Nope, not Barry.

Don't, no, no, don't mess with that guy.

It's all going great.

Until his older brother does what older brothers do:

gets you into major trouble.

Is mom gonna offer any guidance at this point?

No.

Fortunately, they soon realize this is not someone

that you want to play tag with.

It's just another thrilling and slightly traumatic adventure

with your brother that mom will never, ever hear about.

Let's call that a B+.

Lesson two, finding food.

Basic technique for this is digging for grubs.

And I've seen Lion King.

But if you thought Olin's brother was bad,

his sister James is about to introduce him

to a face full...

of scorpion.

She'll probably laugh about it with her friends later,

while you sit in therapy, you know,

reenacting the whole thing with crude sock puppets.

Surely mom's gotta step in now,

there's no way that she's gonna let--

Okay, not a chance.

I guess pain is, you know, it's part of the learning process.

Bravo, Olin!

This report card might just make it to the fridge.

Lesson three, stranger danger.

If there's one thing meerkats need to learn above all else,

it's looking out for danger,

especially from above.

All the other kids head back to the den.

But Olin hasn't realized the lunch break is over.

The only one left is mom.

Will she finally step in now?

I mean, there are literally

so many heroic options available here;

you fight the hawk, you could run to his rescue,

throw yourself in the path of danger.

Well?

That's it?

That was definitely the bare minimum.

Okay, it's effective, but you know, a little phoned in

if I'm being honest.

At least Olin ran away in the end.

But he's still alive, so

I guess we can call it a pass.

You little coward.

And for all those helicopter parents out there,

learn from the underdogs.

A bit of healthy disinterest,

a dash of questionable sibling oversight,

and your kids learn self-sufficiency fast.

Okay, we're gonna check back in on Larry,

a barnacle goose in the doghouse.

Larry's two surviving babies,

which is a disturbing sentence to say,

they're just a day and a half old.

So, Larry and Joan,

they're going to stay right where they are.

No? Oh. No, they're leaving.

They're leaving.

They're definitely go-- they're gone.

Easy if you have fully grown wings.

But the chicks have to find a different way

of getting to ground level.

There's just one small problem: the 800-foot drop.

No flight feathers equals high likelihood

of plummeting to your death.

Starting as a baby chick and ending as a blood-soaked rock.

Or does it?

Let's go out to the edge of the cliff.

Ahh!

Whoops, there he goes.

For most of us, the fall would be a bad thing,

but for these geese that's a calculated risk.

Science has worked out chicks have to jump

between 36 and 72 hours old.

Any earlier, they don't have enough fluff

to slow their fall.

Any later, and their bones are too hard and brittle

to survive the impact.

Okay, science, over to you.

I hope you know what you're doing.

Uh-oh!

No, no, no, no, no, oh.

Well, that...

Oh, that was brutal.

Oh, no, he does seem to be okay.

Oh! Yikes.

You know, 25% is nothing to be ashamed of. Mm-mm.

Okay, little guy, it's all you.

You got this.

Just because your siblings met a horrible, graphic demise

doesn't mean that you're doomed, too.

From what I know about base jumping,

which is, you know, almost nothing,

this is good, I think he's got a real shot here.

Left a bit.

Ah, left, left a bit, left a bit, left a bit, left a--

Okay, hold that.

Hold that, hold that, hold that.

Oofff!

Not ideal, shake it off, shake it off.

No, no, no, no, that's--oofff!

Yeah, you gotta stick that landing.

Nope, that's hard to watch.

Okay, we're on the snow.

And we're still going.

Still going.

And still going.

Is he even alive?

These shows are expensive,

so we'll do the moment of silence later.

Oh, look!

He did, in fact, survive.

No thanks to father of the year over there.

Don't worry, you'll grow to have a more nuanced

and advanced sense of resentment

in many years to come.

I'm not gonna defend Larry's parenting choices,

he's a reprehensible father,

uh, but frankly, his last chick is alive,

not because of him, but, you know, despite him.

But at least it still has its parents,

which is more than we can say for some.

So, we're back to where we started.

With the parent who wins the prize for the least effort--

wait, there's a prize for that?

Oh.

Of course that's not counting all of the absentee fathers.

The Thomson's gazelle, heading out who knows where

as soon as her tiny offspring exited her birth canal.

Well, now the moment of reckoning has come.

The moment when her innocent little calf

will have to face the consequences

of mom's lazy-ass approach to motherhood.

There are so many ways it could be eaten.

He could be chased down and, and disemboweled.

Shredded to ribbons.

You don't even want to know what she'd do to him.

Or worse, be ruthlessly dismembered by jackals.

To those of you still traumatized by Bambi,

I am sorry.

Me and my team are working relentlessly

to find the hunter, uh, who shot Bambi's mom

and bring him to justice.

Oh, the slow motion, no, no, no, no, no.

The sad, dramatic music.

I think Junior's about to meet Bambi's mom.

But wait, who's this?

You see, as we learned from Mrs. Ticklemouse's sad demise,

Mother Nature is nothing if not a master of the misdirect.

It's true that mom here wandered off,

left her newborn baby alone,

surrounded by serial baby-eaters,

which is weirdly the name of my first band.

But it's because she didn't want to draw attention to him.

Truth is, she was always watching from afar.

So when the jackals do find the baby,

she can go from lazy-ass to kick-ass

in 0.3 seconds.

Because that's the thing about parents.

We're not always perfect.

We make mistakes.

Sometimes we seem downright terrible.

But at the end of the day,

when it really matters, we've got this.

And she's gone again.

Are you kidding me?!

I'm not mad, I'm-- no, I'm just disappointed.

Oh, I sound like my mother.

Hi, Tam-Tam.

One of the most interesting

of all mother animals is the opossum,

who carries her litter of babies with her

wherever she goes.

She needs healthy boundaries.

Sometimes one or two do fall off,

but they usually find their way back to mother

and the other babies.

Not if you run faster than they can.

Sometimes the opossum hangs by her tail.

Probably trying to shake a few off.

But soon they all settle down

for a quiet nap.

Ohh, finally. Peace.