like i’m watching blue planet and i’m yelling at the tv!
there’s all these yimmer yammer hand-wavey scientific rigor lines where it’s like ‘we may believe that these animals do on occasion have a base brain-related impulse that allows them to experience feelings somewhat like to those of friendship’ or whatever in the script on top of footage that they then describe as ‘it seems as though these two groups [of fish, different species] are old friends…’ in an almost whimsical manner.
can’t they give them some credit! they have eyes and a face, why is it so insane to think they can’t experience friendship or love or joy just like us? ‘buhhu uhhh its only accurate science if we only observe observable behavior’ why?? you’re neglecting a whole part of any living thing’s experience! inner life can’t be hand waved away! even for a mollusk!
and people loved doing this on reddit as well – oh actually your cat doesn’t understand love or joy or humor, it is simply reacting to the physical warmth of your lap, they don’t actually care for you. don’t worry, depth and emotion does not exist!
You have to remember that this is a documentary made for humans, and the narrator is trying to create an emotional hook for the human.
In reality, the social interactions of other animals are so different from what humans know that it does warrant some sort of explanation for the uninitiated. Humans just don’t know what they’re seeing.
That’s not to say that, for example, your cat doesn’t love you, it probably does. But it will feel it and display it it in accordance to the norms of a cat, which sometimes include bringing in dead mice as an offering, something that will annoy first time cat owners.