Animal Planet: Cave Demons

[wendy]

Well I saw something disturbing on TV tonight, on Animal Planet there is a show called Lost Tapes and this nights episode was on Cave Demons, aka giant human sized bats reported all over the world that kill people.

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/lost ... emons.html

Then they showed some sort of Blair Witch type video of Marines that were attacked by cave demons.

Afghanistan's Tora Bora caves could be inhabited by a threat more dangerous than anyone ever imagined. Footage from what should have been a routine recon mission reveals a labyrinthine nightmare as a Marine unit finds itself trapped inside a nocturnal netherworld of mysterious flying creatures.

At first I thought well this is a dumb show, but then I got mad. They portrayed bats in a bad way. Especially when they said that colonies of bats that have been disturbed have been known to attack humans. I don't know what bats they have encountered.

I thought Animal Planet had a goal of educating people about animals, not giving into some peoples fears. I told my boyfriend that shows like this make idiots with shotguns feel justified in shooting bats in caves.

[batrotter]

There are quite a few shows on TV with the same theme. You have the UFO's, alien abduction, Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, ghosts. They make those shows because there are lots of people who believe that stuff. You are right though, it does make one mad.

[Carl Amundson]

Another upcoming episode will highlight the Hodags in Virginia and West Virginia caves.

[Tlaloc]

There are quite a few shows on TV with the same theme. You have the UFO's, alien abduction, Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, ghosts....

A perfect example of this is the "History" Channel. Most of their programs are about pseudo-scientific new-age gobbldygook. Their two programs about the non-existent "Mayan Doomsday Prophesy" are largely responsible for the urban legend that Mayan Long Count calendar ends in 2012. Now they are saying that Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, the Bible and every other whacko spiritualist knew that this was the date of the end of the world. The really pathetic thing is that people believe it. When I was a child, Congress has a bunch of hearings about the quality of TV programming. There was concern that Television was a "vast wasteland" that was failing to live up to its potential to educate the American people. If anything, it's gotten worse since then.

[Ralph E. Powers]

Well it might give creditably to THIS story...

[David Grimes]

It sounds more like that movie The Cave with the mutated cavers that turned into bat like demon looking creatures and killed nearly all the explorers. I never knew there was an actual story someone claimed was true behind it. I guess people will believe anything.