Funny / Prehistoric Planet

The majestic mating dance of the Carnotaurus.

As this is a Funny page, spoilers will be left unmarked.

Season One

• From Coasts:
  • The Tyrannosaurus hatchlings trying to get the hang of hunting after their father took them to an island full of sea turtles. Between trying and mostly failing to go for the baby turtles making a break for the waves, they all mob an adult turtle. Very ineffectually.
  • The old male Mosasaurus just...hanging out at the reef, being groomed by fish who clean his teeth and eat his dead skin. It's just unexpectedly adorable from a marine apex predator, and the way he rolls over like a puppy so the fish can clean his belly too is the icing on the cake.
  • A moment of Black Comedy, but as the Alcione chick is eaten by the Phosphatodraco, the nearby Tethydraco look on with apparent concern as if to say "Ugh, I sure am glad that wasn't my chick."

• From Deserts:
  • Velociraptor chasing a lizard, before accidentally bumping into a sleeping Tarbosaurus. A close up shot then shows the large theropod opening its eyes menacingly, visibly spooking the Velociraptor. The latter barely manages to avoid getting snapped up.
  • When the Mongolian titans bend down to drink the water, David Attenborough narrates that "if you've got the longest neck on Earth, you can jump the queue."
  • The overall mood of the Tarbosaurus. They're not the vicious, roaring beasts often seen in dinosaur media: here they even seem downright groggy as they lazily rise in seeming annoyance at the raptors disturbing their sleep, and wander off for a drink.
  • The smaller male Barbaridactylus which mimics the appearance of a female to sneak into a harem winds up accidentally attracting the attention of the gigantic ruling male. But instead of attacking the trespasser like he had a former challenger not minutes ago, the huge male mistakes him for a female and attempts to court him, with the smaller male acting like a female playing hard to get and slipping away to further bamboozle the alpha male.
  • The adorable Mononykus has no shortage of giggle-worthy moments, such as her irritation from termites crawling all over her face, or her confusion with her first experience with blooming grass. Attenborough's "Oh, dear!" as she fails to catch a beetle is the cherry on top.
• From Freshwater:
  • The female Velociraptor running off with the pterosaur she killed and leaving her male pack mates at the mercy of the noisy flock. You can practically hear one of said pack mates yelling “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?”
  • An itchy Deinocheirus, pestered by biting flies, relieves his discomfort by scratching himself against a dead tree...all the while grandiose and epic music reminiscent of Zimmer's score for Pirates of the Caribbean is loudly playing as if something incredible was happening.
  • Then comes a moments of toilet humor when the Deinocheirus spends most of its time munching on swamp vegetation it dredges up. Attenborough then mentions that eating that much vegetation has "consequences", followed by a close-up shot of the Deinocheirus wall-eyed expression accompanied by a rumbling noise and even an extended shot of dung being dropped in the water.
  • There's something oddly hilarious about seeing Quetzalcoatlus, a flying reptile the size of a giraffe on the ground, making a nesting ground and other chores on the ground sped up in a timelapse fashion.

• From Ice Worlds:
  • The late arriving Ornithomimus male decides to steal nesting material from other males to save himself the work. Cue him trying to sneak up on their nests when they aren't looking and comically freezing when they are.
    • The Ornithomimus then yells at a pair of hadrosaurs to keep off from eating his nest. Given that they massively outsize him, they aren't bothered at all. It's even funnier if you recognize that it effectively inverts the old paleo-art cliche of ornithomimids raiding the nests of big plant-eaters.
  • The timelapse of Olorotitan grazing combined with a tilt-shift effect makes them look like poorly-animated, stop-motion toys. The way the plants are shown growing and then getting mowed down by the passing Olorotitan that zoom by at fast-fowarded speed adds to the hilarity. And then someone gave it the Benny Hill treatment.
  • The troodontids hunting with fire can come off as Black Comedy with the very idea of a pyromaniac dinosaur intentionally starting fires, which brings to mind this meme.

• From Forests:
  • The Carnotaurus male's mating display is backed up by sound science and analogues in extant animals. And, much like the goofy-looking dances of birds of paradise, his mating display of waggling his tiny, evidently useless arms with bright blue scales on their undersides is hilarious to anyone not in the target audience of female Carnotaurus, complete with whimsical music that cuts off abruptly when the female rejects him.
    • Even funnier is that the female comes in close to inspect in his arms before leaving, seemingly rejecting him because of the smell of his armpits.
    • Attenborough wonders aloud how the male could have done any better. The carnotaurus then picks up a small piece of dead fern from the floor of his stage, clearly this was the problem.
  • The antics of the baby Therizinosaurus trio are as funny as they are adorable; in particular, their attempts to climb a tree to get some honey, and then their reaction to getting stung a bunch of times.

Season Two

• From Islands:
  • The Simosuchus scaring off a much larger Majungasaurus by a very, very silly-looking display of aggression that includes shaking its rear end at the predator.
  • Unintentional, but the serrated beak of the Tethyshadros look like stereotypical Italian moustaches - the very country where they were found in.
  • After the Morrosaurus successfully escapes the Imperobator pack, there's a brief but amusing moment of two Imperobator lightly snapping at each other, almost as though arguing whose fault it is that their prey got away.
• From Badlands:
  • In an exceedingly morbid way, seeing a Velociraptor essentially stealth-kickboxing an unfortunate Prenocephale off the side of a cliff is fairly amusing. The fact that it resembles a memetic scene from 300 makes it even funnier.
  • The alarm calls from the Corythoraptor as they chase off the female Kuru from their nests are oddly hilarious.
  • In an adorable way, it's quite funny to see the two baby Kuru trying to break an egg open that is a lot bigger than them.
  • The young Tarchia being harassed by a bunch of Prenocephale. Even Attenborough admits that for the Tarchia, the little dinosaurs are mostly just "annoying".
• From Swamps:
  • The entire Beelzebufo sequence, where entire image the frog gained back in season one gets shattered hard. It only consists of a lone male trying to attract a female's attention, but he's repeatedly interrupted by other animals, and is forced to watch the herd of mud-bathing Rapetosaurus obliviously destroy his pool. There's even a bit where he slaps his head like a Face Palm. Though he does manage to find a new one shortly after.
• From Oceans:
  • At one point, a Hesperornis seems to be trying to inspect the camera.
    • Especially precious due to just how abruptly it turns aside. One can easily picture the cameraman shooing it away at the last second.
  • The absolutely bizarre ammonites we see, but the biggest one would be Diplomoceras, an ammonite that, as Attenborough puts it, looks like a "giant paperclip". The best part? The show isn't making any of this up. These were real animals and they actually looked like this.
    • The Nostoceras is a close second, due to being built in such a way that it looks like it's trying to eat its own shell. Once again, this is completely accurate.
• From North America:
  • A Quetzalcoatlus and a Tyrannosaurus are in standoff for a Alamosaurus carcass, with the Tyrannosaurus roaring to drive away the Quetzalcoatlus. The Quetzalcoatlus responds by honking loudly.
  • Two juvenile Pectinodons hunting flies end up running into each other.