The Hidden Lives of Pets Review: An informative and interesting show on animals and their inherent traits, narrated by Hugh Bonneville

3.5/5

Story: This docu series, narrated by Hugh Bonneville, features pet's hidden skills and abilities

Review: The Hidden Lives Of Pets shouldn’t be confused with the animated movie series, The Secret Life Of Pets. This one is a docuseries that shows pets and their remarkable traits. The series opens on a cliff in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland. We see a base jumper along with his pet Border Collie, Kazuza, gearing up for his jump and we know that we are going to witness something astounding. Soon, we see the base jumper jumping off the cliff with Kazuza tied to him with a harness! To our surprise, Kazuza doesn't show any signs of panic, but instead, seems to enjoy the flight.

The series then introduces us to many pets with extraordinary qualities - a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Snowball, living at a parrot sanctuary in Indiana that won fans all over the world with her 14 incredible dance moves; lab rats Sophia and Alethia that can drive little cars; Bini, a Holland Lop Rabbit, that made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the most slam dunks ever scored by a rabbit in a minute, the Ranchu goldfish that can score goals and is compared to Cristiano Ronaldo and Bonchan, a sulcata tortoise who goes out on an even walk on the street and has fans on the road. Incredible, isn't it? What's interesting about the show is that we also get to know why they are so special and can go that extra mile when provided with a conducive environment.

The series is divided into four segments - intelligence, communication, super senses and athletes. In the intelligence segment, we see a heartwarming story of the nine-year-old Lurcher Bill, who begins to limp when one of his pet parents breaks his ankle and uses a crutch to walk. But his walk turns perfectly normal with his other pet parent. Here we get to explore the emotion, empathy, in pets. We also get to see Gambit, a bearded dragon, who learns to solve his problem by watching the solution on TV and copying the idea and applying it in real life.

In the segment of communication, we meet sheepadoodle Bunny, who uses words in a pre-recorded button to communicate with her pet owner and Beep, the parrot that fools devices designed to recognise human voices by mimicking the voice. We also meet the dog Strike that can read human minds; Ted, the French Lop rabbit who doubles up as therapy animal and Otis, the bloodhound that protects rhinoceros from poaching at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

And when it comes to senses, animals are much superior than human beings, aren't they? Here we are introduced to the cat Kenny that has unique navigation abilities and can guide its human back home even in a desert like Utah. There is also the tale of the Hungarian vizsla Barna, who can sense a panic attack in her pet parent before it occurs. We get to learn how survival in the wild has helped animals develop their athletic abilities in the segment athletes. We get to know that a greyster dog can run at 20 miles per hour for miles and how their skeleton plays a crucial role in it as dogs don't have their collar bones connecting their shoulders to their ribs.

There are many interesting facts about pets that we get to learn from the show. For instance, the moods of a guinea pig when they are chutting, wheeking and rumbling. We also learn about pets' ability to hear ultrasonic sounds, way above the hearing range of human beings, which is 20 kilohertz. While dogs can hear it twice higher, cats can hear four times higher. Bunnies, on the other hand, can rotate their ears 270 degrees and hear sounds from two miles away. Fascinating, isn't it?

And that's not all. The show also explains why cats are brilliant night hunters and how dogs can tune into our heartbeats and change his behaviour in response, thus their heartbeat falling in sync with us. We also learn about colours and animals. While birds and reptiles are tetrachromatic with four cone cells (compared to human beings that have three), which means they can see more colours than​​ human beings, our mammalian furry friends, on the other hand, notice patterns rather than colours. And chameleons can see 360 degrees, and rotate and focus each eye independently!

There are many heartwarming moments in the show. For instance, the experiment and contest between a cat team and dog team when they are invited to walk over 100 dominoes in a corridor. While the cat team is a clear winner by toppling just six of them, the dog team knocks over 35 dominoes as they run without a care in the world. We learn that the secret to the success of dogs is because cats walk with their leg muscles permanently flexed. When a tortoise is brought into the picture, it acts as a bulldozer, knocking everything off, as they are less nimble-footed. While the different tales have been packaged well, the narration, too, is quite interesting, especially when the voiceover compares the tortoise to a bulldozer in the dominoes game and when we hear, "Thankfully, rats driving cars haven’t hit our highways just yet". The series works for people of all age groups, especially pet owners. And if you are not big into pets, watching the show, might actually want you to get one.

Verdict: An interesting and informative show on pets and their traits that appeals to all age groups.