The Wild Kingdom: Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha (and It’s Now on YouTube)

If you’re a Gen-X’er or old­er, this will like­ly dust off some old mem­o­ries, unleash­ing one of those “Yes, I remem­ber that” moments.

From 1963 through 1988, Mar­lin Perkins and Jim Fowler host­ed Mutu­al of Oma­ha’s Wild King­dom, a 30 minute pro­gram that aired Sun­day nights on NBC. An ear­ly pre­cur­sor to Ani­mal Plan­et and The Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, Wild King­dom let Amer­i­can audi­ences trav­el (at least vir­tu­al­ly) to exot­ic des­ti­na­tions and observe wild ani­mals in their nat­ur­al habi­tats. It all hap­pened dur­ing prime time with mil­lions watch­ing. And the show, oth­er­wise cred­it­ed with rais­ing eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, won 41 major awards, includ­ing four Emmys.

There are two ways to revis­it Wild King­dom. One is to pur­chase The Defin­i­tive 50 Episode Col­lec­tion on DVD. The cheap­er option (actu­al­ly, it’s free) is to vis­it Wild King­dom’s Chan­nel on YouTube, which hosts hours and hours of free pro­gram­ming. The episode above takes you into the mys­ter­ies of the Ama­zon. Enjoy…

via metafil­ter