The BBC has admitted that a polar bear birth scene from its popular Frozen Planet series was not shot in the wild but instead at a zoo.
A scene in episode five of the series that shows a polar bear giving birth inside an icy den was implied to have been filmed in the Arctic.
It was later revealed in a Daily Mail article that it had been shot in a polar bear enclosure in Germany.
The BBC denies that it misled its viewers, insisting that most of the series was shot in the wilderness and safety demanded that certain segments of the program be shot under "controlled conditions".
The broadcaster said presenter David Attenborough's narration was carefully worded so that it did not mislead audiences.
"We felt that the birthing process was a pivotal part of the story, which had to be told. It would be quite impossible for our cameras to film inside a den in the wild without disturbing the female, " The BBC said in a statement.
Frozen Planet executive producer Alastair Fothergill said he did not feel it was worth it to explain the scene’s true origins within the documentary.
“The question is, do you want to break the mood of the program? And I basically don’t think the audience would want the mod of that rather beautifully constructed film to be stopped,” he said.
In the episode, seen by more than eight million people in Britain on November 23, the camera follows a female polar bear in the Arctic as Attenborough comments: "She starts to dig a shallow nest ... once the snow here is deep enough, she'll dig down to make a den. She'll then lie waiting for her cubs to be born as winter sets in."
He then says: "On these side slopes beneath the snow, new lives are beginning."
Footage of the newborn cubs filmed at the German zoo is then screened but Attenborough does not say in the program that the mother and cubs were in fact in a manmade den.
The veteran broadcaster defended the decision to film in the zoo.
He told ITV on Monday: "If you had tried to put a camera in the wild in a polar bear den, she would either have killed the cub or she would have killed the cameraman, one or the other."
He said explaining about the zoo during the show's commentary would have ruined the atmosphere, adding: "It's not falsehood and we don't keep it secret either".
The BBC said it had made it clear the footage was from a zoo in an interview with producer Kathryn Jeffs that was posted on the broadcaster's website a few weeks before the program aired. In the video, Jeffs says there was no way to film a polar bear giving birth in the wild.
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