Netflix is accused of 'eco-tragedy porn' in new Attenborough documentary featuring walruses falling to their deaths 'because of climate change' after zoologist claims they were being CHASED by polar bears.

The BBC's Blue Planet 2 series in 2017 saw creators defend the use of studio shots taken in laboratories as it featured images of coral bleaching that could only be filmed with lights and specialised cameras.

The Blue Planet team also recreated a rock pool on board a ship to film up-close zebra mantis shrimp and the long teeth of the fangtooth fish.

In the recent Our Planet episode of the Frozen Worlds series, Attenborough says that all the walruses know is that they need to join the others and find food.

But a leading zoologist has accused filmmakers of using 'tragedy porn' and 'emotional manipulation' to gain viewers.

Susan Crockford, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, claims the animals were more likely to have been driven over the cliffs after being chased by polar bears.

She cited a famous incident in 2017 near where the Netflix series was filmed, where 20 polar bears chased walruses over to top of cliffs at Kozhevnikova Cape, Ryrkaypiy, in eastern Russia, according to the Siberian Times.

Describing the footage as 'contrived nonsense', Dr Crockford told the Telegraph: 'This powerful story is fiction and emotional manipulation at its worst.

'The walruses shown in this Netflix film were almost certainly driven over the cliff by polar bears during a well-publicised incident in 2017, not because they were confused by a combination of shrinking ice cover and their own poor eyesight.

'Even if the footage shown by Attenborough was not the 2017 incident in Ryrkaypiy, we know that walruses reach the top of cliffs in some locations and might fall if startled by polar bears, people or aircraft overhead, not because they are confused by shrinking sea ice cover.