Editorial policy

How items are chosen

1. Publisher first. We start from organisations whose official website links to their YouTube channel. We record that link and the channel ID YouTube returns. We do not rely on a familiar-looking display name.
2. Candidates, not approvals. Videos found from a publisher's playlists are candidates until an editor reviews them.
3. Review. We check relevance, the source, usefulness, presentation for a general adult audience, misleading claims, apparent unauthorised re-uploads and animal-welfare concerns.
4. Labelling. We write our own label and note and assign subject, habitat and animal-group tags. We add content labels for predation, injury, distress, death or medical procedures.

What we exclude

• Content that appears staged, including "rescues" in which animals seem to have been deliberately endangered.
• Cruelty, or footage that appears to involve harassing, baiting or crowding wild animals without disclosure.
• Generated or reconstructed wildlife presented as documentary footage.
• Health claims about watching videos, such as "calms anxious pets".

Review status is always shown

Each item records how far it was reviewed:

• Publisher evidence only: the channel was verified, but the video was not inspected. Such items are never published.
• Metadata only: reviewed from the title and description alone. Not enough for publication.
• Video inspected: an editor watched the video.
• Owner reviewed: the site owner approved it.
• AI-checked, owner-approved: an AI assistant checked the publisher, the description and sample frames from the video, and the site owner approved the result without watching every video in full. Pages say so.

Automated or AI-assisted classifications are treated as suggestions until that review has happened. We never claim to have watched footage we have not inspected.

Guides

Guides are original writing based on primary sources, which we link with access dates. Drafts are clearly marked and are not presented as finished expert work. Pet-health topics need review by a qualified veterinary professional before publication. They are general information, never personal veterinary advice.

Commercial independence

Money never decides which videos we include or how we rank them. Any future affiliate or sponsored link will be labelled next to the link and listed on the Disclosures page.

Corrections

If you think we have mislabelled an item, credited the wrong source or made a factual error, please contact us. We fix confirmed errors in the next release, remove items that no longer meet this policy, and keep an internal note of the change.