My childhood suspicions about media first arose from a different Amazon. In the second grade (~8 y.o.) a cinematographer from National Geographic came to our class. He showed a film (it was film back then) about piranhas devouring a capybara. They seemed to eat the poor beast in seconds, much to the delight and horror of the kids and teachers.

Then he told us about how that sequence was filmed. Almost shamefully he seemed to admit that it was all staged in an aquarium. They put the partially cleaned caracass in for a few minutes, shoot a few frames, then remove it and flens some more meat off. They repeated that until they got to the bones. They weren’t really in the river. The vicious fishes really weren’t so ferocious.

So my advice would be to show more nature films at an early age. And then show the kids how they are really made, foley artists and all.