Animals featured in the new movie Life of Pi

The Life of Pi is a new and very artistic movie featuring lots of animals as part of the cast. Below is the video trailer for the movie.

I was curious about the animals. Some of them are clearly computer generated but were any real animals used in the production? Here is what I found out.

The movie animals are mostly computer generated but there are some live animals used in background shots. The filming takes place in Taiwan and it is unknown how the animals are treated in that country as to the laws of animal welfare on movie sets.

I did find a lively discussion at this web page about the welfare of the animals with some people chiming in from the movie industry.