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Racer snakes, slug sex, and bat dung mountains: David Attenborough's greatest moments
If there’s one thing all British people can agree on, it’s that David Attenborough, at 91, is a sterling national treasure – although the sole dissenting voice might be that of Attenborough himself, who disavowed the term in a 2009 interview with The Telegraph . ("People like animals, they care for the natural world, they don't like industrial pollution. So, for those reasons, they are sympathetic towards me. It's no more than that.")
Soon, we’ll be joining the veteran presenter and diving back into the oceans – and meeting their most beguilingly odd inhabitants – in the BBC’s Blue Planet II, a long-awaited follow-up to its 2001 Blue Planet (beginning on Sunday October 29, on BBC One). The new series looks to be both spectacular and, with its illumination of ocean pollution, urgent and timely.
But, even if it delivers on all expectations, it’ll be just one of many gems in Attenborough’s glittering, seven decades-spanning television career.
Here are some of the broadcaster’s greatest adventures to date – and some of his most memorable moments as a documentary presenter and narrator.
1. Zoo Quest for a Dragon, 1956: first footage of a Komodo dragon – and a giant python
In our ecologically-conscious times, nabbing wild animals from their natural environments and whisking them off to spend their lives in captivity is widely frowned upon, not to mention usually illegal. “These days zoos don’t send out animal collectors on quests to bring ’em back alive. And quite right too,”Attenborough has said.
When his BBC series Zoo Quest launched in 1954, however, attitudes were different. The hugely popular show saw the young naturalist embark upon a number of expeditions to capture live specimens for London Zoo, presenting both the on-location footage and studio segments, and providing the explanatory voiceover narrative. As the clips below make clear, he excelled in the role, combining boyish charm and gentle humour with a genuine desire to educate his audience.
Attenborough would go on to make a total of nine series of Zoo Quest, each focusing on a search for a particular exotic creature. In 1956, he and his crew made TV history after they captured the first footage of the elusive Komodo dragon in the wild, during a trip to Indonesia.
For younger readers, used to the rather grandfatherly figure seen on our screens today, it’s also quite fun to see just how limber the young Attenborough was back in the day. In the clip below, for example – in which he also politely declines an invitation to take on a man-eating tiger – the young naturalist nimbly scales a tree in pursuit of a giant python.
2. Quest for the Paradise Birds, 1957: Attenborough politely greets some ‘cannibals’
In the clip below, Attenborough recalls a polite encounter with a tribe of alleged cannibals during a Zoo Quest trip to Papua New Guinea, telling TV host Michael Parkinson: "I walked towards this screaming horde of men, I stuck out my hand, and I heard myself say... 'Good afternoon.'"
3. Zoo Quest to Madagascar, 1961: Attenborough solves a giant puzzle
The two clips below, from the 1961 series of Zoo Quest, show a dedicated young Attenborough attempting to reconstruct the egg of a vanished giant – with more than a little help from a local Madagascan boy. The giant in question, sadly, isn’t a long-extinct prehistoric beast but an elephant bird: a mighty flightless bird which experts believe died out, most likely due to human hunting, as recently as the 18th century.
Attenborough would revisit the extinction tale in his 2011 documentary Attenborough and the Giant Egg, which saw the naturalist return to Madagascar, and ponder how the fate of the unfortunate lost bird recalls the plight of today’s endangered species.
4. Life on Earth, 1979: Attenborough meets the gorillas
After his success with Zoo Quest, and as a producer, Attenborough was invited to become head of BBC Two – and later climbed the ranks at the BBC even higher, becoming director of programmes in 1969. His heart, however, was always in documentary making rather than commissioning/controlling, and he resigned, in 1973, to focus on creating nature programmes.
Luckily for the British public – and viewers across the world – he had something truly epic in mind. “I knew that the subject you could really make a mind-blowing documentary about would be the history of life on Earth, from the very simplest to primates like ourselves” Attenborough explained, years later, in a television interview to mark his 90th birthday. “…As soon as I resigned, I suggested to the BBC this might be something they would consider.”
Life on Earth, which took many years to film and produce, was written, presented and narrated by Attenborough. Released in 1979, the 13-part series would be the first of nine “Life”-themed BBC documentaries, cementing the naturalist’s place in TV history.
Attenborough’s encounter with a group of gorillas in Rwanda, and the moving, ad-libbed speech he delivered after coming face to face with a male gorilla – reflecting on how similar these primates are to us, and how strange it is that we characterise such gentle creatures as violent beasts– remains one of the best-loved moments of Life on Earth.
The sequence was followed by some delightful, remarkable footage of Attenborough playing with two of the group’s baby gorillas – a moment he fondly looks back at in the clip below, from the 2007 BBC Four documentary Gorillas Revisited.
Attenborough’s cameraman at the time, aware that his film was limited, only captured a few precious moments of the encounter.
"These baby gorillas started taking of my shoes. You can't talk about the opposable thumb and the importance in primate evolution of the grip if somebody's taking off your shoes. Particularly if that somebody is two baby gorillas," Attenborough observed in Gorillas Revisited. “That was certainly one of the most unforgettable moments of my career in making natural history documentaries.”
5. The Life of Birds, 1998: the amazing mimicry of the lyre bird
The famous footage below, from 1998’s The Life of Birds, is one of the most popular Attenborough clips on the internet, and for good reason. In it, we witness the amazing ability of the lyre bird to mimic perfectly not only the songs of other birds, but non-biological sounds too, including a camera shutter and a chainsaw.
Viewers beware, however; all is not quite as it seems. In a revelation that echoes the great 2011 Frozen Planet polar bear controversy, it was subsequently established that the lyre bird shown making the noises was in fact an individual from a zoo, who had been exposed to sounds of human activity all his life. This doesn’t, of course, lessen the impressive nature of the bird’s vocal range – but it does call into question the documentary’s implication that wild birds are mimicking chainsaws.
6. The Life of Mammals, 2002: Attenborough goes snorkelling with manatees
Like all good wildlife documentary makers, Attenborough has no qualms getting up close and personal with his subjects when appropriate – and this charming sequence, in which the presenter dons a snorkel and swims with gentle manatees, is a great example. He isn’t all too fond of the marine mammals’ pungent breath, however. “Oh, dear… I suppose a little halitosis is what you’d expect from all those leaves,” he muses, ruefully, after one of the gentle giants exhales in his face.
7. Life in the Undergrowth, 2005: surprisingly beautiful slug sex
Yes, you read that right. In the 2005 series Life in the Undergrowth, Attenborough examined the hidden world of invertebrates – and, in the sequence below, shed light upon the graceful, almost balletic mating rituals of the leopard slug. Think delicate, suspended-in-mid-air twirling – and the formation of a “a translucent, flower-like globe”. Slimy yet satisfying?
8. Blue Planet, 2001: The Blue Whale
Blue Planet, a six-part Attenborough-narrated documentary exploring the world’s oceans – and unearthing startling never-before-seen wonders – was packed with memorable Attenborough-narrated moments, including the majestic Blue Whale sequence below.
9. Africa, 2013: Attenborough makes friends with a blind baby rhino
Africa, a six-part BBC production exploring the continent’s wildlife and the challenges facing it today, was narrated by Attenborough – who also adopted a more hands-on presenting role in the final instalment, as the footage below makes clear.
In the heartwarming clip below, the veteran presenter gets in touch with his inner rhino and, squeaking, on hands and knees, communicates with a young, blind animal, resident at the time of filming on a protected nature reserve.
10. Planet Earth, 2006: a terrifying shark attack
Planet Earth, producer Alastair Fothergill’s 2006 follow-up to Blue Planet, explored the way animals live in some of the most remote, diverse habitats on Earth – and, naturally enough, Attenborough’s considerable talents as a presenter/narrator were again called into play.
This stunning, frighteningly powerful footage of a great white shark hunting a seal, launching its gigantic body into the air, remains one of the most impressive moments of the first series.
But there were stranger highlights too…
11. Planet Earth, 2006: the bat guano mountain
“This 100-metre high mound is made entirely of bat droppings,” Attenborough eagerly explains, during a trip to a giant subterranean cave system in Borneo. ”Its surface is covered by a thick carpet of cockroaches,” he then adds. “Hundred and thousands of them.”
Not desperate to visit anytime soon? Fascinatingly, caves like this one are some of the only eco-systems in the world not directly powered by sunlight. Instead, it’s the bats – specifically, their droppings – that feed the other life forms in the caves, including the roaches, and – wait for it – giant, 20cm-long cave centipedes.
12. Planet Earth II, 2016: the racer snakes
Follow-up Planet Earth II, meanwhile, was one of the biggest TV events of 2016, uniting the country in awe – and, when it came to the memorable clip below, in nervous terror.
“Since we depend on the natural world, understanding it is absolutely paramount. Television can provide that link better than ever before,” Attenborough said ahead of the show’s release.
This particular sequence, in which baby iguanas are pursued by lightning-fast racer snakes, was rightly hailed as one of the best TV moments of the year– but, impressive as the footage is, it wouldn’t have been quite the same without Attenborough’s narration.
“A near miraculous escape,” he observes at the end of the chase, with characteristic calmness. Viewers across the UK, watching for the first time, simultaneously exhaled in relief.