LONDON — He was born before the Great Depression, came of age in World War II, and is still making wildlife documentaries.
On Friday, one of the world’s most famous wildlife experts and climate campaigners, David Attenborough, turns 100. His films have brought intimate scenes of nature to hundreds of millions of viewers.
Brits call him a national hero.
“He can inform you, or make you cry at some iguanas being chased by snakes!” says Chris Dametto, commuting in central London. “He’s a great storyteller, he’s a great communicator, and I think the world is better place because of him.”
Fans dressed in animal costumes — lions, tigers and bumble bees — gathered around a life-sized cardboard cutout of Attenborough late Thursday on London’s Trafalgar Square, singing wildlife ballads — Toto’s Africa, The Lion Sleeps Tonight by the Tokens — and of course, Happy Birthday. A few aspiring Attenborough lookalikes roamed the crowd.
There are also special broadcasts on BBC, a concert Friday at Royal Albert Hall, events at science museums, nature walks and tree-planting events.
Attenborough’s best wildlife moments
Born in 1926 in suburban London, Attenborough collected fossils as a child, studied zoology at Cambridge, and got drafted into the Royal Navy in 1947. He had a career as a BBC manager before moving on-camera — only after someone else got ill.
He was already age 30 — though wearing what looks like a Boy Scout uniform of khaki shirt, shorts and knee socks — when in 1956, he wrestled a Burmese python into a burlap sack on TV.
“It’s important to grab his tail as soon as you grab his head,” he instructed the audience, after climbing a tree and sawing off a branch, on the Indonesian island of Java. “Otherwise he’ll wrap his great coils around you and give you a very nasty squeeze!”
One of his most famous TV moments was when he cuddled with gorillas in Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains, in 1978.
“There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know,” he tells the camera.
In 1998, while filing the BBC series Life of Birds, he got pounced on by a lusty capercaille grouse in the Scottish Highlands. He also managed to fool a Patagonian woodpecker into mistaking him for a rival, and answering his call — which Attenborough faked by tapping stones on the side of a tree trunk.
He’s explored mating rituals of fireflies, blue whales and Galapagos tortoises — some of whom are even older than him.
What it’s like to work with Attenborough
Sharmila Choudhury was 15 when she first saw an Attenborough film in the cinema in her native India.
“That changed my world! There was this man showing me all these extraordinary creatures, from tiny protozoans to strange sea cucumbers,” she recalls.
Like Attenborough, she too decided to study zoology, and went all the way to a PhD. She eventually met her teenage idol — and then got hired by him.
“One thing you notice immediately when working with David is how easily he connects with everyone, whether they’re eminent scientists or a taxi driver or a field assistant,” Choudhury says.
Or a hedgehog, in one case.
Last year, Choudhury produced the film Wild London in which Attenborough — then aged 99 — shimmies on his belly to get eye-to-eye with the spiny mammal.
“You know, we call him the animal whisperer! The little peregrine chick in Wild London, it was screaming its little head off, and then David said, ‘Now, now,'” she recalled, in a phone interview with NPR. “And this little bird kind of leaned back, looked up at David and just seemed to know, it’s going to be alright.”
He has a similar effect on the British public.
Appreciation for a British icon
Even during London rush hour, commuters seemed happy to stop and talk to a reporter about Attenborough, waxing poetic about childhood memories, and his iconic half-whispered delivery.
“His voice! We connect his voice with nature and good things,” says Andriana Naidoo, on her way to an appointment. “He’s a good person, and at the moment, that’s really rare!”
“Sunday afternoons, watching Planet Earth with my dad growing up, and Blue Planet as well!” says Liam Wall, originally from Dublin. “I actually won a cardboard cutout of David Attenborough at bingo once! So I had that in my house for like a year.”
In an audio message released late Thursday, Attenborough said he’s “completely overwhelmed” by birthday greetings from school groups, nursing homes and everyone in between.
Scientists have also named a species of parasitic wasp after Attenborough, to honor his 100th birthday.
“I simply can’t reply to each of you separately, but I’d like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages,” he says.
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