- Welcome distinguished guests,
ladies and gentlemen.
Before the hush fell, the buzz in here
was just quite extraordinary.
So I for one am absolutely thrilled
to be introducing this afternoon.
I'm gonna keep it incredibly short
because I know there's
one particular person
that you've all come to listen to.
This event is part of a celebration
of the reopening of the Museum of Zoology,
just around the corner,
within this David Attenborough building
which is dedicated to
conserving biodiversity
for future generations.
We really look forward to you all
visiting the museum,
seeing the new displays,
becoming truly excited by the diversity
of the animal kingdom.
It gives me incredible pleasure
to introduce Liz Bonnin
to you this afternoon.
She is going to be the
host for the conversation
over the next three
quarters of an hour or so.
Liz, we are thrilled that
she accepted our invitation
to host this afternoon.
She's a wildlife and Science presenter
and I know that she has
a particular interest
in big cats, and she actually loves tigers
and she did her master's
research on tigers.
But Liz is also passionate
about encouraging
awareness of environmental issues.
And at the moment she's taken up
Sir David's baton in relation to plastic
and all the problems with plastics.
And she's encouraging awareness,
but also at the same time
helping us to understand
the ways in which scientists of all hues
are trying to alleviate
environmental problems.
So without further ado, I shall introduce,
invite Liz to join us on the stage.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you.
Thank you so much, Paul.
That was such a lovely introduction,
I'm kind of blushing, thank you so much.
I've had such a lovely
afternoon here so far
and now it's my great
pleasure to welcome you all
to the Babbage Lecture Theatre
for a very special conversation
with Sir David
Attenborough, in celebration
of the reopening of the magnificent
Cambridge Museum of Zoology.
It's an endeavour that
took five years to complete
and has resulted in this wondrous space
that houses over two million specimens
that have been collected over
the past 200 years or so.
I'm especially excited about today
because members of the public
are going to get to ask
their own questions to Sir David,
and they can ask questions
about conservation,
his life, his career, the museum
and everything in between.
And asking those questions today
are members of the
museum's two zoology clubs.
So these are made up of
wildlife enthusiasts,
aged between six years
old and 18 years old.
And they get to flex their
passion for natural history
with the support of newsletters
and workshops and events
that are held by the museum.
We've also got questions
from our wonderful
museum volunteers who
have been so integral
to the very smooth runnings
of the organisations,
of all the specimens as the
museum was being remodelled,
and are also such an
important part of the museum
as they impart their knowledge
and their enthusiasm to all the visitors
who come here.
And finally we also have questions
from members of the public who wrote in
to the museum online and we had about
almost 200 questions, so a
big welcome to all of you
who got picked.
I'll be asking those questions for you.
So welcome to all of those lovely people
and to all of you this evening.
And I'm very excited about this.
It's now my pleasure to ask you to welcome
our honoured guest this evening.
The inimitable Sir David Attenborough.
(audience applauds)
Welcome David.
Would you mind sitting down?
- Thank you.
- Now David, I know that Paul mentioned
we have about three quarters
of an hour, but I suspect
you'd all like me to maybe
overrun a little bit,
let's see how we go.
(David laughs)
Can I begin by asking you,
and you put it so beautifully
at the official opening just a while back,
what you make of the new remodelled museum
and how it can contribute to inspiring
a whole new generation
of wildlife enthusiasts and advocates.
- Well it has an atmosphere which is
quite unlike any other museum of zoology
or natural history that I know.
Now that's not their
fault, is it? (laughs)
Because they've been founded
for a very long time.
And they are great museums
and it's a marvellous
thing to be.
But a museum with a long
history of natural history,
because, of course, historic specimens
are type specimens, are
the most important objects
that a museum of this kind can have.
But that does mean that
they have a presentation
which dates for some decades back.
This museum actually has the advantage
of being all those
inheritance of ancient things.
I mean there are Darwin specimen's here,
for heaven sake, there was this specimen,
fantastic collection and now you've got
a new glittering
beautifully designed museum
with all the latest scientific
information and inspiration.
So that it's presented in a way
which makes it a grand
wonderful coherent story
over the last three thousand million years
that life has been on this planet.
And it's all wherever it
is, it's either up there, or
- I've lost my bearings. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
- But it's somewhere
here, and it's glittering
and beautiful and tomorrow.
It's a wonderful place.
- It really is. I know some
of you have already seen it,
some of you haven't, but if you're about
to see it after this
you're in for a real treat.
David have you seen the role of museums
evolve over the years?
And if so what do you think personally,
should the roles of museums be today?
- Well of course, point number one,
great zoological museums
hold type specimens.
Those are the specimens, and there are
many scientists here who know this,
but for those who don't, if you want to
establish a species,
you have to describe it
in words and drawings if you can,
but you also have to, if you
think you've discovered it,
you also then have to
deposit it in an institution
like this one, which is a
recognised scientific institution.
And if that is adopted and they said yes,
this is the first specimen
of that thing there
and that has your name attached to it,
that then becomes the type specimen.
And anybody in the world who wants to know
what the specimen they
found, is whether it's this,
or whether it's something else,
has to come here to see it.
Now these days, what with genomics,
and one thing and another,
that is going to change,
I dare say a bit.
But nonetheless, in the
end, the type specimens
are the most precious thing that
a scientific museum like this can have.
So the specimen, type specimens,
that's the first thing.
But the second thing is
the objects themselves.
You can go to all sorts of places
and learn all sorts of things
about the natural world,
but the basic thing is the shell,
the feathers, the skin, the bones,
the real thing.
I remember going as a boy to
the Natural History Museum
and I was so excited because I was going
to see a dinosaur skeleton.
And I turned up in South Kensington,
and this is no secret,
and I'm not letting down,
not in any way criticising
the Natural History Museum
of South Kensington,
but there was this huge
great Diplodocus, and I went in
and they said have a
look, it's a dinosaur.
And I looked at the label
and it said replica.
And I thought...
(audience laughs)
I'm not interested in replicas.
I thought I was gonna see a real dinosaur.
Well it, I mean, it was a replica
because it was discovered in America.
And Carnegie, a Scotsman and benefactor,
a multi-millionaire,
arranged for those specimens
to go around the world.
They've one in France
and Berlin and London.
And in many ways, of course,
skeletons particularly
big vertebrate skeletons,
are so heavy that you can't mount them,
I mean, it's too big a load to carry.
So that a lot of dinosaur skeletons
are made out of lightweight fibreglass
or plastic, the old days.
But this museum has got
real skeletons in it.
I don't know how many replicas there are,
there may be some, but
there are also real ones,
and real objects, real
butterflies, fantastic things,
as a child to go into the museum.
I remember the Natural History Museum,
to it's credit, did have a huge thing,
not as big as that, but
maybe about a quarter
as big as that, and it was just filled
with different species of butterfly.
And my jaw sagged as a boy.
I thought, how come there are all these
marvellous colours and marvellous shapes
and swallowtails and some
with transparent wings.
How, that knocked me out.
Now I won't pretend
that I haven't forgotten
what your question was.
(audience laughs)
- The importance of museums.
I mean you painted it, that's
exactly what it's about,
it's about getting up close.
But as the world changes, David,
and as Paul put so well,
- Exactly so.
- on his speech, the roles of museums
are beginning to change in a way
that embraces the importance of
our understanding about diversity,
and conservation.
- Yes, and so, but what I was saying
is that, or attempting to say was that,
these museums are places
for the real thing.
And there's nowhere else,
and the ASC communities
are in that kind of way.
But these days, museums of natural history
also have a huge responsibility,
which is to explain what is happening
to the natural world,
how the natural world
came into existence is very important
in the first place.
But what its future is, and particularly
what the responsibility we have
for its future, that is
also extremely important
for all museums, natural
history museums, to explain.
And this museum does it marvellously.
- [Liz] It does.
- And the way it mixes the the fossils,
which could tell you
how these present groups
of animals came into existence.
And then you see the animals themselves.
Breathtaking, wonderful day.
- Absolutely, undoubtedly.
I've got a question for you now
from Rebecca Richmond-Smith,
who won a place in the audience
when she wrote in online
with her question.
And she's studying
zoology here in Cambridge.
As it happens, she's a big fan of yours,
and she wants to know, do
you remember the first time
a museum exhibit impacted
the way you think or act,
and if so, what was it
and how did it impact you?
- Well I've already said,
that that screen of butterflies
with perhaps 300, 400
different species on it.
But there was, I mean, as it so happens,
there was, Natural History
Museum, that day when I went
I did see another thing that
made a huge impression on me,
and that was the skin, the
skeleton of a ground sloth,
a South American ground sloth, Mylodon,
which is like, it's bigger than a cow.
I mean, it's a huge great animal
that munched vegetation in South America.
But what made this as extraordinary
was not only was this
great thing rearing up
but in front of it there
was a piece of skin
covered with sort of the coarse brown hair
and some turds, some droppings.
And I looked at this and it said
that these this skin and these droppings
had been found in a cave in South America.
And was this animal still alive,
or was it not?
And the conclusion as far
as I remember the label
was that it was not.
But nonetheless, you asked
me what impact it made on me,
nonetheless, 35 years later,
(audience laughs)
I found myself in South America.
And I remembered that skeleton,
and I remember, of
course I read it up too.
That it had been found in a cave right in
the south of Patagonia called
Rancho Ultima Esperanza.
The Last Hope Ranch.
And we got a Land Rover and we drove,
I don't know, about 150 miles,
and I found this cave.
- [Liz] Did you find
any more skin or faeces?
- Why do you think I went?
(audience laughs)
- Were you frantically
scurrying around in the cave?
- But, part of the thing about it was,
the discoverer, an
Argentinian palaeontologist,
called Ameghino, he
described how, in the cave,
there was a remnants of a wall,
and was it the case says he, that only man
came across this gate,
giant sloths would also,
so remains were so fresh in
that very, very cold atmosphere.
And maybe this was a wall
in which they had kept
these things like great cowls.
Well actually when you get to the cave,
you can see perfectly well that this line
that might've been a rudimentary wall,
was actually a rock fall from the ceiling.
(audience laughs)
Big disappointment.
Nonetheless, we went.
And so this is, you just asked me
what made an impression on me,
that was what made an impression on me.
- That is some impression.
- [David] And that's what I did.
- I love it.
And collections have always
made an impression on you,
ever since you were a very
young child in Leicester,
cycling around frantically,
collecting eggs and fossils.
How much do you think
that period of your life
as a young boy influenced
your career decisions,
your career path?
- Well it's customary for people,
intellectual people I dare say,
to sort of say, well that's collecting,
collecting is a rather
rubbish anything attitude
or a habit that perhaps
you shouldn't be proud of.
But it's not true.
I mean collecting is indeed a sort of
simple-minded thing that children do
and I did and you collect anything,
collect bus tickets, in my day.
When there were buses.
(audience laughs)
But also when you actually then
start collecting butterflies or flowers
or fossils and you start
to put them together
and you very soon discover
that actually this one
is the same as that one.
So that's rather a better specimen,
and so I'll throw that away.
And then this one is like that one,
but hang on, it's different.
Now why is it different?
And so you start to become a taxonomist.
You start the very basis of zoology,
which is taxonomy.
And you start thinking,
maybe they were related
to one another.
And before you know where you are,
you suddenly find that
Darwin has got something
very exciting to tell you.
How it is that, okay, these things became
related to one another,
and how these different
closely related forms led to actually
even more bigger disparities.
And before you know where you are
you're riveted by evolutionary biology.
And one of the great excitements
of coming to this university,
and to this Central Railroad street,
Downing Street,
is that for the first
time you were going to see
something of the great
range of the natural world.
When I was at school you
learned about cockroach
and you learned about crayfish and dogfish
and rabbits, and that was it.
But here you suddenly
saw this fantastic range
and variety of the natural world.
There was a marvellous lecturer here,
and to my shame, I
can't remember his name.
I don't think I ever really remembered it
for very long because
he was a guest lecturer.
It was the only lecture he gave,
but he'd gave it in this Institute,
in the Department of Zoology.
And it was a lecture about frogs,
and it was, he explained
that frogs needed,
they hadn't got shells to their eggs
so they had to have liquid of one kind.
And all the different devices and ways
in which frogs produce liquids,
how they got to pools,
how they produce froth
how they kept them in their mouths,
how they managed in cells on their backs,
even hatched them in their stomachs.
And I was sitting in
this lecture room here
on Downing Street with my jaw sagging.
Just thinking about frogs.
And nobody had done that before,
and that was a revelatory moment,
which I owe this university
and this department.
- Wonderful, well we have some
specimens from this museum
to show you now David.
Just a few that have been newly set
from a selection of about
50 that were donated
to the museum.
And I think you might recognise them.
I'll give you a hint if you don't.
Look at what's behind them as well,
you might recognise
what's behind them maybe?
Who donated those to the museum David.
(audience laughs)
- I caught these.
(audience laughs)
And today it's illegal.
- It is today but tell me
where you collected these
- Well I was in,
it must have been late fifties
and I was in Paraguay.
And I wanted to go up
into there's a big desert
called the Chaco but also
there's some good rain forests
and there's a river called the Cheque
which goes up into the rainforest
and I wanted to get up there and
Charles Lagus, a cameraman and I
persuaded a launch to take us
up there and the launch took us for
about 50 miles or something and then
said we're going no further
this rivers too shallow
and we said we haven't even
got to the rainforest yet
anyway in the end I found a man with an
outboard and a canoe who said he was on
had to go up into the headwaters.
Great! I said.
Simple minded idiot I was.
(audience laughs)
We'll come with you can you give us a lift
so he did and he took us to the rainforest
and he took us to a clearing where
he knew a woodcutter
who was cutting timber
and he said well I'm now
off I've got to go and do this other work
and it suddenly dawned on me I got
no way of getting back and I
said how are you gonna get me
he said well I'll pick you up
on the way back, I said fine so here
I am in the clearing in the rainforest
but he didn't know how long he was gonna
be and I realised that if he was
gonna come by and they call me and said
hola, where are you and no answer there
came down he would push off and we'd be
still up there so I'd have to stay in
the clearing so we had to film
where we were within 100 yards of the
river we would hear a motorboat and that
meant, restricted us very much so I only
really could work on what was going
on in the clearing one morning I got up
and I couldn't see from one side
of the clearing to the other because
there was a solid dense
cloud of flying butterflies
- [Liz] How thrilling.
- It was a migration
I didn't know about butterflies
migrating in that time but it was there
and it was there the next day
and we couldn't leave so what did I do
well I thought perhaps
I should catch a few.
And so because we were stuck there
I caught rather a lot and and I thought
yes I'm making a survey of course of the
different species that there are
- They are so beautiful.
- And there are a few of them.
- I think you collected about 50 in
these little film tins
- I clicked through yes
and I wrapped them up
I'm afraid I killed them in a primitive
way which is by pinching them and then I
wrapped them in paper
and I put them in the film tin.
- [Liz] This is all the original paper
- There's the paper, and when I got
back I realised I was, well it was about
a decade afterwards that if anyone
discovered that I was a criminal
so because you could no longer catch
- This was in the 1950s
- You can't catch these
butterflies and quite right too.
And what did I do with these?
I thought I'd give them here.
- Wonderful.
I think they're very
grateful (David laughs)
This was of course part of Zoo Quest
- Yes it was.
- Look at this book how
many of these did you have
to write for how many episodes
or series of Zoo Quest?
- There was six of these
- Six.
- Well there were six books but there were
10 expeditions yes.
- Amazing did you enjoy
writing at that stage?
- I don't enjoy writing at anything
(audience laughs)
- I'm quite surprised at that
- Why?
- Because I find it really
difficult but you have got such a gift
with words that I thought this was
always part and parcel of who you were
and how you enjoyed to communicate
the natural world.
- Well I don't find writing easy.
- Wow that gives me hope, it really does
We are, I have so many
questions to ask you
but I want to get to the questions from
our the members of the public who wrote in
so we have a question now for you
from Brandon Greenstone he's 11 years old
he's a member of the
Young Zoologists Club here at the Museum
and Brandon is in our audience there he is
what's your question Brandon?
- Well you must have seen so
many animals in your life,
is there a particular animal
that you have not seen
that you would love to?
- You've seen so many animals in your life
but is there one animal
you haven't seen yet
that you would really love to?
- Oh there are lots really.
- Still are there lots?
- Oh yeah, yeah there's a new species
of birds-of-paradise they say
in northeastern New Guinea.
One of the Parotias.
And I haven't seen it I'm very very,
I'm very keen on birds-of-paradise
I think they're the most
stunning things, one of the things
which is missing from the
ornithological displays
of this museum (audience laughs)
- [Liz] Paul Brakefield pay attention.
- I didn't notice, oh that's not true
there was in fact Wallace's standardwing
which is an aberrant
bird-of-paradise but the main
birds-of-paradise with the
plumes, there isn't one.
But anyway,
- But there's a new
species I'm so surprised
- There's a new species of Parotias
somewhere in the northeast
although it may not be
right, as far as I can see
- But there's a rumour,
well you must get out there immediately.
(audience laughs)
No time to waste after this
conversation obviously.
I'm surprised, I thought you had seen
every one now, every bird-of-paradise
- Well I've seen others.
- Yeah you've seen a vast selection.
- I've got the subjects
except this new one
- Oof, we must figure that out.
Sort that out immediately.
And from the zoology club,
for 13 to 18 year olds
we have Harriet Hewitt,
she's 15 and she has
a question for you about
filming with animals.
- Good afternoon, what species of animal
did you feel best
interacted with the camera?
- [David] What species of animal intera --
- [Liz] Best interacted with the camera,
was a real well show off?
- Well actually, we do
all our best to stop
animals interacting with us.
(audience laughs)
Because we try to show
the animals as they are
as though we aren't
there, so if they start
looking at the camera,
it spoils that illusion.
But nonetheless there are some that do,
and actually gorillas do
and chimpanzees do and
I think it's because
of whatever you do to try and stop them,
if they are habituated so they aren't
worried about your presence
or the human beings presence
and there are gorillas
and chimpanzees like that
that have been accustomed,
when they see the camera,
they see their own reflection
in the camera filter which is on the front
so they come along and they look
at it like into the camera.
Now that does destroy the illusion
(audience laughs)
that you're eavesdropping on them
but that is nonetheless the answer
to your question, that's the one that
interacts most with the camera
- And how difficult has
it been to capture natural
behaviours in their purest form, over your
during your career is there one animal
where you just really wanted to show
what they were capable of left to their
own devices and you just couldn't quite
capture that?
- One is I think you're always
thinking that you've
failed to do it really
one way or another, to
fail to do justice because
animal behaviour is so,
particularly the higher animals
I mean birds and mammals reptiles don't
interact all that much (audience laughs)
but some do I mean the
Komodo dragon of which
you've got the earliest skeleton
I believe the first to be collected is in
this museum and very
formidable it looks too.
- It is, indeed.
- But they certainly interact all right
(audience laughs)
- You've had the pleasure
of interacting with one
back in the 50s on Komodo Island
as it was then called,
tell me about your first
experience of a Komodo dragon.
- Well this was back in 1955,
and there was no television film
ever taken of that, we would be the first,
and it took us a long time to get there
and one thing or another
and people in Java
hadn't heard about Komodo dragons in 1955.
And we finally got our way
to the island and landed and there
was a small village, I
think it's much bigger now,
but there was a small village there
and the local, we asked them in my
primitive (Indonesian dialect),
were there dragons over there
and they said yes yes yes and I said
well can you show us where we will see
and they said yes yes yes
and they said what you
need is a dead goat,
and I said have you have you got one
they said yes yes yes (audience laughs)
I said is it nice and smelly
and they said yes yes yes and so they took
off this dragon to this goat and we hung
it from a tree so I thought I was being
clever and that I would hang it where
the smell would dissipate, would extend,
and the Dragons would try and reach it
but not be able to collect it.
And so we built a hide,
and the boys behind me
or men behind me who carried the gear
were talking and I was saying "Shh! Shh!"
and they went on talking
and so I got very cross
you must not make a noise, go away
of course they knew that
Komodo dragons, like other
reptiles are stone deaf
(audience laughs)
no it didn't make a
difference whether they
would have made any amount of noise.
But how would they, I was
just an ignorant Englishman
but eventually we did get it
but I was watching through the,
this little hide of screen
of leaves that we had
towards the goat hanging in the riverbed
and in due course I turned round
and thought it was the
boys who had come back,
and it wasn't them, it was a Komodo dragon
which was just sort of there.
And I thought well this
is very interesting.
(audience laughs)
And it's sort of long yellow tongue
savouring the air no doubt my body perfume
and so it sat there and we were,
and Charles, who's the
cameraman turned round
and filmed the dragon really just
just sitting there as it were.
And a butterfly came
and settled on his nose
I remember it vividly.
And I thought what do we do now?
As I've mentioned the
dragon went (grunting noise)
it heaved itself up and ran,
and got the bait.
but it was a magical
moment which I've never
forgotten and it was the first film that
had ever been taken certainly there was a
an American company in the twenties who
wondered did one of two shots in 35 mil
but that was otherwise the first one.
And of course now the dragons are a star
and it's certainly the
skeleton down in the museum.
- This is a star in it's own right too.
What an amazing experience
early in your career
and subsequent experiences
that I know we all wish we
could have a little taste of with all
the incredible programmes
that you've filmed
we've got a question from
another member of the public
about that, about the
evolution of programmes
Barnaby Fog has been a
huge fan of yours since he
was a boy and he went out birding with his
father and he watched the life of birds
avidly on VHS tape do any of you know
what that is all you
young people out there.
He's really in medicine now and
pursuing a BA in zoology as well
and Barnaby wants to
know, Sir David if you
could change one thing about
natural history programming
and how it has evolved what would it be,
is there anything you would change
in the course of this
amazing career of yours?
- I have been unbelievably lucky
in that I started in television in 1954.
52, yeah 52,
and 54 I went off for
the first Zoo Quest trip
and we used a clockwork
camera of 60 mil film
which then was the state of the art,
and so much so that the rather antiquated
film department though I'll say it myself
for the BBC, said we're
not going to use this
newfangled 16 millimetre film,
because it's smaller than
35 but anyway we did though.
But since, so I was lucky
that was the first time
that the BBC had used 16mm
film for natural history
and then after that almost every year
there was a new development.
And so black-and-white film because
that was where we started,
colour came, long lenses came,
highly sensitive film
came so that you could
film at night underwater cameras came
high-speed cameras came so you could
slow down things aerial cameras came,
one of the latest things,
but now it's old hat
but the first drones that came
were tremendously exciting.
So every year there's been things.
Now there is actually I
think almost nothing that
we can't record.
- [Liz] Really.
- Can you think of
something you can't record?
- Well I just bow down to the team effort
that is involved in
sort of your imagination
and making things happen
so that you can film
what you need to film over the years.
But, I probably can't
imagine everything that
you can imagine you know
knowing the natural world
like you do but to think that
you're saying now technology can pretty
much match whatever you
would like to capture.
- Yes, almost everything really
- Extraordinary.
- I mean I missed out
actually the biggest of
the developments, the biggest development
was the shift from film to electronic
and that's not just, it meant
that you could actually go
on recording not for just 10 minutes
which was all you could
do on a 16 mil film
but you could go on
recording for days on end,
and not only that not only could
you see what it is that
you'd got as soon as
you did it, but the detachment
of the optical section which
receives the picture and can record it
without any attachment of wires you
could record it next door meant that you
could get a small little miniature
camera now you can put it in a bird's
nest in a tree, for example,
and you can go and sit in
your tent and just wait for it to come
and you don't even have to wait to press
the button because actually you can just
keep recording it in a cycle until it
actually happens then
you press the button.
And so...
that change and all the other changes
means that the, but
that now throws us back
on our invention.
Because we no longer can
have the excuse that we
couldn't get that because you know there
were no conditions or it's too difficult
or whatever.
Now, we actually have
the technical facilities,
in fact the possibilities
to do almost anything so
now what we have to think about is how
to make a good programme and that's
a quite different question.
- Interesting.
I like that.
Another question for you now David,
from one of the museum's volunteers,
her name is Rachel Hooper
Rachel where are you there you are
what's your question?
- Sir David my question
is if you could borrow any
evolutionary adaptation from any of the
wonderful animals that you've seen which
one would you choose to try out?
(audience laughs)
- [Liz] What evolutionary adaptation from
all the animals that you've
seen around the world
would you like to try out?
Hmm that's a good question.
- I wouldn't mind to be able to fly.
(audience laughs)
but also I'd like to be able to hear.
(audience laughs)
Because we don't hear
a huge amount of the amount of the
vocalisation which goes on not only
under the sea but around us all the time.
I mean the high pitch of bats
we can actually bring down to ourselves
but there are lots of
other things of insect
calls and so on which we and frog calls
which we don't hear.
So hearing I suppose,
is one of the things I'd really like to do
apart from being able to fly.
And of course we actually can fly
you know particularly
with drones and so on,
but that facility and to see in
the dark would be wonderful
because that after all is where so much of
mammalian activity goes on after dark.
So we only see and we only show you,
as filmmakers we tend
to just show what's on
during the daytime, but what's on at night
well now we, can we
have got various devices
that we can do in this
high sensitivity cameras and so on.
So we are getting there
but we can only do it for the camera.
One of the most alarming things of course
is that all the cameras can see
in the dark but you can't,
and one day a producer said to me he said
"I think we should really
get a film of lions roaring"
and I said well they don't
call much during the day
they'll go at night, he said "No exactly"
they were all calling at night.
So what we thought would be,
we could find, found
there was a dominant lion
just there on the plains,
who roars every night and so
we suggested you go out in the Land Rover
and go to where he's roaring
and then we will come up on
the other side and film you
and you can lean out of the Land Rover
(audience laughs)
and say something interesting.
But we'll use a Land Rover
that doesn't have a door
on the front really because people would
wish to see very well just to have
a little leaning out of the
window wouldn't be right.
Of course now that I
realise all those things
so we set off in the
Land Rover with no doors,
and again this roaring lion.
But of course you can't see it.
So he's on the producer
is talking to the cameraman,
and the cameraman is saying
"Yes, yes it's very good,
can you get him to drive a bit closer."
So I said, and this is
going (lion grunting noise)
you know what a lion's roar is like.
But if when it's roaring just there,
it's a very very loud noise.
(audience laughs)
And when the director says, he said
"We've got to get closer because
you can't get a good shot in them"
and I must say, being as close as I am to
the front row, yes, the front row,
of the lion then he's gone (lion noises)
and they said it's perfectly all right
if you're in a Land Rover don't get out,
I said there is no --
(audience laughs) about that.
Anyway, I'd quite like to see in the dark.
(audience laughs)
- In hindsight the things we are
asked to do as presenters sometimes David.
- I know well you know you've said it too.
- I can only wonder what on earth made
me think that was a good idea
now Jude Morris is 11 years old,
from the Young Zoologists
Club and has a question
for you about another extraordinary
capability in the animal kingdom.
Jude, what's your question.
- So, lizards lose their tail at will,
what body part would you not mind losing.
(audience laughs)
- You know that lizards lose their tails
at will what body part would
you not mind losing?
(audience laughs)
That's a very personal question!
- Well I suppose, I mean
to take you seriously
and give you a proper answer,
there's any one thing I can think of.
I mean I wouldn't like
to lose my little toe,
because I somehow suspect that
that's helpful to keep your balance.
But the thing I know
that I can do without,
and which we can all do without is that
evolutionary relic, the appendix.
So, and I remember a great story that
the extraordinary lady Dian Fossey,
Without whom the mountain gorillas would
almost certainly be extinct, certainly in
some parts of Africa.
She was passionate to go
to look at apes,
and Louis Leakey,
the great primatologist of Africa,
you would go on a fundraising tour
of the North America.
And she was passionate about apes
and went to him afterwards and said,
"I want to go on and study apes"
and he said, "Have you got your appendix?"
and she said yes.
And he said "Well then
you can't possibly go
I mean because you know you
can't go to the middle of Africa,
what happens if you get appendicitis?
So forget it."
See and disappeared.
Five years later,
he turns up for a second
tour of North America
and who's in the front
row but Dian Fossey.
And Dian Fossey goes up
to him after his lecture
and says wonderful lecture, Dr. Leakey
thank you so much, I've had my
appendix out when do I leave.
(audience laughs)
- That's a wonderful story.
That's dedication for you, wonderful.
Thank you for your question.
We have another specimen to show you
if that's all right David,
this time two white-necked rockfowls
or picathartes gymnocephalus?
Sound familiar to you?
- Yes very.
- Now these ones were
collected from Ghana,
and they were donated to the museum
in the 1960s.
Thank you very much, Shelley.
Take a look at these,
beautiful specimens in fact.
- Yes.
But you're familiar with
them for another reason.
These birds or this species
was quite important or played a very
important role in the naming
of the groundbreaking series
Zoo Quest is that right?
- Yes it is.
- So tell me the story
or tell us the story.
- Well, I had the idea in 1954
that, there'd been
natural history programmes
which people from the zoo,
because all television was
live when I joined it in 52.
And so you had live programmes,
in which a man from the zoo
would bring up animals in a sack and then
up onto pallets and brought
out these poor things
onto a bench with a table mount on it
and explained what they
are and it was great
because of course they were live,
and with any luck they would bite him,
or pee down his front or escape or
that was good television.
And then some wonderful people
called (mumbles) turned up.
And they showed for the first time,
they'd been making films
in Kenya for years,
and they called it on safari I think
and they showed some of
the films they'd caught
and that was terrific.
I thought why don't we get
the two things together.
So I put on an idea that
we should go to Africa,
with a collecting expedition
from the London Zoo,
to collect rare animals
and mammals and birds
for showing in the zoo.
And there was a very nice man
who was in charge of the reptile house
and I said when we agreed on this plan
I said well it's a good
plan but what we need
is a quest for something you see.
Some really exciting creature that
nobody's ever seen before on television
or indeed in captivity.
Is there such a thing in the Sierra Leone
which is where I planned to go
and he said "oh yes, yes yes there is
there's a very interesting bird."
And I said so is Zoo Quest
for what's it called?
And he said "Well it's called
picathartes gymnocephalus".
And I said yes but
Zoo Quest for picathartes gymnocephalus
is a bit of a mouthful,
not actually an audience grabber you see
doesn't it have a common name?
"Oh yes, yes" he said "it does."
I said oh that's great
what's the common name.
And he said, "Well you could call it
the bald-headed rock crow."
And I said eh...
Even the bald-headed rock crow
isn't that much a crowd puller.
So we actually didn't
just call it Zoo Quest,
but anyway, this is what we were after
this is the bald-headed Rock Crow,
picathartes gymnocephalus
and it had never been filmed,
and it had never been
seen in any zoo alive,
and we filmed it and
the zoo man collected it
and one of these lived in the London Zoo
for quite a number of years
it was the first captive example
so at least I recognise
that and I'm no ornithol.
- Well done, well done.
You've spent your entire life
travelling the length and
breadth of this planet,
discovering all sorts of species
ever since you were very young
in Leicester discovering new species but
Kane Colston who's a science teacher
from Hull and another member of
the public who wrote
in with a question asks
if you had a travel a time travel
machine which epoch
would you want to visit,
who would you take with you,
me please, (audience laughs)
and what would you look for?
- Well first of all you've got a ticket.
(audience laughs)
- I can die happy.
- Well that apart where should
we go what should we go for.
I suppose in a theoretical sense
the really exciting thing would be go back
to the Precambrian to, or
to at least the Ediacaran
when in fact you were beginning to get
metazoans, animals that
were rather like sea pens
on the bottom of the sea.
But I mean that's a
theoretical pleasure isn't it
I mean to be, for the real pizazz,
for the real adrenaline
release you would have
to go back to the Jurassic wouldn't you.
But I wouldn't go back to the Jurassic
so much for dinosaurs,
I mean that'd be great,
nothing wrong with dinosaurs,
but the thing I'd really
like to go back for is
quetzalcoatlus northropi,
which you will probably
know is a kind of pterosaur,
a flying reptile.
Who was a contemporary with dinosaurs
and quetzalcoatlus northropi
was discovered in Texas the name is
based from a Maya, an Aztec Goddess,
God, a flying serpent.
And the amazing thing was it was just
a basal bone, a small bone
from the wing and it was
undoubtedly the bone of a pterosaur,
except that it was about ten times
bigger than the equivalent,
that they knew about, and
if you multiplied it up
I don't know what in fact it
was maybe it was five times,
but it was very very much bigger.
And if you did that calculation
it had wings which were 30 feet across,
I mean the size of a small aeroplane.
- [Liz] Extraordinary.
- And subsequent excavations produced
whole wings, so they certainly
existed 30 feet across.
Now when you think about
it, how do you beat,
how do you get into the air if
you have wings 30 feet across
because the first beat of the wing
you would beat on the ground.
And so one of the solutions
suggested was that
these things only lived on cliffs,
and launch themselves into the air,
but it's pretty tricky isn't it I mean
you've got to get back to
a cliff every time you --
- [Liz] Quite restrictive don't you think.
- There is a theory now that there was,
the musculature of the limbs are such
that it seems that it's just possible
that this thing would give an explosive
leap into the air and then bat it,
but I would dearly like to see
quetzalcoatlus northropi,
- [Liz] Spring forward, from the ground.
- And see how it got into the air.
- [Liz] That would be quite
something wouldn't it.
- Yeah, it would.
- Indeed.
You began your career as a
natural history presenter
you could say in its purest form,
showcasing a range of
animals and their behaviours
but gradually over your career there was
a sort of evolution in
the stance that you took,
with respect to conservation,
environmental issues,
was there a moment that you remember,
when you realised this was inevitable,
because of the things you
were seeing as you were
filming around the world?
- Yes, but the fact is
that you and I both
well I don't know what
you're going to do next
so it doesn't true but I know
in the past, I certainly at any rate,
have been sent by the BBC to film
animals where they are to film pristine
rainforest to see the complexity
of the natural world at its richest,
so you go where they are
not were they're not.
So in a way, I got a rosier view
of the situation in the natural world
from many another naturalist.
But at the same time,
we became somewhere, from about
1960 onwards I think, 1970,
- That early.
- Yes and we did say actually
if you went back and found that
particularly the last programme
in quite a lot of series,
almost every one of them ended by saying
look this is enormously complex,
mankind is the most powerful species
that's yet emerged on earth,
we are destroying an utter world,
it's future lies in our hands a very
straightforward message which,
but it didn't cause much
of effect to start with,
maybe we didn't say it loud enough.
But you have to be very careful about
what you say, you better be right,
because nobody else is talking about this.
And so you have an obligation to make
absolutely sure that
your facts are correct.
So it wasn't until about
the mid 60s I think,
that we started to say look,
we know now that you really are.
Now mid 60's may, well to
me it sounds quite recently,
but that's 50 years ago and we have been
saying for a long time,
why did it make a big
impression with Blue
Planet II about plastics,
I don't know.
Just the mood which makes people react
to television programmes is mysterious.
- [Liz] Indeed.
- But I'm just relieved that it did.
I suppose part of it is that
with plastics there's something you can do
if you're a viewer.
If you hear that the elephants are
being shot in Africa,
there's not much you can do as a viewer
except to say how terrible and you can
subscribe but you can't
do anything practical.
- It's certainly more difficult.
- But when you say plastic bags
are strangling albatross,
and seals and turtles and whales,
and here's some pictures,
then that that they see there is
a bag that they may have
taken out of their food store
only the day before.
So they do know that there
is something you can do
and maybe that is why
there was such a response.
But that there is such a response,
is very heartening, I mean
heartening in one way but very important.
We must act on these things.
And the public at large know that,
and the public at large
want politicians to do
something about it and industriers,
and plenty of others places.
And to do it themselves.
- Indeed.
- That's why I think it caught on.
- On that very subject we have a question
from Gabriel Macbeth she's 18,
from the Museum Zoology Club
she has a question about the
environmental challenges.
he I'm so sorry Gabriel, it didn't have
another L and an E so I should have known
but what is your question?
- Sir David, my question
is if you could assemble
the world's leaders what
in your view is the most
pressing environmental issue threatening
our existence that you
would want them to address?
- What is, if you could approach
the world leaders what
is the most pressing
environmental issue that we are facing
that needs to be tackled?
- Allow me two.
- [Liz] I think he might.
- But there are two paramount,
universal problems facing the planet.
One is the one I've just
described which is bigger
than just plastic, we
are polluting the seas
to a dreadful degree.
But also we are polluting the atmosphere.
And as a consequence of which
global temperatures, the earth is warming.
And the universal disasters that come
from the warming of
the seas and the planet
will be widespread and felt everywhere.
They will not entirely be disasters I mean
this country will change
it's, it'll get warmer
and we may think that's rather nice,
and that in fact species from Europe
will be migrating up to us.
But overall, we are making life harder
for the rest of the life on the planet.
Both ways.
And the point is that both of those,
the solutions are clear.
Both of them can be cured
if humanity gets together.
The technology of getting power without
polluting the atmosphere
is absolutely clear.
You can get them from the wind
and the sun directly
and the seas and if you,
you have two difficulties
now, first of all,
you have to have a way in which you
can transfer power electrically
over great distances,
without too much loss.
And we know how to do it,
we haven't done it yet
but we know how to do it.
Secondly we've got to be able to store it.
We know how to do that too
but we haven't really yet done it.
But solve those two problems technically,
and the world could have
pollution free power at an
extraordinarily cheap price
all over the world.
Africa has got all the power in the world,
and we could be using it.
So that is the great
challenge which we can meet.
And if you're going to do that and you can
clean out the seas we can make this planet
a planet for all species.
For ourselves and everything else
for which we have responsibility.
And I believe it can be done,
and I believe what is more,
that there has been a sea change
in the world opinion that all around
the world now people
particularly if I may say so,
young people, whose
future lies ahead of them,
farther than devote the rest of us.
And if they can get
together and solve these,
there's no reason why we shouldn't
live on the planet and care for
the creatures that live on it just as we
care for ourselves.
And I just hope that it'll happen
I believe the possibility that it will,
and I pray that it does.
- We have it in us, we certainly do.
What a wonderful inspirational answer
I'm seeing a lot of people getting
quite emotional at that answer.
(audience claps)
Very good question.
Thank you for that
wonderful question Gabriel
and forgive me for calling you a female.
I do apologise.
We also have another great
question on that topic
if I may it's from Terrace Baines
who's also 18 Terrace
what's your question?
- How do you think balance can be
struck between the need
for economic development,
and environmental
conservation and protection.
- So the balance that
needs to be struck between
economic development and environmental
conservation and protection.
Can that be achieved David.
- Well...
there's sort of a cheap joke isn't there,
that goes around which is
infinite expansion, anyone
who thinks that you can expand
infinitely, in a finite environment,
has to be either mad or an economist.
(audience laughs, claps)
- [Liz] I personally think
that is just it in a nutshell.
- Now, that's all very
well, for a cheap laugh,
but somehow, we've got
to make that problem.
One of the problems that
certainly faces homo sapiens
is population size.
And demographers will explain
that actually the reason
one of the reasons why
increasing population has
been going as fast as it has,
is that a lot of us
are living much longer.
Like me.
And the fact if you,
quite a lot of people live
into their 80s and 90s now,
means that the population is increasing.
It is also, so to some degree
the increase is going to level off.
It is also the case that
wherever you look in the world,
if women are given political freedom
to do what they wish to do,
and the medical facilities that
they wish to have or are necessary
that they will actually
take advantage of that
and limit the size of the birthrate before
so there's a reason to suppose I mean I'm
very worried as what's going to happen of
the increase before
that happens and that's
another question, but
in the very long run,
the population problem may diminish.
By which time we may have reduced
the price of power for the
reasons I've just described,
so that everybody can have
the power that's needed.
What we then know so
living is going to become
easier for humanity.
And what we then have to do is
the wisdom of working out how we may live
in harmony with the natural world.
Allowing the natural world
to have a part of it,
that it's always had, and perhaps
allowing the natural world to expand
beyond nature reserves,
and it could live alongside humanity
which it is possible
to do over great area.
The male will always be,
should always be a place reserved
entirely for the natural world but
there's still a lot we could do to live
in harmony with it in
ourselves and so it is
possible that the doom that a lot of
people foresee coming across us
may not happen but it's in
the hands of young people.
And the hands of the unborn.
But it is just a possibility
that it might happen.
And I believe it might.
- Thank you David.
And I'm aware that we're
running out of time
but I do want to get through
the final three questions from our
volunteers and our Zoo Club members so
on the subject of the challenge we face
about protecting our natural places
and perhaps recovering
some of our lost places,
Jared Howell is 10 years old
and he wrote in with a question
about his favourite
animals, Eurasian wolves
and he asks would you want wolves
to be reintroduced back into
the Highlands of Scotland?
- Well it depends how many
people that are living there.
I don't know enough about wolves
to make positive statements,
but my impression is
that wolves and people
don't mix all that easily.
And that you do need a lot of space,
and space is something
we're running out of.
It could be that in north of Scotland,
where areas in which there's
a very low population
that there are places
where in fact the wolves
which require a lot of space,
where there could be a wolf pack.
I welcome some reintroductions
of creatures that were
already native to this country,
it seems to me that beavers
can be doing a good job
to restrain oh, flooding for example
by making dams and all that.
And they have been
established and they have been
so far so successful.
The trouble is that of course
eventually once you start doing that,
you are introducing a kind
of element of control,
and the moment may very
well come when in fact
there are rather too many beavers and then
you're going to have to
start shooting beavers.
Now by and large I think
we have quite a lot
of problems about handling our wildlife
without adding to them.
So if you have a few hundred square miles
of Scotland in which there's
nobody else that's living,
introduce wolves by all means.
But you must be careful where you do it
because I don't think they
do live alongside humanity
as well as all that.
- Indeed.
On a similar topic we have Jeff Oliver,
who is, there you are,
who is a museum volunteer
Jeff what's your question?
- If it becomes possible
in the future to use
genetic engineering
techniques to bring back
an extinct species, do you
think it should be done?
- Genetic engineering to
bring back extinct species
do you think that is a viable solution?
- It may be viable,
but I would have great
misgivings about doing it.
So you produce, you are going
to get the ovum of a living
species that's related to the extinct one,
and you're going to breed different
females and different males of which
you're going to bring
together and select the genes
that you think the extinct species had.
And after an awful lot of experiments
and an awful lot of trouble,
you bring a zygote and you bring
a fertile embryo of this new species,
which is living in an alien world,
with not another one of
its kind to mate with,
that cannot possibly reproduce itself,
I suppose you might
conceivably do it twice,
but then they're going to
be so genetically close
that they are may not be viable anyway.
And you are bringing this
new thing into existence
for whose benefit?
For the person who's
playing God, I susses,
and I shrink from that notion.
That you can play with life in that way,
entirely to satisfy your own theoretical
imagination.
I would think that the amount of research
and time spent doing that
could be spent better elsewhere.
- Recovering the lost habitats of these
species for one thing.
Before we come to that
lovely young lady over there
we're just about to wrap up,
I know you've touched
on it a little bit David
but you know this room is
filled with young people
who have grown up watching your programmes
and as a result have become
wildlife lovers, wildlife enthusiasts
some of them are studying conservation,
zoology, biology, what advice
would you have for them as they enter
adulthood in what is a rather precarious
period of humanity?
- I don't know what advice I'd give,
I'm not sure I'm in a
position to give advice.
Young people see the
world in a different way,
and you will be aware
of what the demands are.
But the demands of course are
to ourselves, to our own species,
that's perfectly true.
But we are not the only species
that lives on this planet.
It is the case that we have the power
to exterminate anything
and to protect anything.
But how do you use that?
We should care for the planet.
We should care for all the
things that live in it.
But we also depend upon the planet.
We depend on the planet for every
mouthful of food we eat,
and for every breath of air that we take.
And if we damage the rest of the planet
of the life of the rest of the planet,
in the end we damage ourselves.
So we have a grave responsibility.
We now have the power to
wreck the whole thing.
We just have to make
sure that we care for it,
and that we don't wreck it.
- Indeed and this question
I think is a lovely one
to end on considering
your glittering career
and all that you have achieved for us
as individuals and for the planet.
It's a question from another
Young Zoologist Club
member who's over there
her name is Elfie she's seven years old
Elfie what's your question?
- If you could travel back in time
to when you were seven like me,
what one thing would you tell yourself?
- [Liz] David if you
could travel back in time
to when you were 7 years old
like Elfie over there is,
what one thing would you tell yourself?
(audience laughs)
- In a sort of motto you mean do you?
Yeah.
I think you should say,
treat other people as you
would wish to treat yourselves,
do as you would be done by,
and treat animals in the same sort of way.
- Wonderful way to end a
really lovely conversation.
Thank you so much for your time and your
insights into your career and your life,
ladies and gentlemen, the
voice of the natural world,
sir David Attenborough.
(audience applause)
- [Liz] You were so wonderful.
Thank you so much, I really enjoyed that.
(audience cheers, applauds)
