<\/p>\n
FILE – Butterfly Conservation President Sir David Attenborough poses for a photo with a south east Asian Great Mormon Butterfly on his nose, as he launches the Big Butterfly count at London Zoo, July 11, 2012. (John Stillwell\/PA via AP, File)<\/p>\n
John Stillwell\/AP<\/p>\n
FILE – David Attenborough, watched by zoo staff, reaches out to a kangaroo during his visit to Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 14, 2003.<\/p>\n
Dan Peled\/AP<\/p>\n
FILE – Three year old Susan and her father David Attenborough pose for a photo with a sulphur-crested cockatoo Georgie, Dec. 7, 1957. (PA via AP)<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n
FILE – David Attenborough holds ‘Inti’, an armadillo from Edinburgh Zoo, before receiving a cheque from the People’s Postcode Lottery for the charity Fauna and Flora International of which he is Vice-President, at Prestonfield House, Edinburgh, Jan. 24, 2017. (Jane Barlow\/PA via AP, File)<\/p>\n
Jane Barlow\/AP<\/p>\n
FILE – Head of creative enterprise, Maddie Hall, watches hundreds of television screens with broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough’s face, from when he was a young broadcaster, projected on a 360 degree screen inside the dome within the Market Hall ahead of a public release of an immersive film to mark his 100th birthday on May 8, at Real Ideas in Devonport, Plymouth, England, May 6, 2026. (Ben Birchall\/PA via AP, File)<\/p>\n
Ben Birchall\/AP<\/p>\n
LONDON (AP) \u2014 The BBC is hosting a party for David Attenborough at the Royal Albert Hall. Cinemas are playing his nature films. Friends have spent weeks lavishing praise on the man and his work.<\/p>\n
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But the world\u2019s most famous wildlife presenter is likely to be uncomfortable with all the attention as he celebrates his 100th birthday on Friday, said Alastair Fothergill, the producer of some of Attenborough\u2019s most well-known documentaries.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019s always been very clear to all of us that work with him: \u2018Remember, the animals are the stars, I\u2019m not,\u2019\u2019\u2019 Fothergill told The Associated Press. \u201cSo, yes, surprisingly for one of the most famous men on the planet, he doesn\u2019t like being famous at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glorious gorillas<\/p>\n
But Attenborough has had to accept the accolades this week as scientists, politicians and conservationists celebrated the man who has brought frolicking gorillas, breaching whales and tiny poisonous frogs into living rooms around the world for more than 70 years.<\/p>\n
Through BBC programs such as Life on Earth<\/a>, The Private Life of Plants<\/a> and The Blue Planet<\/a>, Attenborough has illuminated the beauty, ferocity and sometimes downright weirdness of nature in a hushed melodic voice that conveys his own awe at what he is witnessing.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Viewers who might never leave their hometowns were transported to the Himalayas, the Amazon and the unexplored forests of Papua New Guinea. But behind the stunning images was an attention to scientific accuracy that helped teach people about complex subjects like evolution, animal behavior and biodiversity.<\/p>\n And as the evidence mounted, he began to sound the alarm about climate change, ocean plastic and other human-caused threats to the planet.<\/p>\n That helped people understand not only how life evolved but, more importantly, why we have to protect it, said Ben Garrod, an evolutionary biologist at the University of East Anglia and himself a broadcaster who has worked alongside Attenborough.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Attenborough, Garrod believes, initially saw himself as a neutral observer but was compelled to speak out when he saw that politicians, business leaders and the public weren\u2019t taking the emergency seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is showing you the majesty, the ferocity, the fragility of the natural world. He shouldn\u2019t have ever had to have turned to policymaking and advocacy,\u201d Garrod said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s very easy for a lot of people to say, \u2018He should have done it sooner. Why didn\u2019t he act 20 years, 30 years, 40 years ago?\u2019\u201d Garrod then asked: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t we?”<\/p>\n Fond of fossils from the start <\/p>\n Born in London on May 8, 1926, the same year as the late Queen Elizabeth II, Attenborough was raised on the grounds of what is now the University of Leicester, where his father was a senior leader.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n His fascination with nature developed when he was a young boy, riding his bicycle into the surrounding countryside where he collected treasures such as abandoned birds\u2019 nests, the shed skin of a snake and, most importantly, fossils.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d find a fossil and show it to my father and he\u2019d say \u2018Good, good, tell me all about it.\u2019 So I responded and became my own expert,\u201d Attenborough told Smithsonian Magazine in 1981.<\/p>\n He went on to study geology and zoology at the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n In 1952, Attenborough joined the BBC, working behind the scenes on \u201ceverything from ballet to short stories.\u201d After he’d been there about two months, the capture of a \u201cliving fossil\u201d off the coast of East Africa caused an international stir, and he was asked to produce a short piece about the coelacanth.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n That story was told in the studio by Professor Julian Huxley, an evolutionary biologist, who used pickled wildlife specimens and a photograph of a coelacanth to explain the fish\u2019s significance.<\/p>\n But Attenborough thought television could do more.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d always wanted to do films on animals around the world,\u201d he recalled in a 1985 interview with The Associated Press. \u201cBut the attitude was, \u2018We\u2019ve got TV cameras in the studio. What\u2019s this about spending money abroad?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In 1954, he finally persuaded the BBC to let him accompany a London Zoo team that traveled to West Africa to collect specimens. That began a decade as host and producer of \u201cZoo Quest,\u201d kick-starting his career in the field.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The privilege of his life<\/p>\n One of the most famous moments of that long career came during the 1979 series \u201cLife on Earth,\u201d when Attenborough encountered a family of mountain gorillas in a forest on the border of Rwanda and what was then Zaire (now Congo).<\/p>\n During that scene, voted one of Britain’s top TV moments of all time, a young gorilla lies across his body while several babies try to remove his shoes. Attenborough grins, laughs and is speechless with delight.<\/p>\n \u201cI honestly don\u2019t know how long it was,\u2019\u2019 Attenborough later told the BBC. \u201cI suspect it was about 10 minutes, or even a quarter of an hour. I was simply transported.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cExtraordinary, really,\u2019\u2019 he reflected. \u201cIt was one of the most privileged moments of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n A character everyone could understand<\/p>\n Attenborough has combined his knowledge of television, an understanding of his audience and his commitment to science to create a character who could deliver complicated issues surrounding wildlife, conservation and natural history to a mass audience, said Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, a professor of science communication at University College London.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically he gave wildlife television a figure, a front of the house person \u2026 which has come to embody television discourse about nature,\u201d Gouyon said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n And on this, his centenary, his fans made a point of finding him. In a recorded audio message he said he thought he would mark the day quietly. As if.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings from preschool groups to care home residents and countless individuals and families of all ages,” he said. \u201cI simply can\u2019t reply to each of you all separately, but I would like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages.\u201d<\/p>\n And he isn\u2019t planning to stop now, Fothergill said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said to me recently he feels unbelievably privileged that a man in his late 90s is still being asked to work. And, you know, he will go on forever. He will die in his safari shorts.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – Butterfly Conservation President Sir David Attenborough poses for a photo with a south east Asian Great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[104456,104454,104457,104450,104452,104453,104455,10689,23681,59373,73298,73294,59371,91639,86159,91638,103773,93705,93706,61262,104451,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-284073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-alastair-fothergill","tag-ben-garrod","tag-david-attenborough","tag-david-attenborough-100th-birthday-nature-presenter","tag-democratic-republic-of-the-congo","tag-hilary-fox","tag-julian-huxley","tag-london","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-package-100923-member-choice-lifestyles-option","tag-product-30594-lifestyles-formerly-weekly-features","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31388-premium-entertainment","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-product-33328-ap-premium-entertainment-other","tag-product-33329-ap-premium-entertainment-tv","tag-product-33330-ap-premium-entertainment-movies","tag-product-33332-ap-premium-entertainment-celebrities","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-rwanda","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}