There are very few people today whom the entire human race, regardless of religion or political beliefs, can collectively hold in the highest regard than Sir David Attenborough, who celebrates his 100th birthday today.
His unwavering commitment to highlighting planet Earth and all of its species, to ensure that humanity pays attention to the other species with which it shares this planet, is incomparable. Delivering his important message for more than 80 years, with his idiosyncratic warmth, wit, and immediately recognisable voice, Attenborough is attached to our hearts as a champion for all that is beautiful, while quietly serving as a fierce advocate for humans to wake up to the breadth and depth of our planet.
Attenborough started his interest in wildlife when his father gave him a fire salamander when he was eight. By eleven, he was selling newts to the zoology department at Leicester University for three pence each. That early instinct, the compulsion to find creatures and then make other people care about them, became the architecture of his entire life. Life on Earth, his landmark 1979 series, has been watched by an estimated 500 million people worldwide, and its most famous sequence, in which young mountain gorillas in Rwanda clambered onto him and tugged at his shoes while he whispered to the camera, was never scripted. He described it simply as “bliss.”
David Attenborough is also very funny. During the filming of The Life of Mammals in 2002, to scare his camera crew, he delivered a wolf howl so convincing that an entire pack of wolves assembled within view of the crew, prompting Attenborough to break into uncontrollable laughter at their shock. In 2013, he was filmed on his hands and knees in a Kenyan conservancy, squeaking back at a blind baby rhino named Nicky as though the two were having a perfectly reasonable conversation. He is also, despite a lifetime spent face to face with gorillas, snakes and the full spectrum of the planet’s more confronting inhabitants, utterly terrified of rats, a fear he cheerfully attributes to one unforgettable night in the Solomon Islands when they ran across his bed in a tropical storm.
At 100, Attenborough no longer traverses the world’s jungles and deserts, but earlier this year, he presented Wild London, discovering canal-dwelling snakes and pigeons riding the Tube with the same attention and admiration he gives all life on earth.
Today, we celebrate the man who has ignited our curiosity and love for our planet and all of its inhabitants. We are immensely grateful for his curiosity and unwavering commitment to sharing the truth about all life on Earth.
