David Attenborough: British broadcaster and naturalist (born 1926)

Attenborough was born in London and grew up in Leicester. He is one of the most famous naturalists in the world. He presents many programs about nature, talking about the lives of animals and has stopped millions of people polluting our oceans. He has won many prestigious award and honorable mentions. In 1980 he won the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award. He is a younger brother of director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough.

He is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in each of black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K.

In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme honored him as a Champion of the Earth "for his dedication to research, documentation, and advocacy for the protection of nature and its restoration".

• Life on Earth (1979)
• The Living Planet (1984)
• The Trials of Life (1990)
• Life in the Freezer (1993)
• The Private Life of Plants (1995)
• The Life of Birds (1998)
• The Life of Mammals (2002)
• Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
• Life in Cold Blood (2008)
• David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
• David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
• Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) - with Errol Fuller
• Planet Earth II (2016)

 

 

At least fifteen species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour.

Plants

Plants named after him include

• an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons,
• a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi),
• one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii),
• a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).

Arthropods

Arthropods named after Attenborough include

• a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi),
• a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail, (Acisoma attenboroughi),
• the millimetre-long goblin spider Prethopalpus attenboroughi,
• an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), and
• a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi).

Living vertebrates

Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including the

• Namibian lizard Platysaurus attenboroughi.
• the bird Polioptila attenboroughi.
• the Peruvian frog Pristimantis attenboroughi and
• one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).

Fossils

• In 1993 it was found that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari was not a species of Plesiosaurus. The palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari.
• A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was given the name Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation.
• A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016.
• The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough.
• In March 2017, A 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him.

In 2012 Attenborough was quoted as saying that the planet has always and will always look after itself but:

what worries him most about the future of the natural world is that people are out of touch with it ... over half the world is urbanised; some people don't see any real thing except a rat or a pigeon ... ecosystems are incredibly complex and you fiddle with them at your peril".

When David Attenborough began his career, in 1950, Earth's human population was measured at just 2.5 billion people ... in 2012 he said:

“We cannot continue to deny the problem. People have pushed aside the question of population sustainability and not considered it because it is too awkward, embarrassing and difficult. But we have to talk about it″.

In January 2013, while being interviewed by Radio Times, he said:

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now”.

In a Daily Telegraph interview in September 2013 he said:

"What are all these famines in Ethiopia? What are they about?" / "They're about too many people for too little land. That's what it's about. And we are blinding ourselves. We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That's barmy".