53 Fun Facts About David Attenborough

Attenborough was born just 17 days after which other British national figure?

Queen Elizabeth II — the two near-twins shared the screen in 2018, when she showed him round the Buckingham Palace gardens for the documentary The Queen's Green Planet.

Attenborough grew up on the campus of which institution, where his father was principal?

University College, Leicester — his father Frederick was principal and the family lived on campus; the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes so admired young David's fossil collection that she sent him a box of specimens.

What did David's older brother Richard become famous as?

An actor and film director — Richard Attenborough went from starring in The Great Escape to directing Gandhi, which won him an Oscar, and later played the park owner in Jurassic Park.

In 2019 a 93-year-old Attenborough made a surprise appearance on stage at which British music festival?

Glastonbury — he walked on to the Pyramid Stage before Kylie Minogue's set to the recorded calls of sea creatures, and the festival crowd greeted him with a huge roar.

In 1936 a lecture by which beaver-saving conservationist inspired the young Attenborough?

Grey Owl — the 'Native American' on stage was really an Englishman, Archibald Belaney from Hastings, who had gone to Canada and reinvented himself.

Attenborough won a scholarship to Cambridge in 1945 to study what?

Natural sciences — the degree led first to a desk, not the wild: he spent a couple of years editing children's science textbooks before television lured him away.

Attenborough spent national service stationed on the Firth of Forth with which branch of the forces?

Royal Navy — called up in 1947, he spent his two years stationed in North Wales and on the Firth of Forth rather than anywhere exotic.

Why was Attenborough initially discouraged from appearing on camera at the BBC?

His teeth were thought too big — that was the verdict of an early boss at the BBC, so he started out behind the camera as a producer instead.

Which 1954 series launched Attenborough's presenting career?

Zoo Quest followed animal-collecting expeditions for London Zoo; Attenborough only ended up in front of the camera because the planned presenter fell ill.

In the 1950s Attenborough sailed to a remote Indonesian island to film which giant reptile for television for the first time?

Komodo dragon — viewers saw the lizard in black and white, but the trip had been shot on colour film, and the forgotten reels were found and finally shown in colour for his 90th birthday.

Attenborough left BBC staff in the early 1960s to study for a postgraduate degree in what?

Social anthropology — he enrolled for the degree at the London School of Economics but never finished it, because the BBC lured him back to run BBC Two.

Attenborough quit BBC management while tipped for which senior post?

Director-General — he was tiring of desk-bound executive life, so he resigned and persuaded the BBC to let him make a Civilisation-style series on evolution, which became Life on Earth.

BBC Two, which Attenborough took over in 1965, launched with which mother-and-baby animal mascot?

A kangaroo — Hullabaloo, the mother, stood for the established BBC1 and Custard, the joey in her pouch, for the newborn BBC2.

Which sport did Attenborough bring to the BBC to show off the benefits of colour television?

Snooker — he commissioned Pot Black in 1969, reasoning that a game decided by the colours of its balls was the perfect advert for the new colour sets.

Which change came to tennis after Attenborough's colour broadcasts left television viewers struggling to follow play?

Yellow balls — the white ones were hard to pick out on the colour pictures he had brought to BBC Two, so the sport switched to a fluorescent yellow that cameras could follow.

Who presented Civilisation, the 1969 series on Western art that Attenborough commissioned to show off colour television?

Kenneth Clark presented Civilisation, which became the blueprint for the big authored documentary series that BBC insiders nicknamed 'sledgehammers'.

Which 1973 history-of-science series did Attenborough commission as BBC Two's counterpart to Civilisation?

The Ascent of Man — Jacob Bronowski's series followed the Civilisation model, and Attenborough thought the story of evolution deserved the same epic treatment, the idea that became Life on Earth.

Which young Irish broadcaster's application to present on BBC Two did Attenborough turn down in 1965?

Terry Wogan — Attenborough rejected the young Irishman's application, later explaining that BBC Two already had one Irish announcer and two 'would have looked ridiculous'.

Which apes played with Attenborough in a famous Life on Earth scene?

Gorillas — a family of mountain gorillas in Rwanda played with him and a youngster tried to take off his shoes, and he later called it one of the most exciting encounters of his life.

Which 1984 series, built around the theme of ecology, followed Life on Earth?

The Living Planet (1984) — after eleven episodes touring wild habitats, its last turned to the newest environments of all: the ones humans have made by changing the Earth.

Which 1990 series on animal behaviour completed Attenborough's original 1979-1990 trilogy?

The Trials of Life (1990) — its crew worked closely with field researchers, which let them film chimpanzees hunting together as a coordinated team.

Which 1993 Attenborough series followed Antarctica's wildlife through the seasons of a single year?

Life in the Freezer (1993) — it followed Antarctica's year, from a winter so harsh that most animals leave to a summer when seals and penguins race to raise their young.

Which technique let Attenborough's The Private Life of Plants (1995), a Peabody winner, show plants as dynamic organisms?

Time-lapse photography sped up growth too slow for the eye to follow, and the Peabody Award citation praised the series for showing how compelling it can be to watch gardens grow.

Life in Cold Blood (2008) completed Attenborough's survey of terrestrial life by covering which animals?

Reptiles and amphibians — Life in Cold Blood (2008) was the last of Attenborough's nine Life series, closing his survey of life on land, from crocodiles to chameleons.

Attenborough was in his mid-90s before he finally presented a major series on the wildlife of which place?

The British Isles — Wild Isles (2023) took three years to film, and he said the animal dramas on his doorstep matched anything he had seen on his global travels.

Which Kalahari animals starred in the 1987 Wildlife on One film that BBC viewers voted the best wildlife documentary ever?

Meerkats — 'Meerkats United' starred animals that take turns standing guard, watching for danger while the rest of the pack forages.

In a famous Planet Earth II chase scene, newly hatched marine iguanas ran a gauntlet of which animals?

Snakes — racer snakes poured from the rocks after each hatchling, and one iguana's narrow escape won Planet Earth II the 2017 Bafta for television's must-see moment.

Planet Earth (2006), then the biggest nature documentary ever made for television, was the first BBC wildlife series shot in what format?

High definition — a powerful stabilised aerial camera let the crew film animals from high above without disturbing them, on the most expensive nature series the BBC had commissioned.

Who composed the main theme for Planet Earth II (2016)?

Hans Zimmer — he wrote the main theme while Jacob Shea and Jasha Klebe scored the episodes, and he returned for Blue Planet II, reworking Radiohead's 'Bloom', a song the first Blue Planet had inspired.

Blue Planet II (2017) is credited with triggering lasting public attention to which issue?

Plastic pollution — more than 14 million watched, the UK's biggest audience of 2017, and within months the BBC itself pledged to rid its own operations of single-use plastics by 2020.

Attenborough's 2019 series Our Planet was made for which streaming service?

Netflix — Our Planet was the streaming giant's first nature documentary, made with the WWF, and viewers in Spain and Latin America heard Penélope Cruz or Salma Hayek narrate in his place.

Flying Monsters 3D, Attenborough's first Sky 3D film, was about which creatures?

Pterosaurs — Flying Monsters 3D, which debuted on Sky 3D on Christmas Day 2010, traced the flying reptiles from the Triassic to their extinction.

A polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough after a poll favoured which name?

Boaty McBoatface — the 2016 online poll's runaway winner was overruled for the ship itself, but the name survived on one of its autonomous submersibles.

What is the title of Attenborough's 2002 autobiography?

Life on Air — Attenborough's 2002 memoir, revised in 2009, is one of several of his books he has read himself as an audiobook.

Nepenthes attenboroughii, named after Attenborough, is what kind of organism?

A carnivorous pitcher plant — found on a remote mountain in the Philippines, it is among the largest of all pitcher plants, with traps big enough to catch a rat.

Zaglossus attenboroughi is one of only four species of which egg-laying mammal?

Echidna — feared extinct after more than 60 years without a sighting, Attenborough's long-beaked echidna was caught on a camera trap in Indonesia's Cyclops Mountains in 2023, the first footage of it alive.

Materpiscis attenboroughi, a 380-million-year-old fossil whose name means 'mother fish', is the oldest known example of what?

Live birth — the Australian fossil preserves an unborn embryo still joined to its mother by an umbilical cord, the oldest evidence of any backboned animal bearing live young.

The 560-million-year-old fossil Auroralumina attenboroughii, a jellyfish relative, is thought to be the earliest known animal what?

Predator — scientists think the 'dawn lantern' caught food with its tentacles, and it turned up in Charnwood Forest rocks that the young Attenborough never searched, because they were thought too old to hold any life.

Attenborough's 1973 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures used warning colours, scent marks and mating signals to explore which subject?

The Language of Animals — the lectures ended by asking whether an animal could ever be taught a human language, and one of them has since gone missing from the BBC's archives.

Attenborough addressed world leaders as 'People's Advocate' at the 2021 COP26 climate summit in which city?

Glasgow — at the opening ceremony the 95-year-old warned that humanity was 'already in trouble' and urged the delegates to turn tragedy into triumph.

The Attenborough Studio opened in 2009 inside which London institution?

The Natural History Museum — he joined Prince William to open its Darwin Centre, an eight-storey 'cocoon' of specimens where visitors can watch the museum's scientists at work.

A 2006 poll of favourite Attenborough moments was won by a clip of which bird's mimicry?

The superb lyrebird — the Life of Birds (1998) footage of it mimicking camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws topped a 2006 poll of favourite Attenborough moments.

In 2012 Peter Blake added Attenborough to a remake of which album cover?

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band — for his 80th birthday in 2012, Peter Blake reworked his 1967 Beatles collage with British cultural figures of his lifetime, Attenborough among them.

Which 2020 documentary film did Attenborough call his 'witness statement' for the natural world?

A Life on Our Planet — it opens and closes with him walking the ruins left by the Chernobyl disaster, where the wild has reclaimed the abandoned city, a sign that nature can recover.

During the Second World War, Attenborough's parents fostered two Jewish refugee girls from which country?

Germany — sisters Irene and Helga Bejach arrived in 1939, were stranded by the outbreak of war, and ended up being adopted into the family as sisters to the three Attenborough boys.

When creationists praise hummingbirds and orchids, Attenborough asks them to consider which creature instead?

A child-blinding worm — he pictures the parasite boring into the eye of a boy on a West African riverbank and asks how an all-merciful God could have made it.

In 2020 Attenborough joined Instagram and reached a million followers in under five hours, taking the record from which star?

Jennifer Aniston — the Friends star had taken five hours 16 minutes a year earlier, and he needed four hours 44, opening with a video that said the world was in trouble.

When two-year-old Prince Louis asked which animal he liked best, what did Attenborough answer?

Monkeys — 'because they are such fun', he said, before warning the prince that they cannot be kept around the home, because that is not where they belong.

What surgery did Attenborough have in June 2013?

A pacemaker fitted at 87 to regulate his heart did not end his career: months later he said he would gladly stop if his job were hewing coal, but it was not, and he was still presenting new series at 90.

Which comedy series did Attenborough sign up for the BBC during his years as a senior television executive?

Monty Python's Flying Circus — the same executive who ordered up high-minded landmarks such as Civilisation also gave the oddball sketch show its break, a reminder that he ran far more than wildlife programmes.

From 1986 Attenborough spent several years producing which annual royal television fixture?

The Queen's Christmas broadcast — for his first, in 1986, the wildlife film-maker had her filmed inside the Royal Mews, the working stables at Buckingham Palace.

According to Attenborough, anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is 'either a madman or' what?

An economist — his point was that a finite planet cannot carry ever more people, and he argued the surest brake is women's rights, since birth rates fall wherever women are literate and have political power.

What did Attenborough say was being 'stolen' when he objected to AI clones of his narration?

His identity — in November 2024 Attenborough said he was 'profoundly disturbed' that, after a lifetime trying to speak the truth, his identity was being stolen by AI voice clones.