David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities, Eden Channel, January 29th 8pm
Just when we thought wildlife couldn't get any weirder than Chris Packham's Nature's Weirdest Events (starting New Years day, 8pm BBC One), Sir David Attenborough brings us his own curious celebration of the eccentricities of Nature (January 29th on Eden Channel). He's been fascinated by nature ever since he was a small boy and when asked 'when did you first get your curiosity for nature' he turned it around and said 'my dear boy, when did you loose yours!?' This curiosity has never left him and he has communicated his enthusiasm for nature to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Now, in a special series, David Attenborough focuses on what he considers to be some of Nature's most wonderful animals -- creatures that have amazed, baffled or fascinated us since their discovery and still do today. Each episode will feature two creatures with curiously distinctive adaptations that link together with a common theme. From the curious ‘hoax’ of the Platypus’s discovery to the Narwhal, the creature that inspired myth of the Unicorn, and the Mole Rat that defies the age limits of all other rodents and lives for 30 years, Sir David will discover how nature has found a way of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Find out more on the Eden Channel website
"This is an extra dimension to animals which I think is particularly fascinating. It has certainly fascinated me ever since I was a kid, ever since I picked up a reproduction of a 17th Century natural history book and saw these fantastic animals, monsters, dragons and mermaids, all of which people thought actually existed and some of which have a really good basis for making them think that. This extra dimension to animals sets you thinking about them as to why they are the way they are, which is something which I don’t think we have done on television before." - David AttenboroughDavid on the Mole Rat
"They are quite the most disgusting animal! Actually, they are amazingly fascinating. They are long, like a sausage, and they are absolutely naked! They are blind and have incisor teeth, one of which arches down from the top and the other which arches down from the bottom. They gnaw their way tunnels underground in Kenya to dig to look for roots on which they live. As you can see that would mean that as they gnaw earth, if they’re not very careful, they would swallow it! But these teeth are so huge that their mouth meets behind so the animal can gnaw with its mouth shut, which is quite a trick!" - David Attenborough
"When we started researching the things across the series we were looking at elephants’ wrinkly skin, but we also looked at mole rats – a creature on a completely different scale but interesting in its own right because they share this feature with the elephant. I remember we had to go and film mole rats and I was quite taken by these creatures!" - Stephen Dunleavy, Producer
Find out more about the natural curiosities in this series and what David thought of them on the Eden channel website.
(Mole Rat Photo: Eden Channel)
Sir David Attenborough's Favourite Natural Curiosity
It’s very difficult. Of the lot I think I’d have to vote for the platypus. It is the most wonderful, extraordinary, breath-taking creature I've ever seen! The nice thing about it is everybody said it’s one of the rarities in Australia, no one ever sees it and it needs protecting. But they've now been studied and there are lots of them in the south east corner of Australia. In most of the rivers, certainly, a great number still have populations of platypus, and of course the attitude towards the natural world has changed even in my life time. And now in Australia they recognise that they have a great treasure and they guard it very carefully and are very proud of it.
If you sit on a river bank very quietly, in the evening or the morning particularly, you’ll suddenly see this little dimple in the river where the platypus has come up to breathe. We managed to use a thing called an optical probe to go into the tunnel of a platypus, and we were able to put a radioactive tag on one of the animals being studied by a scientist. We could use the radioactive tag to plot where it walked down the tunnel into the bank, about 10 yards, and finally it came to a stop. This was its breeding chamber! So now all we had to do was very carefully probe into the chamber with a gun to insert an optical probe into the chamber to see a tiny little platypus supping milk. Wonderful!" Read more on the Eden Channel website.
