I'm currently filming in peninsular Malaysia before moving onto Borneo, it's a part of the world that I am becoming very familiar with as we produce the BBC Natural History series 'Monsoon'. My series won't be on TV for another couple of years, but as I explore these wonderful islands I often hear stories about a peculiar gentleman by the name of Bill Bailey! The reason is because he's been exploring this corner of the world for himself, following in the footsteps of another man whose name I keep coming across, one of the great forgotten heroes of natural history – Alfred Russell Wallace. Ever heard of him? You should have...
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I watched a sneak preview of Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero before I left the UK and I thought it a wonderful blend of humour, history, culture and wildlife. Bill Bailey is a natural for bringing the natural world alive, and in this series he pops a pith helmet on your head and leads you on a fantastical journey through the peculiar world that Wallace experienced.
"I was on a trip to Malaysia a few years ago and discovered there was a huge group of Indonesian islands known as Wallacea, named after Wallace," "He is still considered to be a hugely important figure there but has been ignored in Britain. I got interested and became absorbed by the man, like so many other individuals have been. There is a sort of secret society of Wallace fans. Mention his name and you create a frisson of interest among these people. I have tried to get over the feeling of the excitement that is evoked by his name in our programmes." - Bill Bailey, Observer.
Second Fiddle to Darwin
In the mid 1800s Welsh born Wallace travelled through the East Indies, (now Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens to study and to sell to museums and collectors. Captivated by the diverse range of species, which varied from island to island, he devised the theory of evolution by natural selection – independently of Charles Darwin who had been working on a similar theory for nearly a decade.
"Wallace had sent his paper to Darwin to help get it published." said Bill, "Unluckily for him, he sent it to the one person in the world who had a vested interest in not seeing in print. Lyell and Hooker intervened and a reading was arranged instead.""Darwin's paper was read first and he is the one we now remember as the man who came up with the idea of natural selection. Wallace should have got priority, but it was Darwin, the man with the connections, who got the glory."
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Wallace may have played second fiddle to Darwin on the theory of evolution by natural selection, but he did leave another well known legacy that continues to play a significant role in evolutionary theory. He observed that a different mix of species lived on the islands on either side of a narrow strait in the middle of the archipelago, and he proposed the zoogeographical boundary that is now known as the Wallace line.
As Wallace wrote in 1858... "In this Archipelago there are two distinct faunas rigidly circumscribed, which differ as much as those of South America and Africa, and more than those of Europe and North America: yet there is nothing on the map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits. The boundary line often passes between islands closer than others in the same group. I believe the western part to be a separated portion of continental Asia, the eastern the fragmentary prolongation of a former Pacific continent. In mammalia and birds the distinction is marked by genera, families, and even orders confined to one region..."
The archipelago of South East Asia that Wallace explored were his Galapagos, and as this series will reveal they are just as enticing to anyone interested in the natural world.
I watched a sneak preview of Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero before I left the UK and I thought it a wonderful blend of humour, history, culture and wildlife. Bill Bailey is a natural for bringing the natural world alive, and in this series he pops a pith helmet on your head and leads you on a fantastical journey through the peculiar world that Wallace experienced.
"I was on a trip to Malaysia a few years ago and discovered there was a huge group of Indonesian islands known as Wallacea, named after Wallace," "He is still considered to be a hugely important figure there but has been ignored in Britain. I got interested and became absorbed by the man, like so many other individuals have been. There is a sort of secret society of Wallace fans. Mention his name and you create a frisson of interest among these people. I have tried to get over the feeling of the excitement that is evoked by his name in our programmes." - Bill Bailey, Observer.
Second Fiddle to Darwin
In the mid 1800s Welsh born Wallace travelled through the East Indies, (now Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens to study and to sell to museums and collectors. Captivated by the diverse range of species, which varied from island to island, he devised the theory of evolution by natural selection – independently of Charles Darwin who had been working on a similar theory for nearly a decade.
"Wallace had sent his paper to Darwin to help get it published." said Bill, "Unluckily for him, he sent it to the one person in the world who had a vested interest in not seeing in print. Lyell and Hooker intervened and a reading was arranged instead.""Darwin's paper was read first and he is the one we now remember as the man who came up with the idea of natural selection. Wallace should have got priority, but it was Darwin, the man with the connections, who got the glory."
Tarsiers, Sulawesi. Photo: Paul Williams
As Wallace wrote in 1858... "In this Archipelago there are two distinct faunas rigidly circumscribed, which differ as much as those of South America and Africa, and more than those of Europe and North America: yet there is nothing on the map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits. The boundary line often passes between islands closer than others in the same group. I believe the western part to be a separated portion of continental Asia, the eastern the fragmentary prolongation of a former Pacific continent. In mammalia and birds the distinction is marked by genera, families, and even orders confined to one region..."
The archipelago of South East Asia that Wallace explored were his Galapagos, and as this series will reveal they are just as enticing to anyone interested in the natural world.
Bill Baily with Wallace's portrait – which after being kept for years in a storeroom is now hung beside the grand statue of Darwin that overlooks the natural history museum's main hall.
Orangutan, Sumatra. Photo: Paul Williams
Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero starts on Sundays from 28th April on BBC TWO.