We asked you to send us your questions for veteran TV naturalist David Attenborough via and our website. Sir David doesn鈥檛 actually use a computer, so we put them a range of them to him in person. This is what he said.
Are you concerned that your shows may attract people to areas in desperate need of preservation and minimal human contact?
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Of course. But if you hadn鈥檛 persuaded people that these places were worth seeing and worth preserving, then I don鈥檛 have any doubt that they鈥檇 have gone by now. Take gorillas: if it wasn鈥檛 for television, which made them exciting, they wouldn鈥檛 be the most important source of foreign income for Rwanda and their forests would have been felled.
You can control the tourists, and funnel them along certain routes thereby ensuring there are breeding areas.
With all the places you鈥檝e visited, is there a specific place that you often think of and would like to revisit? (asked by Carrie Peploe)
I鈥檓 against going back to anywhere because I know it gets worse. Nothing ever stays the same and almost everything gets worse. Of course, it may be subjective, but I don鈥檛 think it is.
I鈥檝e been back to places like the Indonesian island of Komodo that, in the 1950s, took me weeks to get to in little boats to film the big lizards. Now there are two tourist trips a day. I just wish I could go back to being 25 when the world had a third of the population.
What鈥檚 the most surprising adaptation you鈥檝e seen? Have any ever made you doubt their evolutionary basis? (asked by )
Naked mole rats. They have completely abdicated all characteristics of mammals and effectively become mammalian insects in order to live on the ground nibbling on roots. It may seem inexplicable but that is because the length of time over which it has evolved is unimaginable.
How do you feel about the removal of mentions of evolution from one of your series by a Dutch Christian broadcaster? (inspired by a detailed question from Hans de Mos)
If they had imposed a positive creationist message, then I could complain. That isn鈥檛 what鈥檚 happened.
If you do international television and your programme is going to be shown in other countries who work on an entirely different intellectual and moral basis, you have to give some latitude, with regards to sexual explicitness for example. It would be intolerable to say 鈥測ou must include these scenes of sexual explicitness because I put them in鈥�. So the BBC has a clause that allows editors to remove things.
What happened is the Dutch have removed a sentence. I said, 鈥�65 million years ago the dinosaurs disappeared鈥�, and they said, 鈥渁 very long time ago the dinosaurs disappeared鈥�. I can鈥檛 object to that, I don鈥檛 think. If they said, 鈥�65 millions years ago God killed the dinosaurs,鈥� then I could object and would.
Any suggestions about how to teach evolution to students who鈥檝e been raised by creationist parents? (asked by )
Sometimes I鈥檓 sorry that my parents brought me up as an agnostic, because I would like to say that I鈥檝e looked at the various Christian myths, and to say that I found them simply unbelievable. But since my parents encouraged me to think for myself from the beginning, I haven鈥檛 got any of these myths to discard.
Every society has a creation myth 鈥� how do you decide which to believe? The answer is not to look at the written word, but to look at the reality of the world around you. Whether you鈥檙e in Australia, Tibet or Europe, the facts revealed are the same. That鈥檚 what the truth is.
When you look at the wonders of nature, such as spiders鈥� webs, wouldn鈥檛 the suggestion of a designer or creator be a more reasonable explanation than evolution? (inspired by a detailed question from Trevor Holt)
People say: 鈥淗ow you can see hummingbirds, roses, and orchids and not believe in the Lord鈥檚 splendour鈥�? But if you鈥檙e going to look at those things, you should look at other things, too.
Imagine an African boy with a parasitic worm boring into his eye. If you tell me God not only created but cares for us all, what about that boy? Are you telling me he says: 鈥淚 understand. God deliberately created a worm that鈥檚 going to blind me鈥�? I find that intolerable.
What can you tell us about the newly discovered pitcher plant named after you? (asked by )
I鈥檝e got a number of plants named after me. This particular one is called . It is a carnivorous plant from the Philippines and apparently has one of the biggest pots of all.
Which extinct animal do you wish you had seen?
Huge dinosaurs, especially a Quetzalcoatlus, though technically it鈥檚 not a dinosaur but a pterosaur. It had a wingspan of up to ten metres. I鈥檇 love to have seen how it got into the air.
What鈥檚 the worst filming experience you鈥檝e had?
I haven鈥檛 had many. I suppose it must have been in the early days when again and again you could see exciting things happening and there was no way which you could film them.
The film we used in 1954 was so insensitive that you couldn鈥檛 actually film in the rainforest at all. There simply wasn鈥檛 enough light. You could see something happening in a tree, a bird that had never been filmed doing a wonderful display, and there was no way you could record it. Those were terrible experiences.
What鈥檚 the most breath-taking documentary you鈥檝e produced? (asked by )
I would say the documentaries that has made in recent years 鈥� Planet Earth, The Blue Planet 鈥� were the most breathtaking, translating that word almost literally.
The best way of filming animals is by helicopter, but the problem is you鈥檝e got to be quite low. Then the noise scares the hell out of them, and the downdraft flattens the vegetation. But if you go high you have to use a long focal lens then the slightest tremor shakes the camera. One of the tricks Alastair has exploited is a device to mount a camera on a helicopter which solves those problems.
You can even iron out any shakes electronically, so that you can get these absolutely breathtaking views of the natural world which give you a sort of godlike 鈥� if you鈥檒l excuse the expression 鈥� view of the African savannah, Arctic tundra or whatever. And can then go in and take a close up shot of a wolf hunting.
If (by some fantastic process we needn鈥檛 imagine just now) you were to find yourself as a world dictator tomorrow, what policies would you put into place? (asked by Phil Prosser)
Population control. How? That I don鈥檛 know. I suppose by persuading people that their lives and the lives of their children would be better if they didn鈥檛 exceed a certain number of births per family. (see Our planet is overcrowded)
I鈥檝e written songs about the science of life and evolution and plan to dedicate most of my composing career for at least the next few years to writing science oratorios that will popularise and celebrate science in song. What science subject or subjects would, in your opinion, most benefit from this sort of treatment? (asked by David Haines)
The pleasure would be to do something you couldn鈥檛 do visually, to take a distant view of time so that you can actually talk about the way things evolve.
The colonisation of the air would be a great subject for an oratorio: how the first multi-legged creatures suddenly found ways to fly. After insects came birds and reptiles, then mammals. I鈥檝e got the copyright on the idea. But you can have it for a fiver!
