Crikey, it's the untold truth of Steve Irwin!
From the time he saved his friend from an angry croc to the freak accident that led
to his passing, here's everything you ever wanted to know about the legendary Crocodile Hunter.
G'day!
The usual disclaimer clearly states that people shouldn't try this at home unless they happen
to be a professional.
"Come on, sweetheart, in you go.
In you go."
At the very least, Steve Irwin had some serious cred from a very, very young age.
According to his obituary in The Guardian, he kicked off his snake-handling career in
earnest at the remarkably tender age of six, back when he was given a twelve-foot scrub
python as a pet.
He named his pet snake Fred, but don't ask us why.
"Now see how he’s opening up his mouth and he’s…”
“Oh, he's…"
"Hang on, no biting now."
Irwin told Reptiles magazine he started catching snakes when he was about four-years old, and
he reportedly captured his very first brown snake simply by putting his foot down on it.
"Dad came over and decked me out of the way — it's the second most venomous snake in
the world."
Under his father's watchful eye, Irwin reportedly jumped on the back of his first crocodile
at the equally tender age of nine.
Talk about a natural!
Obviously his dad did something right, because Irwin somehow managed to make it to adulthood,
thank the heavens.
In 2004, Larry King got Irwin to open up about some of his biggest and scariest close calls.
Irwin told a harrowing tale that involved his best friend Wes and a massive crocodile
named Graham.
"Croc Hunter Steve Irwin says his colleague was lucky not to have lost his leg."
Apparently Graham had bitten Irwin once before on the hand, back when he and Wes were tasked
with shoring up the reptile's enclosure during a flood.
"Wes and I met up when he was a teenager.
And between us, we've wrestled and wrangled and tossed more crocs than you can poke a
stick at."
Clearly the crocodile didn't appreciate the intrusion... especially since he was sharing
the enclosure with his crocodile girlfriend, Bindi...
Awwwww, she's so shy!
Irwin told King:
"Graham snuck up on Wes, grabbed him right by the bottom and just started killing him
right in front of me."
Irwin said he immediately hopped onto the croc, grabbed his back leg, and twisted with
all his might.
Graham finally dropped his friend and the men headed straight to the hospital, where
Wes got stitched up and put back together.
Oh, and Graham?
Well, they almost lost him, too... to food poisoning.
Somehow we're trying to feel really bad about Graham's food poisoning, but it's not working.
Maybe it just hasn't hit us yet.
Irwin spent his entire life working with some of the most dangerous animals in the world.
"Nearly got both of us."
"Son of a gun."
So when he was killed by a stingray, the world's collective response was: "Seriously?"
"It shocked us all that his life would be taken by a relatively docile creature."
The media called it a freak accident, but just how freaky was it?
Well, when you stop to break it down, it was actually pretty darn freaky.
According to Slate, there aren't solid numbers on how many people have actually been attacked
by stingrays, but estimates range between seventeen and thirty incidents worldwide.
Not per year, mind you.
There are only about seventeen to thirty stingray deaths recorded by humans ever.
There have likely been a few more passings, but these incidents aren't tracked particularly
well.
The Atlantic says Irwin was the first Australian to have an encounter with a stingray
in sixty years.
ScienceLine studied exactly how dangerous stingrays are.
For one thing, they're massive creatures: They can grow up to fourteen feet long and
weigh in at a whopping seven hundred and fifty pounds.
Although they're venomous, they don't tend to be particularly hostile.
There are around fifteen hundred stingray-related incidents every year in the United States,
but most of those injuries involve discomfort… certainly not death.
Of course, unless you're trained and well-practiced, you should always give venomous creatures
a wide berth.
What we're trying to say is: Just keep away from stingrays, okay?
"Good day guys!
Happy Steve Irwin Day from Australia Zoo!"
Did you know November 15th is officially Steve Irwin Day?
According to Huffington Post Australia, the date was chosen because it was the birthday
of one of the Australia Zoo's most legendary residents, a Galapagos tortoise named Harriet.
She lived to be one-hundred and seventy-five, and Steve's wife Terri Irwin revealed the
choice was made:
"... in honor of their special relationship and [to make] sure Steve Irwin Day is all
about wildlife and wild places."
Of course, the biggest and baddest of Steve Irwin Day celebrations takes place at the
family's Australia Zoo, where guests get to feed the crocs, eat a huge breakfast, listen
to live music, and enjoy a number of, quote, "conservation conversations."
"I just wanted to say hello and wish everyone a wonderful day today for Steve Irwin Day."
If you're wondering if there's anything you can do to observe Irwin's special day, there
is: Khaki It!
"And remember, as they say in Oz, to khaki it.
Or, as we say in America, khaki."
They say wearing Irwin's trademark khakis can open up a conversation about conservation
and wildlife, and that's exactly the legacy Steve Irwin would have wanted.
Professor Croc Hunter?
Go ahead and call us crazy, but we'd totally take that class in a heartbeat.
“Haha.”
In 2007, Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Terri Irwin had accepted an
honorary professorship on her late husband's behalf.
The posthumous award was given by the University of Queensland, but tragically, Steve passed
before he ever found out the university had decided to make him a professor.
The honorary position recognized all of the conservation work that Steve spent the better
part of his life performing.
It also paid tribute to his partnership with the university in its ongoing project to tag
and track adult crocodiles.
"Come on, big buddy.
Come on big fellow, here he goes."
Steve wasn't the only family member honored by the university.
In 2015, Terri was also given an honorary doctorate for her continued work in conservation
and education.
Some Australians evidently took issue with Steve Irwin's persona.
Of course, many of his fellow countrymen viewed his untimely passing with tremendous shock and
grief, but some Australians thought Irwin was less of a crusader and more of a stereotype.
In many regards, he perfectly embodied how many people envision Australians — down-to-earth,
capable of surviving in the wildest terrain, and fond of saying things like "crikey" and
"g'day" all the time.
On the other hand, he was so over-the-top that plenty of Aussies wanted to distance
themselves from what they thought was an unfortunate stereotype.
"So, you're either sitting in your chair like… my goodness, or you're going like this, watching
the telly…"
Irwin was totally aware of his reputation, too.
After his passing, Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted him as having once said:
"Back here in my own country, some people find me a bit embarrassing.
… They kind of cringe, you know?"
Meanwhile, it was definitely a very different story in the USA.
Crikey!
It's phenomenal in America.
Phenomenal.
It's just…
I'm a rockstar."
In 2004, Steve Irwin sent the world into a tizzy when footage surfaced that featured
him feeding a crocodile in front of onlookers… all while holding his one-month-old son Robert
in the other arm.
"Now TV's Crocodile Hunter took his, what, ten, twelve pound one-month-old baby boy and
held it very close, within feet, of a hungry crocodile."
"I think he was just being silly."
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the incident occurred during a show at Irwin's
Queensland zoo, and the Queensland police reportedly received loads of complaints.
Plenty of critics crawled out of the woodwork to claim that Irwin was basically an irresponsible
parent.
"It seems in the name of entertainment or show business to put your child at risk was
a fairly foolish thing to do."
Meanwhile, Irwin completely disagreed with his critics.
He told Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he would, quote, "probably do things
a little differently" if he could turn back time, but he also said he wasn't sorry about
the stunt.
"I would be considered a bad parent if I didn't teach my children to be crocodile savvy."
That said, the public outcry definitely upset him.
"And the thing that has hurt me the most is that people would perceive what I do as dangerous.
With all of his relentless enthusiasm, it would be rather easy to dismiss Steve Irwin
as a tireless showman who just wanted attention, and lots of it.
"...a python from a… umm, you might have to cut here: he's biting my neck."
He was hugely polarizing even within the wildlife conservation and education community, but
a lot of people never really knew too much about the tremendous amounts of valuable work
he did off-camera.
"Have a look at this little boy!
Crikey, he's fat as mud!"
Through a partnership with researchers from the University of Queensland, Irwin helped
trap and tag crocodiles so that their movements could be monitored.
According to the Smithsonian, that program has unearthed some pretty awesome info about
crocodiles over the years: How far their territories reach, how deep they can dive, and how they
often live in groups with a really rather complicated social hierarchy.
"The kindest and safest way to control a croc is to get as many people as you can to sit
on him."
In 2004, Irwin and the university launched a new program graced with the superior name
"Crocs in Space".
The program outfitted saltwater crocodiles with remote trackers that were monitored from
satellites, and we've learned some seriously remarkable stuff from the programs Irwin supported
and helped fund.
Did you know a non-dominant male crocodile can travel hundreds of miles?
Or that they can hold their breath for around seven hours?
At the end of the day, crocodiles are ridiculously cool animals, and we didn't know any of this
before Irwin and his family got involved.
Sure, his methods were occasionally controversial, but you can't argue about whether or not Steve
Irwin's heart was in the right place.
"Oh man they are so cute…
You just wanna hug 'em and kiss on 'em and squeeze their little hairy face."
That's why it's frankly a little bit strange that he outright refused to become a vegetarian.
Sounds odd at first, but listen to his reasoning.
Irwin told Scientific American that he studied vegetarianism and decided it just wasn't feasible.
He used a purely speculative cow to make his point... a cow that would keep him supplied
with a belly full of nutritious meat for a month.
While the cow was being raised, she could share her little patch of paradise with trees,
plants, and other little critters, while the land around her could be home to all kinds
of other animals.
Irwin explained that if he was a vegetarian, he'd need a heck of a lot more land dedicated
to only feeding him.
"Nothing else can grow there.
… If we level that much land to grow rice and whatever, then no other animal could live
there except for some insect pest species."
Makes sense, doesn't it?
Irwin preached conservation and education, and of course we can all get behind that.
When Scientific American asked Irwin what he thought about areas of the world like Indonesia
places where habitat destruction wasn't going to be stopped anytime soon he had a solution
for the problem.
He called it "time-capsule endangered animals."
"Yes!
The biggest and grandest arrivals of Australia Zoo's history is happening right now."
Essentially, Irwin wanted to take endangered animal populations out of the wild and place
them in zoos.
There, they'd be protected, or the slow passing that goes along
with habitat destruction.
Meanwhile, researchers would learn everything they could, set up habitats for them in captivity,
and breed them.
Once habitat destruction, deforestation, and other threats to survival were reversed, they
could be reintroduced to the wild and the species would be rebuilt.
Irwin believed that's how zoos should ultimately be utilized, and he was hugely in favor of
zoos taking responsibility for all the animals in their particular region.
He told Scientific American:
"We have to be educational facilities with the ability to put animals back in the wild
when the critical stage is over."
Irwin's love of animals — particularly the creepy-crawly variety — isn't as unlikely
as it seems when you consider his highly unusual upbringing.
He told Reptiles Magazine that his love for wildlife started with his father, Bob, and
his mother Lyn, who was a wildlife rehabilitator.
As Irwin told Andrew Denton:
"Mum was a maternity nurse who actually wanted to follow her passion which was joey kangaroos
and koalas and wombats and platypus, raising them."
Irwin spent his entire life around animals, and in 1970, the family founded the Beerwah
Reptile Park.
That later grew into Steve's legacy, Australia Zoo.
While Steve's mom taught him all about about rehabilitation techniques and introducing
animals back into the wild, his father was teaching him how to jump on crocodiles.
Wonder how that went over with Mum.
"Be very very careful… whoo!
Yes, get right in there…"
"I'm really scared.”
“That’s okay."
When the family founded the Beerwah Reptile Park, they also started working with the East
Coast Crocodile Management Program, according to Britannica's Advocacy for Animals.
The goal was to capture crocodiles that had gotten too close to populated areas and relocate
them somewhere that was safer for everyone involved.
Irwin regularly went out with his father on catch-and-release missions.
By the 1980s, he was doing it on his own.
"And in he goes, back into his deep, dark, dirty water…"
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