A Clever Little Newt Collector
This won’t come as a surprise, but David Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He would hang out at his father’s university, and when, at the age of 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large number of newts, he offered to supply them for 3d (threepence) each.
David Attenborough And Cocky The Cockatoo London Zoo’s Oldest Inhabitant. Photo By Mike Hollist/Daily Mail/Shutterstock
He didn’t reveal it at the time, but the source was a pond less than five meters away. He went on study geology and zoology at Clare College in Cambridge. In 1950, he married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel, who died much later in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan, both of whom work in the education.