• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

I miss Steve Irwin....

WingedWolf said:
Maybe his death wouldn't have been a surprise if he'd been eaten by a crocodile or tagged by a venomous snake...but come on...a stingray barb to the heart? How on earth is that not a surprise? He wasn't even messing with that animal, just swimming over it--though plenty of people do play with stingrays, and getting barbed at all is pretty rare.

It wasn't stepping over the line that killed him.
Click to expand...

I wasn't surprised that he died while filming his show, he was tagged so many times by various creatures and always seemed to push their boundaries.

Though you are right, I expected the news reports to say he had been killed by his beloved crocodiles and not a 'freak accident' involving a stingray.

I thought his enthusiasm was infectious, I just think that he should have been more cautious and respectful to the animals he handled. My heart goes out to his wife and children.
 
Fowler? Perkins? Attenborough?
Click to expand...
And lest we forget, Cousteau!

They all opened the door of wildflife exploration (and even exploitation), they all turned on the camera, long before Erwin, so we long-distance dreamers, admirers and knowlege-seekers could live vircariously through their adventures, their travels, their discoveries.
Long before Steve Irwin shared his own style of exuberance, his knowledge and passion to the screen; those pioneers above brought their true knowledge and dedication to us without all the contrived showman factor.
Steve Irwin figured out how to grab the camera and run with it. He was a showman, an animal activist/zoo keeper/actor, not an actual scholar or zoologist/biologist/naturialst. His over-the-edge personnality and charisma is what made him the popular personality he was. Well, that and a nice set of legs :)
I do miss him too, though. ... ironically, I was scuba diving the day, the morning he died, taking photos of the small sharks, the rays, & fish around the bay. I came out of the water and people on the dock were acting goofy; some crying, some talking aloud about "Steve Irwin". I had to go into the live bait shop and ask what was going on before I knew.
 
hhmoore said:
lol - Wild Kingdom, fond memories...but so many variations of the same theme

"...and Jim is going to attempt to castrate the water buffalo with his Swiss Army knife" Camera goes to Jim - clad in safari shorts & hat - who trots bravely into battle. The skirmish ensues, Jim's hat comes off, there are clouds of dirt & grunting sounds....then the camera pans to Marlin - sitting calmly in the jeep, enjoying a ham sandwich. Back to Jim, walking (limping?) sullenly back to the jeep - his shirt untucked, clothes dirty, definitely looking the worse for his experience.
"That one got away...but there's always next time on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom"
Click to expand...

LOL, this is just too dang funny. It wasn't much, but it was all we had in those days.
 
"Crickey!!"

Who can say that any better on TV?
 
I grew up watcing Wild America, Nature, and re-runs of Wild Kingdom, but to me it became boring...I still enjoyed watching the animals through the TV screen, but I was dying for something cute and cuddly....you know, with TEETH and SCALES! Even better would be to see people interacting with these animals so that the information went beyond mere observation. Steve Irwin provided this.

As for unnecessary risk, how many in his field can say they have been handling hots since they were a teen without ever being envenomated? His risks were calculated, and he always made clear that the animals he was working with COULD kill him.

Also, as for how he died, I heard many people say how they saw it coming, or what did he expect. My response to them has always been, "Really? You had a feeling Steve would be killed by a stingray he was swimming with as countless divers have done in the past? People routinely hang onto their backs while diving in some of the tourist locations, but it's going to get Steve Irwin, huh?"

Precious few people cared anything about the animals we love before Steve Irwin, and that is undeniable!
 
captnemo said:
I grew up watcing Wild America, Nature, and re-runs of Wild Kingdom, but to me it became boring...I still enjoyed watching the animals through the TV screen, but I was dying for something cute and cuddly....you know, with TEETH and SCALES! Even better would be to see people interacting with these animals so that the information went beyond mere observation. Steve Irwin provided this.
Click to expand...

I personally like the minimal interaction approach. Generally I want to see the animals behaving as they do naturally in relation to their environment.

Irwin's handling and approach opened up something that I think is a rather unfortunate debate about experience and technique relative to these shows. Animal Planet's big three early on were Irwin- who was the most popular and freehandled everything with that shouting leaping style, Corwin- who largely targeted a younger audience and was handling very few venomous species and O'Shea- who used proper handling techniques, hooks and tubes... which left his show as the least popular out of the three because the audience wasn't there waiting for him to be bitten the way they were with Irwin.

I don't think it's a far cry to say that the likes of Nigel Marvin are direct, and unpleasant, descendants of Irwin's popularity over the popularity of the less sensationalistic but better educated documentary filming zoologist.

As for unnecessary risk, how many in his field can say they have been handling hots since they were a teen without ever being envenomated? His risks were calculated, and he always made clear that the animals he was working with COULD kill him.
Click to expand...

Most. Most people working in... whichever field you think is his... can say that they have never been envenomated. In what manner were his risks calculated? I'd almost give that point to you when he was handling animals from inside the park or australian species that he had direct experience with and antivenin nearby for. Or for the species incapable of doing him any permanant harm. Not so for the species he claimed he was seeing and handling for the first time when he found them in the wild. That's either a lie (quite possible) or the antithesis of a calculated risk.

'course I also never really saw the point or appeal of watching a guy throw himself out of a truck to make a flying tackle on a lace monitor. Especially not when it had been filmed from a distance for three minutes doing it's thing oblivious to the camera crew first. The handling criticisms weren't related solely to the hots. They also involved penguin violation.

Precious few people cared anything about the animals we love before Steve Irwin, and that is undeniable!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't exactly call it "precious few" prior to him but I do acknowledge that his popularity had an impact. Of course if he gets the credit for introducing some people to reptiles then he also gets the blame for everything they have mishandled, given inadequate care to and killed through negligence. Can't have it both ways, either it's all on him or none of it is.
 
Seamus Haley said:
Can't have it both ways, either it's all on him or none of it is.
Click to expand...

That's crap in my opinion. No person's life is all positive or all negative. Each and every one of us make positive and negative contributions during our lifetimes. To try and insinuate that all of ones contributions have to be all positive or all negative in the end is horse apples. Irwin did a lot of good in his life and he did a lot of dumb crap. Welcome to being human.
 
shrap said:
That's crap in my opinion. No person's life is all positive or all negative. Each and every one of us make positive and negative contributions during our lifetimes. To try and insinuate that all of ones contributions have to be all positive or all negative in the end is horse apples. Irwin did a lot of good in his life and he did a lot of dumb crap. Welcome to being human.
Click to expand...

Well... exactly. It's not like he's solely responsible for the massive sale of leopard geckos that Petsmart and petco have pulled off for the last ten years. When he's praised, by people who think he's praiseworthy, they heap a lot of credit on his shoulders for things he had very little to do with.
 
Seamus Haley said:
Well... exactly. It's not like he's solely responsible for the massive sale of leopard geckos that Petsmart and petco have pulled off for the last ten years. When he's praised, by people who think he's praiseworthy, they heap a lot of credit on his shoulders for things he had very little to do with.
Click to expand...


Are you saying Steve didn't actually provide all the Geckos that petsmart had when I got my little guy a serval years ago??? Those D*** liars!!!! I actually named the little guy after him =--(

Steve Irwin was a AWESOME guy I loved his shows no matter what :thumbsup:
 
captnemo said:
Also, as for how he died, I heard many people say how they saw it coming, or what did he expect. My response to them has always been, "Really? You had a feeling Steve would be killed by a stingray he was swimming with as countless divers have done in the past? People routinely hang onto their backs while diving in some of the tourist locations, but it's going to get Steve Irwin, huh?"
Click to expand...
Yet a few weeks later a similar incident happened to another man.
Leaping stingray stabs Florida man near heart

shrap said:
That's crap in my opinion. No person's life is all positive or all negative. Each and every one of us make positive and negative contributions during our lifetimes. To try and insinuate that all of ones contributions have to be all positive or all negative in the end is horse apples. Irwin did a lot of good in his life and he did a lot of dumb crap. Welcome to being human.
Click to expand...
I know some did not like Irwin because, according to them, he was a jerk when the camera was off and the public was not around.
 
O'Shea was actually my favorite of the three. His approach was more scientific and techniques better for the animals. The only prblem with this, is that while we saw this as informative, much of the viewing public saw it as boring.

Irwin's on air demeanor, excitability, and showmanship kept people tuned in, and most developed a respect (and love in some cases) for reptiles they would not have otherwise had. His techniques and knowledge came from years of practical experience, rather than years of study. I feel this was good in some cases, and not so good in others.

As for the stingray incident, I bet that fella lifted that ray from the top...a big no-no! Again, a freak accident.
 
I grew up watching Wild Kingdom and I even called the toll free number once when I was about 5. I didn't know what a toll free number was and when they answered "Mutual of Omaha" I just hung up. I worried about catching heck from my parents for months. It wasn't until I got older that I started to understand the jokes about Marlin Perkins "While Jim tries to wrestle the 20 foot anaconda into a bread box I'm going to go back to the tent and have another banana daqueri" Still, I loved the show and I found his autobiography to be very interesting.

I didn't care so much for "Wild America" because, well, because it was America. Heck, I lived in America what did I care about elk and deer and foxes and black bears. I wanted to see WILD animals from Africa and South America. I did like Marty Stouffer's voice though.

I didn't get to see much of Jacques Cousteau but It seemed like every one I did see was about sharks and I don't care for shark shows.

I saw one Mark Oshea episode and they were looking for geckos in New Caledonia. After watching him rip the bark off standing trees for about 5 minutes I had enough and turned it off. I may have missed something but it sure looked to me like he was simply ripping trees apart looking for his quarry. I've always tried to live by the "leave it as you found it" motto.

Steve Irwin was way to over the top for me. The accent bugged the crap out of me and I always though he was hopped up on speed or something. I thought his handling of a lot of the animals was senseless and the entire thing had just too much of a contrived feeling to me. Flying over some desert type scrub land in a helicopter at 50 feet, spotting a tell tale track of a rattlesnake at the base of a bush, setting the helicopter down and rushing back to reach under the bush without actually seeing what might be under there and grabbing a rattlesnake by the tail. Oh yeah, that wasn't set up. I know, a lot of it is staged for all of them but his just seemed more so than others to me.

I liked Jeff Corwin but I know part of that was just trying to find an acceptable alternative to Steve Irwin.

I also like Nigel Marvin but I think his best work was in the CG dinosaur series where he didn't really work with the animals.

My Favorite by far is David Attenborough. Granted a lot of it is the fantastic camera work by the BBC crew but his shows are by far the most "professional" of all of them as far as I am concerned. I also think his voice and narration commands respect from the audience and shows it toward his subjects. A lot like Marty Stouffer in that respect. In fact I am waiting for my "Life in Cold Blood" DVD to arrive any day now.
 
I recently read the book "Steve and Me", by Terri Irwin. It was a reminder of what I liked about him and why he should be missed. I don't even bother putting on Animal Planet these days.
 
hey anybody have any video related to his death .........plzz do share with ......
 
I appreciated his enthusiasm, but deplored his seeming need to wrestle and harass everything he encountered.

I'm a SCUBA diver, and his death had a notable negative impact on new divers; many were put off trying diving because they were (and some still are) convinced that sting rays were lurking out there just waiting for unsuspecting divers...

Essentially I don't think this can really be classified as an accident, it was inevitable result of manhandling wild creatures. It was diving's misfortune that he got nailed by an aquatic creature and not a terrestrial one.

Still, I'm sorry he got it, he certainly did raise interest in many traditionally "un-fluffy" creatures.
 
Junkyard said:
Yet a few weeks later a similar incident happened to another man.
Leaping stingray stabs Florida man near heart


I know some did not like Irwin because, according to them, he was a jerk when the camera was off and the public was not around.
Click to expand...


I think that is the enigma of him. We get evidence of good and bad, people love and hate. Its a "we will never know" sort of thing. And those things just end up getting talked about forever.
 
Back
Top