Super Giant Animals

For the past two years, naturalist, adventurer and presenter Steve Backshall has been tracking down the world’s most dangerous predators in CBBC’s ‘Deadly 60’. Now he’s seeking out the giants of the animal kingdom, starting with the Nile crocodile in Botswana. ‘I’m really not that comfortable being this close to him,’ he splutters through his diver’s mask, mere inches from one of the six-metre-long creatures at the bottom of the Okavango Delta. ‘Get out of there, then!’ you want to scream at this strange man, who’s either hugely courageous or incredibly stupid.

Backshall’s determination to get close to these beasts is impressive, but all this reveals little more than a sense of scale and the animals’ hunting habits. Plus, the creatures covered (great white shark, African elephant, python…) have already been explored in far more detail by such big guns as David Attenborough and the ‘Inside Nature’s Giants’ team. Backshall’s a tiddler in comparison; for now at least, he should stick to the kids’ shows.