If it bugs you...

...speak out. So I was glad to read that the 'wildlife presenter' Chris Packham has, not for the first time, publicly criticised the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here for its cavalier use of animals for the purposes of entertainment.

For those who don't know, the show purports to strand a disparate group of individuals (minor celebrities, forgotten names and has-beens whose 5 minutes of fame has expired) in the Australian jungle and leave them to manage in circumstances lacking basic comforts. Far from fending for themselves it is of course highly orchestrated, the dynamics closely scrutinized and the most unpopular participant voted off each week. To heighten the faux-drama, certain individuals are elected to undergo endurance trials in which they are showered with creepy-crawlies or encouraged to eat unfamiliar life-forms such as larvae in order to gain credits.

Packham, in a letter to the show's presenters, wrote that such antics are disrespectful of life, outdated, even barbaric, and by orchestrating a fear of among your contestants, I'm afraid you're reinforcing and exaggerating a terrible ignorance and intolerance of these remarkable animals. He suggests that even those that are not harmed or eaten are stressed and in some cases doctored to ensure that they couldn't really cause damage.

The TV company predictably responded that it was nothing to do with the presenters of the show who are not involved with the formatting of the trials, which are devised by the show's producers. ITV takes animal welfare very seriously and expert handlers are on hand at all times.
They did not respond to Packham's most important objection which is the re-inforcement of negative attitudes towards reptiles and invertebrates, the knee-jerk reaction of revulsion and fear on encountering a spider, snake, centipede or maggot.

(You might think these woodlice* could not alarm anyone but a teenage helper at our cafe recently reacted with shudders and a plea for help when a couple fell out of a consignment of vegetables - she didn't even know what they were: so divorced are many youngsters from any notion that invertebrates are interesting, non-aggressive and perform vital functions in the biosystem.)

For me, the show also indirectly mocks and belittles the way of life of indigenous people who once (and in a few places, still) made their home in the jungle and other wild habitats, and, by means of long association with the terrain, learned how the land will provide for those that know it and respect it. It is only in recent decades that Australians have rediscovered and celebrated the 'bush tucker' (traditionally foraged foods) that the white incomers ridiculed and destroyed by taking over the land. The Aboriginal population, forced into settlements, could no longer roam free and consume what the country provided, with disastrous results for their health and welfare. Their Get-Me-Out-of-Heres were ignored, their traditions lost.


Chris Packham's letter

Project Wild Thing from Chris Packham's website - about familiarizing children with the wild.

Witchetty grubs and other bush tucker

*Woodlice are actually not insects but crustaceans, like shrimps, and like shrimps, perfectly edible.