Sir David Attenborough has told an interviewer that he isn’t scared of death.
In a recent interview with CBS’ Anderson Cooper, he said he wasn’t scared “for the process” of death but that he’d “just like it to be a quick process, thanks very much.”
The 95-year-old was asked about the subject of death in 2019 by ABC, when he said he just hoped it wouldn’t be “painful”.
He said: “No, I just hope it won’t be painful – and I hope it won’t be tiresome for others.”
Earlier this week, Attenborough personally intervened to get rid of an incorrect quote on bees that was falsely attributed to him on a plaque at a shopping centre in Adelaide.
The plaque quoted Sir David as saying: “In the last five years, the bee population has dropped by a third. If bees were to disappear from the face of the Earth, humans would have just four years to live.”
The plaque, below a mural of bees at the Westfield Tea Tree Plaza, was first noticed by science graduate Heath Hunter in July.
According to Britannica, while the loss of bees would significantly impact human food systems, it will not result in bigger crises like famines or decline in human population. “The majority of human calories still come from cereal grains, which are wind-pollinated, and are therefore unaffected by bee populations,” the general knowledge encyclopaedia said.
The incorrect quote has been attributed to several iconic figures, including Albert Einstein, in the past.
Attenborough replied to Hunter: “It is most kind of you to bring to my attention the notice that you describe in Adelaide’s Tea Tree Plaza. You are, of course, quite correct in thinking that I never made the statements they attribute to me and that they are false — both in substance and in attribution,” Sir David wrote to Mr Hunter.
