A few years back, Brady Barr found himself face to face with death. The wildlife program host, herpetologist (reptile expert) and conservationist had climbed deep inside a cave to get footage for a documentary about snakes when a cobra lunged at him from the shadows. “I grabbed its mid body and threw it and it came right back at me. I grabbed it and threw it again. For about three or four seconds we did the dance of death.”
After that kind of close call, the average person would probably have said, “that’s it, no more.” But Barr, 49, is not your average person. In a television career spanning more than 15 years, including seven years as host of National Geographic’s Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr, he’s scuffled with pythons, chased polar bears, and, perhaps his greatest claim to fame, captured all 23 extant species of crocodile. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be an animal that Barr isn’t willing to wrestle into submission. But with kids at home and a wife who often wonders if he’s “nuts,” he’s decided to slow down — if only a little.
Barr enters a glassed-in room at Fox Broadcasting Company’s swanky offices in Taipei’s Neihu (內湖) District on a sunny Thursday afternoon, a knapsack over his shoulder and clutching a plastic case. Inside the case is a boa constrictor, which Barr’s handler keeps a close, though nervous, eye on. “It’s a partin’ gift,” he jokes in his appealing down-home Texan drawl. He looks slightly haggard — not from wrestling with the snake, but because he’s on a whirlwind Asian tour to scout out locations and make contacts for a new series of documentaries about Asia’s wildlife and spread the message of wildlife conservation.
Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times
“Some of my most memorable dangerous encounters happened in Asia. So it occurred to me: What am I doing spending all my time in Africa and South America. I need to get back to Asia. That’s where it’s at,” he says.
For his Taiwan stop, Barr met up with local animal researchers in the hope of documenting some of the nation’s endemic species, such as the pit viper and pangolin (a kind of scaly anteater).
“[Taiwan] is one of the most beautiful and wild places on the planet and people don’t know that,” says Barr, who has traveled to more than 70 countries. But there is a shadier side to Taiwan, and Asia generally, he says, one encapsulated by Taipei’s Huaxi Street (華西街). Better known as Snake Alley, the street is famous (some might say infamous) because it’s where visitors can watch vendors kill snakes, take a shot of snake blood or sip some venom. Barr last visited the street when he was here seven years ago.
Photo courtesy of National Geographic Wild
“It’s like a train wreck,” he says as he recalls watching a snake being skinned alive. “You want to see it, but after you see you think, man, I wish I hadn’t seen that.”
Conservation and cultural awareness have become Barr’s twin themes. Whether the excessive consumption of his home country or perceived cruel practices abroad, no lecture to audiences or interview with the media passes without its mention. But when abroad, he is careful not to offend his hosts.
“It’s a delicate dance,” he says. “A lot of these practices are tied up in cultural beliefs that go back hundreds or thousands of years, and it’s hard to change people’s attitudes. But we’re gonna have to change our ways if we want to or not,” he says.
Photo courtesy of National Geographic Wild
Barr uses the analogy of a building’s keystone to describe where we might be headed. “Many species of reptile are what are called keystone species: if you remove [them] the ecosystem can collapse,” he says. He adds that he is especially concerned about reptiles because they aren’t appealing to humans in the way other animals are.
“If I was talking about koalas or panda bears you’d be throwing money on the stage. People love to protect the warm and cuddly animals of the planet. You start talking about the cold and scaly snakes and they head for the exits. They just don’t pull at our heartstrings,” he says.
Barr wasn’t always so proactive about protecting animals. Before joining National Geographic, he was a doctorate student at the University of Miami, researching the “real sexy project” of pumping alligator stomachs.
Photo courtesy of National Geographic Wild
“I pumped thousands of them,” he says. “Everybody wants to know what’s inside the stomach of an alligator. Darn near every film crew on the planet [was interested]. And National Geographic was one of them and they said ‘you are really great in front of the camera.’” He signed on with National Geographic in 1997 and has since appeared in nearly 100 films.
An avid viewer of wildlife documentary programs since the 1970s when I first saw Lorne Greene’s Last of the Wild, a program highlighting endangered animal species, I wondered aloud which nature host Barr compares himself to. He didn’t say. He did say, though, that he has little patience for prima donna hosts, like the late Steve Irwin, who he says are only interested in self-promotion.
“He’s more of a showman. I’m a credentialed scientist,” he says. “Unlike the competition, what you see in my films is real science, in real wild places with real wild animals and it’s real danger. It’s not scripted, it’s not set up, it’s not contrived. We don’t fabricate.” For Barr, it’s not just about entertaining the masses. “There has to be a scientific reason why we put our hands on the animals,” he says.
Which all sounds well and good — until, that is, you watch an episode of Dangerous Encounters. In fact, it’s difficult to square Barr’s guardianship of the planet’s endangered species with his on-screen antics because they so closely resemble the aggressive cinema verite style of American reality programs such as Cops. In these Wild West encounters, Barr can be seen as the town sheriff subduing all manner of scaly miscreant. He even speaks in the argot of the lawman, with the emphasis on investigation, submission, traps, prisons and control.
In one episode, he hunts down a Komodo dragon, an animal “known to be deadly.” His purpose? Mount a “spy camera” on the animal’s back, something “that’s never been done before,” he says as his assistants lasso the visibly annoyed creature. Then, with his cronies, he subdues the beast in a pile up that wouldn’t look out of place in NFL football. With its jaw secured shut with black electrical tape and decked out with a camera, Barr the hunter can now determine how the hunted Komodo hunts.
In other episodes, the scientific rigor seems more an absurd pretext to bother the animals. In “operation hippo stakeout” he convinces a taxidermist to build him a hippo costume, partially made from Kevlar body armor. He then brings the large contraption to Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, covers it with dung and waits for hippos to wander up. The reason? To “unlock the secrets” of hippo sweat, which “some scientists believe … could result in powerful new antibiotics and sun block for humans,” he says. But the scientists are never mentioned and in the seven-minute video I saw, and he fails to get a sample of the coveted sweat.
Barr shrugs off the apparent contradiction between animal protection and treating creatures like prey or mixed-marital arts opponents.
“The only way to catch them is you have to jump on them,” he says of snakes. “That’s what makes it so entertaining. It’s not me being a cowboy or a showman. That’s just how you do it. We are not just doing this for television.”
“It’s too dangerous. Too dangerous for me, too dangerous for the animals,” he says, sounding slightly disingenuous.
Then again, what do I know about the proper treatment of animals. I’m certainly no expert. It does seem apparent, however, that Barr is bothering these animals more than they care to be bothered. In another film, he tries to demonstrate how dangerous porcupine quills are to canines by repeatedly thrusting a stuffed dog into the back of a retreating porcupine. What did we learn here that we didn’t already know?
Looked at from another perspective, perhaps Barr’s program makes me feel uncomfortable because I know subconsciously that his is a crass televised version of what humans are doing to animals more generally.
Yet there remain legitimate and immediate reasons to wrestle with these animals. Citing one example of a Nile crocodile that terrorized and killed more than 20 people in an African village, Barr says he is often called in to relocate these dangerous animals. “This is the thing of nightmares. This is their monster. This has eaten their family and friends,” he says of the villagers.
“They want to destroy this thing. That’s where I’m like no, no, no. We are going to relocate this animal and release it. You talk about the delicate dance, this is even more delicate than the cultural situation we talked about [in Taiwan] because this is a killer. And you have to try and convince them that these animals are important. It’s just being an animal. And usually when someone is killed, it is them that is acting irresponsibly,” he says.
Relocation doesn’t always help, though, because the same villagers who have lost loved ones continue to use the same croc-infested waters. Barr says he is sometimes frustrated because National Geographic will pay to dig a well for drinking or a protective area for villagers to bathe, but then they won’t use it.
“It’s almost like they understand the danger, but they have a fatalistic attitude. If today is my day, well, today is my day. I’m still going to go down there and swim or wash clothes. At the end of the day it’s on their shoulders. Am I going to live my life irresponsibly and possibly be eaten, or am I going to take precautions. For some people it has spiritual and cultural and mythological importance. It’s not so clear cut for them,” he says.
Towards the end of the interview, Barr removes the boa constrictor from its cage. Almost immediately, dozens of Fox employees gather around the office, their faces pressed against the ceiling to floor glass windows. Cellphone cameras captures the moment for posterity. Barr handles the snake carefully, caressing its dry scaly skin while explaining its origins. It’s an odd contrast to his television persona.
Barr says he’s lost several close friends, including the late world-renowned snake expert Joe Slowinski, and gets nightmares about his close encounters with death. “So bad that I pull muscles. It’s embarrassing, actually, because people say, ‘what happened to your neck?’ And I say, ‘well, I had a bad dream last night,’” he says.
And his style of nature program? “I’m here to stay whether people like it or not,” he says. “But I’m kind of moving more into being an ambassador. Educating people for the plight of reptiles and raising conservation awareness, and that’s where National Geographic is such a tremendous platform.”
Season seven of Dangerous Encounters With Brady Barr premiers on June 27 at 8pm with a two-hour special on Nat Geo Wild.
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