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Outside Magazine November 2003

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Beastmaster
With exploding ratings and a new book—not to mention a wardrobe makeover!—can anything stop wildlife-show host Jeff Corwin?

By Hampton Sides


	SVELTE ON THE VELDT: international critter-show superstar Jeff Corwin (photo by Sacha Waldman)

NATURE SHOWS HAVE COME A LONG WAY since the days of Marlin Perkins—gone are the stilted voice-overs a thousand miles removed from the action. Today's naturalist hosts directly engage their fauna, and no one does it better than 36-year-old Jeff Corwin. More than 13 million Americans tune in to his weekly one-hour show, The Jeff Corwin Experience, on Animal Planet, a Discovery Channel spin-off. The prime-time Wednesday program, which premiered in the fall of 2000, is now seen in 90 countries. At autograph signings from New York to Warsaw, Corwin is mobbed by his animalistic fans. In October, he hosts the premiere of King of the Jungle, a series in which contestants vie to become Animal Planet's next safari star, and in November, his new book, Living on the Edge, hits stores. Recently, Outside contributing editor Hampton Sides caught up with Corwin in Mexico City, where he'd just returned from a traditional Aztec dinner of grubs...

OUTSIDE: On the show, you're always dining with the locals in exotic destinations. What's the grossest thing you've ever eaten?
CORWIN: The worst would be sago worms, definitely. They're huge white maggots with transparent membranous skin. They're sort of spiny, and they undulate. In Borneo, we were with some Iban people who served me a whole plate of these things. I'll never forget it. It was like a mouthful of snot.

As with your show, your new book elevates vilified critters over the more charismatic megafauna.
I want to erase that whole idea of one creature being more valuable than another because we think it's cute. I love the creepy-crawly critters, the ones with the fangs and the stingers and the claws. I like the animals that are hated and reviled.

Like hyenas. You're something of a hyena evangelist.
They're amazing, unappreciated creatures. They get this bad rap as the trickster scoundrels of Africa. In fact, some scientists say hyenas have primate-level intelligence.

But they aren't exactly picky eaters, are they?
Hyenas will eat anything. I've seen hyenas come across a mummified corpse of some unidentifiable antelope and just devour it, from hooves to teeth. They can pick up a leg bone of a water buffalo and chew it up like Cap'n Crunch.

Are there any animals that Jeff Corwin truly doesn't like?
Gigantic, 12-inch-long centipedes. The way they move quickly, the way those mandibles tweeze back and forth—it just gives me a chill. I was bit by one in Central America, and oh, my gosh! It was like someone put a cattle prod to my gonads and then plunged them in ice water.

Speaking of gonads, the Experience isn't the least bit squeamishabout delving into sex.
Look, your average human male thinks about sex every 15 seconds. Sex sells. It certainly does in the animal kingdom. How animals try to attract each other, or engage in copulation—it's a very important part of the story.

Your show is also full of scat.
We certainly talk about scat a lot on our show, because it's very, very fascinating to me. It tells you so much about an animal. Like when you see the scat of a hyena and it's just white as chalk from all the calcium in the bones he's been eating. Because it has that taboo element, scat is kind of an ooky conversation motif. It gets people watching.

You once stuck your arm inside a constipated elephant. What was that about?
This animal was wandering the streets of Phuket, Thailand, living on the margins, eating out of garbage cans. It needed a vet terribly. We had to give it an enema. And the thing is, an enema for an elephant is a garden hose. Well, I got up inside there with the hose and I pulled out... a whole stalk of corn. It was like harvest season in there.

You've taken your share of knocks in the name of television.
My body has paid its dues. I got the bends once, diving in Palau. I've had tons of leeches, foot rot, botflies, and a bite from a coral snake that nearly killed me. In Cambodia, I had my shoulder separated by this really fresh elephant, just a real persnickety guy. We were in the water and I was trying to scrub him down.

I take it he wasn't keen on your ministrations?
He grabbed me by my arm and popped it out. Then he pushed me underwater and put his knee on my chest. Just when I was about to drown, he would let me come up and then push me under again. He was a real rat.

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