David Attenborough has chatted to Billie Eilish about dealing with animal extinction.
The 94-year-old joined Instagram last week in a bid to raise awareness about saving the planet and tackling climate change.
In his most recent post, the natural historian spoke with a host of famous faces – including David Beckham, Maisie Williams and Billie Eilish – where they asked him questions about different issues facing the planet.
Singer Billie sent a personal video to David, where she asked him how he coped with his personal feelings about animals “losing their lives and/or going extinct.”
In the clip, Billie said: “Hi Sir David, it’s Billie here. I wanted to ask you: How do you cope with your personal feelings about all the animals that are losing their lives and/or going extinct?
“How do you actually deal with that as a human being? I don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t know how,” she added.
In response, David said: “You feel desperate. I think the most astonishing sight in the natural world I’ve ever seen, and one I shall never forget, the first time I dived on the coral reef.
“You go into a new world and it’s a world of extraordinary beauty and complexity and wonder. You see all kinds of wonderfully coloured fish, lots of creatures you don’t even know exist. The most rich, the most beautiful, the most varied sight in the whole of the natural world.
“And I went through almost exactly the same places where I first saw that, on the Barrier Reef and instead of that pageant of life, it was like a cemetery.”
“It was stark white. It had died,” he explained, “It’s been killed by the rising temperature that we humanity have created.
“That was a terrible sight, and a terrible vision of what we are doing to the natural world, not only in the sea but on the land and in the air.”
Since joining Instagram last week, David has become the fastest person to reach a million followers on the platform.
In his first Instagram post, the natural historian said he was joining the platform because “the world is in trouble”.
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