TV adventurer Steve Backshall has revealed that the animal he's most scared of are hippos, despite his encounters with the planets deadliest creatures. Brave Steve has been in some nail-biting situations, including being constricted by a python, stalked by a polar bear, surrounded by sharks, charged at by hippos, and even bitten by a crocodile. Even with this laundry list of close calls, it's the hippo responsible for more human fatalities in Africa than any other large animal, reportedly around 500 deaths per year that truly gets Steve's pulse racing.
Opening up to the Daily Mail's Weekend magazine, Steve confessed: "The key is not to be afraid because animals smell fear and that brings danger. But there have been some hairy moments. The times I've felt most fearful have been with hippos.
" He described them as one of the "most dangerous, grumpy and unpredictable animals who aren't just a threat in water but also on land, likening their charging speed to that of racehorses despite their three-ton weight". Recalling his scariest encounter, Steve revealed: "On the last show I did I got caught on land with a hippo. "We were looking for crocodiles at night with a light and surprised a hippo feeding nearby.
My heart raced when I saw an animal that size thundering along, first on land and then deep water," reports the Express . "He recounted the intense moment: "We were staggered at how fast it ran. It just didn't stop.
"Thank goodness he charged away from us as we were a long way from our vehicle. It's likely we would have been trampled to death if he'd run towards us. "'We rely on local experience and in that part of Zambia where there's no poaching or hunting, the local guys said we were going to head down a river.
I said, 'But there's a pod of 200 hippos!' I was getting very nervous because if that had been in South Africa we would have been killed, 100%." Steve recently discovered a new species of shrimp, which he has named the Backshall Snapping Shrimp.The TV explorer found the shrimp while filming his upcoming UK tour show, Ocean.
He explained: "It's got one giant claw and one tiny one but it uses the large one to snap and create an incredibly loud sound as a powerful deterrent to other animals. It was named after me because I was on a dive in Tenerife when we found this new creature. It's tiny but utterly beautiful under a microscope.
".
