When I started to publicise my peacock spider photographs someone left a comment “Why didn’t David Attenborough show this to us ?” Indeed, why didn’t he ? Many people probably were asking themselves the same question. These spiders were certainly in his league. The answer of course is, because at the time he too, like almost everyone else was completely unaware of their existence. Until I had publicised my video in 2011 showing the courtship of Maratus volans, virtually the entire world had been slumbering away, not knowing anything about these tiny dancers. What would be more exhilarating now than introducing David Attenborough to them? And that was exactly what I wanted to do. But how to get in touch? I googled his name, but of course, celebrity addresses are not easy to come by, certainly not something you find on google. But I discovered that he had connections with something called the World Land Trust. I wrote to them to ask them to pass something on to David, which they agreed to do. I then sent them a letter with prints of some of my earliest peacock spider photographs, but two years later, sadly, I had not received any response.
In March 2011 I joined Flickr, a photosharing site that was recommend to me as one of the best places to post my photographs. I was reluctant at first to join, mostly for copyright issues. Who knows what people can do with your photographs when they are freely available on the internet. But I soon became part of the flickr family and haven’t looked back, still my favourite site for my photographs today, after 9 years. Once my photographs were on flickr people started to write to me and one day I received a message from someone called Paul. He had seen my photographs and my Maratus volans video on Youtube and somehow we started talking about David Attenborough, and how he would be a person who would probably be very interested in my work. I told Paul that I had already tried to get in touch with Sir David, but hadn’t heard back. But Paul had a suggestion. He said he would be meeting in the next couple of weeks with Tim Flannery. Tim, if you don’t know him , is a well-known Australian scientist and the author of numerous books on ecology, history, climate change, tree kangaroos, quite famous in his own right. Paul suspected that Tim would know David Attenborough personally and he suggested he could ask him to pass on my videos. A bit complicated I thought, but sounded like a plan, and I certainly did not have a better one. Just introducing Tim Flannery to my spiders was exciting, even if the footage got stuck there and made it no further I would have achieved something.
I burnt my video onto a DVD, as that’s what you did at the time, packed them up and arranged to meet Paul in the hospital where he worked as an anaesthesist. I handed over my package consisting of a couple of DVDs, with the video in different formats, and a letter I had written. Now I just needed to wait. Two months passed and I heard nothing, neither from Paul, nor Tim nor David. I contacted Paul again for an update, but never heard back from him either, complete silence on all fronts.
Then in April 2012, more than a year after I gave my DVD to Paul, I received a letter in the mail, with a UK stamp on it and my address on it in handwriting. It read “Dear Dr Otto, It is most kind of you to have sent me discs of your peacock spider film. It is a delight to watch and I congratulate you upon it. What a splendid little creature !”, signed by David Attenborough. He went on to say that he had passed on the footage to the BBC so it could appear on their network. Wow, wow, wow ! So everything had actually worked, Paul passed the disk to Tim as promised, Tim was kind enough to send it to David, and David had been introduced to the peacock spider and miraculously replied to my letter. I was over the moon.
I kept David Attenborough informed of my later videos and eventually when he was in Australia on a speaking tour I tried to get a ticket, but all sold out immediately as soon as they were announced. David came to the rescue, he gave me free tickets for my family and I, we were chuffed. Needless to say, we enjoyed the show, and felt very privileged to join some of his friends in the front row. I even met his daughter during the interval, had a chat with her and asked her what David’s reaction was when he first saw my peacock spider footage. According to her he said something like “That can’t be real”. Well, it was.
Sadly I have never been able to meet David Attenborough in person, and that’s something I still wish for. However, my wife who is also a scientist, happened to be at a lunch in honour of Sir David Attenborough at the Australian Museum in 2016 and she introduced herself to him and said she was the wife of Jurgen Otto who sent him the DVDs of peacock spiders. He clearly remembered them well and replied “Oh yes, we had quite a little correspondence”. He told her how he still used the peacock spiders in teaching.
After having had success introducing Sir David to “my spiders”, I decided that that some of the British royals may also be interested. I wasn’t yet prepared to write to the Queen (I did later), but Prince Charles seemed interested in nature, so somebody worth approaching. Compared to writing to Sir David this seemed a breeze. The address of any of the royals is freely available on the internet. So I wrote to “His Royal Highness” and promptly received a response marked “Private and Confidential”. So I don’t want to broadcast here exactly what the letter contained, but he did say he was most grateful for me taking the trouble to send him the DVD, that he found it interesting and that he found the coloured bodies of the male peacock spiders quite spectacular.