If your child has ever been to a reptile or animal party around Melbourne, chances are it was from Chris Humfrey’s Wild Action Zoo. No doubt you’ve seen him gracing the pages of MamaMag month after month. Kids love his infectious personality and his outstanding menagerie of animals. Chris founded Wild Action in 1994 and for over 21 years Wild Action has been providing interactive high quality environmental incursions throughout Victoria.
Chris lives with his young family and his big pet dog in an idyllic bush haven in the Macedon Ranges. But he also shares his home with a few other pets… around 2000 of them to be precise. This isn’t your average family home, it’s a private zoo where human and animal sagas unfold on a daily basis.
The 43-year-old, who still has the same green tree frog he found in a toilet when he was just 3 years old, and ector, a blue-tongue lizard he got when he was eight, is a passionate advocate for promoting environmental awareness and believes education is the key to animal conservation.
“We live in the best country in the world but we can be a selfish bunch,” Humfrey says. “I don’t think we do enough to look after the amazing wildlife we have. We need an attitude shift to wake people up and communicate with the natural world we live in,”
Chris has just launched a fabulous new TV show, Animal Insinct, on Foxtel’s Animal Planet, where viewers can join him on an action-packed journey of discovery to understand the importance of protecting every living creature. Chris invites you into his house and his Wild Action Zoo where you can watch as he puts his animal instinct into action, caring for his wild ‘family’ of over 2,000 animals.
In the first episode of the show he showed us just how far he will go sharing his life with his animals. This included sharing a bath with his pet python Bertha, who he has had since he was a teenager. Some may find Chris’ antics a little crazy, but to him it is all just part of life with his animals.
‘When I do things like eat koala poo people say, ‘Oh that’s disgusting’ but it’s not really. It’s only gum leaves – it actually tastes like Mentos,’
Whether it’s successfully breeding endangered Mountain Pygmy Possums, catching a 120kg ostrich, feeding a croc in his kitchen or rescuing owl eggs from an unlikely predator, our friend to all animals still finds time to care for his orphaned joey kangaroos, shed the skin of his geriatric water python and snuggle up to baby emu chicks in his own bed.
You’ll fall in love with this modern day Dr. Dolittle and be entertained by his animal adventures at home and around the country, inspiring us all to help save the planet.
You can find Animal Insinct at 6:30pm Saturday’s on Foxtel’s Animal Planet.
Images courtesy of Animal Planet