The Early Days

Born in 1960, Nigel Marven showed early promise as a budding naturalist. He ran a hamster colony at age eight and raced stick insects along his mother's clothesline by the time he was nine. In his early teens, Nigel had graduated to larger creatures, keeping a caiman, magpie and boa constrictors in his parents' house. He even saved a freshwater eel from being jellied, housing it in the bathtub. When anyone needed a bath, the slippery creature was put in a bucket.

Family holidays in the Mediterranean became zoological expeditions as young Nigel scampered over the countryside, pillowcase in hand, catching snakes and lizards for study and then release.

Once his school studies were over, Nigel spent a year traveling throughout America, where he met hellbenders and amphiumas in the wild (both kinds of salamanders). Returning to the UK, he moved to study botany and zoology at Bristol University. This proved to be the ideal place for him to pursue his interest in the natural world at an academic level, and secondly, Bristol is the world capital of wildlife filmmaking.

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