Robert Irwin's Dangerous Stunt Reminded Fans Of His Daredevil Dad

As the whole world knows, Steve passed away in 2006 after a stingray — an animal not generally considered to be dangerous — struck him in the heart. Even before that, the daredevil knew full well how perilous getting up close and personal with wild animals could be — and especially crocs. As a parent, then, we suspect he would have been uncomfortable watching Robert’s crocodile stunt.

But then again, a part of Steve may well have been happy to see his son following in his footsteps. Robert even looks just like his dad — and he’s absolutely inherited his love of animals as well. Though Robert was only two when his father died, scarcely old enough to remember him, he and his sister Bindi have continued Steve’s legacy and made the conservation and care of animals their lives’ work.

In 2021 Robert gave an interview to Esquire Middle East magazine about his life and the memories he had of his famous father. He could just about remember the first crocodile Steve let him hold and the teenager said that it’d been “an incredibly poignant moment… Getting to see first-hand this absolute dinosaur of an animal and see dad’s passion.”

“It’s still a vague memory, and not something that I can remember in its entirety,” Robert explained. “But it’s enough that I go, ‘That was it. That was the spark.’” And that spark’s led to great things. Even without Steve’s tragic death, Robert probably would’ve joined the rest of his family in their work at Australia Zoo — and that still would have led to this dangerous stunt.

Esquire asked Robert if he ever watched footage of his father doing his own death-defying work with crocodiles. “I feel very lucky to have so much captured on camera,” he replied. “Because whenever a moment starts to fade, whenever I start to forget, I can look back at all this old footage, and it completely sparks these memories. I’ll go, ‘I remember that moment, I remember when we were there!’ And I feel very lucky.”

“I actually still learn from dad watching these old documentaries,” Robert continued. “I love working with crocodiles, they’re my favorite animals, if you couldn’t tell already. And he had such an amazing affinity with all animals, but particularly crocs.” Of course, if you’ve been following the Irwins for long enough, you’ll remember when that affinity got Steve into seriously hot water.

Robert wasn’t old enough when the incident happened to even remember it today, but while he was a baby he made headlines. In 2004 Steve did a show at the Australia Zoo during which he held the month-old Robert at the same time as he fed a crocodile — and there was outrage from the media all over the world.

Australian news network ABC reported on the story and interviewed some unnamed spectators. One said, “You know, the guy’s experienced, he should know what he’s doing, I’ve got no problem with that really.” But another remarked, “If he’d have slipped over… the croc could have gotten the baby.”

Steve had to quickly apologize for his actions. He told the gathered media outside the Australia Zoo, “I had a safe working distance with that crocodile when that took place. I’m so sorry that it’s got to this, but that’s the way it is — if I could have my time again I would probably do things a little differently.”

Steve added, “But I would be considered a bad parent if I didn’t teach my children to be crocodile savvy, because they live here — they live in crocodile territory.” Despite Steve’s words, though, it took a long time for the backlash to fully die down.

But the incident never seemed to have any effect on Robert as an adult. “I still watch [old footage] and watch the little techniques that he used, and actually use that when I go in with our crocs and get to work with them and feed them and do our daily shows, to teach people about them.” Yet was that enough when it came to actually facing down a crocodile?

Robert mused on how his dad had “push[ed] the limits,” saying, “You can see how much he loved working with crocodiles. And he would get crocs to strike out of the water harder and faster than anyone could. And he did that to teach people about them.” These Australia Zoo techniques have often come in for criticism, though.

The animal charity PETA posted a series of tweets slamming Steve Irwin in February 2019, just after Google had released a Google Doodle celebrating what would’ve been his 57th birthday. PETA wrote, that Steve “was killed while harassing a ray; he dangled his baby while feeding a crocodile, and wrestled wild animals who were minding their own business.”

“Steve Irwin’s actions were not on target with his supposed message of protecting wildlife,” PETA’s statement continued. “A real wildlife expert and someone who respects animals for the individuals they are leaves them to their own business in their natural homes… It is harassment to drag exotic animals, including babies taken from their mothers, around from TV talk shows to conferences and force them to perform as Steve Irwin did.”

Steve’s fans and peers were quick to bite back against PETA, though. Wildlife television presenter Anneka Svenska told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat show, “Probably now it wouldn’t be looked at as so good to touch the animals like he used to. But at the time he was doing it, it inspired loads and loads of children to go on and work with animals.” Including, of course, his own.

Ever since Steve died, Robert and Bindi Irwin have grown to be big names in the animal conservation world — and, along with their mother Terri, they’ve become stars of the Australia Zoo. The zoo’s official website proudly declares, “Robert is the mirror image of his father and loves photography, mountain biking, and reptiles.”

And Bindi’s now a wife and mother, in addition to running the zoo. She wed her partner Chandler Powell in 2020 and the following year gave birth to a daughter, Grace Warrior Irwin Powell. Robert posed with his new niece for a pic, and people noticed how much he looked like his father had done back when Robert himself was born.

Becoming an uncle didn’t stop Robert from performing more of the dangerous crocodile stunts made famous by his father, though. He told Esquire, “At Australia Zoo, every day, we go in with our crocs, we get them to strike, we get them to exhibit this wild behavior of trying to kill us. We do that for the health of the crocs — they have a great time — but also to educate people to showcase crocs in their full glory.”

Robert added that his late father “built the Crocaseum, this massive 5000-seat auditorium that’s full every single day where crocs come out, and basically try and kill us and chase us around and give people this amazing new appreciation and understanding of just how amazing these animals are. He made crocodiles cool.”

And Robert clearly wanted nothing more than to do the same thing. But it’s incredibly dangerous, there’s no doubt about that. An Instagram video that Robert posted in January 2021 showed him giving food to a crocodile that suddenly lunges at him, forcing him to lurch away. Luckily, he was unharmed.

Robert had an even more dangerous slip-up later on in the year. This one was filmed by a member of the audience and uploaded to YouTube. In the footage, Robert’s doing a show with Monty, a particularly large and scary crocodile. But he’s clearly underestimated the creature’s strength — and its hunger.

Robert had been working with Monty, reportedly among Steve’s most cherished animals, from a very young age. When he was a mere 12 years old he gave food to the huge reptile before an audience at Australia Zoo. You could say the crocodile was his childhood friend — but crocs don’t have friends.

Robert — now 17 — performed yet again with Monty at the Crocoseum in September 2021. And the resulting video shows that at first everything seems fine, despite the death-defying stunts Robert’s doing with the croc. At one point he actually lays down in front of the completely untethered Monty, only to hastily get back up when the animal’s mood changes.

The difficulty comes when Robert does a tug-of-war with Monty, throwing food attached to a rope into the animal’s mouth and tugging on it. Terri, commentating on proceedings, tells the crowd that crocodiles enjoy this because the actions “simulate a struggling animal.” Monty’s particularly fond of them, she says, as he “usually wins.”

And Monty certainly wins this particular game of tug-of-war. While Robert’s tugging hard on the rope, suddenly Monty gets the upper hand — upper claw? — and yanks the piece of meat so hard that Robert falls over right into the crocodile’s territory, namely the shallow pool of water that forms the Crocoseum.

Luckily, this misstep doesn’t lead to the disaster it might’ve done, because Monty’s too far away. Terri even jokes about it. She quips, “Bye, Robert,” and then went Robert declares that Monty’s now had his lunch, Terri adds, “He almost got dessert, too, with a little cherry on top.”

When the video hit the Internet, reactions were mixed. A commenter on YouTube named Andi Holdorf wrote, “They [the Irwins] take very good care of those magnificent animals. You would never get me to do anything like that, but as with any animal, education is KEY, and I think they’re doing a service by educating people on how to treat these powerful predators.”

But another viewer disagreed, stating, “This was totally reckless, and I doubt Steve would have approved of that! That right there is a recipe for disaster! NOBODY in their right minds wants to see the Irwins in danger like that just for entertainment’s sake! I don’t care how ‘docile’ a crocodile looks or is, such animals can be unpredictable and specially when you get too comfortable around them!”

Though plenty of people considered Steve himself to be reckless, it says a lot about him that he was never badly injured by a crocodile despite spending so much time around them. He’d been nipped and scratched plenty of times, he told Larry King in 2004, but “nothing serious. I’m a professional.”

Steve even knew enough about crocodiles to save a friend’s life from one once. In 1992 his buddy Wes Mannion, the head of Australia Zoo back then, came under attack from a croc called Graham while cleaning up a pen. The croc rose from the water and sank its jaws into Wes.

“He was about to grab me on the head when Steve leaped on his tail and hung on,” Wes told The Good Weekend magazine in 2002. “I jumped out of the water onto the fence, and I could see Steve jamming a stick into Graham’s mouth. I yelled, ‘I’m clear!’ and Steve’s gone, ‘You beauty!’, and he jumped out, too.”

So there’s merit in learning to handle dangerous animals, and that was what Steve firmly believed. Throughout his career, he made one thing very clear: he didn’t want people to fear crocodiles but to respect them and, above all, conserve the species.

In fact, this belief is so firmly held by the Irwin family that Terri once expressed relief that her husband’s death was caused by a stingray rather than a crocodile. “Steve would be pleased that at least he wasn’t killed by a crocodile,” she told the You website in 2018. “It would have undone all his efforts to change public perceptions about them.”

Though Steve might’ve scolded his son for ending up in the water with Monty, he probably wouldn’t have had any concerns whatsoever about Robert feeding crocodiles at such a young age. After all, he was handling dangerous animals as a youngster, doing so with his father Bob, the man he named his son after.

Steve told Reptiles magazine in 1998 that he was catching poisonous snakes at the age of just four and dealing with crocodiles only a few years later. He said, “By nine, [Dad] had me jumpin’ my first croc, a freshwater croc. ‘Whack!’ I jumped it, and I was barely able to hang onto it. But the strength of Dad’s arm come up and pulled me and the croc into the boat.”

“All I ever wanted to do was be my dad!” Steve revealed to The Good Weekend. “He was the greatest herpetologist ever, and our snake trips — when I followed his big long footsteps, mimicking him, wanting to make him proud of me — that hadda be the highlight of my life!” And clearly, Robert thinks the same about his own dad.

And Robert told Vanity Teen magazine in March 2021, “I feel immensely honored to continue my dad’s huge legacy alongside my amazing family. For me, growing up I always knew that wildlife and conservation would be part of my life. I think it’s in my DNA.” The family’s newest addition, Grace, seemingly has that as well.

In November 2021 Robert proudly told the presenters of the Sunrise show that baby Grace was “in there wrangling snakes, and she’s going in booping koalas on the nose.” Non-venomous snakes, he hastened to add. So it looks like the Irwins might be doing dangerous animal stunts for generations to come. For Steve’s wife, Terri, this must be incredibly heartwarming to watch. But some days are probably still very difficult for her — especially when she reflects on the sad confession Steve made on the lead-up to his death.

After Steve passed, Terri had to try and put her own grief to one side and be strong for her young children. In a 2018 interview with People, she revealed how the support of her loved ones and Steve’s memory had guided her through the toughest times. Terri explained, “It was a little bit terrifying to have to step up and take the till. But I thought about it and said, ‘Let’s carry on as if Steve was still here.’”

Yet while the shock of Steve’s sudden death was palpable, the truth is that it may not have come as a massive surprise to Terri. That’s because Steve made a chilling confession to her not long before he died. And in a 2018 appearance on Anh’s Brush With Fame, Terri revealed to the world exactly what that was.

“[Steve] never thought he’d have a long life,” Terri told the show’s host, Anh Do. “He always kind of had this sense his life would be cut short.” Yes, Steve Irwin, the erstwhile crocodile hunter, believed there was good chance that he would die young. And sadly, his premonition would come true.

In the emotional interview, Terri solemnly remembered the final time she saw Steve. Fighting back tears, she said, “I remember him at the airstrip waving goodbye.” Terri then said later that day she was told to make a phone call. She said, “I got to our destination for the night, and they said, ‘You need to call your zoo manager.’”

Terri recalled the subsequent moments to host Anh Do, saying, “I just remember this incredible sense of responsibility, this feeling of overwhelming grief but [also], ‘What do I do next?’ I kind of collected my thoughts and then had to go out to the car and tell Bindi and Robert... which was really hard.”

Though over a decade has passed since Steve’s passing, Terri’s grief and longing for her late husband haven’t gone away. She continued, “I’m just lonely for Steve. It’s just really hard not having [him].” Terri’s daughter Bindi has also spoken of her grief publicly, too, telling People, “I remember people coming up to me and saying, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, sweetheart. Time heals all wounds.’ But that’s just not true. It’s like losing a part of your heart, and when you’ve lost that, you never get it back.”

Terri added that she hasn’t been in a relationship with anyone else, nor even been on a date, since Steve’s passing. She continued, “I feel that we had that soulmate thing. And in the [more than] ten years since, I haven’t dated or even thought about it. Because I’m not afraid to be on my own.”

Interestingly, Terri opened up to Anh about first meeting Steve and revealed how she wasn’t even looking for love at the time. She said, “I always felt… if I hadn’t married Steve I wouldn’t have gotten married.” The mother-of-two also talked about how her grief hits at “the most bizarre times.” She continued, “So I might be talking to biology students, and it will remind me of Steve, and I will burst into tears. You don’t ever get over grief. It changes, but you never wake up one morning and go, ‘Oh, I’m done with that.’”

Finally, Terri confessed that there was one aspect of his death that Steve would never have believed. The mom said, “No one would’ve been more surprised than Steve at the outpouring [of] grief and love.” Yes, the khaki-clad Australian had really touched the hearts of millions of people worldwide.

For their part, though, Terri, Bindi and Robert have worked tirelessly to honor Steve’s memory in the best way possible: by continuing the amazing work Steve had started. Australia Zoo – which now encompasses an incredible 1,000 acres – is still very much in operation, and the family have dedicated themselves to animal conservation in a way that would make Steve really proud. Binda told Today in 2019, “[Working with animals] is a part of who we are, it’s not just what we do. We do want to carry on in Dad’s footsteps and make sure everything he worked so hard for continues on.”

Events have continuously been held in Steve’s name, too, including the Steve Irwin Gala Dinner that has taken place annually since 2016 in Brisbane and L.A. There is even a Steve Irwin Day that takes place on November 15 of each year, celebrating his memory and life’s work. And in April 2019, Robert, Terri and Bindi proudly unveiled a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dedicated to the late wildlife warrior.

Bindi, Terri and Robert have subsequently continued to live their lives in the spotlight in the years since Steve’s death. In 2015, for instance, Bindi won the 21st season of Dancing With The Stars – dedicating her victory to her late father. And in October 2018 a new series called Crikey! It’s the Irwins premiered on Animal Planet. The documentary covers the family’s exploits in Australia Zoo and on numerous expeditions across Australia and abroad. With so many interesting things going on with the family, then, the future looks exciting indeed.