Personal experience: How to make your own "In the world of animals" from scrap materials. "Everything is like animals": Evgenia Timonova about animals, people and adventures Everything is like people leading

Yevgeny Timonova began to lead the video blog "Everything is like animals" after leaving her job in advertising, which paid $ 10 thousand a month. Many of Timonova's topics could hardly have been raised in programs about animals on federal TV channels. But it is the episodes about acne and polygamy, homophobia and patriotism that attract an audience that is interesting to advertisers, who disdain ordinary TV.

ALEXEY BOYARSKY, YURI LVOV

Actually, "Everything is like the animals" is also possible for children. Testing the episode "How the cats were tamed" at the second grader. "I catch mice. The level is God," Timonova explains the essence of the offer, which the ancestors of today's leopards made to our ancestors 10 thousand years ago. At the same time, during the period that has elapsed since then, dogs, for example, have not learned what they have learned, and cats, does not hide Timonov's admiration, have not learned anything new at all: "I can catch mice. I can not catch them." The kid laughs. The presenter puts a bag of cat food from a well-known company into the frame and says bluntly: the food is good. But even this move does not look rude after the sugary TV spots about pussies, because Timonova herself, the PR man of evolution, tells us this.

For children, of course, it is possible only in limited doses. "People like it when they are compared to a lion, but in fact a lion is an animal, um ... duck" - this is one of her most famous messages, which has become a meme. And right, um ... duck - you can't say more precisely. The lion is parasitic: he does not hunt himself, takes prey from lionesses, runs away from the hunter first, but roars and fights all day. Not counting sex 40 times a day.

In the episode "Lies, Blatant Lies and Their Mother Mimicry" Timonova, constantly changing color, teaches us to lie masterly, and in her most successful show, "Animal Bars of Patriotism" (over 1.1 million views on YouTube) talks about the animal nature of such a feeling like love for the homeland. At the same time, the leading dozens of patriotic commentators are angry, most often this feeling is not at all useful to the individual herself, but is needed by a leader who pursues his own goals and does not put his fellow tribesmen in a penny. It sounds political, as does the program that homosexuality is found everywhere in nature, but homophobia does not occur at all, so it is unnatural. But politics for Timonova is clearly not an end in itself. "Who are the people in?" We are going to meet Timonova in the jungle, since it is not far away: the center of Moscow, the greenhouse of the Apothecary Garden of the Botanical Garden of Moscow State University. Here, in incredible greenery and flowering, she films a program about trypophobia - the fear of open holes, all kinds of ulcers and enlarged skin pores.

"Now I get maggots out of the bushes, and they drove away"

Two cameramen with cameras, a guy with sound recording equipment, an assistant with a spotlight and another lady with empty hands - apparently a director. "While you, with your head up, admire all this wonderful flora, thousands of eyes are looking at you from the thickets with undisguised gastronomic interest," Timonova, walking towards the camera, narrates with the cutest intonations. Lord, who here wants to devour us? She takes out a tablet and demonstrates a picture: from the deep holes of some plant, the big-eyed heads of either caterpillars or some other disgusting insects are sticking out. "Aaa! Scary ?!" She laughingly pokes the tablet directly into the camera of the operator. But there are things that are really scary.

As such, the editorial board, which chooses the theme, does not have the project "Everything is like animals". “We didn’t expect any million views for the“ Bestial grin of patriotism ”, moreover, we thought that very few people would master it to the end,” Timonova shrugs. “The topic should be interesting to me - this is the main selection criterion, if not the only one.”

We observe how association themes are born at the next filming location - at the Moscow Zoo. Evgenia enters here through the service entrance. After the launch of the rapidly gaining popularity of a video blog in 2013, the zoo employees themselves went to it, offering assistance in the preparation of materials. In the terrarium, the on-duty keeper Alexander rushes to Evgenia's neck. We read the inscriptions on the tablets: "Mongolian toad", "Far Eastern tree frog", "Barossian newt". For a photo in a magazine, we choose which creature would be more colorful to give Timonova in hand. We stop in front of an aquarium with a huge frog with the appearance of a sumo wrestler. On the plate it is listed as "African water carrier".

"This is a male, poisonous, but the poison is only in the skin, there are teeth, it bites in nature, but here it is quite calm - you can pick it up," says Alexander. Timonova takes a frog - a melon with a suitcase-muzzle - with both hands under the belly. "A kilogram and a half," - she estimates, affectionately holding the unpleasant creature. "And half a kilo of them is urine," notes Alexander. "Stores liquid in case of drought."

While the photo session is going on, Evgenia talks about the water carrier: it turns out that he is also a polygamist, like a lion. Only in this species, males fight not for females (harem), but for a place in a puddle, that is, residential property. And females already choose a male by the presence of this living space and its size. “But this may become the topic of a new issue - the housing issue, which has ruined not only people,” Timonova says, picking up a frog that begins to fidget.

The water carrier releases his reserve of fluid into the hands of the video blogger. A puddle on the floor - like after a medium-sized dog. Timonova is delighted: "Oh, he wrote on me!" On the set, she constantly picks up someone, but usually everything goes without excesses. "They didn't bite, but they bit. Guinea pig, bottlenose dolphin, imperial scorpion, macaw parrot, civet ... It only came to blood with the Kalimantan soldier ant, but it was completely my initiative - I wanted to show on camera how he protects a column of ants- And he showed. Kalong, an Indonesian giant flying fox, also distinguished himself. Surprisingly, the bite healed without a trace the very next day. I waited with interest for the full moon, but nothing happened. And the worst bites were from mosquitoes in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. They thought they would eat it alive. The tsetse fly also bit. So far without consequences, but generally the incubation period of sleeping sickness is up to ten years. " Timonova is ready to enthusiastically describe the wonders of nature without a camera. We continue our walk around the zoo - Evgenia can act as a guide here. As it turns out, the Evolution Charitable Foundation is already selling "an excursion with Evgenia Timonova." "The money goes to charity, as well as the fees from my lectures, for admission to some of them they take 500 rubles," explains Evgenia. "I participate in this for free."

A girl comes up to us in the elephant house: "Oh, are you Evgenia Timonova? My husband and I are your fans. Can I take a picture with you?"

Natural business

Timonova from Novosibirsk, considered herself a biologist even as a child, dragged home beetles and worms. I persuaded my parents to buy a dog, but I managed to persuade them only for an aquarium. More precisely, five aquariums. "I handed over the newly-born fry to pet stores for money," she recalls. She dreamed of studying the fauna of the seas and oceans, and entered the biology department of Novosibirsk State University. But she reached the third year, where it was time to study her beloved animals, opening them with a scalpel, and then she realized that she was interested in the behavior of living beings, and not their structure, and in general, she was not a biologist, but a naturalist. Having dropped the biology department, she studied to be a philologist and went to work in advertising. But interest in the animal world has not disappeared. She constantly entertained her colleagues with stories about how everything "happens with animals." Colleagues routinely noticed that you, Timonova, should appear with this on TV.

“I worked in advertising for more than ten years, the last place was a large agency BBDO. I was already bored there, and they feel such things well. So we parted,” Timonova says. “Then I wrote columns for a matte women's magazine at the same time. not about animals. But there was also one about that same lion ... duck. " In 2012, Timonova won a competition from one of the companies for the best idea for a video about the study of the benefits of sea water. Prize - a trip to the Adriatic and filming a series of reports with sponsor's money. There she met the owner of a Dutch advertising agency, Sergei Fenenko. “He read a column about a lion and said that this could have been a cool video plot. And then we would have done a series of programs in the same vein,” Timonova recalls. what a TV ourselves. "

Sergei Fenenko is a director and Timonova's partner in the project: both have 50%. “We filmed the material for the first eight videos, including the one about the lion, in Kenya - we went there for three weeks, spending about $ 8,000 for the whole trip. "Sergei filmed himself. And the first year we worked only together. In the second year, Andrey joined us as an artist, who later became my husband, and in the third year we invited a professional operator," Timonova says. about twenty videos ".

Then advertisers pulled up - for example, the mobile operator Yota paid € 6,000 for six episodes filmed in Portugal. One of these commercials is "Bestial grin of patriotism". “We wrote synopsis of the scripts, announced through social networks about the search for a sponsor. Yota responded the fastest. We signed an agreement for 100 thousand views of sponsored videos on the evolution of ethics, plus 20 thousand views of a special story about natural inventions. to control it and completely trusted us, for which in the end she received almost 2 million views, and this figure continues to grow, "Timonova speaks about the advertising-related business as casually as she does about animals.

In the end, Evgenia also got on television. The team that we found in the Pharmaceutical Garden is not its team, but the film crew of the Zhivaya Planeta TV channel. “We signed a contract for 18 episodes. We recently went to Africa, filmed everything there. And what you saw in the Botanical Gardens blew in the wind with us - we had to reshoot in the greenhouse,” Timonova says. “My ideas, the script is mine. I'm filming my standard ten-minute episode plus another 16 minutes of appendage. The full story is shown on the "Living Planet", and the ten-minute - on my channel. "

Filming for the new season is planned for the summer of 2016 in India, but there are no sponsors yet - for now, they will be filming with their own. "The commercial does not have an average cost price, filmed in Kalimantan costs us one amount, filmed in Moscow in another, but the customer pays for the resonance and the number of views, and by what means we achieve this, this is a technical issue. place is always more interesting and attractive. But the success of a video is not only a picture, "says Timonova. Season - six episodes. Season sponsorship - from € 7.9 thousand excluding VAT, one special issue - € 3.5 thousand

Millions of views usually gain videos from the "neighing" category - this is a cheap audience. My channel is "for the smart", people with a relatively high IQ watch it.

“In advertising, I earned about $ 10 thousand a month in foreign currency. There is no such money here yet, but we are gradually moving in this direction. True, the dollar rate is different now. So this is definitely not downshifting,” Timonova laughs. The main income on the project is also for the animator, who previously worked in the Pilot studio, Andrey Kuznetsov, Yevgenia's husband. Andrei, of course, fulfills other orders, and Timonova herself teaches a course on video blogging at the Moscow School of Radio and Television. It is generally accepted that popular video bloggers receive tangible money from YouTube itself - a share of hosting advertising. According to Timonova, in her case, YouTube deductions are penny - up to $ 100 per month.

The same issue about cats with 118 thousand views has 6 thousand likes and 400 comments. That's 5.4% of views, while the usual rate for a popular YouTube video is around 0.5-0.7%.

"The popularity of our videos is lower than that of the most popular YouTube bloggers. Our usual video gains more than 100 thousand views in the first year, and videos of top bloggers - millions. But, of course, there is a difference in the audience: millions of views usually gain videos from the category "neighing" is a cheap audience, - Timonova argues. - My channel is "for the smart", people with a relatively high IQ are watching it, the share of children is also high, but they are smart children too. these people are resistant to advertising on traditional channels, their media is the Internet. "

Savage death

Naturalists often fall prey to animal attacks.

One of the more recent stories is the attack by an ocelot (wild cat) on the host of the animal show Brave Wilderness, Coyote Peterson. The video, in which it was captured, was uploaded to YouTube on May 17. The story about the life of ocelots was filmed at night, when the animals go out to hunt. As a result, the predators hunted the film crew themselves. The presenter waved his hand, the ocelot did not like it. The cat jumped on the journalist's head, scratched his face and bit his ears.

It is often impossible even for an experienced naturalist to predict when and what kind of human action will displease an animal. In 2015, wildlife photographer Christophe Courteau captured a gorilla at Birunga Park in Rwanda. Calmly kneeling, he aimed the lens at the animal. The gorilla instantly rushed at the photographer and knocked him to the ground. The victim then escaped with only a small scar on his forehead.

Popular science show writers often deliberately put themselves in danger. In 2014, naturalist Paul Razoli was supposed to be swallowed by a five-meter anaconda on the set of a Discovery Channel movie. Swallowed in the most literal sense: the scientist made a special protective spacesuit that provided him with air, with respiration and heart rate sensors. In this spacesuit, he was going to get inside the snake, and then talk about what he saw and his feelings. In order to attract the attention of a predator, the spacesuit was specially smeared with pig's blood. But it all went wrong. The snake disdained to swallow a man in a spacesuit, but began to choke - the spacesuit barely saved the researcher.

Fatalities are also not uncommon. In 2003, Russian scientist and photographer Vitaly Nikolaenko was torn to pieces by a bear. At 200 km from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, he photographed a sleeping bear. Suddenly the beast woke up. The photographer managed to release paralytic gas from a canister into the bear, but this did not stop the predator.

The famous Australian naturalist, TV journalist, author of the series "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin once dived with a crocodile and was bitten - injured his hand. On another occasion, a kangaroo smashed his lip with a strong blow. In 2006, Steve Irwin and a cameraman filmed underwater stingrays (stingrays) for the film Deadly Ocean Creatures. Cases of attacks on humans by these predators are extremely rare, and for a naturalist this was not the first dive to stingrays. But this time one of the stingrays raised its tail with a poisonous sting at the end and hit the journalist floating above it right in the chest. The journalist was killed. The operator floating behind managed to shoot everything.

"Everything is like animals" is a program about who people are like. The YouTube project tells about what Nikolai Nikolaevich Drozdov was delicately silent about - about sex, an inner hamster, hypnotic praying mantises, advertising and insidious vervet. But someone has to! The eternal naturalist Yevgeny Timonova, a biologist by vocation and a writer because it happened so, comes up with stories about animals and people, comics are drawn by Akuaku, and directed and edited by Serge Fenenko.

List of episodes:

Everything is like animals:

01. Penguins of easy virtue - reward mating in Adélie penguins
02. Axolotl - when will you grow up
03. Female Secrets of Primates - March 8 and Hidden Ovulation
04. Leo ...

Everything is like animals:

Bonus: Beasts X. Breed breeding with Evgenia Timonova

01. "Beasts X" - blue and Samoyeds
02. British shorthair
03. Welsh Corgi
04. Maine Coon
05. Bobtail
06.Siberian cat
07. Dachshund
08. Kinkalow
09. Akita Inu
10. Samoyed
11. Russian blue cat

But Timonova really does have charm. We met with her in Moscow during a break between two expeditions, across Australia and Kamchatka, in an oriental cafe. Evgenia ate pilaf and talked about homophobia, the picture of the world, evolution and sex - and it was charming and exciting, like 10 episodes of "Everything like animals" in a row.

Your most popular release is still your early Leo Asshole Animal, with a million views. Or "Sex in the Water", where you are all so beautiful on the beach talking about the sex of marine life, various anemones and other creatures whose names I cannot pronounce. Is provocation your goal?

We do not arrange deliberate provocations. The principle of our program is to explain human behavior through animal behavior, so that people recognize themselves, receive answers to their questions, or, conversely, ask themselves questions. For example, we made the issue about homosexuality with examples of non-traditional orientation among rams as correct and balanced as possible: neither one nor the other. Therefore, in the comments to that release, the main mood was confusion: they say, where to run, whom to beat?

Homophobes are surprised: where are they from in Chechnya ?! You say: you like girls - what needs to be done with you, how to propagandize so that you want to hug and kiss boys? This is biology, this is beyond "morality." They don't give an answer. Why?

Good question! I tried to answer it in my recent column. Homophobia is irrational, in which one argument is funnier than the other. “This is unnatural” - we recall the same sheep and thousands of other species, which are also “like that”. "Homosexual relationships do not produce offspring" - a lesbian couple can give twice as many offspring than a traditional one, there are two women, Captain. And in general, the actual demographic problem of mankind is not population decline, but, on the contrary, overpopulation.

Since we are talking about this, then simple biological reproduction is the task of the animal world, and for us, if we imagine ourselves to be the masters of this planet, social evolution, peculiar only to us, is more important.

The key to the survival of the homo sapiens species today is ethics, with which not all is well. Only ethics will allow us to avoid global wars and harmonize our relations with the space where we live.

With homophobes more or less sorted out; what about other aggressive preachers of unscientific views - creationists? What to answer them?

Yes, you can do nothing special and not answer who listens to them.

Seriously, the scientific view of the world involves the use of the notorious "Occam's razor": if one set of facts is enough to explain one phenomenon, there is no need to invent something else. There are enough rational explanations for the emergence of life exactly here and development in this way.

Creationists do it for good reasons. It is difficult to accept that from inorganic by chance organic matter arose, then again in it by chance RNA gathered, and it started ... Excuse me, the creationists say, it took only some three and a half billion years, and from this slime we supposedly turned out, so intelligent and beautiful? It is impossible to imagine the scale of this time.

In addition, we humans have a great need to oppose ourselves to other creatures. This, in fact, once formed our species; we have very high intra-group cooperation and very tough interspecific competition. We are, and They should be - others who are worse, stupider, unworthy of Us.

And therefore, when it is said: They are also We, that man also comes from this primitive broth, that he did not descend from a monkey, but that there is a monkey, that we are not the crown of evolution, but one of its small branches, it happens, as they say, break the pattern.

What are creationists; let's take linguists, serious people, carriers of scientific consciousness. They categorically deny that animals have reason and language (We are They).

Is it true that the difference between the thinking of humans and other higher animals (not only primates) is not qualitative, but quantitative, that it is a matter of the amount of information that can be processed per unit of time?

“But we can never prove it by imagining the inner world of a dog, a gorilla.

Not "never", but, unfortunately, we cannot yet.

There is the classic concept of Umwelt, introduced by Jakob Uexkühl, a German biologist and zoopsychologist, who described the “inner world” of the ixodid tick. He has no sight, hearing, nothing, for him the whole world is the smell of butyric acid. This is his Umwelt. Fantastic for us umwelts of a praying mantis with his eyes, a bat with a sonar - how can this be imagined?

- There is a well-known project to teach chimpanzees the language of the deaf and dumb - amslen.

And then there is the failed project "Nim Chimpski", in which a baby chimpanzee was taught this language, he seemed to have learned something, but it was at the level of ordinary training. The project was adopted by those who deny the existence of an animal mind, and for a long time afterwards they said: so that we no longer hear about this “animal language”.

And the chimpanzee Washoe swore: she transferred the meaning of the word "dirty" - "soiled" to "dirty" - "bad." Linguist Svetlana Burlak in the book "The Origin of Language", describing this project, quotes a phrase composed by Washoe in the Amslen language: "dirty toilet devil."

The same Washoe said about the swan "bird + water". But the primatologist Franz de Waal, who worked on these chimpanzees, warns that these cases need to be checked and re-checked, because, alas, they can be statistics, the result of the selective attention of the researcher.

- Well, one monkey is "smart", the other is "stupid" - isn't this proof that They are like Us?

Still would. What's more, cognitive differences are not only manifested at levels as complex as sign language proficiency. Already about mice we can say - some are smarter, others less. Birds, fish - they all show differences in intelligence, and therefore, its presence. Octopuses use tools. Wasps recognize human faces.

- Why?!

Well, in fact, they are deeply indifferent to our faces, but they recognize each other's "faces" so well that they are able to apply it to other creatures.

Can we imagine our own immediate biological evolution, or will our fate now be determined only by social development?

We are on the cusp of a quantum leap in our biological evolution.

Very soon we will learn how to edit our genome - and then we can, roughly speaking, do whatever we want with ourselves. That is, the social - scientific and technological progress - will now determine the biological.

First, age-related diseases will be defeated, the main thing, in general, is our biological disgrace. All these neurodegenerative Alzheimers are horror, they shouldn't be.

But from the point of view of evolution, this will just be bad: the old, the sick must die, free up space, resources?

And here is the trick: in our form, old individuals are not useless absorbers of resources, but bearers of useful experience, just the ethics that we talked about at the beginning and which will help us survive. The tradition of humanity is a very cool evolutionary adaptation!

- Let's finally have sex. Why is it pleasant to reproduce - is it an incentive?

In the matter of "pleasant" sexual reproduction, we hominids have already come to everything ready. We don't know for sure about invertebrates, but fish definitely enjoy mating, they have a reward system, that's all. In general, you need to start with the benefits of sexual reproduction - it provides genetic diversity that is impossible with hermaphroditism. It's much easier to be a hermaphrodite: you don't have to bother, look for someone ... But there is a problem with diversity. And it was the mating of the two that was associated with neurotransmitter reinforcement that elicited subjective feelings of pleasure. And since dopamine is universal for all organisms, all organisms, accordingly, began to intensively mate and multiply.

You are loved not only for the popular science factology, but also for the literary merit of your scripts. Are there any plans to do more writing in addition to video?

At one time, I switched from the biology department of Tomsk State University to the philology department of the Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, when I realized that science in its pure form is not mine. Roughly speaking, I could not cut the frog pointlessly (I could cut it and eat it if necessary). I experienced some kind of Dostoevsky throwing: I could not, like others, collect collections of butterflies, these collections are not worth anything against their life. The conveyor of death around biology as a science eventually pushed me away, I went to the philology department, and it was wonderful there ...

- In short, will you write a book?

Yes, I'm already writing! But so far, with all our trips, with my rhythm, when I vomit into a thousand small cubs, it does not work. You have to sit down and write this.

The slogan "The program is about who we are" - about our similarity with other animals. And in what way is a person fundamentally different from them?

Probably all the same by speech. As we already said, many animals have signaling systems, but all this is nonsense compared to the completeness, richness and uniqueness of the human language. With the possibility of fixing that very umwelt and passing it down through the generations. We can look at the world through the eyes of hundreds of people who lived before us, taking just one book, the same "War and Peace".

- And what about technique and technology? International Space Station?

An orangutan can make a telescopic antenna from sticks of different diameters. Hundreds of millions of years will pass - and you will receive the ISS antenna.

Timonova Evgeniya is a Russian science journalist. She also works as a TV presenter, naturalist, and is considered an active popularizer of science. Since 2013, he has been running a popular blog called "Everything is like animals."

Biography of a journalist

Timonova Evgeniya was born in Novosibirsk in 1976. She fell in love with nature in early childhood. At the zoo she studied in the circle of young naturalists, won victories in biological Olympiads of various ranks.

After leaving school, she entered Tomsk University. Timonova Evgeniya studied at the Faculty of Biology. In her third year, her worldview underwent a serious reassessment of values ​​when she realized that she was more a naturalist than a biologist. As a result, she transferred to the Faculty of Philology at the Pedagogical University in Novosibirsk. Received a diploma in Psychology and Literary Studies.

Television work

Timonova Evgenia, whose biography is considered in this article, immediately after university went to work on Novosibirsk television. She began her career in a program called "Expensive Pleasure".

In 2000, the girl took an important step by moving to Moscow. Here she started working in the field of advertising journalism. She mastered the specialty of a copywriter, soon became a creative director.

She also worked on the territory of the countries of the former USSR. For example, in 2006 she headed the Kiev women's magazine, which was called LQ. She worked in the position of editor-in-chief for about a year.

In 2012, Evgeniya Timonova became the winner of the Best Work in Russia competition. At the ceremony, the heroine of our article met its organizers, among whom was Sergei Fenenko, who at that time ran a Dutch advertising agency. Together with him, she came up with her project "Everything is like animals."

All about animals

Her youthful passion for animals and biology played a defining role in her career. The program "Everything Like Animals" by Evgenia Timonova began to talk about biology, human nature, evolution and its connection with the animal world in a popular science format.

It turned out to be a real video channel, which Timonova began to conduct regularly on the Internet. Here she specializes in the original parallels between the behavior of animals and humans, talks about the principles and root causes of our behavior, answers many questions that concern not only children, but also adults. For example, why are we naked, where did love come from, why grandmothers are needed, what women want, why acne hypnotizes us and holes frighten us.

The video is designed for the widest audience of almost any age and education. It is especially interesting to watch because it also contains an entertainment component. In this she completely tries to comply with the principle - entertaining, educate.

Channel "Everything is like animals"

Evgenia Valentinovna Timonova started her own Internet channel in the spring of 2013. An individual style for him was developed by a Dutch company, with which Fenenko helped her to contact. At the end of 2014, the famous cameraman Oleg Kugaev and artist Andrey Kuznetsov joined the project.

The very first season was filmed in an ordinary studio with a green screen in the background. The second was filmed entirely in Kenya. The episodes of the program were dedicated to wildlife. After that, most of the seasons were dedicated to a specific country. So, the program "Everything is like animals" has already visited New Zealand, Indonesia, Portugal, India, Croatia, Australia. A separate season was dedicated to Russia.

Well-known Russian biologists were involved as reviewers. For example, Stanislav Drobyshevsky, Alexander Panchin, Alexander Markov, Alexander Sokolov.

In 2016, the program "Everything is Like Animals" began to appear on the "Living Planet" channel, which is part of the VGTRK holding. At the moment, the project already has more than one hundred thousand subscribers on the Internet.

The most popular episode of the show was titled "Bestial Grin of Patriotism." It was devoted to the mechanisms of military propaganda. He had several million views. In 2015, the channel "Everything is Like Animals" received an award in the competition for innovative journalism in the category "Best Popular Science Blog".

Show seasons

At the moment, eight seasons of the show "Like Animals" have been filmed. The very first one was called "Beginning". It included issues about penguins, the art of mimicry, female secrets of primates, procrastination, lions, praying mantises (this, by the way, is Timonova's favorite insect that lives in her house), spiders. In all these issues, the author tried to draw parallels between the behavior of humans and wild animals.

The second season was called "Around Kenya in 20 Days" and the third was "Anywhere." It included issues about dolphins, bison and beavers.

The fourth season was entirely devoted to human evolution. Timonova talked about sexual selection, the origin of love, massage and gossip. The name of the fifth season is "In Asia", and the sixth is "In Russia". It paid special attention to marmots, seals and seals, foxes, Przewalski's horses, the domestication of cats and the domestication of dogs.

The seventh season was filmed by the team of the project "Like Animals" in India, and the last one to date is the eighth season in Australia. It features an episode titled "Chuck Norris Among Crocodiles", as well as episodes dedicated to poison, milk and eggs of platypuses, the peculiarities of coral reefs, amazing sharks, and why we love their meat so much, the unique Australian animal wombat, which has an original intelligence and ingenuity, kangaroos and dangerous Australian jellyfish.

Personal life

The personal life of Evgenia Timonova is developing very successfully. She got married in 2015.

The artist Andrey Kuznetsov, known for his collaboration with the Pilot animation studio, became her husband. He himself is the director of several animated films: "How the Snake was Deceived", "The Deceiving Crow", "The Adventures of the Fox", "Pumasipa", "The Scientist Bear", "The Brave". All of them are included in the animated series "Mountain of Gems", dedicated to the fairy tales of the peoples of Russia.

As a production designer, he participated in the creation of the national cartoon "South of the North" and the cartoon "About Ivan the Fool". Currently Kuznetsov, together with Timonova, is working on the project "Everything is like animals."

Exclusive interview and talked about Internet popularity, love for nature and modern science.

- Which of your professions do you consider the main one?

- They all make sense only as a complex. It is an indivisible system, the individual components of which are not viable. I am very glad that my difficult path of getting an education and ornate professional activity eventually turned into one interesting puzzle - the program "Everything is like animals". It allows us to do something unique and unlike anyone else.

- What's your education?

- The first is biological, the second is literary criticism and psychology.

- Why do you position yourself as a naturalist and not a biologist?

- There is a subtle difference between them. I do not do scientific research, but use the existing ones. I transfer scientific experience to the sphere of journalism in order to popularize science. Writing and educational activities are closer to me, not theoretical research.

- Please tell us about writing ...

WITH Cenarii, articles, columns, essays, stories and other texts in magazines, collections, the Internet, etc. I don’t have a separate book yet, because I am scrupulous about what is published in print. Too many non-writers have published too many books and have completely littered the information space. In order to somehow maintain balance, I courageously remain a writer who has not published a single book. Although negotiations are already underway with one publisher, so it looks like it won't be long.

- How did the idea to create a project appear “ Everything is like animals »?

On the other hand, the moment was right. How lucky? Successful from the series: "To whom - the war, to whom - the mother is dear." Probably, an unfortunate moment came when on all TV and on the Internet there was not a single Russian-language program about animals that would be interesting. This feeling of information emptiness that requires filling, prompted us to think that if not us, then who?

- Does your program have a mission or goal?

- Is your program more entertaining or scientific?

- We have an entertainment component, but it ... It's not even a way to make the program more popular. It's just that it's much more fun for us to make the program funny. We do it as for ourselves. We like to laugh at everyone and we laugh at everyone. We like to make provocations - we do them.

Science-pop differs from science in this way. Scientific information doesn't have to be exciting. In addition to objectivity, it does not owe anything to anyone at all. Therefore, only people interested in obtaining clean data get to it.

But since we have set ourselves a modest task to improve the whole society, we want to make people not even more educated (we do not give education, but a basis for education), but simply a little happier. It seems to us that this knowledge about people and animals makes it easier to accept oneself and the world. And everyone should be happier with a good mood ...

- How is the theme of the issue chosen?

Usually, the process is similar to the inspiration of a poet: a line comes to mind, which contains different meanings. Gradually, she becomes overgrown with a poem. With the script, it happens the same way: suddenly an idea comes from which then the whole script grows. You read one article, click the second, third, find connections, and gradually parallels and a unified system are built.

Or we go somewhere and there we meet an amazing animal that we want to talk about. For example, the manta ray in Indonesia. Then we look for different parallels, facts, articles and form the material.

- Do you have a favorite episode?

So when the issue skyrocketed over a million views, I was thrilled with who the people really are. They are much better than you think of them, and this is terribly pleasant.

- Do you receive feedback from scientists?

- We get it, and a huge one, because it is with these people that we have to constantly communicate. This is absolutely amazing support. We have a fruitful symbiosis. Science supplies us with facts, hypotheses and ideas, and for them we are a channel of communication with people who would never have learned about their research in another way. We popularize science at a simple basic level, but this level is in many ways the most significant.

Even the most democratic scientists still sit in their ivory laboratory, and they are so burdened with scientific knowledge that it is difficult for them to translate it into human language.So they rejoice at how we combine scientific concepts with fun and answering people's simple questions.

We adore them, because it is a great happiness when you are surrounded by people, in comparison with whom you feel like a fool. You feel all the limitations of your erudition, education, horizons. The worst thing that can happen to a person is the feeling that I am the smartest. If I find myself in an environment in which I am the smartest, that's all - a disaster. Excellent scientists around always remind us that we still need to grow, grow and grow, and also create conditions for this growth. The program is changing before our eyes and we ourselves really like to watch it.

- What do you think helped you to achieve success?

- We made the first video, uploaded it. We started doing it all the time. And they did and did, just because we ourselves really liked it. When a person does what he really likes, it is inevitable that someone else will like it. In our case, we were lucky for a number of reasons. First, we had no competitors. Secondly, animals are a fascinating topic in themselves, and animals are even better in connection with humans.

The main difficulty is to stay in the sector that you initially chose. We didn't want to go into complete entertainment. We quickly discovered how to make videos popular, and deliberately did not take this path. I don't want to just get views. The channel has a meaningful audience and viewers who like what we do.

The rest of the road defines itself. Do what you must and be what will be. Everything that is needed will happen by itself. At first we were still active. It seemed to us that we needed to do something. For example, they decided that they had to go to the TV. The content is interesting. We got in touch with different channels, spent a lot of time on it. But every time the initiative came from us, nothing came of it. At first they said "yes, yes, of course," and then everything ended in nothing. So we were convinced - no need to ask anyone! They themselves will come and offer everything. Just do your thing. We are doing, and gradually people began to come to us with offers that we can no longer refuse.

- What are you most proud of regarding the channel?

- By the channel itself. It is impossible to isolate something from it. He is my favorite child. It is impossible to say what I like the most about the child's ears. If it worked out, then the whole thing. There are two things in life that I am truly proud of: my child and my channel. They are very similar in meaning ... I am now growing "Everything like animals", I care about it, I invest as much as I once invested in a child, and maybe even more, because when I have a child appeared, I was small and meaningless. Now I'm big and meaningful. With later children, they are always more worried.

- What will your project be like in five years?

- I have no idea. I don't make any plans, because it distracts from the process, from how the channel actually grows. In none of the stages did I set goals that after such and such a period of time we would be like that. It grows and develops according to its own laws. He takes him out to territories that would not occur to me. When we started it, the last thing I thought about was popularizing science. We wanted to make a very cool show about animals that will be interesting to everyone. But if we stayed within this framework, we would not be who we have become. Popularity would require other efforts from us and everything would go in a completely different direction. Therefore, I do not bother myself with plans, especially for five years. There would be a couple of weeks to figure it out. But I'm sure there will be something interesting with us.

- Do you have a professional dream?

- It is easy and free to move around the world, as well as have the entire technical base to shoot something, in the way and at the level we want. Technology, people and geography are three things we need to do everything at an even higher level.

Although again it is not clear. Many projects reach the point where they have everything they wanted, and viewers find that when everything was done on the knee, it was much livelier and cooler. So you dream, you dream, and when it comes true, you understand that it was better before.

- Would you like to release episodes more often?

- We thought about it. For example, we laid out the African season once a week. It turned out that the audience does not have time to digest, there is too much information. At that time, our views even dropped. The life cycle of the program is two weeks. The first week is fresh and fresh, and the second is a topic for discussion and reflection. For now, don't need it more often.

- What is your working day? Is every day dedicated to the channel?

- Yes, everyone. I deal only with "Beasts", so every day is given to them. I no longer have vacations or days off. The line between work and life has been erased without a trace. On the one hand, it's great. I don’t go to work, I don’t have any problems typical for hiring. I remember now: two years ago I was sitting in the office. Now it seems like someone else's life on another planet. On the other hand, I had holidays and weekends. I had a time when you don't owe anyone anything at all. Don't do what you want. Now there is a constant feeling: "But what about - how?", "Wow - wow," "A whole hour has passed, but nothing has been done", etc.

It's tricky, but cool. It's cool when life merges together, and you no longer split into vacations and work. All trips are leisure and work at the same time. You don't even need rest, because there is nothing to rest from, this is your life. But this is not easy, because sometimes I feel that I ought to have a rest, but, like in that anecdote about a crow: “Shoot me down, I cannot sit down”. Already the brain is smoking, but it is impossible to switch off.

- Does the creation of the program make you constantly engage in self-education?

- Oh sure. And for this, too, you have to pay dearly. For two years I have not read a single fiction book. Constantly only reference information and data that may be useful for work. Everything is not free.

Plus, I understand that this is not forever. This frantic pace won't last forever. Perhaps we are now at the peak of development. Then there will be a period of stagnation. I prepare myself in advance for the fact that at some point everything will slow down. This is a natural evolutionary process. Here we ran faster, here - slower. Each of the periods has its own advantages.

- Have you made any mistakes regarding the project?

- I didn't have any failures or mistakes at all. There can be only one mistake in life - the fear of making a mistake. Everything else is one or another experience that you either predicted and received, or did not predict, but its value does not diminish from this. Looking back in retrospect, I understand that all the things that seemed to me in vain, in the end, turned out to be bricks or steps, without which the current result would not have happened. The current state, which I really like, would be impossible without all the seemingly mistakes. The understanding that mistakes do not exist is very inspiring. Blaming yourself for something is pointless. Now you cannot appreciate what you did. You have done something, and the results will be much later, and perhaps not at all what you expect.

- What is the most pleasant thing about your job?

- Common to all scientists ... basic scientific nishtyak. When you are paid money to satisfy your own curiosity. Moreover, this satisfaction is so high that for the sake of it you are ready for anything.For the first two years, we ourselves paid for the opportunity to satisfy our curiosity. And now not only we feed the "Beasts", but the "Beasts" feed us. This is some kind of miracle, which I still do not always believe in.

- What's the hardest part?

- Do not become dependent on the success or failure of the channel. We are all arranged in such a way that we react to someone else's reaction to us. And here it is not clear what is more dangerous: reacting to negative reviews or laudatory ones. This is a dopamine needle that many social media users and public people fall for. It is a great pleasure when you get the support of a large number of people, and it’s a physiological pleasure: a special neurotransmitter stands out, causing a physical high. To become dependent on this means to follow a completely different path than you walked initially. Then you start to do everything not for the sake of pure knowledge and fun, but for the approval of others. Unfortunately, this path is very easy to embark on.

- What popular science programs and channels do you yourself watch?

- I really like the channel Vsauce Michael Stevens. He is a scientist, a neurophysologist, who makes short videos with cool dynamic scenarios, in which, in a way similar to us, he provides scientifically based answers to simple human questions. He not only tells how synapses work, but shows them how they work using the example of everyday situations and problems. For example, an issue about fears: why one picture seems scary to us, and the other does not. He has millions of followers and is in many ways the gold standard of science pop. At the same time, he tells things more difficult than we do. We cannot yet allow such a deep immersion into the subject.

There are funny TED Talks , in which serious scientists give short reports about their research. In the West, the problem of scientists who cannot speak to the people is much less pronounced. There, science just comes out easily to the square and cheerfully tells what it does. It has become a separate genre of entertainment, reminiscent of stand up.

From Russian-speaking I really like PostScience because she's so ... uncompromising. They release living scientists who tellabout the research results as they are, and they don't care at all about making it exciting and interesting. For this I am insanely grateful to them: I would not want to be entertained at the same time. They do not have the largest, but loyal audience: only those who need this information.

- What advice would you give to novice authors and presenters of popular science programs?

- Do not be afraid and do! The only advice that will help you understand how to do this is “Do it!”. In the process, everything will become clear.

- Don't you think that the emergence of a large number of author's popular science channels leads to the profanation of scientific knowledge? Not all such channels provide links to information sources and consider different points of view.

- Yes, that's a problem. The process of some kind of "balaganization" of science. On the one hand, this is good because it makes it popular. But on the other hand, it is bad, because it allows you to be irresponsible to what you say. I believe these are evolutionary bugs. Whenever something new appears, it is unfinished. The first birds looked ridiculous and flew badly. Likewise, popular science projects now have a lot of bugs. Gradually, they will be cleaned up, improved and come to an increasingly harmonious system. Another evolutionary law says that momentary gain can be replaced by strategic defeat. Now you can gather crowds of subscribers, telling dubious hypotheses, without indicating the sources, etc., but in the end you will give way to those who do everything strictly, verified and with the creation of a scientific discussion.

- What do you consider the main discovery of mankind?

- In my field, this is what eventually came to be called Darwin's theory. But the astrophysicist will tell you something else.

- You spoke about the buzz of knowledge and the desire to understand the world. Do you think this is a congenital characteristic or can it be instilled in a child?

- Both. Some children are more curious and contemplative from birth, and it is easier for them to instill a scientific interest. If they find themselves in a grateful environment, they are surrounded by appropriate people, then it will be easier for them to reach certain heights. Some babies are naturally adjusted to something different, but curiosity and a thirst for exploration can still be instilled. Every child needs attention, care and development.

All children are naturally talented in some way - that's for sure. Another question is how to develop it. It is easy to develop early and unambiguous talent. If a child has been sitting and poking around in the grass from the age of three, looking for bugs and observing animals, then it is roughly clear where to send him and how to support. It happens that children are gifted with completely unexpected things, and parents continue to knock out their usual abilities: drawing, singing, etc. I myself, as a parent, went through this. It took me some time and wisdom to understand that my child can and knows what I'm a complete stump in, and that's cool. Listening to and understanding what you are talented in is one of the most difficult tasks in life.

- What do you think, as a result of which great scientific discoveries are made?

- This is the result of innate ability - a little bit, hard work - to a greater extent, and a fortunate combination of circumstances. Darwin was the second to publish a paper on the theory of evolution. The idea was in the air. If Darwin hadn't done it, someone else would have done it. By the way, he did. I have forgotten the name of this wonderful man, and almost everyone has forgotten. He wrote a small article on the same topic. And Darwin had been preparing a big book for several years and still could not gather his courage. Until now, the theory of evolution causes rejection for many, and even then ... But then he saw that someone was opening his theory, and quickly completed everything. Yes, it should be a little lucky, but only those who dig are lucky.

- That is, talent, hard work and luck?

Yes! It is impossible to name more banal things, but this is how it works.

- A few words at parting ...

- Don't be afraid to make mistakes. There are no errors.

Photo: from Evgenia's personal archive.