Roger Moroney: Dangerous animals have lot of bite

Zeb Hogan heads into the Guyana waterways in pursuit of wolf fish in Monster Fish.

It is a fascinating place the animal world.

A place of wonder and beauty and colour ... as well as terrifying things that will tear you to shreds given the chance.

Like when you drive through a game park and decide to open the passenger door to get a better selfie with a dozing lion nearby.

Or go swimming in oceans where large predatory fish live.

Crikey, you can't even wade across a river in South America without a school of gnarly carnivorous fish homing in.

But, hey, it is their world as much as it is ours -- in fact we have a habit of encroaching over to their side of the fence more than they wander into ours.

However, I daresay some of the residents of the small towns up Washington state way may disagree when the bears start getting hungry and start popping by to see what they might have in their rubbish bins ... let alone the kitchen table if they leave the back door open.

It could be argued, though, that mankind most likely deprived the bears of both chunks of their natural terrain and foodstuffs by spreading industrialisation.

They only seem to encroach into our space after we have encroached into theirs.

We, the human race, have long had a fascination with wild animals. The ones that have the ability to frighten us, yet at the same time excite us.

Which is why the Romans gathered up lions for their Colosseum sideshows ... although the luckless humans sent in to either fight them or simply be punished by them did not see a lot of merit in the idea.

That concept was effectively expanded into more modern times by sending lions and tigers into circus rings where brave top-hatted "tamers" would crack whips and make them leap from ladder to ladder.

We would all "oooh" and "aaah" because these cats were big.

Very big.

And those teeth weren't designed by evolution to chew on grass and leaves.

Nowadays the circuses are devoid of large wild cats, and even the elephants and monkeys and donkeys have been sent off to zoos -- their places taken by acrobats, illusionists, gymnasts, trapeze artists and clowns.

Which I suppose is fair enough because being carted around in cages and allowed only limited freedom, in exchange for doing the same old things twice a day, isn't much of a life.

At least in zoos and game parks they get more space.

Our fascination for the wilder side of animal life is well taken care of by the wild medium of television, and those who enjoy some danger and excitement, despite it being delivered into their lives in perfect safety via satellite and transmission dishes, have a good weekend coming up.

I'm not talking about the Rugby World Cup, although the England-Australia clash is going to be as wild and unpredictable as any safari.

What we have on Sunday on TV1 at 5pm is a series of close encounters, courtesy of veterinarian Mark Evans, with three deadly predators -- the great white shark, the Nile crocodile and the polar bear.

It is appropriately titled Operation Maneater with Mark Evans.

The way he puts it is that, when these animals attack humans, "both sides lose".

Because as more people are killed or maimed, more animals are killed in retaliation so he has set out to find ways to break "this circle of violence and protect both humans and animals".

On Saturday there is the always slightly nervy Monster Fish, and I still have nightmares about one episode I once saw which featured a nasty-faced catfish which appeared to be the size of a shark.

In this weekend's episode Zeb Hogan heads into the heart of Guyana's waterways with a group of savvy tribesman in pursuit of some deep-river brute called the wolf fish.

I checked them out, and yep, they have some fine teeth to tear you with.

Monster Fish, TV1, 5pm, Saturday

Operation Maneater with Mark Evans, TV1, 5pm Sunday

It is as the title suggests. Monstrous creatures which live in water and have aggressive genes as large as their teeth. Here we seek the wolf fish. Wonder what they taste like?

Operation Maneater with Mark Evans, TV1 at 5pm Sunday: Mark Evans is concerned about the light of maneaters. They get bad press when they do something which is completely natural to them, and their kind often get tracked and destroyed as a sort of revenge. So he is trying out ingenious high-tech solutions to what he calls the most hostile wildlife conflicts on Earth.