No cape or tights for batman on Daily Planet

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This article was published 29/08/2011 (5475 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If someone had told Edmonton native Dan Riskin that a book he read about bats while attending Victoria Composite High School would eventually lead to a new hosting gig with Discovery Channel’s smash-hit science show Daily Planet, he would have said they were, well, batty.

And what if they said he would someday sit next to actress Cameron Diaz on the Tonight Show, and put leeches on her bare arms at the behest of host Jay Leno as part of a science experiment? Or banter with late-show host Craig Ferguson about the bizarre mating rituals of bedbugs?

“Crazy, isn’t it?” says Riskin. “You don’t really realize until you get further down the road, but I took a fork there. That book really stayed in my subconscious; the way it was written really captured the passion of science.”

Even more astounding is that the book’s author and bat expert, Brock Fenton, later became Riskin’s master’s adviser when he attended Toronto’s York University. In addition to a master’s in biology, Riskin holds a PhD in zoology from Cornell University in New York.

Riskin joins co-host Ziya Tong on the nightly science and technology series, which premieres its 17th season tonight with a brand-new set.

Already, Riskin has travelled the world, filming segments for upcoming shows. He’s been to Germany and China, where he barrelled along the Autobahn in a car that drove itself, and visited a factory that churns out dead bodies as art pieces for the controversial Body Worlds exhibit.

Edmonton is where it all began, when he chose physics over drama, and, in the end, wound up becoming both an actor and a scientist.

“I loved drama, but I was starting to get a real kick out of the some of the sciences, by the time I finished high school,” says Riskin, who got his bachelor of science at the University of Alberta. “And I thought: ‘Well, I can always do drama, but it’s hard to do physics on the side. As soon as I got turned onto zoology and biology, I never looked back.”

Riskin says he could spend a lifetime and still not learn everything there is to know about the 1,200 species of bats on the planet. He knows plenty, though. Ask him for fun bat facts, for instance, and he’ll tell you that a male bat’s testicles are, well, enormous, and make up a huge percentage of its body weight. On a human, they would be the size of pumpkins.

“I said this on Craig Ferguson and it went over well,” Riskin says with a laugh over the phone from Toronto. “It’s a fun fact that resonates with people.”

In 2005, he put a vampire bat on a treadmill and videotaped it with a high-speed camera. He found out that, in addition to their propensity to drink blood, they can walk on all fours and have a running gait that no other bat has, allowing them to sneak up on their unsuspecting prey. His research was published in Nature — and got the attention of the producers at Daily Planet, who wanted to interview him on his findings for a segment on the show.

“I would never have believed I would be on the show,” he says. “I had a massive cold at the time — they did the interview at a little studio in Ithica — and I remember being so humbled by the opportunity, and so flattered.”

Little did he know that, six years later, he would be on the show again, replacing longtime co-host Jay Ingram, who had been with the show since it went on the air in 1995. Riskin has honed his scientific acting chops on other TV programs, including Evolve and Monsters Inside Me and taking complicated scientific concepts and translating them into fascinating, relatable facts.

“It’s about the storytelling, and knowing what the important points really are. I only care that people see the excitement. If there are going to be tourists in space, it doesn’t matter what the rocket fuel they’re going to use is made of. That’s not the point.”

And while he lived in the U.S. for several years — he moved to Toronto in May after he got the job — he says his heart will forever be in Alberta. His brother still lives in Edmonton.

“I’m proud of Edmonton, proud to come from Edmonton,” he says, then laughs. “I’ve always bragged about Edmonton — even when the Oilers made it hard. There’s a real sense for me that this is where I come from, and where I got the opportunities that led me to where I am today.”

 

— Postmedia News

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