Robert Irwin’s family thought they had seen everything in nature until they witnessed him in a series of underwear ads featuring wild animals.
The conservationist, photographer and son of the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin shared his family’s reaction to his racy underwear ads for the Australian brand Bonds in an interview on the 3rd hour of TODAY on May 5.
“Well, my family had β they had a lot of words,” Irwin told Craig Melvin, Dylan Dreyer and Al Roker. “They were like, ‘Wow, there’s some things we can’t unsee.'”
The 21-year-old zookeeper was wearing nothing but his skivvies in a series of photos and a video released in April, including one with a snake wrapped around him, a tarantula on his leg and a crocodile only a few feet away.
Irwin said Bonds approached him and said it wanted to do a campaign that spotlights Australian wildlife.
“I’ve dedicated my life to conservation, to carrying on an important legacy, protecting our animals, and they said, ‘We want to showcase that, but you’re going to be in your undies,'” he continued. “So I said, ‘You know what? Let’s do it. Life’s about just embracing it.’ It was fun, mate, it was good.”
Irwin told PeopleΒ when the campaign was released that preparing for the photo shoot prompted him to focus on βmore situpsβ and βless carbs.”
He also is no stranger to modeling, as he made his runway debut in March 2024 at the Melbourne Fashion Festival.
Irwin is now gearing up for the Steve Irwin Gala on May 10 in Las Vegas, which will celebrate his late father and raise money for conservation causes.
“At his core it was all about conservation, and it was all about family,” Irwin said. “That really is what he was about. He was the best dad in the entire world, and I feel like his legacy has never been more important.”
Irwin felt the pull to follow in his father’s footsteps in growing up in the family’s wildlife sanctuary in Australia.
“Being around that, it gives you a sense, first of all, the awe about the natural world, how beautiful it is, but also just how hard we need to fight to protect it,” he said, adding, “I always knew I wanted to continue the family business.”
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