LOS ANGELES -- At an age when many girls are still playing with their Barbie dolls, Bindi Irwin has moved on to something a bit more challenging. Continuing Dad's work: Bindi Irwin, the 8-year-old daughter of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, poses with three elephants on the set of her new show "Bindi the Jungle Girl," at Australia Zoo in Beerwah. - Photo provided by Discovery Kids "I have Blackie my black-headed python.

I also have Corny the corn snake. He sleeps with me at night," the 8-year-old-daughter of the crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin, says proudly as she rattles off the names of the menagerie she keeps back home in Queensland, Australia. It's a group she hopes to introduce to the rest of the world through her new television show, "Bindi the Jungle Girl," Saturdays on the Discovery Kids Channel.

"I also have Jaffa my koala and Ocker, my favorite cockatoo. And Candy, my pet rat, sometimes stays with me," the blond-haired, pigtailed bundle of energy continues until her enthusiasm gets the better of her and her words begin to run together, finally tripping over one another in a heap. "Sorry," she offers with a giggle as she comes up for air.

Then, a moment later, she's on a roll again, passionately recounting the horror stories her father would come home with about the way he saw exotic animals mistreated in shows around the world. He witnessed cobras in India, he told her, that had their teeth yanked out before they were put in baskets for snake charmers with flutes to coax them out of. He saw monkeys that had their young taken away as an incentive to perform.

"They take their babies away until the monkey does the trick, and then they give the baby back," he told her. "It's terrible what people are doing," she says, her voice rising. "And they're just doing it for a living because they don't know any better.

They've just grown up like that. I think we really need to teach all people, big or little. They should all know the message of conservation.

" Her effort to teach them is "Bindi the Jungle Girl," which takes viewers around the world to see animals in their natural habitats while Bindi discusses things like the status of those in danger of extinction. "There are only a few thousand left in the wild, and they could all be gone by the time I'm old enough to drive," she says of tigers and cheetahs. As her father did, she also frequently makes pitches not to use products that result in the needless deaths of animals.

Each show also returns home to Bindi's two-story tree house in Queensland, where the little girl with the soft Aussie accent interacts naturally with her exotic animals, and where, Bindi says, she is always happiest. "I love it in my tree house. It's the best place to be, pretty much," she says by phone.

She keeps a supply of videos of her father there. "I'm ever so lucky because I have so much footage of my dad in the tree house with me," she says. Then she adds softly, "Which is very nice to have because some people only have like one or two pictures of their father or the one who died.

" She was barely 8 when her father was killed by a stingray while filming a documentary at Australia's Great Barrier Reef last September. The two already had begun working together on what would become "Bindi the Jungle Girl," and Irwin is featured prominently in early episodes doing things like climbing trees to visit the nests of endangered orangutans. In one comical moment, a nest's startled resident briefly shakes a fist in Irwin's face.

Almost from the day Bindi was born, says her mother, Terri Irwin, she has embraced exotic animals with the same passion her father had. "Steve was so excited," she recalls. "He kept saying, 'I'm really looking forward to the day when Bindi takes over for me and I can just kick back.

' " Still, in many ways, she says, her daughter is just a typical kid, one who keeps busy with school and pesters her family from time to time for a pony. As for taking up her famous father's legacy at such a tender age, Bindi doesn't see it as a big deal. She began accompanying him on film shoots when she was just 6 days old and learned early on, she says, what her life's work would be.

"I've always wanted to teach people about animal conservation," she said. "I want to follow in my father's footsteps. I loved him so very, very much.

" Customer Service Site Index Terms of Service Send feedback about IndyStar.com Subscribe Now Jobs with us Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy/Your California Privacy Rights, updated August, 2006. LOS ANGELES -- At an age when many girls are still playing with their Barbie dolls, Bindi Irwin has moved on to something a bit more challenging.