When and how did you get into animals?

[lincoln]

Hardcastle Bolushi @ling @hammerhead @ajay  PumAcinonyx SuperCat

[lincoln]

I’ve personally been into animals for as long as I can remember, I think I developed it by having animals and watching stuff about them

I remember i loved the show “Big cat diary” as a little kid and would wake up early in the morning to watch it, I also loved shows like zoboomafoo

i have also always loved watching documentaries 

i also would search YouTube for good animal videos

[Deleted]

I've been into animals since forever. I was heavily into big cats and watched many documentaries and shows. Before I ever had a computer I would use my grandparent's phone and the TVs. It was mostly lion stuff, weird lack of cougar documentaries. Seen a lot on leopards and cape buffalo and cheetahs and etc.
Also watched ''prehistoric predators'' or whatever, still find it just entertaining even though I know it isn't scientifically accurate. I think I actually thought the animals were real... bloodthirsty war happy monsters who got stuck in tar and all died because it got a bit too hot and somehow they have a live one (s).
I was interested-ish in dogs the entire time but when I was 8-9 I had just learned about Kangals and thought them and Great Pyrenees and etc. were wolf killers and my knowledge was totally shit, and that knowledge transferred over to carnivora where I exclaimed Anatolian Shepherds were wolf killers. I only learned otherwise maybe a year ago at best. Basically, Hardcastle walked so I could run. The second I was interested in dogs it took me about 6 months to already become top tier dog guy. (September was when my knowledge was actually worth a lot, before that I knew a decent bit but still had many holes and flaws in my knowledge)

[Deleted]

I watched shows like “Wild Kratts” and “Dinosaur Train” as a little kid. Later I because curious about AvA and watched stuff like “Animal Face Off”, “Monster Bug Wars”, and “Jurassic Fight Club”. Then I watched full-fledged documentaries like “Walking With Dinosaurs”. I finally settled on content similar to “Brave Wilderness”, “River Monsters”, and “Extinct or Alive” (funnily enough).

I would also catch small animals in my backyard and ponds.

Even as a little kid I would read anything I could understand in Carnivora threads.

[lincoln]

Jan 20, 2023 13:42:07 GMT @hammerhead said:

I watched shows like “Wild Kratts” and “Dinosaur Train” as a little kid. Later I because curious about AvA and watched stuff like “Animal Face Off”, “Monster Bug Wars”, and “Jurassic Fight Club”. Then I watched full-fledged documentaries like “Walking With Dinosaurs”. I finally settled on content similar to “Brave Wilderness”, “River Monsters”, and “Extinct or Alive” (funnily enough).

I would also catch small animals in my backyard and ponds.

Even as a little kid I would read anything I could understand in Carnivora threads.

I always thought of wild kratts as a continuation of zoboomafoo. I also used to catch small animals like frogs

[Deleted]

The thread title has bestiality overtones to it. lol

[Hardcastle]

My Animal interest started before I can remember, by preschool I was gayly pretending to be an eagle in the playground, running around with my arms out like they were wings. In grade 1 boys would play "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and indians" and I'd be like "why the fuck would I want to be a human? Can I be a capuchin monkey?" (yes it was that specific) And then I'd climb a tree and screech at them while they ran around playing cops and robbers. In 2nd grade I wrote a book about my dog ralph and my friend's dog (a boxer, can't remember it's name) running the streets and beating up other dogs. In grade 3 I wrote a non-fiction book about the Jaguar, which was by then my favourite animal. My teacher, a canadian, told my mother she read it to her friends at a dinner party and they were all laughing because it was just so ridiculous a kid so young would write such a thing. It started with something like "In the steamy rainforests of Brazil, a deafening chorus of crickets, howler monkeys, dart frogs and bellbirds is suddenly silenced by a mighty roar. The Jaguar, Panthera Onca, has sounded his morning warning." (I can't remember exactly but it was over the top and silly like that). In truth I was jacking some style there from a thick grey jaguar book I frequently borrowed from the library, it was missing it's dust jacket, but in adulthood I believe I have discovered the book was "The world of the Jaguar" by Richard Perry. I was frequently getting out lots of very thick "grown up" animal books from the library by grade 3, and my rich Uncle bought me "the trials of life" by David Attenborough that year as well. I remember the tv show version would play every sunday night, right after church. I'd race inside and my dad would be laying on the ground in the loungeroom watching the intro, because he thought church was gay and our lounge chairs were uncomfortable.

In that same year I made an illustrated bird of prey book, really just a series of profiles of different species.

We moved to a bigger house with a big yard that year as well, one that had a pool, and pond with a waterfall. It also backed onto a park. So began my "field research". In winter the pool would go green and get filled with fascinated insect larvae. I thought dragon fly lava was very cool at this time, I also really liked preying mantises, and salamanders. We don't have salamanders here but our pond would get frogs and grow moss and had a weird earthy nature smell, and I'd picture salamanders being in it. My parents then got me an axolotl, but for some reason wouldn't let me put it in the pond. My dad would take me hunting birds in the park behind our house with a slingshot. For some reason he thought that was the best way to nurture my love of animals, lol. I remember it being fun, sneaking around and spotting the birds, but then traumatising when we succeeded. We'd also see hares, which ralph would chase (fruitlessly). I also witnessed ralph fight lots of dogs in that park, including trucking a rottweiler at full speed and nearly killing it. He also attacked a bull in the agricultural college that backed onto the park. And he attacked a cyclist in spandex speeding down the path in the park. And he attacked a gang of aboriginal youths and pulled one out of a tree... he attacked lots of stuff. And yeah it had an impression on me.

I was still also climbing trees and pretending to be a capuchin monkey or mandrill.

In grade 4 I recall correcting my teacher when she thought an egret was a heron. And going through a very passionate wolverine phase. In grade 5 I wrote an illustrated book where my teacher had a hairy vagina. I don't know what happened there... I arguably got off the rails a bit, but in grade 6 and 7 my interest in "fighting dogs" started really growing quite strong. Starting from when me and a friend saw a documentary (or 60 minutes piece or something) on fighting dogs which talked about pitbulls and tosa inus. My parents bought me Carl Semencic's "The world of fighting dogs" as a reward for winning a short story writing competition.
I also started simultaneously developing an interest in aliens, like UFOS and alien abductions. Between the dogs and aliens and then vaginas and skateboarding and basketball and cigarettes and etc etc my wild animal interest started waning and falling to the way side. Even though dogs are animals they felt like a totally different category of study, dog books didn't even come from the same aisle as animal books in the library (they weren't even on the same level of the building). I was interested in dogs but through a non-nature lens. I was interested in them fighting and being guard dogs. I thought ralph was a bad ass only because he was part english bull terrier, and then I read how english bull terriers are inferior to american pit bull terriers, so in my mind I was like "there are levels to this" and american pit bulls became my favourite. Specifically "red noses". But soon after that I switched to "Neapolitan mastiffs" and to a lesser extent "American bulldogs". Carl Semencic's book made it seem like neos and american bulldogs were badass as fuck. And bandogs. He still definitely maintained apbts were the best, but to me they felt too "obvious" and not hip and underground enough to be my favourite.

Even dog-appreciation dulled a little during the height of my teens, I was taking my social life very very very seriously, chasing girls, drinking, smoking weed, skateboarding and trying to be cool. Ralph was elderly and jack, my staffy (which I stupidly thought would be more badass than Ralph due to higher bull terrier content) turned out to be a pussy.

Later on my interest in wildlife and nature came back. Mostly through fishing with my dad, seeing the sea birds dive bombing the shoals of whiting while giant tuna and sharks attacked them from underneath, seeing the hordes of crabs on the beaches of uninhabited islands, seeing ospreys and sea eagles and pulling up random fanged eels from the deep. That's when I joined the sharkattacks forum, when I was around 19. And I dived DEEP back into wild animals (and was reading and watching LOTS of animal content around this time). But I also joined some dog forums (and comedy forums, and all sorts of forums), and I also rekindled my interest in bandogs because a lot of people online were talking about them. I wanted a bandog bad and finally got one when I turned 21. By then I lived in a very green area which was across the road from a big park with lots of wildlife and that park then joined on to the river where there was a really big wild sort of area. I'd take my bandog on walks and soon realised he loved trying to hunt the hares and turkeys and lizards and bandicoots and possums and wallabies and foxes and whatever else he could find. Just me and the dog and the sounds of nature while dragonflies buzz around and hares scurry into thickets. That really got me loving nature again as well and had me starting to realise that "dogs" and "wildlife" maybe shouldn't be totally different subjects. I was kind of frustrated watching my bandog be too slow to chase as well as he wanted to (though he did kill some things here and there, he got good at ambush, funnily enough), and that started me rethinking the "pig dogs" of my early childhood which I really took for granted and dismissed. I started thinking a dog that can really hunt is actually the coolest kind of dog, and I started investigating the real working origins of dogs, not for pointless crap like "fighting" but their real applications for hunting, and I started to see the man/dog alliance as a "natural" super-predator that should really be analysed and investigated like any other wild animal. Yes it's a social unit, yes it's a multi-species symbiotic relationship, yes it contains specialised roles and specialised role players, so what? None of this excluded it from being a natural animal.

And that's a very shortened version of how I got to where I am now. I feel like my dog background melted into my life-long passion for wild animals, and now I'm trying to "educate" people on how to see dogs the way I do.

[Deleted]

Jan 21, 2023 3:08:16 GMT Hardcastle said:

My Animal interest started before I can remember, by preschool I was gayly pretending to be an eagle in the playground, running around with my arms out like they were wings. In grade 1 boys would play "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and indians" and I'd be like "why the fuck would I want to be a human? Can I be a capuchin monkey?" (yes it was that specific) And then I'd climb a tree and screech at them while they ran around playing cops and robbers. In 2nd grade I wrote a book about my dog ralph and my friend's dog (a boxer, can't remember it's name) running the streets and beating up other dogs. In grade 3 I wrote a non-fiction book about the Jaguar, which was by then my favourite animal. My teacher, a canadian, told my mother she read it to her friends at a dinner party and they were all laughing because it was just so ridiculous a kid so young would write such a thing. It started with something like "In the steamy rainforests of Brazil, a deafening chorus of crickets, howler monkeys, dart frogs and bellbirds is suddenly silenced by a mighty roar. The Jaguar, Panthera Onca, has sounded his morning warning." (I can't remember exactly but it was over the top and silly like that). In truth I was jacking some style there from a thick grey jaguar book I frequently borrowed from the library, it was missing it's dust jacket, but in adulthood I believe I have discovered the book was "The world of the Jaguar" by Richard Perry. I was frequently getting out lots of very thick "grown up" animal books from the library by grade 3, and my rich Uncle bought me "the trials of life" by David Attenborough that year as well. I remember the tv show version would play every sunday night, right after church. I'd race inside and my dad would be laying on the ground in the loungeroom watching the intro, because he thought church was gay and our lounge chairs were uncomfortable.

In that same year I made an illustrated bird of prey book, really just a series of profiles of different species.

We moved to a bigger house with a big yard that year as well, one that had a pool, and pond with a waterfall. It also backed onto a park. So began my "field research". In winter the pool would go green and get filled with fascinated insect larvae. I thought dragon fly lava was very cool at this time, I also really liked preying mantises, and salamanders. We don't have salamanders here but our pond would get frogs and grow moss and had a weird earthy nature smell, and I'd picture salamanders being in it. My parents then got me an axolotl, but for some reason wouldn't let me put it in the pond. My dad would take me hunting birds in the park behind our house with a slingshot. For some reason he thought that was the best way to nurture my love of animals, lol. I remember it being fun, sneaking around and spotting the birds, but then traumatising when we succeeded. We'd also see hares, which ralph would chase (fruitlessly). I also witnessed ralph fight lots of dogs in that park, including trucking a rottweiler at full speed and nearly killing it. He also attacked a bull in the agricultural college that backed onto the park. And he attacked a cyclist in spandex speeding down the path in the park. And he attacked a gang of aboriginal youths and pulled one out of a tree... he attacked lots of stuff. And yeah it had an impression on me.

I was still also climbing trees and pretending to be a capuchin monkey or mandrill.

In grade 4 I recall correcting my teacher when she thought an egret was a heron. And going through a very passionate wolverine phase. In grade 5 I wrote an illustrated book where my teacher had a hairy vagina. I don't know what happened there... I arguably got off the rails a bit, but in grade 6 and 7 my interest in "fighting dogs" started really growing quite strong. Starting from when me and a friend saw a documentary (or 60 minutes piece or something) on fighting dogs which talked about pitbulls and tosa inus. My parents bought me Carl Semencic's "The world of fighting dogs" as a reward for winning a short story writing competition.
I also started simultaneously developing an interest in aliens, like UFOS and alien abductions. Between the dogs and aliens and then vaginas and skateboarding and basketball and cigarettes and etc etc my wild animal interest started waning and falling to the way side. Even though dogs are animals they felt like a totally different category of study, dog books didn't even come from the same aisle as animal books in the library (they weren't even on the same level of the building). I was interested in dogs but through a non-nature lens. I was interested in them fighting and being guard dogs. I thought ralph was a bad ass only because he was part english bull terrier, and then I read how english bull terriers are inferior to american pit bull terriers, so in my mind I was like "there are levels to this" and american pit bulls became my favourite. Specifically "red noses". But soon after that I switched to "Neapolitan mastiffs" and to a lesser extent "American bulldogs". Carl Semencic's book made it seem like neos and american bulldogs were badass as fuck. And bandogs. He still definitely maintained apbts were the best, but to me they felt too "obvious" and not hip and underground enough to be my favourite.

Even dog-appreciation dulled a little during the height of my teens, I was taking my social life very very very seriously, chasing girls, drinking, smoking weed, skateboarding and trying to be cool. Ralph was elderly and jack, my staffy (which I stupidly thought would be more badass than Ralph due to higher bull terrier content) turned out to be a pussy.

Later on my interest in wildlife and nature came back. Mostly through fishing with my dad, seeing the sea birds dive bombing the shoals of whiting while giant tuna and sharks attacked them from underneath, seeing the hordes of crabs on the beaches of uninhabited islands, seeing ospreys and sea eagles and pulling up random fanged eels from the deep. That's when I joined the sharkattacks forum, when I was around 19. And I dived DEEP back into wild animals (and was reading and watching LOTS of animal content around this time). But I also joined some dog forums (and comedy forums, and all sorts of forums), and I also rekindled my interest in bandogs because a lot of people online were talking about them. I wanted a bandog bad and finally got one when I turned 21. By then I lived in a very green area which was across the road from a big park with lots of wildlife and that park then joined on to the river where there was a really big wild sort of area. I'd take my bandog on walks and soon realised he loved trying to hunt the hares and turkeys and lizards and bandicoots and possums and wallabies and foxes and whatever else he could find. Just me and the dog and the sounds of nature while dragonflies buzz around and hares scurry into thickets. That really got me loving nature again as well and had me starting to realise that "dogs" and "wildlife" maybe shouldn't be totally different subjects. I was kind of frustrated watching my bandog be too slow to chase as well as he wanted to (though he did kill some things here and there, he got good at ambush, funnily enough), and that started me rethinking the "pig dogs" of my early childhood which I really took for granted and dismissed. I started thinking a dog that can really hunt is actually the coolest kind of dog, and I started investigating the real working origins of dogs, not for pointless crap like "fighting" but their real applications for hunting, and I started to see the man/dog alliance as a "natural" super-predator that should really be analysed and investigated like any other wild animal. Yes it's a social unit, yes it's a multi-species symbiotic relationship, yes it contains specialised roles and specialised role players, so what? None of this excluded it from being a natural animal.

And that's a very shortened version of how I got to where I am now. I feel like my dog background melted into my life-long passion for wild animals, and now I'm trying to "educate" people on how to see dogs the way I do.

I also pretended to be animals when I was younger, even while playing soccer. I also vividly remember digging in the playground sandbox and unearthing a Colorado River toad which is very strange because they aren’t native to Illinois. Looking back I’m not 100% sure whether or not that really happened or if it was just my imagination.

I guess it could have been a bullfrog, but still. What would a bullfrog be doing burrowing in sand?

[Hardcastle]

I have some very clear memories of animal encounters which absolutely can't be real. One was a dead preying mantis next to my pool that had the wings of a hawk.

Another was a giant lizard in my garden, in the suburbs, that was literally like 20 feet long. Lol. I can still picture it in my head. Literally bigger than a komodo dragon. In fairly dense residential. Of course, I know for sure these memory are not real. Brains are flawed and can play tricks on you.

[oldgreengrolar]

I got into animals as a kid but not many shared my interest. Was looking for people to share my interest which none did until I found AVA forum. Some of my misconceptions were corrected and others were confirmed.

[Deleted]

My family knows my interests, they're like ''that's cool'', but don't really nurture it at all. There is nothing here, and going fishing with a stubborn 80yo man who insists on going to a fishing spot nobody goes to because it's shit is just annoying plus he isn't really interested.

[Deleted]

Jan 21, 2023 4:10:34 GMT Hardcastle said:

I have some very clear memories of animal encounters which absolutely can't be real. One was a dead preying mantis next to my pool that had the wings of a hawk.

Another was a giant lizard in my garden, in the suburbs, that was literally like 20 feet long. Lol. I can still picture it in my head. Literally bigger than a komodo dragon. In fairly dense residential. Of course, I know for sure these memory are not real. Brains are flawed and can play tricks on you.

I bet what you actually saw was a 4 ft tops goanna and your imagination ran loose. I think what I actually found that day was a normal toad but my imagination ran wild because I was interested in cane and Colorado River toads at the time (Toad Rage is a good book btw).

[Hardcastle]

Even a 4 foot Goanna is implausible for the location.

[PumAcinonyx SuperCat]

Jan 20, 2023 7:17:37 GMT lincoln said:

Hardcastle Bolushi @ling @hammerhead @ajay  PumAcinonyx SuperCat

Since Day 1. Always had a love for big cats. Have been watching Nat Geo Wild before I was 6. I can even remember when I watched "Eye Of The Leopard". That must have been not too long after the year it came out. It came out 2006, I watched it possibly in 2010 or 11, but before 2013.

I had a particular animal book (a series actually) where I saw pictures of all them big cats. That was how I knew stuff like "jaguar" existed. I had known about "lion, tiger and leopard", but I found jaguar through that book. I just can't remember the name of the book, was a long time ago.

Around 2013 or 2012 I began asking my dad to download PDFs on entire Wikipedia pages on big cats. He even printed out the Wikipedia page on "Jaguar" so I could read it. Ever since I found out about jaguar, I just had a particular love for it. He also downloaded pages on other big cats.

I watched a lot of documentaries between then and now, more than I care to name and also got more animal books. Basically, I'd find out about an animal in a book, find out that it existed, then I'll go Google it up. At a point I was interested in lemurs, then marsupials, but cats have always been and will always be the centre of my animal love. Felinist to the end of my days!

Along the way, I've had a temporary interest in other animals, even dinosaurs at a point, now it's just cats. Cats and cats.