I have a question for all of you. Why do y'all love animals so much? Well, here's why I love animals. I obviously go to the zoo quite a bit. When I was a little kid, my favorite show was Wild Kratts. I had this game on the Wii called "World Of Zoo". It was a game where you could customize animals and interact with them, I really liked that game. I saw many animal-related movies, such as The Lion King, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, and many others that I really liked.
I think that you go to the zoo, you like Wild Kratts, you play World of Zoo and you saw animal movies BECAUSE you like animals, not that you like animals because you do all these things.
I don’t think many of us can really explain why we love animals and wildlife. It’s just something that we’ve always been attracted to since we were kids. Like Kakapo said, many of us watched and did things like you did as a result of our interest in animals. It’s usually not the other way around.
My affection possibly stems from the fact that I'm what you might call the complete opposite of a 'people person', and I'm truly only happy or at least content when I'm in the presence of animals. I imagine it's how Gandalf would describe me much like he does Beorn... minus the bear part.
I can't really explain why I love animals, as I've been fascinated by them since a very early age. However, as of nowadays, I really find highly interesting their classification. I love classifing things, and animal taxonomy is so entertaining to read about. And I love nature photography: animals are just so excellent subjects to picture.
I'm also not quite sure why exactly I'm interested in animals, especially since no one in my family has a strong interest in animals. What definitely sparked my interest in animals was the program Wild Kratts, which I watched almost daily in the past. From then on I bought books about animals and went to the zoo more and more, and then I started watching documentaries about wildlife. Through my actions, I also awakened an interest in animals in many of my friends as a child, some of whom are still interested in animals at least as much as I am. It is very interesting for me to see how animals are so different from us but yet so the same (the reason why my main interest in animals are the mammals because you can empathise better with mammals) and are capable of so many things.
I’m somewhat like this, I get socially anxious although I’m better now, animals always used to calm me down so the closing of my local zoo isn’t the best but I just think they’re so calming and don’t worry about a lot
It's just an inner fascination, and I've gone to the zoo just about every year of my life (so around 15 years) and watched all the animated animal movies and all the documentaries, and I was just so enthralled by the whole idea.
In a strange way, I find fascinating the way wild animals struggle to survive... we can learn so much from them
I am an anxious person, and tend to ride between very optimistic and very cynical as my post history no doubt shows, but being around nature and animals is a stabilizing reminder that whatever problems I encounter in my human life are smaller than they seem and strictly temporary. The world is an enormous and beautiful place, full of life and for so much of it the reality of life is about eating, sleeping, playing - it's a reminder there is more to life than paperwork and junk and human stressors, and also how much of what we have to take for granted are things animals (and some people, I know, but this post is about animals and zoos) still need to fight for on a daily basis to survive. It is very humbling to appreciate the level of beauty that exists in the world outside of ourselves. In addition, being around animals does fulfill a social need for me. I do not have the kind of unhealthy parasocial relationships where I think of certain animals as my friends on an individual level, and/or believe them to be harmless, but I get to visit other living beings who may be familiar, or meet new ones, and see what is going on in their lives and what might be different. Hudson the polar bear has no idea I exist, but I can look at him and think to seeing him as a cub twenty-plus years ago, how much he has changed and grown. I think for some people, it is like a museum - every animal is a representative of a species, what do they look like, how big are they- but for me and I think a lot of zoochatters, our empathy lets us appreciate them as individuals with unique behavior. I'm sure this probably sounds not so good in how I wrote it.
Like many of us, I've always been drawn to animals, living and extinct, from as early as I could remember. Was it the abundance of animal and dinosaur books in my house? The Schleich figurines and other toys I grew up with? The movies and cartoons I watched over and over, such as The Jungle Book and Harley Spiny? Or was it the abundant visits to the Barcelona Zoo and Aqualeon Safari park, among others? In truth, perhaps the fact that I was an animal person in a very much non-animal family (I've only ever had pets in the last four years of my life, having moved out) and the fact that my favourites were crocodiles, dinosaurs and other reptiles, which everyone around me seemed to disdain and frown upon, with many half-baked councillors trying to disencourage me from "liking sharp-toothed animals", just made me like them even more, in a subconscious act of rebellion. My way of liking animals changed over the years though. As a young child, I liked them just because, but disliked dogs, because my brother did, and pigs, because watching Spirited Away traumatized me at that age. In my tween and teen years, I got swept away in trends of the time... only being interested in "cool" animals and hating on lions and T. Rexes because tigers and the JP3 Spinosaurus were better in my naive conception of the world. Yep, not proud of this stage at all... It's only been in my adult years, shortly before joining Zoochat for that matter, that I've come to appreciate all of nature. I don't dislike any animal, and I have many, many favourites. So yes, I've always loved animals, and this will never change.
I also find that I’m… more comfortable around animals than I am around people. My late dog (may he rest in peace) was the only living being I comfortably talked about my feelings to, and it’s easier to be myself around animals (domestic or wild, doesn’t matter)
