Where does my fascination with animals come from?  If I knew that I may no longer be fascinated with them.  Growing up on a farm in rural Maryland with a biologist for a father, animals and information about them was always near at hand.

I've always enjoyed watching animals over extended periods of time.  Time reveals the individual nature of even the most overlooked of animals.  Even the most simple organism has an incredibly rich and complex existence within the bounds of its environment.

Perhaps animals have become interesting to me because they are the closest things to us in the world.  It is harder to identify with a plant, even through there are far more of them in our lives.  Animals have eyes, ears, feet.  They make sounds, create communities, play, mate and search for the best possible existence within their space.  That is not so different from us, which is as it should be since we are, as many will tell you, animals ourselves.