Do animals connect better with Autistic people?

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I tend to get along so well with animals but so terribly with people. People are really only very intelligent animals and their needs are essentially the same, but more complex. But animals communicate so much more directly and are so much less complicated (besides the very intelligent ones).

It's actually the same with children; young children and babies love me. I can sort of communicate with them on their level. The big problem with people is that socializing becomes so complicated, and you had better know the rules or risk being ostracized.

I BETTER COMMUNICATE TO PET..

Well when my sisters use to bring home animals from school they dumped the responsibility on me since they saw how I was all over them.

@Yigeren, speaking of small children I'm like a magnent to toddlers and small kids especially non neurotypical kids, I remember in public there was this ADHD kid acting up about 6 years old but he actually listened to me.

I can definitely relate. Our family has one cat in particular who is especially friendly towards me. She'll often hop up into my lap several times in a single day and sit there while I pet her. There was also a beagle we used to have who just absolutely adored me. We had to give him away to some relatives and I still miss him even to this day. We also have some gerbils who seem very drawn to me and I have even come across strays who approach me. At one time, there was even a baby squirrel who came up to me and let me pet it. It was soo adorable.

I feel the same way about animals. I find them easier to get on with than humans and they seems to like me more than most humans.



This makes complete sense to me. The same thing is true with non-human great apes and other primates. Direct eye contact and walking straight towards them is also regarded as aggressive I think.

I wonder if another reason I get on with animals so well is that their communication is more direct and simpler. The social complexity or human language is not really there so I don't get confused. My dog seems to have a 1:1 mapping of behaviour to how she is feeling so I can nearly always tell. At the moment she is lying next to me dozing quietly which, to me, means that she is relaxed. She has her back-side facing me which means that she trusts me and I know that if I pick up her treat box she will sit up and go into full 'alert-there-are-treats-around' mode really quickly.

I watch a lot of a program called Monkey-Life about a primate rescue centre in Devon, in the UK. I watch the patterns of behaviour among the chimps, orangutans, caphuchins and other primates and it makes me wonder if humans have two levels of communication. Perhaps there's the complex language-type communication and then there's perhaps an underlying primate behaviour. I can't follow human behaviour very well at all, but if I translate it to primate behaviour I get the edges of understanding of what might be going on. This is still something I'm quite tentative about. But it interests me quite a lot.

Depends on the animal. I like virtually all cats, but dogs is hit or miss. Some dogs are awesome, others are mean!

I don't know if they connect better with me, but I connect better with them.
My parents used to call me the animal lady when I was a kid. My father told people that I thought animals were people, which made me say I know they are not people.
But I kind of do think they are people.

Also when I was a kid, three years in a row I found baby robins that fell out of their nest and I took care of them until they went south for the winter.
Two of them came back the next year as adults and ate out of my hand. I was their mother and they remembered me. I thought it was amazing that each of the baby robins had their own very distinct personalities.

Wild animals come into my yard in the spring to have babies under the shed. Sometimes skunks, sometimes opossums, sometimes raccoons. The skunks and raccoons come to the door and beg for food and I've had to carry baby opossums out of the house.

A couple of years ago a stray cat used to climb in my window at night and jump on my bed while I was sleeping. I let him stay but he was always gone when I woke up in the morning.
Now I take care of a cat that someone gave to my granddaughter when she was a little girl.

I personally find animals much easier to be around than other people.

Studying animal management has been one of the best choices I have made. I am currently doing a research project about the benefits animals can have to those with autism and whether more animal therapies/interventions should exist as I have noticed the growing trend.

I am looking for as many responses as I can get so I can have a more realistic response, so if anyone would like to fill in my questionnaire, this is the link http://goo.gl/forms/iB7q1eUqEa

They either attack or cower with me. Pretty sure they pick up weird signals from my odd body language compared to other humans.

I had a real good friend in an Australian Cattle Dog, though (family pet); I considered him a brother. We had some mutual respect thingy going on.

I have trouble with some dogs. Most dogs I can get along with pretty well, but some of them don't respect me because of my pacifistic nature. Cats are more straightforward than dogs who tend to have weird ideas about dominance and rank that remind me of NT social life.

With me, they either bark or attack, or cower at my feet (most that bark end up doing this). Rarely do they behave like typical friendly dogs with me, such as running around and wanting to touch you.

Horses treat me like any other human, though.

Cats ignore me if they know me. Though, I don't give them any reason to want to approach me. I'm not a touchy-feely person.

I love spending time with dogs. Coming home to my dog after work is the highlight of my day. Try as I have, I've never been nearly as at ease with people as I am with dogs.