Aspies: latent mammal whisperers?

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I don't know if this is common, but I have a habit of completely ignoring the owner of an animal and playing with the animal itself. I can see a gigantic dog and happily walk over and play with it while the owner is shocked that the dog instantly becomes affectionate. I have never once been bitten by a dog whose owner cautioned me it "doesn't like people," and in some cases managed to get an unruly dog which was tugging its owner around, to calm down.

I can approach stray cats and immediately gain their trust enough to pet and feed them.

Placing my hand in a hamster cage causes them to crowd each other and adopt worshipful attitudes similar to the apes and the Monolith in 2001.

When I was a child I once found a pitbull wandering in my yard. I befriended it, stuck a leash on him, and walked up and down the neighborhood asking people who it belonged to. I found the owner several blocks away, after walking up his driveway and through a a crowd of few of his other dogs. He expressed gratitude, then told me "son, you must have balls of steel to not only walk him, but get him by my other dogs without a single fight. He's a mean one."

My girlfriend is regularly shocked at how I can instantly befriend a dog, and kids me that it is a superpower.

I wonder why this may be. I am not afraid of animals, and they are not afraid or threatened by me.

Is anyone else similarly able to understand and communicate with animals, better than with their owners?

Yup, I posted something related not so long ago. I have the "superpower" too

My mom definitely has that superpower. I was much better with animals as a kid than I am now. I've learned to be more anxious over time, and that makes me nervous when I first meet a new animal. I can get close to them no problem after a little bit, though. Once the anxiety wears off. They usually like me just fine after that. I've never been bitten or hurt by any animal.

Yep..been called a dog whisperer, but have two cats, I really like the larger dogs,...not so much the little barkers

The neighbors,at least 2 hate that their dog listens to me better than them....even my whisper or hand signal from across the street they respond to. I would even tell them,...Its your voice,...your freaking the dog out, your sending the wrong message, using your freak out voice and blurting out whole paragraphs, and she doesnt understand..( NO I didnt explain it to Her that way)
........I can relate to that in more ways than one

"mean dogs" dont scare me, At 16 I had a stray that turned out to be a shepard guard dog. My parents made me get rid of her,..

at parties, dogs will "hang" with me and follow me around

super power ? I know I understand them

I don't know why it would be.

I think it may be a combination of factors. For instance, the avoidance of eye contact which many animals view as a threat. The lack of aggression we display toward animals. We may possibly "smell" friendly as well.

I notice that I am much more easily able to determine the mood of an animal than a human. I find it hard not to, they (unlike humans) often have a giant furry flag to display their mood. Perhaps it is not that we are very good with animals, but that we can identify which ones we would be good with. We simply forget all the times we saw a dog, picked up that it was in an actually irate mood, and decided not to approach it. This would skew our perception, because the only animals we do approach and play with would be the ones whose body language we understood to be friendly.

Yes, I seem to have a special connection with animals. I'm drawn to animals and they are drawn to me. I've easily befriended dogs that I had been warned that were aggressive towards everyone else than their owner. Animals tend to follow me around a lot and instantly trust me. Dogs never bark at me, even ones who bark at everyone else who passes by their yard. Animals come to me for protection when they are scared of something or someone. Animals that are scared of most people are not scared of me and instead want to be near me.

People have often commented on how animals act very unusually around me and how I seem to have a special relationship with them. I have a much better relationship with animals than with people.

Yes, animals are straightforward and people often are not.

Wow, I thought I was the only one
Well, yeah, since I was very small, I've been better with animals than their owners... I mean, when I was 12, I went to see my dad, who I only see once a month, and saw that he had a dog with him. I ran straight to the dog and started petting it, immediately gaining its trust.

^^

Well, you're not! ZeroGravitas, I do that as well - us Aspies have the touch when it comes to animals

I am intensely shy and almost would never consider approaching a person. But their pet? Yes. And I do have a rapport with animals; it's mutual. Because there's been so much written about animals and any Autistic Spectrum individual, our "animal link," although only anecdotal, is irrefutable. As to why? I don't know.....good queston. Animals are very "clear," readable and understandable to me - humans aren't. I just like animals better too as they make sense (humans don't). Heck, I'm even good with fish and reptiles. And plants

Note: Nothing I'm saying here is a comment on anyone who's in this thread, it's just a comment on why I, personally, won't call myself "good with animals".

I've had a lot of these experiences myself, but what keeps me from viewing myself as "really good with animals" is the following:

I knew this autistic person who always described herself as incredibly good with animals, as having a gift with animals, described all these instances, all these people who supposedly told her she was good with animals, etc.

But then I got to watch her with animals.

She manipulated them. She found ways to touch my cat where the cat would not respond, but not because the cat was comfortable. The cat looked horribly uncomfortable the entire time. But she had exerted her dominance over the cat in ways where the cat was aware that she wouldn't win any fights, so she didn't fight. Even as she was put through things that actively hurt her.

I told this woman not to touch my cat in a certain spot because she has nerve damage. She immediately touched my cat in that spot and started going on about how special she was that the cat would allow her to touch her there. (The cat was in obvious pain, but restraining herself from actually biting this person, because the cat has manners.) I cannot emphasize how utterly selfish and cruel it is to respond to "Don't touch someone here, it will hurt her" by touching the person there in order to prove how special you are.

She did the same thing when I told her not to scratch under the cat's chin. (In that case it was because my cat only sometimes likes to be scratched there, and I didn't want her to accidentally bother the cat because I didn't trust her to tell the difference.) Again, she immediately went for under the cat's chin, and the cat turned out to like it this time. She then proceeded to go on about how special she was that she was able to scratch her under the chin and "nobody else can do that". When I told her the real reason I'd told her not to do that, and that in fact lots of people can get away with scratching the cat under the chin, she visibly wilted and was highly disappointed that she wasn't the "only one" who could get away with doing this.

But when she told people the stories of these incidents, she of course made herself sound like the "animal whispering" heroine who can get away with everything that nobody else can get away with doing to an animal, and how this made her ultra-special and crap.

I later found out that she had gotten a hamster, and kept the hamster in the closet with no stimulation at all. She basically abused and neglected this hamster in lots of other ways, too many to get into. By the time someone else found out and took the hamster away from her, the little guy was so terrified of people that he had to be re-taught that people could be nice rather than cruel. Even after he learned that, though, he would run and hide whenever this woman came to the house he now lived at. (And the woman would still try to put her hands in and grab him and handle him in all sorts of ways he found highly unpleasant, despite anyone's warnings. Eventually the person who was rehabilitating the hamster finally found a different home for him where this woman wouldn't know where he lived. He is happy there with people who actually care about him.)

Anyway, I don't think this woman really felt like she was lying (even when she was). She had constructed this whole story in her head about how she was "wonderful with animals", and she would bend reality to go along with the story. Meanwhile, she was actually doing things to animals that were outright cruel, and at the worst, abusive or neglectful.

That's why I refuse to play the game of considering myself good with animals, even though some people do say that (and "cat whisperer" and other things) about me. It seems like too big a risk -- like I could end up believing my own story, and going around obliviously doing harm to animals while thinking that I was wonderful with them. And the worst part (or one of the worst parts anyway) was how this person was actually being controlling to the animals, and the way that she got them not to fight back wasn't by being "good with" them, but rather by overpowering them in ways where they knew they had no chance if they fought back. I've seen similar behavior in a lot of people who call themselves good with animals.

Another reason that I won't go along with this idea, is because I've met waaay too many people who claim to be "good with autistic people", but who actually do all the same things to us that people like that woman did to animals. I'm actually traumatized by what some of those people have done to me in the past. And there's all these weird power games and mental traps that can go on when you consider yourself "good with" a class of people who have less power than you do overall in the world. So... I won't do it. I won't put myself in a position where I could hurt animals through my own self-delusion. I do have an affinity with cats, and I don't mind saying that, but at the same time I'm not going to make it into something it's potentially very much not. I don't know exactly how to describe what happens when many people say they're "good with" a certain group of people, but it's not something I'm willing to put myself in the position of doing. I've seen too many animals hurt by it.

I love cats and dogs and have a lot of fun with them. But I found tame ruminant animals to be wonderful to interact with. Im talking about sheep and goats.

Interacting with them in my mind is a combination of forgetting that they are supposed to be less intelligent and not second guessing their intelligence and personality,

but also at the same time remembering that they are an animal, and have different needs from a human.

Letting them initiate the contact is good too as most grazing animals will be self contained, strong willed and will bolt if they dont like how you are acting.

Yes, I am good with animals as well (well...not birds. birds hate me.). But cats, dogs, reptiles...etc, I am good with. I do a pretty good cat meow, which makes a lot come over to me and meow back. I have a tendency to amaze people by petting the cat who "hates people" and getting away with it. I ASSUME that I am not making them uncomfortable (like the b***h in anubuend's post) because they pur and lick my hands and will play with me. I would be HORRIFIED to find out that I was hurting an animal or making it uncomfortable. That being said...I have no dominance over cats. I can effectly boss dogs around (like...make them stop jumpping over people that are freaking out), but cats control me. My friend had an abused cat that would bit and claw anyone who came near it (even her on occasion) and the first day that I came to her house, I pick up the cat and sat on the couch with her (she hadn't told me that the cat hated/was afraid of humans and i am used to being able to do things like that without negative consequence.). The cat purred and sat there while I pet her and sneezed my head off (i'm allergic to...everything that isnt a reptile or amphibian). She came in and said "Holy sh*t you're touching that cat...she's going to claw out your eyes. Do you want me to get her?". I said "No. She's nice." and pet her for over an hour. Now, this is what i mean by not having dominance over cats. I tried to get up to follow my friend to her room and the cat hissed at me and bit my hand a bit. I sat back down and the cat purred, put it's head down, and just lay there. Every time i stopped petting the cat, she hissed. So I was effectively trapped. My friend had to come rescue me (and get scratched and bitten in the process) so that I could get up. The cat followed me downstairs to her room where i sat on the floor and played with her until she decided that she'd had enough and went back upstairs. Lol. But I don't mind letting cats be in control. I am just thrilled to be able to pet them and play.

When I was a kid, before I truely learned how to be gentle, I will say that I got away with being highly irritating to dogs and cats. They were more apt to tolerate me petting too roughly or pulling tails (yes...i admit that i was THAT kid). Cats would sort of wack me with their paws (but would not draw their claws -they were not declawed mind you-) as a way of saying "cut that sh*t out) and dogs tended to nudge me with their heads. This is how I learned what not to do with animals, since I was largely unsupervised by adults when I was playing with animals.

Would a whale here if you whispered to it? It's a very big animal with big ears, I assume.