Pollyanna McIntosh Quotes

Horses are prey animals, and most of the other animals that I've shot are predators. If you act mellow with predators, they know that they can kill you, so they are cool, but if you work with prey, they think that you're going to kill them at any moment.

Man is a fugitive from nature.

In a place where there are no humans, one must strive to be human.

Gorillas are still wild creatures. That's made very clear when you observe them in nature. They charge and perform other displays that are terrifying by design. But they don't attack unless they feel threatened.

A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every little sign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry? A good tracker is interpreting a lot.

I would love to be a field biologist. I would love to do what Jane Goodall did, just totally immerse myself in the life of one specific species for years and study every aspect of its behavior until little by little, all of these patterns become clear. That would be great, but I don't know if I have it left in me.

But the truth is that Homo sapiens is a sensual species. I think all species are, to one degree or another.

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.

I'm so used to swimming with the piranhas. And they're really not that bad.

One of the basic steps in saving a threatened species is to learn more about it: its diet, its mating and reproductive processes, its range patterns, its social behavior.

What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.

I miss the early days; I do. I was so lucky. I basically had it to myself, learning about these chimpanzees. Nobody knew anything about them. Discovering their different personalities, different life histories. I was lucky.

You know, if you have a zoo you don't want the other creatures to see you. You want them to hang out and act properly and, you know, when the monkeys will come and ask for the bananas, they won't act like monkeys. If you want them to act on what their true nature is, you've got to leave them alone.

Hunters and trackers learn not only to understand intellectually a bunch of facts about the animal they follow, but to feel their way into the very being of the animal.

How comedic are squirrels? We don't have squirrels in Australia. The first time I saw a squirrel was at a meeting at Disney.

Animals are everywhere. Some are more romantic, like tigers and elephants and chimpanzees, and some are less romantic, like earthworms, but they are just as interesting.

If you're a wildlife filmmaker and you're going out into the field to film animals, especially behavior, it helps to have a fundamental background on who these animals are, how they work and, you know, a bit about their behaviors.

When I was in college, the first thing we did in acting class was to observe an animal at the zoo and become that animal. So I picked a wallaby.

I once did a role which I couldn't rehearse in my street clothes, I had to have the character's costume on before I could rehearse it. I just couldn't think as the character unless I looked like him, or I knew that I looked like him.

He gathers nuts among the rushes.

My study of the wild gorilla is not yet finished, and even when it is complete, it will contribute only a small part toward man's understanding of his closest animal relatives, the great apes. But one conclusion is already clear: The gorilla is one of the most maligned animals in the world.

In every movie, there's always some physical thing that triggers the character for me. In 'The Long Walk Home,' it was the girdle. Every time I'd put that girdle on, I'd feel my character wiggle to life.

Dogs are a window on the natural world.

The first time I crawled into the octagon, I just felt like an animal, you know? Like a creature, like I wasn't quite human.

Animals are completely grounded in their root chakra.