Sarah Kanowski

Thankfully, it was a soft landing, I assume.

Yeah.

How did your parents react to that?

I mean, immigrant doctors, I guess they had pretty high expectations for their son.

How were things at home when that happened?

So tell me about the volunteering work then where you had this practical experience with animals at the zoo.

What kind of animals did you work with when you were just 12, 13?

Instead of going straight into university, you went to Game Ranger School, which sounds sort of wildly exciting.

What happens at Game Ranger School?

And even as a young guy, teenager still, I guess at that point, 18 or so,

Was it being out away from other people, away from the cities and suburbs, being in the wild that was part of what was drawing you as well as the animals themselves?

You did then end up at university, at the Nelson Mandela University.

What was your campus like?

Running around the actual, like, past the library.

Amazing.

Are they dangerous?

Yeah.

What did you come to appreciate about leopards living so close to them during that time?

Alex, what did you learn about them as a species?

So here you were doing academic work, I guess, starting to research these big cats and other animals of this part of Africa.