PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 99 As a child, Susan McConnell fondly recounts visits to a colony of wood rats who’d taken up residence in a collapsed barn near her family’s home. “I spent hours as a little girl watching them,” Susan recalls, a twinkle in her eyes. “They were so interesting—all their behaviors!” Ardent about creatures great and small, she devoured animal books like Black Beauty and Old Yeller, and cared for a plethora of pets (hamsters, gerbils, parakeets, canaries, fish, lizards, dogs, horses … anything her parents would allow). It’s no great shock that Susan became a wildlife photographer. When she’s not plunging into the jungles of Central America, the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa or the tundra of the high Arctic to capture images of the wild and the wonderful, she works as a neuroscientist and biology professor at Stanford University. Susan’s images invite you in—from a pair of tussling fox cubs or a horde of sea lions jockeying for position on the rocks to a baby elephant trundling beside its mother’s legs or a cheetah solemnly locking eyes with the viewer. And she doesn’t shy away from nature’s visceral side with her unflinching depictions of the hunt. On an upcoming trip to Tanzania’s Nyerere National Park to encounter newborn impalas, Susan notes, “It's a big buffet for predators, for wild dogs, for lions, for leopards. I know, it's sad. But it's a wonderful time of year. Everything's green and very pretty, and the animals are very active because life is everywhere.”
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