I have had the fortune of growing up in the countryside, surrounded by furry pets and where wild animals would come round from time to time to say hello! This is where my profound love for animals and nature began. I thank Aunt Francesca for gifting me the subscription to the magazine Panda Junior – WWF, which helped me understand, already in early ages, that we are just guests on this planet and that we must respect and preserve it. I thank my mother for reading “The life of Konrad Lorenz“ when I was 8 years old, and telling me the stories about it, making me immediately passionate of fascinating Ethology! At the time, I armed myself of pencil and notebook and spent hours observing the neighbours’ cats and carefully reporting their behaviour. I remember presenting an essay to my classmates in middle school explaining what ethology was and that I wanted to study it when I grow up. Finally, at University I graduated in the three-year General Biology course and obtained a Master’s in Behavioural Biology, gaining much field work experience and with two theses on wolf behaviour. The year I was collecting data on the first thesis, my dog started showing behaviour problems. At that point I decided to deepen the study of the behaviour of the dog and that of the wolf in parallel. While I was attending University, I started collaborating with Openlab, the scientific education service of the University of Florence, talking for the first time about the behaviour of a mammal and bringing live dogs to the University! It often happened, that friends asked me for advice for their cats and so gradually I started to document on the behaviour of the cat, which was actually the first species I studied!
Currently I provide consultancy in the field of dog and cat behaviour, I collaborate with Openlab and I hold scientific education meetings on various topics.
