Being a wildlife ecologist can be dangerous in a lot of ways, even if you take all the proper precautions, because there's always these little things.

Even mosquitoes, you know, they can carry diseases. There's snakes that can bite you or scorpions.

And then, of course, I deal with large mammals, usually.

And, you know, wild animals are unpredictable.

And then there can be these more surprising things

that are really, really hard to see ahead of time.

And as I get up to turn around and head back down the hill,

I am face to face with the bear.

I'm Dr. Raywin Grant, and this is a different kind of nature show, a podcast all about the human drama of saving animals.

I want to tell you my story and what it's actually like to track bears and the sierras, chase lemurs and Madagascar, live with lions in Tanzania,

and do all of that as a black female scientist. This is going wild. So today I'll be sharing multiple stories, and they're about near-death experiences I've had doing my job and traveling.

But the stories themselves are pretty distinct and pretty different.

And the first one has to do with a type of animal that I used to really not worry about.

I wouldn't necessarily say I have a deep fear of this animal, but after the experience that I had,

I now try to avoid them at all costs.

When I was living in Tanzania in 2009, I was working day in and day out, tracking a lion population and living in a tent at this pretty awesome field station outside of the Terengiri ecosystem.

And living in a tent was great.

I mean, we had all kinds of adventures.

I remember one time an elephant came to steal the water from our water barrels.

It was just so exciting and just such an authentic, like, bush experience.

But I learned early on that some of the most dangerous snakes in the world exist in this area.

Every night we had to check outside and inside of our tents to make sure nothing was in there.

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