Richard Conniff is an America writer specializing in behavior on two, four, six, and eight legs. He has collected tarantulas in the Peruvian Amazon, tracked leopards with Kung San hunters in the Namibian desert, climbed the Mountains of the Moon in western Uganda, and trekked through the Himalayas of Bhutan in pursuit of tigers and the mythical migur. The New York Times Book Review says, "Conniff is a splendid writer--fresh, clear, uncondescending, and with never a false step; one can't resist quoting him."
Conniff also writes about wildlife, human cultures and other topics for TIME, Smithsonian Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and other publications in the United States and abroad. His magazine work in Smithsonian won the 1997 National Magazine Award, and was included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing in 2000, 2002, and 2006. Conniff is also the winner of the 2001 John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Nature Essay of the Year, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2009 Loeb Journalism Award.
Conniff has been a frequent commentator on NPR and serves as an occasional guest columnist for The New York Times online. He has written and presented television shows for National Geographic Channel, TBS, Animal Planet, the BBC, and Channel Four in the UK. His television work has been nominated for an Emmy Award for distinguished achievement in writing, and he won the 1998 Wildscreen Prize for Best Natural History Television Script for the BBC show Between Pacific Tides.