As you could probably tell from those previous paragraphs, science, more specifically natural science, has always been one of my "special interests". People with ASD tend to have a very narrow list of hobbies and interests (also known as special interests), compared to most other people who tend to have a wide range of hobbies and interests. For me, my hobbies and interests have always surrounded nature and science. It is why instead of watching cartoons and playing "pretend" when I was little, I was always watching nature shows with my realistic toy animals on the coffee table in front of me, or with a big stack of paper and a few pencils on the coffee table where I'd spend my days drawing the nature I saw on TV. 

As a result, I got very good at sketching out animals, though I never learned how to draw humans. I'm sure if I buckled down and really worked hard, I could draw a decent picture of a person. However, it would be tough. I wouldn't enjoy drawing people nearly as much as I enjoy drawing nature and animals. I don't have a hard time relating to animals, but I've always had trouble relating to other humans.

I don't study humans like I study animals. I can stare into the massive, golden eyes of a Great Horned Owl all day, but I can barely stand making intense eye contact with other people. Eye contact was actually damn near impossible for me until I reached high school. But, even in high school and beyond, keeping eye contact with others and trying to relate to them was exceptionally difficult for me to do. But, I could (and still do) relate to animals way better, which explains why my doodles have always consisted of lions and Bald Eagles, rather than of people and houses. 

I don't really have the words to explain why I relate to other animals better than humans, other than animals tend to be way easier for me to understand. While I can learn the nuances of interacting with humans, it has to be explicitly pointed out to me and explained as I usually can't just pick it up via osmosis. However, animals tend to be very explicit with their behavior. If a horse is upset for whatever reason, they'll pin their ears and sometimes pull back their lips to show their teeth. If a dog is happy, they'll wag their tail. If a cat feels very safe, they'll roll over onto their backs exposing their chests (which is considered a very vulnerable spot). As a result, I feel very comfortable around animals since they're so easy for me to read and understand. And, for some reason, animals seem to gravitate towards me too. 

Meanwhile, most people I know aren't very good at expressing their needs and emotions anywhere nearly as obviously as animals. Every person has a unique way of expressing their emotions. Sometimes, when people get sad, they get very quiet. However, people can also express sadness in a million other ways, such as crying, getting angry, smiling the pain away, acting like nothing is wrong, being passive aggressive, etc, etc. This goes for every emotion we can experience, and most emotions have reactions that overlap. For example, people can express anger the same ways sadness can be expressed. To be fair, I have my own unique ways of expressing emotion, mainly by not expressing it whatsoever until I'm in private. However, in private, I do cry when I'm sad, I get very irritable when I'm angry, I'll cower and shake when I'm afraid, etc, etc. But, in public, I typically just shut that all out and try not to show my emotions to others. 

Besides emotions, we have the ability to communicate in many more ways than other animals. Most notably, we have these awesome little sounds we can make called words. Sadly, many people I've run into really suck at using these awesome little noises, and even get pissed at me whenever I try to explain something to them as I'd like it to be explained to me. Very thoroughly and clearly. But, apparently that's "patronizing" and "rude", and I'm the idiot for not understanding what people need when they don't use their words to explain it to me in detail, since I can't read minds (unlike the vast majority of the population apparently).

For years, my mom would tell me to "do the dishes", and then get upset when I did the dishes but didn't clean the whole kitchen. Or, my mom would ask me to clean the whole kitchen, then she'd return a little later and thank me for doing "extra" work instead of just doing the dishes.