Raymond Ditmars

Raymond Lee Ditmars (June 22, 1876 from Newark, New Jersey – May 12, 1942 in New York City) was an American herpetologist, writer, public speaker and pioneering natural history filmmaker.

Ditmars was fascinated by all animals, but primarily reptiles, obtaining his first snakes at twelve years of age. His parents eventually allowed him to keep all manner of venomous reptiles in the attic of their house at 1666 Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx. Ditmars left school at 16 with no formal qualifications but nevertheless gained a deep understanding of zoology through his own personal study of snakes and other animals in the wild and captivity. Throughout his life, vacations were spent searching for new specimens. Such was his interest and knowledge that he would eventually be regarded as the country's foremost herpetologist.

In 1893, Ditmars was hired as an assistant in the Department of Entomology at the American Museum of Natural History. Four years later he quit to take a better-paying job as a stenographer. In July 1898, he began a short stint as a court reporter for the New York Times. One of his first pieces led him to discover the newly created New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society), which was in the process of building what would become the Bronx Zoo. On July 17, 1899 - four months before the zoo's grand opening - Ditmars was employed as an assistant curator in charge of reptiles. He was then aged twenty-three, and would spend the rest of his career with the zoo. His own collection of forty-five reptiles, representing fifteen species, formed the nucleus of the reptile house, which proved an immediate success with visitors. A few years later he began work on his first major publication, The Reptile Book, while teaching himself still and motion photography. He would provide almost all the illustrations in this and his many subsequent books, and in 1914 produced and released The Living Book of Nature, his first motion picture to wide acclaim. Many other films followed, pioneering the latest available techniques including stop-motion animation, timelapse, macro photography, and by the mid-1920s, sound film.

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