VIDEO: Animals Scaring People

We are surrounded by animals and they are surrounded by us.

We lean, love and take care of each other.

And, apparently, we also prank each other.

This video shows funny dogs, curious cats, gross bugs and other animals scaring people!

According to lens.blogs.nytimes.com, Jayanti Seiler is not shy about expressing her feelings for animals. But when she meets the subjects of her project “Of One and the Other,” she keeps those feelings to herself.

She has explored the contradictions of the human-animal relationship, photographing them at circuses, shelters and even taxidermists. She started with birds of prey but soon expanded to include other animals.

Ms. Seiler, 38, has always been an animal lover, so after she volunteered at a Florida wildlife rehabilitation center, she was inspired to chronicle the complex relationships she witnessed.

“The people are extremely altruistic, they are compassionate, they’ve given up so much,” she said. “But yet there’s this kind of hardness to them — and distance they have to keep from animals.”

Many people she meets say they are dedicated to preservation and protection. “We’re taking animals out of their natural environments,” Ms. Seiler said. “They’re helping the animals, technically. But when do you draw the line? It’s complex, messy.”

That complexity became even more evident after she paid for an “encounter” to pet and swim with a baby tiger — an experience she said made her very uncomfortable. “The animal, the baby tiger named Tony, he was not being treated well,” she said. “He was shivering, he was cold; he was being put in and out of the pool.”

Ms. Seiler said she found many of her subjects through animal rights groups and rescue workers, often explaining to them that, as a photographer, she wants to learn about the relationship between people and animals.

One woman, Florence Thuot, converted her home into the Journey’s End Animal Sanctuary, a center for neglected and abused creatures. She photographed Ms. Thuot on a bench, blanketed in cats and looking somewhat saint-like (Slide 15).

Another photo from Journey’s End shows a worker cradling an older dog, which was partly paralyzed from blood-borne parasites (Slide 2). At the sanctuary, the dog received regular sponge baths. Ms. Seiler said she began to cry as she witnessed the scene — the dog and the woman gazing into each other’s eyes.

Ms. Seiler said she strove to keep her strong beliefs out of the project, partly because she hopes both to learn something and treat all her subjects with equal respect. When it comes to taxidermists, for instance, she has deep admiration. “They’re creating this piece of art and they take it very seriously,” she said. “There’s kind of that strange and ironic dedication to the animal.”

One of her favorite images shows a man kneeling in front of a red fence. In his hands, he holds the taxidermied head of a deer. His own head is bowed, eyes closed, forehead touching the deer’s nose. The deer’s eyes are open, staring blankly.

“You see that there’s a head,” Ms. Seiler said, “but there’s also this compassion.”