TEMPLE GRANDIN

Temple Grandin is one of the more successful adults with autism. She was born August 29, 1947. She grew up in a time when very little was known about autism. At age two, she was diagnosed with “brain damage”. Despite showing autistic traits such as rocking, fixation, and emotional distance, doctors did not recognize her condition as autism until several years later.

Based on her personal experience, she advocates early intervention and supportive teachers who can direct the fixations of the autistic child to more fruitful directions. She acknowledges and understands her own hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli, as well as her need to visualize everything. She regularly takes anti-depressants and uses a squeeze-box (hug machine) she invented at the age of eighteen.

It was her visual memory and her ability to notice small details that led her to design humane animal handling equipment. Her insight into the minds of cattle have taught her to value the changes in details to which animals are particularly sensitive to.

Temple is considered to be a philosophical leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. She knows too well the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, all of which motivate her to promote humane livestock handling processes. Her design of sweeping curved corrals was intended to reduce stress in animals being led to slaughter and is being used world-wide.

She became well-known after being described by Oliver Sacks in the title narrative of his book, An Anthropologist On Mars. She has also been featured on major television programs, such as ABC’s Primetime Live, the Today Show, and Larry King Live, and profiled in Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, and the New York Times.

Temple Grandin sought out answers to her challenges of living with autism and used her unique abilities to help others, and offered insight and structure for the more humane treatment of animals.