Fiona Reid spent many years capturing small mammals and drawing them from life. She studied biology at Cambridge University in England, and went to graduate school at Stony Brook, Long Island. After illustrating several children’s books and a series of Neotropical mammal books, she decided to embark on writing and illustrating her own book on Central American mammals. She has written and/or illustrated numerous guides, including A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico, The Golden Guide to Bats of the World, Bats of Papua New Guinea, and Mammals of the Neotropics (volumes 1-3). She is currently a Departmental Associate in Mammalogy at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, Canada. She has also been leading nature tours since 1987, showing ecotourists the mammals and other wildlife of diverse lands from Brazil to Indonesia, and Alaska to Venezuela. She currently lives on the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario with her two children and an assortment of pets.