What reclusive animal do you as an ASD person most identify with?

A Chameleon! Trying to blend in and avoid predators. 

Yes!

They chase you up trees? 

I am a cat.  Even dogs react towards me as if I was a cat.

I would say I'm a lone wolf! I've left the safety of the pack and I'm happy on my own. I meet people occasionally and that's fine but I don't stay around for too long. I go for the dark handsome stranger persona which works fairly well, but I struggle to move it forward after a few weeks. 

Probably a stork or heron - generally solitary birds which spend a lot of time hunting and foraging solo. Very quiet and chilled. At least this is what I aspire to be/would like to be reincarnated as

There's a Chinese Restaurant at Great Victoria Street in Belfast called the Red Panda.

I have a natural connection to horses, they will cross a field to approach me. I love sloths, turtles, chameleons and geckos. I have a crested gecko. Also I love fish. I think i feel drawn to particular characteristics of each, maybe.

Red Panda  - extremely endangered, nice personality & happy to take flowers from anyone.    Mainly solitary, most comfortable in dense forests.  

Some house cats are reclusive

I have read about how cats are more socially inept, especially compared to pack animals like dogs. 

house cats have become more vocal to try and fit in and communicate better with the humans they live with, but its not the same. And while dogs have adapted specifically to emote better for humans, cats faces have not. Sort of how i struggle to mimic certain facial expressions inorganicly. 
cats also don’t wish particularly to be lonely, but again they are very socially unaware and work more on their own terms. I relate a lot to the modern house cat 

Well morality doesn't really apply to tigers. He screwed with the wrong animal by the sound of it and got what was coming to him. When a tiger makes a kill it expects to eat it it. If someone else comes in an changes what is supposed to happen, whats happened a million times, its meltdown time and hes gonna get it. He should have had more sense.  What that story tells me is that people should consider their actions more than they seem too. I don't blame the tiger the man should have known better. However that's not why I feel a connection with those animals its more their psychology which results in them being quiet, hidden and utterly independent etc (not the part where sometimes they eat stupid people :) ) . Tigers and other solitary animals are used as models for autism such as rats. Contrast a Tiger with a Lion, the tiger lives alone, does its own thing, is quiet and discrete, likes to hide away in their own space, doesn't hang around other tigers, is only interested its own thing etc, Lions however are extremely social, spend alot of time with other lions, prance around in the open showing themselves off  etc. More functional autistics are more like tigers and tigers are not just disabled lions they are tigers, NT's are more like lions. Also I'm not trying to make us feel better or empowered or something like that. Its a direct comparison of elements of our nature and theirs. There might be the odd mismatch i.e. some of us are not independent etc but to me there are a number of directly similarities. 

Further similarities to me at least, tiger stripes are unique to each tiger (if you meet one autistic person you've met one autistic person), tigers are much fewer in number than lions (there are far fewer autistic people in the world) which are much more similar to eachother than they are different, tigers are given a very hard time i.e. they are seen as problems to be removed in certain parts of the world (just like autistic people). 

I think if you look at this through an NT lense you might come to the wrong conclusions about why I am making this comparison. Thats something I find they do. The see any actions through an NT prism and thats a source of great misunderstanding of us on their part. I guess we do something similar that might be why we don't understand them alot of the time so have to resort to other means to get some picture of them.

One of my friends (who also has ASD) told me that I am like a spider - quiet and creative, and spending a lot of time alone creating things. Although she also told me that I am like a squirrel sometimes (that must be my ADHD side).

One of my friends (who also has ASD) told me that I am like a spider - quiet and creative, and spending a lot of time alone creating things. Although she also told me that I am like a squirrel sometimes (that must be my ADHD side).

A tortoise.

Making progress, but in a painfully slow fashion.

I quite like the comparison to a lizard or chameleon particularly because their presentation changes depending on their environment. 

I know dogs aren't really considered reclusive, and I'm probably completely missing the point, but I really find I identify with rescue dogs and dogs with major anxiety and attachment problems. I guess that's because I suffer from both of these myself! I think I understand their competing fear of social interaction and desperate need for love and belonging

Have you heard of the true story of Vladimir Markov? Basically, don't mess with an Amur tiger. This man stole the kill of an Amur tiger and then wounded it, and it patiently hunted him down over several days very much like a human assassin.

(Not suggesting you're an assassin, but it's a very interesting story.)

That's a good one  

Sloths! I was once having my afternoon tea in a rain forest margin area, and spotted something lurking in a Leylandii tree. Why someone thought Leylandii was suitable for a tropical garden, Gordan only knows; but the Sloth was curled up in it fast asleep on a very hot and humid afternoon. I took a bit of a closer peek and decided it would better off going back into some more natural jungle where someone would find it a lot more difficult to capture. That at least proved to me that if disturbed they can move quite quickly. It obviously liked the Leylandii because some canopy trees were overhanging it. It moved quite quickly in a most steady manner into the top of the canopy. I was later told that sloths have been known to climb up telegraph poles and get completely stuck under tensioning wires or struts.  Yeah, I have quite a few sloth-like tendencies. ;-)