Dave Salmoni is Animal Planet's apex predator expert and is host of a number of Animal Planet and Discovery Channel programs including Rogue Nature, Predator vs. Prey, Into the Lion's Den and After the Attack, all series that he hosts and produces.

Salmoni, 31, wears many hats. He's a zoologist, a renowned animal trainer, a television presenter and a producer with his own South Africa-based production company, Triosphere. And, Salmoni successfully has been able to marry all these titles, emphasizing one common denominator — his love for animals.

Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, Salmoni always surrounded himself with wildlife. First venturing into the Canadian bush on his own at the age of seven, the young Salmoni was no stranger to the natural world and all that lived within it. Adorning his walls with pictures of big cats and having been the proud owner of a number of domestic pets including dogs, cats and hamsters, Salmoni found his passion early.

Salmoni embraced this passion, and his mother, a competitive figure skating coach, and father, a chemical engineer, fostered his love for the wild. Salmoni studied zoology at the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, and wrote his undergraduate thesis on tracking the hibernation of Canadian black bears. Also while in university, Salmoni was certified in Chemical Immobilization of Wildlife and worked on an elk relocation project and at a deer count station for the Ministry of Natural Resources.

In 1998, Salmoni began his apprenticeship as an animal trainer at Bowmanville Zoological Park near Toronto, one of the world’s largest humane-credited providers of highly trained animals. Salmoni focused on large cat training and has been training large cats as well as other predators since then. It was during this time that Salmoni encountered his first animal attack. Salmoni knew Bongo, an adult African lion, for many months and had worked with him closely. Nevertheless, this impressive 500+ pound cat showed his aggression and possessiveness over a bit of carpet that Salmoni was using during training, proving that wild animals are indeed wild. Salmoni, overcoming the attack and respecting the large cat, continued to train him and learned one of the most valuable lessons of his life — that the safest cat is also the most dangerous cat, and as a trainer, one must never lose focus.

In early 2000, Salmoni was offered a life-changing opportunity to be the first to travel with two captive-bred Bengal tigers to Africa and train them how to hunt and survive in the wild. Salmoni combined his trainer and zoology techniques to achieve this conservation goal, which was documented in Discovery Channel's Living with Tigers. Following this experience, Salmoni lived among African lions for three months in an attempt to show that lions and humans can co-exist in the same area; this journey was captured in the documentary Into the Lion's Den, which aired on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.

Throughout the past several years, Salmoni has developed his career as a television presenter and a producer, forming his own production company, Triosphere, which specializes in natural history filmmaking.

In his spare time, Salmoni likes to spend his time at his family's cottage in Ontario, which is surrounded by an abundance of wildlife. He's an avid outdoorsman, enjoys sports and loves to build things. Outside of his native Canada, Salmoni enjoys Yellowstone National Park and South Africa, where he has lived for five consecutive years and since then, he continues to visit three months out of the year.