At what age do special interests "start"?

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My special interest started at age 2; the first time I played Mario bros. 3 for the NES. It's still my interest, but it's going towards making games rather than playing them.

I've had other interests kinda interrupt it, but it always lead back to video games at one time or another.

I was very interested in bunnies, between the ages 2 and 3.

One of my first was with depths of water. I would always be asking my parents how deep a certain body of water was. I just had to know! I don't remember when that was. Maybe when I was 6 or 7. Now my parents joke with me about it and ask me how deep bodies of water are.

I guess my first particularly specific special interests started at the age of around three: I got really into dinosaurs and the human body, I would want to read and watch anything related to them. I remember when I was a couple of years older I set up my bed as sort of a mini library during the day where I would put all my dinosaur books and toys and go up there (it was a bunk bed) and read them. I remember I also developed another curious habit around this time (circa 5yo) I used to store all my toys and bits and pieces that I picked up (I was a bit of a womble!) under my duvet covers at the end of my bed. I remember that I used to flip out if my brother went upto my bed and moved anything...I still get a bit touchy today if people move my stuff to be honest; I guess I am just overprotective of my possessions.

I don't remember my toddler years either, as hard as I try I can't, my earliest memory is when I had an ear infection, I think I was about 5. I have been told I draw like a pro at age 3 or 4, but lost it.

I have very few memories before the age of 8. I have always been interested in puzzles like logic problems, crosswords, etc. I think that started when I was about 7, but I am guessing

when i was 7 and discovered the paino. i self-taught and played for hours and hours everyday driving my mother insane until I left at 17.

then I didn't have paino anymore and used to curl up in a ball and cry and cry for months until I "got over it" and found other obsessions..

My first special interest at age two was dolphins. I wanted to know everything about them from then on and so much of my play was pretending to be a dolphin, and I would grab every picture book I could get my hands on.

One of my earliest soft toys was a dolphin called "Dolphy". And when I lost Dolphy one day (I remember being really upset at the time because he was my favourite toy -- just like some people have a fav. doll or teddy bear) I eventually got another soft toy dolphin, and this one was "Dolphia"

I don't know any before a certain age simply because I had no one to note or remember such things for me. I suffered from "Nth Child Syndrome" which I just made up, in which a child whose parents have had eleventy-billion spawn before them are so caught up in keeping the older ones out of jail that they take very little notice of the unique traits of the younger ones. So I am all at once bitter and sympathetic without actually feeling much of anything just at the moment.

I do recall becoming obsessed with some things from around age 10 and up. I used to write my own secret codes, sadly never anything fancy. I tried symbols sometimes but I really got interested in trying to rearrange the sounds to make something I could speak and show off to others, speaking my own language that they couldn't understand. Psh, like I wasn't already. Heaven help me if I had succeeded...

I read and reread Piers Anthony's Xanth series up to volume 8. This caused a language explosion when I was 12... I now had the adults looking up words I had used. I started drawing maps, endless maps of my own fantasy world. I must have drawn 10,000 unicorns by the time I was done with puberty.

My earliest memories, by the way, were of my baby beans doll that was my favorite when I was 3, and before that (I hope) I remember running to get a diaper (for myself) from the bottom drawer and trying to get to it first. I remember that's why I was running. I really wanted to be the first one to get there. I was, too, and I turned to the person following and that's where it stops.