Since the opening editorial, Animals has got off to an excellent start. Thirty articles were published in 2011, which comprise 446 pages of volume 1, and already 25 articles have been published this year in 360 pages of volume 2. Meanwhile the impact of other MDPI journals continues to grow; mean impact factor of the ten journals that have been in existence long enough to be assessed was 1.9, an increase of 0.3 from the previous year. Open access internet-based journals are proving ever popular and we eagerly await our first impact factor next year. There was a broad spread of topics, which can be roughly classified as follows (and the number of articles): greenhouse gas emissions from animals and climate change (10), animal ethics (9), veterinary medicine (8), animal nutrition (7), animal welfare (7), biodiversity (4) and animals in art and literature (4). Several book reviews have been published and replies by the authors. [...].