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Hippos aren't very graceful. They are terribly scary "river monsters" that are very dangerous. Their teeth and powerful body can smash through many boats along rivers. (Of course, this is all constructive).

Does a teenager count as younger or older?

I bet they can ^_^.

Answering the questions now!

Note, the bible goes into great detail about the "Behemoth", a massive, unstoppable doom monster of murder who is widely believed to be a mythological, exaggerated description of a Hippo, just as Leviathan is believed to be a monster based on the Crocodile. They say he has great bones of brass, skin thicker than any shield, and his body cannot be bound by any rope or chain that man can make.

You know what that means, right? That means there were actually guys that engaged motherfucking hippos in glorious bronze age hippo combat and found this shit out. There were people who tried to chain a hippo to a stake and failed and were turned into meat smoothies between gaping, four-tooth-jaws of murderkillage.

But they're just so darn cute! Who wouldn't wanna chain them up?

0_0

It is known.

Toledo has a hippoquarium.  Now the hippos have to wear radio collars, because one of them got squished by the automatic doors between the viewing tank and the indoors.

(Toledo kills an unacceptable number of animals, btw.  They killed the Detroit zoo's sloth bear because they thought she was pregnant and going into hibernation, so they put her indoors and starved her to death.  She wasn't pregnant, and also sloth bears don't hibernate.  The official statement by Toldeo Zoo head PR person was "there's a lot of different kinds of animals.  you can't expect the zookeepers to be experts on all of them.")

Like, fatally squished? Or just "it's funny 'cause you're fat" squished?

When I read this, initially I got the impression of men putting bronze armor on hippos, saddling them up, and using them as war animals.

1) Spiders are interesting to learn about, incredible to watch from long distances and across screens, but horrible to be around. Like the Hannibal Lecters and Heath Jokers of the animal kingdom. The different kinds have very unique hunting methods, fighting styles, movements, etc., and of course there's all those wonderful Game of Thrones family dynamics!

2) Despite being rather older than a lot of Animal-Perspective shit's target audience, I actually think I might have an answer to this. Despite the fact that a lot of it is obviously marketted toward children, and children can tell that right off the bat, the maturity of the stories is one of the main appeals. Writing/roleplaying/generally shitting on your surroundings with Warrior Cats is a lot like kids creating their own soap operas with dolls when they're un-supervised, or playing the Sims and "Exploring dialogue trees" in the bedroom and starving people to death in doorless bathrooms.

It's a harmless way to explore what you can do in writing. If you write s story about Scourge of Bloodclan, who wears a cat-tooth necklace and runs around killing other animals, it's no big deal. It's just a kid with a wild imagination. If you write a story about Pre-Genghis Mongolia in a world of constantly warring clans and one of them is headed by a guy named McKilligan who wears human teeth around his neck, you're going to be sent to the counselor's office.

That's the thing about about animals. We've seen them do literally everything on National Geographic. There's elephants getting smashed on naturally occuring coconut wine, there's graphic depictions of geese hopping on each other's goose-ginas and exchanging alien worm fluids, there's bears eating only the most pastel-red delicacies out of the crushed ribcages of deer and buffalo. Drugs, sex, and murder, is all perfectly okay for children to watch, and it gets past with a G rating, as long as animals are doing it. And we all know how kids love being edgy. In fact, when I was very, very little, before I made comics of kung-fu-fighters disembowelling each other, I... I drew Warrior Cats doing it first, and then get caught, and if the only trouble I got in for drawing the picture was because I was drawing in class and not because they were disembowling each other, I would then draw people fighting and doing the "adult approved" fatalities, and they would be completely unable to fault me for it because that's what the cats were doing. That's actually how I determined I could pass a lot of my earliest fight scenes off as "clean" in the comic books (Shitty, forced jokes surrounded by sweet but poorly drawn action) I made and stapled together, and let my friends read them, I could tell them about it and if any of them got vindictive over the immature slights we threw at each other as kids just because, they wouldn't be able to tell on me about this.

Just for fun, here was the general "rating system":

Wounds, blood drips: Okey dokey.

Large sprays/globs of blood: Only if is later found out that they were robots powered by cherry soda and/or aliens with "green", (not-colored-in) blood or "Ichor".

Wounds with lots of lines in them that look like exposed "stringy muscle" that they draw on cartoon anatomy charts: Only if the teacher doesn't know what you're doing. Try if you're feeling brave and/or lucky.

Wounds with lots of lines in them with blood around: The teacher will now know exactly what you're doing, you cheeky little shit. Don't push it.

Organs: Only okay if they're being vomitted, apparently. Intestines are slightly more okay.

Unrecognizable bits and chunks that are implied to be guts/organs: Only okay if they're being vomitted or there's so much other stuff going on in the fight scene that attention is drawn away from them.

Valentine Hearts: Only okay if used as an emote, eyeballs, or, if it must be violent, in a bloodless "Rip out your heart" stunt.

Actual Hearts: Only okay if you use them as emotes to be ironic.

People with no skin, or with large amounts of skin missing: As long as the removal happens "offscreen".

Intestines: If they just fall out  and aren't being pulled, or other violence is not committed with them. A poop joke "good" enough to make the teacher smile at it is required. (Ex: "Oh poopy!" "Aw gosh, I can't control my bowels!" "Why you bein' so anal, man!?")

Loose eyeballs: As long as the optic nerve doesn't trail behind it, and there aren't any veins on it, or bleeding involved in its removal.

My friends and I played a lot of Halo when we were in 1st/2nd grade... We thought we were the edgiest motherfuckers...

3) Animals are perfectly good characters, as long as they're good characters in general.

4) In no particular order, The Chicken from Family Guy, Snowy from the Adventures of Tintin, the Luck Dragon from The Neverending Story, The Dog in I Am Legend, Animal from The Muppets. Oh, and Snoopy. Snoopy is the shit.

I guess, since animals live a lot less complicated lives than we do, NatGeo in the proper doses is a good way to introduce really heavy concepts to kids in very simplistic ways. Though they probably don't know they're contemplating all that stuff they see on the news, they see animals do it, with their motives and reasons explained by an invisible Australian Narrator, it becomes more tangible to them because, yeah, that's why they're doing it, and that's how they do it. Then, as they encounter fiction and animals become more anthropomorphic, they can apply more thoughts and feelings to it and they can come to more intuitively understand the world.

Just make sure they watch all their normal cartoons and shit in between, too. If you watch too much/only animal murderfucking as a kid, you get Ryder, probably.

Cuttlefish are the most awesome animals. They're brilliant, have amazing camouflage powers, possess three hearts, and have the weirdest mating process. Cephalopods in general are pretty great though.

And while Africa's animals are impressive, I wouldn't call North American animals boring. The 'Most Boring Wildlife' award I believe goes to the UK.

I'd like to hear an explanation for the animal perspective obsession too. Especially when it's not even animals with realistic behaviors we're talking about. Meanwhile books like White Fang and Call of the Wild are the gold standard in that genre, and yet I suspect the number of so called fans of animal stories who have actually read them is very small.

Red Fern is a classic, but I haven't read it in years. That'll be one worth revisiting soon, I have it on my shelf right now actually.

I'm not sure where the line is drawn or if there's a different term for animal perspective stories where the characters are basically humans with fur and lacking opposable thumbs, and animals that behave realistically as animals. The latter has educational value, the former can be entertaining in the vein of a Disney movie, so both have their place. I have fond memories of the Hank the Cowdog series, and The Grand Escape is a cat story my niece used to love that was fun for me too. 

I think the weirdness we see regarding WC and the wolf stories here has more to do with the kids being obsessive, fanatical, and not very bright, probably with a too limited or non existent exposure to other kinds of fiction, and reality, to help balance it out. (It's like, I can see why they enjoy stories of that nature, but not why what they try to do with it is always bad, and why they can't recognize that stories can be bad, or when the source material itself is regurgitated and uninspired....)

Watership Down still remains my favorite book. Well defined, likable characters, and I'd consider it basically the perfect blend of adventure and social commentary. Even though they were sentient with their own culture, the author put in a great deal of effort making the rabbits behave believably as rabbits and keeping them with an animal's perspective of the world.

Also, thank you Bucky for making a topic with an actual topic, that might lead to an actual discussion. The Lounge has been embarrassingly awful lately. Moreso than usual, even. I'm curious whether anyone is keeping a tally on how many threads have been deleted in the past week.

I'm a fan of animal stories! Pretty sure White Fang and Call Of The Wild were among the first when I started getting into animal stories.  Of course, then again, I fit into many small percentages so it's not really all that surprising. Fell is pretty good too, combining a high fantasy magic world with the perspective of a wolf. Wolves Of The Beyond was another from a wolf perspective in a high fantasy world. Hank the Cowdog was really amusing. I've never heard of The Grand Escape though. I'll have to look that one up.

"I'm not sure where the line is drawn or if there's a different term for animal perspective stories where the characters are basically humans with fur and lacking opposable thumbs, and animals that behave realistically as animals."

Just a little trivia you might find interesting.

I think turtles are awesome because they're slow.

Frogs are awesome because they're cute. Their cuteness overrides the part of my brain that knows about all the rape and cannibalism.

1. Extinct: iguanodon; non-extinct: whale shark.
2. (N/A; I guess I'm getting old)
3. Animals are conscious living beings so they're characters just like humans as far as I'm concerned. It just depends on the genre on feel of the story how prominently a role they'll play. You might associate animal perspective with children's stories, but George Orwell's Animal Farm, anyone?
4. Probably someone in Animal Farm. Can't remember though, it's been a while since I read it. I guess Flamepaw from Warriors; cats STory teh storugame gets an honourable mention.

Animal farm was a good book.

Just finished reading Animal Farm two weeks ago for my English class. It was pretty good, but if you're not interested in the Russian revolution there's not too much to go on.

something along the line of a mouse story would be pretty good, stuart little, tom and Jerry, that one movie with the two guys and the mouse, all were pretty good.

(Sub1: at work, better posting when free time)

1) all animals are awesome. ( Except apes/chimps etc.  they're horrible.) 

Defending North America!  Otters are incredible! And beavers are, with the building, and!

Wolverines! We got a whole badass superhero named after them!  And what about bison? (buffalo!) or hellbenders! And peregrine falcons! And burrowing owls! 

Every North American animal you mentioned can kill people!  Except maybe armadillos, but they're not from around here. 

( Except apes/chimps etc.  they're horrible.)

Someone finally gets it, thank you.

I actually don't mind apes that much but chimps are seriously unsettling/horrifying to me. And yet everyone persists in thinking they're cute despite how fucking violent and dangerous they are, and their lovely habit of peeling people's faces off.

Or stealing and eating babies. I have seen footage. I will never look at a chimp the same way again.

Yes, beavers kill people.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/11/newser-beaver-kills-man/2074145/

http://www.newser.com/story/152026/scouts-stone-rabid-beaver-to-death.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17/beaver-attack_n_5505315.html

To be fair, the second and probably the third accounts there were caused by rabies, and I was reading about that fisherman yesterday when the question came up, and in other articles it specifies he was trying to grab the beaver. So, the man would've been the aggressor in that case, he wasn't just attacked out of nowhere.

Anyone who spends $400+ on a one-seater boat obviously isn't firing on all cylinders.

Armadillos carry a form of leprosy that is communicable to humans.

@Bucky , large concentrations of beaver scat in water can turn any lake into a habitat for Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba that can cause parasitic meningitis.

Well, we have coyotes, which, granted, don't engage in anthropophagy all too often.

We also have the coral snake and rattlesnake, as far as deadly but non-man-eating fauna goes. In terms of more benign critters, we have the swift fox, kit fox, black-footed ferret, hummingbirds, and praire dogs. And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

*gape* But snakes are adorable! And scorpions are so cool!

I knew a girl whose python would give her "kisses".

It probably just likes the way she tastes.

Umm...I don't live in the desert or Australia, and I have seen plenty of scorpions. Granted, they're just wood scorpions.

"I think once in a blue moon we deserve a non shit post thread. So let's talk about awesome animals."

You, sir, just became 20% more huggable.

1) Most awesome... y'know what, dinosaurs. I'm appealing to all of our inner children with that one and I don't care, dinosaurs are awesome. I do kinda wish we could still see an actual, living, breathing T-Rex hanging around, but I will admit what we have left is still pretty damn cool. 

3) It's a mix of skill and genre. No, I don't like talking animal flicks all that much, I have been agonized by the very thought of being dragged to one in theaters ... (and I am content with a lot of mediocre movies as long as you give me popcorn, a soda, and a good crowd) but put me in front of a Narnia or Kung Fu Panda movie and I promise you I won't complain. (I still love the swash-buckling mouse. And yeah, KFP2 is just... I loved it.) 

I'm also a sucker for a good animal familiar, I won't lie. Snarky witches' pets, gravelly-voiced body-guard wolves, old and wise spirit guide dragons, the occasional Coyote god (*cough*whatblatantselfplugIdon'tknowwhatyoumean*cough*) I can totally get into it ... if the writing is good. But a bad story/character is a bad story/character. Period. 

4) As a kid, for video games, I was absurdly fond of Sonic. I also remember really liking Nightmare from KQVI--something about the concept of being Death's horse and stealing men's souls, I suppose. In literature, I loved Reepicheep. (Again: swash-buckling mouse. What more do you need to know?) These days, I don't think I really have one.

1) Yeah... Dinosaurs are cool, i wished they still exist too. ^_^ They are SO awesome, even though some were carnivores. Hey, i would've wanted one as pet somehow. ^_^

2) I personally LOVE all kinds of turtles or sea turtles! ^_^ I know they're not anything special, but they're my favorite.

3) But!, i like all other animals too. There are other animals that are awesome that i never even new about that are weird, but cool. Of course, i can't remember the names of some them now. ^_^ So yeah.

1) ... To be fair, it's not that they don't exist anymore, they're just dead. :D So they exist in bone and fossil form. Granted, there's 'relatives' and then there's the theory that sightings of "Nessie" / "sea monsters" were really just reports of some surviving dinosaurs who made it long enough to still be a legend in this day and age. The sea seems the likeliest place for anything to hide this long, I guess ... since it's so freaking vast and we've explored so little of its depths. I suppose I'd like to think it's true and that there's some out there, somewhere, which we'll find if we look hard enough since we're still discovering new species in the world today. (Alas, that's optimism, not realism talking.)

2) Turtles are awesome.

3) Ah.

Komodo dragons aren't dinosaurs, but they're probably as close as we'll ever get, barring what you've said here about sea creatures. And there are enough still alive and relatively unchanged since prehistoric times it's entirely possible.

Turtles have been around in similar form for long enough to qualify, and then there's the coelacanth they thought went extinct in the Cretaceous period until they started finding them again.

People thought giant squids were a myth for the longest time too, it was only 2004 when they finally caught a live one on camera.

:( Sorry, that's not true, either. Komodo mouths are actually cleaner than ours. People got it backwards.

"It's not the predator that's a filthy, gaping bag of bacteria -- it's the prey. Specifically, the Komodo dragon's favorite snack: the water buffalo. The water buffalo is not native to the Komodo dragon's Indonesian home. Meddling humans took them from their mainland Asian habitat -- where they were accustomed to huge, idyllic fresh marshes that they could shit all over to their hearts' content -- to some small islands with a few tiny ponds here and there. And you probably don't need a doctorate in molecular biology to figure out that cannonballing into a combination sink/bathtub/toilet while having a gaping wound might present significant risk of infection." (Link if you want the full article)

Ikr? I love animals and all, but I will never understand how Steve Irwin did that kind of thing daily and survived as long as he did. (Crazy to have gone the way he did, out of everything that tried to kill him.)

<3 rays.  Especially cownose rays.  SO happy!! 

Omigod, I love Komodos. <3 I was so sad when I found out that the "toxic bite" thing was only a myth. :(

Oh, yeah. That's one of the things that gave me hope, you know. Giant squids are awesome, and since we've only known they weren't just some sailor's fever dream for a little over a decade... who knows? (Of course, they could also be the only ones responsible for those sea stories. >_> But I wanna believe...!)

Yeah true kiel, my bad. ^_^ You know what i meant though. XD About the dinosaurs.

No, I don't like talking animal flicks all that much, I have been agonized by the very thought of being dragged to one in theaters ...

This is usually my opinion too. I don't think it's the talking animals in particular so much as 'dumbing down for the kids, let's add some poop jokes' style of humor so many of them have. 

But since we're on the subject of movies and I've been gushing about this to everyone in earshot, I just wanted to point out that the new Jungle Book movie is very, very good, and far better than I expected. I wouldn't take a kid younger than ten or eleven though since there were some sequences one of my nephews found absolutely terrifying.  (...and damn, King Louie creeped me out...)

"I don't think it's the talking animals in particular so much as 'dumbing down for the kids, let's add some poop jokes' style of humor so many of them have."

You make an excellent point. Again, it's the quality of the story and the characters. People think they can get away with pumping out total crap to entertain kids and most of the time, they're right!

Really? I've heard good things, and then I've heard "you saw the old one, right? Then you're not missing anything."

The plot uses a few more elements from the actual book than the cartoon did, the wolf family has a bigger part for instance, and Kipling's 'Law of the Jungle' poem plays a part which I thought was a neat touch.

The cartoon is still a classic, but it's a little dated in some ways for kids now, and I appreciate it when Disney does an...I guess 'reimagining' of their stuff while still staying recognizably faithful to what made the original good. Plus I thought the plot of the new one held together a little better, and Mowgli gets to have more agency. He's unquestionably the hero in this one instead of just being a little kid getting swept along by the plot. Gotta say, I preferred the ending to the movie as well.

I liked the new Jungle Book movie. 

It's tough to compare because when Kipling wrote the book, it was a good thing for man to conquer the jungle and rule over the animals.

@Kiel_Farren

Reepicheep was an asshole! XD  I hated him. 

1. Outside the family canidae, my favorite animals are snakes, especially pythons and other constrictors.

2. N/A?

3. I think the roles of animals in a story depend on the genre, tone, etc. In allegorical fiction, such as Animal Farm, all non-human characters are persons with characteristics that reflect the symbolism associated with their species. In realistic fiction, such as Stone Fox, the role of the main animal character is to aid in the emotional development of the human protagonist.

4. Disney's Robin Hood.

1. Don't really have a favourite, but I guess dogs? I also like pandas, but mostly because they make me feel better about my own lifestyle, what with the eating a lot, not moving very fast, falling off of random stuff, and somehow still nog being extinct and all. 

2. I think I'm too old to answer this...

3. I actually don't mind animals in stories, I don't even necessarily mind animal-perspective stories. I think the quality of a story is mostly determined by the writer's skill. If they can come up with an engaging story, it's probably a good one. Of course an animal as one of the main characters might be more believable in the right setting, like Jungle Book and such, but if it's properly inserted as a character in a different story, I don't think it matters if it's an animal or not. 

4. Again, don't really have favourites that I can think of, but I agree that Scooby Doo is one of the greatest animal characters to have ever existed. I also really like Aslan, from the Narnia books, but he's less animal than, you know, Jesus allegory and all that.

Greatest animal character of all time is the horse from Tangled.

Man's the greatest animal, because we kill all the other animals, genetically manipulate others to better serve us, and then poison the entire world, killing ourselves in the process, to wipe out all life. That's a badass way to go about life.

So's everything else. When we're stupid enough to fuck something up, we can irradiate countries. And that's badass.

Man is the most successful animal.

Man is also the only animal that will claw its way to the top through overwhelming obstacles and then feel really bad and ashamed about this.

Tell that to the octopi and their massive underwater liquor bottle forts.

This only applies to my post if they drank all the liquor to assuage their guilt and shame at being so much more awesome than all the other ocean critters. Later he got drunk and cried for this crab.

In the Jungle Book (actual book) the law says not to kill men for food.   Unlike animals, the whole tribe of men seek revenge for the death of any of them, against everything in the jungle.

Most awesome animal? I'd say elephants because they are very intelligent. They can recognize past owners in their adulthood when they were trained as calves. They can hear low frequency noises and they're just purely machines of war. Their huge tusks are amazing to see in person or through a television screen.

Animal perspective stories. Yes, those. Well, they're popular because so many Disney films portray them as perfect and cute, which they are, and most kids that age have pets. So they'd like to see what it's like to be an animal.

Favorite animal characters.....don't really have one.

I like turtles in general, but just to mention more coolness of North American animals, I feel like jaguars are really underrated when it comes to the “big cat” family. (Though I know they're far more common in Central and South America)

There have been many animal characters that I found entertaining or liked, but I suppose if I had to pick one in particular it would be the wolf from the Aesop’s Fable “The Wolf and the Lamb.”

If I have pick an outright “furry” movie. I suppose I’d pick Rock & Rule.

I’d like to see a story where the dinosaurs try to implement a mammal suppression plan and attempt to build bunkers for the incoming meteor.

Introducing "The Good Dinosaur 2."

Falcon. I would totally have a pet Falcon. I'd name him "Punch" for lol's. It'd be even better if it was like the one from Family Guy that somehow understood English and would fetch me shit.

I dunno, man. Pass.

Also do not know. Pass again.

Obviously it's Akamaru from Naruto. He started out all small and adorable and then turned big and ridable. He also turns into a clone of Kiba, so that's cool too.

Actually, I take both of those back. I'd have a pet Temmie.

Well, I'm back baby so I might as well, might not be crazy long though, and sorry I'm reviving a day late sort of thread. XD A good idea to make a friendly thread though.

1) Well of coarse a wolf, first. They can be independent, or loyal and not to mention fierce. They are dependent creatures who can yet strive on their own. But ever since I was a small child, I'd loved Giraffes! I didn't think they were real since their physical features were fascinating (and yet you believed in dragons? mhhm) and when I first saw one I screamed "GIRAFFE!" XD But there's also a horse, who's graceful and cunning, and though people say dogs are loyal pals, I believe horses are even more so. The feeling of being on one is fantastic if you haven't experienced it. You can be one with your horse. Finally, I'd mention lately I've taken a liking to chimps.

2) They help discuss moral lessons in many ways, but also, many African tall tales explain how the animals got the way they are (physically) and they can help teach lessons with these features, such as the famous fable/tale, Tortiouse and the Hair. I don't strongly support my answer for this though, so don't quote me on this...

3) A very complex question in my opinion, maybe that's just coming from a 12-13  year old but I rely mostly on my peers to answer this correctly. But if I was to answer, assuming I understand the question, I believe that it may depend on the author mostly, on how they can let the reader understand the purpose of the animal character and their position in the stories plot.

4) Oh, the classic Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, but my all time favorite would be Dory from Finding Nemo! (Can't wait for Finding Dory to come out, represent!!!) 

I've looked inside a horse's brain cavity before. It looked like you could at least stick a small orange in there.

Yes, donkeys are generally more intelligent than horses, aren't they?

Ok. Wow. My apologies. Horses are graceful and SWIFT. 

And, hey, I live in Saratoga, missed out on going to the racetrack last year tho.

Can confirm. I lived on a horse farm for most of my life.

Tortiouse and the Hair.

I'm sorry but this made me laugh. And yes, I'm quoting you on this. :P

Plus, I know we've already had this discussion here, but ugh, chimps are the worst.

Oh dear. XP

Animal Farm was just filthy Commies in fur suits.

Same. It's weird though. I just finished an English unit on the book. It's one of those things where once you discover it, everyone around you is talking about it.