Here’s a look at the most likely of animal interactions — those that hew closely to predictable predator/prey relationships. As you might expect, the majority of these animals have never met and have no particular bond with one another, although we can guess that if they were to ever meet, their reactions would range from general indifference to outright hostility, as this is the way of all things.
Here are a cat and a baby duck who have never met.
This cat has made no surprising interspecies friendships.
These chicks are being raised by their biological mother, according to custom, rather than by a friendly cat.
Here is a baby elephant who has never bonded with a sheep after his mother’s death.
This elephant is, as pictured, alone.
This sheep has no idea that the elephant even exists, and vice versa.
All over the world — every day — animals you would never expect to meet never meet. They go about their normal routines, interacting only with the animals it makes sense for them to interact with. Here is a deer that has never deviated from its typical behavior by helping a mother bird guard her eggs.
This deer has a lot to do; guarding a clutch of eggs is not on his list.
These baby birds are not aware of the existence of deer in general, much less this deer in particular.
Unlike in the popular movie, this fox and hound are not close friends.
This fox is not looking for a friend.
This hound socializes exclusively with humans. He has no idea what he is missing.
They have never gambolled together in a sunny field. They will never be torn apart by social forces and angry farmers outside of their control. Never will the fox sigh dreamily to the hound, “We’ll be friends forever, won’t we?” because they do not know one another, and because we live in a world without magic.
Here is a baby bear that has never snuggled with a tiny, warm piglet.
He might as well live in a world free of piglets entirely.
How can you miss something that you’ve never known?
Here you will see a picture of a turtle who was raised by other turtles. They died, as turtles do, and he continued to live until he died, without ever riding adorably across a flooded river on the back of a friendly hippo who helped to raise him, despite their many differences.
This is a turtle qua turtle.
Here is the hippo, who has never touched a turtle, except perhaps once by accident. They have no relationship whatever to speak of.
This hippo will never know the joys of raising an orphaned turtle.
This monkey has never seen a baby tiger, and would not know what to do if it did.
This baby tiger has never seen a monkey, but it would figure out what to do pretty quickly if he ever saw one.
He would eat it without a second thought.
All over the world, animals are eating and ignoring each other, “friendship” being a human construct that does not enter into their daily struggle for survival. They would eat you too, given half a chance. If the hills beyond your home were just a bit more wild, if you wandered just a bit too far afield, if your glasses slipped from your breast pocket and you stumbled for just a moment, they would eat you too.
Tags: animals, animals who are not friends
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BRB, have to go find an orphaned baby elephant and adopt it and raise it like one of my own.
This is kind of how I feel about human babies. They seem ok but they are as much a part of my world as a baby hippo: great to look at but head the other way if Mom is looking for a sitter.
Does this mean that we should stop personifying our dogs? That’d be great, because then I can once and for all tell my mother that their bassett hound is not “plotting against her” and trying to break her Crockpot because she knows my mother loves it. The dog just wants the pork bits left inside, for god’s sake.
That hound sounds pretty shady IMO. You have no idea what could be happening behind/under/within those ears.
Behind those limpid brown eyes lurks the soul of a monster, no doubt. She also thinks that her whole “love everyone, climb into their laps and lick their faces before falling asleep in a boneless pile of dog” is part of some longer campaign to lull us into complacency and…then…break Crockpots I guess? She literally said to me “she’s only nice because she WANTS you to like her”. Well…yeah…?
you’re a monster
“Turtle qua turtle” is the first use of “qua” that has not made me want to smack whoever used it in a sentence in the face. Lookin at you, annoying intellectual bros from my college. Lookin right at you.
Buzzfeed writers: “Shit. This changes EVERYTHING!”
MALLORY ORTBERG, MAKE-WORSER OF MONDAYS
‘They have never gambolled together in a sunny field. They will never be torn apart by social forces and angry farmers outside of their control. Never will the fox sigh dreamily to the hound, ‘We’ll be friends forever, won’t we?’ because they do not know one another, and because we live in a world without magic.”
Shut up. No, YOU’RE crying.
Actually, a facility in Siberia has, after decades of careful breeding, been able to domesticate silver foxes. So the dream of a fox and a hound being friends is possible thanks to the magic of selective breeding.
This is just… Mallory, your writing is perfect.
Ugh. I want to have interspecies relations with that last sentence, Mallory.
That’s a tortoise. Which leads me to an extensive quote from Blade Runner.
Holden: You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when…
Leon: Is this the test now?
Holden: Yes. You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a…
Leon: What one?
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: Doesn’t make any difference what desert… its completely hypothetical.
Leon: But how come I’d be there?
Holden: Maybe you’re fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself…who knows. So you look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you…
Leon: A tortoise. What’s that?
Holden: Know what a turtle is?
Leon: Of course.
Holden: Same thing.
Leon: I never seen a turtle.
This makes sense, even though it makes me sad. What doesn’t make sense is why my cousin’s two cats (from the same litter) are not friends/don’t interact. I like to yell at them, “YOU ARE SISTERS! HANG OUT TOGETHER!” but they ignore me.
it makes sense when you recall that in the wild, cats are solitary predator-scavengers who only interact during territory disputes and mating season. Litters go their seperate ways and may never see each other once they’ve become adults.
(My two cats, also sisters are still friends, but they are also broken cats. Between them they make a single normal cat)
Never get two sister cats from the same litter. They will hate each other for years. Apparently this is common wisdom that my mom didn’t know about, and so got 2 sister cats – Ethel and Lucy – who have fought for 17 years now. Weapons generally include pissing on everything that the other cat has not pissed on yet. NOT A GOOD THING.
Brother and sister cats, on the other hand, appear to be fine in my limited experience of two. I did worry about whether they were going to hate each other when they grew up, but they cuddle on a regular basis.
My friend and I co-owned brother and sister cats. He now owns the sister by himself and I own the brother by myself, because they stressed each other out so much that they’d puke everywhere and pull out their own hair. (Which, to be fair, is how I tend to react to my own family.)
If you are VERY lucky you’ll get two who are disturbingly co-dependant, like we did.
I do not recommend this either, as you ahve to take them to the vets in the same carrier or they throw a shitfit.
My sister cats, from the same litter, behaved much like human twin sisters. They fought frequently, they slept curled up together, and they comforted each other in times of crisis. They were similar in many ways, but was also important to them that their family and friends acknowledged them as unique individuals, outside of their identity as twins.
When my gf’s cat still lived with the rest of her litter, she and her sister would climb up on the taller pieces of furniture, glare at everything walking by, and then randomly swoop down together to beat up some poor unsuspecting cat for nothing but the pure anarchy of it. This was pretty much the high-point of her feline social life; other than that the cats pretty much ignored each other.
Now she lives with us, where she has recently taken to ambushing our other cat (no relation) while he uses the litter box, jabbing at him through the swing door when he tries to leave, effectively trapping him.
She is not a very nice cat.
I have a little yurt for mine, which I have had to put in a corner of my wardrobe so that whoever is in it can’t be ambushed from behind and sat on by the other one. They will curl up and share a box, they will share my chair when I get up and they want to steal it, but if one is inside something the other will be there to whack them. They both do it to ech other as well, it’s not one whacker and one victim.
If you are VERY lucky you'll get two who are disturbingly co-dependant, like we did.
I do not recommend this either, as you ahve to take them to the vets in the same carrier or they throw a shitfit.
My friend and I co-owned brother and sister cats. He now owns the sister by himself and I own the brother by myself, because they stressed each other out so much that they'd puke everywhere and pull out their own hair. (Which, to be fair, is how I tend to react to my own family.)
That hound sounds pretty shady IMO. You have no idea what could be happening behind/under/within those ears.
Now picturing the entire weird music video for “I just haven’t met you yet” by Michael Buble, with theses animals in various starring roles.
Behind those limpid brown eyes lurks the soul of a monster, no doubt. She also thinks that her whole "love everyone, climb into their laps and lick their faces before falling asleep in a boneless pile of dog" is part of some longer campaign to lull us into complacency and…then…break Crockpots I guess? She literally said to me "she's only nice because she WANTS you to like her". Well…yeah…?
Hahaha @ “How can you miss something that you’ve never known?”
As someone who recently sat through a special on Netflix about unlikely animal friendships (I just put it on in the background half-joking but it sucked me in), this is deeply upsetting.