Learn More About Me: My Favorite Animal
Posted on February 9, 2021 Posted by Athena Scalzi 30 Comments
Today I’m back with another edition of “Learn More About Me”. This riveting series of posts is just meant to get all you lovely readers more familiar with me: the person you’re reading! I’ve already posted about my favorite movie, anime, and song, so today I decided to do my favorite animal.
Just like my favorite movie and color, this favorite of mine has been lifelong and unchanging, and by this point I doubt I will ever determine a new favorite. Anyways, without further ado, my favorite animal is a tiger!
Why is the tiger my favorite? I think there’s a couple different factors that contribute to that. One, I was born in the year of the tiger! Two, big cats are my favorite type of animal in existence (I know, I should’ve saved it for another “favorites” post, but that probably would’ve been too weirdly specific), and since tigers are the biggest and baddest TRUE kings of the jungle, they’re my favorite big cat.
I mean just look at them! Majestic.
Name one thing that could kill you that’s cuter than that. You can’t! They’re just so fluffy and adorable… and deadly!
I love the fact that tigers like water, even though cats are known for hating it. They’re unique, just like their stripes. I mean just look at this funky dude having a swim:
Look at those BEANS. They’re so big! This post is really just me fawning over how cute tigers are. Despite them being my favorite, I never had a single tiger plushie as a kid, or really anything tiger-related.
Also, Aladdin was/is one of my favorite Disney movies, and Rajah is by far my favorite Disney animal companion! He was so sweet and supportive to Jasmine, and just look at his face!
[Attempt to insert image of Rajah but get nerfed by Disney for copyright]
So, yeah, tigers have always been a personal favorite of mine. And no, I haven’t seen Tiger King. Let me know what your favorite animal is in the comments, or let me know if you’re a tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, too! Or if you have any suggestions what I should do next for a “favorites” post, that’s appreciated, too.
Have a great day!
-AMS
I am also a big cat (and, to be fair, little cat) fan. I love the videos of big cats playing in boxes like their smaller kin. I’m not sure I could pick a specific cat favorite, but have you seen the caracal? Those cute tufty ears and the fact that they jump into the air and fling their bodies around to knock birds out of the sky when they hunt.
Tigers are amazing
My fav animal is the Orca though closely followed by the Orangutan.
If I ever got a tattoo it would be an orca leaping out of the water with an Orangutan on its back under a night sky with two moons (think Uplift series by David Brin)
At a place called Dreamworld on the Gold Coast in Australia they have tigers including white tigers. You can feed them. You might be able to take photos with them as well. If your Dad ever does a book tour DownUnder maybe you can bludge a lift and go. When I went I spent an hour just watching them
My eldest son is also a tiger – unsurprising since he’s the same age you are.
I’m a rooster, and my favorite animal (at least at the moment, they change periodically) is the peacock, just for sheer unadulterated beauty. Previous favorites include horses, dolphins, and if mythological animals count, dragons.
When I was a kid, I lived about three miles outside the small tourist town I grew up in and would often ride my bike into town and spend hours in town. One of the shop owners had some friends who travelled all over rescuing various big feline cubs, and they stopped in town at the shop for a week to do some fundraising/awareness activities. They set up a big pen in the front yard.
The entire week they were there, I would sit next to the pen against the pine tree and read. A bunch of the cubs came and napped next to me on the other side of the fence. They had lion cubs, orange tigers, a white tiger, a leopard, a jaguar, and a puma.
After a couple of days, the rescuers decided to invite me to come into the pen with them since I was being so calm and quiet. I sat down and most of the various cubs came over to introduce themselves properly, but the one who stole my heart was the little white tiger cub. She waited for the more rambunctious cubs to get bored, then crept over, crawled into my lap, and promptly went to sleep.
My legs went numb because I was NOT disturbing her until she woke up on her own.
To this day, I am a sucker for white tigers.
The only cub that didn’t come over to me at all was the puma, and that didn’t make me feel bad at all. He was clearly just Not Into Humans, and the area I grew up in had mountain lions (my family had a close brush with one while out riding horses), so I was pretty aware of how bad they could be if they weren’t comfortable.
But that white tiger cub…she stole my heart.
I’d say tigers are probably my favorite of the big cats, at least–they are, as you say, cuddly and adorable . . . and absolutely deadly. I have no desire to get up close and personal with one, but I’ll take every chance I can get to admire then from a respectful (and safe) distance!
Polar bears are cute and fluffy and will have you for dinner in a second. Jaguars are also good swimmers and there is another smaller wild cat whose name I can’t remember off hand that is an excellent swimmer. Growing up, my absolute favorite animal was the horse but, these days it’s more feline domesticus. 😸
Have you ever been really close to one? There’s a zoo in Grand Rapids Michigan where it’s just two layers of 20-foot-high chain link fence between you and the tiger… about 8 feet away.
And my brain is saying — walk away, slowly, and maybe you won’t be eaten. I’ve never had that reaction at a zoo.
Like @William above, I want to recommend Tiger Island at Dreamland in Oz–it’s the best place in the world to see tigers! They have standard tigers, white tigers, and amber tigers (a paler gold tiger that still has pure black paw pads–they’re genetically the same as the standard orange tiger, but have a mutation on the extension gene that causes the color difference. In domestic cats, the amber color was first noticed in Norwegian Forest Cats).
My favorite animals are grizzly bears. They live in the northern mountains and are strong, yet fluffy.
My youngest son loves giant pandas. We got to feed a giant panda in Atlanta. It was a highlight of his childhood.
Rosie and Brian and I were all born in the year of the Tiger. Tigers are the best!
That’s a great story, Devin. When a friend of mine’s daughter was 12, we happened to be at a mall where there was a “feed a tiger cub” experience out in the parking lot. Even though I know it’s horrible to support that industry we could not resist the opportunity. I got to have the tiger cub in my lap while she fed it a bottle. Somewhere there are pictures. I wonder if she remembers it and what her memories are like.
I admit I like cats too, but I was born in the year of the dog, but my favourite animal is actually a wolf. So still related to dogs. My fav colour would be a silver one – some of the grey ones look silverish, esp against snow.
But yes I think tigers are cool too.
I am a monkey, but I don’t like monkeys. I’m a big cats fan. Right now I love leopards. I also love horses and unicorns.
Hello from another Year of the Tiger! Water Tiger in my case (going with the combined element/animal cycle).
Another year of the tiger person here. My mother and a favorite cousin were also tiger people, born 12 and 24 years apart, all of us pretty independent-minded. I have a sweatshirt with a great Chinese tiger from a long time ago, and have been refusing to admit it’s completely worn out. Maybe I could cut the panel off and sew it to a newer one.
There is nothing wrong with tigers, because they are cats, but my favorite animal is the domestic cat. They are much easier company and they don’t eat as much as the tiger.
Honey bees might be in competition for favorite right now, but I am a known serial fanatic and the honey bee fixation may fade, whereas the domestic cat love has been lifelong.
I hope you saw the Life of Pi movie. Made me appreciate tigers more.
Go Big Cats! My favorite is the Cheetah. There’s a video by National Geographic, “Cheetahs on the Edge-director’s cut”, of a slo-mo cheetah run that is so amazing I tear up and cry every time at the beauty of the movement of that cat. The focus of his head and the power and flexibility of his body behind that seeking head and the amount of time he spends in the air with no touchdown is so amazing. Cheetahs can fly. Amazing in the true sense of the word. Plus they look great in spots. If these cats go extinct my heart will implode.
Brings to mind one of the minor items Arthur C. Clarke devised for a novel, the “Mini Tiger”, described in chapter 11 of “The Hammer Of God”. I tolerate cats better than most pets, I like how they’ve got more personality* than seems reasonable, given their brain size.
*”Furry, feature reduced little people”.
Tigers are great!!
Tigers are completely striped; they even have stripes on their skin.
Due to all of the reasons stated above; the domestic feline is our pet of choice (she is also “stripy” girl).
I was born in a dragon year, but my favorite animal is the bat. A truly wonderful beast… and a successful one- 20% of known mammal species are bats! One of the most amazing and powerful experiences I’ve had was watching the evening bat emergence at Bracken Cave in Texas- it hosts a nursing colony of ca. 20 million Mexican Free-tailed bats, and they come out in a huge vortex (you can feel the wind of it) before streaming away across the sky like a river. It’s massive enough to be seen on radar. Absolutely breathtaking.
Big cats on nip:
Oops, I just meant to post the link. Sorry…
Dogs. No matter how bad your day was, they make it better when you get home.
Overheard conversation …
I’m afraid of spiders.
I know what you mean. My father’s really afraid of tigers.
Well, …
Yes as a little boy he was coming home from school and met a tiger. But he had a torch and waved it at the tiger and the tiger went away. And ever since then he’s been afraid of tigers.
I have kind of a similar story but with bluejays instead of tigers and no torch. And once at a zoo they offered to let my daughter pet a tiger, but she’d already been scratched by a monkey, so not even she was interested.
I love tigers! To quote from Calvin and Hobbes:
Tigers are mean, tigers are fierce
Tigers have teeth and claws that pierce
Tigers are great, they can’t be beat
If I were a tiger, that would be neat!
The first time I saw a tiger really up close, I was surprised to see their pupils are round, not slits like house cats. And tigers are HUGE! I was in awe and I’m sure the tiger was looking at me and thinking “lunch”…
Favourites suggestions- favourite candy, snack,tree, tree,flower,soda. Favourite building, or architecture type. Favourite artwork, ballet, costume designer, fahion designer. Favourite musical. Faviourite dinner you like to cook. Favourite stationary. You might not have ‘favourites’ for all of these, and you certainly won’t have longstanding and unchangeable favourites. But thats ok. Favourites for this year, or today, are still interesting. Maybe your favourite is the one thing you saw or ate, and thats only because of a special relative, or the colour of the moon that evening. All good!
You have forced me to re-examine my phases of favorite animals. I typically liked animals I could imagine being. Tigers – yes, at one time their power appealed to me. Kangaroo – the leaping, the marvelous leaping, but the pouch always gave me pause, so not for me. In 4th grade I did a report on lemmings. They seemed so purposeful and had an unbreakable camaraderie doin’ what they do, but the end result is so sadly hilarius. Monkeys interested me but I had to hold one at an animal park one time and it kind of disgusted me. My idiot brother always wanted to be a dolphin, which was preposterous to me. They seemed like an animal that came late to the game when all the other mammals were getting feet. Plus all the chittering. Anyway, I like dogs now.
https://www.wkyc.com/article/life/animals/cleveland-metroparks-zoo-announces-naming-contest-for-endangered-amur-tiger-cubs/95-5026839a-106b-471c-966d-5cc0edefa537
A decade or so ago, the San Francisco Zoo had a baby tiger born, so we decided to join the zoo (made sense if you were going more than 2-3 times in a year, and it’s about an hour away), and we’d go there every couple of weeks to watch the tiger grow up. Since then they’ve also had some snow leopard cubs, who were extremely playful.
Las Vegas used to have a couple of places you could see tigers and other big cats – MGM had a habitrail kind of thing for the visitors to walk through, and their lions would be hanging around outside watching us, and occasionally they had lion cubs you could take a photo with. I don’t know if Siegfried and Roy’s Garden is still there (Siegfried died just recently), but they had various white tigers, white lions, and some other cats including a leopard who was very attentively watching the tasty children walking outside its cage.
But hey, baby rhinos are also very cute. Kind of like calf-sized puppies.