If you could have any pet, what pet would you like?

[onesteptwostep]

I totally want this guy: Turritopsis dohrnii. Who wouldn't want something that's immortal? I guess all you had to do is feed it planktoon or something once in a while. Literally a no effort pet

Anyone else know weird shit they might want as a pet? Or just any pet would be fine.

 

[aiyanah]

i would want a bunch of piranha's so i could feed them beef and watch the water turn red.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

a bacteria culture, probably one which has rapid cell division so it will have an ever evolving personality. I could play around with antibiotics and train the bacteria to become antibiotic-resistant.

 

[aiyanah]

when there's a new flesh eating bacteria scare, i know who to blame.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

myself

i'm partially domesticated and rarely bite without provocation

 

[redbaron]

myself

i'm partially domesticated and rarely bite without provocation

i'll take one of these

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

i'll take one of these

you should know i may have underreported the biting

 

[redbaron]

you should know i may have underreported the biting

good >_>

 

[Rook]

A herd of Tolkienesque Oliphaunts and the entire Serengeti as my personal domain.

My Rookdom gives free citizenship to all midgets alive, as well as legless amputees.
We gonna mine deep man. We gonna steal yer diamonds from beneath yer lazy arseholes. We gonna be next gen sir, V21, we gonna be a city below, wilderness above. If you want to destroy our order, you will be forced to face true, primal anarchy first. Nuke us we neokU2.

Id like to own a Brontosuarus and use it instead of a tractor. A herd of them.... Richest operation on earth. Novelty value.

 

[kora]

I have perfect pet already

Spoiler: Ribit

Also budgies.

Spoiler: Budgies

Wouldn't mind a crow though, or an African grey parrot.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Have you gotten the parrot.. oh that isn't a parrot is it. Higs, you should totally get a parrot and make it screech "higs".

Oh yeah domesticated crows would be a cool thing too, having a black bird around sounds pretty nice.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

my parents had some sort of bird in a cage as a pet. One of those small parrot things. One day they generously put the cage on the terrace to give it some sunlight. But as fate would have it, while no one was watching, a crow came down and fuckin ripped that thing out of the cage and ate it.

One helluva life, huh? You were born to fly, but then someone decided to put you in a cage for their own entertainment. And then they put the cage out in the open, exposed to predators, and let you get your head ripped off without any chance of escape.

I was happy for the bird though. It was finally set free.

 

[onesteptwostep]

I recommend that you write a short story on that. It'd make for a good Hemmingway-esque tale.

 

[TransientMoment]

I like tardigrades. There's probably a ton of them nearby and I just don't know it. @higs - That furball is cute. Does it bark? Is it potty-trained? And can it hum the French national anthem?

 

[kora]

It is potty trained and entirely mute. Communicates happiness through weird teeth grinding or spasms and jumping, unhappiness/anger/fear is communicated through epic foot stomps. Highly entertaining, would recommend. Also fan of tardigrades for sure. @TransientMoment

@Serac I frequently feel guilt for having birds, but console myself with the fact that they have best life possible for captivity born thing what with flying around the house and being able to socialize + safety from predation. They seem happy enough. If I get any other bird it would be a rescue. Releasing them into the wild is certain death.

 

[Minuend]

A lot of exotic birds are pretty intelligent and can probably have their needs met enough to where not being able to fly outdoors is a negligible drawback. If they have a stimulating, social and play life, I believe they can have happy good lives, even if they don't get to fly freely outside. Because with that type of intelligence, adaption to happiness tend to be possible- meaning they are able to adopt to other activities/ stimuli as main factor of happiness/ thriving (not that flying is necessarily the main thing regardless)

Problem is a lot of bird owners keep them in their cage like 23 of 24 hours, which I'd say is not a good life for most birds, unless their cage is like its own house or something. Higs' birds seems to have pretty good lives, though, so don't think you need to feel guilty about them.

Not being able to fly outside might have the biggest drawback for bigger birds. But a lot of the bigger parrots also very easily starts plucking their feathers when they are unhappy, and a lot of parrots don't do that even when they don't get to experience free flying. I think that's an indicator that also bigger parrots don't necessarily need free flying as a part of their lives to thrive. I guess it might be partly a "what they don't know" thing.

That being said, my knowledge of parrots/ exotic birds is limited, so I wont hard press that I'm right on this one. Though, I do think if you start becoming observant of your pet and understand the signals/ body language/ etc, you can tell whether it's thriving or not to a larger degree.

--

I have a "problem" when it comes to my own pets as well, as I have cats (or I guess cat, since one of them is old and stays inside most of the time), that hunt and kill small birds which is a bad thing, both ecosystemily and also because I dislike animals being killed when it can be avoided. Having them put down is a bit extreme, I think most people would consider that crazy (?). Giving them away wouldn't change anything as they'd still kill birds at their new home. So I have no plans of getting rid of them. I wasn't conscious of that when I got them, so tough luck for me. And the ecosystem.

I can also tell a lot from observing the behavior of my cats. Which is kinda interesting if you're interested in erm animal... "psychology" (????). A lot of animals are def more than just instinct machines, so to speak. Though, I guess I'm getting too far out of topic so. The End.

---

As for the OP, I already took DNA from pnb, rb and rook and have their virtual clones living in a virtual simulation in my basement, those are all the pets I need

 

[kora]

@Minuend Budgies are grossly underestimated in their intelligence because they're so cheap to buy. It's a real shame, I think loads of people just get them as decoration and let them mentally stagnate in a cage all day. Mine are shut in at night (they go themselves when I say "basket" it's hilarious.)

Have you tried putting bells around the cat's necks ? I heard that can work reduce the kill rate.

 

[Minuend]

I've read cats tend to be able to adapt to bells. Plus collars carry the risk of chocking the cat if he gets stuck. I haven't tried bells myself. I know there are some regular type collars that are designed to fall off if the cats get stuck, whether there are collars with bells and the escape function, I don't know. I guess I should find out.

 

[lightfire]

a dinosaur.

 

[Happy]

Komondor

 

[Cognisant]

Small Gravity Elemental

 

[CatGoddess]

Miniature Giraffe

 

[Cognisant]

I've changed my mind, I want uh... whatever this is.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

So this thread had me thinking about which mythological creatures would make the best pets, and I had a realization about Jormungandr; which is described as a serpent so long that it encircles the world and grasps its own tail. This description initially makes me think that it encircles the earth around the equator or some meridian, but I realized at the height of these particular myths, Norse culture typically thought of the world as flat. So in actuality Jormungander would simply encircle whatever landmass that was considered 'the world' at the time, acting as the barrier to all those who sought to sail too far off into the distance.

Kind of a dumb realization I know, but I just never thought of the myth in the context of a real flat earth.

 

[Cognisant]

Did that train of thought have any stops between "best pet" and "apocalyptic sea-serpent" or was it express all the way?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

A lot of stops actually. My mind ping pongs, so whatever thought I'm expressing, there are usually several dozen other discarded ones.

Went something like: 'Which mythical creature would make the best pet? Giant spiders are best left wild. Cerberus would be cute, if messy. What about something big enough to ride? Dragons are cliche and boring. Oooh a Gryphon would be awesome, particularly an owl/leopard one. Gryphons always remind me of chimeras and chimeras have snake tails. What about a basilisk? No too dangerous, and I'd rather have something I could traverse the ocean on. Jormangandr is too big though. It's supposed to encircle the world, but weren't the norse still using the flat earth model back then? What was the logic behind that then? OH! I get it now.'

Large animals are too much work though. I'll settle for a cat-sized quetzal gryphon, preferably one that nips enough to draw blood occasionally, but not enough to take any fingers. Ugh when is genetic engineering going to get to the point we can customize bizarre flashy pets. Taking exotics from the wild is typically bad ethics, so better to create our own. I'd be tempted rescue a sugar glider perhaps, but I can barely meet my cat's social needs, so that's probably a bad idea.

 

[Cognisant]

Well regular engineering can get you close.

Spoiler

What's truly mind-blowing is that this video was uploaded a decade ago.

With wifi you can offload the AI to household computer and with wireless recharging mats the robot can top up its supply discreetly which lets you get away with a smaller battery. The ant robot in the video above could easily be reconfigured to look like a griffin, the real problem would be getting the user to empathize with it, there's been several attempts at robotic pets and so far nobody's really cracked it yet. The problem seems to be that when people know they're dealing with a robot they don't feel the need to empathize with it, Pleo in the video below actually triggers less of an empathetic response than a completely non-characterized drone.

Spoiler

I think it's because there's no sense of danger/urgency or rather agency on behalf of Pleo whereas a drone demands your attention by potentially crashing into you when you're not looking, it's moving around, it's doing things, whereas Pleo just stands there or toddles over at a sedate pace.

Spoiler

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Modern robotics still has a long way to go when it comes to mimicking the movements of living things, especially non-insects. They're better off being their own distinct category for now, rather than trying to co-opt the existing charm of something else.

I don't really see the point of a pet that doesn't have potential for disobedience or unpredictability personally. AI just aren't complex enough at the moment to be able reliably form organic-feeling relationships with widely varying groups of people. You can put googly eyes, a wagging tail, and a fur coat on a robotic dog, but it still has leagues to go before it can compete with a real one in a companion role. Plus the more you try to hijack the human tendency to anthropomorphize/find things cute, the more resistant they'll become to it.

A well programmed vr pet probably has a better chance at success.

 

[Pizzabeak]

I think any pet owning or collecting is a matter of money or how much you're willing to invest in a hobby. You could get any phone (android or galaxy), or keep up with any times like new technology coming out for them and TVs/monitors, like 3-D stuff or projection. I've been wanting to study engineering for a long time, to build robots or solder. I have some experience with building and circuit connecting, so it wouldn't be too complicated to start. It's not any lack of understanding, merely a ploy. Anything you study starts to improve your life or quality of wellbeing.

Not just to state the obvious, VR was supposed to make better videogames, even though it has other technological applications in making life easier for people. You could have any fun with it, even get virtual reality attachments to your phone. There isn't much to it, when I was a kid I wanted to be a videogame tester and programmer, but got sucked into music first and reduced my time studying it because I couldn't use as much feeling. So I don't think it's too late to start. I've always wanted robot pets, don't think organic is much different, technology is just a reflection of people, and who programs it, doesn't mean there's any universal truth behind it.

 

[lightfire]

My current pets are my brother's cat who he adopted then when he moved, he left it with me -_-

And I have a sort of handicap rescue bunny that I take care of.

But I would love a dragon too, but I guess that's dinosaur kind of.

 

[CatGoddess]

@Cognisant Funnily enough it's more common for people to form attachments to inanimate objects than to robots. E.g. teddy bears, security blankets, Companion Cube from Portal, etc. Hell, one of my teachers owned a stuffed animal and I had a running gag where I'd nab it for the class period and stick it on my desk.... except at the end of the year I was oddly sad about having to leave the plush behind...

H00mans are weird.

 

[Cognisant]

People who collect dolls interest me in that regard, as you can tell by your own avatar a robot that has a solid casing is invariably going to look doll like and I really want to figure out how a robot can have that same appeal.

Spoiler

If it moved/acted right I could see myself petting this thing.

A well programmed vr pet probably has a better chance at success.

I remember how popular the Tamagotchi was, for something so simple its need for constant care made it very compelling.

 

[Pizzabeak]

My current pets are my brother's cat who he adopted then when he moved, he left it with me -_-

And I have a sort of handicap rescue bunny that I take care of.

But I would love a dragon too, but I guess that's dinosaur kind of.

Eh, not always the best situation to get stuck with. Although, animals can be good stress pals or companions in general. They can communicate in more ways you'd be apt to forget and not pay attention to, and be more perceptible in ways humans aren't or can't be. Unfortunately, they have an according life span compared to some 85-100 years that human beings have. It's all just the circle of life.