32
votes
Accepted
Man and artificially sapient dog alone on Mars. Dog starts behaving erratically
According to this, the story is “Red Rover, Red Rover” by Howard V Hendrix.
The narrator is a rich old man, and Cogzie is his indulgence. As is moving to Mars, where the enhancers he puts in the dog ...
- 1,046
29
votes
Accepted
How are fathiers raced?
This is answered in The Last Jedi: Visual Dictionary. On the page for Fathiers there are Fathier Jockeys and images of a saddle and whip. As such it appears they are raced with a rider like a horse ...
- 142k
25
votes
Accepted
Whatever happened to Superman's super powered moa?
This is Action Comics #425 - "The Last Moa on Earth".
Strange gases affect the last moa egg
The moa drains the hunter's life forces, growing to an enormous size within hours
Superman fights the ...
- 659k
25
votes
Accepted
What information do we have about Spock's childhood pet?
The episode you are thinking of is TOS: Journey to Babel and the pet is question was a sehlat named I-Chaya.
Here is a picture from TAS: Yesteryear, in which we finally meet the creature:
A lower-...
- 16.7k
25
votes
How are fathiers raced?
When Finn and Rose dismount from their fathier and release it, we see them remove the saddle that they’ve been using to ride it. The existence of such saddles implies that they are ridden like horses ...
- 61.1k
22
votes
Are humpback whales granted civil rights?
I don't know about humpback whales specifically, but there are cetaceans of various species in Starfleet. Some of the larger ships have a cetacean ops section.
Star Trek Lower Decks has two beluga ...
- 16.6k
21
votes
Accepted
Post-human Earth with intelligent animals. In one scene, bear rubs against crystal pylon to leech energy from structure holding stored human minds
That sounds like Brian W. Aldiss' short story "Old Hundredth". It fits in every point. The main character as an uplifted sloth and human minds are in semi-material structures called ...
- 39.2k
20
votes
What information do we have about Spock's childhood pet?
Spock's pet sehlat, I-Chaya, was part of a story told twice in Star Trek canon. I-Chaya appeared on screen in the animated episode Yesteryear:
The story was repeated, from Sarek's perspective, in the ...
- 14k
19
votes
Accepted
What was the name of this horror/science fiction story involving orcas/killer whales?
This sounds like "Bulk Food", a short story by Peter Watts and Laurie Channer, first published in On Spec in 1999. Watts indeed has a PhD in zoology, and worked at UBC's Marine Mammal Unit. ...
- 57.3k
19
votes
Book where the storyteller is a dog
This is A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny.
The dog, Snuff, belongs to Jack the Ripper (who is a good guy, or Closer, in the story), the cat is named Greymalk and belongs to a friendly ...
- 108k
17
votes
Accepted
Are the Redwall creatures their natural real-world size?
According the the FAQ on Brian Jacques' official Redwall website, the animals in the Redwall series have no clearly defined size:
Q: Do the animals in your stories walk on all fours or, do they ...
- 659k
17
votes
Why don't Thor's goats appear in the MCU?
Thor Odinson's goats do appear in the comic Marvel Universe. Recently when he lost access to Mjolnir (which in the Marvel Universe is how he gains the power of flight) he was forced to return to his ...
- 212k
16
votes
Accepted
How many pets do we know about on the Enterprise-D?
We know about :
Christina, O'Brien's tarantula (TNG: Realm of Fear)
Livingston, Picard's Lionfish
The two Spots, Data's cats (kudos Xantec)
Amanda Rogers' three dogs for a brief period (TNG: True Q) (...
- 69.4k
16
votes
Accepted
What use are the wizard familiars?
While they can be useful, the students’ animals are mainly pets.
Presuming this question is referring to only the students’ pets (excluding, for example, Dumbledore’s phoenix Fawkes, Salazar’s ...
- 105k
16
votes
Accepted
What horse or horses played Shadowfax?
According to Ian McKellen's website, Shadowfax was played by two horses. Blanco, mentioned in rand al'thor's answer, was described by McKellen as Shadowfax's "galloping double."
The principal horse, ...
- 161k
15
votes
What "Earth-Origin" animals exist in the canon Star Wars universe?
In light of recent developments in the Star Wars canon, I'll add an updated answer.
Humans:
Snakes:
Lizards:
In the canon novel Lords of the Sith, Sidious uses the "like
rats from a sinking ship" ...
- 66.7k
14
votes
How are fathiers raced?
Other than looking like a sheep/horse hybrid, and being much larger, we see in The Last Jedi that they are essentially treated no differently than we treat horses. The canon book Star Wars Made Easy ...
- 50.8k
13
votes
Accepted
Can Hogwarts students have more than one familiar?
Unknown, but I would guess not.
I can't remember any ruling on this in canon, nor can I recall anybody who had more than one pet at the same time. I also had a look through lists of pets on fan ...
- 102k
13
votes
Are there any animals in the Star Wars universe that are the same as those on Earth?
The Ewok Adventure (later released with the subtitle Caravan of Courage) has the caravan traveling with pack horses.
And they are identified by name.
...
- 92.8k
12
votes
What classic SF story involved intelligent dogs being the secret masters of humans?
This sounds extremely similar to the story which was answered here:
Name of a short story with a telepathic man and cats
Note that the original poster of that question acknowledged they had ...
- 13.6k
12
votes
Were the horses in The Final Frontier an Earth breed?
No
The animals are called horses, even though they clearly are not:
A rider emerged from the storm. He rode astride a native creature
that Federation settlers jokingly referred to as a “horse.”...
- 115k
12
votes
Accepted
How come no-one has bug bites on Dagobah?
It's likely that creatures like the insect-eating Sleen (seen in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back) do an excellent job of keeping the swamps clear of biting insects.
We know that there are both ...
- 659k
12
votes
Accepted
What is the earliest work of sci-fi that features crows as an advanced/technologically evolved species?
In Raymond Z. Gallun's classic novelette "Seeds of the Dusk" (first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1938, available at the Internet Archive), crows have evolved near-human ...
- 155k
12
votes
Are there any animals in the Star Wars universe that are the same as those on Earth?
Ducks exist in the (canon) Star Wars universe. They appear to be essentially identical to Earth ducks based on the descriptions
They receive a mention in The Phantom Menace
Captain Panaka If we ...
- 659k
11
votes
Accepted
Short story about a woman who is about to leave on an interstellar trip to search for non-human intelligence
Look Closer by Amy Bechtel
Excerpts from the Google book:
Her dad and her brother Hamish were bringing in the last mob of sheep
off the hill pasture; it was shearing time. For a moment Jess felt out
...
- 13.1k
11
votes
Accepted
Gandalf's other horse
Short answer is no, we don't know any.
Neither "The Hobbit" nor "The lord of the Rings" contain any mention of Gandalf's previous horse's name. There are only mentions of "a / my horse" or "I rode" ...
- 1,561
11
votes
Accepted
What are the crystal critters?
They are known as Vulptices or a Vulptex
Vulptices are native creatures of the mineral planet Crait. They live in the caves and tunnels under the surface of the salt flats which cover Crait. After the ...
- 76.1k
10
votes
Accepted
Were the horses in The Final Frontier an Earth breed?
The film's official novelisation refers to them as "Tsemus" and specifically states that they're an alien animal that the locals refer to as horses, despite them not actually being horses.
It was a ...
- 659k
9
votes
What "Earth-Origin" animals exist in the canon Star Wars universe?
I looked through my Kindle editions of all the canonical books I own, and found the following words; I have taken the liberty of providing links for the few entries on the list that might be ...
- 68.8k
9
votes
Accepted
What kind of owl is Hedwig?
She is a snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus).
"White owl" is just a description of her, but "snowy owl" is actually a species of owl, native to the Arctic. It is the only species of owl that is predominantly ...
- 134k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible