Fat Animal Facts from Fat Friday
Each Fat Fridays Virtual Social Club (presented by NAAFA and hosted by me!) involves a themed discussion and game. The following information came from our January 2023 gathering with the theme of fat animals. What you’ll find in this list is a collaborative effort from our group discussions.
Want to join in on the fun? RSVP for our next event here!
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Fat Animal Facts
To me, fat animals represent size diversity. Biodiversity is imperative to ecosystems and body diversity is nature! So, here we celebrate some of our champions of fat visibility in nature—pigs, hippos, and beluga whales!
A pig in a grassy field with white and yellow flowers.
Pigs
They’re smart AF!
Pigs are cuddle bugs. They like to huddle together because they enjoy physical contact.
They’re super social and have preferences for who they spend their time with.
Pigs are empathetic. Their mood can change based on the pig friends around them. If another pig is stressed, they can become stressed.
A baby hippo cuddled against an adult hippo in water.
Hippos
They’re the deadliest wild animal to humans—and they’re not even carnivores! They’re just really defensive if you get up in their shit.
Fiona the hippo was a premature hippo that went viral online. Learn more about her here. Watch a video of her and her little brother here.
One Fat Friday participant named her house hippo after Fiona. You can follow her shenanigans here.
A beluga whale under water.
Beluga Whales
Their latin name, delpinapterus leucas, means "white dolphin without a fin" but belugas are a toothed whale, not a dolphin.
Their closest relative, the narwhal, lives in the arctic, as well.
A pod of belugas in the St. Lawrence river (Canada) adopted a narwhal that was separated from its pod and in doing so ensured its survival.
Baby beluga are mottled gray but turn completely white as they age.
Beluga are a favorite food of polar bears (Urus maritimus *their taxonomic name hints at an amazing fact: even though they are bears, they are classified as marine mammals since they spend nearly their entire lives either on or in the ocean).
Beluga can fucking PAINT! Watch a video here.
And you can virtually paint with them! Learn more here.
A small ceramic sleeping elephant.
Just for fun
View Bree’s fat animal chachki collection here.
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