Fuck of Mat, that is a legit question, and they prob do.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
421 points (99.1% liked)
me_irl
7638 readers
2642 users here now
All posts need to have the same title: me_irl it is allowed to use an emoji instead of the underscore _
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Just sleep bro you probably had a long
day
Fuck of Zac, that is a legit observation, and they prob do.
Just sleep bro you probably had a long
day
Fuck of Doh, that is a legit observation, and they prob do.
Just sleep bro you probably had a long
day
(Sir) Fuck of Far, that is a legit question, and they prob do.
They do.
It's "nature's" way of pairing the best together, enabling long-term survival of the species & hopefully favouring the best genetic traits being passed along for future generations, hopefully ending in a permanent adaptation or evolutionary change.
This is how I ended up with an entire army of genetically superior crows that sing musicals about how messed up it is that I did that to them with forced selective breeding.
If animals are aware of the apex predator and their habits, it's not that far of a stretch to have "celebrity" status.
Like distinguishing between "they're hyper-aggressive" and "they're chill if you leave them alone" is straight forward.
Forgive me for anthromorphising(?) but pushing it to "holy shit, watch out for that guy I've seem him take out a crocodiles regularly" and "he's been around longer than ANY of us - like how??" is just an elevated version of that. I can't imagine "forgetting" who's who is an effective trait in any ecosystem.
Then clearest example of this "celebrity - status" are crows and humans.
It's prob not anthropomorphism, our brainholes are too similar (same parts, but different parts are beefed up or shrunken down) & I think if we can feel something so are animals capable of a form of it (comparing feelings & thoughts between humans is already impossible).
So yes, different entities are famous for different things. A human that is nice to birbs can get a cool status. One pack of wild dogs can defend a human from another.
This dog park I used to go to had this one golden retriever that every other dog fawned over. If he was there, all the action was centered on him. So I think yes
When I lived in New York, there was a red tail hawk that a lot of of us were very interested in following. He landed on my fire escape a couple of times, and I got very excited.
holy shit, I saw that hawk! he landed on my fire escape once! I was so excited!
Willing to bet Crows, Ravens, and other provably-intelligent birds actually do have something like this. A proto-culture, if you will. If you're unaware, such birds have been put to tests of "comparative intelligence" to see what faculties of reasoning they have in common with us, and the results have been very interesting. Many animals (not just birds!) recognize themselves in the mirror as themselves rather than another member of their species (cats fail this test, elephants and dolphins don't). Crows understand conservation of quantities and will put stones into a cylinder of water to raise the water level until a floating treat can be obtained.
I'd be surprised if they didn't have celebrities among their kind.
Territorial birds can tell which of their neighbors is singing, and show up to investigate if you play a song from a non-local male! So maybe local celebrities?
Horses have celebrities.
Lions have Ducal Royalty: The males chase out the existing ruler, become the ruler, have lots of kids, get killed by another ducal house, all their kids are banished to the frontier, rinse and repeat.