>Are all smart animals big?
I'm not sure this is always true. For fish, it is likely to be true. Many fish grow throughout their lives, and live to be quite old unless killed or eaten first (50 - 100 years!). Therefore, an intelligent catfish might be very large simple because it is very old, being smart enough to avoid being eaten or caught. Also, bottom dewlling catfish could make a good living, even if it were very large.
For bunnies, some birds, horses, and other animal that rely on speed and agility to survive, I'm not sure they would be much bigger than the rest of their kind. A giant rabbit might be cumbersome and easily caught. A giant horse might not be nimble enough to escape, or might attract undue attention from human hunters. Otoh, it is MGF to have sentient animals be larger than normal, and they might have spells or other special abilities to help them survive. But I occasionally stick in normal sized sentient critters, because they make good plot devices.
Animal motivations.
Someone asked whether animals would even worship human gods - what their
motivations are.
My guess is that if my dogs were fully sentient, they would use their intellects to focus on food, sex, obtaining more territory, and stomping other dogs to get on top of the social pile. That sounds rather like a lot of humans. A sentient bunny might worship Bunalda, the Goddess of Clover, and Wabblanth, Chief of Forest Creatures, who rescued Bunalda from the evil Fox in the Underworld...
Earth vs Spider -
Yes! A hallowed episode. What could be better than a couple of guys backing a tanker truck labelled "DDT" up to a cave, and walking in with a 200 meter fire-hose, and dousing Tarantalor with hundreds of gallons of toxin - unprotected!?! And then putting the giant spider, (thought to be dead, but really only stunned), in the high school gym the night of the Big Dance? It has a special place of honor in my video shelf, right next to "Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum".
(We have inspired Martin Laurie with "Milos Gloriosus".)
Sorry for the Gloranthan digression.
Pam
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