high five: most popular musical acts of the animal kingdom

A few days ago, fellow blog contributor Zombie Jesus and I watched a solid 3 hours of Planet Earth. It is hands down the most mesmerizing show on TV, and I can only image it is better in HD. Susan Sarandon's voice is even better for narration than Morgan Freeman's. There, I said it. Someone had to...

But the best part of the show is the ridiculous animals they film. My favorite had to be the "Pine Martens" (I think that was their name. Don't quote me on it though). They are basically thieving, immoral squirrels. But all these animals got me thinking, what if they had the ability to make music? What animals would be burning up the Billboard charts? One thing is for sure, there would definitely be an auto-tuned song about Pine Martens climbing in yo' nests, snatchin' yo' creatures up. So ya'll need to hide yo' eggs, hide yo' chicks, and read these high fives, cuz I'm rankin' everybody out there.

#5 - Li'l Deer

Li'l Muntjac serving time on weapons
charges. Everyone wants a piece of the
famous guy...

So one animal I saw was the world's smallest species of deer, and it stands a whopping 18 inches tall and an weighs in at approximately 20 pounds. I have a hard enough time understanding how regular deer have avoided extinction all these years, since all they do is eat grass and get preyed on by carnivores. So how the hell is this tiny deer, called a miniature muntjac, not go extinct instantly? It must have some serious respect in the animal kingdom and the smarts to somehow live alongside predators that would eat it like a White Castle burger.


So let's look at what we know about this crazy little animal. It's really small, it's a survivor, it probably always feels disrespected, and it's smarter than you would expect. This deer is straight gangsta. I'm gonna say this is the closest fauna get to Li'l Wayne, who is only 5'6", shot and nearly killed himself at the age of 13, raps about his peers hating on him, and actually was an honors student in school. So it's settled, animals must be lining up to collaborate with Li'l Muntjac.




#4 - The Gnarwhals

Looks like quite the Motley Crue

I don't know a ton about metal music, but my impression is that it comes from a cold, sad place. Like the Artic, for instance. And that it somehow provokes listeners into temporary fits of insanity, marked by the desire to slam into each other or impale stuff. Using, say, a 10 foot long horn. And I'm really not trying to be mean when I say this, but most hardcore metal fans have a distinct appearance that few want to imitate. Metal isn't exactly starting the latest trends in fashion.

So the narwhal is the obvious choice for the best underground (or rather, underwater) metal group. "The Narwhals" sounds like it could already be a rock band of some kind. Add a "G" to the front, and it indicates some rough, twisted musicians. So when the summer rolls around and the pods of 5-10 narwhals start to converge and form larger groups, they're probably gearing up for a big show by the Gnarwhals. There's no better music for "tusking", which seems to be the underwater-equivalent to moshing for horned porpoises. I know if I had a giant tusk on my head, I would assert my male dominance by smashing it against others' tusks.


#3 - Kings of Lion

"Oooohhh, this sex is on FIIIIREEE"

Big shaggy mane. Mates with as many females as possible. Famous across the world. Spends its day doing very little. Am I describing a lion or a rockstar? If you think about it, lions really are the rockers of the animal kingdom. And just like some "talented" rock groups who don't write their own songs, lions have a reputation for ferocity but let others (i.e., lionesses) do all the hunting.

Lions have the coif of an '80s hair band. They mate with as many females as they can, but only within their pride. In the world of rock, that's called a "scene", and groupies make the mating process pretty easy. The lion is iconic; everyone in the world knows it's the king of the jungle. The Kings of Leon are about to go on a world tour! It all adds up, lions are rockers. Check out their first song of their album "Only by the Night" called Closer, about stalking prey.


#2 - Lady with-Flagellum

When I saved this picture off Google,
the file nme was "tadpoles sucking".
How appropriate for a country band...

I'm just going to admit that I loved the name Lady with-Flagellum too much to exclude it from this list. Also, it's kind of hard to come up with musical animal puns. So that's why we have Grammy Award-winning group Lady Antebellum lending their musical stylings to a collection of tadpoles who love their country and the twang of a guitar.

As it turns out, frogs aren't a bad match for a country band from Nashville. Did you know that in Tenessee, they have competitions called "frog gigging"? Basically, it's like an Easter egg hunt, except the frogs hide themselves in nature, and full grown adults go looking for them. Whoever find the largest amount of frogs, measured in pounds, is declared the winner. But the Tennessean love of frogs doesn't stop there; the Tennessee Amphibian Monitoring Program (TAMP) is a network of volunteers, or "frog-loggers (their term, not mine), who dedicate themselves to the study and protection of local frog populations. Clearly there is a deep connection between frogs and the home of country music, so I think Lady with-Flagellum could be a huge hit amongst animals. And to all my frog-loggers out there, TAMP on!

(You just said "tampon" in your head, didn't you? Gotcha...)


#1 - Fi$her Cat

If you auto-tuned this animal, you could
apparently sell 2 million albums 

Guess who this one is aimed at. In case you can't figure it out, I'll tell you a little bit about the (suspected) fisher cat that used to live in the woods behind my house. At night, it makes really weird sounds. Sound that no one could enjoy. Sounds a baby would make if someone kept tasering it. The fisher cat makes you want to go outside and yell, "SHUT UP fisher cat! Why do you keep making these awful noises?"

So now you probably know that the fisher cat would be the animal-equivalent of Ke$ha. To many, they appear to be something impressive (ferocious predator vs. pop superstar), but when you stop and objectively look at them, they're both nothing more than ugly weasels that make annoying sounds. So to clarify, I don't think Ke$ha (or Fi$her Cat) is the best musical act, but I think it's the best match, and animals are probably as dumb as the people who run KISS108 FM and still play "TiK-ToK" every day.

Here's Fi$her Cat's latest video. It doesn't get much air time on MTV, but then again, what music video does?

Next time you watch Planet Earth, see if you can stop yourself from imagining the animals doing ridiculous people things. It might be really easy for you, but I think it's almost impossible. Luckily, it only makes the show that much more fascinating. In the meantime, read some older high/low fives, starting with the St. Patty's Day special...