Sometimes animals climb atop moving objects and stay there. Sometimes the objects are other animals, sometimes they're the same moving objects humans tool around on. What follows are some of the best examples I could find of impressive animal rides.
Whiplash the cowboy monkey is one of the more well-known animal riders on the scene. His rodeo act consists of riding a border collie around. Which is to say, a monkey riding a border collie around. They both wear costumes. God bless you, Whiplash the cowboy monkey.
Observe the expression on Whiplash the cowboy monkey’s face. I beg you. Observe.
A man’s dog riding his friend’s tiny horse around his backyard. The dog does so very matter-of-factly, and for all intents and purposes it seems like the horse can’t even tell. Still, impressive.
A video about a Jack Russell Terrier that is so good at surfing he won what is apparently a canine-only surfing competition. The surfing is adorable and impressive and all, but I’m still mostly curious about the dog surfing competition. If anyone can give me any information whatsoever, please do so.
Another video that upsets the traditional animal hierarchy, this one depicts a headstrong cockatiel braving the potential wrath of a sassy, confused housecat. What courage!
A Comment on Animal Tricks
While there are certainly no bones about how entertaining these videos are, there’s a certain element of oddness to them.At what point does making a dog surf or a monkey ride a bike become animal exploitation?The short answer is that I don’t know.It probably makes me a tree-hugging jerk or something, but I felt somewhat obligated to point out that (disappointingly) there is not a 100% chance that monkeys love riding motorcycles.
In the spirit of that, I’ve included links to some local and not-so-local businesses that do good things for animals that are less ambiguous than teaching them how to ride each other.
A small monkey zips around the streets of what appears to be a south Asian city on an extremely small motorbike. If this isn’t entertaining, I don’t know what is.
A trained snow monkey rides a small bicycle for circus spectators. This is almost sort of sad, but the monkey appears to be in no significant danger. He even takes a small bow when he is finished, much to the crowd’s delight.
Now we’re talking. The guy who engineered this unlikely combination is nothing less than a king among men. He even admits that this idea was born when he was “sitting in the park talking about what would be impossible to do.”
Apparently this guy is something of a Venice Beach fixture, but this is new to me. What genius.
Another classic on the level of the cowboy monkey, a cool video of a skateboarding bulldog. I feel it’s worth pointing out that I can barely even do what this dog is doing.
A short video concerning a bird riding a hedgehog. The bird clearly cannot be bothered to worry about the hedgehog’s trademark spikes. The manner in which this bird throws caution to the wind and rides a hedgehog shows just how much we humans still have to learn from the animal kingdom.
This is one of my favorite videos in the bunch, primarily because the youtube description suggests that the owners “looked out their window one day” and noticed their cat riding their horse around. I can only imagine the pride they must have felt can only compare to marrying off your firstborn or things of that nature.
Behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner is responsible for many of the conditioning methods required to get animals to do the more complex things seen in these videos. He was a pretty fascinating guy, and helped us all realize that you can teach or convince just about anyone (man or beast) to do just about anything.
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