=^. .^=

Others are actually young witch babies.

Since witches have no womb and are a byproduct of wild magic, whenever a witch wishes for a child they might one day find a young animal lingering around the house, much like receiving a familiar. An easy way to tell the difference between a youngling and a familiar, however, is that once bonded a familiar will soon begin speaking thereafter. Younglings will not develop speech until much later in their development.

The 2 year mark is when familiar and youngling dimorphism begins. While familiars will simply grow into an adult animal, younglings will enter into a “troll” stage, in which they will develop traits that separate them from ordinary creatures but do not yet resemble a human. It is towards the end of this stage that they will begin saying words, and simple sentences. Minor jinx magic is to be expected.

The “troll” stage will last for ~5 years, and the next stage can happen anytime within the next 3-6 following years. They will encounter a sudden “growth spurt,” where they will suddenly come into distinctly human shapes, while still retaining vestigial traits from their troll years. This transformation can happen overnight, or take over a year to complete. They can begin practicing simple spell magic at this point.

While some claim that the animal a youngling starts off as influences how they look as an adult, that’s largely been debunked. Witch children actually tend to generally resemble their parent(s).

Because names are of great importance to witches, some traditional households will follow the custom of waiting for the youngling to arrive at speaking age to let them choose their own name. Until then, often they refer to the child as their animal: Kitty, Crow, Frog etc.

And finally, here are all the famous couples ✨

Holmes & Watson, Poirot & Hastings, Jeeves & Bertie, Raffles & Bunny

And mostly lines which are Crowley's inner monologue thinking about how little influence Heaven and Hell actually have on Humanity and how they already have free will!

And don’t get me started on how much it emphasizes the irony in having these four supernatural beings determine the fate of the universe and humanity with no feedback from Actual Humans and the irony in the story trying to pretend it has always been about humanity instead of underplaying this aspect of the novel in favor of the Ineffable Husbands Melodrama when Crowley starts using lines cut and stolen from Book!Adam.

This has already been covered by others but I still wanna share it 'cause I just learned about it.

Gene Zebraxton (left) and Gene Zebrowski (right) appear to be two zebras that are partners and close friends.

But look closer and you might notice that Zebrowski looks a little different than his partner: his stripes are less numerous and less defined, his mane is longer and wavier, his muzzle is a different shape, and there are hints of brown around his muzzle, eyes, and wrists.

What's the significance of this? Well, Zebrowski might not be a zebra at all, but a horse disguised as one!

His body might be covered in some sort of fur paint or makeup explaining the chestnut brown of his normal fur peeking through around his muzzle, eyes, and hooves.

His stripes could be painted on, explaining how unnatural they look.

His mane might be dyed to have the same striped look as Zebraxton's but there's not really much that could be done about stiffness or texture without sacrificing the style.

He might wear long sleeves so he doesn't have to disguise his arms.

Taking a look at concept art from the The Art of Zootopia 2, originally Gene and Gene were likely meant to both be zebras, based on the matching muzzle shapes and the tails:

But then somewhere along the way this 'not a zebra' idea came up, because look at Zebrowski's tail. That's a horse tail. No zebras have that tail.

However something interesting is that in the film, Zebrowski does have what looks to be a normal zebra tail. This could of course be some sort of wrap or something but it's still a curious detail.

Also at first I assumed he was just a different species of zebra — mountain zebra have a browner part around the muzzle for example — but none really line up too well with his features.

Now, if he actually is a horse trying to look like a zebra then why would he do this?

It could be a disguise (removing his zebra look would make him much less recognizable while undercover), it could be so he can match his partner ('cause what are the Zebros if one isn't a zebra?), or maybe Zebrowski is just not happy being a horse and prefers to identify as a zebra, and this is just a personal choice unrelated to his job.

In any case, none of this has been officially confirmed or denied from what I can find, so until then I'm just going to headcanon that Gene Zebrowski is a horse in disguise.