Hi! I know that this might be a research question, but I was unsure as to how to google this. What insects/small animals would make for the best service animals and emotional support animals for fairies? I’m thinking of service insects for mental illness (I’m not being too specific here since there’s going to be a couple of fairies using these with different needs) being featured, but insects trained to replace the senses of sight or smell, often in combat (since faries see with a combination of sight and smell like insects, gases that smell pungent and obscure vision would probably be used a lot) but also recreationally for disabled faries would also likely feature. The size of the fairies is probably as tall standing up as a rat is on its fours (6-9cm)
-🧚🏻♂️🧚🏻♀️
Hi asker,
My first instinct is intelligent insects – ants, bees, spiders. A service animal has to have intelligence and skills to be trained and whatnot. "Smart" here I'm going to use to mean like, problem-solving, communicating, etc, at a degree higher than, say, a fly who's just trying to get to some fruit and therefore would not be an effective service animal.
Bees are very smart, and research shows they can even do some basic math. They have complex communication with each other and they do a lot of cool things like give each other directions; they're about 1-2cm if they're honeybees for example but largely they'll be a good size next to fairies. They can also fly, which if fairies can fly, would seem like a pretty good thing for a service bug to do.
Ants are strong and work hard and collaborate a lot. They're adaptable and social, good traits for a service bug. Size wise, the largest species is 6cm which is about fairy-size but mostly they're significantly smaller. The main drawback would be that not all ants can fly, but a flying ant could be a good choice for non-mobility tasks.
Spiders... well spiders are so variable that this really depends, but in general spiders are pretty smart. Jumping spiders are the smartest. They have strong senses in general, but especially excellent eyesight, and they plan different ways of attacking prey depending on what works best, meaning they can problem-solve. The main drawback on spiders is that most spiders are not social, which is probably important. However, there are some social spiders.
Dragonflies are extremely efficient predators, which makes them pretty smart. They can tailor their attacks very well and are super, super precise – they basically never miss. They come in many sizes too so some could be too big to help fairies but some are quite small and could work effectively.
Something else that might work is very small birds. They might be better for something like mobility assistance, in the way that large dogs or miniature ponies can do that for humans. Small birds are, generally speaking, pretty smart as well as social, and can in that way also fill the role of "service dog" for fairies.
The smallest bird in the world is a bee hummingbird (5.5cm average). Hummingbirds in general are quite intelligent (they can recognize people, which is neat, and have big memories) and quite small, although this one is the smallest of them all.
Esmeraldas woodstar (6.4cm), Calliope hummingbird (7cm), and Costa's hummingbird (7.4) are the next smallest birds and also all hummingirds, so the above applies as well.
A bonus for birds, is, of course, that they can also fly. The main con is that even the smallest ones are basically the size of a fairy and that's kind of big – even big service dogs are usually a significant amount smaller than their handler.
Also, I liked your ask! I really love fantasy and picturing fairies with service animals made me smile.
Hope this helps,
mod sparrow
Hello asker,
A service animal will need different skills depending on the tasks they do. Mobility animals need to be larger than for example diabetes alert animals. Guide animals also need to be relatively large.
I would reccomend researching a bit more into why specific dogs and dog breeds are chosen to help you figure out what you're looking for!
-Mod Patch
Hello, thank you for your ask!
For mental illnesses, service dogs are usually trained to provide comfort, prevent self harming behaviors (though limited to things like hitting ones head with their hands or banging their head), and can even act as a weighted blanket. Insects such as bees might work best, since they're social and intelligent enough to train. Anything more specific requiers more context to decide a better fit.
For fighting my first thought would defiantly be insects like ants and termites that already have species specialized for battle. Like Mod Sparrow said, not only are ants highly intelligent social animals but there are species that have developed large jaws, venom, chemical sprays and even rudimentary surgery (though these ants aren't particularly large and wouldn't help as mobility aids). The only potential downside (besides arial battle not being possible for a lot of species) is that they communicate through pheromones, and the faries would have to learn to make and be able to deploy them as needed to signal to the ants.
As for generally disabled fairies, I'd would also recommend doing more research on what the fairy needs from a service animal before deciding. Would it help with vision? Medical alert? Hearing? Retrieving items? Mobility? And for mobility you'd also have to think of how the animal would help, like if the fairy would be using it for support while flying or need them to fly the fairy, and if the fairy is riding it that then goes into issues power chair have such as support level, smoothness while traveling, padding, etc. Looking into what dogs are trained to do in these cases will defiantly help your search for small animals who can specialize.
If you need any more specific help, feel free to ask again!
Mod Rot
