Question

Your class recently visited an animal petting zoo. At one special exhibit, two animals had become good friends even though they were two different types of animals. Your class begins to wonder if this happens with other animals. You decide to do some more research. You have found three sources. Your class decides to make a storybook to share with the animal petting zoo and the people who visit the zoo. You will write a story to add to the storybook.

You have decided to write a story about a boy or girl who already has a pet and is now getting a different type of pet. Write about what happens when the two pets come together for the first time. When writing your story, find ways to use information and details from the sources to improve your story. Make sure you develop your character(s), the setting, and the plot, using details, dialogue, and description.

As you write, think about these questions:

Did you write a narrative about the assigned topic?
Did you use details to describe the characters, places, and events?
Did you organize your narrative clearly with a beginning, middle, and end?
Did you use a variety of words and well-written sentences?
Did you use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation?
5 small paragraphs

Source One
Can We Be Friends?
By Ellen R. Braaf
What Is a Friend?

Biologist Dr. Marc Bekoff at the University of Colorado studies dogs, wolves, and coyotes. Although human friendships differ from animal friendships, Bekoff believes that many animals do have friends. What are the signs of animal friendship? If they're in the same pack, animal friends may sleep close to one another. They greet one another, travel together, share food, and groom each other. Animal friends are nice to one another. They even play together. This friendly behavior can be important to an animal's survival.

Playing together, for instance, helps forge important social bonds* that keep an animal within the safety of the group. “Coyote pups who don’t play much are less tightly bonded to other members of their group and are more likely to strike out on their own,” says Bekoff. Leaving the protection of the group is dangerous. In his seven-year study of coyotes in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, Bekoff found that 60 percent of the youngsters who left the group failed to survive.

For more than 35 years, Dr. Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has studied primates—animals such as apes and monkeys. He, too, believes friendship plays a role in understanding how these animals interact.

How does de Waal define friendship? “Friendship involves liking, loyalty, and common purpose,” he says. “I know two female chimpanzees who 30 years ago were already close friends. They lived in a zoo group in the Netherlands with more than 25 chimpanzees. Last year I visited and noticed that they were still friends, still grooming each other, helping each other in fights, and so on. Loyalty!”

Why do animals have friends? “Mainly because in the long run they benefit from friendships,” de Waal says. “It is all give and take. Sometimes

Answer 1

When Maya’s class visited the petting zoo, she watched a goat and a pig nap curled up together and whispered to her friends, “They look like best friends.” Back at home, Maya’s own golden retriever, Milo, greeted her every day with a wag so fast his whole back wiggled. Milo loved fetch, long walks, and new smells. Maya wondered what would happen if Milo met a very different kind of animal—a rabbit—so when her parents surprised her with a small grey bunny from the zoo, she named her Thimble and tried to keep her hands from shaking.

Thimble was smaller than Maya’s backpack and smelled like warm hay. Her fur was soft as cotton and her ears flopped when she munched a piece of carrot. Maya set Thimble’s travel box on the kitchen floor and called Milo in. The sun slanted through the window and made a bright patch on the rug where the meeting would happen. Maya felt both nervous and excited; she remembered the booklet from school about animal friends and how scientists had noticed the ways animals say hello to each other.

Milo padded over slowly, nose twitching, and lowered himself into a polite doggy bow. He sniffed the box, then the edge of the blanket, then Thimble’s whiskers when Maya lifted her out. Thimble’s nose twitched so fast it looked like a little gray blur. At first she froze, but she didn’t bolt. Maya whispered, “It’s okay, Milo. Be gentle.” She had read that Dr. Marc Bekoff said animals often play, greet, and sleep close to the ones they like, so she sat cross-legged and encouraged Milo to lie down and be calm.

They started with small things: Milo let Thimble hop around him while he lay still and watched with soft eyes. Thimble bumped Milo’s nose and then nibbled a carrot where Milo’s paw rested; Milo tasted the carrot too and paused, surprised. After a few minutes, Milo rolled onto his side as if inviting play, and Thimble began to hop in quick zigzags. They chased each other in gentle loops around the rug, and Milo licked Thimble’s ears once, like a careful groom. Maya thought of Dr. Frans de Waal, who wrote about grooming and helping as signs of friendship, and smiled because Milo’s lick looked a lot like kindness.

By bedtime the new pair had learned a language of their own. Milo let Thimble burrow into the crook of his tail and Thimble twitched her nose until she was settled; they fell asleep close together on the same blanket. Maya closed the storybook she was making for the petting zoo and wrote, “Different animals can be friends: they greet each other, play, share food, and even groom one another.” Outside, the stars came out, and inside, a dog and a rabbit breathed together like two old friends.