Exotic Magazine - Issue 331

BFFs In The Natural World

by Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle

Let’s face it. It’s easier to get along with your pets than it is to even make small talk with the clerk at the gas station some days. We’ve all been there. When your friends ditch you at a party, or the so-called love of your life leaves you high and dry for that chode she just met, when your therapist turns you in to the cops just because of your murderous fantasies, or when your work buddy betrays your trust, and you find yourself jobless because you let it slip that the sexually suggestive pictures of feet that Melinda keeps getting, are from you. People can’t be trusted, so we turn to our pets. Fido will never judge you for your fetishes. What is it about interspecies friendships that just work so well? Maybe it’s because we don’t speak the same language, maybe it’s because there’s an understanding that it’s a two-way street (I’ll scratch your butt and you lick my face at 3 a.m.), or maybe it’s just because they’re so darn cute. Maybe we’ll never know. Mutualistic symbiotic relationships don’t always seem like friendship... exactly, but when two life forms rely on one another, it’s a special, magical, and occasionally grotesque thing. Let’s now consider some of these unique bonds between non-human animals and the benefits for those involved...

The Monthly Column: Imperial Russia In: Big-Time Baltic Blunders

by Wombstretcha

In a departure from my usual format of "list of amusing things" style articles, I’m about to drop some knowledge on one of the most inadvertently hilarious and/or pathetic military exploits in history—that of the Russian Baltic Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War.

Some background here. The Russo-Japanese War began in 1904 and lasted until 1905; pretty short, as wars of the era went. The reason Russia and Japan went to war was basically because Russia and Japan both wanted a piece of China, which at the time was larger than now, and consisted of the Korean Peninsula, where we now find... Korea. Well, both Koreas, and the Liaodong Peninsula, still part of modern China, but which was owned by Japan following the Sino-Japanese War a decade prior. The Sino-Japanese War was one where China and Japan fought, and Russia provided support to the Qing Empire of China against Japan. You following so far? Great...