Pi explains that animals sometimes form surprising living arrangements through a kind of animal “anthropomorphism” he calls zoomorphism, when an animal treats a human being or another animal as if it were its own kind.

He gives familiar and personal examples: pet dogs can assimilate humans so fully that they attempt to mate with them, and at the zoo a golden agouti and a spotted paca peacefully huddled and slept together until the agouti was stolen. Pi also recalls the zoo’s rhinoceros-and-goat pairing and mentions circus lions as another case of unusual social arrangement.

Pi adds reported and recorded cases from elsewhere, including dolphins that have pushed drowning sailors to the surface and held them there, consistent with how dolphins help one another. He cites a documented relationship between a stoat and a rat, even though the stoat ate other rats presented to it.

Returning to the zoo, Pi describes a “freak suspension” of predator-prey behavior: a mouse lived for weeks in a viper terrarium, building a nest, storing grain, and moving openly among the snakes while other mice disappeared within days. The spell ends when a young viper bites the mouse and an adult viper immediately devours it, after which mice resume disappearing at the usual rate.

Pi then describes how dogs are sometimes used as foster mothers for lion cubs; the grown lions never trouble the dog, and the dog maintains calm authority, though signs are needed so visitors do not think the dog is food. Pi concludes that zoomorphism is driven by a “measure of madness” that helps life survive: companionship for the lonely, social stability that prevents violence, and the psychological necessity of believing in a protective bond, even if reality contradicts it.