However, if you plan to exceed the baseline (whatever it is) by roughly the same amount each day, then it’s hard to say you’ve overcuddled your BOTIMAL®.
Furthermore, you cannot cuddle your BOTIMAL® to death. That is: your BOTIMAL® won’t ever die from cuddling—just its absence.
Why doesn’t my clone ovum have a white line along its circumference?
Clone ova never have white lines along their circumferences. The white line along the circumference of the ovum that came with your HatchKit® was precision-laser-emblazoned at the Graham&Swords Corporation FacLab Facilities before being sent to the warehouse for shipping, and is only a guideline: we added it to the ovum to make use of the IncuBand® (even) easier.
There are other, non-BOTIMAL® pets in my home. What kind of safety precautions should I take?
Graham&Swords Corp. researchers have found that, with the exception of cats, most common household pets seem to find BOTIMALS® to be as adorable as we human beings do, and they rarely, if ever, behave aggressively toward BOTIMALS®; sometimes they even appear to be trying to court them.
BOTIMALS®, themselves, tend to enjoy the company of household birds—particularly Quaker parrots—and they even seem to enjoy interacting with wild birds. On the other hand, they’re reluctant to engage with snakes, lizards, and amphibians, even though most of those creatures, when left to their own devices, have been observed bringing food and toys to BOTIMALS® with which they cohabitate.
Cats, however, are a different story. Except in certain cases where they were introduced to BOTIMALS® as kittens, cats will behave toward BOTIMALS® as cats traditionally behave toward birds and small rodents. Lucky for BOTIMALS® that they have no inclination to be near cats! That said, if you do have a cat, you should do everything you can to keep it away from your BOTIMAL®.
Can my BOTIMAL® drink coffee? What about beer?
Graham&Swords Corp. strongly advises against giving your BOTIMAL® coffee, alcoholic beverages, or anything else to ingest that contains intoxicating substances (e.g. black tea, caffeinated sodas, cough syrup, etc.). Though most intoxicants, if administered in extremely small dosages that take relative proportions into account, should act on your BOTIMAL’S® system in a manner similar to that in which they would act on a normal, healthy human being’s, other intoxicants may affect your BOTIMAL® in unpredictable, potentially fatal ways. Furthermore, the difference between life and death could be a matter of a single milligram or milliliter, so beyond the problems inherent in calculating suitable (i.e. intoxicating rather than lethal) dosages, accurately measuring them out can prove quite difficult if you don’t possess the proper measuring equipment.
Can BOTIMALS® fall in love with each other?
As far as we can tell, the answer is: no. We have seen BOTIMALS® embrace one another, feed one another, offer water to one another, kiss one another on the face (and even on the mouth once or twice!), but this kind of behavior was seen only in BOTIMALS® whose owners had modeled it for them, which suggests that these seeming displays of affection were in fact just mimicries of owner behavior. Then again, it’s possible. It’s possible that although they learned to, for example, kiss each other by mimicking their owners, the kissing behavior later became “sincere”: a behavior they performed not simply to please their owners in hopes of—or gratitude for—receiving the reinforcement of human warmth, but because they actually wanted to kiss the BOTIMALS® they kissed. Not that kissing someone always (or even usually!) means you’re in love with them—but it might mean that. And wouldn’t that be something?
My BOTIMAL® seems to get cuter and more adorable with each passing day. Is it? Or is it more like my new friend is just growing on me?
It’s not only possible that your BOTIMAL® is continually becoming cuter and more adorable with each passing day; it’s extremely unlikely that your BOTIMAL® isn’t becoming cuter and more adorable with each passing day. And by “cuter and more adorable,” we mean “OBJECTIVELY cuter and more adorable.”
Early research has shown that even just the sight of older BOTIMALS® generates greater activity in the part of the human brain called the amygdala than does the sight of younger BOTIMALS®. In one study, we showed the same sleeping BOTIMAL® to a group of subjects once a week from the time it was a hatchling til the time it was three months old, and each week, upon seeing the sleeping BOTIMAL®, the subjects’ brains showed two to three times more activity than they had the previous week. Some subjects were told that they were seeing the same BOTIMAL® each week, and others were told that they were seeing a different one each week. The amount of brain activity was not affected by this knowledge. We also did another study identical to the one just described, except that the subjects, rather than being shown a sleeping BOTIMAL®, were asked to physically interact with a waking BOTIMAL® for five minutes each week. The brain activity of the subjects increased at roughly the same rate as it had during the sleeping studies, but the baseline was over ten times as high (i.e. physically interacting with a BOTIMAL® is over ten times as stimulating to the amygdala as watching that same BOTIMAL® sleep).
We have no data on amygdalic response rates to BOTIMALS® over the age of twenty-eight weeks, so we won’t make any claims regarding the objective cuteness/adorability of BOTIMALS® over the age of twenty-eight weeks, but one thing is certain: if your BOTIMAL® seems to you to be getting cuter and more adorable all the time for the first seven months of its life, that’s because a) it is, and b) you’re a human being.
2012
Graham&Swords Marble and MagicSleeve CURIO® EmergeRig 3.0
User’s Manual
Congratulations on the purchase of your brand-new Graham&Swords CURIO®, the lifelike best friend that believes it’s your pet®!
What’s in the Sock?
1 Marble
1 MagicSleeve® (hold on to the sock!)
1 7-day supply of WorkPellets®
What Exactly Is a CURIO®?
A CURIO® is a soft automaton® with built-in, cutting-edge senso-emotional call-and-response technology (SECRT)® so convincing it almost might as well have a heart and a soul, even though it doesn’t®.
Energizing Your CURIO’S® Autoconstruction
Energizing your CURIO’S® autoconstruction is easy! All it requires is some body heat and a MagicSleeve®. You can provide those things! Do so as follows: