Animalia's 2022 birthday celebration was quite big, not only because of all the new members. Both Lyre/Animalia and its colonies each had their own way of celebrating.
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Nicole, Joanne, Philip, and Lars had their wedding on that day. While they had a quieter ceremony beforehand, the wedding reception dinner was officially part of the birthday celebration. Part of what made it funny was the way that Morgan got "jumped"/"pounced" on by various predator Animalians, mainly for the humorous photo opportunities.
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Heiya Island celebrated it in a typical Asian fashion, including a dragon parade, with a few other surprises as well.
While Lenard had been warned by Tuxing about the girls there swarming him when he and Mikey arrived, it was still a bit of a surprise, especially since he had to play it down, so to speak, when he explained it to Mikey. Afterward, he was able to be introduced to the rest of the Five Elements, as well as Liao and Li Wei. After meeting them, both Lenard and Mikey were able to enjoy the festivities.
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Vilcabamba was celebrating Animalia's birthday in a Mesoamerican way, including priests/witch doctors wearing modern recreations of priestly garments, which had been partly inspired by the priestly garb found in some of the burials. Miles did his own coverage of the events while also keeping well away from the alcohol that was being served. Though this didn't mean that he didn't catch a few humorous moments on his camera, such as one guy trying to pull a Tarzan but ended up doing a George of the Jungle instead.
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Another part of Animalia's birthday celebrations was the official release of the latest episode of When Worlds Collide.... In it, Hide, Arthur, William, the company of dwarves they were accompanying/protecting, and their newest member, Beowulf, arrive in Ming Dynasty China only to be detained by a group of soldiers. However, this was because the Wanli Emperor was extremely curious about them, especially about their claim to be able to kill demons. After Hide and William were able to prove it by killing a demon that had taken up residence in the palace, Wanli revealed the real reason why he needed them: the empress Wu Zetian had somehow returned from death and was causing all kinds of trouble in an attempt to reestablish the Wu Zhou Dynasty.
During the investigation, Wu Zetian was revealed to not have been returned to life, but it was actually a Hino-Enma (basically the Asian version of a succubus) that had somehow taken her shape and absorbed her memories. Fortunately, thanks to Hide and Sohayamaru, the Hino-Enma was defeated and decapitated. As repayment, they were allowed to travel on to the remains of the ancient dwarf kingdom.
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Another surprise that happened during the birthday celebration was an indirect result of the lesbians and trans women joining them. However, it was considerably less than what internet idiots made it out to be. There were still lesbians who wanted to be something other than lizards (whether or not it was due to some aversion to reptiles was unknown) and there were still trans women who wanted to become herms.
The surprise happened when the group of newly minted whiptail Animalians were working out at Claw Coliseum. There were a few male lizard Animalians also working out, but they were more focused on their workouts than bothering the whiptail Animalians. However, the whiptail Animalians were noticing the male lizards, as well as developing an unusual attraction to them. This was unusual because the New Mexico Whiptail reproduced exclusively through parthenogenesis, and nobody really knew why they were developing attraction to males. Because of this new twist, new whiptail conversions were "postponed for further research".
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A final surprise came from Dennis Vile and his friends. While they still didn't know if Animalia would accept cryptocurrency, they had decided to bite the bullet and sell off enough of their AniCoin to afford a single dose conversion for all seven of them. While this did affect the price of AniCoin, it didn't affect it enough for some people to call it a "pump-and-dump scheme". A "sub-surprise" was that Horizon more than understood that they wanted to double dose themselves afterward.
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With six years down and four more to go, Animalia was expected to grow quite a bit more before Animalia celebrated a 10th Anniversary.