Animal stories in pulps

There has been a lively discussion at the PulpMags e-mail liston animal stories in the pulp magazines, with which the members of the list meant stories in which the animal is the protagonist, a point-of-view character or even a narrator. Gerald W. Page mentioned many authors who specialized in them: Jim Kjelgaard, Paul Annixter, Anthony Rud, Harold Cruikshank. Rud especially wrote lots of animal stories - Page mentions having read one in which the hero was an Octopus!

Page sums up the genre saying:

Animal stories were almost always short, and generally easy to plot. But I enjoy reading them; and in the western pulps when you come across one they're always much more welcome than another short, hastily written story about a cowboy searching for rustlers or a gunman going up against the old sheriff would be.

Page also mentioned stories with elephants: "There are a surprising number of stories about elephants in the pulps as well. I recall one by Anthony Rud and a few others, more vaguely", he said and continued:

One of the Singapore Sammy Shay stories collected in "South of Sulu," is about elephants. "The Pink Elephant" from the October 25, 1930 Short Stories. There's also a fine circus story about Elephants in the August 1948 issue of Blue Book. It's "Elephant Boss" by Robert Barbour Johnson and concerns the efforts of one of an assistant elephant handler trying to protect elephants from the cruelty of a new boss.

I weighed in saying that I've found a western short story by Bertrand Shurtleff in which the main animal is a seal (called Velveena; I don't know where the seal got her name, since she lives wild in nature) and one story by George Cory Franklin with a horse called Rustler. I think it narrates its own stories - I'm not sure, I should check the original story.

But what especially caught my eye was Morgan Holmes's idea for a dinosaur anthology. When asked, he specified the possible contents:

Let's see, as to dinosaur stories. There are the two by Paul L. Anderson in ADVENTURE. One is T. rex vs. Triceratops. Another is Mammoth vs. Sabertooth at tar pit. There are at least two dinosaur stories in Wonder Stories, ("One Prehistoric Night, and I think another called "When Reptiles Ruled"). There is a Paul Annixter story from ADVENTURE around 1931. You could mine some dinosaur stories from THRILLING WONDER STORIES in the late 30s. There are probably some in the Tremaine era ASTOUNDING. I know there is one from WEIRD TALES in 1930 plus another by Edmond Hamilton (can't think of the title right now). Could always throw in "Before the Dawn" by Temple.

Holmes also continued developing new anthologies:

There are probably enough cave man stories to fill a companion volume. Howard Devore told me at pulp con once about his idea for a cave man anthology. It had the usual suspects as de Camp's "The Gnarly Man" and del Rey's "The Day is Done." I would not be in favor of those two because they are over-known. Go for the more obscure stuff. There is enough cave man fiction in Ray Palmer era AMAZING STORIES to fill a book alone. You could use Paul L. Anderson's Cro-Magnon stories, Robert E. Howard's "Spear and Fang," P. Schuyler Miller's "People of the Arrow." There are some cave man stories by Clifford M. Eddy, Jr., a buddy of Lovecraft's in WEIRD TALES from around 1924. I think there is at least one by Charles Willard Diffin in TOP-NOTCH in the mid-30s. Might be a fun book.

The conclusion:

So we have in theory: PULP DOG STORIES, PULP HORSE STORIES, PULP ELEPHANT STORIES, PULP ANIMAL STORIES, PULP DINOSAUR STORIES, PULP CAVE MAN STORIES, and for the hell of it do PULP TARZAN IMITATION STORIES, PULP BARBARIAN STORIES, PULP LOST RACE STORIES.