They have close contact with humans and converse with each other and with humans, and in some stories wear clothing.  They perform different tasks, such as building houses, playing musical instruments, tailoring overcoats, getting married, and celebrating in human fashion.

A main character in Estonian animal tales is the bear, who is simple-minded and naïve but possesses great physical power.  The wolf is portrayed as greedy but not always crafty.  The hare is goodhearted, witty, and helpful to other animals in time of trouble.  When the hare realized that a horse had outsmarted and killed his mortal enemy, the wolf, he laughed so hard that he split his upper lip.  The bird world is represented mostly by the frivolous magpie, the crow, and the sparrow.  The most popular domestic animals and fowl are the dog, cat, horse, ram, goat, ox, pig, rooster, turkey, goose, and duck.

The animals in Estonian folktales, for example, include frogs, fish, snakes, and a variety of bugs and insects, such as the hornet, mosquito, flea, and spider.  The spider and the fly were once good friends but became mortal enemies.  It all happened at the time when the Moon, the Sun, and the Wind walked on earth and talked to animals and humans.

One day the Wind took a rest because he had been blowing for a long time.  On the top of a hill, he went to sleep behind a large boulder.  The animals began to miss him, and so they sent the spider to look for him.  The Wind was not pleased with the disturbance because his sleep was interrupted by the rude spider.  So the Wind thought and gruffly asked her to leave him alone and go back where she had come from.

Since spiders are known to move slowly, it took her a long time to get down the mountain.  On her way down, she met the fly who was also sent to look for the Wind.  The spider revealed good-heartedly to the fly the Wind’s whereabouts.  Immediately, the fly had a plan: to get back to the animals way ahead of the spider.  She is the one who found the Wind and will get all the praise and reward! Her plan worked.  She arrived long before the spider and told the animals how hard it was for her to find the Wind, how tiresome the trip was, and how bruised her tender body was from climbing over the rocks.  The animals celebrated her with a party, and while the festivities were going on, the tired and bruised spider arrived and disputed the fly’s story.  The spider was asked to leave in shame and never return.  And that is how the spider and the fly, once good friends, became mortal enemies.  The spider makes beautiful webs, just to catch the flies and eat them.