my personal pick for most underrated animal is the european legless lizard, which i think is often taken to just look like a normal and rather plain snake, but if you’re familiar with reptile anatomy at all it looks more like some sort of bizarre heraldic fantasy creature than basically anything else on earth
Ollie loves to have the bases of his ears massaged with my thumbs and whenever I do it for him his eyes close and pushes so hard into it that he has to brace with his legs to avoid falling over and he purrs, and every time I do it I think about how he can’t do that for himself on his own, and how wonderful and strange it is that our two species happened to evolve in a way that allowed a bread loaf-sized obligate carnivore capable of receiving the most satisfying ear rub imaginable, but only from a giant omnivorous ape
