This essay for the inaugural issue of Technology and Language explores the notion of animatechnics in its two meanings: living technology and animal technology. On the one hand, there is a fiction or utopian component in this notion, on the other hand, it raises the question about technical life beyond the human: Can technology be alive – other than metaphorically? How does animal technical life work? These questions can be fused into one and suggest the notion not of the command but of the request as a technical operation.