Sam
by Ian Tullis
Answer: I'M AMERICAN
We know that Sam likes starry animals. With the mental leap that we're talking about Uncle Sam, we can decide he likes striped animals, too. Looking at the "map" for this area tells us that we want Dragon, Snake, Hyena, Tiger (inferred), Zebra. We want to line up their "feeder" answers, taking every other letter to form a message. The leftover letters have a pattern: _A_B_C_…
| Critter | "Feeder" |
|---|---|
| Snake | IAMB |
| Hyena | ACM |
| Dragon | DEER |
| Zebra | FIG |
| Tiger | ??? |
It makes sense for Uncle Sam to say I'M AMERICAN.
Knowing that this puzzle's answer ends with CAN and considering the _A_B_C_… rule, we know the Tiger answer is either CHAIN or ChainJ (a specialty lubricant); CHAIN is the safer guess.