I was typing a response in the Tricia thread, but it was getting so far of topic that I guess it is better to make it an own thread:
With regard to family relationships there are several interesting scenes throughout the land before time sequels.
Most notably there is the scene (and song) in LBT 8 where Ducky and the others try to define what family means. I don't really know if they know at the end of the song, but there is clearly a difference between friends and family ("[...] family is more than being friends.") which in turn might mean that the relationship between Ducky and Spike is on a different level than that of Ducky and one of her other friends. The "qualifications" for being family seem to be higher in LBT 8 than in any other LBT movie.
Then again that difference may be blurred through the lack of physical separation in the Great Valley. While we live in houses with our family separated from other families who are in other houses or flats, there are no such separating walls between the nests of the families in the Great Valley.
In LBT 10 Littlefoot offers Shorty to be his brother. How much does that mean?
Would the term mean that the relationship between Shorty and Littlefoot would become the same as the relationship between Ducky and Spike?
I don't think so. Even with the term brother being used I daresay that Littlefoot's relationship to Shorty is by far less intense than that to any one of his other friends.
In LBT 9 they actually DO use a somewhat "abstract" term. Littlefoot and Mo become "mudbrothers". Of course the term is meant to be a pun at "bloodbrothers" (and may cause some confusion to the non-English speaking audience who listen to it in their native languages
). But is there anything more than friendship associated with the term "mudbrother"? I don't think so, but I may be mistaken.
In LBT 2 we have another interesting case. Littlefoot becomes Chomper's papa and the gang as a whole sings "
We are a family and you're one of us now."
I think the scale for the term family is lower here than it is in LBT 8. LBT 2 is very explicit in making clear that Littlefoot and the others don't really think of physical relationship with regard to the term "family" at the time of that movie.
In LBT 4 we have grandpa longneck refer to Ali's herd as cousins. The consequence of this term has been that many people mistook Ali for a cousin of Littlefoot. I think that grandpa was just using a slightly outdated connotation of the term cousin. In some older texts the term cousin is sometimes used to describe what today would be referred to as kinfolk (provided that I am correctly informed that this might describe someone of the same kind or a relative in a very, very broad sense of the term).
In the German version of LBT 4 grandpa refers to the herd as "Verwandte" which can mean "relatives" but is likely to be interpreted as "kinfolk" in that context.
I wonder if perhaps there may be a different understanding of the term "family" depending on the species?
Ducky's kind is supposed to be somewhat "family orientated" which may give more significance of the term than for example to Petrie. Flyers may be less of the family type due to their great mobility. We never heard anything about Petrie's Dad and perhaps flyers are a bit more likely to have imaginary friends (LBT 9) on long lonely flights than others who enjoy a more settled family life? Petrie's strong relationship with Pterano might be seen as an argument against the theory of flyers being less family orientated, but it might support the argument as well (if we assume Petrie's enthusiasm to be based on the lack of other grownup relatives in his life).
