I'm a little confused by this - these comments suggest the animals talk to you, but I've tried TALK TO [ANIMAL] and generally get a response indicating that I've been largely ignored! I'd also tried giving the gems to the scorpion (Jewelled scorpion? Worth a try...) to no avail.
Might also be worth pointing out that the readme suggests typing 'HELP' will give some hints about verbs, but this doesn't work - at least on the Next version.