Starting with a flowchart:
Animals Flow.png

I've entered data into excel like so as a starting point:
Animals Excel.png

I'm using the "|" and "backslash" (it won't let me enter the actual character) symbols both as a visual aid for humans, and I'm also thinking I can search for those characters algorithmically. I don't NEED those characters, I'm just thinking it will be easier to do what I'm trying to do if they're there. What I'm trying to do is take this map, or any arbitrary map of any complexity, and generate a pair of columns of the relationship between the items. In this example, the list of relationships would be this:

animals relationship.png

I've been poking at this with a bunch of IFs and the various LOOKUP functions, but I feel like I'm getting nowhere, so I thought I'd see if the forum had any better ideas, because you usually do.