Secret emotes?

[Nalien]

Have you tried it with a bomb?

Check the Minion Log;

Wind-up Kobold
Another of 789th Order Acolyte Bo Go's masterpieces, this cuddly kobold miniature in fact houses several onzes of highly flammable firesand, designed to ignite when outward pressure is applied... such as with a tender hug.

I guess they might have issue with people causing random explosions everywhere, but hey; They gave us actions when riding the Magitek Mount for seemingly no other reason than to annoy other players with.

[Marxam]

A: Even I, Yoshida, don’t know! ... I don’t do any checks.

Explains a lot. lol #takenoutofcontext

[Rennah]

I'm not sure if /pet just triggers the minion animation (definitely not on all; doesn't seem to work on the minute mindflayer), or if it's hidden things with certain ones, but just confirmed:

/pet:
cherry bomb does a backflip
naughty nanka does an angry charge
baby behemoth rears up
chocobo chicks hop and wiggle, flapping their wings
smallshell raises up slightly

Will add to this as we find more! Testing it out with a friend.

update: watching the cherry bomb, it does the backflip on its own as well, so it seems for some minions it triggers existing animations? But does nothing on others.

[Preinfalk]

I've found something. The /hand over emote. If you do it on a minion, it changes it to "x feeds the y". Any independent minion will come straight to you when you do it, even if it isn't yours.

[Madoka]

The /pet will make a minion do its idle animation if it has one.
/handover or /clap makes it come to you if it's not a wind-up
/beckon makes it sit on you if it can (bluebird, succubus, nutkin for example)

Dunno what other emotes they react too.

[Ayamia]

Derpy Dodo minion comes to you on /handover and runs away when you /slap it.

[HumsterMKX]

The /pet will make a minion do its idle animation if it has one.
/handover or /clap makes it come to you if it's not a wind-up
/beckon makes it sit on you if it can (bluebird, succubus, nutkin for example)

Dunno what other emotes they react too.

/beckon don't seem to work on Blue Bird

[HumsterMKX]

For Slime Puddle and Bite size pudding, you can /poke it and it melts a bit.

For Morbol Seedling you /pet it will do a lazy yawn, /slap it will run away.

For Chigoe larva you /pet or /poke, it will do back-flips.

[Madoka]

/beckon don't seem to work on Blue Bird

It worked with mine when I tried it before but it may have already been going to land on me. I'll test again later

[Windseraph]

I've tried out a few myself, using /pet on the fledgling apkallu will make it bob it's head up and down lol cute as, and I gave a serpent salute to wind-up Kan-E-Senna which caused her to raise her staff, very nice