Even in settings where talking, civilized, or funny animals exist, adoptions will still happen between parents and children. Some parents are caring enough to take in a child, regardless of their species. They may be animals raising a human child, humans raising an animal child, or even a combination of both. It doesn't matter, as adoption is still adoption, and parents will always be parents. The subject of the adoption may or may not even be an issue among society.

This is an over-trope of Raised By Wolves and some cases of Oblivious Adoption, as well as cases that aren't covered by either trope. May also overlap with Moses In The Bullrushes.

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Examples:

Comics

• Hellboy is a demon who was adopted by a human parent and raised to appreciate humanity, even if he constantly has to deal with the fact that he's frighteningly different from them anyway.
• Superman is probably the most famous example of this trope. He's an alien sent to Earth as a baby, and he grew up on a farm by the Kent family.

Film

• The Stuart Little movie did this to remove the Fridge Logic from the original book (where the titular character just had human parents for no apparent reason).
• Giant panda Po's father in Kung Fu Panda is a duck; this goes unmentioned in the first movie, but becomes a minor plot element in the sequel.
• In Thor, Loki turns out to be an Ice Giant adopted by Odin and raised as his own under a glamor.
• Elf: Buddy is a human adopted by Santa Claus, and raised among elves.
• Disney's The Ugly Dachshund. A Great Dane thinks he's a dachshund because he was raised by a dachshund mother.

Literature

• In the Discworld novel Guards! Guards!, Carrot is a human adopted by dwarves. He is completely oblivious to this, even when his adoptive father tries to explain that there's a reason he was always too tall to fit in dwarf passages correctly. Notable in that even after it's been explained to him and he's accepted that he is biologically a human, Carrot still considers himself a dwarf, albeit a very tall one.
• The Ugly Duckling is a classic example of this trope. A swan raised by a duck.
• RuneScape: Betrayal at Falador, Kara was adopted and raised by dwarfs.

Live Action TV

• Worf was adopted by the Rozhenko family, a human couple from Russia. In turn, Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko was also raised by Worf's adoptive parents.

Video Games

• Mallow from Super Mario RPG, originally from Nimbus Land, was adopted by Frogfucius in Frog Pond, and grew up largely believing he was a frog "who can't jump".
• Adell in Disgaea 2 is a demon adopted by humans as a result of his biological parents leaving to fight fake Zenon. They fail.
• Penn in Soul Nomad is adopted by the Nereids. This is part of a breeding plan when he turns 18.
• F-Zero's Leon, depending on the game (although both examples still fit). In X, he's adopted by Mrs. Arrow and her husband Super Arrow, a crime-fighting superhero couple. According to GX, however, he was instead adopted by Fable, a soldier belonging to the race that attacked Leon's homeworld twelve years ago (which led to the poor kid losing his parents and his left eye, as well as Zou becoming an economical dump) who rebelled when he became disgusted by their tactics. Leon's a bipedal cat-like alien, the Arrows are human, and Fable is another species of extraterrestrial being.
• After the time skip in Final Fantasy VI, the half-human, half-Esper Terra is shown to have adopted some children from Mobliz whose parents were killed by Kefka's Light of Judgment.
• At the end of Final Fantasy IV The After Years, the last remaining Maenad is adopted by Rydia and christened Cuore. This is a bit of an ambiguous example as the Maenads are a race of Artificial Humans made in Rydia's image by The Creator.
• After her parents were killed by Space Pirates, Samus Aran was adopted by the Chozo, an ancient race of bird-like creatures that raised her and trained her to be what she is.
• In Devil May Cry 2, a big deal is made out of Lucia being a flawed demonic construct of Arius instead of Matier's biological daughter. After going through a Heroic BSOD and struggling with the ramifications of her true nature for a bit, Matier comforts Lucia and outright tells her, "You are my daughter." This gives Lucia the strength to carry on and break out of her Cloning Blues complex.
• Neverwinter Nights 2. The protagonist's race can change, but the foster father is always the same.

Web Comics

• Lindesfarne in Kevin And Kell.
• The trolls in Homestuck. It's societal norm for them to be raised by another species. However, these guardians may or may not be totally sentient, and not all of them are good parents, so it also delves a bit into Raised By Wolves.

Web Original

• Quite a few characters from Cerberus Daily News. Thus includes (but is not limited to) a Turian who was adopted by a human couple (Gahars Patnus), a human who was adopted by an Asari couple (Some_Random_Merc/Johnny), a Drell who has recently adopted a human infant (Rohim), a human whose legal guardian and father-figure is a Turian (Wildflower/Flower and Davril, respectively), and a human who was raised by a Quarian (Human Quarian/Kolya).

Western Animation

• Heifer was raised by wolves. The Wolf family to be specific. They were just going to eat him, but decided not to an raised him as their own.
• SpongeBob and Patrick adopted a baby scallop in one episode. It left other citizens quite confused when they thought about the biology involved.
• Dinosaur Train: Buddy the T-Rex is adopted by a pteranodon family.
• Cat Dog continually brought up one particular issue over the course of the series: Where did CatDog actually come from? For as long as they can remember, they'd always lived on their own. The series ended with CatDog going on a long journey to find their parents. It was never revealed how CatDog came to be, but for a brief time after they were born, they had been raised by a frog for a father and a sasquatch for a mother. They were all separated in a storm.

Real Life

• Real Life examples involving animals like dogs, cats, and rabbits are a mainstay of websites like Cute Overload.
• One of the strangest incidents of this kind occurred in Samburu, Kenya: a lioness adopted an oryx.
• There is a famous joke about a turtle which constantly climbs up a tree and jumps down with its legs spread. After a few attempts (and the turtle getting quite a few traumas), a bird watching it from nearby asks its mate, "Should we tell our son he's adopted?"

Other

• This◊ Bad Habits strip, which is also an Oblivious Adoption.