Furry Confusion / Western Animation

• The Babaloos: It’s fairly common for there to be both animate and "normal" versions of objects (for instance, one episode involves living keys causing chaos while another involves the main cast searching in the sandbox for inanimate keys), or even specific objects that are alive in some episodes but inanimate set dressing in others (Faucet is perhaps the biggest offender here).
• Centaurworld: Played for drama in "The Key". The centaurs are extremely distressed at learning that glue is made chiefly from boiled hooves, aside from Glendale. Horse is a lot more sanguine about it.
• Dinosaur Train:
  • The tiny green snake in one episode doesn't talk, but Sana the Sanajeh in the same episode can talk.
  • Even though bugs are regularly seen as snacks for many dinosaurs, one episode revolving around a concert has a band of singing cockroaches.
• Green Eggs and Ham (2019): The fox, mouse and goat are fully sapient beings, with the former two wearing clothes. But the mouse, however, can only be heard talking by the viewer, but not the other characters. Meanwhile, the various Mix-and-Match Critters are Nearly Normal Animals who are kept in zoos and cannot talk, although at least Chickeraffes and Giroosters understand speech. Furthermore, the green eggs laid by fully sapient chickens are popular food, and the green ham also has to come from somewhere.
• Gumby has clay confusion. Gumby and his family are literal slabs of clay, but with other characters it's not clear if they are actually made out of clay in-universe or just for animation purposes.
• Regular ducks and rabbits were occasionally shown alongside Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny in the Looney Tunes shorts. It should be noted that the Looney Tunes characters act a great deal more like normal animals than Disney characters do (Daffy lives in a lake, Bugs lives in a burrow, neither ordinarily wears clothing). Also, Daffy has acknowledged that he still "Kinda stands out in the crowd" of other ducks.
  • It should be noted that Daffy started out looking like this◊ and slowly became more and more anthropomorphic.
  • In The Looney Tunes Show, most Looney Tunes characters have become almost complete Funny Animals, except occasional animal traits and incomplete clothes, usually played for humor. However, there are occasional moments of confusion such as Lola Bunny (herself a rabbit) and Daffy Duck bringing a pet gopher as a substitute for one of the Funny Animal gophers who was presumed missing.
  • In the episode "Buster's Directorial Debut" of Tiny Toon Adventures, Babs Bunny was magically turned into a non-anthropomorphic rabbit by a witch who wanted to eat her. In the episode "Thirteensomething", she quits Tiny Toons and Buster winds up interviewing a mundane rabbit as a potential new co-host. In yet another episode of this series, Plucky wants to fly south for the winter with a flock of non-anthropomorphic ducks.
  • The "Thirteensomething" episode is particularly odd, as Babs is able to pass for human simply by covering her ears. The fact that her face is covered in fur doesn't quite go unnoticed: "You really should get a wax, dear. You have a lot of facial hair!"
  • In the beginning of Hyde and Hare, Bugs poses as a normal, timid rabbit to encourage a kindly gentleman to feed him carrots in the park, eventually dropping the ruse when the man (who unfortunately turns out to be Dr. Jekyll) invites him home.
  • An episode of Duck Dodgers lampshaded this by having Daffy gain access to a Green Lantern ring. As he hovers in the air and proclaims his pride at being the first of his species gifted with flight, several ducks fly by behind him.
  • Porky Pig, in contrast, is fully a Funny Animal. He's frequently depicted living in a regular house, wearing (some) clothing, keeping pets or farm animals, and even stocking his fridge with ham and sausages — despite being a pig himself. In The Looney Tunes Show he even gets a horrifying revelation upon finding out exactly what pepperoni (his favourite pizza topping) is made of. Even scarier, he eats when he's upset, and upon finding out what pepperoni's made of he goes into a massive depression and eats more pepperoni.
  • In the Tiny Toons movie, Hamton and his (all pig) family unknowingly pick up an escaped maniac hitchhiker. While they are all in the car, the radio announces that the madman is driven berserk by exposure to any sort of "pork product". The pigs sniff the air and actually seem to find their smell quite appetizing.
  • In the short Hare Splitter, Bugs and his rival Casbah are both shown to live in burrows, yet their love interest, Daisy, lives in a normal house.
  • In Season 1, Episode 3 of "Baby Looney Tunes," in the song parody "Mary Had a Baby Duck," Granny won't allow a pet duck inside her school room, which is entirely filled with animal students. Oddly, the pet duck is Daffy, who had human intelligence and was a normal member of the cast.
• Several Huckleberry Hound shorts, including "Postman Panic" and "Tricky Trapper", featured him with "real" dogs.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam has a fair amount of Animate Inanimate Object confusion:
  • Buddy and Krupa (two drums) produce several inanimate percussion instruments (specifically, a castanet, two maracas, a tambourine, and a handbell) from Hammerspace at one point during the theme song.
  • There’s an inanimate violin in a glass case in the Jazzberries’ music library, despite most of the show’s characters being anthropomorphic musical instruments. Juan from “Genre-Busters” also continuously produces inanimate musical instruments from Hammerspace and plays them, and no one even seems to find this notable enough to comment on it.
  • A living electric fan is a minor character in “Billie’s Biggest Fan”, yet multiple other episodes have shown the Jazzberries using inanimate electric fans to keep cool (or an electric fan someone had accidentally left on blowing on a white sheet and making it resemble a ghost).
  • A living (well, ghostly) handsaw who mentions having worked with some other sentient tools appears in one episode, while the Jazzberries have used inanimate tools a fair few times.
• In Rocko's Modern Life all the characters are anthropomorphic animals. But both Rocko and his neighbors, the Bigheads, have pet dogs.
  • In one episode, Rocko (an anthro wallaby) ends up getting mistaken for a dog by a dog catcher while searching for his lost pet Spunky.
  • To add to the confusion, there's even a pair of sapient parasites named Bloaty and Squirmy who live a sitcom-like existence on the non-sapient Spunky.
  • Things get especially weird when you consider that there are also sapient, speech-capable non-anthropomorphic animals, yet they're still treated as wild animals in-series.
    • "I'm a wild pig!"
• Duckman was the patriarch of a family of anthropomorphic ducks whose best friend and partner was a pig and whose nemesis was a chicken. The series also featured anthropomorphic dogs as supporting characters, yet Duckman owned a pet dog, Gecko, that acted like a pet dog, and various other animals appeared in the background.
  • One episode featured a shady retirement home, that seems to offer buffets made out of deceased anthropomorphic inmates. Duckman digs right in.
  "What ? It's not like it's someone you knew..."
• On Wild West COW Boys Of Moo Mesa, the series is set in the Old West and focuses on animals who became very human-like due to radiation from a meteor crash. Some animals, such as horses, were not affected. Of course, the horses can thus serve as the C.O.W.-boys mode of transportation, and once you see a Minotaur riding a horse, you don't forget it. The series also featured the eponymous characters herding non-anthropomorphic cattle, and some episodes featured humanoid versions of horses and sheep, animals usually portrayed as non-anthro "herd animals" within the show.
• The Raccoons featured two English sheepdogs, Schaeffer and Broo. While Schaeffer walked on two legs and talked, Broo acted like a regular dog. It could be because Broo is a puppy, but still. . .
  • Made even more awkward as Bentley is entrusted to take care of Broo as a way to show he's capable of handling a dog. He's even stated to have to walk Broo. Now, this could simply be a Furry Reminder, but the way it's phrased seems to suggest something else.
• The Get Along Gang was populated entirely with anthros of the most humanoid sort. One episode concerned a search for a missing baby elephant. Fair enough, except for the fact that it turned out that said elephant was missing from the zoo.
• Road Rovers concerned a superhero team made up of very anthro dogs — who were "mutated" normal dogs. In one episode, they help an injured wolf. You gotta wonder what the wolf was thinking when he met them...
  • Then there was the time one of the main characters became a werewolf.
• Family Guy features both regular, mundane dogs and anthropomorphic, talking ones who stand upright, are sexually attracted to humans, and may or may not wear clothing, sometimes within the same family. For instance, Brian's mother Biscuit was non-anthropomorphic, while his cousin Jasper is anthropomorphic like he is.
  • Brian from Family Guy plays up the trope mostly by being far more erudite than the human members of the Griffin family, driving a recognizable Toyota Prius while Peter and Lois have generic cartoon cars, and often holding a martini (complete with olive) while walking around the house on his hind legs, all of which makes it much funnier when he does engage in realistic canine behavior.
  • Lampshaded on one occasion when Peter suddenly says "Holy crap! You can talk!"
  • "The Former Life of Brian" reveals that Brian had a completely human son with a human woman. He's thirteen... even though Brian is only six. Brian says it's "dog years".
  • As if this all wasn't confusing enough, Brian and Stewie once visited an Alternate Universe where all the dogs are the talking anthropomorphic type, and humans are their doglike pets. Oddly enough, the humans still wear clothes. The human version of Brian is anthropomorphic, but unlike his dog counterpart, isn't treated like the opposite species in his universe.
    • To make matters worse, when Brian (who's been romantically involved with many human women on the show) showed attraction to a fellow anthro-dog's pet woman, it was treated as Bestiality Is Depraved.
  • Not to mention that throughout the show Brian had been attracted to (and had sex with) human women, human-like dogs and non-humanoid dogs. Compared to that, discovering that he unwittingly slept with a trans woman sends him into a BSOD.
  • One of the show’s running gags is that most of the time Brian acts and is treated as fully human to the point that the audience practically forgets he’s a dog and thinks of him as a person with an inexplicably dog-like appearance—then without warning at particular moments he suddenly exhibits standard dog behavior or qualities (e.g. gets down on all fours and starts barking furiously).
• Lampshaded on Chowder— an anthropomorphic bear plays a ring toss game run by a humanoid elephant, and wins a prize: a human. Cut to a humanoid dog ordering food from a human, who hands him a perfectly ordinary frog on an ice cream cone. The dog starts licking the frog, much to the horror of its mother, a humanoid frog in hair curlers. In Chowder, everything is anthropomorphic, including vegetables, ice cream, souffles, mold, roasts, and soda cans.
• Starland Krew: has a short film where Sparky and Sparkle meet a horse on all fours, who still talks like a human, to team up and stop Naarky from turning Malador the skunk into a skunk sundae.
• Spongebob Squarepants:
  • The episode Nature Pants has starfish in the background that act like real starfish rather than surface animals or having human-like minds like Patrick.
  • There's also the fact that SpongeBob, a sea sponge, is very anthropomorphic, while other stationary animals like coral and anemones are treated like plants, and maybe there were some non-anthropomorphic sponges, too.
  • An episode of the first season, Karate Choppers, shows an extra (a fish) fishing ^note  It's later shown that "clam-fishing" is a thing in the show's world, since Mr. Krabs takes Spongebob and Squidward to do it on Goo Lagoon, but that still begs the question of why they call it fishing . Considering that the inhabitants of Bikini Bottom know what fishing is, as Mr. Krabs warned Spongebob and Patrick of the dangers of the fishhooks, this is a little bit disturbing when you think about it. A later episode lampshades this when another extra (also a fish) is arrested for cannibalism because he had gummy fish in his pocket.
• Extending this to talking plants brings a few odd instances in VeggieTales:
  • "LarryBoy and the Rumor Weed" has Laura Carrot stunned that the titular villainess can talk. The Weed claps back that Laura is a talking Carrot, to which Laura has no further retort.
  • In "The Lord Of The Beans" story, an anthropomorphic asparagus is given a powerful non-anthropomorphic bean.
  • "Duke and the Great Pie War" also includes regular apples along side the anthropomorphic blueberry, as well as lots of pies. This was addressed in the DVD commentary for this episode. When asked by fans whether or not the consumption of apples and other plants was cannibalism, the replied that it "didn't count" if the vegetable could not talk.
  • In the episode that deals with the plagues of Egypt, the Nile turns to tomato juice. There's a short scene of Bob the Tomato seeing this and fainting.
  • The song "The Dinner Time Song" from the album Bob and Larry's Toddler Songs contains the recurring line "But hold the tomatoes and the cucumbers, please!", sung by Larry, who himself is a cucumber.
  • A Twitter post shows Larry the cucumber with cucumbers on his eyes. It got to the point where Phil Vischer commented on the image and said that it was not right for Larry to do this.
  • Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie has The Slap of No Return demonstrated on an non-sentinent pumpkin. In addition, the Japanese dub replaces the "Do you prefer poking or non-poking?" joke with a quip about a vegetarian menu, when the characters themselves are vegetables.
  • In "Celery Night Fever", the caterpillar character Stix chops vegetables up and flings them into his vegetable customers' mouths during the song "Feel The Beat".
• This trope is parodied and taken to its only logical extreme in an episode of Futurama. At a veterinarian's office, there is a man stroking a purring cat. The camera pans, showing a Cat Girl (presumed to be alien) petting a cat-sized human, also purring. In a later episode, we see that same Cat Girl and her pet human as contestants in a pet show.
• Most kid's series that feature anthropomorphic animals confront the 'time to get a pet' Life Lesson at some point. Usually with interesting results, as in an episode of Franklin that had our young turtle hero (who is already bestest buddies with a bear and a fox) contemplating getting a kitten.
  • Franklin owns a pet goldfish, and a puppy he finds in one episode belongs to a marmot. Even more confusing is that they've shown both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic animals of the same species - a normal squirrel and normal possums appear in "Franklin is Lost", while an anthropomorphic squirrel appears in "Big Brother Franklin", and anthropomorphic possums appear in "Franklin Goes to Day Camp" and "Franklin's Rival".
• Kipper the Dog is made of this trope:
  • There seems to be no dividing line between animals that are and aren't sapient. The main characters are basically anthropomorphic. The main character has a mouse in his house that can talk and play with him, but otherwise lives as a normal mouse. Another character's aunt has a parrot that can talk fluently, but obviously isn't sapient. And at various points characters have interactions with pet birds, hamsters, and wild hedgehogs that are essentially normal animals. Naming is also weird in this show, with Kipper (a dog), Arnold (a pig), Pig (a pig), and Tiger (a dog).
  • One episode has Kipper finding a gosling, and looking in a book to figure out what it is. One set of animals in the book is a non-anthropomorphic pig and piglet... yet his aforementioned friends, Pig and Arnold, are anthropomorphic pigs.
• Camp Lazlo has several instances of this:
  • In one episode, Clam attempts to insult the Squirrel Scouts by calling them "animals." This results in awkward silence, because after all, they are animals, so he adjusts his insult to "ugly animals".
  • At the end of an episode with all the Bean Scouts partaking in meat hot dogs, Raj actually brings up the question of what the hot dogs are made of, to the revulsion of all.
  • Interestingly, no one bats an eye at Lumpus (a moose) and his love of meat, except when he attempted to eat a bird that was still alive.
  • Everyone freaks when Lazlo brings a bear into camp, despite the fact that one of the campers is a bear, who is hiding with the rest of the campers. This is never addressed. Granted, the wild bear had the size and look of an actual grizzly, and the camper looked more like a teddy bear, but still...
  • In the parade episode, the announcer (a water buffalo) comments on Miss Prickly Pine's beautiful yak skin dress, made from real yak skin.
  • Santa Claus is featured in the Christmas Episode, and instead of being a Funny Animal like everyone else, he instead looks like a normal human being. He's in fact the only human or human-looking character we see in the entire series.
  • In an episode where Raj becomes a Friend to Bugs, the other campers are not pleased at this, including Chip and Skip, who are both dung beetles. When Raj points out Chip and Skip are bugs, the two insist that they're not bugs, but "vermin".
• WordWorld is just weird overall (technically, all the characters are talking words) but it's worth a mention here because all of the major animal characters, down to the Ant, can speak and act like people — except for one, who, like in most cases of this, is the dog. There are also a few minor characters including non-talking sea creatures and a cow who is basically a Living Prop.
• Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks:
  • The entire cast is made up of anthropomorphic farm animals. However, the sheep act like normal sheep. Except when they are alone, in which case they can talk to one another.
  • Fernando had a pet fish at one point.
• Little Bear features a world in which everything from bears and cats to chickens, ducks, and a snake are capable of speaking and behaving like human beings. Yet Tutu, the pet dog of Emily (one of only two human characters on the show) is a regular, non-anthropomorphic dog. In one episode, it's mentioned as an aside that the reason we can't understand Tutu isn't that she can't talk, it's just that she speaks French. Of course, that doesn't actually explain why "French" sounds more like the noises a dog would make, or why she behaves largely like a pet dog...
• In Jim Henson's animated/Muppet show Dog City, only two species, cats and dogs, are shown to be anthropomorphic, possibly justifying the rare appearances of other non-intelligent animals (mostly small birds and such).
• If you don't mind us extending this to robots, in Transformers, the living vehicle-robots and real vehicles sometimes fall into this trope. Side Burn's love for little red (non-living) sports cars is best not thought about too long or too hard.
  • Transformers: Animated has even more Furry Confusion. To Wit, there seems to be no dividing line between robots that are and aren't sentient. The Cybertronians are sentient. The Dinobots were originally non-sentient theme park attractions. Soundwave was originally non sentient as well, as were the Constructicons and Wreck-Gar. And let's not forget Tutor bot and Sparkplug.
  • Let us totally forget the whole lesbian tiger thing in Beast Wars.
• Long-forgotten prime-time animated series Calvin and the Colonel (1961-1962) did this. In one episode, where the duo gets a job running a cloakroom (where they store coats from guests at a nightclub), one man requests a silver fox coat, which the Colonel (a fox himself) retrieves, not caring that he's holding a lifeless skin of someone his own species.
• Wonder Pets! avoided this up until the later episodes. In one, the three pets decided to take a vacation and get summer jobs at the circus. Now the Pets are regular animals that talk and wear little superhero suits when humans aren't around. Any other animals in the show are fairly normal aside from talking. However, at the circus, the ringmaster was a penguin, the animals were riding a normal sized train in front of a school (like humans wouldn't notice that). Even more confusing is that the audience members were all wild animals, but dressed in clothing. You may think that this indicates that all the "humans" in the show (who are never actually seen) are actually animals that treat smaller animals as pets — but it was explicitly said in early episodes that the humans were humans.
• There was a show about an Unusually Uninteresting circus run by animals, the early Disney Channel puppet show Dumbo's Circus. All the members of the Circus were Humanoid Animals, except for Dumbo himself (who went on all fours but at least got to talk and wear clothing). All the towns the Circus visited were populated by humans. All the animals outside the Circus acted more or less normal aside from talking.
• My Little Pony has had this to varying degrees over its history.
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In general, the Dream Valley ponies live far from humans, while Megan and her siblings live where everything is "normal". Megan's family even has a non-talking, miniature horse named TJ — however, TJ can understand his friends' antics well enough to laugh at them. Oh, and he can laugh. In "The Magic Coins, Part 2", when the heroes reach Niblik's house, they find a human prince already there and trying to purchase passage... and the prince's steed, a regular-sized, regularly-proportioned horse with a unicorn horn and no evident ability to speak. Nobody comments on this.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Applejack has Winona, a sheepdog who behaves just like a regular (albeit well-trained) animal. In a later episode, we are introduced to the Diamond Dogs, anthropomorphic creatures that speak, walk on two legs, and wear clothing. To be fair, the Diamond Dogs are essentially canine-looking trolls with a Punny Name.
    • If horse-drawn carriages get brought up, expect a good dose of Lampshade Hanging, such as in "Over a Barrel" ("Okay, your turn to pull.""Aw, but we just switched!") and "The Best Night Ever" (Twilight enchants a few mice to turn into full-grown horses to pull their carriage, said mice run off... and Rarity solves the problem by simply asking her neighbors to pull). Basically, horse-drawn carriages are shown as the pony equivalent of rickshaws, even acting as a taxi service.
    • The animals Applejack and family herd hit this fairly often. Early on, we see her herding stampeding cows... who turn out to actually be a panicked mob she was running crowd control on (with a lasso and sheepdog). Later, we see her herding sheep into a pen... who then comment that she could have just asked.
    • As a standard rule, practically every animal appears to be sentient and sapient, although only a subset is shown to be capable of speech (mostly equines, bovines, and magical creatures); other animals, including other ungulates, are consistently depicted as regular if clever animals. Angel Bunny is intelligent, bad-mannered and capable of bossing around Fluttershy (admittedly not a difficult feat), Owloysious is a capable assistant librarian, and the animals in "May the Best Pet Win" are sufficiently self-aware to ignore their natural behaviors and try for the pet job.
    • My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) introduces Funny Animal birds and cats into the universe. Non-anthropomorphic birds exist and Rarity owns a pet cat.
    • My Little Pony: Best Gift Ever features sapient reindeer that can use magic, in contrast to the other deer seen in the show which are non-sapient animals. The IDW comics, however, do feature sapient deer, just adding to the confusion.
• Averted in Help! I'm a Fish. The only fish that have anthropomorphic traits are either fish that have been exposed to the "Anti-Fish" potion, or humans who have been exposed to the "Fish" potion. Of course, there are only three humans that are exposed to the "Fish" potion — and it seems that the "sapient" fish have no problem with enslaving their own kind, and in the case of Shark, eating any fish, "anthropomorphized" or not.
• Played with in D'Myna Leagues, where after losing a high stakes arcade game to an anthropormoprhic Raccoon, they have a rematch playing a Davy Crocket-themed game. The Raccoon scoffs at the childish game, and agrees to play, but suffers a nervous breakdown when he see the Raccoon-skin hats the player characters wear.
• The classic BRB International animated adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days, Around the World with Willy Fog, avoids this in some interesting ways. For starting, all animals are either sapient and anthropomorphic or neither. All the animals that are sapient are mammals and most (with very few exceptions) are rodents, carnivores, pigs and primates, which are never non sapient (and so there are no pet dogs or cats or any known equivalent). Horses, camels and elephants are never sapient and are used for transport.
• In Thomas & Friends, the depiction of any rolling stock or non-rail vehicles will vary widely. Some of them are sentient, while others are not.
• In the show Zula Patrol, every single celestial body (stars, planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets, nebulae, galaxies, black holes, etc.) can talk to the main characters, but for some reason their homeworld doesn't.
• The Amazing World of Gumball takes place in a world where Everything Talks, even down to the rocks and trees in their world. However there are non-anthropomorphic objects coexisting with some of the characters (who are occasionally otherwise inanimate objects), such as the policeman (an anthropomorphic donut) and non-anthro donuts. Said anthropomorphic creature or their ancestors used to be non-anthropomorphic.
  • This is actually baked into the setting. Darwin was the family pet until he spontaneously grew legs and attained sapience one day.
  • Lampshade hung in "The World," where living food is shown to be eaten by characters.
  • Played for Laughs in "The Nest", when Gumball (a cat) is scratched by a non-anthro cat and remarks "And that is why I am not a cat person", much to Darwin's confusion.
  • Similarly, "The Roots" has a scene where Gumball and his mother (also a cat) visit a pet store and find non-anthro (live-action) cats for sale.
    Nicole: I know sweetie. Don't think about it too much.
  • One episode centers around Darwin's self-consciousness over constantly eating potato-based foods in front of his friend Idaho, who is an anthropomorphic potato. When Idaho is eventually asked for his opinion on the matter, he Hand Waves it away saying he's not the "same kind" of potato, then suggests it's Fantastic Racism to even raise this.
• As a primarily educational cartoon, The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog often features a real animal in each episode along with its anthropomorphic cast. For example, one episode's mystery involved a non-anthro mockingbird imitating the anthropomorphic Cynthia. Alfred then explains that mockingbirds can imitate other types of birds.
  • Alfred Hedgehog is especially confusing with this since they have 3 types of animals. -Anthros; -Animals that can speak and are human minded but don't wear clothes, walk on four legs and may be predators, preferring to live in the forests than modern civilization; -And normal animals.
  • Furthermore, one regular cast member is a non-anthro moose that speaks.
• The cats from Slacker Cats walk on their back legs and talk but the tiger who escaped from the zoo doesn't. They say it's because he's more in touch with nature than they are.
• Quick Draw McGraw, who is a talking bipedal clothes wearing horse/cowboy encounters normal 4 legged horses pulling stage coaches and being ridden by other characters.
• One episode of The Angry Beavers, "Kreature Komforts", had the brothers received a visit from their wild cousin, who happens to be a photo-realistic beaver that acts like a non-sentient animal. Impressed by his simplistic life, the beavers give up their possessions, stop bathing, and remake their home to look like an actual beaver dam. However, they end up using their modern possessions without one knowing the other until they decide to live as they did before. Subverted in the end where it's revealed that their cousin may not be as he seems, as his photo-realistic dam grows robotic legs and marches off to the distance.
• Adventure Time goes all over the place with this trope, starring a human boy (who may or may not be the Last of His Kind) and his adoptive brother, a talking dog, in a world where everything from candy to mountains can be anthropomorphic, but sometimes isn't. (For example, Marceline has a zombie dog who seems completely canine, while Finn had to ask if Lumpy Space Princess was living with talking or non-talking wolves.) Justified because the series is supposed to take place a millennium After the End, when a combination of magic and nuclear radiation has completely transformed the rebuilt world.
• Catdog is a humongous offender of this, with both anthropomorphic and realistic animals (as well as one strange human like character ironically named Sunshine) living together without complaint. One episode had Cat try to make Dog behave with a dog leash, lying that there was a new leash law and that he would be taken to the dog pound if he didn't act like a good dog. He then takes him to a Dog Park where he tries to blend in with the other dog walking residents, including an ordinary human, a bat, and another two legged, fully clothed dog. In another episode, Cat fails to resist temptation and eats Dog's pet goldfish, Veronica, that he won at a fair. When he goes inside Dog's mouth to retrieve Veronica without Dog's notice, he finds it has grown enough to tower over him (their stomach is shown to be Bigger on the Inside), has learned to speak, and is a male (although cat always knew it was a boy).
• Rupert: Similar to Little Bear, Rubert is a humanistic white bear who wears clothes and lives in a house with his parents. He lives in a world populated by animal people, ordinary (yet still sentient and talking) animals, and humans, making this Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My! This is in addition to sentient objects such as a scarecrow (whom only Rubert knows is alive) and a cuckoo bird from a clock in one episode. And let's not talk about the mythical beings like unicorns, deities, and monsters.
• An early episode of the 1983 Alvin and the Chipmunks series featured Alvin switching places with a wild chipmunk, even dressing it in his clothes; since 1961 and The Alvin Show, the Chipmunks had been stylized into their anthropomorphic state, however, this wild chipmunk resembled Alvin in both appearance and size (roughly four feet, according to franchise co-owner Ross Bagdasarian, Jr.). Alvin is captured by a woodsman who doesn't seem to find it odd that a chipmunk can talk, while Dave, Simon, and Theodore are curious over Alvin's sudden animalistic behavior.
  • Even though The Chipettes are chipmunks as well, they are a lot more anatomically correct compared Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, possessing human-like hair on their heads, and smooth human-like skin; they are even depicted with these features (as well as breasts) during imagine spots where they are matured as adults. It should also be noted that these characters do not have tails... Alvin, Simon, and Theodore's biological mother on the other hand, Vinny, not only has human-like hair on her had, but also body fur, breasts AND a tail.
  • In a few episodes of The Alvin Show, Theodore had a pet parakeet named George. Also in another episode, Dave and the boys go on a camping trip, where Alvin encounters a non-anthropomorphic bear.
  • In some cases, some animal characters appearing within the 80s Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon are depicted as both anthropomorphic such as "Uncle" Harry, and non-anthropomorphic; in the latter case, The Chipmunks later adopted a puppy named Lily (this after a stray kitten they found and named Cookie Chomper III was hit by a car).
    • In one episode, Simon and Theodore get back at Alvin for playing pranks on them by having him believe Theodore is transforming into a weredog (after Alvin tricked Theodore into a dog biscuit); Theodore even goes so far as to crawl on his hands and knees. Later in the same episode, Simon has Alvin dress as a dog and recite an incantation to break the spell, only to be caught by the dog catcher, who is surprised, but somehow convinced that a dog can talk.
    • On that same token, in Alvin and The Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman, Theodore is bitten by their new neighbor, Mr. Talbot, who becomes a werewolf by night, causing Theodore to turn into a weremunk, but at any given moment; when consulting with a television psychic, she explains that being a chipmunk, Theodore is already naturally closer to animalistic behavior, to which Alvin asks Simon, "Do we resent that?"
  • It has also never been confirmed or denied that The Chipmunks are vegetarians. On The Alvin Show, Theodore orders hamburgers from hotel room service, but is later reminded by Dave that he doesn't eat meat in Alvin and The Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman. Throughout the 80s cartoon, Theodore has been seen at least once making a huge sandwich that appears to have lunch meat on it. However, Alvin has been seen eating a salad for lunch once.
  • The live-action movies seem to give nods to all this, with The Chipmunks being portrayed as normal (CGI) chipmunks that can somehow talk, sing, dance, and generally act like humans. However, they still retain chipmunk behavior, such as running on all fours when in a hurry or storing away food, a habit they eventually broke. Also, every time someone mentions another member of the rodent family in their presence, they grow a bit hostile. For example, when Dave tried to explain that leaving food out would attract rodents, he tapered off under their withering glares and covered himself by clarifying "bad, non-talking rodents."
• In the MGM short "Barney's Hungry Cousin", Barney Bear (a talking bear who wears clothes) tries to protect his picnic from a forest bear (a silent bear who is naked). Both are bipedal, however.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), Raphael has a pet tortoise called Spike. It's not quite as bad as the other examples though, due to Raphael and his brothers originally being regular turtles until they were accidentally mutated, but it's still a tad strange.
• In Alfred J. Kwak, there's several occurrences of regular animals appearing alongside the anthropomorphic ones; noticeably, the circus has trained horses, as well as an anthropomorphic horse who's the resident human trainer.
• Eek! The Cat is a pet to a human family, but he's bipedal, he can talk, and most other humans treat him like he's a person. It's not quite made clear whether his girlfriend Annabelle is a pet herself. To further confuse matters, Annabelle has a pet of her own, Sharky the Sharkdog.
• Scrappy-Doo may be an inversion. While Scooby-Doo normally walks on four paws and doesn't seem to really speak clearly (just makes dog sounds that resemble human words), Scrappy walks on two paws, speaks perfect English, and acts, thinks and interacts like a human.
  • In a later series we find out that talking, intelligent animals are a known and accepted part of society, but still seem to be considered animals, legally. Scooby actually strikes up a relationship with a normal dog.
    • That normal dog also turns out to be an anicent goddess posessing the form of a small dog, so not exactly normal, but that aside, she was normal at the time so the point still stands!
• Piggsburg Pigs!! shows a city inhabited by anthropomorphic pigs (and two wolves). The city is located behind “the world’s largest pigs farm” (which is itself creepy if you think about it, almost like having Tel Aviv behind Auschwitz) and the Monsters of the Week come from the Forbidden Zone and are mostly humanoids or evil humans. In this case, at least, all pet animals seem to be always chickens or some other farm bird that normally acts like dogs.
• Apple & Onion seems aggressively indifferent to the trope, with all the food-people in A&O universe selling and eating food, even the foods that they themselves are, without attempting to hide the fact. The short "Pizza Party" has the duo briefly worried about eating pizza in front of Pizza, only for Pizza to declare "I love pizza! It's what I is!"
• Somewhat confusingly, one scene in the Wallace & Gromit short film The Wrong Trousers has Wallace telling the new boarder at his flat that he doesn't allow pets in the house. Said boarder is an intelligent penguin, while Wallace's other flat-mate is Gromit, an intelligent dog. But in a world of intelligent animals fully capable of living alongside humans as equals, pets are still apparently a thing.
• In the somewhat obscure French cartoon Les Minijusticiers (known in the United States as "The MiniMighty Kids"), based on the comic of the same name, all the characters are anthropomorphic animals that speak, yet they coexist with non-sapient, normal animals, and can also keep them as pets and in zoos, which makes for some good Fridge Horror material.
• The main cast of Maisy is a mouse, a chicken, an alligator, an elephant and a squirrel. But there's also an installment where Maisy visits a farm with animals, including chickens, another where a rabbit follows her home into her house and plenty of birds flitting about in the sky. It seems it's not unusual for random non-sapient animals to follow Maisy into her home, as there's another episode with a ginger cat that does so.
• Regular Show features several human-size anthro characters, most notably the lead characters Mordecai the bluejay and Rigby the raccoon. However, it also features plenty of animals that don't talk and are regular-sized, most notably other birds such as ducks and geese. Unlike most shows though, the show is aware of and intentionally plays with this trope. To name one such example, in an early episode, Mordecai and Rigby are praised for their 'costumes' at a party, to which they express confusion, yet Rigby is referred to as a 'man' by other characters on a number of occasions. Rigby is the only such animal character in the show to even act like a non-human by instinct, and when he does act like a raccoon (such as eating food out the garbage), Mordecai criticises him for being lame and unnecessary. It should be noted that most of the characters are not exactly human, and most of the outright human characters are enemies, and that the show operates on Rule of Funny.
• In the Mickey Mouse cartoon "Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip," Pete claims he once had a cat and imitates a cat's loud meowing to make Pluto bark and reveal himself (because Pluto was hidden in Mickey's suitcase since dogs weren't allowed on the train). The thing that makes this Furry Confusion is that Pete is originally supposed to be a cat himself.
• In "What's the Funny Little Creature in the Pond" on Guess with Jess, Jess encounters said funny little creature in Horace's pond, which he names Freddy. It transpires that it's a tadpole, which later grows into a frog. Thing is, Horace is a frog too, a talking frog, but Freddy only ribbits, even after becoming a fully-grown frog.
• Sheriff Callie's Wild West is chockfull of this. The cast is made of anthro talking animals living in a Wild West setting, the titular Callie being a cat herself, yet several non-anthro, non sentient creatures show up constantly. Callie owns a horse named Sparky, Peck uses a mule as his mount, and so on. Bafflingly enough, several of the non anthro animals are of the same species that the characters themselves.
• In Buzz Bumble, Joe is a fly and being The Pig-Pen he often has much smaller flies buzzing around him.
• The Secret of Mulan is a mockbuster of Mulan where all the characters are anthropomorphic insects and mammals. However, they use normal insects and mammals as either weapons or mounts.
• Danger Mouse (2015):
  • In the episode "Big Penfold" Prof. Squawkencluck, an anthropomorphic chicken, appears in the same scene as a non-anthropomorphic one and doesn't seem to be bothered that Danger Mouse is eating fried eggs.
  • A recurring character named Big Mike sells chicken and probably ham pies at his pie stall.
  • The episode "Nero Come Home" has Baron Greenback unleashing a soundwave that turns pets evil, so there are lots of appearances by non-anthro animals. Most bizarrely, the Queen — who in Danger Mouse is a corgi as a reference to Queen Elizabeth having pet corgis — turns out, inevitably, to have pet corgis.
  • Lampshaded in "Crouching Hamster, Hidden Wagon", in which the villain claims to be taking revenge on behalf of farm animals who are "forced to toil in the fields, while other animals stand on their hind legs, and hog all the clothes and penthouse accommodation!"
  • Anthropomorphic dogs and non-anthropomorphic dogs are known to exist in the unvierse. Lampshaded in the "Mouse Fall" two-parter; Dawn, an anthropomorphic poodle, asks her father Augustus P. Crumhorn IV, an anthropomorphic Doberman Pinscher, for a pet puppy.
• A minor example of this is featured in Jackie Chan Adventures, as Shendu, an anthropomorphic and intelligent dragon capable of speech, commands hordes of non-anthropomorphic dragons who cannot speak and behave in a rather bestial manner. Although Shendu may not technically count as a real dragon, as he's explicitly referred to as a demon.

• Max and Ruby takes place in a World of Funny Animals, or more specifically one full of Funny Animal rabbits. Despite this, several of Ruby's dolls are of humans.
• In TaleSpin a series about an anthropomorphic World of Funny Animals several episodes deal with the main characters transporting other non-anthropomorphic animals including birds and kangaroos. One episode even have the main characters actually buying a pig.
• In Babar, a show about literal Civilized Animals making a human-like society, Lady Rataxes (a rhino) has a pet warthog. The weirdest part is that a warthog ambassador can be seen in some episodes.
• One Drawn Together gag that showed Spanky Ham's job as a hostage negotiator parodied this. The scene had Pluto taking Goofy hostage, demanding to be treated as another antropomorph, with clothes, a home, a job etc. In true DT fashion, Pluto ended up shooting Goofy and then killing himself.
• DuckTales (2017)
  • The opening scene involves a non-anthropomorphic seagull getting chased off by various bird-like people, including one who looks like a seagull.
  • An in-universe confusion happens in season 3, when former moon denizen Penumbra has a Double Take in confusion watching Webby and Dewey feed actual ducks, and then horror when Dewey decides to eat some of the popcorn they were feeding them with. According to Word of God, the staff had been trying to do this joke for quite a while.
• In Muppet Babies (2018), the nursery is home to a baby frog, pig, bear and penguin, who are all treated like people, but the three baby chicks live in a chicken coop and go to the vet (even weirder, one of them's Baby Camilla).
• Peppa Pig:
  • The episode "The Zoo", in which a class of kids that includes a giraffe, an elephant and a zebra, with a gazelle teacher, go to the zoo. A running gag is Madame Gazelle mistaking the zookeepers (Mr. Lion, Mrs. Crocodile, and Mr. Giraffe — Gerald's dad) for animals that have escaped.
  • In one episode, there was a polar bear featured in the boat. In season 7, the character of Penny Polar Bear was introduced
• In The Great Santa Claus Caper, the villain shows off his unbreakable toy-preservation film on a doll. Raggedy Ann tearfully protests that it keeps you from cuddling and loving it, while Raggedy Andy dismisses it as a "dumb ol' doll". This would not be unusual - except that Raggedy Ann and Andy are dolls themselves.
• Betty Boop originated as a Humanoid Female Animal girlfriend for the studio's Everyman character, a dog named Bimbo. They continued to be presented as a couple after Betty's canine features were phased out, until The Hays Code balked at the Interspecies Romance implications and Bimbo was cut from the series. A year later, Betty obtained a new canine sidekick in the form of a non-anthropomorphic pet dog, Pudgy; although Pudgy and Bimbo never overlapped, they would subsequently appear together in merchandise and in the 2016 comic book published by Dynamite.
• In DuckTales (1987), Circe is an anthro pig. She still has her standard Forced Transformation of turning people into non-anthro pigs, and this even happens to her at the end of the episode.
• Over the Garden Wall is about two boys and their pet frog who are Trapped in Another World. Animals in the Unknown all seem amplified compared to our world: many wear clothes and go to school, and some can talk, but without explanation why others don't. Meanwhile, the frog slowly becomes more humanlike himself as time goes on: by episode six he can stand upright and sing.
• In the Rosie And Ruff In Puppydog Tales episode "Take Care of Pets", Rosie (who happens to be an anthropomorphic dog) adopts a non-anthropomorphic stray.
• This runs rampant in Tuca & Bertie: Tuca and her aunt Tallulah are both toucans, but the latter has pet birds. Tallulah's butler is a Dog Face who has pet dogs. Draca is a Plant Person who has pet turtles.
• Let's Go Luna!: Although Carmen and her mother Maria are anthro butterflies, regular butterflies are seen in a few episodes, like "Melvini Madness".
• The DePatie-Freleng Enterprises cartoon, The Oddball Couple, has Spiffy and Fleabag, respectively an anthro cat and dog, who co-exist with regular cats and dogs. Confusingly, there is an episode where Spiffy is shown to be allergic to cats.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Recurring character Drupe is a living strawberry person, and is suitably horrified in "Plazalympics" when she sees Brandon eating an ordinary strawberry.
• Danger Rangers has an episode about teaching proper dog care and how to safely approach a dog.....but several of the characters are anthro dogs.
• Pocoyo: In "Wackily Ever After", Pato the duck briefly adopts a canary. The Narrator is dumbfounded by this.
• In Bluey, all of the characters are anthropomorphic dogs who generally act like humans except for the occasional Furry Reminder, but Socks, up until "Christmas Swim" acted like a normal puppy would. It could be implied that this is because Socks is only 1, but in "Baby Race" we see a flashback of Bluey and all her friends as babies and they acted like normal human babies.
  • In "Bumpy and the Wise Old Wolfhound", Bluey's character says she wants to have a puppy, when Bluey herself is a dog.
  • Bandit starts wildly barking when playing an annoying neighbor, much to Chili’s confusion.
    Chili: He’s… he’s… I don’t know what he’s doing!

---