Aardvark Trunks

This is some major Aard-tistic License here.

Anteaters and aardvarks are somewhat common in fiction while other ant-eating mammals such as echidnas and pangolins are more rarely seen. Due to their large, vacuum-shaped snouts resembling the trunk of an elephant, their snouts are often depicted as much more flexible than they are in Real Life. Real snouts are bony, unlike the boneless, muscle-filled trunk of an elephant, and thus cannot be flexed around like an elephant's trunk.^note Ironically in the case of aardvarks, they actually are related to elephants, both being in the clade Afrotheria. To these ends the tip of the aardvark snout is muscular and can move, but nowhere near to the trunk-like extent frequently seen in fictitious media.

This depiction comes in different styles for the different kinds of ant-eating mammals:

• Anteaters are sometimes portrayed as having their mouths at the base of the snout rather than at the tip, with the snout acting as a nose. This is usually to give the animal more facial expressions. Alternatively, even if the mouth is at the tip of the snout, it is still much more expressible than it should be.
• Aardvarks are usually a victim to the Informed Species trope, often resembling anteaters more than aardvarks; the two species almost always being treated as synonymous. They are often depicted as having snouts pointing down like anteaters, rather than straight out with pig-like noses at the tip.
• Echidnas, sometimes called "spiny anteaters", can have either long, curved beaks or short, straight ones, depending on the subspecies. Like anteaters, they may be depicted as having mouths at the base of their beaks rather than the tip.
• Pangolins, sometimes called "scaly anteaters", have similar mouths to anteaters (albeit a bit shorter) and therefore tend to suffer the same treatment as the other ant-eating mammals.

It should be mentioned that occasionally, they are erroneously shown sucking up ants rather than slurping them. This is also false, as sucking ants from an anthill would mean sucking the dirt too, which real ant-eating mammals avoid. And while many of these animals lack teeth in real life ^note Aardvarks have teeth, but no incisors or canines, they are often given teeth in fiction to make them even more expressive.

Sub-Trope of Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying and Funny Animal Anatomy. Compare Mouthy Bird and sometimes Clamshells as Mouths for other instances of an animal's solid mouth being more expressive than usual.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Princess Tutu: Anteaterina's snout is rather expressive, changing position from being straight from her face to rather droopy.

Comic Books

• Boner's Ark: Arnie has a mouth behind his pig-like nose.
• Cerebus the Aardvark: When the comic started, Cerebus had a long snout with a somewhat pig-like nose that was the same width as his snout. As the comic progressed and Sim's art improved, his snout shortened and the nose broadened, becoming more round and completely obscuring his snout if seen from the front. He also has two mouths, one on each side of his head just behind his snout. Cirin and Suenteus Po, the two other aardvarks that appear in the story, have similar mouth/snout arrangements but their snouts are more tapered and their noses aren't as wide as Cerebus' is.

Comic Strips

• Anteaters in B.C. appear to have two mouths, with one realistically at the tip of the snout (where the tongue is shot from) and another at the base.

Film — Animated

• Ice Age: There is a creature that is identified as an aardvark, but though it has the ears of an aardvark, it has the bushy tail and coloration of a giant anteater, and its snout is weirdly elongated to be reminiscent of an anteater (not an aardvark), but that animal would have a tiny mouth at the tip of its snout, whereas the cartoon critter has its mouth at the base.
• Over the Moon: Gobi the pangolin looks more like a bear at first glance due to how wide his nose and mouth are drawn.
• Charlie the Anteater in Rio 2 seems to have more of a flexible tongue. He is correctly portrayed as having a long tongue just like real anteaters. However, there is still some Artistic License – Biology involved, as he is portrayed as having an Overly-Long Tongue that is sometimes shown stretching to his feet. He also suffers a lot of Tongue Trauma throughout the movie by Nigel.
• The 2016 Belgium film Robinson Crusoe ^note (or The Wild Life in its North American release) features both a pangolin (named Pango) and an echidna (named Epi). For the most part, Pango's design is fairly accurate, but Epi's snout looks more like a nose with a mouth underneath.

Literature

• In the first Arthur book, Arthur the aardvark had a long nose but he looked more like a brown tapir (or a giant anteater, without the stripes or the plumes of hair on the tail) than an aardvark, with a medium-sized pig-like snout pointing downward. In the second book, he had a long face with his mouth at the end of it (but not an accurate snout). In following books, his nose was gradually shortened until in his later design (and in the animated series) Arthur and his family had absolutely no snouts at all, making them not even look like aardvarks. Awkwardly, said first book was entitled Arthur's Nose, in which Arthur faces bullying for his long nose and learns to accept himself as he is, making for a rather Broken Aesop.

Puppet Shows

• It's a Big Big World: Bob is a tamandua (an arboreal species of anteater) whose mouth is at the base of his snout.

Toys

• Star Monsters: Hanako has a long snout due to an anteater hitting the star it formed from with its snout.

Video Games

• Animal Crossing: The snouts of all anteater villagers wiggle when they talk.
• Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course: A massive anteater is one of the opponents faced in the level "Bootlegger Boogie". His mouth is placed at the base of the snout rather than at the tip, making the snout a trunk of sorts. Despite this, the tip of the snout still has a tongue come out of it, making him essentially have two mouths. As if that wasn't weird enough, in the anteater's game over quote, he still refers to his trunk as a "nose." This is also true of the villainous anteater in "Ants in the Plants" (see the Western Animation section), which the anteater's design seems to have been based on.
• Rampage: Total Destruction: Icky is a giant echidna. However, his snout looks more like a pig's than an echidna's.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Knuckles the echidna appears to be a strange inversion of this trope. Rather than having the beak his species is known for, he instead has a pointed snout with a black nose and a mouth with sharp teeth underneath, resembling a dog more than an echidna.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends: Sniffles the anteater has a very expressive mouth at the tip of his trunk. Additionally, his trunk was originally very long and droopy but later shortened, though is still somewhat flexible. A few episodes have even shown that his trunk is hollow and he has another pair of jaws at the base of his skull, pushing this trope even further.

Web Original

• In Serina the noot alludes to this trope, being an anteater-like animal which a movable, trunk-like snout. This is because it is actually a member of a highly aberrant canary lineage that developed facial tentacles, so the snout is pretty much all muscle.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The episode "Beyond The Grotto" introduces the alternate selves of several characters. The alternate of Tree Trunks the elephant? Bush Roots the anteater, who looks pretty much like an elephant with smaller ears and a bushy tail.
• Almost Naked Animals: Anteater has his mouth at the base of his snout rather than the tip. His snout, however, is usually straight, though he sometimes uses it like a trunk.
• The Ant and the Aardvark: The titular Aardvark looks more like an anteater with his mouth at the end of his snout, and even then, it's super flexible and he usually tries to eat Ant by sucking him rather than slurping him up. More prominent in Pink Panther and Pals, where the Aardvark's snout is curved upwards like an elephant trunk.
• Around the World with Willy Fog zig-zags this trope. The conductor on the train which takes the travelers on the first leg of their journey across India is an anteater whose snout is drawn fairly realistically, with a small mouth at the tip. However, while he's talking, both the tip and the base of his snout move, making it look as though he has two mouths, one at either end of his snout.
• Bubble Guppies: The anteater from the episode "Bring on the Bugs" has his mouth in the correct place, but also displays a flexible snout.
• The Casagrandes: In "How To Train Your Carl", an anteater at the zoo is shown with a flexible trunk, sucking up ants and making the same trumpeting noise as the elephant it speaks with.
• The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!: One episode has a giant anteater with his mouth at the base of his snout.
• Color Classics: The anteater in "Ants in the Plants" has a trunk that looks and functions very much like an elephant's, and it is even able to stretch and bend through the ant tunnels.
• Doki: Oto is a lesser anteater with the accurate body markings of one, although he has yellow fur and, of course, a mouth at the base of his snout.
• A Take That! variant. In the Family Guy episode "Peterotica", Renée Zellweger's face is drawn like an anteater's snout and she's seen sucking down ants.
• George of the Jungle (2007): In the episode "L'il Orphan Anteater'', George adopts a baby anteater with an expressive trunk that Shep the elephant grows jealous over.
• Harvey Beaks: The episode "The Almighty Foo" introduces Easy, an anteater exterminator with his mouth at the base of his snout.
• The Koala Brothers: Sammy the echidna has a wide smiling mouth below his beak, making it more like a nose.
• Kung Fu Panda:
  • The Dragon Knight: Queen Zuma's giant anteater guards have snouts that wiggle slightly.
  • Legends of Awesomeness: Sanzu, a villainous pangolin who appears in "Po Picks a Pocket", has a snout tipped with a bulbous dark nose and his mouth at the base, making him resemble a dog.
• Cyril and Cedric Sneer, and Sophia Tutu in The Raccoons are pink aardvarks whose trunks act like noses, with their mouths at the base of their trunks.
• Sonic Boom: Similar to Knuckles, Diane Aardvark is also drawn with a dog's snout rather than that of her own species.
• South Park: The pangolin in "The Pandemic Special" has a short, wide snout, rather than a slightly longer, skinnier snout.
• Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea: Bic and Bac, both pangolins, have mouths underneath their snouts that look like noses. They also have no scales or claws, unlike real-life pangolins.
• The anteater from the Timon & Pumbaa episode "Paraguay Parable" was prone to this, having a flexible trunk with his lips at the end.
• Tiny Toon Adventures has a couple of Inverted examples.
  • From the episode "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny?", Sappy Stanley, an elephant, has his mouth drawn at the tip of his trunk rather than the base, making him resemble an aardvark or anteater.
  • A Perfecto Prep elephant from the episode "The ACME Bowl" also has his mouth at the tip of his trunk.
• The Tom and Jerry Show (1975): In the episode "Termites Plus Two", the titular duo brings in an anteater as one of the ways to dispose of a termite colony. As the anteater sucks up the insects, its snout becomes bloated. Its mouth also briefly moves to the underside of its snout when Tom helps it hold in a sneeze, caused by a feather that the termites were carrying in order to escape.
• Trunk Train has Duda, who is yet another anteater with a misplaced mouth.
• Yin Yang Yo!: The Stink Aardvarks are very elephant-like in appearance, thanks to their flexible trunks.

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