Florida takes
alligators WAHA very seriously.
In fiction, wild animals rarely act the way that they do in real life. Those hilarious
Comic Relief chimpanzees and their hilarious antics? Never once do they get violent, no matter what (they may get mad for the hero's benefit, though). When animals do get mad, they're usually easily calmed down if just given whatever
Mac Guffin is necessary. Is a bear rampaging through town? Just give it some honey and everything will be OK. Being a
Friend To All Living Things can help, but surprisingly often it seems like nearly anyone can calm a wild animal down.
Part of the cause of this is simply that
animal sidekicks are really adorable, but most of the more interesting ones are not of domesticated species, and the only rational way for the hero to get one is if it is from the wild. Taming an adult animal is far more trouble than it's worth. Even taming a baby one never does much for softening its wild instincts.
Note that domesticated means 'genetically altered to meet human needs' Until very recently this mean intentional or unintentional selective breeding. That is why we refer to certain plants as 'domesticated' or 'wild'. Obviously, domesticated wheat is not 'tame' or 'trained' and 'wild' wheat is not going to bite you or run away in fear. A feral housecat is domesticated, but a trained bear is not.
As you'll see below, a depressing number of people think this is
Truth In Television and are apparently under the impression that nature is just a bigger version of
Disneyland. This usually does not end well...
See also
All Animals Are Dogs.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Averted in Wolf's Rain. After finding Kiba asleep near a tree, Tsume's human gang members mistake him for a huge dog and thus try to kill him for food. Kiba is not happy at being surrounded by humans and shows his discontent by tearing out people's throats. Tsume, being another wolf, is the only one strong and fast enough to counter his attacks.
- Azumanga Daioh: The show has a Running Gag in which Sakaki tries to pet a feral cat and is inevitably bitten. It's actually a little surprising she's ever able to get that close in the first place, since feral cats usually run away whenever humans make any concerted movement toward them.
- Azumanga Daioh also uses this trope when Sakaki meets Maya, an Iriomote Cat in Okinawa. In spite of it being a wild, meat-eating beast, Sakaki can pet it, hold it, and eventually takes it home as a pet! This is almost disturbing as Iriomote cats are an endangered species so removing one from the wild for personal purposes is a serious crime indeed. Also, Maya shows signs of violent behaviour, biting Tomo enough to draw large amounts of blood, and this is played for laughs!
- This is more acceptable considering that Sakaki didn't actively seek to take Maya as a pet - he followed her home across hundreds of miles, stowing on ships, and was too weak to move by the time he found her, and she didn't want to betray the poor creature's trust after all he did. Also, Maya doesn't really show any more violent behaviour than a normal housecat (as unrealistic as it probably is); Tomo was being her usual Jerk Ass self, bugging and annoying Maya to the point of retaliation - anyone familiar with cats can tell that this is often Truth In Television, and purely the fault of the human party.
- Maya behaviour seems to follow this trope as a joke. While Maya behaves like a house cat towards Sakaki, the domesticated house cats behave more like wild animals towards her, creating an example and an inversion of this trope at the same time.
Film
- Help! has a zoo tiger that is theoretically man-eating - unless everyone sings Beethoven's Ode to Joy in German. Everyone does, and it never lays a paw on Ringo.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean features a monkey who runs around and helps...usually Barbossa, but he's a bit of a mercenary. As the commentators of the DVDs are quick to tell you, that monkey was not nearly so helpful, friendly, fun, or cute for the filming process and we are seeing only the best bits.
Literature
- In Foundation and Earth, the main characters visit a formerly inhabited planet. When one of them encounters a dog, it takes him quite a while to understand it can be dangerous - and then he spends half a chapter reflecting upon how there is no dangerous fauna (or flora, it seems) after twenty thousand years of the man taking care of the Galaxy.
Real Life
- A very ugly length of fencing was recently erected along the bright green outside walkway of Boston's otherwise very beautiful Custom House
clock tower. This fence had to be put up because too many tourists were trying to -so help me- pet the Peregrine Falcons who nest there almost every year.
- Even more rampant Too Dumb To Live - this troper once saw a bunch of tourists get out of a car driving along the Alaska highway, in hopes of getting closer to a bear — and her three cubs.
- You get this in many national parks, when clueless city folk fail to realize that it's not just the carnivores that are dangerous. This troper thinks the results play out like a scene from Looney Toons: tourist gets out of car to photograph mama elk, mama elk does not appreciate the invasion of her personal space, Hilarity Ensues.
- There are some great warning signs in Yellowstone National Park with images of people getting chased by buffalo.
- Worst of all - a law has been passed in a state of Australia against getting too near a whale carcass — because a group of tourists tried to pet the sharks feeding on one. Guh... buh... muh... *kerboomies*
- Behold, if you will, the
king queen of this trope. When Mama Bear is a lioness, do not mess with her kids.
- If you abruptly stick your hand in a terrarium with a live snake in it, you will get bit. One of this troper's acquaintances proved Too Dumb To Live in this regard with a science teacher's pet ball python, got her mother to press charges against the teacher. It turned out she'd been told, repeatedly, not to handle Monty in the first place.
- Then the mother tried to press charges against the teacher for keeping a venomous snake in the classroom, under the logic that nonvenomous snakes do not bite. The entire family was pretty damn special.
- You haven't lived until you've seen a koala latch onto an American's face, screaming at the top of its lungs.
- Who? The koala or the American?
- Both.
- This troper's Australian friend did the same. Turns out Aussies scream as loud as Yanks.
- An American playing with a koala without the advice and supervision of a care professional is hilarious but understandable in an idiot tourist sort of way, but an Australian? That's just stupid.
Western Animation
- Subverted in an episode of Justice League, when a depowered Superman (transported thousands of years into Earth's future by what was believed to be a Death Ray) is confronted by a pack of post-apocalyptic wolf creatures. He first tries to command them to stand down using all of the typical trained dog orders (stay, sit, heel, etc.), but they don't listen. It's only after he fights them off, kills their Alpha, and makes a coat out of its hide that they finally listen to him (and act much more like domesticated sled dogs, as a result).
