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Good Animals, Evil Animals
aka: Species Coded For Your Convenience

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"When casting a picture with 'good guys' and 'bad guys', these are important considerations. The 'good guys' have to be small, ineffectual, cute, and associated with nonviolence. It doesn't matter if the real animal is that way or not. You are playing off the images in the viewers' subconscious, and if people grew up thinking a certain way that is where you must start. To have a mean and cruel kitten terrorizing a family of nervous, flighty bears is an uphill fight for everybody."

Similar to Animal Jingoism. Also see Animal Stereotypes.

There is a tendency, especially in animated works involving animal characters, often Funny Animals or Talking Animals, to cast characters of a certain species as bad guys and characters of a different species as the good guys.

For example, some animals, like butterflies, dolphins, deer, otters, or pandas are usually portrayed as good, friendly, or nice. Some animals, like snakes, bats, vultures or rats, are usually just portrayed as bad, mean, or evil. As a rule of thumb, though, Herbivores Are Friendly and Predators Are Mean.

This trope is invoked whenever a work attempts to inform the audience who the good guys and who the bad guys are based solely on their species. When Species Coding is used as a metaphor for racism, it becomes Fantastic Racism.

This is different from Animal Jingoism in that here, there may or may not be a natural hatred, and that one side is definitely evil and the other side is definitely good.

Keep in mind that not every animal character in a work is necessarily going to align with the alignment most associated with their species. Aversions do occur and is completely up to the discretion of the individual creator. The examples are not meant to pass judgement on the value of the species listed, but simply to show the species with the alignment most often associated them when species coding is involved.

Not every work will employ species coding and thus alignment of the characters will remain independent of the character's species, leaving the species of each character to be an aesthetic choice rather than a visual cue towards their alignment. These works are not examples and should not be listed.

See also Good Colors, Evil Colors and Dress-Coded for Your Convenience for when you want to do this with Non-Non-Humans. See What Measure Is a Non-Cute?, where the "goodness" of an animal is correlated with its cuteness, and Unpleasant Animal Counterpart, when the "good" and "evil" animals are paired up against each other. Whenever you expect these codes to hold true, but they don't, you may be dealing with a Killer Rabbit. For the circumstances that could have led to this trope, see Good Taming, Evil Taming. For sub-tropes dealing with specific animals, look at the Pleasant Animals Index and the Scary Animals Index.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Beast Saga, being the Spiritual Successor to Battle Beasts/Beastformers (mentioned below) features the good Land Tribe and the evil Sea Tribe. The Land Tribe primarily consists of noble big cats and savanna-dwelling herbivores (there's an elephant, a zebra, etc), while the Sea Tribe is mostly sharks, other threatening fish like a piranha and a manta ray, and a few aquatic mammals and reptiles
    • There are some notable subversions in both tribes, like the good snake and the evil dolphin.
    • The neutral Sky Tribe seems to exist for comedy reasons; its members are mostly cute or non-threatening birds like ducks, parrots, and pigeons.
  • Beast Wars Neo featured mostly-mammalian Cybertrons and evil dinosaur Destrons.
  • Played With the humanoid bird characters in Doraemon: Nobita and the Winged Braves. The heroes and civilians are all species usually portrayed as good (eagles, owls, ducks, ostriches, penguins, pelicans, cranes, etc.) while the antagonists are ones commonly stereotyped as evil (a vulture, a falcon, and crows). Downplayed in that said antagonists are more of Well-Intentioned Extremists that believe humans are a menace to birds, and the vulture receives some sympathy for being shot in the wing and rendered flightless.
  • The Battle Beasts in Transformers: ★Headmasters follow the cold-blooded vs warm-blooded split with reptiles, amphibians and sealife as evil, and warm-blooded species as good. There were a handful of mammalian-or-avian Decepticon Beastformers, though.

    Art 
  • Raphael Rooms: In "Cardinal and Theological Virtues", Fortitude is casually petting her lion companion, one of the few animals brave and noble enough to sit beside courage personified.

    Asian Animation 
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, the goats are good and the wolves are evil. There are a few exceptions; for example, Wolffy's child Wilie is friendly toward the goats despite being a wolf.

    Comic Books 
  • Maus: The cats (Nazis) are bad, and the mice (Jews) are good. There are good and bad Polish pigs. Americans are portrayed as dogs. Other animals appear with varying attributes (British appear as fish, Swedes as reindeer, and a gypsy as a moth). Subverted somewhat, however, in that all Germans are cats, Nazi or otherwise. The nice German lady married to a Jewish mouse is still a striped cat (and their children are mice with tiger-like stripes).
    • The German versus non-German distinction notably breaks down in this panel, where the protagonist mentions how the Nazis tormented other Germans, with a character portrayed simultaneously as both cat and mouse.
  • The comic adaptation of the Thundercats follow the same alignment: felines are good; reptiles, canines, primates and birds are evil.

    Fan Works 
  • Lost World RPG retelling of The Lost World: Jurassic Park set in the Amalgam'verse: The Suchomimus is a docile fish eater who remembers her time around human keepers and comes to the expedition team's aid twice after they help her out of a snare trap. By comparison the Carnotaurus sees the humans as an ideal food source that's too slow to run away and just big enough to be worth hunting, one attacking the team until the Suchomimus fought it off. Later on the more natural, realistic, feathered Deinonychus inevitably helps save the team from the scaly, psychopathic Raptor Attack modified Deinonychus more akin to the movie raptors. Humorously the Herbivores Are Friendly trope is blasted to smithereens. From the Sauropods to the Stegosaurus herd, pretty much all of the large herbivores are extremely aggressive.
  • In Equestria Girls: Dinosapien, Eno is a bird-like, evolved Troodontid who is completely docile around humans despite being the size of a bear; being implied to have known the main character's missing father. A pair of Dromaeosaurid descendants are his species' natural enemy and have zero problem stalking and hunting humans.

    Film — Animated 
  • In The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Rats, Moles, Badgers and Toads are good and Weasels and Stoats are bad.
  • An American Tail: The mice are the good guys, and the cats are mostly bad guys.
  • Played for Drama in The Bad Guys (2022). The gang consists of predator animals that have always been seen as monsters (wolf, snake, tarantula, shark, and piranha), and decided to live up to the stereotypes and become a Caper Crew. They stand in contrast to beloved Governor Diane Foxington (a red fox) and genius philanthropist Professor Marmalade (a guinea pig). While the gang revels in their villainy, deep down, leader Mr. Wolf wishes the world had given him and his friends a chance to see them as anything other than savage monsters. Marmalade is later revealed to be Evil All Along, using his public perception as an inherently good creature to get away with framing the gang for his own crimes. And Diane is revealed to have been a former criminal herself, having lived up to her own species' worst stereotypes before getting sick of the lifestyle.
  • In the animated soccer match sequence of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the yellow team consists of stereotypically mean animals (a lion, a rhino, a warthog, a hyena, a crocodile and a gorilla), while the blue team consists of stereotypically nice ones (a cheetah, an ostrich, a hippo, a kangaroo and an elephant).
  • A Bug's Life: Ants are good. Grasshoppers are bad. A bunch of other insects, such as flies, a ladybug, a mosquito, etc, appear and have their traits used for gags.
  • Cat City: Mice are good, Cats Are Mean, rats are mean but clumsy. Subverted with the bats, who are first menacing, but become friends with one of the protagonists.
  • In Epic (2013), the Leafman heroes ride hummingbirds into battle, while the evil Boggans ride bats or grackles.
  • From Isle of Dogs, followers of the villainous Mayor Koboyashi are shown to ostensibly like cats while the general populace prefers dogs.
  • Inverted in the Soviet-era Russian series Leopold the Cat. A kind, peaceful and artsy Leopold is harassed by two mice bullies, who set traps and perform brutal practical jokes on him. In most cases, they're just a petty nuisance, given that Leopold is several times larger, older and wiser. Having a Jesus level in forgiveness, Leopold occasionally even saves the mice.
  • Played with in The Lion King (1994). The Big Bad is a lion, but his species is generally presented as good. Hyenas, meanwhile, are ostensibly bad guys, but it's because they're being starved to death. Individual hyenas come across as Laughably Evil.
  • Kung Fu Panda:
    • Played with in the first movie, with villainous wolves and crocodiles in an Imagine Spot and rabbits, pigs and ducks for civilians... actually, any species that doesn't have more than two specimens is destined to stand out, for better or worse. The villain, however, is a snow leopard. His motivation is borne out of psychological resentment rather than anything to do with species, and animals tend to pretty much get along.
    • In Kung Fu Panda 2, the main villain is a white peacock, while there are primarily good characters who happen to be a rhinoceros, a crocodile and an ox.
  • Over the Hedge centers around a group of woodland friends that mixes species usually seen in a more negative light (porcupines, possums, a raccoon, and a skunk) and more positive light (a turtle and a squirrel) together. Pets are also shown sympathetically. The only animal that's intimidating or anything is a big black bear that's got every reason to be pissed off (somebody broke into his home, woke him up, and tried to steal his food).
  • In films such as The Pebble and the Penguin and Happy Feet, penguins are usually good guys while leopard seals and skuas, their natural predators, are Always Chaotic Evil.
  • Robin Hood (1973) has foxes, hens, rabbits, owls, mice, cats, dogs and turtles to be good, whilst Prince John is served by wolves, vultures, boars, rhinoceroses, a crocodile and a snake. Lions don't follow the pattern, with King Richard presented as good and Prince John as evil, because they are royalty and so are operating under a different trope.
  • Rock-A-Doodle: Owls are evil to the point of having vampiric weakness to sunlight. All other animals are good. Some of them have obnoxious tenancies, though.
  • The Secret of NIMH and its source novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, averted this for the most part. Rats were both good and bad guys, the owl was terrifying but also wise and helpful if you dared to approach him, and the crow is not at all evil. However, Dragon is a prime example of Cats Are Mean.
  • In the wizard duel scene of The Sword in the Stone, Madam Mim turns mostly into traditionally evil animals like a crocodile, a cat, a fox, a rhinoceros, a snake and a dragon (although an elephant and a chicken are also thrown in the mix). Merlin turns into traditionally good ones like a tortoise, a mouse, a rabbit, a caterpillar and a walrus (the only forms that actually have weapons are a crab and a goat).
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit is an interesting case. While weasels are portrayed as uniformly evil and serve the malicious Big Bad, all other animals are presented as basically good (although some cases very mischievous, but then it's to be expected in a film running on Rule of Funny). An important factor is that all of them in this movie, except for two ancillary real animals (a real horse in the background of the scene where Eddie and Dolores are outside talking and a real dog being walked by a person that are both seen for a few seconds), are animated and supposed to be toons in-universe.
  • Zootopia takes traditional animal stereotypes and plays around with them in a way that subverts them as often as plays them straight. Wolves are threatening but have a crippling obsession with howling, sloths are slow but rather clever, and so on. This turns out to be the whole point of the movie, with attitudes among sentient animals being a stand-in for social bias and prejudice. For the most part, the various characters are flawed but fundamentally good (or, at least, morally grey) and the main story-line involves a situation where predator animals are reverting to their primitive, savage ways. Some exceptions are a particularly trashy weasel, and a gang of criminal sheep (from the Big Bad on down being motivated by lust for power rather than species).

    Film — Live Action 
  • Cats & Dogs: A movie in which cats were evil and try to Take Over the World and dogs were good trying to Save the World. The sequel, however, reveals that cats are Not Always Evil, although the villain is still a cat. The sequel also mentions that some dogs are evil, although none are seen.
  • The first Narnia movie has the armies of Aslan and the Witch pretty much divided among these lines. There are dwarves on both sides, but they are visually different depending on which side they were on (mostly by hair color). In the second movie, however, nearly all of the non-humans of Narnia (minus a Hag, Werewolf, and Black Dwarf) fight together, and a minotaur sacrifices himself to save the monarchs.

    Literature 
  • Kobitos Zukan Stormy Blackwings and Saintly Redwings are heavily implied to be good/evil versions of each other.
  • Redwall played this to a T, with species being almost entirely good or entirely bad. Mice, hares, hedgehogs, otters, and badgers were always good. Rats, weasels, foxes, ferrets, stoats, and all reptiles were always bad. Snakes in particular were so bad that even the other 'bad' races abhorred them. Birds of prey, strangely, were usually Good, although often Good Is Not Nice.
    • There was one exception, however: bats are good. Utterly ineffectual, but good.
    • There were a couple of examples of members of 'bad' races becoming good (and vice-versa), such as a sea rat who performed a Heel–Face Turn in The Bellmaker, and a tribe of antagonistic squirrels in Martin the Warrior. Cats could be either good or bad, possibly because one of the characters in the original Redwall novel was a good cat.
  • The Deptford Mice books fall under this, too. Mice are good, rats are evil; squirrels are good, bats are good, and the main villain is a cat. There are exceptions, rats that are sort-of good and nasty mice, but for the most part, convention is followed.
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe split talking beasts more or less along the standard lines between those on the side of the Witch and those on the side of Aslan. This didn't show up so much in the rest of the series when Narnia was united, but "evil" animals didn't show up much at all then.
  • The Wind in the Willows: Mole, Rat, Toad, Otter and Badger are good guys, as are the nameless rabbits. Weasels, stoats and ferrets are the bad guys.
  • In The Bad Guys series, wolves, sharks, snakes, and piranhas are blatantly categorized as “bad animals” in this world. This is their cause to become good, thanks to this stereotype.
  • The Jungle Book, "Rikki Tikki Tavi," and its animated adaptations, has an irresistible image of a plucky mongoose, all furry and cute, being a nigh-fearless defender of the innocent against evil deadly snakes who are seemingly everywhere.
  • Zigzagged in the Welkin Weasels series.
    • Weasels are the oppressed common folk, and most of them are good guys. The main heroes are all weasels.
    • Stoats are their feudal overlords, overtly based on the Norman aristocracy of post-1066 England. Most of them are bad, with a few exceptions, but even the bad ones tend to have a few redeeming qualities.
    • Squirrels are noble knights.
    • Rats are violent, filthy, dumb, and the only animals to be Always Chaotic Evil... until the second trilogy added a bunch of amiable sewer rats who speak in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
    • Other animals - including hedgehogs, moles, moufflon sheep, ferrets, foxes, and lemmings - occasionally show up in villainous roles, but we mostly get the sense these are just individuals who happen to be jerks, rather than reflective of their entire species.
  • Piilomaan pikku aasi: The main heroes are donkeys, dogs, and cats, and the villain is a Stubborn Mule with fox lackeys.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: the antagonists of the third season, Xindi, who plot to destroy humanity with mini-Death Stars because trans-dimensional beings told them humans will destroy their future home world, are split into five species — the Always Chaotic Evil Reptillians and Insectoids, the much more benevolent Primates and Aboreals (who side with humans near the end of the season after being told they've been lied to by the trans-dimensonal beings), and the neutral Aquatics. There was a sixth species, the Avians, but they went extinct before the series began.
  • The Wesen in Grimm also tend to be like this; Mauzherz (mice), Genio innocuo (tortoise), Seelengut (sheep) and Fuchsbau (foxes) been generally good or peaceful while Klaustreich (cats), Königschlange (snakes) and Gelumcaedus (alligators) to name a few are evil (or at least generally violent). Nevertheless other like Blutbad (wolves) and Bauerschwein (pigs) have both good and bad individuals in a more balanced level.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • Zoroastrianism has a long list of good animals and bad animals. Bad animals are most predators except for dogs, and include wolves, cats, snakes, frogs, wasp, flies and so on. Also some mythological like "winged dragons". Good animals include the dog, most cattle like sheep and ox, and the ant. This is the reason why it is said that Zoroastrians do no killed ants when they took some corn saying that they could spare some of it for them. Harming a dog was absolute taboo, whilst hunting the bad animals (like cats and wolves) was almost mandatory and it is said that Zoroastrianism mandates to have a weapon to kill snakes in the house. Interestingly some of these orders are the exact opposite in both Judaism and Islam were dogs, for example, are considered ritually unclean and (in the case of latter) cats are ritually clean and favoured as pets. This of course brought to the exact opposite situation when Islam became dominant in Iran as Muslims are not allowed to own dogs except for hunting and guarding (and not allowed to enter their houses) and cats are their favorite pets which caused friction between dog-loving Zoroastrians and cat-loving Muslims. In fact it is also said that, due to Muslims view Zoroastrianism as Religion of Evil, mistreatment of dogs was a way for Iranian Muslims to taunt their Zoroastrian enemies.
    • The negative connotations of dogs in Islamic cultures have been fully fortified after a major plague, where the scavenging dogs were taken out for being the cause of it.

    Newspaper Comics 
  • Garfield the Cat vs. The either evil or spotlight stealing dogs.

    Toys 
  • LEGO's Legends of Chima series. Out of the factions seen so far, Lions, Eagles and Gorillas are the good guys while Crocodiles, Ravens, and Wolves are the bad guys.

    Video Games 
  • The binoculars in Far Cry 3 identify whether an animal is a herbivore or a predator, the distinction being whether or not they'll attack (e.g. a buffalo normally eats grass and is a herbivore, but is marked as a predator because it attacks those provoking it.)
  • Subverted in the Pokémon games. While many of the villains used Dark-Type and/or Poison-Type Pokémon, the Pokémon themselves are not actually evil. They're just essentially doing what their trainers are telling them to do.
  • Angry Birds: Pigs are evil, while birds are good.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Crocodiles are evil, while primates are good.
  • Rocket Knight Adventures: Depending on the game, Pigs (Original), Lizards (Genesis Sequel), and Wolves (SNES Game) are evil, while the possums (with the exception of the villainous Axel Gear) are good.
  • In the Star Fox series, the bulk of the Cornerian troops is composed of canine soldiers, while the Venomian troops serving Andross are mostly made of primates and lizards.
    • Star Fox Adventures, formerly Dinosaur Planet, has the antagonistic Sharpclaws, a race of anthropomorphic theropods, led by General Scales, an anthropomorphic allosaur despot. Other hazards include non-anthropomorphic tyrannosaurs and Galdon, a bizarre insectoid dinosaurian thing that also appeared to be some kind of carnosaur hybrid. The only really evil mammal is Andross. Fox's allies are pterosaurs, ceratopsians, and other herbivorous dinosaurs. And the odd mammoth or two.
  • In Conker's Bad Fur Day, the Bees are pacifists and would rather tickle people than sting them, but the Wasps play the Wicked Wasps trope straight.
  • In Minecraft, mobs are classified as "passive" (will never attack the player and will run away if the player attacks it), "neutral" (may attack the player under certain conditions), and "hostile" (will attack the player on sight). The stereotypes are sometimes followed, sometimes not. For example, foxes and bats are both passive, but spiders are hostile.

    Western Animation 
  • Tom and Jerry: With Tom being the antagonistic cat, and Jerry being the lovable hero or the other way round.
  • Ace again, this time in Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
  • DuckTales (1987) as well as their 2017 reboot, with rare exceptions, generally follows the rule of "good ducks vs evil dogs" as if the dogs are portrayed as villainous scavengers.
  • In Biker Mice from Mars, the Martian mice are always good (with the exception of their government and one traitor), while the Plutarkian Fish People from the original series and the Catalonian cats from the Revival are almost always evil.
  • Beast Wars:
    • The Maximals all turn into either mammals or birds (with the exceptions of Dinobot and Blackarachnia, who both started out as Predacons before doing a Heel–Face Turn), while the Predacons mostly turn into either reptiles or arthropods. There are a few fish on both sides, though, and at least one mammalian Predacon in Ravagenote . The theme was especially apparent in regards to the Fuzors, who had Mix-and-Match Critters for beast modes — Maximal Fuzors included Torca (orca/elephant), Bantor (tiger/mandrill), and Silverbolt (wolf/eagle), whereas Predacon Fuzors were guys like Terrorgator (crocodile/turtle), Skyshadow (dragonfly/lizard) and Quickstrike (cobra/scorpion).
    • Beast Wars Shattered Glass features a small group of Autobots taking beast modes, including a lion, an eagle, and an elephant, opposing a group of Decepticons mostly made up of the Seacons (a sub-group that includes a shark, a snapping turtle, and a squid).
  • The series Krypto the Superdog featured primarily "Heroic dogs VS evil cats" for their good guys and bad guys. One noteable exception was Streaky, a heroic cat that acted as Krypto's partner for many episodes. There was also Ignatious, Lex Luthor's pet iguana. However, he was more of a Jerkass than actually evil.
  • The short-lived Sectaurs cartoon. comic, and toyline was an interesting variation on this; the heroes and the villains are all humanoid insects or arachnids. However, the heroes are based on harmless, cool-looking bugs, like beetles and dragonflies, where the villains were based on venomous or frightening ones like wasps and spiders.
  • ThunderCats features heroes based on big cats, with the bad guy's main Mooks being an ape-man, a jackal-man, a vulture-man, and a nasty lizard-man. The Big Bad Mumm-Ra gets his power from the Ancient Spirits of Evil, deities which resemble a hog, a crocodile, a bull and a vulture, and not to mention he has an evil dog companion. In contrast, his counterpart on the side of good Mumm-Rana gets her power from the Ancient Spirits of Goodness, deities which resemble a horse, an otter, a goat and an ibis.
    • The ThunderCats (2011) reboot gave them more dept. The "bad" animals like dogs and lizards are not evil per se, but victims of the circumstances and the felines are not entirely good either.
  • In The Raccoons raccoons, dogs, birds (except for birds of prey) and cats are good whilst aardvarks, pigs, rhinoceroses and bears are bad (with the exception of aardvarks Cedric and Sophia, the Token Heroic Orcs of the series).
  • Babar elephants are good and peaceful as they are traditionally portrayed and rhinoceros are bad and violent, also as traditionally portrayed. Although the rhinoceros might be an aversion considering that they are ruled by a dictator so not all of them are really evil, and the dictator himself is more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
    • Played with in Babar and the Adventures of Badou. The show's recurring antagonists are rhinos, crocodiles, a cape buffalo, a black leopard, and a python. However, the villains also include an elephant and a lion, both being Token Evil Teammates of their respective species, and there are also good rhino and crocodile characters. As odd exceptions to this trope, the good characters include a hyena and a condor, going against the stereotypes of the two species. Deconstructed in "Slogging Through" where Babar teaches Badou that not all crocodiles are bad, just as not all elephants are good.
  • TaleSpin plays with this trope. In a world of anthropomorphic animals naturally all the different species would have good and bad individuals, nevertheless the main heroes and villains do play the trope straight. For example the main heroes are bears, orangutans and a lion, whilst the most recurrent villains are a tiger, a band of wolf pirates, a gangster crocodile and his two goons a rhino and a gorilla, and the boar-like Thembrians.
  • In The Lion Guard, generally you can tell by the species who's going to be an antagonist. There are some exceptions, such as Jasiri and her family being good hyenas, the old crocodile leader Pua being wise and kind, and Makuu pulling a Heel–Face Turn in Season 2. But in general if the animal is stereotyped as evil in real life it will cause trouble for the Lion Guard, while animals that get stereotyped as good or either will be on the Guard's side.


Alternative Title(s): Species Coded For Your Convenience

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