alt title(s): Horse Of A Different Colour; Fictional Similar Animal

We've got a discussion about the title of this trope: Discuss It has also been suggested that it is merged with this YKTTW: [1].

Giant yellow birds are the mount of choice for the spiky-haired RPG hero.

"Good bird-horse-thingy."

— Sokka, Avatar The Last Airbender

Evolution being what it is, alien worlds (or Earth time periods far removed from the present day) are bound to have different forms of animal life than our world. The people there, however, are usually just like us, or close, and would therefore develop and breed different livestock to fill the same needs.

And one of the major needs is for animals to fill the niches horse fill on Earth: basic transportation in areas where mechanical transport are impractical, unknown, or expensive; or prestige transportation in areas where mechanical transport is cheap and easy. Horse-replacements may also be used as draft animals.

Of the types of creatures available, large flightless birds are probably the single most-common type of horse-replacement. Two-legged fast dinosaurs come up frequently. To replace the larger draft animals, vaguely ox-like creatures and large lizards seem to be popular.

Evil, bloodthirsty races will often use a giant form of a common predator, like a wolf. Cats are a mixed bag, they are predatory, and notoriously disobedient, but both heroes and villains can be seen riding them, and performing great feats of sure-footed trick riding.

A flying creature that can be trained, and can carry a man, is the holy grail of animal husbandry. Most fantasy settings have at least one, either a scaled-up physically implausible thing, or just a big one used by a small and light race of people. Dragons are especially popular in this department.

For maximum Speculative Fiction cred, try having the mount not even being made of flesh and blood. In video games, these often become The Yoshi.

Named for a pun in The Wizard Of Oz, although that was an actual horse that, as the name suggests, kept changing color randomly.

Not to be confused with Yellow Horse.

Examples

Flightless Birds and Other Bipeds

Flinx in For Love Of Mother-Not rides a stupava riding bird through the soggy forests of Moth, where its partially webbed feet come in handy for the muddy terrain.
The various world-settings in the Final Fantasy series use a type of giant bird called a Chocobo as a riding mount. Some variations of them can fly, though.
Horseclaws are giant flightless birds used as rides in Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (and inspired the above-mentioned chocobos).
- Nausicaa also features another type of unusual mount, referred to as Warbeasts, which are something like giant, shaggy dogs with cow horns & lizard-like feet.
In Ragnarok Online, the standard animal of monture are giant birds called Pecos, not unlike Chocobos. They are limited on use to one class job, however (even if the things are also in the wild and can be captured as mascots).
- Although with third jobs, wolves and the dragonlike ferus are now both also fair game.
In Maze Megaburst Space, a two-legged brown dinosaur is the preferred cavalry mount.
In Samurai7, some people ride around on giant turtle-like creatures. With shells.
Yoshi!
Yoshi!
Trigun has the Tomas, weird cross-breeds between ostriches and dinosaurs.
Ostriches were ridden in The Swiss Family Robinson. (Truth In Television: Ostrich jockeys have races in Arizona every year.)
Early in Rogue Galaxy, the hero is seen riding a sort of skeletal mount called a Yago. Apparently they must have some meat on them because a sand worm eats one at the end of the first chapter.
Strangely, the Pokemon Dodrio — based off ostriches — can learn Fly in the games. The anime makes a clever justification when Falkner's Dodrio makes a leap that makes it look like it is flying, though the birds are usually ridden as land mounts when seen.
- The character Yellow of the Pokemon Special manga is eleven, and is small enough to ride its juvenile form, Doduo.
Last Exile has some very chocobo-esque flightless birds. Although they were never used as mounts they replaced horses as the animal of choice for racing.
There are undead units in Battle For Wesnoth which ride skeletal 'chocobones' which are a clear parody of the Final Fantasy birds.
Striders — similar to riding birds, but scaly and butt-ugly — are used as mounts by the Kang of Talislanta, and their smaller, feistier cousins, marsh striders, by the Jhangarans.
The Gaunt's Ghosts novels had birds called Struthids used as cavalry on one of the planets; the general description made them look like the bastard child of cassowaries.
David Weber and John Ringo's Prince Roger series has 'civan', which are bipedal, carnivorous and bad-tempered dinosaur-like creatures described as horse-ostriches. They're used as cavalry mounts. There is also a related species which is far more placid, known as 'turom', used as draft animals.
Abe in Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey can ride a strange, Ugly Cute creature named Elum in certain areas. The manual describes him as "Cranky, stubborn, and smells like a burst sewer pipe, and those are his good points. Fortunately, chicks dig him."
Suss Birds in Harkovast fit this trope, as do the Bataks and Histoos.

Predatory Animals

Literary example: Goblins in The Hobbit ride on Wargs — huge, intelligent, evil wolves.
Halflings in Dungeons And Dragons Eberron campaign setting ride dinosaurs. In others, they sometimes use large breeds of dog (Saint Bernards and the like) as riding mounts.
Order Of The Stick: It has one paladin riding Argent, a kick-ass wolf, and another one riding Razor, a shark. The halfling riding dogs are spoofed in Order Of The Stick when Belkar ends up riding a dachshund.
In the classic comic book series, Elf Quest, the focus characters are the Wolfriders. They literally ride wolf companions like mounts, but their relationship goes deeper; there's a literal biological kinship due to the tribe's founder, Timmorn, who was the offspring of a wolf and a shapechanged high one.
In S.M. Stirling's and David Drake's "The General" series of SF novels, the stranded inhabitants on the fallen colony of Bellevue ride genetically engineered giant dogs instead of horses. The native wildlife (Velociraptors) was hostile enough that horses weren't considered viable, but a 1200-pound Doberman the size of a draft horse was. Biological implausibilities were gleefully ignored.
- The 1987 Ardath Mayhar/Ron Fortier After The End collab Trail of the Seahawks also featured giant riding dogs (and giant mutant foxes that could be trained as mounts).
- Another series with dog mounts was Mike McQuay's painfully sucky duology of Pure Blood and Mother Earth. But McQuay felt the need to call them "woofers" for some reason.
CJ Cherryh's Gate series of novels has creatures called nighthorses that could be easily mistaken for horses, except that they are telepathic foul-tempered carnivores whose group behavior is based on being pack hunters. In contrast to herbivorous horses' tendency to form groups for protection, nighthorses formed groups for attacks. The implications of this are shown in the stories in such a way that it becomes quite plain that nighthorses are not just differently colored horses.
In Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, a bard character domesticates a giant lynx by playing his harp for it. The creature loves the music, and, at first, attempts to attack the other characters when he stops playing. Eventually, it takes a liking to everybody and becomes positively cuddly.
Chiyo-chan in Azumanga Daioh is so small, she can comfortably ride Mr. Tadakichi, a Great Pyrenees, to Sakaki's envy.
- Which was probably inspired by the novel and Japanese anime series Belle And Sebastian (which also happens to be the name of an indie band), where the latter, a small boy, would often ride on the back of the enormous Belle (also a Great Pyrenees), as they traversed the French and Spanish countryside in search of Sebastian's mother.
While Akamaru the dog from Naruto is as small as most dogs before the time-skip, he grows to the size of a pony over the course of 2 and a half years. His owner, Kiba, uses him as a mount occasionally post-timeskip.
- And Kiba acts surprised when Naruto brings it up. "Really? I must not have noticed!"
- Other ninja dogs, including Kakashi's and Kuromaru (the one used by Kiba's mom), are capable of talking. And after the Time Skip Kuromaru is inexplicably even larger than Akamaru.
And who could forget Battle Cat, huge, occasionally talking green Tiger (or is it a Liger ?) with a shiny red saddle for He Man And The Masters Of The Universe. Likewise, Skeletor has Panthor, although he practically never rides him for some reason. In the 2002 show, he and his evil cohorts preferred to ride giant humongous griffins, instead.
Koark from Order Of Tales rides Potok, who resembles a giant cross between a dog and an aardvark. (Hey, insectivores are carnivores!)
The mole-men have the hated dirt-puma, the giant alligator, and the pseudo-saur (which is actually a giant iguana).
In Twilight Princess, the protagonist serves as a mount to his Ninja Butterfly while he is transformed into a Big Badass Wolf.
In the Magic World of Mahou Sensei Negima, the mount of choice appears to be dinosaur-like reptiles such as the one Makie rode while buying groceries for the bar she worked in.
Battle For Wesnoth's goblins use wolves as mounts.
Noishe, in Tales Of Symphonia is a giant white green dog with massive ears. Who's deathly afraid of monsters. And in one of the skits is speculated to be an ancient ever evolving creature. ..Yeah..
Giant dogs (podogs) are common steeds in the Gamma World setting, for those who can't afford freaky mutant horse/insect critters.
Dino Riders is a show/toyline that's Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
Sir Didymus, a bipedal fox, rides an English sheepdog in Labyrinth.

Giant Flyers

Pirates Of Dark Water was set on a world without wide-open spaces of dry land. Flying critters called Dagrons (small dragons, really) were the ride of choice. Turns out they had a secret.
Dragonriders Of Pern: the dragons were genetically enginerered from small flying lizards. They form a mind bond with a single rider at hatching.
- Although both horses and oxen exist on Pern ("Runnerbeasts" and "Cartbeasts") and are in far wider use, for obvious reasons.
Record Of Lodoss War features a group of knights who ride on Wyverns (Heraldic creatures similar to dragons).
The Skybax Riders of Dinotopia, who train and fly on huge Pterosaurs, rest very proudly in the realm of the Rule Of Cool.
The Inheritance Trilogy
Giant eagles were favored as steeds by Winnowill's people in Elfquest.
Dragon riders are fairly widespread in fiction, to the point of being savagely parodied in Terry Pratchett's 1983 The Color of Magic
- Speaking of Discworld, herons and buzzards qualify as "giant flying steeds" if you're a gnome.
Wyvern Knights are a common type of cavalry in the Fire Emblem franchise, as are Pegasus Knights.
In the classic video game Joust, your character rides a generally ostrich-sized and shaped bird that is capable of flight.
- In the lesser-known sequel Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest, your ostrich can transform into a pegasus. Also, in both that game and the original Joust, your computer-controlled opponents are all mounted atop giant buzzards.
The tarns (large flying birds used as steeds) of John Norman's Gor novels.
In JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth stories (The Lord of the Rings, etc.), Sauron's Ringwraiths ride the wyvern-like flying 'fell beasts'.
- Wyvern-like only in the movies. In the books they are pretty much giant pterosaurs
A few Flying type Pokemon are Dragons...or at least look like one in the case of Charizard (not to mention several final form Flyers are quite big). Parodied in the anime when Ash tries to use his own Charizard as a proper mount for the first time and fails horribly.
In the prequal comic book to the video game The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Reguard, itself entitled The Origin of Cyrus, depicts Dark Elves riding astride giant wasp-like creatures. None of the games feature this, presumably for time/budget/technical reasons. However, in Morrowind, you CAN ride giant tick-like creatures from one town to another.
Battle For Wesnoth's Dwarves use Gryphons as mounts.
One obscure tribal culture in the Mystara D&D setting rides giant pelicans. Not cool, but handy if you're carrying cargo.
Harry Potter: There are a number of different breeds of winged horses (based in part on the legend of Pegasus and Bellerophon), according to Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. Hogwarts employs thestrals, probably the least horse-like breed.
- Don't forget hippogriffs.
In The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, giant eagles have been known to give people rides. Notable example, Gandalf's escape from the tower of Orthanc.

Other/Multiple

The Na'vi ride six-legged, nectar-drinking horse-things.
In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, the party's covered wagon is pulled by what resembles a giant blue mouse called a Papaupamus.
Final Fantasy X has a giant blue elephant-like creature called a "Shoopuf" that carries large amounts of people at once.
The Warcraft series, particularly World Of Warcraft, features such a wide variety of mounts that listing them all would be impractical. For starters, each of the ten playable races has a distinctive basic mount, ranging from undead horses to mechanical ostriches to elephant-like elekks. In fact, humans are the only race that gets an actual honest-to-goodness horse. Then there are the various flying mounts, starting with griffons and giant furry bats and later progressing to sporebats, drakes, miniature helicopters, hippogriffs, etc. Lastly, Wrath of the Lich King introduced a variety of new land and flying mounts including mammoths, proto-drakes, flying carpets, motorcycles, and turtles; not to mention achievements for acquiring as many mounts as possible.
- It's worth noting that pre-release promotional material for the Burning Crusade expansion referred to the Blood Elf mount as a Cockatrice; eventually, however, someone at Blizzard realized that introducing a creature with "cock" in its name into a game largely played by teenagers and immature twentysomethings was just asking for trouble.
Star Wars had several; Tauntauns on Hoth, Dewbacks and Banthas on Tatooine, ~~Baby Dinosaur Ponies~~ Kaadu on Naboo, etc.
Avatar The Last Airbender there are various different riding animals for the different nations due to Mix And Match Critters. The Earth Kingdom has the Ostrich Horse (basically an Expy of Nausicaa's Horseclaw), the Air Temples flying bison (only used for companionship and transport, the only one seen in the series being Appa), the Fire Nation has the Komodo Rhino and Mongoose Lizard, and the Water Nations has a less used Buffalo-Yak for the Tundras (otherwise they use boats).
- And can't forget the eelhounds, for those times when you aren't just satisfied with running on land.
- Flashbacks have also shown that people in the Fire Nation used to have Dragons fill in this role too, before Fire Lord Sozin happened. Roku, and Sozin himself, can be seen flying on two dragon's backs.
The Elder Scrolls series replaces cows with Netches on the island of Vvardenfell, home of many strange and unique beasts, which are herded and slaughtered for leather. For some reason, the game feels the need to prepend "Netch" to every piece of leather equipment (so, instead of wearing a leather cuirass, you wear a "Netch Leather Cuirass," just like a real person would wear a "Cow Leather Jacket"). Still, they get a bit of a pass, since netches, being enormous floating jellyfish-esque monsters, fall squarely under the Rule Of Cool. Seriously, it's an enormous jellyfish.
- This troper suspects that netch leather is rare outside Morrowind or Vvardenfell, and cow leather would be rare within the two, but both might exist. Hence the distinction.
- Vvanderfell also has Guars, which are basically large and fairly cute bipedal lizards used as draft animals, and the enormous insectile Silt Striders used as mass transit.
  - Morrowinds concept art book depicted people riding Guars. This never made it into the game either due to time constraints or because it would be absurd (Other creatures in Morrowind tend to follow common sense when it comes to anatomy, but Guars have heads almost as big as the rest of their bodies.
  - Note that regular animals were always part of the series - it's just that Vvardenfell is very strange, but the rest of the world is much more like our own, and contains ordinary horses, as seen in Daggerfall and Oblivion.
Transformers series occasionally play with this. They don't usually have a reason to ride anything, but sometimes, one character has an alternate mode that just invites it, like a motorcycle. There's a nice use of this in the movie: On Junk, the Junkions are attacking, and one of the Autobots shoots a Junkion off the motorcycle he's riding. That motorcycle's another Junkion, and both of them transform, switch places, and charge again.
In Princess Mononoke, the hero of the story rides what is referred to as a "red elk," but looks more like a large antelope. Not only can the beast comfortably carry a rider, but is so strong that he can do that kind of animal's graceful leaping so burdened.
- Ashitaka calls his mount "Yakkul," and it is entirely fictional. Indeed, it goes as far back as the short manga Shuna's Journey, Hayao Miyazaki's first written story, where the entire species is called "yakkul."
The dinosaurs in The Flintstones.
- Also, Boy during the "Caveman's Best Friend" episode of The Backyardigans, in a way that reminds most people of Dino. Expy anyone?
In Dungeons And Dragons' Eberron campaign setting, the Kingdom of Breland is famous for their bear cavalry. As a certain image macro says: "Bear Cavalry: Yeah, you're pretty much fucked.◊"
- Unless you have Cat Snipers.
- Or are a halfling, in which case you ride freaking dinosaurs.
Warhammer 40000 has tons of these: cyber-horses, boars, cyber-boars, giant lizards, daemons that look like weird worms, daemons that look like metal rhinos...
- In addition, the chief source of meat in the Imperium is the Grox, a large, rather ill-tempered lizard-like creature.
- As usual it's overshadowed in the sheer awesome department by its sci-fi brother, but Warhammer Fantasy also has a variety of fantasy mounts, including wolves, boars, giant spiders (pony-size), gigantic spiders (rhino-size), cold ones (featherless giant velociraptors), pegasi, sauropod dinosaurs, griffons, woolly rhinoceros', small carnasaurs, various sorts of daemonic mounts (including the metal rhino ones), and naturally, dragons.
Frankly, Dungeons And Dragons has a million of these things, some of the odder ones including Giant Bees and enormous Wall Crawling lizards popular among the subterranean drow. If it's got the strength score to carry you, you can hypothetically train it for riding (or in the case of intelligent creatures, ask it politely).
- Really? You use giant bees and lizards as examples for strange mounts? You can ride a gelatinous cube. Well, really, you ride IN it and wear protection from the digestive acids, otherwise kind of in trouble. Illithids ride inside a cyst in a purple worm's mouth. Or you could ride on a soarwhale, basically a living blimp...whale...
- This troper is rather fond of the brixashulty, which is basically a mountain goat domesticated as an all-purpose livestock animal by halflings. Mundane, yes, but it's fun to see the look on everyone's faces when your "halfling riding goat" singlehandedly (singlehoofedly?) splatters half the enemy in a single critical bull rush.
Likewise, Rifts features just about everything, from Cool Horses to Dinosaurs to giant beetle-like monsters to bears and even giant chickens (Fun Fact: Cossacks refuse to ride the giant chickens). Plus Robot and Cybernetic horses. Magic robot horses, too. Some species, such as Psi-Ponies and Blood Lizards, can even be chosen as player characters.
The Dark Crystal had Landstriders, long-legged beasties with stinger tongues.
Do the Thestrals from Harry Potter count? Technically they're pegasi...
- Carnivorous and borderline undead pegasi...
Girl Genius has all sorts of this: wagons drawn by clockwork clown robots or horse-headed men, or that have legs; the Dark Action Girl jaegermonster Jenka rides a red grizzly bear construct named Füst; Baron Wulfenbach's cavalry troops have the beetlesque Hoomhoffers; and the Geisterdamen have... well, giant riding spiders for traveling the Wastelands, and a whole profusion of other creepy stuff besides.
In Julian May's Saga Of The Exiles, the mount of choice for the Tanu dwelling in Earth's prehistoric past is the chaliko- short for chalicothere. Chalicotheres are extinct relatives of horses, rhinos, and tapirs. (Unfortunately they're also generally pretty slope-backed and have a gait that really wouldn't work well at all on a riding animal. Oh well.)
The thoats and zitidars used as mounts in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian/Barsoom stories featuring Captain John Carter of Virginia.
Go-Backs from Elf Quest use their world equivalent of reindeer and such as their mounts when hunting or traveling.
- And the Sun Folk used zwoots, while humans occasionally used no-humps.
In Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, the upper-class transport of choice is the Chevaline, which is a kind of robot horsey with a vestigial knob for a tail.
In Dune the Fremen ride the sandworms of Arrakis.
In the webcomic Looking For Group (loosely based on World Of Warcraft), one of the characters, Richard, is turned into an infant temporally and uses a bunny as a mount.
In Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords, you can capture and ride a number of creatures, from a giant rat or wolf to a giant, fire-breathing spider.
In Rice Boy, the Frog-men use giant lizards. Maquìn has a horse-like creature that's able to contract its entire body into its cubical head.
- And in Order Of Tales, Koark rides this... thing which appears to be a cross between a horse and an anteater. I don't even know.
Great-worms and lesser-worms (used in teams to pull a chariot)
Thanks to the setting jumping to a new universes almost every year, Magic The Gathering has a ton of these. Variations range from relatively normal giant birds and giant moths to 'classic' fantasy creatures such as griffins and pegasii, to somewhat familiar yet nontraditional species such as pterosaurs, to completely new species such as "springjacks", "cervins", and "wumpuses".
The late great Jo Clayton's Moongather and its sequels featured at least two riding animals resembling deer or antelopes, and another that seemed to be basically ornithopod dinosaurs.
The racing snail in The Neverending Story movie.
The MMOG Ultima Online has an array to choose from. Bipedal dinosaurs without front arms called ostards, llamas, ki-rins, and giant beetles are among the choices.
The Savlar Chem-Dogs in Warhammer 40000 are an Imperial Guard regiment taken from the inmates of a toxic nightmare of a prison planet. Their Chem-Riders tend to saddle up bizarre, vile-looking mutant critters, Emperor knows what.
Gaia Online has a few mount options, mostly from the Wild Things set. The Roc is pretty obviously a chocobo knockoff, and the other Wild Things are a wolf (Fenrir) and a tiger (Khan). In addition, the Fallen Wish item has a serpentine dragon that you can ride, and I think the Kelp o' the Loch gave you a proper horse... as well as a hobby horse.
The giant pig-like Bulbos from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Snails are Spongebob Squarepants equivalant to cats. They meow and purr just like cats. Worms act and are treated like dogs in the same show.
- Jellyfish are analagous to bees, sea horses take the place of regular horses and clams and other bivalalves take the place of...just about everything else. We've seen clams as orcas, birds, lions, and more.
  - Not to mention the sea-bears and sea lions.
In Age of Wonders most mounted units ride horses or wolves, but the Lizardmen are the most unusal ride giant frogs. There are also specialized units which ride giant eagles, wyverns, giant moles, and giant beetles.
The 'Buggalo' (giant ladybugs) in Futurama are the equivalent of cows.
- And only those who ride Buggalo may have Buggalo. And that's us.
- And when driving Buggalo, you ride a giant ant.
- Uh, actually the creatures they rode to drive the Buggalo were giant tarantulas. Or if you want to quote Farnsworth...
  Farnsworth: Its not a magic bug you idiot, its a magic arachnid! See, count the legs, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!
H. Beam Piper had the Freyan oukry in his Terro-Human Future History stories, and mentioned in at least one book that most people think actual horses are extinct (they actually aren't). One character mentions having seen Westerns filmed by riding these oukry. Adaptation Decay, anyone?
The Vermine of Discworld is basically an ermine, but a lemming instead of a weasel. Its fur is just as prized for use in robes and dresses.
The Weber/Ringo collaboration that is the Prince Roger series has a species referred to variously as 'flar'ta' and 'pagee', described as a hexapedal triceratops, almost. They are herbivorous, and mostly placid, although there is a related species ('flar'ke' or 'pagithar') which is far more aggressive (the analogy drawn is to Cape buffalo). The flar'ta fills much the same role as an elephant- pack animal, mount and occasionally war beast.
Older Than Feudalism. In True History by Lucian the king of the Moon rides on a vulture-horse.
In Real Life history, several non-horse animals have been used as transport. Most notably, elephants have been used in war quite effectively due to their intimidating nature.
- The Egyptian Pharaohs had domestic Cheetah that they would use to pull their chariots and as hunting dogs. The line sadly went extinct around the time Alexander conquered Egypt, and ever since no one has managed to re-domesticate the species.
Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen trilogy has domesticated elephant-sized dinosaurs which the U.S. destroyer crews, not knowing the "brontosaurus" was actually an apatosaurus, think of as miniature brontosaurs and call "brontosarries."
In "The Atlantean Age", a setting book for Fantasy Hero, the Tellat Empire fields units mounted on "battledons" — take a rhino, make it 50% bigger, and add extra horns, claws, and bad attitude. Meanwhile the Hazarians look almost normal with their knights in plate armor riding giant wolves.
Golden Age Wonder Woman comics had the Amazons ride on the backs of Kangas, vaguely kangaroo-like animals.
The Planet of Adventure by Jack Vance has "leap-horses" as the native substitute quadruped. They have heads resembling a horned tapir and exaggeratedly long necks as shown here◊. As their name implies their motion is more of a bounding motion that a horse-like gait. All in all riding one sounds like a fast-track to lower back problems.