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Mulan: My ancestors sent a little lizard to help me? Mushu: Hey, dragon, dragon! Not lizard. I don't do that tongue thing. (does that tongue thing)
A Talking Animal (or at least someone who looks like one) is constantly mistaken for another species as a Running Gag. Often, it can be their Berserk Button, particularly if they consider it a Fantastic Slur. This trope often leads to Insistent Terminology.
Trope name is a reference to Cow and Chicken spinoff I Am Weasel. Not to be confused with I Am Not Shazam. Contrast this trope with its inversion, Ass in a Lion Skin, for when an animal wants to be taken for another species.
See Mistaken Nationality when it is happening with humans for ethnicities or nationalities, or My Name Is Not Durwood when dealing with proper names.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Inu Yasha
- In the episode "The Mysterious, Lecherous Monk" , Inu-Yasha and Miroku persist in referring to a weasel demon as a "raccoon dog" (tanuki) even when he tries to remind them that "I'm a weasel, dang it!" This despite the fact that one of Miroku's oldest friends (and frequent accomplices) is a tanuki, so you'd think he'd know the difference.
- Also in Inu Yasha, it's a Running Gag that Shippo is constantly mistaken for a tanuki, leading to him saying "I'm a kitsune!" (i.e. a fox).
- From a different episode:
Villagers: Are you in league with that cat demon? (they mean Kirara)
Inu-Yasha: Who're you calling a cat demon?!
- In another episode, the gang have to fight a tribe of panther demons. Much to them, and their more human like leaders' anger, the main characters often call them cat demons.
Shippo: It's the cat demons from the west!
Tora: Huh? cat demons? My friend and I are panther demons. Don't lump us with ordinary cats or you'll make us angry.
- Of course, if not for his father and half-brother's transformations, it'd be easy to conclude that Inu-Yasha is a cat demon; claws sharp enough to use as deadly weapons aren't exactly a dog trait after all.
- Zafira of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, gets this every so often, even from his long-time allies.
Vita: I'm jealous of Zafira, it's so convenient being a dog...
Zafira: ... I'm a wolf.
- Technically, he takes the form of a small dog while on Earth, having been convinced by Arf that it's less intimidating than his wolf form.
- Genetically there's no difference between dog and wolf, they're still the same species.
- He also prefers to be called a "guardian beast" rather than a "familiar" (an even finer distinction, which Fate's wolf familiar Arf claims to be different only in terminology).
- Yuuno often appears in weasel form, and is occasionally taken for a familiar. In reality, he's a shapeshifting mage.
- Mahou Sensei Negima!
- Half-Dog Demon Kotarô usually prefers to call himself a lone wolf.
- Chamo, from the same series, is an ermine. Negima!? combines this trope with Running Gag and Insistent Terminology when the girls of class 3-A refer to him as a rat.
- One Piece's Tony Tony Chopper is frequently mistaken for a tanuki in his hybrid form and a yeti(at least once) in human form. Of course, his real form is that of a reindeer. Franky has also referred to him as a "Gorilla" and even "Gorilla-Deer" when he realized he was a Devil Fruit user.
- In the Funimation dub, Chopper is also frequently called a "raccoon-dog".
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Neo Spacian Aqua Dolphin is called a fish by Judai, and replies that he is a mammal.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, Xiao May is thought to be a cat by everyone in Amestris, but she's really a tiny panda bear. Note that the Chinese word for panda literally means "bear-cat".
- Shadows of Spawn — a manga adaptation of Todd McFarlen's Spawn. Ken Kurosawa (who is the series' Spawn) encounters an intelligent wolf spawn named Mangler, whom he often mistakes for a dog.
- A running gag in Doraemon: when someone first meets him, they think he's a tanuki. This makes Doraemon really mad since he's a robotic cat without ears.
- Fritz the Bitter Goblin in the Duel Masters dub gets very upset when he's called a squirrel.
- Like Zafira above, Val of Otogi Juushi Akazukin would like to remind us that he's a wolf, not a dog.
- Even if the domestic dog is still genetically a clear canis lupus, that is, a wolf.
- Belbel in There, Beyond the Beyond is a magician who looks suspiciously like a rabbit, and gets mad when compared to one.
- In Digimon Savers, Masaru's little sister calls Gaomon a dog, prompting him to point out "Would a dog wear boxing gloves?"
- Averted in Dorabase with Shiroemon, despite the recent Art Evolution making his ears longer (thus looking like a rabbit). But probably enforced since it is Art Evolution.
- Similarly averted with Trump (Drump in some translations), despite having the longest ears in the series for cat robots. Then again, whether or not he was a cat is never pointed out in-series.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
- Inversion. Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective is a rat, but to call him one is seriously pushing his Berserk Button. He prefers the title of "a big mouse". The Basil of Baker Street book series (on which this movie was based) has "Padraic" Ratigan as a mouse.
- Over the Hedge features a turtle who corrects anyone who call him an amphibian. It also features a pest exterminator with a freakishly strong sense of smell:
Pest exterminator: (sniff) raccoon, squirrel, two opossums, skunk, amphibian—
Vern: (under his breath) — reptile.
Pest exterminator: (sniffs again) No... reptile.
- Mulan
- There is some confusion when Mulan meets Mushu for the first time, hence the page quote. He's just not the size you'd expect for a dragon.
- Of course, Mushu goes on to call Mulan's horse a cow for the rest of the movie.
- Call Pumbaa from The Lion King a pig only if you're in a real hurry to die. Simba and Timon can get away with it, though.
- In Tangled, Flynn keeps referring to Rapunzel's chameleon sidekick Pascal as a frog.
- At one point in Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, Fred attempts to bullfight a lion. At first he shouts, "Toro, toro!" which causes the lion to look around in confusion, as if to say "Bull? Where?". Fred thinks for a moment, then shouts, "Leo, leo!*
Technically, he should be saying "león", but eh, details "
- Elsa the Pterodactyl from We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story apparently hates being referred to as a bat.
- Lampwick from Pinocchio refers to Jiminy Cricket as a beetle just right before he turns into a donkey.
"You mean to tell me you take orders from a grasshopper?"
Films — Live-Action
- The Lord of the Rings: Never call an Ent a "tree". Mocked by the Rifftrax of The Two Towers movie.
"TreeBeard some call me."
"Well then, why did you get so upset when we called you by half your name?!"
- Though this is only the case in the movie; it never comes up in the book. Still, it probably makes sense — most shepards wouldn't like being called "sheep", even if their name is Mr. Sheep-Herd.
- From the MST3K take on Eegah!:
Character from film: It's not a monster! It's a giant!
Crow: There is a big difference!
- Krull from Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes seriously dislikes being called a "monkey":
Krull: Monkeys are further down the evolutionary ladder... just above humans!
- This also pops up in Escape From The Planet Of The Apes. Cornelius tells the commission not to call him and Zira monkeys because it's offensive to them.
Literature
Live-Action TV
Music
- In 1968, the band Canned Heat teamed up with Alvin and the Chipmunks to do a version of the Chipmunk Song ("Christmas Don't Be Late"). The intro to the song was Bob "The Bear" Hite barging into the Chipmunks' recording session as it was Canned Heat's turn to use the studio, and asking somebody to "get those mice out of here", drawing protests from the insulted chipmunks.
- Flanders and Swann's The Gnu Song has two references to g-nus (that's the way they say it in the song) objecting to being confused with "similar" animals like bison, okapis and hartebeests. One even threatens to sue over it.
- To this day since its release, people think Three Dog Night's Joy To The World is called "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog," simply because it's the song's first line.
New Media
- Extremely common on eBay, where anything with spots will half the time be labeled as "tiger pattern", and vice versa.
Radio
- In the ZBS Foundation
 series Ruby: Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe, rat-faced alien Rodant Kapoor has to constantly correct pronunciation of his name. ("Not rodent, Rodant!")
Puppet Shows
Video Games
Web Comics
- The species of Exploitation Now's Ralph is a Running Gag in the strip. Whatever people guess, he denies with indignation. (He looks most like a no-name-brand Moogle.)
- In Fletcher Apts, the main character Bob, a hamster who is rather ambiguous-looking, is mistaken for different rodents (a squirrel here and a rat here) and produces a rant about it, which no-one pays attention to.
- George Fennec, from Kevin & Kell, is often thought to be a rabbit. (A fennec is a type of fox with huge ears.)
- In Freefall, Florence Ambrose, a red wolf, get almost invariably mistaken for a dog on first contact.
- In Schlock Mercenary, the title character is often mistaken for a pile of dung.
Web Original
- In We Are Our Avatars, Kyon once mistook Silver for, of all things, a parrot. Later Hohenheim mistakes him for a parakeet. And mind reading Pikadevil revealed that he believes that he is a hen. His being mistaken for a bird has become a Running Gag. And then The Lost Vikings came along, and mistook him for a platypus, a duck, a swallow, a goat, a cow, and an elephant of all things and later on, he learns that he's 1/16th bird.
- Klonoa's a Phantomillian; he's not a Mobian, he's not a rabbit, and not a nekomata.
- In a video of "Chip Cheezum"s, where they're Retsupuraeing someones LP of "Okami", the kid starts calling Ammy a...bunny. Chip then rages that Ammy is not a bunny, she's a dog. Of course several youtubers then pointed out Ammy is actually a WOLF. The original description read "IT'S A DOOOOOOOOG", but later "SHUT UP IT'S A WOLF" was added.
Western Animation
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