Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
redirected from Main.TalkingAnimals
alt title(s): Talking Animals Many cartoons have them — some animation companies have made their entire core casts out of them. Very simply, these are animals who talk. They are a lot better at it than the Speech Impaired Animal. They can easily hold down a conversation with human members of the cast. It's not like every human is The Doctor Dolittle either; the animals themselves are able to talk and that's just the way it is.
Despite their ability to speak, they are still animals in almost every other way, particularly when it comes to instincts, priorities and motivations. They very rarely wear clothes, and they are often vocally proud of the fact they aren't human. This distinguishes them from the more anthropomorphic Funny Animal, who is essentially a human in an animal costume, or Petting Zoo People, which are actually humans with some animal characteristics.
A good comparison: Bugs Bunny and most of the other Looney Tunes characters are Talking Animals. Bugs lives in a burrow, dodges hunters, and runs around naked (save for his fur). Mickey Mouse and his friends ( except Pluto) are Funny Animals. Mickey lives in a house, drives a car, wears clothing, and sprays his garden with pesticides ( think about that for a second).
Since these are otherwise normal animals who are able to talk, the issues of Furry Confusion don't usually come up. The issue of What Measure Is A Nonhuman, however, is far more likely to affect a Talking Animal than a Funny Animal. That said, Talking Animals are likely to voice just what they think about humans...
Older Than Dirt. The Fairy Tale is more likely to feature a talking animal than a fairy. (Although they do often turn out to be enchanted humans. Or even ghosts.)
Many Weasel Mascots, Non Human Sidekicks, and Team Pets are Talking Animals. Talking birds are a separate subtrope. Compare Intellectual Animal, Sapient Steed, and Uplifted Animal.
Lots of verbal jokes involve talking animals, with the humour usually deriving from a trait of that animal or a pun based on the word for the animal. A common subversion of these jokes is to replace the punchline with something along the lines of "Holy crap, a talking horse!"
Compare Animal Talk.
Examples
Anime
- The Meowth owned by Team Rocket from Pokemon (It shows through flashbacks just how hard it was for him to learn to say something other than "Meowth", which other members of his species say.)
- One could consider that Meowth some manner of prodigy, as it also is capable of translating "Pokemon" to English from other Pokemon varieties than Meowth.
- There is also an Alternate Universe where all the Mons are able to speak like humans, namely the one depicted in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. It's likely a case of the Translation Convention, since there are no humans in the Mystery Dungeon games save the protagonist(s). Even then, one only expresses surprise at being able to understand the other Pokemon at the beginning of the original game. The protagonist of the sequel worked with Pokemon before his transformation.
- Chopper from One Piece, he's a reindeer that can not only talk to humans, but other animals as well. Of course, this is because he had eaten a devil's fruit which gives him this ability.
- Luna, Artemis and Diana from Sailor Moon. In one of the Sailor Moon films (Sailor Moon S: The Movie) Luna becomes human through magic.
- This is slightly different in the original manga. While the first time Luna is changed into a human is presented in the same way as it is on screen, later it is established that all three of the feline characters can take on human form at times of great crisis, because they are actually aliens.
- A villan from their home planet is presented as being a Human Alien at all times. Why the trio is limited to times of crisis is unknown. Or why only they have the Crescent marks on their forehead that when damaged turns them into ordinary cats. Or why Diana keeps her tail in human form but her parents don't.
- Fuji, Yankumi's dog in Gokusen, is a slight subversion of this trope — he runs through an internal monologue and has surprisingly human thought processes, but he's actually making strange dog sounds and the other characters in the show don't understand him.
- Teika Midarezaki from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, who is a talking lion. He's very proud of this.
- Generally, Wolf's Rain can be considered this. Telepathy or not, they can verbally communicate with humans and this is how the majority would describe them anyway. Not only can the titular wolves speak telepathically, they use illusions to disguise themselves as humans. When they fight, the illusions are understandably dropped and they are very clearly wolves.
- Every dog in Ginga Nagareboshi Gin and its sequel, Ginga Densetsu Weed.
- Jillas the fox and Pokota, the, um... critter from The Slayers.
- Shamisen, Kyon's cat in Suzumiya Haruhi, for a short time. Of course, normal cats don't talk and this is all Haruhi's fault.
- Chamo from Mahou Sensei Negima.
- Muta in The Cat Returns. Although he does begin to sway toward being a Funny Animal when at the Cat Bureau, and also in the Kingdom of Cats.
- Clara (a cat) and Poipoider (a porpoise) in Mars Daybreak. Poipoider's ability to speak stems from translators built into the Powered Armor he uses to walk on land, but Clara is able to understand him even outside of it.
- Happy and Charle from Fairy Tail are two talking cats. Though they might not be cats since they are also blue and can sprout wings as a form of magic. Also, Happy and most likely Charle hatched from an egg. They're still called cats, though. Then again, Plue is a dog
- Emusa, the pink alien bunny thing in Transformers Zone.
- Ruby from Rave Master, who's most likely a penguin.
Comic Books
- In an odd case, Snoopy from Peanuts is a Talking Animal who doesn't (usually) talk. Despite this, he's certainly one of the most verbose and eloquent of the characters, verbalizing his thoughts via balloons. His pal Woodstock might surpass him except that we don't know what Woodstock says exactly.
- The same applies to Garfield.
- Chip Dunham's Overboard has several of these characters. One of these, a dog named Raymond, speak out loud (presumably in intelligible English), walks on his hind legs, and wears a fedora hat. Another dog, Louie, walks on all fours, thinks "out loud" via thought balloons, and wears no clothing. Several mice and rabbit characters also appear more or less regularly.
- Also, Bill Watterson's beloved Hobbes, of Calvin and Hobbes is only animate when alone with Calvin, as a general rule, yet seems to live quite an independent life from Calvin, chasing critters in the forest and reading comic books with interest. Hobbes is very often the more sensible, the more sane, and the more eloquent of the titular duo, though he does have his moments of primal savagery (which he works off by attacking Calvin whenever he comes home from school, or having Calvin throw a slice of jellied toast for him to "catch.")
- In Get Fuzzy pretty much every animal character seems to have this ability.
- Most of the Pearls Before Swine cast regulars are talking animals, while most one-time characters are humans. They have no trouble treating the talking animals like people.
Fairy Tales
Film
- Draco the dragon from Dragonheart.
- Dragons can talk pretty much by definition. And they are not really animals.
- Most of the non-human characters from the Narnia films: Aslan, Reepicheep, Fenris Ulf, Mr. and Ms. Beaver, and so forth.
- The agents in the Disney movie G-Force talk, though they use a device to translate animal speech. Though they are at first led to believe that they are genetically engineered to have higher intelligence and special skills, they discover that they are actually ordinary animals with special training. This implies that all animals can speak with a translator.
Newspaper Comics
- Gorgon from Barnaby, who rambles on, tells shaggy dog stories, and eventually has to be bribed into shutting up.
- Lampshaded in Pearls Before Swine, in which all the main characters are talking animals such as a rat or pig. In a certain strip, the introduce "Chuckie, the non-anthromorphic sheep," who can't speak in English and can only communicate in "baaahs" like a normal sheep can.
Literature
- A lot of Diana Wynne Jones' stuff. Mini the elephant from The Magids' Merlin conspiracy and Sirius from Dogsbody spring to mind.
- The Devil's entourage in the Soviet-era Russian novel The Master and Margarita includes an enormous walking, talking, chess-playing cat named Behemoth.
- Fang, the Learned English Dog, from Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon. It's also got a robot duck in it. Thomas Pynchon is a weird writer.
- Gaspode the Wonder Dog...although he's sneaky about it, because everyone knows dogs can't talk.
- Grimya, from Louise Cooper's Indigo series, is a sentient mutant wolf who usually poses as the heroine's guard dog. She's telepathic (at least where the heroine is concerned), and can also speak out loud (albeit in a raspy growl, and with significant effort). When she's first introduced, she's ashamed of her abilities; her mother tried to kill her, and humans tend to mistake her for a demon.
- In John C Wright's The Orphans of Chaos, the dog Lelaps.
- One of the hallmarks of CS Lewis's Narnia. Note that Talking Animals are specific creatures and differentiated from ordinary, non-talking animals, which can still be eaten or used for labor.
- Peter S Beagle's A Fine And Private Place features a talking raven.
- In Peter S Beagle's "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros", the rhinoceros talks. It also maintains that it is a unicorn.
- Balaam's donkey in The Bible was temporarily granted the ability to speak.
- The Cat in Coraline, which can speak in the Other Mother's World.
- In Charlotte's Web, there is Wilbur, Charlotte and Templeton. As well as quite a few others.
- Played with in the works of S.J. Perelman; the narrator, a semi-fictionalized Author Avatar, occasionally had his pets "speak" in times of stress. Just one line, then they went silent. This troper thought they were throwaway gags until he started to edit this entry, and then he realized they might be stress-induced hallucinations.
- The novels about "A Dog Called Himself" by Kenneth and Adrian Bird. Himself has been taught to speak by a cruel circus owner, and after escaping takes up with an Irish tinker with whom he has a series of adventures. The dog's unusual name comes from what the tinker exclaimed on hearing the dog speak: "It was as if himself were talking!"
- Pretty much every animal except Toto that makes the trip to Oz can talk there.
- Toto can as well, he's just quiet.
- The great hound Huan in The Silmarillion spoke three times. It's quite possible he wasn't a hound after all but a Maia (angel-like creature) in animal form - Tolkien doesn't seem to have made up his mind about this.
Live Action TV
- Princess Fantaghiro's horse.
- Many Toku have talking dogs. Denshi Sentai Denziman for instance has IC.
- Muffy the mouse from Todays Special. Lived in a mousehole (although she upgrades it a bit later), but on speaking terms with the rest of the staff—the security system considered a disaster damaging her home a bad thing, for one.
- And in this corner, from Sesame Street ... well, it's the Big Bird *pyro*
- Parodied in a series of That Mitchell And Webb Look sketches featuring a farmer who clearly thinks his horse is a talking animal, and makes numerous efforts to try and break the ice, only for the horse to 'snub' him each time. This tends to result in a very emotional tantrum on the part of the farmer very quickly. The horse, however, actually doesn't talk for the same reason that most horses outside of this trope don't talk.
- Wishbone, from the show of the same name. Though in the stories he imagines himself in, no one sees his character as a dog.
- Darwin the dolphin in Sea Quest DSV is able to talk due to a translation machine Lucas has built. That doesn't make him any easier to understand, though.
Video Games
- Blanca, from Shadow Hearts: Covenant, is a wolf who occasionally shows himself to be at least as smart as the main cast, plus a fair bit more savvy. Like Snoopy, he doesn't actually talk - except in a sidequest of his where he converses with other wolves.
- Not just Exile III but most of Spiderweb Software's games feature feature giant talking spiders. Exile III (and its remake Avernum 3) also include giant talking cockroaches.
- Linda the mutated lungfish and Mr. Pokeylope in Psychonauts. Since other local animals have psychic abilities, it's possible they're not the only ones.
- There are a few in the Quest For Glory series of adventure games. There's Fenris, talking rat and familiar to the wizard Erasmus, a fox who gives you some advice in the first game, and Manu the monkey in the third game.
- Daxter and Pecker in the Jak And Daxter series, in addition to the rest of the Precursors.
Web Animation
- And The Cheat from Homestar Runner is probably one of the smartest characters in the cast, but is a vaguely feline/rodent critter who is shaped like a wedge of cheese (or maybe an anvil) and speaks in an incomprehensible language of his own.
- The Cheat has little problem speaking English when making his own cartoons, doing pretty decent impressions of everyone in the show. (Pretty decent for a The Cheat. For a regular person, not so much.)
- The Show Within A Show Cheat Commandoes features (supposedly) the same species as The Cheat who can speak fluent English.
- Bionicle has a few, such as Tahtorak
Web Comics
- Kiki and Bun-bun from Sluggy Freelance are halfway between this and Funny Animal. Both display the instincts of their respective species; for example, Kiki, being a ferret, is prone to hide shiny objects and mess behind the couch and Bun-bun, being a rabbit, is prone to chewing on things in his environment. However, both also often act like people, although in Bun-bun's case, it's a rather sociopathic person.
- There is also Frog, a high-ranking member of Hereti-Corp.
- Spark, Dominic Deegan's pet cat, has just about as much deadpan snark and dry wit as anyone else in the cast.
- Sniper Wolf's pet wolf, Berthold, from the Metal Gear fan webcomic The Last Days of FOXHOUND doesn't actually speak, but is a telepath somewhat more intelligent than the human cast. He has spoken to Liquid, Octopus, and Raven and has a varying degree of disdain for any human who isn't Wolf. He got his brain fried after being electrocuted while trying to stop Gray Fox and seems to behave like a normal wolf towards the end of the comic as a result.
- No Rest For The Wicked: the talking bear. (Though he is a result of Involuntary Shapeshifting.)
- In The KAMics the Penguins would qualify, although only other penguins, and the reader, can understand them.
- Autumnside has a talking wolf, as well as a few talking pumpkins.
- While no one knows exactly what Red XIII is in Ansem Retort, he's certainly treated as a pet, and he can speak telepathically. Oddly enough, the only ones that understand him are Diz and Xemnas.
- Coleman, the tiny blue polar bear from Sore Thumbs, albeit with a speech impediment.
- Glen from My Roommate Is An Elf is a talking monkey. Though he isn't really a monkey, he's Griswold's familiar.
- Woo from Sandra And Woo is a talking raccoon. All the animals, including Woo's friends Shadow (a fox) and Sid (a squirrel) speak the same language, but only Woo is able to communicate with humans. He's not talking to anyone but his owner Sandra, though, since he is afraid of ending up in a laboratory otherwise.
Web Original
- Dusty from Sailor Nothing is another example of a talking cat helping out a magical girl. Although he can talk and can give people powers, he was initially just a normal cat.
- Rufus, from Gaia Online/zOMG, is Ian's pet cat... who for reasons that are never adequately explained, can talk. He's smart enough to run a store, but prolonged absence from his owner seems to have an adverse effect on him. (He even starts using LOL Speak instead of English.)
- The eponymous Vatsy and Bruno are, respectively, a talking feline-like thing and a talking chimp.
Western Animation
- Almost the entire Looney Tunes cast of characters.
- The Warner brothers (and the Warner sister) are cute little animals of an indeterminate (most likely feline) species.
- The Tiny Toons are cartoon animals in training.
- A character by character breakdown:
- Bugs Bunny - Talking Animal (in cartoons.. has had his Funny Animal moments in comics and other extra-canonical sources)
- Porky Pig - Funny Animal (ever see him wallow around naked in a pig sty? didn't think so; this is probably because Porky is the oldest of the well-known characters)
- Daffy Duck - sometimes Talking Animal (when Porky's trying to shoot him!), sometimes Funny Animal (Duck Dodgers, etc); probably victim of Anthropomorphic Shift.
- Sylvester and Tweety - Talking Animal (note however that while the audience can understand, Granny doesn't seem to know they can talk.. so maybe it's just Animal Talk)
- Wile E. Coyote - Talking Animal (although he rarely speaks)
- Road Runner - Speech Impaired Animal (clearly of human-level intelligence, can write signs and hold them up for the audience to read; but only ever say "beep beep")
- "Meep meep". And only applies in the animation - in comics this troper has read, the Road Runner can be as eloquent as any of the other characters.
- Some of Tex Avery's MGM characters (Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, etc).
- Woody Woodpecker.
- Many of the characters in the Hanna-Barbera stable.
- It could be argued that Brian in Family Guy is actually more human than most of the Griffin family, but he is a dog.
- The Disney Animated Canon has more examples that you can shake a stick at.
- At many times the Disney Animated Canon tries to maintain a semi-realism with animals being able to talk to humans. For example, it would seem logical that mermaids would be able to communicate with other living beings in the ocean or that a human raised by animals would understand the animal language. A couple of unusual exceptions to this rule were used in Cinderella where Cinderella and the mice were able to communicate with each other in English without real explanation for it and in The Rescuers films, where children were able to communicate with multiple species of animals (often donning clothing).
- You could probably get real philosophical with this one, and people probably have. How? In a nutshell a "We see what we want to see" argument. Over-speculation, it's fun AND scary.
- At the end of The Rescuers, when Penny is being interviewed by the TV reporter, she tells him that she talks to Bernard and Bianca. The reporter is surprised. This Troper always chalked it up to in the Disney world, kids can understand/communicate with animals, but adults can't. Also, let's not forget the array of wild animals Cody could talk to in The Rescuers Down Under: kangaroos, wombats, mice, lizards...
- Donkey, the Three Little Pigs, the Three Blind Mice, and the Big Bad Wolf from Shrek.
- Twinkle the Marvel Horse from Dave The Barbarian.
- The titular dog from Courage The Cowardly Dog, amoung many other animals in the show. And trees. And foot fungi.
- Courage is a rather unusual case, who shifts between Speech Impaired Animal and talking depending on the situation and who's listening. At one point even calling Murial, since he can't use full english around her in person.
- In the 2003 series of Strawberry Shortcake, Custard (a cat) and Honey Pie Pony can talk, while the rest of the animals cannot.
- You forget Papaya Parrot and Raven, although they're one-shot characters (although Raven appears again in the European-release-only second Strawberry Shortcake GBA game).
- While Rufus mostly speaks in gibberish he is capable of basic elocution for some of his favorite words, including Cheese. More disturbingly, he seems to know not only what Cheese is, but what the context is regarding asking about cheese. This troper wonders if Rufus was ever accidentally hit with an intelligence ray of some sort.
- The titular character of Martha Speaks.
- Up features dogs with special collars that translate their thoughts into speech. Said thoughts are... not that deep.
- Similarly, in a strip of The Far Side, a scientist invents a canine-to-English translator, only to discover that every bark simply translates to the word "hey".
- While it isn't clear if the animals in Christopher The Christmas Tree can talk to humans or only to each other, there is an owl who can't 'talk' and can only hoot.
- Dukey of Johnny Test was a normal dog until he got experimented on by the Test Twins. Then, he can talk and seems to be smarter than Johnny. He hides the fact that he can talk from everyone except Johnny and the twins since 1) he will get experimented on by the Government and 2) Johnny and the Twins will get in a lot of trouble if their parents find out.
- The Teen Titans encounter both talking alien dogs and talking card carrying gorillas. Also, velociraptors speak, but in their own language.
|
|
