Basic trope: An animal has the combined physical appearance of two or more species.
- Straight: The Troper resembles an otter with bat wings, a snake's tongue and venom-injecting fangs.
- Exaggerated: The Troper has an otter's body, the forelegs of a canine, the rear legs of a horse, rabbit ears, a beak, a tongue that's forked and raspy, a rat's tail, a spider's legs, a hagfish's skin, a pouch, an udder, gills, tentacles, antennae, four eyes, (two of which are on stalks) the wings of a wasp, a whale's tail flukes, and a fly's mouthparts. She breathes a smelly gas, secretes tons of thick mucus from her body in in risky situations, sprays blood from her own ambulatory arteries, lays eggs in vast quantities almost like a frog, is hermaphroditic, and can fly.
- Downplayed: A hybrid snake, like a "wall python" (woma/ball python); she has traits of both species, but not of anything that's not a snake.
- Justified:
- The character is from another planet where otterlike creatures have the aforementioned bat-like traits.
- The character is a common fictional mashup, such as a gryphon or jackalope.
- A hybrid that's possible in Real Life, such as a liger or goat/sheep hybrid.
- The creature is a genetically engineered hybrid.
- Inverted: All-otter on a planet where everyone else is a mix-and-match critter.
- Subverted:
- The wings, tongue, and fangs are part of a disguise...
- The description of the Troper as a hybrid is hyperbole, and the animal's traits only superficially resemble them and are otherwie distinct.
- Double Subverted: ...which conceals a much more elaborate chimera.
- Parodied:
- The character contains so many composite, mismatched animal character traits that she looks like a gargled mess (for instance, one leg is a tentacle, one leg is a duck's foot, there are too many eyeballs in one socket, her tongue somehow has a mouth of its own, one leg ends in a hoof and one leg is a human's). Basically, like exaggerated, only more random and with more Body Horror.
- Alternatively, everything that's living on this planet is a bizarre hybrid, even the plants and technology.
- The hybrid also has a mix and match name that is a Punny Name.
- It is revealed that a mermaid was born when a woman slept with a fish.
- The jeneflappen is a duck... with the body of a different duck.
- Zig Zagged:
- The parents are an otter and a bat. She has three other siblings: a normal otter, a normal bat, and a bat with webbed toes, whiskers, and a long, thick tail. The bat with otter traits marries a kangaroo, and they have a kangaroo-bat child and an otter child.
- The character lives in a world where both this trope and normal animals coexist.
- Averted: The Troper is a completely normal otter.
- Enforced:
- The writer was told to make all of the characters composites of at least two animals.
- The writer wants to make a Shout-Out to The Wuzzles, Spliced or any other work with mix-and-match critters.
- Lampshaded: "It's like I'm half-bat or something."
- Invoked: The character undergoes surgery to attach the aforementioned bat traits.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: A scientist tries to get a bat and an otter to breed but doesn't consider the experiment a success until the offspring are "normal" animals.
- Discussed: "Apparently, the Troper's parents are an otter and a bat."
- Conversed: "You gotta love science. We can mix any two animals together now."
- Deconstructed:
- Finding that she is the last wild bat-otter, scientists capture the character and closely analyze her to discover how she became that way.
- The biological functions fail horrendously, and she dies a slow, agonizing death.
- Reconstructed: Over time, they successfully get her to breed with both bats and otters and thus save bat-otters from extinction.
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