Come along and sing with me, it's fun to learn your ABC, with the letters that you get, in your animal alphabet!
— The title song
Animal Alphabet was a series that aired on ITV, Nick Jr. and other channels in other countries from the late 90's to early 2000s. The show consisted of 26 episodes, each one featuring an animal with a song for each letter of the Alphabet. The show would eventually be released on home video, as well as a sequel, "Animal Numbers". The company who majorly produced the series no longer exists and has since defunct.Of the 6 dubs to exist, 3 have been archived on the net. There was an attempt to access the ITV archives, and hence uncover the dubs, but the attempt was unsuccessful. To this day, the one user dedicated in the search is still looking for the dubs, if not on a wild goose chase.
(lion roar)
- Artistic License – Biology:
- Not necessarily in the video itself, but some disk boxes tell about "penguins in the Arctic", as well as "Gibbons in Africa". All members of family Hylobatidae are restricted to South-east Asia.
- The R is for Rat song starts OK enough, featuring the features of the Black, Kangaroo and Giant-pouched rats. Then, in the fourth segment of the song, the Naked Mole-Rat is featured, making this segment the most confusing of the 4. Despite their name, they aren't necessarily defined as Rats. The term "Rat" isn't as taxonomic as it is terminology. Stereotypically, any muroid that is large is termed "rat", and any muroid that is small "mouse". Mole-rats are an entire new order themselves. The Naked Mole-Rat is an exception, as it owns its own genus, Heterocephalus. That said, what the lyrics forsaw is that the Naked Mole-Rat is now, even more confusingly, classified as a rodent. In short, the inclusion of this animal in a song about rats is a pretty close call, they aren't totally right, but they aren't totally wrong either.
- In a most definitely unintended use of the trope, the V is for Viper song states that "all of us are poisonous", a very common misconception. Snakes like this aren't poisonous, but rather venomous. The song gets it right though, that "we keep it in our teeth".
- Eat the Camera: Done by a cartoon lion at the beginning of each episode of the TV version.
- Edutainment Show: Two-minute songs featuring lesser-known animals and describing their habits.
- Lost Episode: Formerly the case, but now averted. The Spanish dub had 27 episodes, one episode more than the other dubs as the Spanish alphabet has one more letter. This Spanish-only episode was "Ñ for Ñandu", an animal known by the English speakers as a rhea. The episode, like the Spanish dub, was partially lost until February 2020, when Dedennedillo uploaded the full Spanish dub onto Google Drive
. - Shown Their Work: The "P is for Penguin" song's lyrics highlight that not all penguins live on Antarctica, and some live in places like Chile in South America. This is, however averted in Animal Numbers, which mentions "To be a penguin must be very nice, but only if you're fond of snow and ice."
- Silly Animal Sound: In the DVD version, some segments between songs feature animals making wrong noises, such as a lion crowing like a rooster.
- Swallowed Whole: As it uses actual animal footage, animals do get eaten within the video. Namely a fly in the Chameleon song and a sea creature by another sea creature in the Nudibranch song.
- She's a Man in Japan: Unlike the English dub, the French dub has a woman as the main singing role.
- Zebras Are Just Striped Horses: Lampshaded, the cartoon zebras in the video make horse sounds.
