Rename (alt titles 5/15): Intelligent Gerbil

I've recently found and started keeping an eye on The Conquerors Trilogy, where one of the entries was about Intelligent Gerbil... except that it was using the trope wrong, so the entry was deleted.

Anyway, I went to look on the trope page itself, and at a glance more than a few people are using the trope to mean "looks similar to Earth animals", whereas the trope seems to me to be about aliens with behaviors of Earth animals that are given sapience.

As I'm not familiar with many of the sources, though, I can't really tell for sure if the examples actually fit the trope. Assuming I'm not misunderstanding the trope (entirely possible, but I doubt it), could someone give a hand cleaning this page up?

edited 20th Jul '11 1:27:40 AM by Nohbody

I've been planning on taking this to TRS myself. As came up in this conversation in World Building, it looks like your interpretation is pretty widespread, and it is definitely incorrect. The one-line definition of Intelligent Gerbil is what I quoted there -

- it is not about aliens that look like Earth animals.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure what to do here, as Intelligent Gerbil isn't just a term we made up ourselves.

Which gets more weight, a pre-existing term or in-wiki misuse?

I see no problem with, for example, a rename that ends with the article opening up that it is also called an "Intelligent Gerbil".

edited 20th Jul '11 7:38:24 PM by Stratadrake

I'm reasonably certain it's supposed to be preexisting terms. The issue is that I'm not sure if this really is one or not - while we didn't coin it, I don't know if it's actually used off-site besides in the original essay that it came from.

Why don't we consult the all-knowing overlord?

• intelligent gerbil: 198,000
  Aside from TV Tropes dominating the top three results (including this thread), most of the first page is about actual pet gerbils or rodents.
  • intelligent gerbil -tropes: 220,000
    Minus TV Tropes, almost the entire first page is still about pet care.

• "intelligent gerbil": 1,080
  Wow. Just ... wow.
  • "intelligent gerbil" -tropes: 500

edited 20th Jul '11 8:11:45 PM by Stratadrake

That seems pretty decisive, then. I'm now leaning towards a Trope Transplant, especially since we don't actually have a trope to cover what the misuse is.

I think I may have not made myself sufficiently clear.

From what I read, it looked like more than a few of the examples were only about appearance, and didn't mention anything at all about behaviors based on the Earth animals they vaguely resemble. That's what I was viewing as a misuse, not the degree of visual similarity to Earth animals.

If I may, the misuse argument at this point is only alleged (someone check and document your findings). On the other hand, Google reports that the pre-existing term is not in widespread use, therefore failing the requirement for pre-existing term immunity. Aside from here, I can't seem to find any Wiki articles on it whatsoever: A search for "intelligent gerbil" wiki -tropes scores less than 100 results!

edited 21st Jul '11 8:29:23 AM by Stratadrake

Let me do a full check on all the wikilinks...

Definitely correct - aliens based on Earth animals in appearance and characterization

• Animal Stereotypes: "...they're actually an alien race that coincidentally shares all of their traits with a terrestrial animal"
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: "In Marti Steussy's Forest of the Night: Building a permanent shelter is a no-no. Calling someone's autobiography "boring," or accusing them of embellishing it, is fighting words. Letting your disabled child starve to death because he can't hunt is unfortunate, but not morally wrong."
  • Ill Girl (same context)
• Characters.GL Other Villains: "Aliens who mimic terrestrial spiders in their appearance and habits."
• Known Space: "Cat Folk - The Kzinti are aggressive, warlike humanoid felines with rat-tails."
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: "Species that are essentially aliens based on predatory animals, such as the Cat Folk often found in many Science Fiction works, are also apt to be of this type."
• Quintaglio Ascension: "The eponymous Quintaglios are a species of human-like intelligence descended from small tyrannosaurs. Though they are similar to humans, the Quintaglios are true to their ancestry. They are obligate carnivores that hunt with tooth and claw, are fairly aggressive by nature, and have fierce territorial instincts that often turn out to be a major problem when several Quintaglios must work in a confined space (like, say, a ship)."
  • Non-Mammal Mammaries, same context
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism
• Warhammer: "The Skaven, anthropomorphic rats who are cannibalistic, disease-ridden, and generally unpleasant, as well as attacking in swarms.

Related tropes using the term at face value

• Bee People: "Related to Intelligent Gerbil"
• Cat Folk: "Related to Intelligent Gerbil (science fiction aliens based on animals)"
• Funny Animal: "Frequently overlaps with Animal Superheroes and Intelligent Gerbil"
• Human Aliens: "The bottom rung of the Alien ladder, below Rubber-Forehead Aliens and Intelligent Gerbils."
• Petting-Zoo People: "Supertrope of Intelligent Gerbil."
• Planet of Hats: "See also Rubber-Forehead Aliens, Intelligent Gerbil..."

Other references to the term at face value only

• Dungeons And Dragons: "Additional rules for swashbuckler-style game, extra Intelligent Gerbil races...."
  • Headscratchers.Dungeons And Dragons: "Mystara got Loads and Loads of Races, and at least Savage Coast among other Intelligent Gerbil peples has Rakasta."
• Lawful Good: "Treecats are much harder to peg, being somewhere between Starfish Alien and Intelligent Gerbil, with a psychology to match."
• Literature.Prisoners Of Power, under Human Aliens - "The other is the Headies (Golovans), who are Intelligent Gerbils in appearance but quite Starfish Aliens in mindset."
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: "...overlapping with Intelligent Gerbils."
• Seikesshou Albatross: "Some Monobails."
• Standard Sci-Fi History: "Said stories are also an example themselves, covering a timespan from the start of World War III up to the collapse of the Concordiat in the Final War with the Melconians."
• Thundercats 2011: "Surprisingly, shaping up to be a Beast Fable, in concert with the Intelligent Gerbil characterization of Third Earth's residents."
• Starfish Aliens: "Star Trek Enterprise has the Xindi Aquatics, Avians and Insectoids. The Insectoids are more Intelligent Gerbil, they have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, stand upright, etc. They could easily be played by an actor in a rubber suit, and are even called 'overgrown Grasshoppers' by Archer."

Misusing the term entirely

• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: "most Pokemon are based on animals."
  • Pokemon are native species, not aliens.

Playing the name literally, correctness unclear

• It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": "The fact that Hämsterviel is in fact a literal intelligent gerbil doesn't help the situation."
• Gaming Steve Universe: "A large number of races are this. The Omic are a race of literal Intelligent Gerbils."
• Bernice Summerfield: "...one of her close friends is an enormous sentient hamster..."
• Burning Wheel: "Roden are intelligent human-sized anthropomorphic rodents who divide themselves into Country Mice and City Mice, with murderous cultists and albino mystics thrown in for good measure."
• Literature.Tasakeru: "Intelligent Squirrel, along with foxes, badgers, wolves, skunks, ferrets, rabbits, and raccoons, are the eight formally-recognized sentient species..."

Mentioning only the visual anthropomorphism, characterization unclear

• Alien Among Us: "Even though she and her father resemble cows, no one has mentioned this or even noticed..."
• Dinosaucers: "There's a little leeway given that these are all aliens who happen to resemble anthropomorphic versions of Earth animals...."
• Literature.Dream: "The ursapes are human-like polar bears. Not actually 'aliens' like the trope suggests, but definitely far too ursine to be considered Petting-Zoo People."
• Frogs And Toads: "Keroro Gunsou features a whole horde of invading aliens who look like impossibly cute bipedal frogs."
  • Keroro Gunsou, same context
• Go Mutants: "...Norma Baker, who is a space cow."
• Mary Gentle: "Rats, from the same setting, are...well, seven-foot-tall rat people..."
• Out Of The Dark: "Technologically superior, carnivorous, canine-analog aliens..."
• Restraining Bolt: "Florence, a genetically engineered anthropomorphic wolf"
• Spacetrawler: "The Affably Evil lizardlike bodyguard Growp."
• Sword Of The Stars: "Cliff note's version of some of the races: Liir - Space Cetaceans (whales and dolphins), Hivers - Space Ants, Tarka - space lizards, Morrigi - Space Archaeopteryxes, Zuul - space Tasmanian Devils."
• Talislanta: "Jaka (cat-people), Ferrans (rat-people), Aeriad, Gryphs, and Stryx (bird-people), and Saurans (lizard-people), among others."
• The Cobra Trilogy: "The Troft, with their beaks and throat bladders, look somewhat like humanoid chickens."
• Vampires Are Sex Gods, under Known Space: "Luckily our hero has befriended a tiger-like alien..."
• SoYouWantTo.Write A Furry Comic: "No, they're really aliens, they just look an awful lot like the animals we know and love."

Too difficult / not bothering to classify

• Alastair Reynolds: "A subversion, since they're few and far between and, by the time starfaring humans discover them, they're usualy already extinct."
• Albion: "Sure, their basic premise is 'cat people,' and there's something about scent glands, but beyond that, their physiology and culture is commendably original."
• Awesome.Beyond The Star Empire Of The Otters Of Doom
• WMG.Brandy And Mr Whiskers: "Ed Otter is really an Ugly Cute alien from a Sugar Bowl..."
• Chakona Space: "Most Morphs are bipedal tetrapods, but some, such as the Chakats, are quadrupedal hexapods known as Taurs."
• Characters.Darkbolt: "Unlike most of the rest of the Demons, Destruction isn't humanoid so much as a bus-sized, nasty, apatosaurus-like lizard. Mentally, he's pretty human-like, though."
• Descriptively-Named Species (opening line)
• Dogs Are Dumb: "Headies in the Noonverse are a species of dog-like aliens that are psychic, extremely pragmatic as a species and much, much smarter than humans..."
• Dungeon Crawl: "Enjoy your Felid Wanderer of Xom."
• Furry Confusion: "They may be mutants or visiting aliens or something."
• Characters.Honor Harrington: "Doesn't quite fit here but is closer than any of the other Alien tropes."
• Kemonomimi: "one of the most common ways to invent a fictional race or alien species is to take a non-hominid animal and anthropomorphize it to an extreme..."
• Noon Universe: "lizard-like Tagorians and Ugly Cute dog-like Golovans."
• Analysis.Our Werewolves Are Different: "In Speculative Fiction, the werewolf is often neither really wolf nor man, but some species of alien."
• Characters.Pokemon Generation I Families: "Alakazam has an IQ that exceeds 5,000, making it the smartest Pokémon in existence."
• Quadrail Series: "Some alien races are described in terms of Earth animals (though this might just be how the human viewpoint character sees them). For example, Bellidos have chipmunk-like faces, Juriani parrot-like beaks, Shorshians dolphin-like snouts, and the Filliaelians horse-like faces - in an Incredibly Lame Pun, humans nickname them 'Fillies'."
• Snowfall: "The Yersai were designed off of two species of foxes, Artic and Fennec."
• Something Happens: "What, an absurdist comic is going to stick to plain old animals?"
• Son of an Ape: "That said, most of the species from Sword of the Stars have similar nicknames..."
• Space Beasts: "All the Non-Earthling species are this, Aves are Bird People (Specifically Alien Herons) Octos are Octopi, Magis are Cats..."
• Spore: "Very easy to make your own."
• Tech Infantry: "The K'Nes, talking housecats. Originally conceived as large crosses between a Lion and a Blimp who constantly floated, they later got Retconned into being shorter parodies of housecats."
• Teenagers From Outer Space (listed under Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism)
• Theodore Rex: "Incidentally, don't look forward to there being any explanation as to why there are anthropomorphic animals. In some scenes, it appears that they may be aliens, and they have their own society and culture."
• The World Forged By Powers: "Most of the aliens in the galaxy are based on earth animals."
• World War: "The Race are described in the books as 'looking like chameleons with delusions of grandeur.'"

Little to no context

• Alien Chronicles: "everyone"
• Andre Norton
• Literature.Beetle In The Anthill (paired with Snarky Nonhuman Sidekick)
• DarthWiki.Beyond The Star Empire Of The Otters Of Doom
• Embellished Webcomics: "Furr - A series about three warrior cats, a wolf pup, a genre-savvy alien vixen, and their odd adventures."
  • Furry Webcomics, same words
  • Sci-Fi Webcomics, same words
• Evolutionary Levels: "A related idea ... tends to assume that the 'goal' of evolution is to become a bipedal tool-user with curious ideas about how it got there, so doing anything else isn't evolving."
• Characters.GL Green Lantern Corps
• Humanoid Aliens: "Most aliens in Buck Godot Zap Gun For Hire, although quite many are Starfish Aliens or animal-like..."
• Last Res0rt: "Many, many, many of the alien species."
• Meteos: "The bee-like Hanihulans"
• Phules Company: "Cat, slug, warthog, lizard."
• Robert Silverberg: "the Nildoror in Downward to the Earth"
• Starfire: "The Khanate of Orion are cat aliens. The Ophiuchi Association are bird aliens. The Rigellians are bear aliens...."
• Star Trek The Animated Series: "The Kzinti in 'The Slaver Weapon' and the Caitian M'Ress."
• Characters.Suikoden V (listed under Civilized Animal and related tropes)
• Wing Commander: "The Kilrathi"
• WesternAnimation.Zula Patrol: "Wizzy and Wigg (easily based off of bee/lightning bug)"

Indexes

• Alien Tropes
• Animal Tropes
• Bizarre Alien Biology (under Alien Animals)
• Characterization Tropes
• Fantastic Sapient Species Tropes (under Alien Tropes)
• Intelligence Tropes
• Speculative Fiction Tropes

So far we've got about 10 correct usages, 15 referencing it by name (that's a total of 25%), and a small selection which are missing the point entirely. The rest is a mixed bag that I can't quite figure out. Help?

edited 13th Apr '12 8:47:36 PM by Stratadrake

So, this trope is something along the lines of Alien Funny Animals or Alien Talking Animals, correct?

Sort of, but the key element is that they also act like the Earth animal they're based off of. A species of literal intelligent alien gerbils would not qualify unless they exhibited gerbil-like behavior, for instance.

Bump

So the requirements are the following?

• not human
• sapient (having language, culture, and similar)
• appears similar to earth animal
• behaves similar to earth animal

I think so.

I would support a rename. This title has always bothered me and by the looks of it is subject to rampant misuse.

Where are you getting that from?

Post #9. 100% Wick Check, feel free to debate/fix any problems with the examples cited.

The Bee People and Cat Folk references are mostly correct; in fact, those aren't just related, those are subtropes.

Mentions under Funny Animal, Petting-Zoo People, Rubber-Forehead Aliens and Starfish aliens look correct.

The mention under Kemonomimi uses, and restates, the definition of this trope correctly.

I feel obligated to point out that nowhere in my check did I label any group as "misuse" - I just tried to sort them by theme. For example, using the term at face value isn't a problem when you're listing compare/contrast tropes.

Clocking for lack of activity.

Out of the wick check, only the Alakazam Pokemon one, and the alien that looks like a bus-sized apatosaur with human psychology, appear clearly wrong to me.

Given that sorting misuse out of that wick check basically probably requires reading/watching each work to see if animal-like psychology is not present, finding a real misuse rate and correcting the wicks may be impossible.

Which isn't to say that those wicks aren't misuse. That the editors saw no need to describe alien psychology rather clearly shows they missed the point of this trope. And the name is neither clear nor widely used outside this wiki.

Given all that, I prefer a trope transplant over a strait rename. Move the original meaning to a new page with a new name, and keep Intelligent Gerbil, with its examples and wicks, as the supertrope to Insectoid Aliens and The Reptilians. I suppose it'd also be a subtrope to Petting-Zoo People. Perhaps use Petting Zoo Aliens as a redirect.

Bumping for votes.

Calling crowner in favor of renaming Intelligent Gerbil

Please brainstorm names before hooking up a crowner. It works better that way.

There's several names mentioned earlier in the thread, they're on the crowner now.