History Main / NaiveAnimalLover

* Pax, a recurring AntiVillain on ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse,'' [[AnimalWrongsGroup constantly attempts to free alien creatures that are actively harmful if left to their own devices]] (in his first appearance, he talked Ben into helping him free a Screegit not knowing it would grow big and rampage once exposed to an atmosphere with nitrogen in it, and in his second he freed the Grackleflint which Rook says wants nothing more than to eat anything that isn't another Grackleflint) and then has the nerve to complain when Ben and Rook try to contain them again when said creatures inevitably cause trouble.

This is a subversion of FriendToAllLivingThings or the MountainMan. Compare TheFarmerAndTheViper which is about good deeds being repaid with evil (and a variant of the "old story" described at the start). Characters like this usually are a HorribleJudgeOfCharacter except applied to animals instead of people, and will often be TooDumbToLive. A character may become this if he loves animals but AnimalsHateHim. If the person actually succeeds in getting bloodthirsty, vicious animals to like them, they're a FluffyTamer. May be a member of an AnimalWrongsGroup. Can also be related to NatureIsNotNice. Subtrope of AnimalLover.

* The [[ComicStrip/TheFarSide Gary Larson]] book ''There's a Hair in My Dirt!'' is about a woman called Harriet who loves nature and doesn't understand a damn thing about it. So she goes through the woods "helping" animals in ways that make their situations worse (helping an invasive species at the cost of an endangered one, throwing a ''tortoise'' into a pond, rescuing a disease-ridden rodent from a snake), until eventually her lack of comprehension kills her (never kiss a rodent).

* [[https://slate.com/technology/2017/07/thousands-of-minks-die-after-being-set-free.html Another scenario similar to the example above occurred in 2017]]. Between 30,000 and 40,000 farm-raised minks were released into the wild after animal rights activists cut the fence to a mink-pelt farm and opened the cages holding the mammals, letting them run into the wild. Unfortunately, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome farm-raised animals rarely survive for long in the wild]], and many of the minks died once released because of the heat. What's worse, the ones that were recovered killed one another due to the disruption to their social grouping.
%%* It happened yet again in late 2022. They just don't learn.

* It happened yet again in late 2022. They just don't learn.

* While Fluttershy of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' is usually good at dealing with animals, she becomes this in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E10SwarmOfTheCentury Swarm of the Century]]" when she decides to adopt a cute parasprite, which then multiplies and very nearly destroys Ponyville by eating everything (even buildings) in sight. After Twilight and the others have found a way to rid the town of the parapsprites and are congratulating themselves on a job well done, what do they find but a ''new'' colony in Fluttershy's cottage. She couldn't resist keeping one, despite knowing the damage that they cause and the fact that they [[ExplosiveBreeder breed like]] [[Franchise/StarTrek tribbles]].

* ''Literature/ImpracticalMagic'': Yam is an animal lover obsessed with getting many many familiars. He loves all animals. Particularly monsters. Particularly dangerous monsters. Particularly horrifying, disgusting, dangerous monsters that he doesn't actually know how to make friends with. Those he wants to steal and raise as his own by default.

* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants has quite a strong admiration for [[ElectricJellyfish jellyfish]] (which this show treats as an undersea equivalent to [[BeeAfraid honeybees]]), but this ends up biting him in the back a couple of times. In one episode ("Jellyfish Jam"), [=SpongeBob=] decides to take one home as an [[CoolPet exotic pet]], believing that [[AllAnimalsAreDomesticated he can tame it]]. In another episode ("Nature Pants"), [=SpongeBob=] decides he wants to live as a wild man alongside the jellyfish in their natural habitat. But on both occasions, [=SpongeBob=] eventually finds out the hard way that the jellyfish are aggressive, ill-tempered, wild animals that don't really care for him.

* ''Series/FatalAttractions2010'' tells true stories about Naive Animal Lovers, many of which ended in tragedy.

* In the second series of ''Series/{{Primeval}}'', a woman found a ''Smilodon'' cub that had fallen through an anomaly and decided to adopt it. She thought that because he saw her as his mother, he wouldn't harm her. During the final confrontation, where the protagonists tried to get her away from the now fully-grown predator that had been hunting and eating humans for weeks, she refused and insisted that he wouldn't hurt her. One swipe from his paws proved her fatally wrong.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

** After his former pet Aragog died, he was genuinely surprised to discover the only reason the giant spiders in the Forbidden Forest didn't attack him on sight was because Aragog told them not to.

* Bubbles of ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls''. A friend to just about every creature great and small. Magnified in "Helter Shelter" when she brings a beached baby whale home.

* The Creator/WernerHerzog documentary ''Film/GrizzlyMan'' shows the life of Timothy Treadwell, who was one of these in RealLife (see that folder below for more info), and the horrible death that befell him and his girlfriend because NatureIsNotNice.

* In ''Film/{{Prometheus}}'', a character finds a snake-like creature who is obviously acting in an aggressive manner but still decides to get in close to touch it while calling it "baby". It doesn't end well.

* Hagrid in ''Literature/HarryPotter'', who is known to befriend all sorts of dangerous beasties, from dragons, to flesh-eating ''books''. Played with, in that although they really don't harm ''him'' (much), his monsters are often a danger to the heroes. This is at least partly because he doesn't fully grasp just how much stronger and more resilient he is from most humans (he's a three-meter tall half-giant); and also because most of these creatures legitimately don't pose much threat to him. Not to mention, not fully understanding how dangerous said creatures can be to the average human aside, he does know his way around creatures.

There's an old story in which a boy encounters a rattlesnake. The snake asks the boy to pick him up and be his friend. After the boy does so, the snake bites him. When the boy, now dying, asks, "Why did you bite me?" the snake merely responds, "You knew what I was when you picked me up."