Speaking of Animals and Their Families is a 1942 short film (8 minutes) directed by Robert Carlisle and Jerry Fairbanks.
It purports to be a documentary about how animals look after their young. The film and its narrator visits animals in various setting—a team of Alaskan huskies in the wild, with most of the other animals, such as hippos, rhinos, giraffes, owls, alligators, and pigeons, in captivity. The film shows mom and dad animals looking after their young and teaching them how to survive, talking throughout as if the animals are human. To further this gag, the animals sometimes have cartoon mouths animated, which they supposedly use to talk back to the narrator.
This film was part of a "Speaking of Animals" short film series that ran in the early-mid 1940s, comic shorts that showed animals talking with human mouths. An uncredited Mel Blanc provides the voice of the wolf.
Tropes:
- Househusband: A joke. The film keeps cutting back to a male Alaskan husky leading puppies around. The narrator finally wonders where the mom is and asks "Rex". Rex answers "My wife works at Lockheed."
- Instant Messenger Pigeon: Carrier pigeons are shown taking a break from delivering messages to look after their young.
- Medium Blending: The animals' mouths are animated, and they talk in human speech. Sometimes the animation mixed in with the live action is more elaborate, like when a giraffe blows a bubble of bubble gum that explodes over its head, or a bear plays the banjo.
- Narrative-Driven Nature Documentary: A documentary of how animals look after their young—an Alaskan husky leads his puppies down the trail, a mother hippo takes her baby underwater to nurse, and more. Throughout the narrator acts as if the animals are human parents. When a mother rhino leads her young around the zoo enclosure in a circle, the narrator calls it a game of "ring around the rosy." The animals having cartoon mouths to talk back to the narrator furthers the illusion.
- Narrator: Ken Carpenter keeps up a track of jokey, humorous narration.
- The Owl-Knowing One: The film introduces three owls on a branch as the narrator speaks of "the wise old owl...sage of the woods."
- Pun: Several. The narrator asks a young alligator what it would like to be and the alligator says, in a high-pitched feminine voice, "I'll probably turn out to be an old bag." (Alligator-skin bags and suitcases. Get it?)
- The Runt at the End: Three owls are on a branch. Two adults obligingly hoot for the camera. The young one on the right refuses to hoot, instead saying "I don't give a hoot."
