Animals Respect Nature

Mufasa: Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.

Simba: But, Dad, don't we eat the antelope?

Mufasa: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.

— The Lion King (1994)

In Real Life, all non-human animals are part of the ecosystems they live in. Anything they do to help the environment thrive is not because of some moral code but because they have found ecological niches that increase their likelihood of survival while minimizing the need for competition.

In fiction non-human animals might not only maintain this ecological balance but do so with full understanding of ecology, something that only humans have demonstrated in real life.

Ecological sustainability in the food chain is a point-in-time phenomenon that is constantly changing as selective pressures give some creatures a leg up on others over many generations. This delicate balance can be disrupted easily with the introduction of invasive species, most commonly by humans. Further, losses to keystone species and changes to the climate can also have devastating effects on the entire ecosystem. If anything, the food web often gets interrupted or even outright ignored with things like birds destroying nests and lions and hyenas killing each other's cubs to ensure less competition. Both of these are actions that do not reinforce the idea of "balance" in an ecosystem. Though because the story typically focuses on the idea that Predation Is Natural, conflict between animals beyond predator vs. prey is very rarely addressed.

Humans have removed themselves from being intrinsically dependent upon ecosystems and instead dominate the environment to exploit it for natural resources. Doing so in unsustainable ways and the resulting climate changes are likely what has led to increased numbers of stories suggesting respect for the land through animal allegories.

If they accept being eaten as natural, it can overlap with Carnivore Confusion or Let's Meet the Meat.

Compare Nature Lover. See Introduced Species Calamity for when animals disrupt the balance of nature, usually due to humans or another sapient species moving a species from one environment to another.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Buddha, several characters can communicate with animals and thereby draw from their wisdom about the nature of life, mortality, and sacrifice. As a wolf mother tells one character she has taken under her wing, "We of the wild kill only when we're hungry and we must. That is our law!"
• Hello! Sandybell: Oliver is a Big Friendly Dog and guards Sandybell's flower garden.
• Primitive Boy Ryu: Averted with the vicious Tyranno, who only lives for causing destruction. Most of the plants and animals in the series (like the Savage Wolves and man-eating plant) also count.
• Remy: Nobody's Girl: Vitalis' animals and Rosette the cow play this trope straight. The Savage Wolves, however, don't and attack their fellow animals.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): According to the author of this MonsterVerse fanfiction, the Titan Scylla in particular is irate at the damage manmade Global Warming has done to the ice caps (which her specific environmental effects work to reverse in MonsterVerse canon).
• Better Bones AU: The Clan cats have some understanding of ecology and try to avoid overhunting certain species, making them less damaging to the environment than real-life feral cats.

Film — Animated

• Brother Bear: Kenai learns to respect nature only after being transformed into a bear.
• The Lion King (1994): Mufasa tells Simba that as king he needs to understand the balance of nature and respect all creatures in it, noting that when lions die their bodies will become grass and antelope will eat the grass, which connect them in the "great Circle of Life.” The 2019 remake also implies that the reason Shenzi's hyena clan is banned from the Pride Lands is because they refuse to control their hunting habits, already having driven out all the prey from their territory.
• Once Upon a Forest: The elderly badger Cornelius acts as mentor to three "furlings:" Abigail (field mouse), Edgar (common mole) and Russell (hedgehog). They learn about nature and conservancy, including using willow bark as an analgesic. His aesop at the end of the film answers a furling's question whether their homeland of Dapplewood will ever recover from a toxic devastation: "If we all work together, it will be."
• In Wish (2023), the forest animals teach Asha that every living thing is made of stardust and explain the cycle of life to her, with a message to cherish life and ourselves because we're all part of the same cosmic existence.

Film — Live-Action

• The Jungle Book (2016): The animals follow rules to ensure the overall health of the jungle, such as the Water Truce in which prey and predators are not allowed to kill at the watering hole during a drought. The villainous Shere Khan distinguishes himself from the other animals by how he doesn't obey the laws of the jungle and kills for sport.
• The Matrix: Agent Smith claims that every animal except humans instictively form a symbiosis with their environment, and that humanity should therefore not be classified as a mammal but more properly as a virus.
• MonsterVerse: Godzilla and Kong in this continuity are basically an Animalistic Abomination and a colossal Gentle Gorilla respectively, who each in their own way keep the ecosystems they govern in check: Kong maintains Skull Island's ecosystem whilst Godzilla maintains the global ecosphere as his own territory, combating Kaiju-sized invasive species which threaten those ecosystems. Spin-off materials such as Godzilla: Dominion and the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization outright confirm that Godzilla is conscious of the positive effects his victories have on the world's ecosphere and he considers them good. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) in particular explores the notion that the majority of Earth's Kaiju (Titans) are guardians and antibodies which maintain the balance of nature, although it's ultimately shown that most of those other Titans only enforce the natural order when they're strictly under Godzilla's control, not when they're following their own whims or when they're under the control of a more malignant Alpha Titan.

Literature

• James and the Giant Peach: Miss Spider prides herself on catching flies (and is even puzzled that some humans are arachnophobic when spiders kill flies), the earthworm brags about helping the soil with his droppings, and the centipede is even proud of being a "pest".
• The Jungle Book: The Law of the Jungle is a code of conduct shared by animals which among other things states that predators are allowed to hunt for food but not for pleasure.
• Watership Down:
  • This concept is built into the rabbits' own creation myth. In the beginning, all the animals were herbivores, but eventually the rabbits start multiplying too fast and eating all the grass. To bring them back under control, Lord Frith reacts by turning some of the other animals into predators and filling them with the desire to hunt and kill rabbits.
  • Discussed later in the book by Strawberry when he tells Woundwort, "Animals don't behave like men. If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill, they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality." Being the tyrant that he is, Woundwort doesn't listen.

Tabletop Games

• Werewolf: The Apocalypse, big time. Just about every single tribe and breed claims that humans are unique in that they don't respect their place within the natural order. Several also blame humans for breeding too quickly, which is a especially rich given that humans are actually among the more slow-breeding animals. ^note The fact that humans are so plentiful has more to do with the fact that we're freakishly good at keeping our children alive until they reach breeding age themselves, but presumably "humans take really good care of their babies" wasn't as easy to spin into a villainous trait as "humans are Explosive Breeders."

Websites

• Not Always Right: "The Purple Flower Eater" has the manager at an apartment complex get called by a resident who thinks their neighbors destroyed their flower plantings because they believe the resident is gay. The manager asks if the resident did anything special when they planted, and the resident says they put fish pieces in the soil as fertilizer.
  Manager: ...[Resident], I think that raccoons dug up your flowers to get at the fish.
  Resident: What? No, that can't be. Raccoons are very respectful of nature. They wouldn't do that.

Western Animation

• The Lion Guard expands upon concepts mentioned above by Mufasa about the great balance of the circle of life. Many animals are seen to have their own responsibilities to keep the ecosystem going; for example, in one of the first episodes, Pua's crocodile float passes by a watering hole Basi's bloat is currently resting in, asking if there's enough fish for them to eat. When Basi confirms there's not enough fish at the moment, Pua agrees to lead his float elsewhere to find food. Basi is also shown creating lanes in the mud after a rainstorm. This trope usually ends up being bungled, however, since frequently predator animals who are simply hunting their prey are treated as antagonists. Janja's hyena lackeys are only allowed to live in the Pride Lands if they commit to only eating carrion when hyenas are active hunters.
  • However, like in the orignal movie, it's also implied in many of their songs (where Janja's group frequently discuss wanting to eat every living thing in the Pridelands if they were allowed to return) that the hyenas aren't allowed in because they overhunted. It's stated that the lions, hyenas, and leopards of the past mutually agreed to keep to separate territories because too many apex predators in one area would overtax prey populations and cause the exact disaster seen in the film. The evil hyenas are also stated to be outliers; the rest are perfectly fine keeping to their own territory.

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