"Detective Hammer Logan III woke with a start, images of the bizarre bayou murder still fresh in his mind’s eye—a dame in trouble, body covered with bloody toothprints and saliva—but as sleep lifted, the grizzled detective remembered that he was a dog and the dame a coyote, so he spun on the bed three times and slept the rest of the day."
— Jacob Smith, Dallas, TX, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2016
He may be the Funny Animal, the Intellectual Animal, or maybe even the Speech-Impaired Animal, but if there's one thing that he's incredibly good at, it's solving any kind of mystery that comes his way. He can be either a Hardboiled Detective, an Inspector Oblivious, or a Defective Detective. Whether he does it on his own, or with a friend, or with a group of humans, expect him to help solve the case with ease. This character may or may not work in a World of Funny Animals.
Compare: Animal Superheroes.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Advertising PSA McGruff the crime dog has that whole Columbo thing going for him.
- An Australian ad for blood donors had a bloodhound acting in much the same way. Due to the shortage of blood donors (voluntary in that country), said bloodhound had to be a detective to find one.
Anime & Manga
- The main protagonists from Animal Detectives Kiruminzoo use devices named "Kirumin", which makes them able to transform into animals. They use them to get clues a normal human couldn't get, as well as communicating with animals and understanding their feelings.
- Sherlock Hound is an anime where various Sherlock Holmes characters are Funny Animals.
- Averted by Goro in Detective Conan — the clues he gives to Kogoro in "The Cat Sitting Case"/"Secret of the Russian Blue" (Manga/Anime titles respectively) were set out by Conan placing cat treats.
Asian Animation
- In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Little Detective, Weslie the Funny Animal goat becomes a Kid Detective and solves mysteries.
Comic Books
- Detective Chimp from DC Comics.
- In the few stories he narrated himself, Batman's dog Ace the Bat-Hound was shown to be an expert detective.
- Joey Fly and Sammy Stingtail of the Joey Fly series, a housefly and scorpion respectively.
- Rex The Wonder Dog from DC Comics had issues where he demonstrated his capabilities as a detective. He's even best friends with the aforementioned Detective Chimp, although they rarely if ever work on cases together.
- Fish Police. It's pretty much there in the titles.
- Detective-Inspector Archie LeBrock, the badger lead character of Grandville, and his sidekick Roderick Ratzi.
- Blacksad is about a feline Private Detective who gets involved in Noir-like stories.
- Sam Spayed, one of the eponymous cat's former incarnations in Garfield: His 9 Lives.
Comic Strips
- Slylock Fox is a puzzle strip featuring a fox who solves crimes while dressed as Sherlock Holmes. Most of the other characters are anthropomorphic animals, too.
Films — Animation
- The Great Mouse Detective is an Adaptation Expansion of the Basil of Baker Street books.
- In Zootopia, Judy Hopps is very methodical in trying to uncover clues and potential leads on the missing animals case.
Films — Live-Action
- That Darn Cat!
- In Oh! Heavenly Dog, Chevy Chase plays a private eye who is sent back to Earth as a dog on order to solve his own murder.
Literature
- In Anonymous Rex, a velociraptor in disguise as human is a Hardboiled Detective. (But the book is set In a World... where there are dinosaurs living among us, so he's not unique.)
- The title character of the Mrs. Murphy Mysteries.
- Akif Pirincci's Felidae series features, as you might guess from the title, a cat detective who solves cat crimes. Not as silly as it sounds.
- Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann is a murder mystery that gets solved by a flock of sheep.
- The titular hero of the Basil of Baker Street series is a Mouse World version of Sherlock Holmes. These books were the source material for The Great Mouse Detective.
- The Midnight Louie series of novels, Midnight Louie being a cat.
- Catseye Gomez is a thaumagene tomcat addicted to old hard-boiled detective archetypes, who plays a key role in investigating murder cases in two of Simon Hawke's Wizard novels.
- In the Sherlock Chick children's books, the hero is a chick who was born with detective gear and a deerstalker hat. In his adventures, he solves cases for the other farm animals.
- Chet Gecko is a Big Eater lizard Private Detective whose activities are limited to his elementary school, where the students and staff are all Funny Animals.
- Bug Muldoon of Bug Muldoon and the Garden of Fear is a beetle private eye who takes jobs from insect clients in the garden where he lives.
- Similar to the Bug Muldoon example, Incognito Mosquito, Private Insective, Ace Lacewing, and Spider Kane.
- 'Private I. Guana, which features an iguana detective who tries to find a missing Hollywood Chameleon for a client.
- Detective Dinosaur - the title character is a Clueless Detective assisted by his pterosaur Hypercompetent Sidekick and Da Chief, a Tyrannosaurus rex.
- In Walter Brooks' Freddy the Pig series, one of said character's hobbies was running a detective agency.
- The Chet and Bernie detective stories, about private detective Bernie Little, narrated by his dog Chet.
- In City of Devils and its sequels, Fifty Feet of Trouble and Wolfman Confidential, the LAPD and local Sheriff's Departments are entirely staffed by werewolves.
- The Joe Grey series, featuring a pair of cats with the unique ability to speak and think like humans. After finding out "whodunnit," they phone in anonymous tips to the local police force.
- The Sherlock Hound novel series by Brenda Sivers. Unrelated to the anime version, beyond "Sherlock Holmes parody".
- Left ambiguously open by Lilian Jackson Braun in her The Cat Who series - Koko gives clues that in hindsight point directly at the criminal, though it is never made clear whether the clues are coincidental.
- Hettie Bagshott and her sidekick Tilly in The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency by Mandy Morton.
- Old Toffer's Book of Consequential Dogs, an authorised sequel to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, has a poem about "Dobson, the Dog Detective"; opposite number to the criminal cat Macavity.
- Tailchaser's Song is a Mature Animal Story about an older kitten named Tailchaser and his Tagalong Kid Pouncequick going on a quest to find out why cats in their clan (and neighboring clans) are disappearing.
Live-Action TV
- Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp is an Affectionate Parody of James Bond films made with real monkeys.
- Wishbone played the roles of Sherlock Holmes in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "Scandal in Bohemia" and C. Auguste Dupin in "The Purloined Letter".
- The German Shepherd dog Inspector Rex from the eponymous Austrian and later Italian crime series. He is a skillful dog who has been helpful to solve many crimes.
Puppet Shows
- Colambo in Sesame Street is an ovine Columbo parody.
- Roland Rat once starred in a series called Tales of the Rodent Sherlock Holmes.
- Episode 103 of The Muppet Show had a Sherlock Holmes spoof starring Rowlf.
- In Muppets Tonight, episode 206, there's a sketch in which Sherlock Holmes is a whale.
- In Muppets Most Wanted, Sam the Eagle is a CIA agent on the trail of a stolen painting.
Radio
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who serials, the Doctor's companion Frobisher is an alien called a Whifferdill that can change shape. His favorite shape, and the one he adopts in his day job as a detective, is penguin.
Tabletop Games
- Crimestrikers is set on a World of Funny Animals called Creaturia. The titular heroes are an elite team of crimefighters who are the local equivalents to the Interpol Special Agent.
Video Games
- Pennington from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Though at the end of the chapter, he reveals he's not a real detective, he just likes to pretend.
- Barnyard Sherlock Hooves features a cow and a rat trying to determine what became of their missing friends.
- Even Pokemon gets in on this with Detective Pikachu, which was also made into a movie.
- Investi-Gator: The Case of the Big Crime has the titular Investi-Gator, an anthropomorphic alligator and Clueless Detective.
Western Animation
- Scooby-Doo, most of the time.
- Brain from Inspector Gadget.
- Darkwing Duck, like his inspiration Batman, is a Badass Normal Animal Superhero who also does detective work from time to time.
- Mumbly, though he is said to be an Expy of Muttley.
- Clue Club featured two dog characters, Woofer and Wimper. However, Woofer is a bit of a Know-Nothing Know-It-All and Wimper is his Hypercompetent Sidekick.
- Jabberjaw featured the eponymous shark who helped his human friends, Biff, Shelly, Bubbles and Clamhead, solve mysteries in a futuristic underwater world.
- Subverted with Hong Kong Phooey, who may be "number one super guy", but the mysteries that he encounters are actually solved by his cat, Spot.
- Ceri the Dog-tective in Llanargollen, big time.
- The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, though it's mostly accidental. The bickering among Sylvester, Tweety and often Hector causes clues to appear in front of Granny, who then solves the mysteries herself.
- Snooper and Blabber are a cat-and-mouse detective team.
- The Hunter from King Leonardo and His Short Subjects.
- Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb.
- Danger Mouse. He's a secret agent but he still does yeoman's detective work.
- Chip of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers does most of the detective work for the group.
- Ace Yu/Ace Hart from Dog City.
- Droopy and his son Dripple starred in several cartoons in Tom & Jerry Kids and eventually their own spin-off series Droopy, Master Detective in which they played the roles of 1940's style private detectives.
- Daffy Duck in Looney Tunes shorts:
- As Duck Twacy in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.
- As Sgt Joe Monday in Rocket Squad.
- As Dorlock Homes in Deduce, You Say!
- As Boston Quackie in Boston Quackie
- As China Jones in China Jones
- Fish Police, the In Name Only adaptation of the comic book mentioned above. They're fish, and they're police.
- Gravity Falls had a Show Within a Show called Duck-Tective, which is about a duck (a highly intelligent, but otherwise ordinary, duck) in a deerstalker hat solving mysteries.
