Intellectual Animal

It's not that impressive. He has to hunt-and-peck.

Guiv: What are you, a philosopher bird?
Turul: Just an old bird. In a thousand years, you are wise too.

— Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel

In Real Life (some) animals are quite intelligent, but in certain media and literature they can do many astonishing things you don't usually see animals do and, might or might not, be smarter than the human characters.

Intellectual Animals can range from being Nearly Normal Animals, to being Civilized Animals, to being full-blown Funny Animals. Some can actually talk freely with humans.

The character doesn't have to be a specific animal, merely be animal-like (four-legged carnivores are popular) and clearly not human (a Nature Spirit, a god, et cetera). They are more likely to be an imposing animal than something cute. To reduce the sense of cartoonishness inherent in this idea, the Intellectual Animal may speak without moving their mouth and/or talk in a normal, serious voice.

In fact, this character tends to be a little cynical about humans or may even have outright contempt for most of humankind. The rest of the cast may have to earn their respect. If they do prove themselves they might choose to befriend the human, even going so far as becoming an equal partner and Sapient Steed or Mentor. Often, they will be much smarter than the human they accompany.

Do not confuse this character type for the Team Pet or the Mascot. They will not enjoy the comparison.

The Talking Birds are a subtrope. Compare Nearly Normal Animals, Funny Animals, Uplifted Animals and Civilized Animals. See also Talking Animal.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Every Pokémon in Pokémon: The Series, ever.
  • Particularly the Rocket trio's Meowth, who originally learned to talk to impress a female Meowth (it didn't work).
  • Additionally, Pokémon had a Slowking that could also talk in human speech, though in its case it was because of the actual high intelligence level inherent in all Slowking.
    • Mewtwo fits this trope even more closely, being extremely intelligent, telepathic and not particularly friendly.
    • Following in Mewtwo's footsteps, most of the legendary Pokemon that appear in the movies are able to speak telepathically, be they psychic-type or not.
    • It even applies to non-legendary Pokémon featured in movies, with Lucario, Zorua, and Ash's Pikachu all being able to speak in their respective movies, the former two with telepathy.
• The wolves from Wolf's Rain are definitely smart and intimidating. Kiba and Tsume are also quite contemptuous of humans (Kiba tends to kill lots of them). They usually communicate telepathically, but when they take on their human disguises it's interpreted as actual speech. Many of the other animals are telepathic as well.
• Nyanko-sensei/Madara from Natsume's Book of Friends.
• Zafira of Lyrical Nanoha, especially from the third season and up, where, according to the Megami Sound Stages, less restrictive military rules for animals in the TSAB means that he's never seen out of his wolf form while on duty.
• Mao from Darker than Black is an animal-possessing Contractor who has lost his original body some time ago and now uses a black cat as his default form. The black cat body dies at the end of the first season, so he switches to a squirrel during the second season.
• Ein of Cowboy Bebop is a "data dog", apparently some sort of genetically-engineered biological supercomputer, with considerable if not superhuman intelligence. Although his abilities to use this intelligence is limited by his body (most obviously, he can't talk), he's been known to utilize keyboards, play shogi, and hack into websites. The episode "Mushroom Samba" shows him holding a conversation with a cow, in which he is quite articulate.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure shows us that developing a Stand gives an animal human-level intelligence. From Part 3 alone, we have the Boston Terrier Iggy (the Fool), Forever the orangutan (Strength), and Dio's pet falcon, Pet Shop (Horus).
• Chi from Chi's Sweet Home, although she's pretty low on the intellect scale, essentially being a cat toddler. Other older pets are smarter.
• From Hetalia: Axis Powers, Cameroon's lion cub Kokolo, a Glasgow University Fine Arts graduate according to Hetaween 2011. Who designs and apparently makes his "master" a Halloween costume with his own hands, er, "paws".
• One Piece: Tony Tony Chopper, once a normal reindeer, ate the Hito Hito no Mi devil fruit and became a talking animal with humanesque forms. Then he trained to become a doctor. By the time he joined the Straw Hat Pirates at age 15, he was a physician able to mix medicine, perform surgery, and thaw and resuscitate frozen people in an age where normal technology is about the level of the Renaissance. He's not a bad fighter, either.
  • Animals in general tend to be far smarter and more human-like than you'd credit them for. The News Coos (seagulls) fly around the world delivering newspapers (and taking payment), the Kung-Fu Dugongs have an established society, and an otter and a vulture form the frighteningly competent and ironically named Baroque Works team known as "The Unluckies".
• It isn't clear how smart all of the animals from Mori no Ando are but the turtle appears to be able to read kanji and the fish can speak English.
• My Hero Academia: Nezu, the Principal of U.A., is some sort of furry mammal that has manifested a Quirk giving him Super-Intelligence, and apparently the ability to talk.

Comic Books

• Norbert Sykes' god, Myrtle, from The Badger. Could be an imaginary friend, since only the hero ever sees her. The line "God is a badger named Myrtle!" will always be one of this contributor's favourites.
• Although technically human, Beast from the various incarnations of the X-Men certainly evokes the same imagery.
• Kitty Pryde's dragon Lockheed from X-Men. Cosmo the dog from Nova. Devil Dinosaur is pretty bright.
• Prackspoor, Lord Arux's pet from Lucifer.
• The Beaver from Seth Green's Freshmen. Essentially a take on the X-men's Beast. Except as a tiny fuzzy animal who has an obsession with building dams.
• Detective Chimp. Gorilla Grodd, especially in Justice League. In the Silver Age, Supergirl's horse Comet was actually a centaur who had fallen victim to a Forced Transformation. And Silver Age Krypto had full human intelligence for no real reason except that it was more fun that way (and hey, he's an alien dog, so why not?).
  • Also Rex the Wonder Dog, who once nuked a T. rex, was a fully qualified intellectual long before the Fountain of Youth gave him the ability to talk. Hell, by that point he had already had a successful career as a newspaper photographer.
• Barnabas, Destruction (later Delirium)'s dog in The Sandman (1989).
• In Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel, Guiv is followed around by a peacock named Turul who claims to be a thousand years old.
• Earthling, Joe's cat in King City doesn't talk, but he does complicated-looking mathematical equations in his spare time.
• Lucky Luke's horse, Jolly Jumper, is shown to be smart enough to beat his owner at chess, and Luke claims that his horse beat him at dice only because he cheated.
• Katie the Catsitter has Katie babysitting the many cats of a Crazy Cat Lady, all of whom are super skilled at many different things from welding to building inventions, and good at helping fight crime.

Comic Strips

• Peanuts: Snoopy. He's probably one of the smartest characters in the cast, although most of said intelligence is spent dreaming up his flights of fantasy. He's certainly one of the most intellectual.
• Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes. Assuming he is a tiger and not stuffed toy.
• In Garfield, there's the titular character, as well as his fellow cats, the mice, and the spiders, all of whom seem to have more wits about them than Garfield's human owner.
• The sea urchin from Conchy, who spends his days making philosophical musings about life at the bottom of a tidal pool.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles:
  • Bolt, Mittens, Rhino, and the various animal OCs all have a love of culture and the arts. While the three main characters enjoy a wide variety of media, Bolt prefers visual art, Mittens prefers music, and Rhino retains preference for anything that shows up on the television.
  • Taken to its most extreme level in "The Imaginary Letters." One of the TV star dogs Bolt meets at a TV-Con is Zaui, who is shown watching a question-and-answer TV quiz program (likely Jeopardy!), where he blurts out all the correct answers as the show airs. Ironically, the character Zaui plays on his TV show is that of a notably dumb pooch.
• There's No Rule That Says A Wolf Can't Be A Jedi: Swift is a giant wolf, easily large enough for an adult human to ride, and became a Jedi Initiate at just one year old (though his species is mature at that age). Nonetheless, he acquires a reputation as quite a philosopher, and even accidentally provides therapy counselling to Anakin Skywalker.
• This Bites! takes the concept of smart animals prevalent in canon, and adds a character with the ability to give them their own voice. The result is that approximately every animal showing up in the story has a mind, voice and personality to express themselves with, from the News Coo wanting to break into journalism, to the unending Old Spice references made by the South Birds. To say nothing of the ones who end up joining the crew - add "ability to hold their own in a fight" and "government-issued pirate bounty" to the list.

Films — Animation

• Glisten and the Merry Mission: The reindeer are shown to be more technologically advanced than the elves who refuse to modernize as their introductory scene has them using computers to monitor the weather.
• The Sword in the Stone: Archimedes the Educated Owl, Merlin's companion, is as studied as his friend and serves as one of Arthur's teacher.
• Gromit from the Wallace & Gromit shorts and film is much smarter than his Bungling Inventor owner.
• Ratatouille: Remy is a rat and a skilled gourmet chef.
• Watership Down: In the film adaptation, the main group of rabbits are more intelligent than normal rabbits but they're still rabbits. All but two or three of them don't quite understand things like how some objects are able to sit on top of water and not sink and cars and tractors appear to be monsters that run along roads.
  • Blackberry is considered the most intelligent of the group and consistently offers good advice to Hazel's plans. It was he who recognized the significance of the boat during the escape from Efrafa and reminded Hazel earlier of their success using a board to ferry Pipkin and Fiver across a river to escape a dog.
• In The Secret of NIMH, a group of rats and a pair of mice are scientifically enhanced to have human-level intelligence. Oddly enough, the family of one of the enhanced mice seem perfectly intelligent themselves, even though it's a rather important plot point that they were not enhanced above normal mice (it's possible the children were supposed to have inherited some of their father's intellect, but the wife is discriminated against by the rats for being a normal animal). The movie also features a crow who, while not especially smart, is capable of human-level conversation with mice, and an owl who gives life-saving advice.
• The Road to El Dorado: Altivo the horse. When Miguel asks him to fetch a prybar so that he and Tulio can try to break loose, Altivo does one better and steals the keys.
• The dinosaurs from The Good Dinosaur have developed human-like intelligence and the trappings of civilization; Arlo's family are subsistence farmers who grow corn and keep chicken-like birds, while Butch the Tyrannosaurus and his kin herd cattle.
• From the BIONICLE films:
  • The rhino-like Kikanalo turn out to be quite intelligent once Nokama realizes her mask power lets her communicate with them. They can understand speech, have a sharp wit, help out the heroes on their quest, and while they don't mind others using them as steeds, they only do so if they're treated as equals. Though they sill behave like destructive, rampaging beasts if they don't have anyone to interact with.
  • Keetongu is a sage-like cryptid who hands out moral advice, has a strong sense of honor and can say basic words. His categorization as an "animal" is mostly relative — in Bionicle, animals are called Rahi, which just means "not us", a name given to any creature created by the Makuta race. Rahi can be mindless and bestial or fully sentient, and Keetongu lands on the latter end of the spectrum.

Films — Live-Action

• George of the Jungle: Ape, as in the cartoon, is without a doubt the most intelligent of the main cast (also, he's voiced by John Cleese to make him even funnier).
• Blood from A Boy and His Dog. Definitely smarter than his partner Vic.
• Godzilla and most of his Kaiju friends, although their intelligence varies from one film/adaptation to another. On average, Goji-san himself seems to have human or near-human intelligence.
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: The chapter "Meal Ticket" has Gallus Mathematicus, a chicken that can supposedly do simple sums. It's never clear whether the chicken is actually performing arithmetic or if it's some sort of trick.

Literature

• Many animals in the Tamora Pierce Wild Magic series, but especially the Badger God.
  • Leads to a Chekhov's Skill when Zek the monkey realizes how keys work.
• Most of the animals in Rudyard Kipling's original Jungle Books are cynical about human nature. The Wild Child Mowgli naturally shares their attitude, leading to friction when he tries to return to human society.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • Aslan the Lion is the God of the world of Narnia. Intellectual Animal does not even begin to describe him, as knows just about everything that is there to know.
  • Narnia has lots of non-divine mortal talking animals as well, who make a strong distinction between themselves and the regular, nonsentient sort of animals. Although not all of them are particularly intellectual.
• Quite a few in the Discworld: with the magic and narrativum and all:
  • Gaspode, the Wonder Dog, the World's Only Harmonica-Playing Dog (tuppence), What A Good Dog, Saved The World Once You Know.
  • The Librarian, who technically used to be human before being turned into an orangutan and found he rather enjoyed it. He's not only quite possibly the most intelligent living thing in all of Ankh-Morpork, but he's also capable of grabbing a grown man by his ankles, turning him upside down and bashing his head into the pavement.
  • Quoth the Raven, one of Death's companions.
  • From the Tiffany Aching books, the toad who used to be a lawyer (and now lawyers for the Feegles)
  • And the Amazing Maurice and his rodent friends.
    • Who follow in the tradition of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, complete with a Shout-Out to the latter rodents' aspiration to found their own civilization in Thorn Valley.
  • The rats of Ankh-Morpork, especially those living in the Patrician's Palace, have an almost-human intellect as a result of all the magical books and rubbish from the Unseen University they nibble on. When Vimes is thrown into the Patrician's prison in Guards! Guards! he discovers the Patrician is teaching them about the finer details of diplomacy and statecraft in return for small favours.
  • Averted in Sourcery, where what Rincewind took to be a highly cultured talking snake turned out to be an extremely thin man sitting behind the snake.
• Firekeeper has these in truckloads, considering that basically every wild animal comes in a smart variety.
• Feral in Soon I Will Be Invincible is a tiger-man so animal-like that he walks on all fours when in private and has back problems from standing on two feet in public.
• Aargh, from The Dragon Knight series by Gordon R. Dickson is a giant wolf and good friend of the protagonist, though in general he tends to have little use for anybody.
• Louise Searl's short story Sharazad, featured in The Dream Eaters and Other Stories, is about bipedal lions, hyenas and African wild dogs with human-level intelligence. They evolved naturally after humanity's extinction.
• Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series features a handful of non-humanoid creatures with humanoid-level intelligence, though most aren't any more gruff or cynical than what you'd expect of humans:
  • The kyree, wolf-like telepaths with a strong oral (mental?) history.
  • Gryphons, who are almost universally cheerful, vain, and entirely self-assured. Gryphons were created by a mage in the earliest parts of the series timeline, and as far as the gryphons are concerned, they're an improvement on sentient life as a whole.
  • The dyheli, deer creatures with Psychic Powers, a strong herd mentality, and the fuzzy concept of free will that you get when you mash the first two together. Probably the most powerful minds in the series; in one novel, a dyheli herd leader repeatedly displays the ability to ignore mental shields in order to get concepts across. They allow the Tayledras to ride them as equal partners.
  • There's also the Companions and the Firecats, although they're less cool animals and more spirits in useful form or proxies of their deity, respectively.
• It still remains unclear whether Jonathan Swift meant the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver's Travels to be taken seriously in their cynical, anti-human perspective. (Inverted in the Yahoos with which they share their island, who are unintelligent humans, or perhaps very humanlike apes.)
• Frith and the Black Rabbit of Inlé, the rabbit gods from Watership Down.
• The Dragon Horse in Journey to the West. (Monkey himself seems really too humanoid to count.)
• Smaug the dragon,^note dragons were portrayed almost universally as dumb animals until The Hobbit the giant eagles, the ravens, and Bilbo's thrush in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
• Poul Anderson's novel Brain Wave, where Something sends the IQ's of every animal on Earth soaring, including Humankinds, resulting in The Singularity.
• Einstein, a modified Golden Retriever, in Watchers, by Dean Koontz. He loves to read, plays a good game of Scrabble, and has fun teasing his humans.
• The Bunyip in Naomi Novik's Tongues of Serpents, a race of landgators adapted to living underground who set complex traps, communicate between communities and understand the concept of trade/bribery.
• Harry Potter invokes this by way of the Wolfsbane Potion, which allows werewolves who drink it to keep their mind in a human state.
• The Treecats of Honor Harrington are fully sentient, have a civilization spanning most of their home world, history (via recorded memories) dating back thousands of years, and as of book 7 have started colonizing other planets.
• Dinotopia is an entire island populated by this kind of character. In particular, Bix hates it when anyone calls her their Non-Human Sidekick.
• Dr. Dillamond (a goat) in Wicked. Gregory Maguire's Oz is populated by numerous Funny Animals, but Dr. Dillamond is the only one who appears as a named character, and is most definitely intellectual.
• Harry's temple dog Mouse from The Dresden Files has at least human-level (though likely even higher) intelligence. Though he tends to hide it most of the time.
• Moongobble and Me: More than a few, starting in book 1 with Moongobble's partner Urk the toad, who's fully capable of speaking like a human. It's implied that his magical nature is the cause, since Edward notes that most animals he's met don't speak unless they're magic in some way, and in book 2, he's surprised to meet some animals who can speak but don't have obvious magic.
• The End of the Raven is narrated by Edgar Allan Poe's cat, and considering this poem perfectly mimics Poe's The Raven, that's quite impressive.
• The cat Shamisen in Haruhi Suzumiya asks how the rest of the cast know that he is really conversing with them and not making random sounds at random times that just happen to sound like language that fits in with their own speech, and generally talks philosophically (as long as he talks).
• King Crow: The crow is not simply clever, but smart as a human.
• Harry's Mad: Madison/Mad (an African Gray Parrot) is fully capable of understanding and fluently speaking English. He chalks it up to having been 'raised' by a professor of linguistics.

Live-Action TV

• Mr. Ed the talking horse from Mister Ed.
• Jeb from VR Troopers is the dog of Ryan Steele who gains intelligence and the ability to speak after an accident in a lab.
• A running joke with Comet the Wonder Horse from The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.. In one episode, Comet cracks a safe.
• Gerald the Gorilla from Not the Nine O'Clock News.

Tabletop Games

• Bunnies & Burrows: Zig-zagged with the rabbit characters. On the one hand, they have organized societies with roles like Storytellers and Seers. On the other, they're quite dim compared to humans: concepts like writing and numbers larger than four are forever beyond their grasp.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Any animal bonded as a Familiar by a wizard gains a significant intelligence boost. Past middle levels, familiars get significantly smarter than the average human.
  • The Awaken spell can permanently turn an animal into this. Some take it well, others... less so. Since no druid wants to deal with a genius dire wolf wizard who blames them for taking it away from its pack, it's not often used.
  • The paladin's and the oracle of nature's bonded mounts start with an intelligence of 6, which is equivalent to a low-level familiar. A halfling who chooses the Caretaker racial trait can increase it further to 8, which is just below the average human intelligence. As Intelligence is one of the few dump stats for a Paladin, this can amusingly result in a paladin who's horse is smarter than they are.
• Summerland: While the Call eventually degrades human intellect into an animalistic state, it seems to have the opposite effect on non-human animals, and many of the Sea of Leaves' wildlife is becoming noticeably cunning and aware. Many have developed the ability to use complex tools, plan for the future or even speak, but their motivations and thought processes are usually profoundly alien and difficult to predict or understand.

Theater

• In Orpheus: A Poetic Drama, Orpheus gains musical inspiration and advice on what to do from the animals, who respect the cycle of life and advise him to appeal to Persephone for Eurydice's soul.

Video Games

• Red XIII, aka Nanaki, from Final Fantasy VII is perhaps the prime example of this in video games. Red is especially weird; not only is he smart for an "animal", he's probably the smartest member of your party. Even weirder is when it's revealed that, adjusting for his species' lifespan, Red is a teenager, making him a sort of Teen Genius on top of being an Intellectual Animal.
• In Shadow Hearts: Covenant all wolves are apparently very smart, and one of them, Blanca, is a party member. In fact, when he fights some wolves as Duel Bosses, their pre-battle dialogue is fully translated from Animal Talk and voiced by humans, such as Shūichi Ikeda for Blanca himself.
• Amaterasu and the Satome Canine Warriors in Ōkami
• Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer: Okku the bear. Statistically Speaking, his intelligence is below average — although seeing as the average intelligence of a bear is a whopping 2, that shouldn't count too much against him.
• Persona 3: Koromaru, who's a dog (an albino Shiba Inu, to be exact). While he can't talk, he's smarter than Junpei, capable of detecting shadows, is great with a knife, and is capable of summoning a Persona.
• Minion Masters: Despite looking like a beast, the Elder Beast is fully sentient.
• Mother 3:
  • Boney fits this pretty well, although he is a charming chocolate labrador as opposed to something more intimidating. Despite this, he occasionally speaks with the party (how he does this is never explained) and blends human-level intelligence with animal instincts, taking offense to an NPC suggesting his use as bait for a raging monster one moment, and dropping everything to chase after insects the next.
  • PSI-users can communicate with animals using telepathy, although Lucas could do this even before his powers awakened.
• Tales of Vesperia: Repede, to the point of acting more human than dog at times. He is pretty much an expy of Blanca.
• Dragon Age:
  • The mabari hounds from Dragon Age: Origins are described as having almost-human intelligence, and legend even tells that they're "smart enough to speak, but wise enough not to". You can recruit a mabari into your party, and he occasionally "converses" with your other party members while you wander around.
  • Hawke in Dragon Age II can also have a mabari, and can come upon him playing cards with Varric at their manor. Apparently the dog is quite good.
    Varric: You know, you play diamondback better than my cousin Vidar. You wag your tail whenever you have a good hand, though. Might want to watch that.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Kaepora Gaebora the expository owl, who reappears in a couple other games from the series.
• Seaman is capable of posing some very thought-provoking questions to the player. Granted, it's all reliant on what Vivarium and Sega had already programmed into the game, but it discusses a much wider range of topics than one would expect from a Virtual Pet.
• In Overcooked!, Kevin appears to be an ordinary dog in a world where Funny Animals exist, and he can only say "BARK." But not only does he know how to fly a helicopter, he's generally the Straight Man to the goofy Onion King.
• Hanpan the Wind Mouse from Wild ARMs is by far the smartest member of your party and provides both exposition on things the human characters would not know as well as some well-deserved snark when someone does something stupid. The anime Twilight Venom and Wild ARMs: Million Memories imply this to be true of all Wind Mice, and justify this by revealing they can live for thousands of years.

Web Comics

• Dream Catcher has Arashi the horse. He will wait for you to say please.
• Girl Genius: Krosp I, emperor of all cats, was altered through Mad Science to become one of these.
• Thomas Kemper (the cat) from Penny Arcade may qualify, while he is never shown doing anything out of the ordinary it is mentioned that he has some sort of Microsoft Professional Certification and he may or may not have designed an industrial laser and possibly a time machine.
• Artie of Narbonic is this and then some. Superhuman intelligence, an excellent classical education and a boundless love of alfalfa all in one gerbil-sized packet.
• The imperial cats from Alpha Shade. They seem to vary from between being house-cat sized to big cat sized. They have psionic powers that are significantly in excess of any humans we've seen.
• Elven Lacryment: Xanther seems to be the lead character's psychiatrist.
• The Order of the Stick: Blackwing the raven is intelligent enough to offer advice and insight to his master, Vaarsuvius. Justified in that he's the Familiar of a powerful wizard, so by Dungeons & Dragons rules he's likely smarter than most humans.
• Sandra and Woo: Most animals are intelligent enough to have their own cultures, social more and societies. The fox Shadow might be the most prominent example, since he's for example able to come up with a rhyming carnivorous anthem. Woo, on the other hand, attempted at least subliminal cookie acquisition.
• Our Little Adventure: Any wizard/sorcerer familiars. Angelika's got a rat named Norveg and Simonicus has a cat named Ebony.

Web Original

• Hamster's Paradise: The Calliducyonidae genus is made up of two separate of sapient, canine-like species, the tall, omnivorous northhounds and the stocky, carnivorous southhounds. In terms of appearance, they could be easily be mistaken of Earth canine or the other dog-like lycanines they share their planet with. Interestingly enough, both species actually view themselves as intellectual animals, seeing themselves as just another kind of animal that can reason and speak rather than something distinct from the natural world like humans might. This is due to the presence of other lycanines that greatly resemble them and range in intelligence from clever animal to semi-sapient near person.
• The SCP Foundation has a few of these under its watch. SCP-1156 is a talking coach horse named Wellington who can somehow summon clothes onto his body. SCP-1867 is a telepathic sea slug who claims to be a ninteenth-century explorer and naturalist named Theodore Thomas Blackwood, and has a vault full of unknown-to-science specimens to back his claims. SCP-1845 is a kingdom of animals based on a feudalistic European model, led by a dynastic line of foxes, whose inhabitants can't talk, but can read, write, and make tools such as musical instruments, canoes, and rosaries.

Western Animation

• Klaus, the Smith family's goldfish on American Dad!, fits this. Of course, Klaus isn't just a goldfish; he used to be an East German Olympic ski-jumper until his brainwaves were switched with that of a goldfish in the 1986 Winter Olympics (which did not exist) by the CIA to prevent him from winning the gold medal. He also has a rather overt... "fascination" with Mrs. Smith. Paging Troy McClure, line one Mr. McClure...
• Many animals in Avatar: The Last Airbender, but most notably Appa, the badger moles, the dragons, and the Giant Lion Turtle. Not to mention animal spirits like Wan Shi Tong the knowledge owl.
• A Batman Beyond episode was all about a gorilla being turned into this when his DNA was spliced with a human's.
• In the kids' show Blue's Clues, the titular dog Blue. Despite being a puppy (and mentally a child) Blue is probably one of the most intelligent characters in the series, even though she occasionally has the same limitations as a child and/or a pet. In fact, the reason she was in the world the series takes place in (the Storybook World) was because she felt out of place in the world where she was born, as she was an animal that acted like a human being instead of a common puppy, like the other dogs of her farm.
• In one of The Critic's Cutaway Gags, it's revealed that raptors are this.
• Scooby-Doo.
• The mammoths in Cro are actually smarter than most of the human characters they share screentime with. Although since most of them are neanderthals, this is hardly surprising.
• Brian from Family Guy tries to be this but all he really has going for him is being able to talk. Later seasons made it a regular gag to have him try to put on airs of being an intellectual only to be immediately deflated by whoever's around listening to him ramble.
• In Flip the Frog every character that is not a Funny Animal or Animate Inanimate Object, is this.
• In George of the Jungle, Ape (a gorilla, to be precise) is probably the smartest member of the cast.
• Shipwreck's talking parrot Polly from G.I. Joe seems to possess human intelligence, or darn close to it.
• Perry the Platypus/Agent P along with the other animal secret agents from Phineas and Ferb.
• Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
• The Simpsons:
  • Spoofed in "Guess Who's Coming To Criticize Dinner" when Homer became a food critic and was writing a review. Due to a fight couldn't turn to Lisa for help, so he started asking the family dog for advice.
    Homer: "And the bread was really..." Come on, help me out here.
    Santa's Little Helper: Ruff!
    Homer: Rough? I don't know... you've been pitching that all night.
    Santa's Little Helper: Chewy?
    Homer: Chewy! That's inspired!
  • "Deep Space Homer"
    Scientist: People, we're in danger of losing our funding. America isn't interested in space exploration any more.
    Assistant: Maybe we should finally tell them the big secret: that all the chimps we sent into space came back super-intelligent.
    Chimp: No, I don't think we'll be telling them that.
• In the episode "Sleepy Time", Gary the Snail from SpongeBob SquarePants is revealed to be quite intelligent through his dream self.
• Monsieur Mallah from Teen Titans (2003). He's a gorilla, he talks and plays chess.
• Corneil from Watch My Chops.
• In Xiaolin Showdown there is a T-Rex that appears to be this. Though Clay points out that she doesn't actually seem to be all that smart, and people simply assume she is because she has a British accent.
• The animals in Mike, Lu & Og, in contrast to the human inhabitants of the island.
• Gadget Hackwrench of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is one of the Funny Animal variety. She's a mouse with a demonstrably higher IQ than...well, pretty much everyone on the show, human and animal alike. However unlike most examples she never lords this over anyone (even unintentionally) and she's good-natured and kind to a (literal) fault. Usually.
• Brain from Inspector Gadget displays a great deal more situational awareness and common sense than the titular character, whom he must constantly protect from harm.
• In Dan Vs. "The Dinosaur", the T-Rex endears herself to Dan by demonstrating an appreciation for television, a love of fast food, and general misanthropy. She's also intelligent enough to be enraged when Dan finally gets her back for wrecking his car by sending her the repair bill.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Slice of Life" reveals that Pinkie Pie's pet alligator, Gummy, is one of these, as he gives a lengthy (and depressing) internal monologue contemplating the nature of his existence.
• Aladdin: The Series has Iago, a very witty and smart talking parrot. Abu the monkey is also smart, but can't talk.
• Tracy from Filmation's Ghostbusters. Downplayed in the live-action series, though: Tracy is a genius, but only when compared to Spenser and Kong. It's more pronounced in the animated series, wherein Tracy is seen building Homemade Inventions and maintaining/repairing the Ghostbusters' gear.
• Rufus, Ron’s pet naked mole rat, in Kim Possible has helped Kim and Ron escape from traps that they got caught in, built a few gagdets, and occasionally speaks.
• The animal companions Cringer and Spirit from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power are both of at least human level intelligence, at least enough in Cringer's case that he's rendered immune to Beast Man's telepathic control. This makes them far more useful in the alternate identities of Battle Cat and Swiftwind.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Exposure to the magic of the Sword of Protection ramped up this incarnation of Swiftwind's intelligence, allowing him to talk and even understand (in his own way) such concepts as freedom. He's still a bit simpleminded, but that has helped Adora with her own problems since he's unencumbered by preconceived ideas.
• Brain of Pinky and the Brain, a genetically-altered Evil Genius lab mouse who's constantly developing schemes to take over the world. They always fail due to his own oversight, arrogance, bad luck, etc., but he's nonetheless highly knowledgeable, and particularly adept at inventing mechanical devices.
• The Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "A Dog and His Boy" is about a boy named Truman Clock whose pet dog is highly intelligent and capable of speech.

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