Basic Trope: Ant-eating mammals are depicted with flexible, expressive snouts.
- Straight:
- Arnold the aardvark can bend and contort his snout in a similar way to an elephant's trunk.
- Alternatively or in addition, his mouth is drawn at the base of his snout instead of at the tip.
- Exaggerated:
- An x-ray of Arnold shows him either with a hollow trunk, or jointed bones in his snout that allow it to bend.
- Arnold has mouths on both the base and the tip of his snout.
- Downplayed: Arnold can only bend his snout slightly.
- Justified:
- The tip of an aardvark's snout is somewhat flexible in real life.
- Arnold is part elephant.
- Arnold broke his nose.
- Arnold is either a mutant or an alien.
- Inverted:
- Trunked mammals such as elephants or tapirs are drawn with their mouths on the tip of their trunks.
- Arnold is drawn without a snout or with a very short one.
- Subverted: Arnold bends his nose and it is completely bandaged up by a doctor in the next shot.
- Double Subverted: Arnold's snout just so happens to have extra cartilage, much to the doctor's surprise.
- Parodied: Arnold is "trunk buddies" with Eddie the elephant and they even share a secret trunk shake.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Arnold is drawn with a normal snout, but it can bend at certain times.
- Arnold is drawn with a cartoony snout while all the other aardvarks are drawn with realistic snouts.
- Averted: Arnold's snout is stiff and bony with his mouth at the tip.
- Enforced: The animators deliberately drew Arnold this way to make his design more expressive and fun.
- Lampshaded: "Is your nose supposed to bend like that?"
- Invoked: Arnold gets a nose job.
- Exploited: Vacuum Mouth.
- Defied: Arnold would rather not bend his snout as doing so is quite painful.
- Discussed: "Wouldn't it be more convenient to have a long, sticky tongue, instead of just sucking up dirt?"
- Conversed: "Do kids think anteaters are just smaller, furry elephants?"
- Implied: Arnold supposes he could wiggle his snout through the crevice to reach the ants inside, but uses his tongue instead.
- Deconstructed: Aardvarks have elongated snouts that are meant to probe anthills and effectively eat insects. But since Arnold is genetically altered, his mouth is not where it should be and his long, droopy trunk is always in the way. He has no choice but to suck ants in through his nostrils, causing him great discomfort and pain from their biting.
- Reconstructed: Arnold was recreated by the scientists who realized this implication. He still has a trunk instead of a snout, but this time he has his mouth at the tip, along with an Overly-Long Tongue, enabling him to properly eat the ants he craves. He just needs to make sure not to tie his trunk in a knot or suck up anything that could clog it.
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