Informed Species

I've decided to make a thread for this topic per Ask The Tropers. To copy my original comment from the post:

Informed Species is for animal characters that are not identifiable as the animals they're supposed to be, but a lot of examples are of animals that look somewhat different from their real life counterparts (often due to anthropomorphism), even if they're still identifiable as those animals, which I think would go better under Funny Animal Anatomy.

For instance, there was an example I deleted saying that Daffy Duck looked more like a penguin than a duck, even though most people would say he looks pretty duckish. There's also some human examples like Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy from SpongeBob SquarePants, even though most audiences can identify them as humans (albeit heavily stylized), along with a bunch of "alligators that look like crocodiles (or vice versa)" examples, even though most people don't know the difference between both crocodilians anyway. There's even an example saying Garfield doesn't look like a cat, even though he is identifiable as one (albeit a stylized cartoon cat).

I think a basic rule of thumb should be this: if you were not told what kind of animal they were supposed to be, would you be able to tell from appearance alone? If the answer is yes, then it doesn't fit.

Following this definition, Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio would qualify, as would the titular Arthur, Disney's Pete, Master Shifu from Kung Fu Panda, the Breadwinners, Ren and Stimpy, and the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil and Roadrunner.

There's also a lot of examples that reference other examples, which I'm not a fan of. They mainly consist of stuff like "Jiminy Cricket looks like Lowly Worm", and vice versa.

Yeah, I've been witnessing this sort of problem with that trope for a while! Kudos!

Here's a list of Sonic the Hedgehog examples I've deleted off which I feel are nitpicky. Can I have a review to be sure if they really do fit or not?

• Rogue the Bat doesn’t look much like a bat. She sort of looks like a generic humanoid in costume.
• Charmy the Bee looks like a child with goggles in a bee jacket.
• Mighty the Armadillo doesn’t look much like an armadillo. He lacks their long snout and rough looking skin. The only thing he has are the armadillo ears.
• Wave the Swallow looks to be the same species as Jet. She actually seems to resemble a swallow tailed kite rather than an actual swallow.
• Big the Cat doesn't look like his species at all. If anything, he looks more like a fat ring-tailed lemur. Him having dark rings around his tail and his round small circular yellow eyes instead of having big slanted cat-like eyes don't help matters much. His ears are also unusually long for a cat's, looking to be more like rabbit or a fennec fox ears. If he's supposed to be a cat, why doesn't he look more like Blaze, who clearly resembles one?
• While Infinite looks like a cross between a Humanoid Abomination and a Cartoon Creature, the Sonic Forces prequel comics reveal he's actually a jackal, despite not resembling a real one at all.

Edited by PrincessPandaTrope on Dec 25th 2019 at 12:22:27 PM

Based on a Google image search, I doubt I'd know what Mighty the Armadillo and Wave the Swallow are supposed to be if it wasn't part of their name. I doubt I'd even have guessed Wave was supposed to be a bird on the first try.

The others look pretty shoehorny to me, especially Charmy. You put yellow and black stripes on anything and it's not hard to guess "bee."

I agree with re-adding Mighty and Wave.

Let's go through the Camp Lazlo examples, complete with images of each character.

• The title character himself doesn't look too much like a monkey, aside from his tail. It's pretty easy to tell he's supposed to be a monkey from looking at him. Remove.
• Although Clam is supposed to be an albino pygmy rhinoceros, he looks more like a dinosaur. Keep. Most people can't tell he's a rhino.
• Chip and Skip are supposed to be dung beetles, but look more like purple things. Keep. They have zero insect traits, and you can't tell they're supposed to be dung beetles without being told.
• Edward the Platypus has white fur, orange bill, and beaver tail, while real platypodes have brown fur, blackish bills and limbs, and venomous spurs on their hind legs (for males). Remove. It's pretty easy to tell he's a platypus.
• Samson is supposed to be a guinea pig, but he doesn't look like one at all - for one thing, he doesn't have ears. He looks more like a porcupine or perhaps a hedgehog. Maybe? I think he looks more like a furry gray thing than any real animal.
• Ping-Pong and Dave are supposed to be loons, but they look more like ostriches. Keep.
• For some reason, the Lemming brothers look more like green frogs with ears than well....lemmings. Keep.
• Patsy is said to be a mongoose, but she doesn't have black rings around her eyes, making her look like a kangaroo. Keep.
• Gretchen is supposed to be an alligator, but she looks more like a crocodile, having green skin and the lower teeth sticking out of her mouth. Remove. Most people can't tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile anyway, and she's clearly identifiable as a crocodilian.
• Ms Mucus is supposed to be a warthog, but looks more like a domestic pig with tusks, due to being pink instead of gray and lacking a mane. Her face also looks more like that of a bulldog. Keep. She doesn't look very warthog-y.

I think the issue with some of these examples is that they're bringing up subtle traits most non-experts wouldn't know about, like the black eye rings mongooses have.

Also, mentioning small details of animals people wouldn't remember isn't necessary. That's just nitpicky to me.

I remember the Sonic the Hedgehog examples mentioned that the hedgehog characters didn't look like hedgehogs. Now it's been scooped up by someone who claims all hedgehogs but Amy look like real hedgehogs. I disagree, because Sonic looks more like a cat or alien being to many people.

Edited by PrincessPandaTrope on Dec 25th 2019 at 5:30:55 AM

This was just added.

• Marlene from The Penguins of Madagascar is intended to be an Asian small-clawed otter◊. She doesn't look all that much like one, though that's likely due to the low-budget CGI.

I can still tell she's supposed to be some kind of otter just by looking at her, even if she's not a specific species.

Yeah, that seems a little hair splitty to me too.

Bump to keep this thread more active. Since nobody removed the innacurate examples from Camp Lazlo yet, I'll do it now (even though I'm not one to talk).

Edited by Dghcrh on Jan 14th 2020 at 10:17:28 PM

Hey man, if only people who had never added a slightly shoehorn-y trope example were allowed to participate in cleanup, nothing would ever get done.

I definitely want to remove a lot of the shoehorned examples myself (at least for the works I'm familiar with).

Alright, so here are some examples I'm looking at on the main page.

• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • In a minor case, while Donald Duck's cousin Gladstone Gander is a goose there's basically no difference between him and the ducks. On one hand, he's still a white waterfowl, and geese and ducks are interchangeable to a lot of people. On the other hand, when you look at his design, you immediately think "duck", not "goose", so maybe we can keep it.

• Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog: Mina is a mongoose who looks more like a bear. Looking at her design on the wiki, while I can't automatically tell she's a mongoose, she doesn't look especially bear-like to me. Her long tail is more mongoose-like than bear-like. Removing.

• The title character of Paddington Bear was intended to be a spectacled bear (he was originally supposed to be from Darkest Africa, but the author's editor pointed out that Africa has no native bears, so he suggested "darkest Peru" instead, since Peru has spectacled bears). While he's obviously a bear, his resemblance to a spectacled bear is nonexistent. As pointed out on CommonKnowledge.Literature, Paddington is not a spectacled bear, but a fictional bear species. Removing.

• Garfield:
  • Garfield looked reasonably enough like a chubby cat in the earlier comics. His more recent incarnations appear to look less obstinately feline, but he still looks somewhat reasonably like a feline. If he still looks reasonably cat-like, then it should be removed.

• Pig from Pearls Before Swine, and the other pigs in the strip, doesn't look all that much like a real pig. For one thing, he has much longer ears and fingers. It gets a Lampshade Hanging in this strip, where Rat reveals that he applies two hours' worth of "cartoon pig make-up" every morning. Before he does, he looks a lot more like a real pig. It's not hard to look at a pink animal with a pig nose and curly tail and think "pig". Removing.

• Barney & Friends:
  • Barney has been said to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but other than having only two fingers, he has a Tooth Strip and the claws on his feet look way too round to even qualify as claws. While this was done on purpose to make him look appealing to children, this was also apparently one of the reasons so many people hate him.
  • Baby Bop even more so. She has been identified as a Triceratops, but other than having a head frill she barely resembles one at all, as she has mammalian ears and a face like a hippopotamus. Then again, this was done intentionally so that she could look appealing to children. You can still look at these characters and think "Tyrannosaurus" and "Triceratops". Remove.

• It's a Big Big World:
  • Bob is supposed to be a Tamandua, a type of anteater, but looks more like a cross between Gonzo and a cat. He still has the coloration of a tamandua, so if you know what a tamandua is, you can tell he is one. Remove.

• The Muppets:
  • Fozzie Bear is hardly identifiable as a real bear; he has more of a toy teddy bear or even koala look to him while other Muppet bears like Bobo look like actual bears. Real bear or toy bear, he still looks like a bear.

• Sesame Street:
  • Big Bird looked much more like an actual bird in the beginning - and even then, he never looked as avian as his sidekick Little Bird. Although his exact species is debatable depending on the source, he doesn't resemble many of the species he has been identified as. For example, some sources have identified him as a canary. To say nothing of his size, he doesn't really look like a canary at all apart from being bright yellow. It's not hard to think "bird" when you see something with feathers and a beak. Maybe we could change up the example a little to be more specific.

I think Baby Bop can stay. You can probably tell she's supposed to be some sort of dinosaur◊, but she's not immediately identifiable as a Triceratops. She doesn't have any horns that would identify her as such ^note And yes, baby Triceratops did have horns in real life.

But yeah, the entry for Barney can go. He's obviously a T. rex, if made a lot more friendly-looking for children.

Personally, I think Baby Bop looks enough like a triceratops, and the fact that baby triceratops do have horns doesn't seem like common knowledge to affect, but that's my opinion.

Like the example mentioned of It's a Big Big World. I don't know what a tamandua is, so I don't know if that looks like it.

In my opinion, any example that includes an obscure species should be cut from Informed Species, because the reaction is different.

Like being said that Master Shifu is a red panda, is different saying "that doesn't look like a red panda" than "WHAT is a red panda?"

Edited by ElBuenCuate on Jan 16th 2020 at 3:25:44 AM

I think Seldom-Seen Species can still factor into here. (For instance, even if you know what a red panda is, you can't tell Shifu is supposed to be one.)

I think another type of animals this trope has a problem with is the dinosaurs examples. Some of them are like "The Allosaurus, Giganotosaurus, or [insert random large theropod] looks more like a T.rex with three fingers". Yeah, as if most people can make the difference between T.rex and Allosaurus other than the number of fingers, and some people may not be familiar with the latter.

To Baby Bop staying. Triceratopses have three horns. It's right there in the name. If you show me literally anything and ask, "is this a triceratops," the first thing I'm going to look for is the presence or absence of horns. Three of them, specifically, in the characteristic configuration typical of triceratopses. Baby Bop has zero horns, not three horns. Ergo, Baby Bop does not identifiably resemble a triceratops.

Mina the Mongoose can stay too, although the example text could stand to be changed to remove the bit about looking like a bear. She doesn't look like anything in particular, just a generic animal-person-thing.

Yeah, I re-added Baby Bop, and I'll think of re-adding Mina (albeit changing the text).

I cannot discuss against that logic.

Also, I want to bring some examples of my own.

• Flushed Away: The rats look nothing like real-life rats. Instead, they look like miniature humans with big ears, pointed snout, black nose, and a tail, kinda like The Littles. It's easy to see them as rodent-like, remove.
• The Lion King (1994)
  • Although Pumbaa is a warthog, he looks more like a tanned domesticated pig with a mane and tusks. To be fair, he did look like an actual warthog in early concept art. I think he can still be recognized as a warthog.
  • Timon looks almost nothing like an actual meerkat. Timon is peach-yellow when meerkats are sand colored, has upturned ears when they have downturned ears, and a head full of red hair like a human would have. Plus, real meerkats walk on all fours and have black eyes. This ties with my comment on Seldom-Seen Species, meerkats were an obscure species until this movie. I'm not sure if this can be kept.
    • And the worse part is, it seems that only Timon's colony looks like him. Other meerkats shown during the Circle of Life sequence look like actual meerkats. Removing this, since is kind of complainy.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy
  • Despite supposedly being a British opossum, Ollie looks more like an Australian kangaroo or wallaby with a rat tail. Doesn't look like a kangaroo at all, but I think he looks like a rat, keep.
  • The Chief looks like a frog with antennae than a flea. It's easy to see him as insectoid rather than a frog, remove?
  • Larry looks more like a mouse or rat than a shrew. His color and nose make him look more like a shrew than a mouse, remove
• Leo the Lion: Spots and her mother are supposedly cheetahs, but they look more like leopards. Non-experts are unlikely to know the difference between these species, remove.
• Zig & Sharko
  • The Hyena: Though he doesn't look like one, he always lets out a good laugh. Personally, I think he does look like a hyena, remove pothole?
• Mickey Mouse: Can you honestly look at Mickey (especially his later designs, which often eschewed his tail) and say he looks like anything like a real mouse? Yes I can. If Mickey doesn't count as a mouse, then I don't think any cartoon can be seen as a mouse. Remove.

I also think Rafiki could be removed from the TLK examples, since anyone who knows what a mandrill is will be able to identify him as one from the facial markings.

Anyone think we should delete the "general" examples from the analysis page? Because most of these have become commonplace enough that people will be able to recognize the animals listed on those pages even if they look different from real life. I feel they would go better under Funny Animal Anatomy.

Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on Feb 23rd 2020 at 12:09:59 PM

Agreed, most of the bullets on that page are about facial etc. details on animals, instead of gross overall lack of fidelity to any easily recognizable animal convention (like the trope image with the Beagle Boys, where not only do they not facially resemble beagles, but their entire bodies don't even resemble that of a dog).

On another note (with the goal of definition clarification), is the page image on Psycho Electric Eel an example of an Informed Species? You have to be told that it's an electric eel (instead of a generic electric fish), since it looks absolutely nothing like an electric eel◊. Or is being an electric fish in the first place a sufficient convention to being an "electric eel"?

If so, merely not resembling the actual species's appearance even in any physical quality whatsoever would not be enough to qualify them as an Informed Species.

Edited by Albert3105 on Feb 24th 2020 at 9:17:12 AM

Most people don't know electric eels aren't actually eels, so if they see an eel that produces electricity, it's not too hard for them to think "electric eel", so I say no.

I think most people can tell the difference between cheetah and leopards. It's leopards and jaguars that confuse people. But, I don't think spots are noticeable enough to make a character Informed Species. That's just Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying at best.

Then the description must be rewritten because it is currently concerned with appearance only, not about abstract concepts like "long electric fish should be electric eels".

Edited by Albert3105 on Feb 25th 2020 at 2:38:02 AM