Informed Species

Are you sure? I think Cheetahs and Leopards can be plenty confusing.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

From the literature section:

• The eponymous Arthur of the picture books and later animated TV series is billed as an aardvark. In the earliest books there is some trace of a resemblance, and the elongated nose is actually relevant to the plot (though it resembles that of an anteater's more than an aardvark's.) Later in the series, you wouldn't know unless you were told.
• Lowly from Richard Scarry's works is supposed to be a worm, but he looks more like a snake.
• The illustrations of Roo in the original Winnie the Pooh books look more like a cat than a joey. Averted with Disney's Roo.
• This is a major plot point in A Dog's Way Home. Bella is a nondescript mutt but is repeatedly referred to as most likely being a mastiff or Rottweiler mix. A man at the local shelter, however, believes her to be a pit bull. Though various characters (including his co-workers) try to argue against this, it still causes trouble for Bella because her county has strict BSL laws. Bella is almost euthanized several times because she's erroneously dubbed a pit bull. As a result, Bella's owner sends her into foster care out of town until he can move out. Bella doesn't understand this and believes Lucas abandoned her. The day before he's set to come back for Bella, she runs away trying to get to him herself.

I think the Arthur and Dog's Way Home examples count, but not the others.

Cheetahs are very slender, make chirping noises, and look nothing like leopards. I can't imagine most people would confuse them. That's like mistaking a Greyhound with an Akita.

Their Is also the black marks on the face of a cheetahs which Is pretty distinct

Edited by miraculous on Feb 26th 2020 at 7:58:51 AM

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

I think Lowly counts too since I thought he was a snake rather than a worm.

Edited by Dghcrh on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:35:15 PM

I'm mainly a fan of underrated media.

I think Lowly can stay. The only thing he has in common with earthworms is he's brown and noodly.

I'm going to look through the Arthur examples now. Arthur himself is definitely an example as pointed out in the first post of the forum, so I'll skip him.

• Brain and the Tibble Twins are supposed to be bear cubs, but Brain looks more like a gopher or a mouse than an actual bear and the Tibble Twins look like grey-skinned humanoids with bear ears. This is because in the books, they werehumans, and were changed to bears for the cartoon. Honestly, I think they look like bears, just really cartoony ones. However, on the Viewer Species Confusion page (which I'm not sure is distinct enough from this trope) it's pointed out the bear characters confuse other people, so I don't know.
• George doesn’t really look like a moose, more like a reindeer or a goat with antlers. Remove. Moose and reindeers are both in the deer family, also I think his antlers look more like the former's than the latter's.
• While Sue Ellen, a cat, has an appropriate little button nose, Jenna, who's also a cat, has a weird human-like nose. Remove. They're both pretty recognizable as cats
• Prunella is supposed to be a rat (like Mr. Ratburn), but her ears and hair make her look more like a poodle. Due to Flip-Flop of God it's unclear though. She may actually be a poodle, since Marc Brown Studios' Facebook page says she is. Oddly enough, she looks more like a rat in Brown's books, sporting a pair of sharp teeth that disappeared when she made the transition to television. The official Arthur website says she's a rat. It seems all we can say for sure is that Prunella looks confusing. Keep.
• Muffy and Francine are monkeys/apes but they look like humans with large muzzles. In the early books they had lighter-colored muzzles, but in the cartoon their fur is one tone all over. Muffy also had two buck teeth in the early episodes, which made her look more like a hippo than a monkey, which is possibly why they were later removed. I also used to think they were humans, so keep?
• Binky is supposed to be a bulldog. He looks more like a hippopotamus with a human nose. Keep.
• There are a few exceptions, however. The rabbits are easily recognizable, having the right ears (and the right nose in Buster's case). Maybe Mr. Ratburn, but his head is quite triangular. Fern also seems to look like a dog. Unnecessary.

Edited by Dghcrh on Feb 29th 2020 at 9:38:28 PM

I'm mainly a fan of underrated media.

Analysis.Informed Species is pretty much "common ways people get animal anatomy wrong", which often leaves the animal still recognizable. Should be moved to Funny Animal Anatomy?

Content Warning: My posts may involve my actions dealing with R-rated or Not Safe for Work content. Same for my edit history.

So I want to bring some new exmaples to check.

• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: Since when did spider monkeys have orange fur? Or loons have blue feathers? Or trouts have pink scales? Or pythons have human-like faces and hair? And real life giraffes don't have necks as long as Ingrid's, especially not when it's only supported by a pint-sized body, roughly the same size as an 11 year old boy. This is simply complaining.
• Pokemon: A lot of the pokemon types/species (besides the abstract ones) and if they aren't outright Cartoon Creature, are these, as they're meant to be something but really look like/called something else (a few specific examples are listed here). However, some of these is because of translation errors but it's not too clear about the rest. Doesn't specify any specific examples.
• Godzilla: The Series: Although supposedly a mutant crustacean, it more resembles some kind of mutant cephalopod. So this is talking about a completely made up creature.
• Ice Age: The creators had to let the audience know he is a fictional prehistoric squirrel. Refering to Scrat, is very easy to identify him as a squirrel.
• Digimon Adventure Lesser Antagonists: Is said to be a kiwi, but bears a little more of a resemblance to an extinct terror bird (barring the long beak, which is kiwilike). Seems to contradict itself saying that it doesn't look like a kiwi, and then saying that it does.

Those all look pretty cutworthy for the reasons given.

Let's look at the Regular Show examples.

• Rigby is supposed to be a North American raccoon, but strongly resembles a Crab Eating Raccoon or a Coati, both of which only have a short brown layer of fur, and more slender bodies. Crab Eating Raccoons are native to Costa Rica and South America and Coatis can be found in the Southwest US including Southern California. Rigby's lack of a proper face mask has been explained by the fact that he has huge Cartoony Eyes, and is occasionally shown blinking where he has black eyelids. This is consistent with his more humanoid looking brother Don too. Rigby's lack of resemblance to his real life counterpart has been Played for Laughs on multiple occasions - he comments on the black circles around his eyes as being 'his thing', when he and Mordecai encounter realistic animal versions of themselves Rigby is drawn as a standard gray and black raccoon (present on a comic cover too), and in an early episode, one of the enemies says to him 'what are you supposed to be?'. Remove. The character is obviously a raccoon.
• Skips looks more like a white gorilla than a yeti (described to be like a human with reddish-brown fur). Remove. When people think of yetis, they generally think of a white ape, and Skips matches that pop culture idea pretty well.
• Margaret is supposedly a robin, but has a coloration and crest of a male cardinal. She looks like a red jay or even an pileated woodpecker. Keep. She looks more like a red version of Moredcai than any real bird.
• Eileen is supposed to be a mole, but due to looking much more human-like than the other animal characters, does not resemble one. People keep trying to remove this example, and I have no idea why. There's nothing mole-like whatsoever about her design, and you'd think she was a human if it weren't for her tail and feet.
• The ostrich and possum in "Replaced" look more like a combless chicken and a stripeless numbat, respectively. Definitely keep Jeremy, as there's nothing ostrich-like about him. Maybe we can also keep Chad, but I'm not sure whether he's supposed to be an Australian possum or North American opossum.

Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on Jul 13th 2020 at 3:07:52 AM

I agree on all points about what to cut and what to keep, although some of the keepers could use wording / formatting changes too. Specifically, the ostrich and possum should have separate bullet points, and I don't think I like the "they look more like" bits in any of the examples. The average TV Tropes reader doesn't know what the !@#$ a "stripeless numbat" is, so saying "this 'opossum' looks like a stripless numbat" isn't good context.

Any more thoughts on the Arthur examples before I remove any of them? The ones I'm not completely sure about are Brain and the Tibble Twins (which I would honestly remove) and Muffy and Francine.

Edited by Dghcrh on Jul 14th 2020 at 7:19:43 PM

I'm mainly a fan of underrated media.

When I was a kid, I can say I didn't really know what the Tibble Twins were supposed to be at first. Until I looked up the official website, I thought they were supposed to be gophers or something. I did know Brain was a bear, but the Tibbles had different style noses from him and his family, so I thought they were supposed to be different species. It didn't help their grandma looked even less like a bear than either of them.

I suppose this should be mentioned. thenabster126, who added many other shoehorned examples in the past, added these back to the Video Game subpage after being removed.

• Charmy Bee looks more like a human child dressed up in a bee costume rather than an actual bee.
• Sticks the Badger and Marine the Raccoon don't resemble their species. Marine has cat-like ears, while Sticks' head is shaped like a boomerang.
• Rogue the Bat can be hard to identify as a bat at first glance. Although her ears sort of resemble a bat's ears, her wings appear as if they were part of a costume.

I admit Sticks looks pretty confusing as somebody not familiar with the series. I'm not sure about Marine since she could have an equal chance of being a red panda, but Charmy and Rogue are rather obvious.

Edited by Dghcrh on Oct 28th 2020 at 9:24:31 PM

I'm mainly a fan of underrated media.

...Charmy's last name is literally Bee.

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And Jiminy's last name is Cricket, but if it weren't for that, you wouldn't be able to tell he was a cricket, and thus he counts.

I agree Charmy's not an example, though.

Are there any Human examples at all?

Probably Bosko, since his blackface design makes him look more like a chimpanzee than a human.

Regarding Timon from The Lion King (1994), he is still recognizable as a meerkat, albeit with cartoonishly exaggerated features. I saw kids at the zoo shout "Timon" upon seeing meerkats.

For the Pokémon example, Pikachu is considered a mouse according to the official translation, but many consider it a rat.

To be fair, the original Japanese don't differentiate between mice and rats in a non-technical context such as video games suitable for children.

The same can be said about Eevee.

I found this discussion online:

https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8138

It's mainly about the debate on The Other Wiki regarding Eevee's real life counterpart.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 28th 2020 at 9:47:33 AM

Kirby is awesome.

• From The Simpsons examples:
  • While Snowball II is identifiable as a cat, her very stylized design makes her vaguely resemble one. The same goes for the cats owned by the Crazy Cat Lady. Gets weirder in that Scratchy, a cartoon character In-Universe, looks more like a cat than they do. Cut. If she's identifiable as a cat, she doesn't count. As a side note, I think she still does look like a cat, albeit with weird facial fur.
  • The squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits throughout the show have faces that look nothing like in real life, usually looking vaguely humanoid with button noses. Although some more realistic ones have been seen. Don't know.
  • Pokey and the other guinea pigs from "The War of Art" have faces that look more like pug dogs than guinea pigs. It gets jarring in that "Brother's Little Helper" featured guinea pigs that look like real guinea pigs. Again, I don't know if this counts.
  • "Whistler's Father" featured toucans which possess cockatoo-like crests on their heads, but they otherwise look like actual toucans. Cut. If they otherwise look like toucans, they don't count.
  • In "The Book Job", Homer gets in trouble for sleeping inside the head of an animatronic dinosaur which he calls a Tyrannosaurus, and one of the security guards corrects him in that he's inside an Allosaurus. In Homer's defense, the dinosaur in question actually looks more like a Tyrannosaurus than an Allosaurus, having a bulkier head and none of the brow horns Allosaurus is known for having. Keep?
  • The last segment of "Treehouse of Horror" parodying The Raven had Bart playing the titular bird, except he looked less like a raven and more like a black dove with two-toed feet. ???

• Pingu: While the pinniped example can stay IMO, the one about the penguins not looking 100% like emperor penguins due to their lack of detail should go.

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The ponies (at least the mares) might qualify, but I don't think Zecora counts since with her head shape, she's pretty recognisable as a zebra, albeit a cartoony one.

For every low there is a high.

From Rocko's Modern Life.

• Heffer Wolfe doesn’t look too much like a steer. Filbert barely looks like a turtle, resembling Gogo Dodo from Tiny Toons.

Even when I was a kid, I could tell Heffer was some sort of bovine, and that Filbert was a turtle.

WAAAAAAY too many examples are just Fynny Animal Antonomy. Joey, Marky and Dee Dee may fit, Lady K fits and so does the mexican cockroach.

Edited by Delibirda on Feb 10th 2021 at 12:02:53 PM

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

The only thing not particular horse-like in MLP (that isn't part of the fantasy setting, like wings/horns/coloring) are the heads; the relative ratio of their bodies/legs/tails to each other makes it fairly clear they are horses.

Zecora is even less of an example, because she has similar proportions of horse body parts combined with black and white striping.

They still look like horses in my opinion.

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”