Analysis / The Coconut Effect

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How this trope affects popular perceptions of animals

Oftentimes, animals in fiction have palettes that look realistic or natural but aren't actually. While the colours aren't too abnormal (such as a pink gorilla or purple giraffe), for the species or breed it's actually impossible if not very unrealistic. For example, solid orange and cream cats in real life show at least a few tabby markings or stripes, but cartoon ones appear one solid color. This rarely if ever appears in live action for obvious reasons. Over time the trope becomes so commonplace that people are surprised that animals aren't like they are in fiction, such as how real gorillas aren't brown (they're black with dark grey faces, chests, bellies, hands, and feet) and how real alligators aren't green (they're blue-black or dark grey with off-white underside and belly scales).

Mammals

• Badgers are black, gray, and white like a European badger, regardless of where the cartoon takes place.
• Cats: (domestic): They often have white tail tips in animation even though white tail tips are rather uncommon on Real Life cats.
  • Golden age cartoon cats are often drawn with tails tapering to a point when the tip is usually more rounded on real life shorthaired cats. Cats regardless of fur length also have long or pointed cheek tufts when in real life much more common on longhaired cats (and lynxes) than shorthaired ones.
• Cattle: Cows are usually either white with black or brown blotches, while bulls are usually solid black or solid brown, even though cattle coloration in real life is not based on sex. Cows are sometimes depicted as solid brown if they are not bicolored.
• Giraffes are yellow or orange with brown spots. Their tongues will always be pink, even though real giraffes have black or purple tongues. Older works have orange giraffes with black spots.
• Zebras often have bushier tails and make neighing noises, since Zebras Are Just Striped Horses.
• Hippos are usually drawn with blunt canines and lacking the lower incisors, possibly due to being based on captive hippos which often have their teeth filed down. Wild hippos have sharper and longer teeth, since they need to use them as weapons. Usually all grey (like rhinos or elephants) or brown, sometimes with a lighter colored stomach. Real-life hippos are mostly dark brown, and have orange-pink undersides and areas around the eyes and ears.
• Lions: Tufts on the end of their tails will almost always be the same color as the manes. In real life, the tufts are black. Cubs are almost always yellow, with no sign of the rosettes (spots) present on real life lion cubs.
• Tigers: Occasionally, tigers will be colored wholly orange while lacking the white or cream-colored muzzles, paws, and undersides they have in real life, unless if they are white tigers. Don't expect to see other color variations, like the golden tiger.
• Hyenas are usually depicted looking and sounding like dogs, since they are often mistaken for canines.
• Primates:
  • Gorillas and Chimpanzees: Usually black or brown furred with lighter skin on their hands, feet and faces. In real life their fur is more likely to be black, and unless when chimpanzees are very young, the bare skin will be black, dark brown, or dark grey.
  • Male orangutans are sometimes depicted without flanges or cheek pads, making them resemble female orangutans.
  • Non-human apes are usually drawn with hands that can form into a fist, despite having longer fingers and shorter thumbs. This error has led to gorillas being commonly depicted doing their Primal Chest-Pound with fists rather than open or cupped hands as in real life.
  • Monkeys: Like apes, almost always brown-furred with tan or peach hands, feet, bellies, and faces. Often have longer arms than legs like apes, when their arms and legs are both about the same length.
• Rabbits in real life do not have pads on the bottom of their paws nor button noses like a cat or a dog, unlike how Bambi and many cartoons portray. Also, their incisors tend to be hidden inside their mouths, rather than sticking out like on a beaver.
  • The same would go for cat- or dog-like button noses often drawn on certain other mammals such as rodents (except rats and mice), walruses, ruminants, and even dry-nosed primates.
• Whales:
  • Sperm whales are always drawn with their blowhole on the top of the head like most whales, rather than as a left nostril like in reality. Also, baleen whales are usually drawn with a single blowhole instead of two.
  • Sperm whales are always depicted having a shovel mouth rather than the proper thin jaw, with teeth on the upper jaw (only prehistoric sperm whales had those).
  • Belly lining seem to be associated with all whales in cartoons, but in reality it's restricted to baleen whales.
• Rodents (beavers, porcupines, etc.): Their teeth are usually colored white, despite real rodents having orange or yellow teeth.
• Chipmunks are often depicted with shorter deer-like tails in cartoons, likely to distinguish them from squirrels.
• Spotted big cats often have their features generalized with each other, which results in jaguars lacking spots in their rosettes and both jaguars and leopards with solid spots. This confusion extends to cheetahs (which are not even big cats; like cougars above, they are part of the Felinae subfamily, so they are big small cats, or small big ones), sometimes portrayed with rosettes and no stripes. Jaguars also have shorter tails than those of leopards and cheetahs in real life.
• Sheep: If you haven't grown up on or near a farm, you may be surprised to see sheep with long tails, like this. Sheep are born with long tails, but they're usually "docked" (that is, cut short) not long after birth, to help prevent a variety of hygienic and veterinary problems. Farmers that choose not to do this are the exception, not the rule.
  • You may also be surprised to see that not all sheep are woolly. "Hair sheep" have hair (not wool), and are usually kept for their meat, milk, and hides more than their hair. They're more common in hot climates, where wool would cause the animal discomfort and worse. They're also harder to tell apart from goats, especially if (as is common in the Middle East) they're herded together. (Now you know why Jesus used a metaphor about "separating the sheep from the goats.") Considering that the wild ancestors of sheep, mouflons, don't have wool◊, this actually makes hair sheep closer in appearance to their undomesticated folk. However, you will almost never see "hair sheep" or sheep with long tails in media.
• Deer:
  • Unless if they are moose, deer species are commonly mixed up with the white-tailed deer.
  • Animal Gender-Bender in deer species with the doe having antlers like the buck. Only the caribou a.k.a. reindeer have antlers in both sexes, which may come off as a surprise as reindeer doe are commonly portrayed lacking antlers in cartoons.
• In a similar case to deer, many antelopes like gazelles and impalas will have large horns regardless of gender. Females actually have shorter horns, if they have horns at all.
• Elephants:
  • It is commonly known that male and female Asian elephants are distinguished from each other by the females lacking tusks. This sexual dimorphism also sometimes extends to African elephants, despite tusks being present in both genders. You wouldn't expect that female Asian elephants actually have small tusks or tushes, and tuskless male elephants also exist.
  • Sometimes people will confuse African and Asian elephants, resulting in cartoon elephants looking more like Asian elephants even when they are in Africa.
• Foxes and giant pandas are usually drawn with round pupils rather than the slitted ones they possess in real life, since slit-pupils are normally assigned to cats. In reverse, big cats are supposed to have round pupils, but will be drawn with slit-pupils like small cats.
  • Likewise, mammals with horizontal pupils, like sheep and mongooses, are usually shown with round pupils.
• Marsupials are invariably drawn with pouches, even if they are male. In real life, the yapok and the extinct thylacine or Tasmanian tiger are the only marsupials to have pouches in both genders.
• Koalas in real life have two thumbs, not one. Though who would think a two-thumbed hand is not weird?

Birds

• Overall: One example of pop culture and fictional media infusing people's knowledge of he real world is the fact that most fictional and cartoon birds' beaks are yellow or orange. This has led to the assumption that all birds' bills are yellow. This assumption gets so commonplace that people are surprised to find out that some birds' beaks aren't like they are in fiction, like how real crows' and ravens' beaks aren't yellow (they're black or dark grey) and neither real cardinals' beaks (they're red).
• Animal Gender-Bender in birds. Most notably peahens with trains, female mallards having the coloration of the males, and female ostriches being black like the males instead of the correct brown or gray (not helped by both sexes having long eyelashes usually associated with females).
• The oversized bill pouches commonly seen in cartoon pelicans are actually a result of being filled up. Real-life pelicans normally have fairly thin bills.
• Ducks usually sport a yellow or orange bill even if female — female mallards, in real life, have darker gray or orange-brown bills.
• The common portrayal of parrots, toucans, woodpeckers, and owls having three toes in front and one in back, due to people often associating all birds with chickens. Seeing a foot with two forward-pointing toes and two backward-pointing toes would seem freaky and alien for some. ...Unless you DO own a parrot (or a budgie, which is basically a smaller cousin to parrots.) Alternatively, they may be portrayed with two toes in front and one in back, like an animal equivalent of Four-Fingered Hands.
  • Similar to the above, ostriches actually have two toes and only one claw on the larger inner toe.

Reptiles and Amphibians

• Overall: Most reptiles and amphibians will be shown as being green, even though in real-life they can come in a wide variety of colors and patterns.
• Alligators and Crocodiles:
  • They tend to have bright or dull green scales all over their bodies in cartoons. In Real Life, most species are brownish, grayish, blackish, dark-grayish, or brown- or grey-green. For example, real life American alligators are grey black or dark grey with off-white undersides. Only the Siamese crocodile is decidedly yellow green, and all other cases of green crocodiles are actually due to algae growing on their scales.
  • Since many people tend to have trouble telling them apart from crocodiles, it is quite common for alligators to be portrayed with more croc-like features in cartoons. The only difference more commonly known is that gators have more rounded snouts, while other distinguishing features such as overlapping jaws and darker colors are forgotten. The same could be said for crocs being portrayed with overbites rather than the accurate interlocking teeth.
  • Crocodilians (and, by extension, archosaurs as a whole) can only have up to three claws on each hand, but they are always drawn having a claw on each finger likely due to people associating them with lizards.
• Turtles and Tortoises are green, with a patternless brown or darker green carapace, and a light brown or yellowish plastron. In Real Life you're more likely to find an orange turtle than a green one, and most species are at least somewhat patterned.
• Snakes: Constrictor snakes are not toothless, nor do they have fangs (they're not venomous). For that matter, snakes and lizards do not have their teeth protrude out of their mouths, with the exception of venomous snakes with giant fangs.
• Frogs and Toads: Generally, frogs are always green in cartoons, while toads are brown, even though real frogs and toads can have any kind of color, markings, or pattern depending on the species. The exception is if it's intended to be poisonous, in which case it will be a garish poison dart frog.
• Axolotls are always depicted as pink, which is actually a case of leucism due to being in the pet trade. They normally come in green or brown.

Fish

• The blobfish we are used to seeing is actually the result of it being taken onto land, suffering tissue damage from the pressure. They actually look less ugly in their natural habitat at extreme depths.
• Electric eels are often drawn as colored green and having sharp teeth, when they are brown and toothless in real life. This may due to associating them with the green moray, despite being unrelated.

Invertebrates

• Crabs and Lobsters are usually red. In real life, there are only a couple of species, mostly crab species, that are red when they're alive. Most only turn red when they're cooked.
• Mosquitoes are often depicted with their stingers as noses, when in real life the stingers are their mouths.
• Octopuses and squids have beaks located underneath their bodies (the center of their arms), not lipped mouths on their foreheads. They also have only one siphon on one side of their bodies; it is not an ear or a sucker-mouth. They are also occasionally depicted with fewer than eight arms, even though "octopus" is Greek for "eight-footed".
• The common portrayal of arthropods with more vertebrate-like features such as two eyes, a nose, a mouth that close upwards and downwards, and fewer limbs. Considering many people are afraid of insects and spiders anyways, these are deliberate to make them look more "appealing" to the audience.
• Flying insects, especially butterflies and sports team and university mascot wasps, are commonly depicted with no legs or with only two arms.
• Six-legged scorpions, due to the pincers or pedipalps being considered "arms" when they're actually part of the mouth.