Civilized Animal

aka: Civilised Animal

A little snow isn't going to stop their scheduled mitten.

Civilized Animals exhibit some form of cultured, well-mannered behavior, but otherwise occupy their species's natural role in the ecosystem and (especially) the food chain. They generally display half the mannerisms of a civilized human character and half the mannerisms of a wild animal character. They may wear clothes (often being accessory wearing, half dressed or even barefoot, but otherwise fully-dressed), or may live in houses, and are frequently depicted as walking on two legs; but their anthropomorphism stops abruptly at this point, as their everyday concerns are for ordinary activities such as catching prey and avoiding predation by larger animals. A Civilized Animal can be a pet — a child could just as well play with the pet throwing stick at them or pulling out a game console and playing together.

Civilized Animals are typical of children's stories, especially that of British literature.

Like Funny Animals, Civilized Animals usually have a body that is generally shaped like that of their respective species, even though they are typically bipedal and sometimes human-sized. Civilized Animals, like Funny Animals, tend to be bipedal even if their species is not naturally so, and most Civilized Animal birds have Feather Fingers, whether their wings look completely like wings or look like arms. Many Civilized Animals can shift between using two legs and four. Civilized Animals can be anywhere on the Sliding Scale of Animal Communication.

A related trope is Mouse World.

Civilized Animals differ from their neighbors on the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism as follows:

• A Funny Animal has most or even all the mannerisms of a human character, and generally if replaced by a human, the plot will be mostly or even nearly identical.
• A Partially Civilized Animal exhibits some form of civilized behavior, but is more likely to have a minimally anthropomorphized body shape and the majority of the mannerisms are ones you would expect in an animal.
• Talking Animals, Intellectual Animals and Speech Impaired Animals have all the body shape and mannerisms of the animal; their anthropomorphism is strictly limited to the fact that they talk, have human-like sapience and in some cases walk on two legs.

This is not to be confused with Beast Man, which is for a species that for some reason bears a resemblance to an Earth animal, despite not being related.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The animals in Animal Land are Partially Civilized Animal and it is the main goal of Tarouza to turn the world into this trope, he is on the way there by teaching many animals to farm and live in harmony together while eating the Eternal Fruit (that even meat-eating animals find to be delicious). The rest of the world still needs a lot of work, though.
• The mid 70's anime Bannertail: The Adventures of Gray Squirrel: The Story Of A Grey Squirrel shows the squirrels wearing clothing and can communicate with each other.
• The 1973 anime Fables Of The Green Forest (Rocky Chuck, The Mountain Rat) mainly stars rodent characters along with a raccoon and a male bunny.
• Gamba: Gamba to Nakama-tachi is a CGI 2015 animated film that stars a group of talking mice. The film is also an animated adaptation of the 1975 anime Ganba no Boken.
• In the Happy Happy Clover anime and manga, the main characters (mostly rabbits) are mostly seen walking on two legs with the exception of running where it involves running on fours. The rabbit characters are mostly seen walking on two legs when they are inside a home, burrow, or tree. Every character acts human like, however characters that would show up in later volumes of the manga such as Luna The Rabbit and his music band are seen wearing vests and hats. While the other characters are never seen wearing any and are only seen wearing them during special events at Crescent Forest.
• The Pandas in Panda! Go Panda!. By the end of the first installment, Papa spends his days going to work as a zoo attraction and then clocks out and heads to Mimiko's house for the evening.
• Pokémon: The Series: Meowth of the Team Rocket trio fits this trope. He used to be a normal street Meowth but he taught himself to talk. As a result, he's often treated on par with humans and often forgets that he's a Meowth.
• In another Sayuri Tatsuyama manga Pukupuku Natural Circular Notice the main characters are actually seen wearing various clothes including an astronaut suit.◊
• Shirokuma Cafe features animals that can talk, wear clothes, and stand on two legs if necessary, all while managing a cafe. At their heart, though, they're still regular animals.
• Teeter and Totter in Suzy's Zoo: Daisuki! Witzy are pretty much regular turtles, but they do speak English and can communicate with the other casts of the show.

Arts

• Dogs Playing Poker: As the name implies, the dogs are playing poker, with many of the dogs dressed in the fashion of the era. Not Beast Men, but actual dogs. One wonders how they can hold the cards without thumbs.

Comic Books

• In Adventure Time: Marceline Gone Adrift, the Tuffbones are intelligent telepathic space dogs, that are still entirely canine in their body shape.
• In Astro City, there are intelligent gorillas who live on a rift in reality and are intensely military as a result. Sticks escapes because he wants to be a drummer.
• Numerous characters in Fables, notably Brock "Stinky" Blueheart, Bigby Wolf and six out of seven of Bigby's cubs.
• Ellsworth Bheezer and Bruto the mynah birds from the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe.
• Monica's Gang: Lionel's Kingdom (Turma da Mata in the original) consists of many anthropomorphic animals living in a jungle. While they are bipedal and civilized, use some technology and some of them wear clothes, their houses are in places like burrows and caves, they have been targeted by human hunters and they present animal stereotypes, such as the rabbit character having hundreds of children.

Comic Strips

• Otto from Beetle Bailey walks on two legs, and wears a uniform (complete with Sarge's rumpled garrison cap).
• Garfield, started out as more of a Nearly Normal Animal in the strip's early years before he began walking on two legs and evolved into this. Snoopy himself went through a similar development.
• Satchel, Bucky, and in fact almost all animals (wild or domesticated) in Get Fuzzy. What keeps them from being placed higher up on the scale is the fact that wild animals still occupy their natural role in the ecosystem, and pets like Bucky and Satchel are normally treated as such by most humans, despite otherwise being fully sapient, capable of human speech, and usually walking on two legs. Apparently, What Measure Is a Non-Human? is in full effect.
• Snoopy from Peanuts can't talk, lives in a doghouse, doesn't wear clothes, and is Charlie Brown's dog, but he does manage to act largely human. Sometimes to the point that some members of the cast forget that he is a dog.

Films — Animation

• An Angel for Christmas: Angela's wolf friend, Wilfred, talks like a human, eats at the table like a human, can partake in snowball fights, and even celebrates Christmas. He's only shown acting like a wolf when Bobby and Marian wander into the forest, and immediately calms down when Angela gets there.
• The Aristocats: Roquefort the mouse is a definite Civilized Animal, but even the cats in the movie show characteristics of this trope, like walking on two legs sometimes, wearing accessories, and playing musical instruments.
• The chickens from Chicken Run can talk and read, yet they don't wear clothes and they fear being made into pie by their owners.
• The mice from Cinderella wear clothes (either half dressed or fully dressed), talk, and walk on two legs, but they live like normal mice and worry about being eaten by Lucifer the cat.
• In Ernest et Célestine, the mice generally look rather like mice and the bears rather like bears and they have certain behaviors of each. But they've both set up fairly advanced societies and have human behaviors like working at jobs, holding courts and forming friendships.
• In Fantastic Mr. Fox, all the animals work in jobs, wear clothes, and use modern technology. However, they have animal lifespans, don't use utensils, make their houses in places like holes and trees, and the foxes still dig. It's a plot point that they're "wild animals" despite their civilised lifestyle.
  • Near the end, Mr. Fox and his crew briefly encounter a seemingly completely non-anthropomorphized wolf. Mr. Fox attempts to make contact with it in several languages, to which it responds with nothing. Just before leaving, Mr. Fox lifts his fist in acknowledgement, and the wolf finally reacts, matching the motion politely before leaving.
• Goat Story - Old Prague Legends: Goat eats cabbages and gets milked like a goat, but drinks alcohol and speaks like a human.
• Madagascar — The animals can talk, Julian wears a crown, Alex walks upright, and they have society (Julian, for instance, is a king and the lions in the sequel have their own society with rituals and even a religion). On the other hand, they live in places such as the wilderness and zoos, predators still eat prey animals, and most of them walk on all fours.
• The Chimp in The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists uses a butler's tuxedo and is in general well-mannered, even Talking with Signs.
• Rango — Everybody talks, wears clothes, and lives in a town. However, they still eat and drink things you'd expect animals to, and Beans has involuntary defence mechanisms like a normal lizard.
• Ratatouille: Lampshaded when Émile asks Rémy why he walks on his hind legs. He responds that he doesn't want to get his paws dirty.
• The mice and other small animals from both Rescuers movies fit this trope to a T. Orville and Wilbur the albatrosses in The Rescuers and the The Rescuers Down Under respectively also fit this trope.
• The Big Bad Wolf, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Blind Mice, and Puss in Boots in the Shrek movies.
  • Invoked by Donkey in Shrek 2. Shrek drinks out of a finger bowl mistaking it for a bowl of soup. He then realizes his mistake when he sees Donkey, who is normally depicted as being even more uncivilized than Shrek, washing his hooves in a finger bowl.

Films — Live-Action

• The guinea pigs and star-nosed mole in Disney's G-Force are Uplifted Animals who were given superpowers by their owner. Or so they think; turns out they were normal guinea pigs from the pet store.
• A horror version of the trope, as in literature, can be found in the various film adaptations of The Island of Doctor Moreau, (namely Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)), which tell of a Mad Scientist trying to create uplifted animals that will be more like humans, but end up as hideous, uncanny instances of this trope. Most adaptations leave out or downplay the social commentary behind H. G. Wells' original work.
• A lot of the humour of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 come from playing with boundaries of this trope and Funny Animal. Back home in Darkest Peru, Paddington and his family - all talking bears - lived in the jungle eating wild oranges, with no human contact, and were more in line with this trope. When Paddington is forced to move to England, he becomes more of a Funny Animal, living alongside humans in a major city, who - despite having never seen a talking bear wearing a hat before - all take it in stride, sometimes even suggesting that this might be fairly commonplace in the setting.

Literature

• Achoo!: Taken quite literally. The animals may live on a farm, but they also eat at a table, read, and care an awful lot about dignity.
• As Animal Farm progresses, the pigs become more and more man-like, eventually becoming all but impossible to distinguish from actual humans. And no, this is not a good thing.
• The characters in Jean de Brunhoff's Babar books, and the animated series and film based on it. Origin stories show that they started out as regular animals before becoming this trope.
• Bad Mermaids: Steve the sea horse is the only sea creature in Hidden Lagoon who can talk. Beattie's mum, the explorer Belinda Shelton, found him near a shipwreck and took him home as a souvenir. He wears glasses, lives in a pair of dentures, and is obsessed with Hidden Lagoon's most popular cartoon, The Clippee Show.
• The Intelligent Toads in The Balanced Sword, who can talk, live in houses, and use tools, but don't wear clothes and in many respects are just toads.
• The ancient Greek Batrachomyomachia makes this trope Older Than Feudalism: it's a mock epic parodying works in the genre like the Iliad, and it does so by replacing the heroic figures with talking mice and frogs. They definitely still behave like animals in some respects, but they wear armor, carry tiny spears, and generally act 'civilized' throughout the 300-line poem.
• A Bed of Your Own!: The animals wear pyjamas and sleep in a bed, but they also live on a farm and their bed is in a barn.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia, talking animals live in their natural environment in huts with windows and can talk to humans, but they usually don't wear clothes and don't always walk upright (though they sometimes use armor in battle, and in the unreleased first draft Animaland, they did wear clothes and walk upright).
• The civilized dinosaurs in Dinotopia, who are either the second or third group. They live in buildings, speak in their own languages, but most usually don't wear clothing, although some wear armor or adornment on horns, spikes, plates, ect. Those who do wear clothes usually save them for important occasions.
• In The Emerald City of Oz (one of the later Oz books) there were a group of rabbits who had been civilized and live in a town called Bunnybury; their king expresses himself as nostalgic for being a natural rabbit and living in a hole in the ground:
  "I've often thought," said Dorothy, who was busily eating, "that it would be fun to be a rabbit."
  "It is fun—when you're the genuine article," agreed his Majesty. "But look at me now! I live in a marble palace instead of a hole in the ground. I have all I want to eat, without the joy of hunting for it. Every day I must dress in fine clothes and wear that horrible crown till it makes my head ache. Rabbits come to me with all sorts of troubles, when my own troubles are the only ones I care about. When I walk out I can't hop and run; I must strut on my rear legs and wear an ermine robe! And the soldiers salute me and the band plays and the other rabbits laugh and clap their paws and cry out: 'Hail to the King!' Now let me ask you, as a friend and a young lady of good judgment: isn't all this pomp and foolishness enough to make a decent rabbit miserable?"
• The birds in How to Be Comfortable in Your Own Feathers go to school and work, and can cook. On the other hand, they fly and have birdlike physiology. Only the Bird Doc wears clothes and even he (she?) wears only a lab coat.
• What Mad Scientist Doctor Moreau tried to do in The Island of Doctor Moreau with horrible results. H. G. Wells took the opportunity to mock concepts as religion, government and law.
• An In-Universe example with Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure (and sequels) in The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, which seems to be the Discworld version of both Peter Rabbit and Wind in the Willows. The Educated Rodents (who are Uplifted Animals rather than Civilised Animals) find the concept intriguing and bewildering.
• Andrei Belyanin's My Mentor Fox takes place in a world, where the passage of a comet in 1812 has somehow resulted in sentient, talking animals (possibly only mammals) starting to be born in the world. Britain became the first country to recognize the "close in nature" (the PC term for talking animals) as people and grant them equal rights. Notably, the "close in nature" walk upright and generally have the same body structure as humans. Some humans have even married "close in nature", even though such pairings never result in offspring. The narrator's life changes when he is rescued from a gang of bullies by a strange gentleman calling himself Mr. Fox (or Monsieur Renard, as his French Battle Butler calls him). As can be inferred from his name, Fox is, well, a red fox, except in this case he's also an Expy of Sherlock Holmes. Other animals have found their niches. Racoons are ever-present, usually as newsies. Horses have monopolized cab driving (all cabs are steam-powered in this version of Victorian London). Certain breeds of dogs can often be found as policemen.
• The Redwall books, with "good" species being quite close to next animal anthropomorphism stage. Birds and vermin species, on the other hand, are somewhat more animalistic. Still, although the "good" species such as the mice live in a monastic community or in village communities, they have plenty of mannerisms one would normally associate with their species. The mice are cheese connoisseurs-they make a dizzying variety-and love food in general. The hares are fast, fast talking as well as fast running. The badgers are curmudgeonly, but fierce fighters with a strong sense of justice.
• While most mammals in the Spellsinger series are Funny Animals, those which lack manipulative digits (hoofed animals other than pigs, cetaceans) seem more like this trope. They don't wear clothing aside from the purely-functional (armor in battle, tack when carrying goods for others) and mostly socialize with their own kind, unlike the cosmopolitan Funny Animal species.
• Peter Rabbit from The Tale of Peter Rabbit is perhaps the most iconic form for some people. Beatrix Potter's other works also exemplify this trope. The animals wear clothes and some have jobs, but predation is a real threat and they don't seem to live in houses.
• Tales of Kaimere: Kaimere is a Multicultural Alien Planet that not only has various Human Subspecies, but also several Intellectual Animal. Out of the various species, three are considered sophont with their own multi-generational culture and even having their own witches and Assembly members working alongside the native Kaimerans and humans from Earth.
  • The first to be encountered are the Notzokidue, or the Crow Folk of Pakardia. The descendants of flightless pterosaurs, the Crowfolk use tools developed on their own or picked up from archaic humans. Their focus is mainly on creating art from paintings to sculptures.
  • The second are the Manephaunts, dwarf elephants that live peacefully on their islands. They rely mainly on scent for communication, with occasional noise or visual display for hard-of-smelling members or for fashion. They are a peaceful race that only uses weapons in self-defense against megaraptors that arrive by sea.
  • The third are the Skraa'aae, a species of theropods from the Eastern Continent of Kairul. They not only have a long history of tool use for hunting but are adept and fast at learning and speaking human languages.
• Time To: The mice do things like throw parties and can obviously write, yet they still can't speak and are mouse-sized.
• The Welkin Weasels series starts in a place where humans have long since left. In their place are weasels and stoats. Stoats rule over weasels with an iron fist. Sylver and his group of weasels comes up with a plan to find humans and free the rest of their kind. The animals look and behave like animals but also have tools and behaviors like humans.
• This is an important plot point in The Wicked Years series. There is a distinction between Animals (who are anthropomorphized, can speak, and behave much like humans) and non-anthropomorphized animals- note the spelling. The former can lose their capabilities.
• Early chapters in The Wind in the Willows exemplified this trope, but later parts of the story exhibit an Anthropomorphic Shift towards Funny Animals.

Live-Action TV

• The series Dinosaurs shows in some flashbacks that the dinosaurs were once savage and primitive (albeit more like tribal cultures) and gradually evolved into the civilized suburban society we see in the show.
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman: Ruff is shown to be more civilized than most dogs, such as perfering Chinese food instead of kibble, the fact that he hosted a real game show, and when he breaks his leg and has to wear a Cone, Unlike all dogs, Ruff doesn't want to lick any wound at all. but he still has some noticeable dog traits, such as liking Speaky Toys and living in a doghouse.
• Many of the Wesen in Grimm are essentially animalistic werebeasts acting according to their animal behavior, but others left that to live normally and peacefully among humans keeping The Masquerade, like most of the wolf-like Blutbaten. Monroe himself confess (with certain shame) that he use to be much violent and hunted humans. This even comes to play in some episodes as much more traditional Wesen consider this losing their identity and animal instincts.
• The animal companions of Professor Memelovsky in Odisea Burbujas: Patas Verdes the toad, Mimoso the mouse, Mafafa the lizard and Pistachon the Bumblebee are supposed to be normal in-universe animals but somehow much more civilized than normal as they speak, walk straight and use clothes, reason why Memelovsky made them human-size using an especial machine.

Magazines

• Boys' Life mascot Pedro the Mailburro, aside from his plant-based diet and occasional brays, talks and acts pretty human for a burro.

Puppet Shows

• Kermit in Sesame Street keeps interrupting Bob's lecture on frogs to claim that all frogs live in apartments and eat human food just like him. Other parts of the Muppet universe show him living in swamps.
• The character Topo Gigio is a mouse that learns how to dress, walk, sing and even pray.

Toys

• In the G1 and G2 eras of My Little Pony era the ponies were this. For example, early into the franchise they slept outside or in sheds but by the early 90s they were sleeping in houses and eating human food. Despite that they still largely acted like ponies, especially in the first of the My Little Pony TV Specials. In G3 the ponies became borderline Funny Animals however G4 heavily scaled down on it, though they're still more anthropomorphic than in G1.

Video Games

• Adiboo: Magical Playland: Pup can grab things with his hands, open the door to Adiboo's house, and every cake you make for him is wrapped up like a present. He still enjoys normal dog things like playing fetch with his owner and chewing on his bone, and he sleeps in a dog house.
• Many of the animals in American McGee's Alice follow this trope. Others, like the cat and the Mock Turtle, choose to go naked.
• In Animal Jam, the animals players play as are animals usually going on fours and featuring mannerisms of animals, yet they are able to build human-like civilizations and do human activities. The Alphas are civilized animals too, although Liza the Panda Alpha is a borderline Funny Animal.
• Most of the animal-based bosses in Cuphead, such as Werner Werman (Gadgeteer Genius who fights a war… with cats while living in a typical Mouse Hole) and Rumor Honeybottoms (the elegant queen of a beehive who still collects and makes honey) would go here, though Ribby and Croaks and the Howling Aces are Funny Animals while Grim Matchstick and Wally Warbles are Talking Animals.
• The dogs in The Dog Island fall under this category. They have a society, live in houses, wear hats, and are even capable of practicing medicine, fishing, and sailing ships, but they walk on all fours and bark just like any other dog.
• In Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, nearly every animal is like this. There's the population of Smile and the Bees, for instance.
• King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride has the town of Falderal, which is populated by animals who talk and wear clothes. The ruler is a bossy French poodle named Archduke Fifi Le Yipyap, and the citizens include a bull who runs a china shop and a Snake Oil Salesman who's an actual snake.
• Lorwolf: All of the characters are animals and they still engage in animalistic behavior such as hunting for food and your wolves rolling in smelly things they encounter on campaign, but they also wear clothes, talk, and have societies and professions.
• The animals in Lugaru and Overgrowth. They're more barbaric than "civilized," though.
• The Felynes from the Monster Hunter series sit somewhere between this and Funny Animal. Some go around naked while others can be found fully clothed, and they have their own meowing language. On the other hand, they also work and fight alongside humans, and can wield swords despite appearing to lack opposable thumbs. Oh, and they can get high on Felvine.
• In The Night of the Rabbit there is the town of Mousewood, which is inhabited by Funny Animals and they have their own laws, economy and jobs.
• The Pokémon in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon have shops, adventuring organisations, live in rudimentary houses, and seem to only eat fruit, but they're still just as capable at fighting as wild Pokémon.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic himself is not an example of this trope, nor are most of the main characters in the games. The tiny animals who are freed from the badniks however, are this behaving mostly like the animals they represent and occasionally walking on hind legs.
  • The students in the non-canon PC edutainment title Sonic's Schoolhouse, who mention that they have realistic animal eating habits, etc in the field trip videos.
• Much like the world it was based on, Them's Fightin' Herds has the world of Foenum and its sentient ungulate inhabitants, who slide less towards the scale of Funny Animal and even closer to this trope than even the ponies do.
• The beavers in Timberborn have invented agriculture and industry, but they still live near rivers and build everything out of wood.

Web Comics

• In contrast to many of the other animals depicted in-story, the rabbits from Blue Moon Blossom are by far the most civilized, down to being exclusively bipedal rather than quadrupedal like their real-world counterparts. They've built enormous statues, left inscriptions behind, built temples, and have apparently carved a major settlement into a mountain that's full of all kinds of material culture, ranging from florists and houses of worship, to coffeehouses and even an optometrist. Koalas may also be on this level, given that they all wear glasses that have to come from somewhere and have access to fabric, but their lands are never shown in much detail. It's also possible that the koalas trade with the rabbits or some other unseen species of Civilized Animal for their glasses, or that the fabric seen in use by koalas is scavenged.
• Girl Genius: Krosp may still be a cat but he is a talking, espionage doing, jacket-wearing cat that was designed to be the King of all cats and commander of a bear army.
• Housepets!: Despite possessing only slightly less intelligence than normal humans, animals in the Housepets universe still eat each other, can be owned as pets or livestock, and have no legal rights. Deconstructed when it comes to the ferret Keene, who inherits his father's money and begins putting it towards establishing rights for animals to put them on the same legal level as humans.
• In The Intrepid Girlbot, Raccoon #1 has demonstrated some ability to be civilized, but she's still very much prey to her animal nature.
• Kevin & Kell's universe is a World of Funny Animals in which they're still very obviously animals. The series is full of Furry Reminders, with the very premise deconstructing Carnivore Confusion. Kevin and Kell are an inter-species couple (wolf and rabbit) in a world where it's normal for anthropomorphic animals to hunt other anthropomorphic animals. It's also shown that characters who leave civilization immediately revert to being quadrupeds, implying they're not quite as physically anthropomorphic as they're drawn.
• Legend of the Blue Diamond: Almost all of the characters are wolves. They may have human-level intelligence and speech, but they are still wolves.
• MS Paint Adventures:
  • Problem Sleuth: The Weasels and the Hogs are obviously sentient, but not anthropomorphic enough to be Funny Animals. On the one hand, they so civilized they have their own kingdoms. On the other hand, they look far from humans, wear little to no clothes and eat animals' food.
  • Homestuck: Salamanders, crocodiles, turtles and iguanas can communicate with human characters (the mini-game with John on Land of Wind and Shade shows this especially well). They also have their own cultures — and in the Act 6, we see a lot of cultural artifacts made by them. But they look like animals and usually don't wear clothes. Other characters (except for Caliborn, who is a bad guy) don't kill and usually try to protect them, but see them as the most stupid creatures in the universe. John even stole one of salamanders (Casey or Viceroy Bubbles Von Salamancer) and gave her to Rose, as if she was just an animal.
• The Petri Dish features some super intelligent squirrels, who have a currency and whatnot but still live in trees and eat acorns.
• Sandra and Woo: While Woo likes living with the Norths, he still goes back to the woods, where his partner Lily lives. Like other raccoons, he likes to eat a lot of food, including leftovers and other human foods!
• The sentient canid species in Wurr (at least the two to which we've been officially introduced). No clothing beyond the occasional collar, and very canine body language and (for the most part) behavior. However, the hounds seem to at least build shrines to the deceased, while the dogs have tents, jewelry, and currency.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Kalliv's family appear to occupy the space between Talking Animal (they slept huddled together as mice, in a hollowed out tree, and Kalliv was snatched away to be eaten) and Funny Animal (the walls of their home had household objects and a written notice attached to them), though Kalliv mentions they would "go to the market and stuff" in their demon forms. Yfa's parents are a fruit fox and spirit bird who run an inn together.

Web Original

• The ferret-like Tyl, Velociraptor-like Featherclaw and elephant-like El'Dar from Engines of Creation are examples of this trope.
• Hector's World: The citizens of Silicon Deep are practically normal sea creatures, but they use modern technology.
• The Seldnac'Rae anatomically look like real-world felines and canines, but they have sapience, human-level intelligence, and do things like build houses, craft metal items, etc.
• The Elrich series of tales in The Wanderer's Library features them. In one, From the Crown Press, a notice is put out warning of an “armoured force of mystic marsupials, which were supported by a column of raccoon mystics”, and orders a death sentence on them.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs:
  • Slappy and Skippy Squirrel exemplify this trope because they live in a tree and fight predator animals while still walking on two legs, talking, and sometimes wearing clothes.
  • Rita the cat is also a good example of this trope, she walks on two legs, manipulates things in her paws like they were human hands, talks, and wears clothes and accessories (albeit rarely), but is treated like a normal cat for the most part in the episodes she stars in.
  • Even though Minerva Mink is a full-on Funny Animal complete with a human frame, in the two episodes she actually starred in, she lives in a log in a forest and Newt tried to hunt her in one of those two episodes.
  • Minerva's foe, Newt the dog plays this trope much straighter. He is portrayed as having an owner in "Meet Minerva" and "Puttin On The Blitz," but unlike most of the other dogs in the show, he often walks on two legs and manipulates things in his paws like they were human hands.
• A few of the "non-anthro" animals in the Arthur episode, "The Great Lint Rush," especially Toady Wartface, Mr. Toad (No, not that one), and a lizard that showed up.
• Chip 'n Dale in the Classic Disney Shorts are Partially Civilized Animals, but otherwise, they fit squarely in this trope.
• Rodents, cats and other domestic animals are like this in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers when humans aren’t watching. They use clothes and in the case of the rodents they made a lot of artifacts from home appliances and garbage including dirigibles and a space faring rocket.
• The eponymous character of Courage the Cowardly Dog: fully human intelligence and can use his front legs like hands, but lives as a human household's pet. Most of the other animal characters are either Funny Animals or are somewhere in between this trope and Funny Animal.
• Curious George, unlike the other animals.
• Most of the animals in Dinosaur Train can talk, and the Troodons in particular have invented Casual Time Travel and all sorts of modern-style vehicles, but they mainly live in the wilderness.
• Brian Griffin from Family Guy, in earlier seasons. Newer ones make him a Funny Animal with occasional Furry Reminders.
• Franklin, both the books and TV series.
• The Gummi Bears are not only civilized bears in their universe, they are said to be more civilized than humans: they developed advance engineering and technology in the Middle Ages, built large cities and where capable of transoceanic travel much earlier than humans.
• Most of the animals in Infinity Train. The corgis in "The Corgi Car" and the turtles in "The Unfinished Car" have their own monarchies, while The Cat is running a new business/con every time that we meet her. They all wear limited clothes and generally walk on all fours, though.
• The heroes and villains of Kulipari: An Army of Frogs are all this. Frogs, turtles, platypuses, wallabies, and possums are all good and civilized. Most (but not all) spiders, scorpions, bats and paralysis ticks are evil.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Many of the animal characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, and Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird.
  • Bugs Bunny belongs in this trope. Although his behavior is entirely human, he still lives in a burrow and has to worry about being hunted or eaten. There was an odd situation in the cartoon "Hare Splitter" where Bugs and his rival live in furnished burrows and wear only their fur, while their contested girlfriend lives in a frame house and is fully dressed. In a segment of The Looney Tunes Show, Bugs must prove he is a real rabbit to a group of "actual" rabbits (who are Talking Animals). As a Civilized Animal, Bugs is mostly able to perform the tasks the other rabbits ask of him but always pulls them off in an oddly "human" way (like digging a burrow that looks like an "outdated condo").
  • The same applies to Daffy Duck (although he tends towards Funny Animal in later works), and a lot of other Looney Tunes animal characters.
  • Sylvester's characterization ranged from being a normal cat to being a Funny Animal, but he usually fit either this trope or the Talking Animal trope.
• Considering that Los Trotamúsicos (a dog, a cat, a donkey and a rooster) can sing and play instruments, they are pretty civilized.
• The insects and arachnids in Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends exemplify this trope, but Felix the Frog is just a Talking Animal.
• Ratty and Mole from Mr. Bogus often show shades of this.
• The eponymous equines of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic occupy a weird, nebulous intermediary zone between this and Funny Animal. On the one hand, they live in houses and in a lot of ways their day-to-day lives paint them more as quadrupedal humans than mildly anthropomorphic horses. On the other, the creators researched a lot of horse behavior and incorporated it into the characters' body language, Rarity's song "Art Of The Dress" and the accompanying visuals account for equine physiology in a way that also betrays extensive research, and wherever possible they avoided having the ponies use their hooves for fine manipulation.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: All the animal characters can walk and talk, and—super spy antics of the titular penguins aside—they all generally desire whatever their real life animal would like (or is stereotyped to like, such as Burt the elephant eating peanuts.)
• Perry from Phineas and Ferb can go from "mindless pet" to "intelligent animal with instincts" to "practically human" depending on both his and the episode's needs.
• Pinky and the Brain: The titular mice walk on two legs, talk, and sometimes wear clothes, but they usually live in a cage like normal lab mice would. The other mice in the show generally fit this trope, except Mousey Galore.
• The dogs from both versions of Pound Puppies. Lucky's squad is firmly planted here, despite the fact that only Niblet can comfortably walk on two feet. Cooler and his team are borderline Funny Animals, but are here due to the plot focusing mainly around getting their fellow canines adopted.
• The Raccoons: At the beginning of the series the episodes started with the lives of a forest ranger and his children living in a shack with two dogs, unaware that their dogs are sentient and actually (well, one of them) can talk and walk and have a friendship with forest animals that live in a pretty civilized environment with buildings, roads and automobiles. Cyril Sneer’s mansion, for example, is much bigger and luxurious that the ranger’s humble shack. One can only wonder how the ranger never sees any of this, he should be very lazy at his work.
• For certain values of "civilized", Ren & Stimpy much of the time, in particular in episodes like "Big House Blues" and "Man's Best Friend".
• Santa's Christmas Crash: Santa's two reindeer, Romuald and Joe. They both wear Christmas sweaters, can speak English, and Romuald is seen at the start of the film standing on his hind legs at a stove, stirring in a pot.
• Spot from Teacher's Pet is able to go to school and disguise himself as a human and engages in other human behaviors, but other than that he generally acts like and is treated like a normal dog.
• Some of Tex Avery MGM Cartoons characters (Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, etc.).
• Also the same with a lot of the Tiny Toon Adventures animal characters like Buster, Babs, and Plucky.
  • Furball is usually portrayed as a normal cat who can walk on two legs, but was also sometimes portrayed as a Funny Animal or a Civilized Animal.
• Luxor from Tutenstein can speak, is a loyal servant to the Pharoah, and sometimes walks on 2 legs and engages in human-like behaviors (for example, being able to run an ice cream machine in "Bedhety Late Than Never") but he generally acts like a normal cat and is Cleo's pet. It's implied the Scepter of Was gave him these human behaviors including being able to speak (he was a normal cat before Tut was awakened).
• Gromit, of Wallace & Gromit, is a bit of an odd case: he alternates between acting like a dog and acting like a person, he often acts as a direct partner to Wallace, who seems to consider him a peer at the very least, and he never talks, making it hard to pin him in either category. In general, he seems to have fully human intelligence and capabilities aside from his lack of speech, but is content to act doglike when relaxed. Shorts tend to vary by Rule of Funny on whether people consider Gromit to be sapient or not, though characters actually treating him like a dog is usually shown as patronizing.
• In We Bare Bears, The bear trio live in a fully-furbished cave, own cell phones and a computer, and eat home-cooked meals. Other animals seem to show traits of this, such as the pigeons who run a stolen merchandise ring in "Our Stuff" and the animals in "Food Truck" who know how to use money.
• Winnie the Pooh, as far as you can say for stuffed animals. Except for the Nearly Normal Animals, Buster, Small, and the squirrels from My Friends Tigger and Pooh, some of the characters are Talking Animals and some of them belong in this trope.

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