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Furry Reminder

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The worst part is he's not a rooster (or even a falcon).
"SOMETIMES, THEY'RE DINOSAURS."
Alt text for this Dinosaur Comics strip

So, we have an anthropomorphic animal who acts just like a human. Stands on hind legs, talks, interacts with humans just like he's one of them, they treat him just like a human... it seems the only difference between him and a human is that he has fur and a tail. But then, when the audience has forgotten what he is... he does something that's actually animal-like! If he's a dog, he might suddenly stop what he's doing to chase a car, if he's a cat, he might happily give someone a dead mouse.

Sometimes, the Furry Reminder is a consistent occurrence, such as a character with an Animal Species Accent.

This trope is most common with animals on the Civilized Animal and Funny Animal tiers. This can sometimes happen to animals on the Nearly Normal Animal, Talking Animal, or Partially Civilized Animal tiers, but animals of those tiers move around like their real life counterpart, tend not to be treated like or act like humans, and don't seem to be prone to Denial of Animality or "purely aesthetic species" syndrome. On the other hand, a Beast Man would tend not to do it since they're treated more like human with animal features than an anthropomorphic animal. If a Cat Girl or other Little Bit Beastly drops a furry reminder, it tends to get jarring as they look completely human aside from their animal ears and tail.

This trope doesn't necessarily involve an Anthropomorphic Shift, but can sometimes be applied after a shift has occurred to remind us that the character is still as much an animal as he was before.

There is a variant of this trope involving stuffed animals and toys, especially those that seem more like actual living things to viewers, that reminds viewers that the character or characters are in fact stuffed or toys. The most common example of this involves either an arm or leg getting ripped or ripped off or part of their body getting a rip in it.

If he's trying to hide the behavior, but it accidentally comes out, it's My Instincts Are Showing.

This is a furry reminder, reminding both the audience and the characters what species a character really is. Contrast Denial of Animality. Also contrast Furry Lens, which due to treating the animals as "humans in animal costumes" naturally avoids furry reminders. Compare Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag and Werewolves Are Dogs (for a mythical being). The toy and stuffed animal variant occurs most frequently on toys on Levels 4, 5, and 6 and sometimes on Level 3 on the Sliding Scale of Living Toys. May overlap with "Harmful to Pets" Reminder.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • Claude the Cat:
    • He mainly talks, but in one PSA, he's heard screaming, "Reoww!" (the same sound effect used in That Poor Cat) upon accidentally burning himself. After that, he licks his wounded paw.
    • In a digging PSA, he's seen digging and saying, "So much for privacy", implying he wanted to poop there.
    • In another PSA, he has a Delicious Daydream about a canary, and in another one, he's seen trying to catch a mouse.
    • He loves electric blankets and heaters and dislikes the cold.
  • Dear Kitten uses this for much of its humor. Cat is intelligent and fairly sardonic, but he can't recognize his reflection in a mirror (he thinks the mirror is a window to a world with doppelgangers of his world), doesn't realize clothes and people are separate objects, and dreads the vacuum cleaner ("the monster known as Vac Oom").
  • There was a Got Milk? advertisement featuring SpongeBob and Patrick drinking chocolate milk and getting chocolate milk mustaches. Since SpongeBob is, well, a sponge, he absorbs his milk mustache not long after getting it. He keeps drinking and absorbing the resulting milk mustaches before finally sticking his head in the glass, absorbing all of the chocolate milk, much to Patrick's amusement.
  • In the Microsoft Office XP ad "Clippy Faces Facts", during the dinner scene when Clippy and his family - who are all paper clips - eat dinner, the food falls through them straight to the floor. The same thing happens later again when Clippy drinks a beer while he's drowning his sorrows.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Aggretsuko:
    • In the original TBS shorts, Gori the gorilla pounds on her chest when she is excited.
    • In the Netflix series, Washimi, a secretarybird, demonstrates her dominance by stomping on things with her powerful feet, just like real secretarybirds do. In the TBS shorts, she reveals that she can't smile because as a bird, she doesn't have facial muscles.
  • In Delicious in Dungeon, Izutsumi is a Cat Girl with emphasis on the "cat", and so regularly does things like lick her bowl clean when she finishes eating, startle at things only she can see, and take frequent naps. Her whole personality is also stereotypically catlike, in particular being a standoffish loner whose number one priority is herself (though she's gradually becoming more considerate).
  • In Digimon Ghost Game, Jellymon panics and runs to get help from Hiro while her partner Kiyoshiro is being attacked by The Swarm of Weedmon. When Kiyo calls her out on this, she reminds him that Weedmon attack by draining their victims' moisture, and as a jellyfish she's 90% water.
  • Dog Days plays with this a lot. Cinque, for example, plays Frisbee with Milhi almost every day. Of course, this primarily involves him throwing the disc, and her catching it (with her hands, of course) and bringing it back. Petting is also a common pastime between the Heroes and their respective Princesses.
  • The titular character of Doraemon (a robot cat) have moments where he displays cat-like behavior, despite being andromorphic:
  • Dragon Ball examples:
    • The chief priest of the temple hosting the Tenkaichi tournaments is a humanoid dog. His speech at the start of the 21st is a single word: "Woof!"
    • Jackie Chun defeats Man-Wolf in the Budokai by making him 'fetch' a bone thrown out of the ring. That was after ridiculing him by having him do dog tricks.
  • The chimeras in Fullmetal Alchemist sometimes exhibit traits of the animals they've been fused with. Some inherit handy things like enhanced senses of smell, increased strength, the ability to climb vertical surfaces or an "animal instinct" which tells them when they should fight and when they should run away, some do things only vaguely related to the animal they're fused with like adhesive saliva projectiles (toad) and shooting spines (wild boar, which are sometimes called razorbacks) but others just do funny things like pee standing on one leg, something Martel teases Dorchetto about. In Brotherhood, Dorchetto embarassedly/angrily states that he only did that once.
  • The dogs in Ginga Densetsu Weed have their mouths open near constantly, which would be a nice touch reminding viewers they are dogs if it weren't for the fact that it's caused by the artists not bothering to draw them with any expression other than Dull Surprise.
  • Despite being a Little Bit Beastly Cheerful Child, Hana the Fox Girl will sometimes act in ways that remind one that she is a fox and, thus, a predator. These include waking up her caretaker Fu with a bird she caught and killed for breakfast. Another instance is being unable to resist trying to eat a mermaid who visits their coffee shop.
  • Inuyasha:
    • There is an episode where, at the start, Kagome gets Inuyasha to fetch a stick, much to his annoyance.
    • Inuyasha, sit!
    • He'll also shake off like a dog when wet, or scratch his ear with his foot, in addition to his nose being always being damp, only drying out when he has a cold, he buried Kaede (he thought she was dead until he realized she was alive and left her head sticking out of the ground) in episode four with his foot, and when tracking a scent, he is down on all fours.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, Diego Brando's Stand ability Scary Monsters is to turn into a Utahraptor-like dinosaur. Even in human form, he swallows rocks to aid his digestion and sniffs the air with his hands held to his chest in the classic (and inaccurate) claw position. However, this only happened when he was under the influence of someone else using Scary Monsters to force him to transform. Once he makes the power his own, he doesn't act like this anymore.
  • Monster Musume occasionally has the eponymous monster girls nod back to the quirks of biology that come from being not entirely human. The centaur girl is a vegetarian, the mermaid gets sick from swimming in chlorinated water due to her gills, the lamia is cold blooded and gets lethargic when exposed to cold temperatures, etc.
  • Froppy from My Hero Academia has a quirk that gives her the abilities and weaknesses of a frog. The Spin-off My Hero Academia Smash!! expressed this by having her try to hibernate during the Christmas special.
    • And from MHA proper, Hound Dog's speech devolves entirely into growls and backs whenever he gets angry.
  • An entire episode of Oh, Suddenly Egyptian God is dedicated to showcasing how the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet (appearing as a Funny Animal in the show instead of a cat-headed human) behaves like a cat. She appears in the most random of places, gets bored so easily, and at one point she sleeps on and walks all over a laptop keyboard. In a later episode, Bastet is also shown to be the best at jumping off a swing and sticking the landing, because cats always land on their feet.
  • The Mink Tribe in One Piece is a race of Beast Men who still have animal traits, most humorously shown by Wanda, the otherwise civilized dog woman who has a tendency to lick people's faces and is obsessed with Brook.
  • This happened occasionally with Meowth in Pokémon: The Original Series episodes. Team Rocket distracted him at least once with a ball of yarn that he excitedly ran after and played with and he was entranced by cat nip. Later episodes feature Denial of Animality for humor.
  • Princess Tutu:
    • Neko-sensei will occasionally wash himself like the cat he is.
    • Actually a plot point with Ahiru. If she does anything that resembles her true duck self, she will turn back into a duck.
  • The animal characters of Shirokuma Cafe exhibit this fairly often (for example, Panda eating bamboo).
  • It both occurs and is occasionally subverted in Hyper Police. Natsuki Sasahara, the protagonist, is a Cat Girl and sometimes acts in a typically catgirlish sort of way, except that it's not always a result of her nature but because she acts like that on purpose; she seems to be obsessed with cats in a human sort of way, and sometimes when life is too hard or when she has too much responsibility, wishes she was just a cat.
  • The cats in Sailor Moon normally act pretty human despite not looking like them. However, some episodes will occasionally show them in a more feline light.
  • In one episode of Sonic X, it is mentioned that bats like Rouge have sonar that can sense things in the dark.
  • Yo-kai Watch:
    • Manjimutt was a human who, due to the circumstances of his death, is now a human-faced dog. Despite predominantly acting like a human, he has an obsession with bones and cannot resist howling at the moon.
    • As a cat Yo-kai, Jibanyan can speak human language, but also has the Verbal Tic "Nyan", which he adds at the end of his sentences. However, when he was a normal cat before he died, he could only meow.

    Asian Animation 

    Comic Books 
  • Blacksad: Blacksad meets a mole foreman at a subway building site who offers him a sandwich before opening a can of live worms to eat from himself. Blacksad has trouble hiding his disgust.
  • Chlorophylle is a Civilized Animals world where predator animals behave according to their instincts.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy:
    • Rocket Raccoon, especially during his time with the team (at least, before Brian Bendis came along). He'll often remind people he's a racoon, noting his frizzy tail, mentioning trouble's making his hackles rise, and having an inexplicable hatred for Cosmo... who is a dog. Speaking of which...
    • Cosmo himself, who is a talking dog (for reasons no-one, not even Cosmo, is entirely clear on). He's less anthropomorphic than Rocket; he sleeps in a doggy basket, likes squeaky toys, and admits he would've solved the problem of Annihilus by trying to rip his throat out ("but then, I am being dog", as he puts it). The reminder gets amped up when he's briefly deaged into a puppy, and starts acting like... well, a puppy, being more concerned with playing fetch and chasing squirrels than the threat of time falling apart around everyone.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Big the Cat chased a ball of yarn.
    • It's been shown that echidnas hatch from eggs.
  • Rather often the humor in Lupo Alberto (set in a world of Funny Animals) comes from the characters suddenly acting like animals:
    • An early strip had Alberto (a wolf) being caught by his girlfriend Marta (a hen) while he's sneaking around with her best friend — and interrupting her jealous rant to tell her he finds ridiculous she's jealous of his midnight snack. Similarly, many of Marta's relatives fear Alberto because he's a wolf and think he could eat them any moment.
    • On one occasion Moses, the farm's sheepdog that always beats Alberto up, is foiled when Alberto grabs his stick and throws it, resulting in the dog chasing it. Moses is also (sometimes) terrified of loud noises, especially those from blank-only handguns (in Italy called "scacciacani", that translates as "dog banisher"). This is in spite of him owning a rifle and sometimes using it.
    • Enrico la Talpa (a mole) is rather prone to this, as he lives underground and often pokes out from his house, sometimes mentions having just eaten something a mole would eat, and suddenly digging his way out of trouble (he and his wife are actually supernaturally good diggers when motivated).
    • The rabbit couple of the farm has lots of children.
    • Silvietta the dunnock usually acts like everyone else, but can start flying at any moment. Also, she's vulnerable to bird-specific game calls.

    Comic Strips 
  • In Beetle Bailey, Otto bites people whenever he gets angry.
  • Calvin and Hobbes:
    • Hobbes often likes to hide and then pounce on Calvin. He also subscribes to National Geographic... so he can look at all the attractive female tigers.
    • While playing cards, his tell is that his tail starts flopping all over the place.
    • Every once in a while, there's a Stuffed Animal Reminder when Hobbes is seen from the perspective of an adult. He then looks like a normal stuffed toy, not the anthropomorphic tiger we usually see. And occasionally, he has to get stitches if he pops a seam, or has to go through the washer and dryer when he gets dirty.
  • In general, if there's a comic in The Far Side that features non-human animals, monsters, inanimate objects, or anything else acting like humans, the punchline will generally be something of this nature.
  • Garfield likes to try to eat birds. He'll also occasionally shed and hack up hairballs, much to Jon's disgust.
  • South Afrian comic strip Madam And Eve has the Hadeda Birds, which in real life are a large noisy creature found throughout the Cape and which re viewed in Cape Town as a sort of large intrusive pigeon. The screeching discordant sound of the Hadeda is used in the strips as a sort of ironic commentary on the pretentions of the human characters.
  • In Peanuts, Snoopy, despite a gradual Anthropomorphic Shift over the first couple of decades, still lives in a dog house and eats from his dog bowl. In one strip, when he lets the ball go straight past him while playing shortstop in Charlie Brown's baseball team, his explanation is "You didn't say 'fetch!'"
  • Pooch Café: Poncho (and all of the other dogs in the strip) can talk and think like humans, but their instincts will sometimes get the better of them and they'll do things like chase cars or eat garbage.
  • Occasionally, the punch line to a Shoe will rely on the fact that the characters are all birds (albeit anthropomorphic ones who generally act very humanoid otherwise). Very rarely, you might even see them flying.

    Fan Works 
  • Almost Psycho Chuck Chicken: Buford, the sheep is mentioned to bleat when he laughs.
  • Anthony J. Crowley, Retired Demon and Airbnb Superhost: The snake demon Crowley rents his flat out on Airbnb. Fitting for a cold-blooded reptile, his floors are heated, the thermostat doesn't go below 31 C (87.8 F), and one customer found heat lamps and humidifiers in storage. In A Visit to the Pet Shop by the same author, the owner of a specialty reptile store finds it strange how Crowley puts snake hides (artificial terrain snakes can hide under, not snake skins) over his head like a hat before muttering that he prefers under the sofa, and how he buys just enough heating pads to cover a king-sized mattress. Him kissing Aziraphale is described to look like a snake swallowing a rat alive.
  • Boldores and Boomsticks:
    • Even though Pokémon act with all the intelligence and personality of humans, they do occasionally display animal-like behavior.
    • Mal attempts to pounce on Blake's ribbon mid-sentence.
  • Catlike Instincts, a The Amazing World of Gumball fic, centers around Gumball displaying a different one in each chapter. Including dealing with temptations to jump into an empty box while in class, realizing how useful having claws and cat eyes that allow you to see in the dark can be, and others. The story even ends on a heartfelt speech regarding Furry Reminders, after Nicole walks in on Gumball playing with empty grocery bags in the kitchen. She tells her son that they all have moments like that and it's nothing to be ashamed of, before joining him in slapping around the bags.
  • The Female of the Species: Used for dark Deliberate Values Dissonance. Several Prideland lions are mentioned in extended media, such as Nala's Childhood Friends Chumvi and Kula, but don't appear elsewhere. Their lack of appearances are explained in the second chapter: they were killed by Scar in a ritual where cubs who aren't the king's are all killed. This emulates actual lion behavior where new males will kill off the previous leader's children. Nala only survived because Sarabi convinced Scar to kill his son (and Nala's half-brother), the ailing Mheetu, in exchange for the healthier Nala.
  • Gensokyo 20XX:
    • Occasionally it is acknowledged that Ran would act fox-like, on example of this being that she would consume rodents on occasion, which foxes actually do. There is also the fact that in once it is noted that she does make sounds that foxes make, like gekkering when she got in a fight. There is also the fact that she's bore a few litters, something foxes also do, though, in that case it can be hand waved in that the authoress wasn't sure if kitsune bear litters or just one if not two (mythology is also fuzzy on this). Apparently, she goes though a molt cycle, again also something foxes tend to do but that is when it's warm (in the spring to be more precise).
    • It's mentioned that Chen, a nekomata, purrs to herself, and it's previously noted that she used to hunt mice and rats.
    • Inverted with Reimu in Foundling, as, having been around kitsune pups, she takes on their mannerisms and acts as they do, however, when she's being taunted in one chapter, she drops this momentarily, picks up a rock, and hurls it at the offending tanuki.
    Chen: "At that moment, the runt remembered that she was a human and acted at humans would, in which case, she picked up a rock that was roughly the same weight she was and hit her with it."
  • Hatch Ya Later Kabaton squeals like a real pig when Mepple kicks him.
  • How to Break a Family: David Read mentions his species. In canon, the characters almost never mention that they're animals:
    As soon as Mr. Read, Mrs. Read, Arthur and Kate left the room, Mrs. Read furiously turned towards her ex-husband.
    "Are you happy now?" she yelled, tears filling her eyes, "It was your irresponsibility that got DW kidnapped, and now you are taking Kate away from me! What type of a husband are you, you... you selfish, horrible pig?!"
    "As far as I know," Mr. Read replied dryly, "I am an aardvark."
  • Played for Laughs in If Wishes Were Ponies. Seeing as how the Mane 6 and CMC are ponies, human concepts such as clothing are strange to them. Harry has to constantly tell them to wear clothing, and it takes them a while to get used to eating meat. Visitors to Equestria are also surprised by the existence of things such as hay-burgers, and need to adjust to a vegetarian diet (as they can't eat meat in Equestria without offending someone).
  • A rather dark example from Junior Officers: Captain Barnacles roars when he breaks his leg in "River Riding Adventure, Part 1".
  • Lighting Candles: Bunny, being a large rabbit, is unnerved by Tadashi's fox form. Tadashi uses it to mess with him a few times, only to eventually learn that, because he's basically a fox spirit who can turn human, he is afraid of dogs.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • The Amulet Job: Played for laughs, when Gus (a griffon) orders homestyle food at a restaurant and is given his meal by the waiter vomiting on the plate in front of him. Everyone else is shocked he'd order from the kids' menu.
      Gus: Just like Mom used to puke.
    • Beneath your feet, what Treasures is about Spike dealing with his Precocious Crush on Rarity via his (very small) Dragon Hoard.
    • Clair de Lune: When Lune goes to a library, the section on gender studies has books about herd behavior.
    • Claro de Luna: Horses generally have a lifespan of 25 to 30. In this story, Octavia is described as old by 26 and it's mentioned that she's outlived the average by a year.
    • Contraptionology!: Applejack had to have her wolf teeth removed when she was a filly. "Wolf teeth" is the term used in real life for the vestigial first premolars in horses, which are commonly present as small, useless peg-like teeth and which are often surgically removed to prevent discomfort or eating complications. Equestrian ponies do it mainly for aesthetic reasons.
    • D. G. D. Davidson's fanfics (Fanfiction, Fimfiction) make a point of making it clear that the characters are horses who happen to think like humans, not humans who happen to have horse bodies. The characters' body parts are referred to in terms of equine anatomy ("pastern", "cannon", "frog", etc.), and other horse terminology is used too (such as calling one's parents "dam" and "sire"). Also, there are references to mares being in heat only in spring. The author, apparently, was surprised to find out that most bronies aren't experts on horsemanship and that the terminology would go over their heads.
    • It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door: Rarity, Rainbow and Applejack don't pack much in the way of food — when they make camp for the first time, they simply graze from the surrounding vegetation. While Rarity dislikes doing this, her main complaint is that she doesn't like to eat the grass "raw" and without any seasoning.
    • My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic III: "And he threw his head high up into the air and let out a very loud and mournful NEIGH... just like the pony he was."
    • My(stara's) Little Ponies: Friendship Is Adventuring: Ponies rely on their sense of smell more than their sight for identifying others, and they have herd instincts. As a side-effect of this, it is very easy for ponies to pick up on their fellows' fear pheromones, causing them to panic in turn, causing a chain reaction that can easily lead to a stampede.
    • Sophistication and Betrayal: The protagonist gets Rarity some flowers when taking her out on a date, and is promptly surprised when she eats one for taste. The next time he slips a note in, reminding her not to eat them immediately.
    • The Pieces Lie Where They Fell:
      • Xvital, being a feline, tends to curl up like a cat and make mewing sounds.
      • Night Blade, a batpony, hisses like a bat when things get too bright or too loud.
      • Wind Breaker, a griffon, sometimes stretches his neck out and chirps like a bird.
      • Rex, a member of a canine species, is known to bark and wag his tail, and during the escape from Canterlot he has his head sticking over the side of their skimmer, his tongue hanging out like a real dog's would, though he denies it. He's embarrassed when photographic proof emerges.
    • Sharing the Nation: In the first chapter, while leaving one of Pinkie's parties, Luna comments favorably on the toasted anise offered among the snacks. Twilight replies that that wasn't a snack, Luna just ate the potpourri.
    • This Is the Life uses this quite regularly, with the human protagonist often being surprised when the ponies do pony things. One chapter even references this trope almost directly, with him remarking that he tends to forget they are ponies because for the most part they think like humans.
  • Several times in Star Of Wonder Star Of Night:
    • Yuni, being a cat-like alien, can’t resist batting at Christmas tree decorations.
    • Lance, being a bear-like fairy, is used to hibernating during the winter.
    • Pegitan slides on his belly in the snow like a real penguin.
    • Zestar Apple Flambe: Pony mares go into regular estrus. Spike had the misfortune of being stuck inside a room with Apple Bloom when she gets hers.
  • There is a subgenre of Spider-Man fanfics (especially on Archive of Our Own) where Peter Parker has more spider-like behaviors as a result of his powers (such as hissing or even purringnote , sleeping in webs, hibernating/being less active in the cold, being able to hold his breath for a long time, etc).
  • Spider-Ninja:
    • Mikey goes into his shell to avoid letting Donnie treat an injury (much like many turtles do when they're scared). His siblings treat this like it's normal, while Doctor Connors (who's mostly seen the teens behave like humans) stares for a second.
    • In a later chapter, Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello have to sit out a mission because they're shedding their skin note . Petra tells Agent Hill that she does NOT want to know (Hill doesn't ask further questions).
    • Splinter admits that he has much better hearing after becoming a rat, and he is shown to hiss whenever he fights.
  • Star Trek: Phoenix: Sunset and Twilight are often mentioned as making equine noises, such as whinnying when scared.
  • In Whispers of the Abyss, Blot and Rena are both bird Pokémon (a Corvisquire and an Altaria, respectively) who perch in trees when they sleep.
  • Zorua Trainer: Ash may look like a human with his illusionary disguise, and he may act like a human a lot of times; but he still engages in a number of behaviors that remind the audience and his human friends that he's still a fox Pokémon. Among other things, he loves digging holes just for the sake of it (getting in trouble with Delia a few times when he was young); or getting zoomies when he's cooped up in his illusion for too long.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Aladdin, Iago the parrot can actually speak instead of just copying people; but he keeps it a secret from all but Jafar, his evil owner, so when other people are present, he squawks and copies people.
  • The Angry Birds Movie: At one point in the film, a mother bird packs her children's lunch...by eating some food then vomiting it into their bags.
  • Bee Movie: In one scene, Adam stings a man and nearly dies.
  • Cats Don't Dance: Sawyer's ear twitches when she's annoyed, she yowls realistically when her tail is caught in a door, and when a fire escape ladder hits the ground with her on it, she jumps off with fur bristled, claws out, and eyes darting about neurotically, before immediately composing herself and acting like nothing happened.
  • Chicken Little shows various animals dropping furry reminders from time to time. For example, a father and son pair of dogs play frisbee with the son catching the disc in his mouth.
  • The animals in Fantastic Mr. Fox do various animal-ish things throughout the film, but the real kicker is how they eat at the dinner table.
  • In The Great Mouse Detective, Basil is able to detect drugs in his beer by simply dipping his fingertip into the drink and licking it. Which is very similar to what real-life mice and rats do when they suspect poison.
  • In Ice Age: The Meltdown, Sid gives Diego impromptu therapy much like a human would, but words it in a way that goads his predatory tiger instincts. His being afraid of the water may also be a reference to how Cats Hate Water.
    Sid: If you're afraid of [the water], that means you're its prey.
  • Puss in Boots is full of it, usually in relation to Puss himself, who acts like a Zorro Expy, until we see him drink milk (by rapidly lapping from the shot glass), purr, lick himself, make big kitty eyes (usually intentional), make cat noises when someone hits him with an object, chase a sunbeam, or bring an apparently dead animal to his adopted mother.
  • Several in the Kung Fu Panda films. It usually manifests as characters using their animal traits in combat, making realistic animal sounds, Running on All Fours, etc.
  • In Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted in the scene where Vitaly the tiger and Alex the lion are arguing about the former's leaving, Alex tries to tear out some of Vitaly's things, he drops a ball of yarn and they both spontaneously start to throw it up like regular cats. It's brought up a few times in the movies that the characters still age at the same rate as their real-life counterparts. In the first film, Marty the zebra reaches his 10th birthday and claims that his life is already half over. In Europe's Most Wanted, Alex asks if Gia the jaguar is five during their banter, to which she replies that she is.
  • In The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Pooh's seam rips a little as he does his stretches. Eeyore's tail is also attached with a tack. And while Pooh, Piglet, Kanga, Roo, Tigger, and Eeyore are toys, Owl, Rabbit, and Gopher are real animals who live in the Woods.
  • Invoked and Played With Louis the alligator in The Princess and the Frog. He is mistaken for a human in a gator costume when he hops onto the steamboat to play jazz music. Later in the movie, on a Mardi Gras float, when he hops off to rescue Frog Tiana, he does so on all fours like a real gator.
  • In Rocket Saves the Day, Rocket has a doghouse, sleeps on a bed outside, and sniffs a lot, but otherwise his behavior is human-like.
  • Shrek:
    • The first film:
      • At one point, Donkey believes that he is dying, noticing that he can't feel his toes. He then remembers that as a donkey he does not have toes.
      • In the middle of a song, Monsieur Hood puts an apple in Donkey's mouth.
      • Fiona asks Donkey to get her some blue flowers with red thorns, to which Donkey notes that it'd be easier if he wasn't color-blind. All while surrounded by the blue flowers with red thorns.
    • Shrek 2:
      • Puss in Boots occasionally gets a hairball. And does the big kitty eyes thing when attempting a surprise attack. In one scene, he starts swatting at butterflies.
      • When Donkey becomes a horse, he can still talk, but he can also whinny.
  • Sing:
    • The audition has some examples. A sheep bawls as he sings the chorus of "Kiss From a Rose". The frogs jump as they sing... "Jump". A group of spiders swing on their threads as they sing "Aserejé" and three shrimps sing "Crazy in Love" in an aquarium, since they would die without water (how they got in the theater is a mystery). A kangaroo pushes her daughter out of her pouch to sing "The Safety Dance".
    • Ash tosses her quills when she is stressed or excited, although in Real Life porcupines only lose their quills when they are shedding, or when they become embedded in something.
  • Sing 2: A snail covers a cellphone with slime as he sings "Hotline Bling".
  • In Storks, we are reminded that birds can't see glass when Hunter reveals he had his office built entirely out of glass despite knowing this. Some other storks then smack into the office. Junior, the focus stork, runs into trouble when he tries to lose a wolf pack in a warehouse full of glass sheets.
  • Scooby Doo has, at least once, given in to his instincts and chased cats around, even growling. He eventually makes peace with them though.
  • Although he's a toy and not an actual dog, at the end of Toy Story 3 when the gang gets washed off with a hose, Slinky Dog shakes water off himself like a dog would.
  • Dr. Doppler from Treasure Planet is an anthropomorphic dog-like alien who for some reason actually eats out of a dog dish. With a spoon.
  • In Turning Red, when Mei is surprised and in her giant red panda form she will raise her paws up which real red pandas do when they feel stressed or threatened.
  • Done in Up, in which the dogs are distracted by squirrels or the fact that Dug likes chewing on the tennis balls that Carl uses as part of his cane. This proves handy on a number of occasions. Also, the dogs wear collars that enable them to talk, but it doesn't stop them from being able to bark.
    Carl Fredricksen: And on your way, learn how to bark like a real dog!
    Doug: I can bark. woof woof And here's howling. Awoo!
  • Winnie the Pooh (2011): Owl mentions that his mother hollowed out a hole in his tree with her claw.
  • Zootopia:
    • Judy (a rabbit) has 275 brothers and sisters. In real life, rabbits are notorious for having huge litters of bunnies. Do the math.
    • Many herd animals (wildebeests, zebras, camels, etc) are seen walking together in large groups.
    • When he gets mad, Mayor Lionheart growls a little as he yells.
    • Wolves are prone to howling, to the point that it's a well-known (and visibly accurate) stereotype.
    • When Judy and Nick first visit Mr. Big and Fru-Fru, it's the latter's wedding night. When the shrews are seen again towards the end of the film, Fru-Fru is very visibly pregnant despite it only being a few weeks since their last visit. In real life, female arctic shrews have a gestation period of two to three weeks.
    • Due to the movie's message about not believing stereotypes, this trope is averted a few times:
      • The most obvious aversion is the fact that the predators do not hunt or eat the prey animals, with it being stated by the filmmakers that the predators get their protein from bugs and fish.
      • Clawhauser is a cheetah, the fastest land animal in the world. However, he's the most out-of-shape cop on the force who spends most of his time working dispatch at the front desk and clearly loves junk food (he admits to loving doughnuts several times).

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle: After incapacitating the Pottsylvanian spies during the climax, Bullwinkle then confronts Fearless Leader, kicking his foot across the floor, blowing smoke from his nostrils and even grunting like a real moose as he charges towards him.
  • The Cat in the Hat: The cat gets a hairball at one point.
  • Rocket from the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) movies is a raccoon who's been genetically and cybernetically enhanced and is now capable of functioning almost as a human. However, he's still very much a raccoon and it shows, in both obvious ways such as Running on All Fours and in more subtle ways like his tendency to want to steal stuff. Black Widow mentions catching Rocket eating garbage.
  • Rare Live-Action(ish) example: Last Action Hero features a minor character named Whiskers, a cartoon cat on the police force with Jack Slater, who acts entirely like a human throughout the film. However he was delayed coming to the rescue of Jack and Danny because of a hairball problem.
  • Night at the Museum: When Teddy Roosevelt gets hit by a carriage, his injuries are treated by melting wax over the wounds, reminding the viewers that "Teddy Roosevelt" is actually a wax mannequin. Likewise, Lancelot's nose melting and deforming in Secret of the Tomb after he's spent too long holding the torch too close to his face is a reminder that "Lancelot" is also a wax mannequin.
  • In the climax of Ted, the eponymous teddy bear gets ripped in half.

    Literature 
  • Animorphs: Tobias suffers Shapeshifter Mode Lock in the very first book, and even when his morphing ability is restored his base body remains a red-tailed hawk, which he's lived as ever since. While he's also allowed to acquire his original human body, he's become unused to certain human-only features like mouth muscles (so he comes across as The Stoic) or peripheral vision (so he ends up staring at people without noticing it).
  • In The Armadillo with No Heart, the anthropomorphic animal characters are indistinguishable from humans in most scenes (living in humanlike houses with running water and electricity, working in offices, etc.) but the armadillo protagonist at one point curls into a ball to protect himself from wolves. Hedgehog characters are also seen sharpening their claws or using their own quills as toothpicks.
  • Dash Learns Life Skills:
    • In "Dash's Belly Ache", Dash goes to the vet instead of the regular doctor.
    • The characters are seen eating out of pet bowls.
    • In "Dash Decides Going Potty is Awesome", Dash goes to obedience school.
  • Dilly the Dinosaur:
    • Whenever Dilly uses his trademark "super-scream", it's loud enough to do things like make doors fall off their hinges.
    • Several dinosaur characters live in swamps.
    • When the dinosaurs blush, they turn green instead of pink.
    • They have a sport called "tail-ball".
    • They make cereal and cookies out of ferns, and in one book, Dilly eats toasted swamp worms.
  • In Dinosaur Vs, Dinosaur acts like a human preschooler but roars a lot.
  • In Dip The Puppy, Dip and his siblings could always talk, but they must learn to bark. Dip initially meows instead. Also, there's a talking horse who whinnies, but used to quack.
  • In the Discworld, Gaspode the Wonder Dog is a normal backstreet mongrel living on his wits until one day he is cursed with human-level sentience. Every so often he reverts to canine nature, such as his ill-fated courtship of werewolf Angua.
    Gaspode: I don't suppose there's a chance of a little sniff...
    Angua: None whatsoever.
  • Duncton Wood: After a while, the moles start to read less like sentient animals and more like hobbits in moleskin trousers. Then they snack on earthworms or do something true-to-species and the reader is reminded.
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl: Donut is an Uplifted Animal who now has full human-level intelligence, plus a haughty streak ten miles wide. But physically she's still an ordinary housecat. She rubs against Carl's legs and purrs, spits and hisses when annoyed or angry, and sleeps on his neck at night because she's been doing that her whole life and doesn't see a reason to change.
  • In Fred, the cats can talk, but their song lyrics are things like "meowly yowly yowl" (and the kids are surprised they can talk, implying that they usually just meow in front of them). They also shout, "Yeoowwwl!" when someone throws a saucepan of water on them, Fred used to sleep all day (in strange places) and pee on the flowers, and it was cat flu that killed him. In the Animated Adaptation, Famous Fred, however, the cats sing in English instead.
  • A Lion in the Meadow: The lion mostly speaks, but can be heard roaring at the beginning.
  • In William Tenn's short story "Null-P", once the Earth is taken over by sentient dogs, the only surviving humans are pets maintained for the purpose of throwing sticks.
  • In Loyal Enemies, Shelena the werewolf has a canine reproductive cycle, including being in heat. It doesn't seem to impact her behaviour, though.
  • In The Pet Person, the dogs are anthropomorphic and keep humans as pets, however, they still have some doglike traits:
    • They eat from pet bowls and consider eating at the table to be an "embarrassing habit".
    • The father buries bones (albeit with a spade).
    • The grandfather sleeps in a doggie bed and he thinks a bone would make a better present than a person.
    • When they go out of the house, they're naked.
    • When Rex sulks, he sits on his haunches.
    • Some of them are seen being walked on leashes by their pet people.
    • When Ginger's (a human) grandmother sees Rex, she fears he will give her grandson fleas.
  • In the Splat The Cat stories, cats can both speak and meow. In Splat the Cat Sings Flat for instance, when Splat is concerned about his singing voice sounding flat, his teacher suggests he meow instead. Unfortunately, he's forgotten how to meow.
  • Tailchaser's Song: Tailchaser might be an intelligent Partially Civilized Animal, but he's still a cat. At one point late in the novel he looks into a lake, sees his reflection, and thinks it's a watershadow that mimicks cats movement. Cats don't pass the "mirror test".
  • The Tale Of Ginger And Pickles: While the shopkeepers are mostly anthropomorphic, they're tempted to eat mice (for Ginger) and rats (for Pickles), Ginger eats naked and on all fours, and Pickles requires a dog license.
  • The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher: Jeremy is mostly anthropomorphic, but he does have a wet house and he also eats bugs like a real frog.
  • The Tale of Two Bad Mice: While Tabitha is fully anthropomorphic, the kittens seem more catlike, preferring to go naked, sometimes walking on all fours, and, in Tom's case, scratching Tabitha on the paw.
  • Who Wet My Pants: When Reuben confronts the tortoise, he hides in his shell.
  • Wicked: Doctor Dillamond may be a renowned​ biology professor, but he's still a Goat. He doesn't have hands and thus needs assistance writing down notes.
  • Winnie the Pooh:
    • Pooh eats honey, while Eeyore eats thistles, which is part of what real-life bears and donkeys eat.
    • Rabbit lives in a hole. Downplayed for Owl, who lives in a tree, but a treehouse.
  • Wings of Fire: Dragons have claws too sharp to handle book pages, so they write on wood-handled scrolls instead. Bookworms are referred to as "scrollworms", and instead of being "on the same page", kindred spirits are "on the same roll of the scroll".

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Bumble, Bumble the bee talks but often says, "Zzz." This is actually Artistic License – Biology; bees buzzing is not a vocalisation but rather the noise of their wings beating together. He also makes honey, albeit with a machine.
  • In The Go Show, one song is sung from the perspective of a cat, who always meows after singing the chorus.
  • Masters of Horror: While the Deer Woman from the episode "Deer Woman" is smart enough to blend in amongst humans by hiding its legs, at the end of the day it's still a Half-Human Hybrid. When Faraday catches it trying to cross the road while pursuing it in his car, the Deer Woman has a literal "Deer in the Headlights" moment and freezes.
  • Raven: The titular character, who can shapeshift between bird and human form, will occasionally remind the warriors about his avian side with dialogue e.g. calling them "fledglings".
  • Red Dwarf
    • The Cat may be humanoid, but don't get him wet or put him near a dog. In the first season, his behaviour is very reminiscent of a cat's; for instance, his tendency to spray everythingnote  and claim it as his own, his love of raw fish, and his Blue-and-Orange Morality. He becomes gradually less cat-like as the seasons go on. The one thing he doesn't do is eat off the floor, because he's got "style and sophistication". He eats off the table... in typical cat fashion.
    • This gets taken further when the lost felis sapiens society appears in the feature length episode The Promised Land. The doors in their spaceships are hinged at the top, their supreme leader amuses himself by knocking objects off a table, they hiss and snarl in combat (and have claws) and their elite guards can be distracted with a laser pointer.

    Music 
  • Kids Praise: Technically it's for an anthropomorphic book and not an anthropomorphic animal, but there are numerous reminders in the albums that Psalty and his family are books, e.g. talking about book covers instead of about clothes, turning Psalty's pages in preparation for a song, etc.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Lindi from Allegra's Window is able to speak, but her dialogue is often peppered with the occasional bark or howl. She'll also whimper when she's sad.
  • Bear in the Big Blue House:
    • In the episode "Water, Water Everywhere", Treelo, a lemur, asks to ride on Bear (his Parental Substitute)'s back. Real life baby lemurs often ride on their mother's back when they reach two weeks old. He also likes climbing in trees and swinging from them.
    • Tutter lives in a Mouse Hole, and in two episodes, he has asked for more cheese in his sleep.
    • Pip and Pop are otters, and they like to swim.
  • Between the Lions:
    • The Lion Family loves to eat meat, especially raw meat; every "What's Cooking?" segment ends with Theo and Cleo disregarding the part of the recipe that involves cooking the food and jumping straight into eating the meat raw. They also roared in "The Roar That Makes Them Run".
    • Gus Bunny can jump pretty high.
    • At the begining of "Piggyback, Piggyback", Cleo gives her kids a tongue bath.
    • In "Too Cool", when Lionel tries to talk to his friend Derek, who is a cheetah, the latter runs off quickly.
  • In The Chica Show, Chica's mom (otherwise known as Mrs. C) mainly talks, but in her Sunny Side Up Show appearances, she clucks in sentences.
  • Meet the Feebles, another film with anthropomorphic animal characters, has several:
    • Bletch, a Wily Walrus, devours a fish character in one scene (and later vomits him back up).
    • Trevor, a rat, feasts on a corpse in another scene.
    • Heidi, a hippo, is a Big Eater.
    • F.W. Fly, a... well, fly, is seen eating a lump of poop in one scene. Harry also assaults him with a flyswatter and bug spray.
    • Harry himself is a hare who catches a bad case of bunny pox after having too much sex.
    • And lastly, Robert, a hedgehog, is known to roll into a ball when he's nervous.
  • The anthropomorphic animal characters in The Muppets are mostly treated as people, but Kermit occasionally refers to eating insects, Miss Piggy takes offence at references to pork products, and Rowlf frequently makes jokes about being a dog. In The Muppets (2015), Miss Piggy mentions that her anxiety about her broken leg stems from the fact she grew on a farm where when someone broke a leg they were taken away and killed. In another episode, Rowlf mentions he had to undergo surgery, and wear the Cone of Shame because he kept biting the stitches.
  • Donkey Hodie:
    • One of Donkey's catchphrases is "Hee-haw!", the sound donkeys make. Interestingly, this was her grandfather's Verbal Tic in the series the show is based on.
    • In "The Waiting Game", Duck Duck yells "Quack!" several times.
    • Bob Dog will occasionally howl. Like Donkey's "hee haw", this was a trait of his Mister Rogers' Neighborhood counterpart. He also sometimes is seen with bones, a stock favorite food of dogs.
    • In the episode "A Fair Way To Bounce", Purple Panda suggests a contest where everyone eats purple bamboo in order to decide who goes on the Bounce-a-rino. Bamboo is a stock favorite food of pandas.
    • In "Chili Jamboree", Bob Dog eats out of a dog food bowl.
  • Lomax, the Hound of Music has Louise and Clark who are seen jumping pretty high in a few episodes, which is what fleas do.
    • Bob Dog attends Good Dog School, which is a dog obedience school.
  • Sesame Street:
    • Big Bird occasionally exhibits natural bird behavior such as preening his feathers, shuffling his body to fit in his nest, taking a dust bath, and putting his head under his wing to relax.
    • The Bear family doesn't hibernate, but in one episode, it's revealed that they still need to occasionally take all-day naps to make up for lost sleep.
    • The Bear family also mainly talks, but they can growl. One episode is about Baby Bear accepting that his baby sister Curly has a louder growl than him.
    • Chip and Dip can both speak and meow.
    • One "Elmo's World" skit features a tiger who can talk and once demonstrates his roar.
  • Patty from The Sprout Sharing Show often snorts when she speaks.

    Radio 

    Roleplay 
  • Darwin's Soldiers:
    • The writers often reference anatomy or behaviors of the nonhuman characters to reinforce the point that they are, well, nonhuman. Canine, feline and equine characters often have their ears described as flattening or pivoting towards sounds and in response to various stimuli. Snake characters are always mentioned as slithering or having fangs or gulping down food whole. Avian characters are sometimes shown using their beaks as weapons.
    • The most extreme example was when Dr. Zanasiu reminds his girlfriend (who is a dhole) that he has forty six chromosomes while she has seventy eight. By the way, the chromosome counts are accurate.
    • It's also shown that reptiles cannot sweat to cool off.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Although the dogs, cats, rodents, lizards and birds in the world of Pugmire are very anthropomorphic, the mechanics often remind the player that their character is indeed an animal. For example, scent is a reliable means of observation alongside sight and hearing for dogs, cats and rodents, the Pirates of Pugmire source book brings up how firearms are rare due to several animals falling to "Gunpowder Panic" upon hearing the sound of the shot (since their non-anthropomorphic equivalents tend to dislike loud noises), and speed is divided between being on two versus four legs.

    Video Games 
  • Animal Crossing has this from time to time.
    • Some villagers have houses that reflect their species. For example, Joey's house in the original titles is just a pool in the center, and most of his houses in other games involve bodies of water (Joey is a duck). Another example is Iggly, a penguin, whose house in New Horizons has walls, floors, and tables made of ice.
    • A literal example in New Leaf. Sometimes Cranky villagers may ask you "If I were an animal, what would I be?". If you choose the first option, their actual species, they'll say that they get that a lot, then remember that that's what they actually are.
    • Frog villagers don't use umbrellas in the rain because they're amphibians who require water on their skin to survive.
    • Sometimes when you talk to Pete in New Leaf, he'll mention that when he gets off, he's going to eat a fish that he's been storing in his bill pouch. Other times he'll complain about the fact that the rarity of opposable thumbs leads to a lot of illegibly written addresses.
    • A few special characters enjoy eating animals suitable for their species. For example, Pascal (an otter) and Nat (a chameleon) eat the scallops and bugs you give them, respectively.
    • Blathers and Celeste are found asleep during the day, but awake during the night as owls are nocturnal animals.
    • In Happy Home Paradise, Sprinkle (a penguin) and Bianca (a tiger that looks like a snow leopard) both want cold-themed houses, while Savannah (a horse that looks like a zebra) wants an oasis-themed house.
  • Aviary Attorney is set in a world populated mostly by human-shaped people with animal heads, though there are more animallike people around. Largely they act human and it's easy to assume the animal traits are irrelevant or only cosmetic, but apparently cat people still have killer claws, and predators are believed to have a degree of bloodthirsty ambition.
  • Banjo in Banjo-Kazooie is mostly a Funny Animal, but swims still like a real bear (unless Kazooie is helping him). Kazooie will also preen her feathers in her Idle Animation in the sequel.
  • In Deltarune, Noelle Holiday, a deer monster, heals much less than other characters from the Darkburger, which has meat in it. In contrast, there's an unused salad item, which heals Noelle for much more than for other characters when added in.
  • Inverted in Ghost Trick, where Sissel's catlike instincts are shown long before it turns out that he's the ghost of a cat rather than a human. He likes crawling in small, cramped places, knocks down things using his poltergeist powers, and has never seen darkness.
  • In Guild Wars 2 the Charr (large bipedal catfolk) drop to all fours for their out-of-combat running animation.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend:
    • The birds are mostly an inch between Civilized Animals and Funny Animals, but Oko San, a fantail pigeon, is more birdlike than the others. He talks in coos which are translated, has a hyperactive, arrogant and extremely stupid personality, and his 'human' portrait is just a pigeon in a school uniform. He was based on the writer's real life pet bird, and serves mostly to remind the player that the cast really are birds.
    • At one point, San is made to wear a maid costume as part of a class fundraiser. Ryouta, a rock dove, tries to convince him he looks okay, and holds up a mirror to prove it. San, since he lacks the ability to pass the mirror test, can't tell that it's his reflection and starts trying to court it.
    • When the class all leave wishes on the tree for Tanabata, everyone leaves well-spoken messages except for Oko San, whose is covered in footprints and spots of ink (or possibly droppings).
      • When the game takes its Cerebus Syndrome shift on the Bad Boys Love route, it's revealed that the uplifting event which granted the birds their humanoid intelligence works faster on some species than others. San is an "older breed", which going by supplementary material doesn't appear to mean fantail pigeons in general. Maybe just throwbacks.
    • For most of both games the bird characters other than Okosan act largely like humans with feathers and the ability to fly who hold things with their wings, though now and then the word "hand" slips through. Still, a quail character once remarks that it's good he didn't see something scary, or he would have hit the ceiling - quails instinctively flee by flying straight up. And in Holiday Star, there's a single moment of purest bird behavior.
      Sakuya sticks his beak in the air and coos irritatedly.
    • Dr. Shuu Iwamine, a Chukar Partridge, has an Evil Laugh. Which is actually the call of the Chukar Partridge.
    • At the end of Ryouta's route, he admits that his mother's failing health this whole time was just old age— they're pigeons, after all, so their life expectancy isn't very long. He's hesitant to date the human girl because if they fall in love, he'll die first and leave her alone the same way.
  • Hollow Knight: When he is defeated, the Dung Defender falls on his back and flails his limbs, struggling to get up — a trait of real beetles. Also, he attacks by rolling dung, because he's a dung beetle.
  • I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: Despite being a Little Bit Beastly, Rex's dog genes make his lifespan slightly shorter than that of the average human, referencing the short lifespan of dogs in general.
  • The secondary protagonist of the Jak and Daxter series, Daxter, actually began the series as a human. However, after his transformation into an ottsel, he's picked up more animal-like habits. While he normally uses his hind legs for walking and running, he will occasionally drop to all fours, has been seen using one of his hind legs to scratch behind his ears, and likes to be petted and scratched.
  • Kirby Star Allies added additional Dream Friends after it released, which include Rick, Kine, and Coo and Daroach. Rick, as a hamster, has a very hamster-like idle animation as well as other more hamster-like movements, while Daroach will sometimes move his ears, much like a real mouse.
  • A running gag in the h-game Let's Meow Meow is that the Little Bit Beastly cast members are, despite all appearances, still descended from their animal stock. Mikan, the Cat Girl main female, is easily distracted by feather dusters, can be mesmerized with foxtails, and purrs when happy. Likewise, dog-girl Shinju considers showing her belly (a sign of submission in canids) to be the most romantic thing she can do.
  • Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon: Played with as more of a Mook Reminder in the final battle of the game. To defeat King Boo, you have to take advantage of the fact that, as a Boo, he'll follow you when you're not watching him and stop in place when you are.
  • In Puyo Puyo Tetris, Ai, the S.S. Tetra's engineer, is an anthropomorphic dog. Whenever he gets frightened he begins whimpering and barking like an actual dog.
  • In Reverse: 1999, Mr. APPLe is a sentient, talking, floating enchanted apple. Though he's largely treated like a human, when he's poisoned with a magical fungus, he desperately acts for "Mancozeb", a fungicide often used for fruits, to cure himself.
  • Sam & Max: Freelance Police:
    • Sam and Max are a dog and a rabbit. They very rarely actually exhibited animal-like behaviour, until The Devil's Playhouse, where Sam's doglike qualities were suddenly constantly exaggerated for comic effect. More specifically, he's shown to pant with his tongue out in hot places, growl and bark when angry, have trouble eating peanut butter (which is actually the solution to a puzzle), and wear a plastic cone when he gets injured. At one point, Max claims that one of Sam's worst fears is 'being put in a carrier to go to the vet's'.
    • Max's rabbity qualities are underplayed compared to Sam's other than his bounciness and fondness of gnawing on things, but there's still a few references in Season 3 - at one point, he mentions to Sam that he's constantly chased around by beautiful women. Sam promptly replies that they've been through this already and the women only want to test cosmetics on him.
    • From the comic book:
      Sam: (beaten up and distraught) They kicked me — and punched me — and swatted my nose with a rolled-up magazine.
    • Sam's crying in Hit The Road sounds like dog 'crying', or whining, rather than like human tears. And his singing in the Telltale games sounds more like a dog howling along to music (but with words!) than it does human singing. His Big "NO!" in They Stole Max's Brain! is less of a human shout, and more of a dog's howl.
    • In the Hit The Road comic story, Sam attacks a hoodlum robbing a convenience store by biting his hand. He admits afterward that he's never done that before and it was embarrassing.
    • Combined with Fridge Horror for Black Comedy effect in Hit The Road, when Max cheerfully observes that as a rabbit, he can only expect to live to be five. note 
  • In the Sly Cooper games, one of the titular protagonist's idle animations has him using his cane to scratch his back, which results in one of his legs twitching like a dog's (even though he's a raccoon). Possibly justified in that raccoons are caniforms.
  • In Solatorobo, Caninu (dog-people) are shown as catching flying discs in their mouths like regular dogs in lore, and Red himself is quite fond of chewing on a Stock Femur Bone.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic can only walk across the bottom of any body of water in most of the games because hedgehogs are supposedly not good swimmers. (Though in reality, they don't seem to be worse off than most other land mammals.) Also, Sonic, along with some of his friends, curls up into a ball, which is what hedgehogs do in real life for defense (although they do not roll in balls or jump onto their enemies while curled up).
    • Knuckles the Echidna can dig, which is what echidnas can do. However, the hedgehogs, foxes, and rabbits, which are also burrowing animals, cannot dig.
    • The first time Rouge the Bat meets Shadow and Eggman in Sonic Adventure 2, she is seen hanging upside down from the ceiling, not unlike an actual bat.
    • The characters sometimes move their ears like actual animals. For example, at the start of Adventure 2 (but not the Gamecube port) Sonic's ear twitches when he hears Shadow.
    • Whenever Vector enters water, (such as the Olympic Games crossovers), he swims exactly like a real crocodile, with side to side tail strokes.
  • Splatoon:
    • The background band Bottom Feeders has a couple. Fin's stubborn personality and fierce rivalry with Ink Theory matches pretty well with the species they're based on, as the tropical betta fish is aggressively territorial by nature. Jawn's Trademark Favorite Food is meat, as one might expect of a shark.
    • One of Marina's lines at a concert in Splatoon 2 is "I think my hearts might explode!". Marina is an Octoling. Octopi have more than one heart.
    • In Splatoon 3, one of the dialogues for Salmon Run has Big Man say that the idiom "risking your neck" doesn't really work for him, since he doesn't have a neck.
    • In the opening to the Gear vs. Grub vs. Fun Splatfest, when Frye says that you need food to survive out on the ocean, Big Man suggests swimming around with her mouth open, which is how real manta rays catch their prey.
    • During the opener to Chill Season 2022, Big Man wonders if any of the new weapons work with fins. He'll also offhandedly remark that he's able to ride the waves in the Grass Vs. Fire Vs. Water Splatfest announcement, as opposed to Shiver and Frye to whom water is lethal.
  • Spyro the Dragon:
    • Spyro: A Hero's Tail: Blink the mole's gameplay revolves around digging. He even has a phobia of being above ground. Blink's uncle, the Professor, is normally not very mole-like yet he tries to dig his way into Red's lair in the final world.
    • Spyro: Shadow Legacy: Dragon beds are circular so that their owners can curl up on them, and low to the ground.
  • Star Fox:
    • In Star Fox 64 Slippy has toad-like eyes instead of the more humanoid eyes he has in future titles
    • Slippy croaked in the Japanese version of Star Fox (which was replaced with a stutter in English translations).
    • Slippy (again) mentions in Star Fox: Assault that the cold makes him hibernate, which is natural for cold-blooded creatures like him.
    • The ape soldiers encountered in Sargasso Space Hideout will sometimes make monkey whoops upon defeat.
  • Kitty of Sun Haven is an Amari, a type of Little Bit Beastly sentient race. She will often demonstrate behaviors and traits of a domestic cat, like warning you about her claws being sharp, enjoying hunting small birds and other prey, and having a strong preference for sushi dishes.
  • In Super Catboy, you're the titular cat-human Super-Soldier, who spends the whole game kicking canine ass. Clear the final stage though and you celebrate by... cleaning yourself. Via licking. With your tongue against the inside of your legs. Proving that even a cat-human is still a cat.
  • In Paw Borough, wealthy cats are described as "white-collar silver-bell".
  • Timberborn: A number of amenity buildings are themed around the various needs that a sapient beaver might experience, such as tooth grindstones. Beavers also enjoy keeping their fur damp, requiring you to either send them to do tasks in the water or install public showers. Also, the most basic form of power supply is a giant hamster wheel.
  • Tokyo Afterschool Summoners has Moritaka, an anthropomorphic dog, constantly being tricked into doing dog tricks, particularly the "shake" command. He gets embarrassed any time that happens.
  • Losing a round as PaRappa in Um Jammer Lammy has the poor dog whimper like a puppy.
  • WarioWare: There are some instances involving Spitz, an anthropomorphic cat.
    • Losing a life in WarioWare Gold has Spitz arch his back and hiss.
    • As an idle animation in WarioWare: Get It Together!, Spitz will use his cannon as a scratching post. Losing a life as him will cause him to claw it furiously.

    Web Animation 
  • In Battle for Dream Island, there are plenty of non-animal examples. For example...
    • Cake watched Needle eat a cake she got as a gift. He was horrified.
    • When Firey hugged Leafy after apologizing to her, Leafy burned in the flames.
    • Inverted with David sometimes. The characters occasionally refer to him as a human, reminding people he is one of the only two humans (Errr... stick figure humans) in the cast.
  • DEATH BATTLE!: In "Iron Fist vs. Po", the former attacks the latter with a bamboo pole at one point. Po, being a Big Eater panda bear, responds by eating the bamboo pole until half of it is left.
  • Tried and failed in Dusk's Dawn. The De Noir son states that he's turning nine, and at the start of the musical number sings that "Today I am/A kid no more". Problem: real stallions are considered mature somewhere between a year to three years old (depending on the rancher), and in FiM, there's at least one normal character (Grannie Smith) who's lived to be at least one hundred years old, implying that MLP ponies age at human rates. So either De Noir is an incredibly slow bloomer, or he's kidding himself about being an adult.
  • In Fall of the Crystal Empire, Princess Luna gives a decidedly horse-like snort in contempt of King Sombra's attempt to turn her to his side.
  • The official wiki for Happy Tree Friends actually has a page dedicated to listing all the moments where the eponymous Tree Friends act like their respective species.
  • Helluva Boss:
    • Loona the Hellhound might be anthropomorphic and just as intelligent as any other demon, but she has her moments of acting like a dog or a wolf, like snarling and showing her teeth when upset, her ears perking up or going down according to her mood and reacting like a dog being taken to the vet for a shot, as well as lashing out when cornered.
    • Stolas is an owl Demon Prince and he occasionally reminds us of the fact by eating mice, hooting when excited and hissing like a bird when upset.
  • In the Mappy web show, Mappy (a mouse) has a nightmare involving Goro (a cat) trying to eat him.
  • Some Faunus characters from RWBY can have such moments. Most prominent example is Blake Belladonna, who is a cat faunus. On top of her ears moving in accordance with the situation, she has been shown to like meals made out of fish, land on her feet when falling (or at least rebalance herself while in the air), be afraid of the dogs and attracted to laser pointers.
  • A somewhat bizarre example in RanZar's Tank Toons, where occasionally there will be nods to them being mechanical such as drinking fuel out of a jerry can, or they may react to something that displeases them by loading it into their mouth and firing it.
  • When Rouge video-chats in Team Sonic Racing Overdrive, her bat fangs are prominent. They're gone in the next shot. Rouge has bat fangs in the games as well, but they've been toned down since Sonic Adventure 2.
  • Some of the spirits in No Evil show their animal instincts on occasion, particularly Corn's (rattlesnake) tendency to rattle and then bite when nervous. It's apparently happened to Calamity more than once.

    Webcomics 
  • Awful Hospital has several small gags during the Inert Subconcept arc to remind us that Ms. Green's allies are a fungus, a maggot, and a bacterium. There is one notable instance where this is instead Played for Drama:
    At this microscopic scale...or whatever it is...you found it so easy to detach yourself from where you were. You knew what it was. You knew what these beings thrived on. It was all just too alien to come to grips with, for better or for worse. You had long come to see these beings as only "people," however strangely they might be shaped. But right now, as you watch them strip the putrid flesh from a bloated mockery of your own face... all you see are things.
  • By the Tail: In this comic, a tiger girl comes on to Viper, offering to have sex with him in his club. He proposes finding someplace more private, to which she responds "Let 'em watch." with her hand on his belly. The next panel shows Viper asleep, and the girl angry and confused.
    Tiger Girl: Hey! What gives?!? You're supposed to fall asleep AFTER we've had sex!
    Fox Girl: You don't know much about gators, do ya?
  • Sebastian, eloquent, sophisticated and sarcastic talking, magical housecat from Clan of the Cats is often foiled in his arguments when somebody teases him with a cat toy. This became even more of an issue when he became a kitten for awhile.
  • Technically a scaly reminder in Cloudscratcher: Ixia expresses her desire for pancakes by flicking her tongue.
  • Commander Kitty has little touches such as the red panda Nin Wah possessing bamboo-flavored chewing gum, or Ace brandishing his feline claws to fight with.
  • Digger has a brief Marsupial Reminder when the title character, a wombat, is disgusted learning about a human cult ritual re-creating the experience of placental-style birth.
  • Drugs And Kisses: In this strip a character is shown tearing up bread to feed to ducks, the camera moves and it is revealed the ducks are anthropomorphic beggars.
  • Forestdale likes to do this frequently with Dallas Burnside, an anthropomorphic dalmatian. Examples include: Chasing his own tail under the excuse that it was mocking him, catching a frisbee in his mouth when playing catch with his best friend Kyle, and shaking himself dry after coming in from a rainstorm instead of using a towel like he was supposed to.
  • Florence, the "Bowman's Wolf" engineer in Freefall, acts very human (though she admits she has to fake some of her behavior for the benefit of the humans and human-programmed robots with which she interacts), but she'll run on all fours if she's in a hurry, and will happily chase a thrown ball.
    • Her catching instinct has sometimes caused her serious trouble, for example while being in a moving car, or seeing a fast-moving object on screen.
      • When she's not forcibly reminding herself otherwise, she has a habit of interpreting other peoples' behavior as though they were wolves. Her captain, who comes from a species of scavengers, is constantly doing things like stealing her half-finished lunch while she's distracted, leading her to assume he's behaving like an omega wolf for her benefit, which clashes with her notion of him being higher up the chain of command.
  • This trope is what keeps The Gamercat running. Everything from specific gags about their feline nature (how cats throw up, how they clean themselves, their body language) to things that simply remind us they may be gamers first, but they are cats in the end (GaMERCaT will jump onto the demo kiosk in front of you and start cleaning his privates if you take too long playing the demo and he wants a turn).
  • In the backstory of Girl Genius, Krosp is a genius-level somewhat anthropomorphic cat created via Mad Science to be ruler of all felines, but that didn't work out so well, his subjects being cats and all. (Although it turns out, unbeknownst even to him, that isn't the whole story.) He manages to avoid being destroyed as a supposedly-failed experiment, and ends up joining up with the eponymous female genius, Agatha. As noted, he's highly intelligent and sophisticated, talks, and generally acts human... except for when he merrily bites the head off a live rat, or lets himself be distracted by an "escaping" piece of string. The last one is particularly noticeable, since it is Agatha specifically demonstrating to him that despite his advanced intellect, he is still a slave to his feline impulses.
  • Homestuck: For John's birthday, Jaspersprite (a cat) meows the happy birthday song, and Jade (half human girl, half First Guardian dog) starts barking, and eventually chases after Jaspers.
  • In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! when furry Cartoon Creature Galatea goes bareback riding on a dragon, she sticks her head over the side with her tongue flapping in the breeze like a dog sticking its head out a car window (notably, part of her genetics does come from dogs). When she realizes it, she's embarrassed and immediately stops.
  • While Lunar Exalted technically start out human and only become animal-themed shapeshifters after exaltation, Marena still demonstrates the trope nicely in this Keychain of Creation strip.
  • While they are mainly used as analogues for humans, the cats of Lackadaisy will display some feline tics, usually for comedic effect. Rocky's pupils dilate when he's excited or hyper-focused (or high, which is the only time it happens to Mordecai). For all the characters, their tail fur bristles when they're frightened, their ears pull back when they're sad or upset, and their tails tend to twitch when they're annoyed or engaging in predatory behavior. A side comic has Mordecai trying to kill a spider with his shoe, only he's lunging after it on all-fours like a cat does while hunting, complete with flicking tail.
  • In Litterbox Comics, the kittens occasionally exhibit "non-anthropomorphic" behaviors, such as leaving a mouse on the doorstep, or pouncing on a laser dot (exploited by mom). Traits of other species sometimes come up like a gazelle walking seconds after birth.
  • A repeated gag in Nip and Tuck is facets of animal biology influencing the characteristics or behavior of characters. Some of the more recurrent examples are the difficulties that a porcupine protagonist has in being around people when she's covered in razor-sharp needles (which also wreak havoc on her ability to wear dresses), opossum women having pouches, and a female lizard who needs to wear a wig to make her gender clear because she's bald and has no breasts, as well as going into torpor when the temperature gets too cold and getting "drunk" when it becomes too warm.
  • In No Rest for the Wicked, Perrault is a Funny Animal who lives in luxury with his "master," the Marquis. However, he still occasionally turns back into a "normal" cat to catch mice, and claims that no cat can resist actually hunting.
  • Ozy and Millie are inconvenienced by their lack of sweat glands, and scratch itches with their feet.
  • Precocious:
    • Suzzete (a spaniel) wears a dog collar with a bell. She also beats up Jacob using only her tail, just to prove it was strong enough to be used like a third leg.
    • Here, Principal Blessure wears a Cruella De Vil costume, which horrifies some random dalmatian kid.
  • All the characters in Recursion are anthropomorphic cats. Which apparently occasionally suffer from hairballs.
  • In Sequential Art Kat deals with some birds that were annoying her and Art in a rather species-characteristic manner. She also gets very excited at the idea of playing with yarn, although it's expressed as a borderline-erotic fascination.
  • Niue, a minor character in Skin Horse, appears more or less human but is in fact a transgenic creation and part macaw. She generally also acts quite human, until she sees a hat, which drives her into a rage. Apparently it’s a bird thing; one fan theory related it to the number of their ancestors who were killed to supply feathers for fashion hats, but apparently, it’s just that her brain can’t handle the change in someone’s appearance when they don or remove a hat.
  • In S.S.D.D. Naps is good at climbing telephone poles thanks to his claws, but not too great at getting back down.
  • The Whiteboard:

    Web Original 
  • In the Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test, one of the "De-Suifier" questions asks "If your character is a non-human, does he/she react in very non-human ways or in ways more appropriate to his/her species?" Hovering over the word "reacts" lists some examples, including "A wolf hybrid whose first instinct is to eat the roadkill," and "A half-cat who actually spits at people he/she finds threatening."
  • Neopets:
    • Myncis can both speak and make monkey noises.
    • Petpets mainly just make noises, but Desert petpets say, "A curse on you!" sometimes, robot petpets occasionally say, "Need oil", "Hungry, need food" or "Must protect Neopet", Tyrannian petpets know a few phrases in Tyrannian, and if you swear (or accidentally trip the filter), all petpets say, "Oi! Don't swear! This site is family-friendly!".
  • This Very Wiki has a Just for Fun page for the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Show Within a Show Daring Do, from the PoV of hypothetical online ponies. Furry Reminders abound; for example, vegetation in the wilderness is filed under Food Porn.

    Web Videos 
  • Natural Habitat Shorts practically runs on this trope, as it teaches about animal behavior by illustrating how animals would act in human situations.
  • Stop Bullying Now: Cassandra lets out a nasty meow when KB accidentally bumps into her.

    Western Animation 
  • In the commentary for the 3-2-1 Penguins! episode "Trouble on Planet Wait-Your-Turn'', Midgel mentions that he was up for hours, preening himself all morning.
  • In The Adventures of Puss in Boots, a bandit catches him off guard in the middle of a fight by distracting him with a length of string.
  • Jake the Dog of Adventure Time often displays canine-like behavior such as scratching his ear with his foot in the episode "When Wedding Bells Thaw." He also refers to this in "Slumber Party Panic" after being asked the question "Do you prefer chocolate or fudge?".
    Jake: I can't eat chocolate or fudge 'cause I'm a dog and they would probably kill me.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • In "The Mystery" Darwin (a goldfish) states he doesn't know where he was earlier because he has incredibly little memory.
    • In the Pilot, he also forgets what he and Gumball were ready to do.
    • Darwin has shown a few times to be able to breathe underwater (most consistently, he sleeps in a fish bowl). He is also a very good swimmer.
    • A non-animal example would be the numerous times that Gumball has popped Alan (a balloon).
    • Gumball (a cat) napped in a cat-like fashion on his neighbor's porch in "The Debt".
    • When stranded in a forest in "The Picnic", Gumball remembered that he was a predator, tries to roar, but just ends up meowing.
    • Another non-animal example when Anton (a piece of toast) runs into a lake blindfolded in "The Goons". He almost drowns, but instead he floats up to the surface and gets eaten by a duck.
    • Another non-animal example in "The Flower": when Gumball rants at Leslie (a flower), he calls him "photosynthesizing" and "self-pollinating".
    • In "The Apology", Miss Simian screeched like a monkey when she went berserk.
    • In "The Hero", when Gumball had to jump and be caught by his dad to save himself, his claws end up digging into his dad's chest.
    • Defied in "The Game": the family are playing Dodj or Daar, and all agree to take every Dare card they draw to finish as quickly as possible. Gumball then immediately draws a card and takes a dodge, because he refuses to bathe himself with his own tongue—the others insist that he doesn't either.
    • In "The Flakers", Tina (a T. rex) gets mad when Gumball points out that she can't play the piano since she only has 4 fingers total.
    • A fourth non-animal example in "The Storm": Carmen, a cactus, cannot cry tears as she tends to retain water.
    • In "The Procrastinators", Gumball chased after a red dot from a laser pointer in a cat-like manner, even suddenly getting an actual cat's eye-shape.
    • In "The Burden," Gumball uses his claw to cut a hole in a window to sneak into the school.
    • While Nicole is fighting another mother in "The Egg", she does something disgusting offscreen that Richard describes as "territorial scent marking". Given Nicole is a cat and obviously not spayed, this implies she was spraying on or around her opponent.
    • In "The Cage", Gumball purrs when Darwin strokes his chin.
    • In "The Decisions", Gumball uses one of his claws to pop Alan.
  • Happens roughly once an episode in Amphibia, as the frogs, toads, and newts, while anthropomorphic, all carry amphibious traits:
    • Frogs and toads regularly stop what they're doing to catch flies with their tongues. They're also shown using their tongues to do various things.
    • In "A Night At the Inn", the proprietors for said inn are cannibals, as well as horned bullfrogs. In real life, horned bullfrogs eat other species of frogs.
    • It's mentioned in one episode that newts who lose their tails can regrow them, with an entire business existing for temporary tails that they can wear until their real ones grow back.
    • It's a plot point in one episode that the frogs are cold-blooded, and thus go into instant hibernation when exposed to temperatures below a certain point.
    • Every creature in Amphibia eats bugs.
  • The line is pretty blurred Arthur; to the point where there’s a whole article here but sometimes the show does reference the fact that the characters are animals. For example, in the season one episode "My Club Rules", Buster says "I'm not made of money, I'm made of fur!" Another episode has Francine insulting Arthur (an aardvark) by telling him to eat an ant sandwich. Most of these are from the first seasons of the show; nowadays it's gotten to the point where there's confusion among fans whether they're truly anthro animals or they simply look like animals to the viewer.
    • At one point in "The Pride of Lakewood", Binky refers to Buster as a rabbit.
    • In "Dancing Fools", George comments that he'd rather lose an antler than be in dance class.
  • In Atomic Betty, Maximus IQ is a cat-like alien who hates water. In another episode he suffers from mange.
  • In Babar Zephir walks like a monkey some of the time and has a particular liking of fruits. On the other hand trumpeting from an elephant is normally seen as something weird or unusual, considering that all elephants in the series are Civilized Animals that try as much as possible to distance themselves from animal-like behavior. Yet in one episode Babar starts trumpeting after reconnecting with his animal spirit via the ghost of the Old King, much to other elephants' dismay, but it became a catchy thing to do at the end of the episode.
  • The Backyardigans are normally experts at averting this... except "It's Great to Be a Ghost!", where Tyrone is referred to as a "scaredy-moose".
    • This actually happened at least twice more. In "Knights Are Brave and Strong", he plays the role of "the moose of the mist", and in "Secret Mission", one song refers to him as a moose and mentions his antlers.
      "Let's just say a little... hippo note  told me."
    • Pablo the Penguin is sometimes seen waddling, including the intro.
  • Becky in The Bagel and Becky Show will chase a dot if you show her one.
  • Birdz:
    • This occurs in one incident concerning the sleeping habits of a bat character.
      Eddie: Sleepy, I still can't believe you've done the essay! I mean, who can find the time?
      Sleepy: I'm a bat, I'm up all night. (yawns) What else am I gonna do?
    • This becomes a Brick Joke later in the episode, when Sleepy mysteriously shows up in Eddie's bedroom:
      Eddie: Sleepy! What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night!
      Sleepy: Eddie, I'm a bat! (Face Palm) We've been through all this!
  • Bluey: The dog characters mainly behave like humans, but sometimes, they do doglike things:
    • They have names associated with dogs, such as Bingo, Stripe, and Lucky.
    • They wag their tails when excited.
    • Chili is said to work in airport security, referencing how airport security agents use dogs to sniff for bombs or drugs.
    • In "Ice Cream", Bingo does a Howl of Sorrow when her ice cream melts.
    • In "Yoga Ball", Bingo curls up when sad, and she barks as a way of saying no.
    • Socks randomly licks people, and before her second birthday, she was essentially a normal dog.
    • The reason Bandit became an archaeologist is because he likes to dig up bones.
    • In "Grandad", Mort gets heartworm, which is a disease dogs get.
    • In "Bike", Bingo finds a way to drink from the water fountain by spilling the water on the pavement and then licking it off like a real-life dog.
  • All over the place in Bojack Horseman. Especially by Mr. Peanutbutter, an anthropomorphic labrador retriever who gets excited to go ride in a car and keeps a trunk full of tennis balls. You can see all sorts of examples in Funny Background Events. Season 4 brings us this verbal one.
    Mr. Peanutbutter: Oh, God, today's the day. I haven't been this nervous since Diane was vacuuming during a thunderstorm on the Fourth of July and I had to take a bath and there was a stranger in our yard!
    • He also gets scared when Diane and Sextina Aquafina start making fake gun noises.
    • In "After the Party," Wanda and BoJack go into the forest at night, looking for a deer BoJack hit with his car. BoJack asks how Wanda is able to see so well in the dark, and she matter-of-factly replies, "I'm an owl." She then flies away to get a better view of the forest, and BoJack accuses her of showing off.
    • In a flashback episode, Bojack gives Princess Carolyn a ball of crumpled up paper as a birthday gift. Being a cat, she's utterly delighted.
    • Bojack once mentions seeing a bag in the window of a car and getting spooked by it. He also whinnies when he climaxes.
  • Brandy & Mr. Whiskers:
    • Brandy stays firmly on the human side apart from the occasional tail-wag whenever excited, but in one episode, she began acting more like a real dog when she discovered she was really a mixed-breed.
    • There's also an episode where Brandy has to dig her way out of jail.
      Brandy: Sorry, carefully manicured nails, but sometimes it pays to be a dog!
  • Camp Lazlo:
    • In an early episode, Patsy (a mongoose) informs Lazlo that she is an expert snake catcher. Although it's subverted because she later admits that she was lying.
    • In fact, every so often on the show the characters will mention that they're animals.
    • In "Slugfest", Lazlo complains that Slinkman has no backbone. Slinkman comments how that's literally true because he's a slug.
  • In the educational cartoon The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, the titular cat usually acts like a human, but in one episode, he ends up standing in water and is very upset about being wet, causing the other characters to remark about how cats hate getting wet.
  • In Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, the four rodent Rangers can sometimes be seen running on all four paws like real rodents would, and other characters show traits of their species, too.
  • Some of Disney's old "You and Your..." educational films with Jiminy Cricket point out that Jiminy is in fact a cricket, to point of being a Running Gag.
  • Cow from Cow and Chicken will sometimes moo to punctuate a sentence. Chicken can also crow.
  • The cast of Danger Rangers are normally Funny Animals who act like humans, but in the "Everybody Be Water Safe" song segment, Sully is seen balancing a ball on his nose like a seal would.
  • In Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood:
    • The animals can speak and sometimes put their sounds in the middle of their sentences, especially Katterina Kittycat.
    • When Katerina is angry, she'll sometimes put her ears back like a real cat.
    • O and X sometimes fly a bit when they're excited.
  • The Dog & Pony Show: Sometimes, Dog will do typical dog things. In one episode, he chased after a squirrel, barking. In another, he shook all the water off his body after he got wet.
  • This happens a few times in Donald Duck cartoons.
    • In "Don's Fountain of Youth" (1953), Donald uses an alligator egg to convince his nephews that he's found the Fountain of Youth... and reverted to a pre-hatched state. One of the few, if not only, instances of Donald's avian nature being plot-relevant. The same thing happened in Quack Pack.
    • In "Trick Or Treat" (1952), Witch Hazel mentions Donald's quacky voice in her retort to the latter grabbing her Gag Nose.
      Witch Hazel: That quacking rogue is tougher than I thought.
    • An episode of DuckTales (1987) centers around the Fountain of Youth, where looking into the fountain in said episode would give you a vision of your younger self. Scrooge and a guest character his age look in and see younger versions of themselves, Launchpad looks in and sees himself as a kid, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie look in and see... a trio of unhatched eggs.
    • Similarly, in DuckTales (2017), a flashback shows Huey, Dewey and Louie as eggs. An episode gives a twist to the Sibling Seniority Squabble with an argument over who hatched first versus who was laid first.
    • In Mickey Mouse (2013), it's revealed that Donald can't handle cold weather and has to migrate for the winter.
  • Donkey Kong Country: In "The Big Chill Out", K.Rool and his gang become addicted to the episode's Coconut Chills (Coconut shells topped with snowballs). Near the end, they steal a whole shipment of the stuff... and not long afterwards, a sharp cold snap replaces the heat wave. The episode ends with a shot of K.Rool, Klump, and the Critters paralyzed on the floor.
    Cranky: At least the Crystal Coconut will be safe for a few weeks.
    Candy: Why's that, Cranky?
    Cranky: Because after glomming down a few thousand of those confounded Coconut Chills, it will take that fool K.Rool and his pack of cold-blooded lizards at least that long to thaw out!
  • In the "Christmas Carol" episode of Dora the Explorer it's shown that Swiper, Boots, and most of Dora's animal friends are all the same age. Boots, a monkey, is a child and Swiper, a fox, is an adult. When they go five to seven years into the future Boots has barely aged while Swiper is elderly. The show takes note of how animals develop and age differently depending on their species.
  • Eek! The Cat is a Talking Animal/Funny Animal that often partakes in human activities, but is also a pet cat and cannot speak to his owners, although he appears to be able to speak to other human characters.
  • Elinor Wonders Why:
    • Olive trumpets with her trunk, to show that she's an elephant. She is also capable of siphoning up large amounts of water using her trunk, like a real elephant.
    • Camilla, a camel, is absent in winter episodes, because camels only live in warm climates.
  • When describing her friendship with Lizzie, Ever After High character Kitty says "She's my sister from another litter."
  • Family Guy has Brian, who started as a talking dog, but through the course of the series, has become more and more human. Although every once in a while, you're reminded that he still is a dog:
    • Not being able to stand when in a moving van.
    • Occasional barking or wagging his tail.
    • In a Flash Forward, when he's shown in Heaven, Brian admits that he died from eating chocolate.
      • A much later episode had him gorging himself on Valentine's Day chocolate, only to remember halfway through that he can't eat chocolate and then throw up and collapse on the floor. The next scene is after he gets his stomach pumped.
    • "Oh my god! You can talk!"
    • A lot of the comedy in Brian comes when he acts like a dog while still talking in a deep, suave human voice:
      "Yes, I would like the ball. Yes, I would - I would enjoy playing with it. Yes. Please may I have the ball?" (runs off, returns) "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you threw the ball."
      "Hey! Hey! Hey, other dog! ... FUCK YOU!"
    • On the same vein as the above quote, he is also shown to not recognize his own reflection in the mirror, instead thinking it's another, different dog. Then again, Peter makes the same mistake.
    • Occasional references are made to his age (seven), and Peter also addressed the fact that Brian will only live a fraction of the time Peter will.
    • In the earlier episodes, he used to sit similar to how a dog would. In recent episodes, though, he sits like any other normal human would.
    • He also lives in irrational terror of "Mr. Hoover" and has an intense dislike of dog whistles.
    • One episode has him complaining about being given gray M&Ms. Naturally, we saw them as colorful.
    • In one scene in the pilot, he's seen peeing at a fire hydrant, but is standing the way a human male would urinate, even shaking off the excess once he was done.
    • In one episode, he attempts to storm out of a room, only to return a moment later to ask Stewie to let him out.
    • Disguised as Meg, he also pees on a locker, saying with a smirk "My locker".
    • In another episode, when he bites Peter after he stuck his pill up his butt, he is clearly shown with sharp teeth like all dogs.
    • In one episode, he's seen enjoying himself jumping around in a field of tall grass along with another dog... and Peter.
    • Left alone in a room with snacks on a low table, Brian engages in what he calls "paws on the table, side-of-the-mouth dog eating". It is exactly what you would picture an actual dog to do in the situation.
    • Being unable to resist eating disgusting things like vomit, chewed food and melted clones.
    • Lois chides him in one scene for raiding the kitchen trashcan.
    • One episode has a cutaway where he gives Lois a dead bird as a gift.
    • In "Road to Rhode Island", he fails to open up a bottle of aspirin due to not having thumbs.
    • He's seen rolling in garbage in one episode and when Stewie chides him over how disgusting that is, Brian responds, "I know, I hate myself!" before continuing.
    • In "Married With Cancer", when marrying Jess and during her vows, she talks about putting his ring on "the weird dog thumb halfway up your arm" and then we are treated to a surprisingly graphic picture of said thumb as she places it on.
    • In "Boys and Squirrels", he attacks and kills a baby squirrel Stewie and Chris had adopted in an animalistic manner.
    • His inability to walk in shoes, especially when on all four feet. It gets even worse when Joe makes a video of it and uploads it online.
  • Futurama:
    • The Chicken Lawyer, with a very Matlock-style bearing, is reassuring a little girl on the witness stand, then suddenly lunges at her with an alarming squawk because he thought she was corn. He's also known to describe himself as a "simple country hyperchicken".
    • Zoidberg constantly does crustacean things — shedding his shell, eating garbage, mentioning that he dies after mating... he also does things pertaining to other marine invertebrates — a couple of different episodes show that he can squirt ink out of his armpits.
  • House of Mouse:
    • In one cartoon shown within the show, Mickey says that Pete is the only cat that Pluto can chase.
    • In some episodes, Mickey is shown drinking from a giant water dispenser, like the ones used for small pets. He also exercises on a large hamster wheel.
    • In one episode Mickey complains about having to cancel O'Malley and the Alleycats... again, and exclaims, "You got any idea how mad cats get when a mouse fires them?"
    • Timon's love for bugs results in him trying to eat Jiminy Cricket in one scene.
  • Jellystone!: With the show taking place in a World of Funny Animals, this is a frequent gag.
    • Yogi Bear is Not a Morning Person; when Boo Boo wakes him up in "Boo Boots", he angrily wrecks him and his room much like a wild bear would.
    • Top Cat's gang has a cardboard "sitting box" in their alley, uses a pile of kitty litter as a bathroom and a telephone pole as a scratching post, and tries to reclaim their turf by licking everything.
    • In "Yogi's Tummy Trouble", when Huckleberry Hound thinks he heard someone say something (he mentions he occasionally hears ghosts), he turns his head like how a dog would.
  • Kaeloo: These happen a lot, since the cast are all animals:
    • Stumpy the squirrel eats acorns quite a lot.
    • In the episode "Let's Play Cops and Robbers", Kaeloo sees a hole in a yogurt container and concludes that Mr. Cat made the hole because he's the only one with claws.
    • In "Let's Play Simon Says", Kaeloo the frog uses her tongue to snatch Stumpy's game console. Later in the episode, she also mentions wanting money to buy herself a bowl and a ladder.
    • In the episode "Let's Play Justice Masters", Mr. Cat pats the couch with both hands and then walks in circles on all fours before curling up to sleep on it.
    • In the episode "Let's Play Figurines", Kaeloo takes one of Mr. Cat's whiskers.
    • In Episode 74, Mr. Cat pounces on a soccer ball and plays with it.
    • In Episode 83, Mr. Cat affectionately rubs his head against Kaeloo like a real cat would.
    • In Episode 89, Olaf slides down a hill like a real penguin.
  • It's not uncommon for Littlest Pet Shop (2012) to take liberties with its animals, but this still pops up once in a while:
    • Zoe the dog occasionally wags her tail when she's happy, and growls when she's angry.
    • Sunil the mongoose hates cobras and is certain to take a level in badass whenever something involves fighting them. Real life mongooses are practically built for fighting cobras.
    • Minka the monkey is sometimes seen grooming other characters.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Bugs Bunny often lives underground.
    • Sylvester's reason for trying to eat Tweety is basically "I'm a cat".
    • Sylvester and Tweety are always shown as house pets.
    • Coyote's wants for eating Roadrunner are similar to Sylvester's motivations. They are also are always shown in the southwest American desert, the natural habitat of real roadrunners.
    • Daffy has been shown both flying and swimming like a duck. He regularly forgets he can, though.
    • An episode of The Looney Tunes Show called "We're in Big Truffle" has Daffy dragging Porky out into the forest to hunt for truffles, despite Porky's insistence that he's not that kind of pig. Eventually, a bear shows up and chases them up a tree. Porky suggests that Daffy fly them out of there, to which Daffy says that he can't fly - he's not that kind of duck. Eventually, they're chased to a river and Porky says they have to swim for it, only for Daffy to say that he can't swim. Then we get this:
    Porky: You can't fly, you c-c-c-can't swim... ARE YOU EVEN A D-D-D-DUCK AT ALL?!
    Daffy: I'm not sure. (points at his beak) This comes off very easily. (demonstrates)
  • Hamilton in Maggie and the Ferocious Beast is a polite and intelligent Pig Man, but if you startle him or make him laugh, he'll snort and squeal like a real pig.
  • Martha Speaks: Martha gains the ability to talk from eating alphabet soup. She can still bark while able to talk, but if she tries to talk after going a day without soup, she can only bark.
  • Mickey Mouse Clubhouse:
    • Pete is acknowledged to be a cat.
    • In one episode, Daisy and Minnie toss a ball of yarn to Pete and he gets distracted by it for a while.
    • In another episode, Willie calls Mickey, Donald, and Goofy a mouse, a duck, and a dog respectively.
  • In Mighty Magiswords, Gateaux the wizard cat can be distracted by a laser pointer like any other cat.
  • In Minnie's Bow-Toons, Clarabelle Cow is heard mooing when she slips on water in one episode.
  • My Little Pony:
    • In G1 ponies had a Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism depending on the media. In the media where they were more like Partially Civilized Animals, like My Little Pony: Rescue at Midnight Castle, they still exhibited behavior of horses like licking or nuzzling each other in a non-romantic way.
    • The female-to-male ratio in all series is an unintentional case. Feral horse groups lack males for the most part, with rarely over two adult males. Stallions tend to group together... This is officially what happens in My Little Pony 'n Friends with the Big Brother Ponies, as they're racing around the world on their own while the females are living in Dream Valley. In the toy line almost all adult males either live separate from the females or have families.
    • My Little Pony 'n Friends also occasionally remembered that horses are much stronger than humans, such as in "Bright Lights" when Lofty goes into Mama Bear-mode and kicks the lock right off a cage, freeing the babies.
    • Many in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Like the original series, Lauren Faust wanted it to be clear that all the creatures were still animals, not animal-shaped humans. Pony characters snort, neigh and whinny throughout the show, and buck or rear as signs of excitement or annoyance, while other creatures also make appropriate animal noises and actions. Even things such as how the technology in the show (at least, tech that doesn't fall into the schizo category) functions fall under this, with features that make it clear that they're made by and for ponies. The animators are very much aware of all the small differences between ponies and horses when incorporating more animalistic behaviors as well. Faust was very against any poses or actions that seemed too human, with her reaction to the Bridlemaids ad being "HUMAN POSES!!! AAARRRRGH!!!" Even after Faust left the production and the show began undergoing Anthropomorphic Shift, the vast majority of the show's furry reminders still remain in place.
  • The characters in Peppa Pig are anthropomorphic but still display animals behaviors. For example they constantly make animal noises and the rabbit characters live in burrows.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Perry the Platypus was shown to sweat milk in "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?", and in "Primal Perry" Doofenshmirtz finds out he has poisonous ankle barbs.
  • Puppy Dog Pals: Most animals can speak as well as make their natural sounds. A.R.F., a Robot Dog created by Bob, can speak human, and understand regular animals when they speak.
  • In a rather morbid example, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit detaches his own paw in "Trolley Trouble" to kiss it.
  • Peg + Cat:
    • Cat sometimes takes naps on the ground, curled up into a ball, and when he stretches, he does so in the manner of a real cat. He also sometime plays with things by batting at them with his paws.
    • The pig oinks sometimes.
    • In "The Big Gig Problem", one of the Billy Goats Gruff is seen eating grass on all fours.
  • An episode of the Rainbow Brite reboot has Starlite (who acts far more human than his original incarnation) struggle to open a door with his hooves, only to remember that he's a horse and kick it open instead.
  • Regular Show:
    • Rigby seems to be the only one who does this, in that he occasionally runs on all fours like the raccoon he is.
    • Mordecai, meanwhile, never flies or does anything else birdlike. The only birdlike trait he's shown is being unable to handle cold temperatures, immediately passing out when he and Rigby are locked in a freezer.
    • Benson is a non-animal example — for example, unicorns have taken gum from him.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show:
    • Periodically, when Ren gets hurt (and not enough to cause him to just scream), they will sometimes use the sound effect of a puppy whimpering. Likewise, he can be seen trembling when emotionally overwhelmed or otherwise in a compromised state, much like chihuahuas will do when overstimulated.
    • Stimpy loves his litter box and catnip mouse. He also sometimes hacks up hairballs.
  • Rocko's Modern Life has a lot of reminders that the setting is fully of Funny Animals.
    • In the Halloween Episode, Rocko and Heffer scream in terror when they think they've found a headless Filburt. But then they remember Filburt is hiding himself in his shell because he's a turtle.
    • When Rocko goes over to have dinner with the Wolfe family (who are all a bunch of wolves, with the exception of Heffer), they feast on a giant animal carcass.
    • Occasionally Inverted with Rocko, who on several occasions had to remind people that he's a wallaby due to being mistaken for a dog or...beaver.
    • In "She's the Toad", after Mr. Bighead has a nervous breakdown at work, he croaks like an actual frog while still in a semi-catatonic state.
    • In "Gutter Balls", Rocko is seen kicking a bowling ball while standing on his tail like an actual wallaby.
  • In Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Scooby and Scrappy both got this occasionally. It's a bit more noticable with Scrappy, who was the more anthropomorphic of the two. When he got really worked up he'd start putting barks in midsentence, and when the gang was running, he ran on all fours. Likewise, Scooby almost exclusively runs on all fours, and will commonly bark at something he wants to bring attention to (which actually tends to be more effective than just trying to tell the gang what he sees).
  • In the 90's Secret Squirrel revival episode "Hot Rodney", Secret at one point delays the titular antagonist's arrival to the finish line by distracting him with corn. Hot Rodney happens to be a rooster and he eats the corn by bending over and pecking at it.
  • Bitzer, the sheepdog in Shaun the Sheep, is a thoroughly anthropomorphized Beleaguered Assistant to the farmer. But throw a stick, and he reverts to a regular dog so completely that his wristwatch disappears.
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Catra is a Cat Girl that shows her feline side on numerous occasions. She gets jumpy if she thinks there's a mouse nearby, frizzes her tail up when startled, often curls up when she's asleep (even shown sleeping at the foot of Adora's bed like a housecat), purrs when she's happy and hisses when angry or scared. She dislikes being picked up/cuddled and reacts by trying to wiggle free, and she freaks out when spritzed with a squirt bottle. At one point, she also found where Entrapta was by literally sniffing her out of hiding. She runs on four legs when Hordak chases her after learning what she sent Entrapta to Beast Island.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer", Homer encounters his spirit guide, a talking "Space Coyote", who explains to Homer that he must go on a quest to find his soul mate. After about a minute, when the conversation begins to get serious and intellectual, the coyote unexpectedly begins aggressively gnawing on Homer's ankle. Homer kicks him off and says "Hey! Knock it off!" to which the coyote responds "Sorry, I am a coyote".
    • In a Halloween special, Itchy & Scratchy escape from the TV into the real world with the intention to kill the Simpsons and find (to their likely surprise) that they aren't actually human-sized. Easily overpowered, Itchy is thrown into a hamster box (where he starts to run in the exercise wheel immediately) and Scratchy falls in love with Snowball II (prompting Marge to say that they should neuter him — and Scratchy shrieking in horror).
  • Sticks offends a walrus in Sonic Boom by telling her she has enough blubber for the winter.
  • In Sonic Prime, Rouge (and most of her Shatterverse counterparts) is shown sleeping upside-down like an actual bat.
  • Spliced:
    • Entree (a cow/chicken/pig/shrimp hybrid) has had this happen to him a few times. In "Brothers In Farms", Aperatif makes him lay an egg (wait, "him"?). The episode "Juice" revolves around him finding out he makes delicious milk. In "Cleaning Up", when Patricia says Entree's not for eating, Entree replies "Uhmmm, actually...", and in "My Fair Sharkbunny", Peri and the Wunny Sharbit identify him as both "friend and food". In "Mr. Wrinkles In Time", Peri and Entree disguise as ice cream in order to get into Smarty Smarts' lab, leading to Smarty Smarts calling his ice cream terrible because "I don't care if it was free-it has feathers!"
    • Smarty Smarts often makes dolphin noises. In "Mr. Wrinkles In Time", Entree mentions that one of his udders can communicate with sea creatures (It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context), and demonstrates it by having it call up a bunch of fish and Mr. Smarty Smarts.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants benefitted (and still does, to a point) from the fact that the show's original creator, Steven Hillenburg, was a certified marine biologist. As a result, the writers enjoy throwing in the occasional reference to the fact that most of the main cast are sea creatures.
    • SpongeBob bragged that he could "reproduce by budding", and then proved it by sprouting multiple heads. He also mentioned that his people are sedentary and filter-feed (this was in an episode where he broke his butt and was afraid to leave his house). In multiple episodes, he takes advantage of his nature as a sponge to absorb water, cushion impacts or change his shape.
    • Depending on the episode, specifically "The Bully", "The Way of the Sponge" and "Demolition Doofus", SpongeBob's body was able to absorb the attacks caused to him, leaving him unharmed and sometimes slinging his enemies back the way they came. However, other episodes show him getting injured in many ways.
    • Mr. Krabs once shed his shell, as crabs and other crustaceans do, and his "new" shell was shown to be soft and pink as the fresh carapace hadn't hardened yet; he is shown to be embarrassed by this, even moreso because he was supposed to be meeting his own Navy buddies imminently.
    • There's also an episode where Sandy Cheeks shows her squirrel nature by burying her food in the ground.
    • Squidward is normally depicted with his tentacles arranged as if he were a biped, but from time to time he'll be seen in a decidedly more cephalopodian light, even secreting ink on SpongeBob in the bathtubnote . He also sporadically inks when he's temporarily turned into a giant. He inks again in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. SpongeBob uses it to save the gang from Pelican Island. In "Greasy Buffoons," he's shown to be able to camouflage himself, using it to "disappear" from view after seeing the grease trap under the Krusty Krab.
    • There's also "Karate Star", where Patrick rips his own arm off, then regrows it, then the arm regrows another Patrick.note 
    • When SpongeBob accidentally spreads a fungus throughout Bikini Bottom, Gary ends up eating it. SpongeBob tries to scold him for being disgusting before Mr. Krabs informs him that since he's a snail, Gary is a bottom feeder and is supposed to eat that stuff. Downplayed in that Gary is not anthropomorphic, and usually not sapient.
    • Mrs. Puff, being a blowfish, will inflate to a massive size if she is any sort of significant distress—usually due to Spongebob's antics.
    • Several instances with various Bikini Bottomites occur during the episode "Your Shoes Untied", as Spongebob is desperately looking for someone who knows how to tie shoes. Unfortunately, the various aquatic citizens offer no help, since, being, well, acquatic, none of them have feet ("Uh, fins?") to actually put shoes on in the first place, and therefore forego proper footwear.
  • Summer Camp Island:
    • In "It's My Party", Susie refers to Oscar as a "silly, little ding-dong elephant".
    • In "Monster Visit", Hedgehog mentions that she is a hedgehog and that she is good at digging.
  • Sushi Pack:
    • Tako, being an octopus, can shoot ink out of his tentacle arms.
    • In one episode, Kani molts her shell just like Mr. Krabs as mentioned above.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: Doctor T'Ana is a Caitian, and this shows several times. When she asks Tendi to retrieve a Catian libido post, all she really wants is the box. She also acts just like a cat going to the Vet when Tendi tries to give her a physical.
  • SWAT Kats generally sees the populace lean towards the more human end of the scale, with the only reminders (aside from the lame cat-puns) being references to consumer goods such as "hairball eliminator," the apparent substitution of milk for alcohol, and the one time in the series that Razor gets a furball (chalk that one down to Rule of Funny).
  • T.U.F.F. Puppy has a lot of this, mostly from Dudley Puppy:
    • Dudley often chews his own butt and uses his sense of smell to find clues.
    • Kitty drinks from the water fountain with her tongue and goes crazy for cat toys and catnip. At one point a villain even tricks into chasing a tiny wind-up mouse.
    • The Chameleon catches bugs with his tongue like a real chameleon.
  • A very VERY rare occurrence in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (though more modern incarnations have been using this more):
    • In the original cartoon, the Turtles only ever pull their heads into their shells once (Possibly a case of Early-Installment Weirdness) and Mikey pulls his head into his shell during the first movie.
    • In the 2003 series, the furry reminders are a bit more subtle: they never pull into their shells in this series, but Raphael is able to escape a boat he's trapped on by swimming to the shore even remarking "Good thing Turtles are amphibious!" and in the Garbageman episode, the Turtles just swim to Garbageman's island. They also show them shivering and wrapped in blankets in one episode, with one of them lamenting the fact that turtles are cold blooded.
    • One big one in the original cartoon. Shredder uses a heat-seeking missile. The above is brought up. Missile turns around and goes for Shredder.
    • The reminders are a lot more common in the 2012 cartoon. The turtles duck into their shells more often, and it was a big plot point in TCRI; Mikey holds his breath for an extended period of time ("Like a turtle do!") to avoid breathing poisoned air, and completely goes into his shell, a first in any of the series, so his brothers can use him for a battering ram to get out of the glass prison they are in.
      • In the same series, Master Splinter shows some rat-like tendencies when he fights, such as hissing. This hadn't been done in any series before (not even the 2003 series where he was an Uplifted Animal).
    • On the villain side, Tigerclaw, the badass bounty hunter drinks milk (skimmed!!) with his tongue.
    • Rise makes the shell ducking exclusive to Mikey, here a box turtle who can fully retract into his shell (and usually does so when stressed or scared).
    • Donnatello is a softshell turtle in Rise and has to wear his "battle shells" as armor. It gets mentioned a handful of times that it's dangerous for him to have his soft shell exposed.
  • Although she doesn't exactly look the part, Starfire in Teen Titans (2003) and its spinoff Teen Titans Go! is a member of a feline race. This occasionally shows when she does things like groom her pet larva Silkie with her tongue the way a mother cat would groom a kitten.
  • Tuca & Bertie is set in a World of Funny Animals, mostly birds, and thus is full of these, mostly as gags but sometimes used for plot or worldbuilding.
    • In episode 2, Bertie's boss, a heron, swallows a footlong sub sandwich whole. The same episode has Dirk, a rooster, crowing when he's proud of himself.
    • The plot of one episode revolved around Tuca having an (unfertilized) egg stuck in her ovary.
    • Fashion is instead called "plumage."
    • This world's equivalent of Christmas is called Molting Day, and its story does in fact involve molting one's feathers.
  • One Woody Woodpecker cartoon has Woody falling from a great distance, only to start flying. He admits he forgot he was a bird.
  • Work It Out Wombats!:
    • The titular wombats are fast and love rolling around, much like real wombats.
    • In "Game Changer," JunJun and his family, who are eagles, go to the birdbath. In that same episode, Duffy, a kangaroo, carries her daughter Louisa in a pouch.

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Brian Howls at a Siren

Brian Griffin may be a talking dog, but he still has the mannerisms of an actual dog, such as howling at a fire engine siren as shown here.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (22 votes)

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