Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!

Teacher: So the first Little Pig went to the store. He asked the merchant, 'I'd like to buy some straw please.' And what do you think the man said?
Student: He said, "Holy shit, a talking pig!"

— Story from an old email meme

Funny Animals are handy. Because they're animals that act human without looking human, they can add a sense of whimsy or comedy to a piece; seeing a group of animals go about ordinary human lives can help to accentuate just how absurd we are sometimes. If they're played with "realistic" animal traits (or as realistic as circumstances allow), they can allow for a unique brand of comedy. If they're being used seriously, they can help give the impression of a different world. Heck, they might just be easier to draw. However, in many works that use them, they are a "human substitute." It might get a little too weird to consider what it would be like having both humanoid "animals" and "ordinary" humans running around in the same world—especially if there are regular animals running around as well, and even more so if some of them talk!

Some writers couldn't care less, however. And thus you get worlds where pointy-hatted young women buy their groceries from six-foot-tall raccoon dogs, little girls go on play dates with grizzly bears, preteen kids go to school with monkeys, and plenty of other assorted hijinks go down between humans and what most people consider "furries." To make things even more baffling, some of these worlds have ordinary Talking Animals as well, generally making everyone's heads hurt. And... don't bother asking what everyone eats. Seriously... just don't.

If the cast is mostly human, expect the talking animals or anthropomorphic animals to be an Unusually Uninteresting Sight. If the cast of a work is mostly composed of animals, a human may be thrown in as the furry equivalent of a Token Minority. And if the Funny Animals in question are very small and typically go unnoticed by humans, it's a Mouse World. And when the entire setting is made of funny animals instead, see World of Funny Animals.

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Example subpages:

• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• A series of commercials for the carbonated drink Orangina came out in 2008 in both English and French. One commercial gained controversy for rather provocative imagery.
• The Compare the Meerkat ads have zig-zagged this. Initially, all the characters we saw were meerkats, although it was presumed that Meerkovia existed in a world of humans looking for car insurance, hence the confusion with Compare the Market. The Orlov Family History Trilogy included a war against mongooses, and a slightly creepy muskrat. As the Meerkovia setting was downplayed, human characters started appearing, first as customers who were given meerkat toys as a reward for visiting the correct site, then Maurice and Spencer, Aleksandr and Sergei's opposite numbers. Eventually, the only meerkat characters were Aleksandr, Sergei and the kids. In 2021, a new campaign had Aleksandr leading a team of former supervillains comprising a rabbit, mouse, ostrich, racoon, squirrel and panda, and the humans have disappeared again but are presumably still out there.

Anime & Manga

• Animal Treasure Island, an adaptation of Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island that had Hiyao Miyazaki himself play a key role in production is this. The protagonist, Jim, is a human, as is Captain Flint's granddaughter Kathy. Silver the pirate Big Bad is a pig, the crew Jim sails with are talking animals, and other funny characters are as well.
• Kind of inverted with Shinigami Captain Komamura Sajin of Bleach, who is an anthropomorphic wolf living in an afterlife where everyone else is human. While he appears to be some kind of supernatural creature or a mutant and clearly not an animal, he's fairly self-conscious about it, and initially wears a mask, because he thinks people would see him as a talking animals and not a person who looks similar to one.
• In BNA: Brand New Animal, humans and beastpeople exist in the same world, but don't truly coexist due to prejudice.
• Doctor Slump: Before Dragon Ball there was Toriyama's previous series, set in Penguin Village, a place where Funny Animals (especially anthropomorphic pigs), aliens, and even Animate Inanimate Objects live among humans. One of Arale's classmates is a rat and a some of the other "kids" are not human-looking either. The local doctor (not the one of the title) is a goat. Ironically penguins are probably the only animals who are almost never seen in Penguin Village, except in the last story arc when we discover that the mayor is an actual penguin. The main premise of the manga is Robot Girl Arale pretending to be human, but she has no real reason to do it in a village like that.
• Dragon Ball: The series has many Funny Animals and Talking Animals in it, who often live among humans. Major ones are Oolong, a pig who walks upright, talks, and wears clothing (including a Zhongshan/Mao suit), and Korin, an immortal cat, but there are many others. There's Shu for instance, an anthropomorphic ninja dog who serves Emperor Pilaf. In the first episode of the anime, he and his woman partner Mai are chased by pack of wolves who are fully zoomorphic (don't stand upright and don't talk). Also, the few times he appeared, the President of the World was an anthropomorphic fox as well. Some of the animals are zoomorphic in body form, but are capable of human speech, such as Turtle, who is the turtle companion of Master Roshi, so this is also a case of Furry Confusion. Dragon Ball Z also featured funny animals on a smaller scale, but they became less and less present. Upon being asked about this later, author Akira Toriyama admitted that he simply forgot that such characters existed after the Namek arc.
• Subverted in Goodnight Punpun. Punpun and his family are cartoony birds living amongst humans, however it's stylized. Punpun is really a normal human who looks like a bird (and sometimes he doesn't even look like that) to the viewer.
• Hyper Police has humans (now an endangered species) living alongside and even interbreeding with catgirls, kitsune, werewolves, pig-men, and minor gods.
• Downplayed in My Hero Academia. Some characters look like anthropomorphic animals, but are in fact just mutant humans with various degrees of beast-like features. Still, there is at least one genuine example of anthropomorphism through Principal Nezu, who is explicitly said to be a mouse blessed with Super-Intelligence, and yet he doesn't look out of place.
• For the most part, Night on the Galactic Railroad uses cat-people as stands-in for people... but then about 75 minutes in, three humans get on the train.
• One Piece justifies this by having anthropomorphic animals be their own separate race and culture, with each individual resembling some sort of furry mammal. The Fishmen are also this to a certain degree, except with fish and marine invertebrates.
• Porco Rosso is about a World War I fighter pilot who apparently turned into a pig due to a curse. Everyone else is human. Nobody questions this.
• Princess Tutu: Most of the main cast is human—except for Ahiru, who is a duck that can magically turn into a girl—but many of the secondary characters are anthropomorphic animals, including Neko Sensei (the ballet teacher). Ahiru seems to be the only one who thinks it's strange. The animals and the other villagers' lack of reaction to it is a result of Drosselmeyer's hold on the town; at the end of the series, after he has been defeated, the town slowly starts to go back to normal and the animal characters return to their human forms.
• Shirokuma Cafe is a cafe that is run by a polar bear and is frequented by both the animals who work at the nearby zoo and regular humans. The humans and animals get along perfectly well and the zoo even has a special fare price for animals who visit the zoo.
• The Sonic the Animation short from 1994 features Sonic the Hedgehog in an unnamed city surrounded by humans.
• Freedom Planet from Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie consists of Funny Animals, humans, and, in the case of Sera, cat girls.
• Super Pig features vaguely anthropomorphic pigs which are actually Alien Animals — Ton-chan, the three pun piglets, and then there is Buurin herself who is usually human but becomes a pig when she activates her super powers.
• Twilight Star Sui and Neri: Humans and animals in the 26th Century coexist with one another. A Downplayed trope as this only occurs in Tetsunagi, at least. Animals outside of the island like in other cities are non-sapient and are quadruped, like the mice that Sui, Neri and the teenage boy seen in Chapter 12.
• In The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms, the wizarding school Wizdoms is located in a kingdom made up entirely of Uplifted Animal people. The wizard who uplifted them was a human from a kingdom of humans, however, and in the last story in the manga, a human boy spends time with his best friend/love interest, who is an anthropomorphic bear.

Asian Animation

• In some later seasons of 3000 Whys of Blue Cat, the Funny Animal characters interact with humans. They get along pretty well.
• Happy Heroes features funny animal cows in the background, existing alongside the Human Aliens of Planet Xing.
• There are a few videos of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf (mainly music videos) that show humans interacting with the Funny Animal goats in Goat Village.

Eastern Animation

• Czech children's cartoon, The Little Mole (Czech: Krtek or Krteček), is this for the most part. Animals are naked and they live in their natural habitat (in this case, the forest), but they are very sapient and act decidly human-like. And there are humans in the cartoon and they seem aware of this as they interact with animals very much like they would interact with other humans. For example, there is an episode where Krtek becomes a movie star and signs his autographs to his fans (all are shown to be human).

Comic Books

• In Bone, you have talking opossums, bugs and a dragon, as well as the stupid, stupid rat creatures... then you have—um, whatever the heck the Bones are supposed to be... and then you have humans as well.
• In Castle Waiting, based on European fairy tales, the main cast includes an anthropomorphic horse (who flirts with human girls) and a stork, plus cameos by anthro dogs, rabbits, and cats — and normal dogs, horses, and cats appear as well (although it's revealed one cat, at least, has human intelligence).
• Cerebus the Aardvark was basically the only Talking Animal in a world of humans (there were a couple of other aardvarks, but they only made small, if significant, appearances). Nobody ever seemed to comment on this or think that it was odd. He even had a completely human-looking child with another human.
• Most characters in the French comic De Cape et de Crocs are human, but the leads are a fox and a wolf (with a rabbit sidekick trailing behind). They are acknowledged as such (for example, when they fall into the sea: "One cannon and two canines overboard!"), but definitely fit into the category of Unusually Uninteresting Sight. They each have a human love interest, although we eventually learn Don Lope, the wolf, used to be in love with another wolf ; there are a few other background characters who are various species of animals, and none of this is ever commented upon. However, Carnivore Confusion is actually addressed, in a hilarious way.
• Disney Mouse and Duck Comics in general. The exact proportions vary Depending on the Writer. In some stories, the background citizens of Duckburg or Mouseton are approximately equal amounts humans (usually Dogfaces), birds of various species, pigs etc. while in others, apart from the main characters, there's not a single non-human in sight. When it's the former, the various anthropomorphic animals still refer to themselves as humans. The expanded canon also includes a Talking Animal or two, and even a few stories use Animal Talk (notably for barnyard animals). There are also regular animals to top, which Depending on the Writer may or may not be the same that have Animal Talk. And among those, some behave in ways that imply that in spite of their inability to speak, they are still more sentient that our regular animals (see Pluto), while others are scientifically accurate to amazing levels. It's a mess.
• There was a Donald Duck comic book story (a spy spoof), and three Mickey Mouse stories (G-rated James Bond style, accompanied by Goofy, not a spoof), where all the other characters were human (and no pig or dog noses).
• Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles: The world this takes place in is just shy of an Alternate History, taking place in a world populated with Beast Man and human living side by side.
• Fables — both the anthropomorphic and realistic animals are capable of speech and human intelligence. It kind of makes you wonder how the Three Little Pigs react to eating their real-world counterparts.
• Gold Digger in the alternate world of Jade anyway has all sorts of human hybrid creatures, most of them from the "were-" category (werewolf, were-ceetah, wererats etc) along with a bunch of other races (elves, dwarves, dragons, amazons, humans. Seriously this series is a regular Fantasy Kitchen Sink). There are a few of these characters that reside on Earth too, but mostly work under a masquerade.
• In Grandville, humans are a despised minority, derogatorily referred to as doughfaces. (In Grandville: Noel, which features both the rise of a Nazi-like movement and the origins of this world's Christianity, doughfaces are clearly parallel to Jews.)
• In Hillbilly, all animals can talk, but they're still very much animals, living apart from humanity out in the wilderness, and they still eat each other.
• Howard the Duck was essentially in the same boat as Cerebus, except that the human world he inhabited happened to be the Mainstream Marvel Universe. Also unlike Cerebus, he definitely stood out, but most who saw him dismissed him as a dwarf in a duck suit.
• Inspector Canardo: In the first album, Canardo and co. were barnyard animals who were perceived by the humans around them as normal animals. The next several albums following that went for a more midway setting with primarily Funny Animal characters surrounded by a few clearly human characters. Eventually, the humans disappeared completely, making Canardo's stories a World of Funny Animals.
• La Vache is a comic book series from the '90s. All animals are sentient and capable of talking, but pretend to be normal animals around humans. It has plots that quite brutally reflect on human nature, with for example dolphins tricking other sealife into getting captured in return for free food at the fish restaurants.
• R. Crumb's Mode O'Day comics take place in a world where humans and furries apparently live side by side, with no one ever commenting on it.
• Sam & Max are a dog and a rabbit, but in the comics almost everyone they run into is a human, as well the occasional talking rat or cockroach. Some ordinary, non-anthropomorphised dogs can also be seen in the background of some panels. By the end of the Sam & Max Season Three game, characters across the franchise included a talking fish on a fake body, a non-talking but still sapient fish, some aliens, a race of molemen, a talking chicken, a sentient colony of spacefaring bacteria (Also technically an alien, but he deserves to mentioned separately), sentient computers, giant stone heads, Yog Soggoth, and all sorts of mythological creatures. And yet Sam and Max are still the only Funny Animals in the cast, except for their rarely seen relatives, the anthropomorphic cockroach Sal, and maybe the molemen. And the giant rats and roaches on the moon, but they're aliens. Lampshaded in The Devil's Playhouse: They Stole Max's Brain! in which Sam discovers a canine-ish skull in a museum with a caption saying it belonged to 'one of a hideous and brutish evolutionary dead-end of man-dog hybrids' (obviously implying that Sam's species is separate to normal dogs and considered extinct). Sam complains about the racism and says the skull reminds him of his great uncle. The same museum has a statue of Anubis in the Ancient Egypt exhibit, which is slimmer and darker and has pointed ears but otherwise looks exactly the same as Sam, which Sam is quite happy about.
• The Shazam! comics feature Talky Tawny, an erudite, well-spoken tiger who walks on his hind legs and wears leisure suits. He's since been retconned as a shapeshifting spirit of some kind, and how anthropomorphic he is tends to vary.
• Sonic the Comic: Despite taking place on Mobius, as world that was mainly populated by anthros and existed separately from Earth, there was a few human characters along with Robotnik.
• After Sonic Adventure came out, Mobius from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) was revealed to be this. Humans and the four-fingered descendants of humans known as "overlanders" do exist, but they're outnumbered by the Uplifted Animals and usually stick to themselves.
• Super Agent Jon Le Bon: While the setting of Jon Le Bon is a World of Funny Animals, sometimes human characters will show up for a gag in a few panels.
• Super Angry Birds, a comic-spinoff of the game series, takes place in an alternate New York. Only two species besides humans are intelligent citizens, pigs and birds (as well as one single rabbit).
• In Tank Girl's world, semi-anthropomorphic intelligent kangaroos seem to be reasonably common. Tank Girl herself is dating a kangaroo named Booga.
• Top 10 is a world where everything that was ever popular in comics was real. You've got very human superheroes living alongside aliens and Atlanteans and things, plus guys like Hyperdog (an intelligent dog in a humanoid exoskeleton) and Mr. Fischmann (a literal shark lawyer). The prequel makes it clear that funny animals used to be more common, just as they used to be a more popular genre before superheroes dominated the medium.
• Usagi Yojimbo had an inversion in that there was one, lone human in the series filled with talking animals. One of the reasons why this only happened once is because Stan Sakai later hated the idea.

Comic Strips

• Bloom County started out with an all-human cast, but gradually introduced funny animals (most notably Opus the Penguin).
• The company in Dilbert has few, if any, concerns about humans having Funny Animals as co-workers or even supervisors.
• Get Fuzzy: Nobody seems particularly surprised that Satchel and Bucky are talking animals who walk on their hind legs, implying it's normal in this world.
• Snoopy from Peanuts plays baseball, decorates his dog house, and can write stories on a typewriter, but still is treated as if he was a regular dog for the most part. However, when he is Joe Cool, Peppermint Patty sees him as the "kid with the big nose."
• Pearls Before Swine has an anthropomorphic rat, pig, goat, zebra, and several crocodiles living in a neighborhood with humans (including Stephan Pastis himself), who seem used to talking animals. However, many of them eat pork products that used to be sapient pigs, and the crocs are constantly trying to eat Zebra. Rat's "Danny Donkey" picture books also include both humans and talking animals.
• Prickly City has a female human and a cast of desert-related funny animals.
• The majority of characters in Slylock Fox are anthropomorphic animals, but humans show up from time to time. The most prominent named character is conman villain Slick Smitty. Count Weirdly is an ambiguous case, humanoid but green.

Fan Works

• Pokérin is on its way to becoming this in Intelligence Factor, with several anthropomorphic Pokémon (such as Zoroark and Incineroar) being granted citizenship or becoming trainers.
• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fics:
  • In The Black Dossier Volume II, talking animals have enclaves in Britian in the Hundred Acre Wood and the former Manor Farm.
  • In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Tempest Rewrite they live in the state of Calisota.

Films — Animated

• The Bad Guys (2022) is set in modern-day Los Angeles where the world is populated by humans but the principal characters are anthropomorphic animals.
• Cats Don't Dance is set in an alternate 1930s where animals are trying to break into movies (and act as stand-ins for ethnic and social minorities).
• Cinderella has anthropomorphic mice that talk to the human Cinderella, and are transformed into non-morphic horses.
• A similar case to above is in The Great Mouse Detective, although the smaller anthropomorphic animals are also mixed in with non-anthropomorphic dogs, cats and horses, and the humans do not interact with any of the main animal characters.
• Hoodwinked! is an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, and expands greatly on the idea of a talking wolf by taking place in a modernized storybook hamlet filled with Funny Animals, including the Three Little Pigs as police officers. There's also one minor character who's a human in a white-tiger costume. This is never explained or remarked on.
• In The Legend of the Titanic, humans slowly start interacting with animals. In its sequel In Search of the Titanic, everyone seems to interact with everyone, including some Animate Inanimate Objects.
• In Penguins of Madagascar, the penguins meet an elite team of animals called the North Wind, which use high-tech human technology, as opposed to the penguins' Bamboo Technology, with no explanation as to how they obtained it. The villain is an octopus that can disguise himself as human, and is even able to talk to them, which none of the other characters in the franchise seem to be able to do.
• Disney's Pinocchio has a cast of mostly humans, but also Honest John the Fox, Gideon the Cat, and of course Jiminy Cricket.
• The Filmation movie Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night has obvious expies of each of these characters. Then again, this is all in line with the novel.
• The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. Mice and other small animals are part of an international organization that rescues young children. The children communicate with animals easily; it's implied that the adults don't have that ability, however.
• Santa's Magic Crystal has Poro the anthopomorphic reindeer in a world otherwise populated with humans and Christmas Elves.

Films — Live-Action

• The Muppet movies. Human characters such as Doc Hopper (The Muppet Movie) and Bernard Crawford (The Muppets Take Manhattan) at least seemed to be vaguely aware there was something odd about a talking frog and his friends breaking into showbiz. Nobody in The Great Muppet Caper gave it a second thought.
  • In The Muppets Take Manhattan, Rizzo hits on a human girl, who expresses some reticence about dating a rat. The scene is fodder for a whole treatise about speciesism in the Muppet world.
  • In Muppet Treasure Island this is commented on very briefly by the innkeeper woman, who announces that tomorrow she will be serving roast suckling... (pausing as two pigs walk out the door) potatoes. It's not clear if there's some distinction between muppet animals and regular edible animals.
    • Considering that she then apologizes to an ambulatory potato, the answer seems to be "probably not much."
    • In the movie in general it seems to be recognized that the Muppets are animals, but nobody sees anything strange about, say, a frog captaining a ship. It does mean that Jim and Rizzo can make "cold feet" jokes, however.
    • In this case, it's probably because they're playing parts in a previous work of fiction who were human as a Show Within a Show.
  • Played with in The Muppets (2011), especially with the Oscar-winning musical number "Man or Muppet". There is at least some awareness the Muppets are a different sort of creature from humans, but no explanation is forthcoming for why Gary has a Muppet brother in Walter and no one ever seems to find it strange.
• The Toon characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit include a mix of Funny Animals (Roger, the weasels), humans (Jessica, Baby Herman) and Animate Inanimate Objects (Benny the Cab, the bullets on Eddie's toon gun). All of them are freely interacting with live-action humans, although they are considered an ethnic minority.
• The Wizard of Oz has a talking lion and talking monkeys. It's also the Trope Namer.

Literature

• Alice in Wonderland has a variety of Talking Animals, Civilized Animals, and Funny Animals interacting with Alice and human(ish) individuals like the Queen of Hearts and her court.
• Animal Farm has talking, literate animals serving as characterizations of real Soviets. It also ends with the pigs and the humans interacting on seemingly equal footing. Unlike most examples, this one serves a purpose in the story and is even noted by the narrator at the end. The humans represent the Czarist government of Russia, which was overthrown by the communists (represented by the pigs). Just as the citizens of Russia found themselves no better off under the Soviet government than they had been under the Czar, the animals see no difference between the pigs and the humans in the end.
• In the original Arthur books, the Tibble twins and their grandma were humans. They were re-done as furries for the animated series, though newer Arthur books (except the "Step into Reading" series) still depict the Tibbles as humans.
• In Babar, we have intelligent elephants who can communicate with humans and rule a kingdom of anthropomorphic crocodiles and monkeys.
• Dave Barry tells an unusual version of the story of the grasshopper and the ant. The grasshopper has asked the ant for food, but before he can get a reply both are killed by mischievous Boy Scouts. Too bad; for they could've made a fortune with a pair of talking insects.
• The land of Vision in Brave Story is populated by both humans and several types of animal people. One of the main characters, Meena, is a Cat Girl.
• The Chronicles of Narnia, especially the chronologically later books (anything after Prince Caspian).
  • Subverted because in The Magician's Nephew, we find out that humans are not native to Narnia, and all Narnian humans are descended from King Frank.
    • It's nothing too bizarre. In the last couple pages of Magician's Nephew, it says King Frank's children married the local magical creatures — naiads and wood-spirits and such. By the time of the Pevensies, there are just some magicals with a touch of human blood. The human population post-Caspian, and all the kings through the rest of the series, are all Telmarine stock (descended from pirates that accidentally slid into the Narnian world). Although Caspian's marrying a star's daughter means that they are at least partly non-human after him.
    • Plus the Archenlanders (whose monarchs, at least, are descended from King Frank and Queen Helen, and are still around and human as of The Horse and His Boy)— and the Calormenes, who are likewise contemporary with the Pevensies (so pre-Telmarine). The latter must either be descendants of Frank and Helen or the result of an incursion similar to the one that brought the Telmarines in. (But the Calormenes deal with the problem of coexisting with Talking Animals by enslaving them and not acknowledging them as sapient.)
  • In addition, the distinction between Talking Animals and "dumb beasts" is treated as a rather important one.
• Dinotopia is all about shipwrecked humans coexisting with intelligent dinosaurs on an undiscovered island.
• Animals in the Discworld can range from the normal mundane sort to the fantastic. In between you get things like the creatures in the Patrician's Menagerie. Here the meerkat colony have a suspicious resemblance to prisoners of war in Colditz, and see zoo life as an exercise in outwitting their guards and making often elaborate escape attempts. On the Disc, camels spend those long desert treks and down-time sheltering from sandstorms in devising their own higher mathematics. Then there are magically-enhanced sentient creatures like Gaspode The Wonder Dog and the rats of Bad Blintz. Some fanfictions have taken this aspect of Discworld life a step further.
  • The rats of Bad Blintz are seriously confused by the children's book Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure, which suggests that humans are much more comfortable around talking animals than their own experience suggests is the case. They come to the conclusion that the book is a vision of utopia, possibly provided by The Big Rat Deep Under The Ground.
• Gordon R. Dickson's The Dragon Knight series has talking dragons and wolves, with all other animals being perfectly normal.
• S. Andrew Swann's Forests of the Night (part of the Moreau Series) has anthropomorphic animals living alongside humans, though they're considered an underclass. The protagonist is a tiger P.I.
• Fox Tayle was created in a secret government laboratory, but the project was cancelled. Shep and Wolf were killed, but Fox escaped and now the FBI is chasing him. He's left as the only anthropomorphic animal on the planet.
• Walter Brooks' Freddy the Pig series features talking animals who can do everything from solving mysteries to running a bank to writing poetry. Interestingly, the talking part came later in the series, meaning Freddy has to pretend to be a mute after putting on clothes in one early appearance.
• Gaspard and Lisa, a series of picture books and an Animated Adaptation, has the titular characters and their family members as anthropomorphic dogs in the otherwise human society of France.
• The Hobbit has a lot of talking animals, including giant wolves, birds and even wallets. There is also some anthropomorphism, for example Beorn's pets includes dogs that walk on their hind legs and carry trays and dishes on their forepaws. However, the more adult sequel, The Lord of the Rings, has no anthropomorphic animals, and only a few characters can actually speak to animals. But it does have anthropomorphic tree-like creatures.
• Little Red Riding Hood. While talking animals who live in houses are fairly common in Central European fairy tales, a wolf being able to disguise himself as an old human woman by wearing her clothes makes this one stand out.
• The Magic Pudding has Funny Animals interacting with humans in an Australian setting (the hero is a Koala).
• Nursery Crime has a world that's mostly human, but anthropomorphic animals do exist, and are treated as something of a persecuted minority with a slightly different culture that faces discrimination.
• Paddington Bear has talking bears existing alongside humans, although not many of them appear to live in Great Britain.
• In The Red Vixen Adventures the Foxen are aliens that just happen to resemble anthropomorphic foxes, so they regularly interact with humans, even marrying each other.
• Bill Hand's series The Redaemian Chronicles take place in a medieval-style world where humans and Funny Animal rodents exist side by side.
• Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger novels have Funny Animals and humans co-existing, although there's some Fantastic Racism with humans who somehow sense that this isn't the way it works in other worlds. It's also noted that humans are shorter than they are in our world, although whether this is an actual genetic difference or just due to the diet in a Medieval Stasis world isn't revealed. Also Interspecies Romance between Humans and the anthropomorphic animals is not frowned upon in this fantasy world, except for the main character Jon-Tom, who being from our world is the only character to find that concept a turnoff. Despite Flor also being from our world, unlike Jon-Tom she not only has no culture shock, but she ends up dating an anthropomorphic rabbit (mentioned in passing).
• The Tale of Despereaux, in both the books and movie.
• Wicked is based on the Land of Oz books. In the original books, all animals could talk in Oz. In Wicked, there are two types of animals: talking Animals and normal animals. They can interbreed (some Animals are even born from animals) and Animals are historically treated like animals, however there are major political and social differences between the two. Most Ozians look down upon Animals and treat them with at minimum some degree of Fantastic Racism. Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, is an activist for Animal rights alongside Dr. Dillamond, a Goat who teaches at Shiz University.
• In The Wind in the Willows, most of the animals live in burrows (albeit in very human-like comfort) and have little or no interaction with humans. Mr. Toad, on the other hand, lives in an actual house, drives cars, is put on trial in a human court, held in a human prison, and escapes by disguising himself as a human washerwoman. During his escape no one suspects that he's Mr. Toad until he actually announces it when he rides off with a barge woman's horse. And he also interacts on a more-or-less equal basis with all the other animals.
• Winnie the Pooh, of course, has Christopher Robin, though the characters are understood to be composed of his stuffed animals. According to the Word of God, Owl and Rabbit were real forest animals while the rest were toys. (This is reasonably clear in the original illustrations.)

Live-Action TV

• On Barney & Friends, no one finds talking, walking-upright dinosaurs the least bit unusual.
• A lot of characters on Danger 5 are humanoid animals, or humans with animal heads, with no explanation. This extents to historical domain characters; for example, season 2 depicts Otto Skorzeny with the head of a wolf.
• Invoked at the end of Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger where the human and zyuman worlds fuse together. The direct-to-video movie deals with the aftermath of this event.
• Subverted in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood where the Land of Make-Believe has talking animals but it is made clear that it doesn't really exist.
• Kermit the Frog and co. from The Muppets interact with humans on a daily basis, and Pepe the King Prawn dates human women (although the Swedish Chef still sees all animals as food). In a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, Seth Meyers accidentally calls Kermit a "puppet" and is corrected: a puppet, Kermit says, is manipulated by a human by way of strings or some other apparatus, whereas he, Kermit, as a Muppet, is a talking frog.
• In the magical worlds of Once Upon a Time, humans live alongside talking crickets and mice, as well as magical creatures like sirens and fairies. Subverted in the Land Without Magic, where many of those creatures were turned human during the Curse.
• Sesame Street has Muppet Funny Animals (Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Hoots the Owl, etc.), Muppet monsters (Grover, Cookie Monster, Elmo etc.), Muppet humans (Bert, Ernie, Julia, etc.), Muppets that don't fit into any of these catergories (Oscar the Grouch, Abby Caddaby), and actual humans.
• Wishbone has the title dog imagine himself as the main character in classic works of literature. The other characters in the book don't question one of the people in their world being a dog.

Music Videos

• The animated band Studio Killers is made up of a human Big Beautiful Woman and an anthropomorphic fox and mink.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Savage Coast boxed set for Mystara fully incorporates such furry races as lupins (dogs), rakasta (cats), and tortles (three guesses) into its Hispanic-flavored D&D setting. Then again, it's all but traditional for settings to have Loads and Loads of Races to begin with.
  • The Delver's Guide to Beast World is a third party D&D setting which used to be a World of Funny Animals before humans arrived from another world about fifteen years ago.
• Most Toon settings allow you to be any kind of cartoon character you can think of, including Funny Animals, cartoon humans, and Animate Inanimate Objects.

Theater

• In Into the Woods, the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood appears alongside the other human characters.
• In Wicked, many of the citizens of Oz are animals who generally interact normally with the human Ozians-such as the Shiz University history professor Dr. Dillamond. Although, the prevalence of talking animals in Oz starts to change as the plot starts to unfold.

Video Games

• In the world of Against the Storm, humans live alongside anthropomorphic beavers, lizards, and foxes.
• Animal Crossing: You and your fellow Player Characters are the only humans in a village full of Half Dressed Cartoon Animals. To be fair, the other species you meet seem to come in short supply too, so you're all kind of Token Minorities.
• The original Banjo-Kazooie was basically an all Funny Animal/Talking Animal world (no telling what Gruntilda or Mumbo are supposed to be), but Banjo-Tooie brought in several humans; most notably, the shamaness Humba Wumba. All the human characters are also way bigger than Banjo - he must be a very small bear.
• In Bear & Breakfast, talking woodland animals work together to build inns for humans. However, the animals only make noises when they talk to humans, and while they can vaguely get what they're saying, Sabine is the only human who can fully understand them.
• Beyond Good & Evil features both humans and several species of Beast Men (the most common seem to be goats). Pey'j, one of the heroes, is even a pig!
• Blender Bros takes place in the far future where humans live alongside animal people called Animalmen. The main villains, the Zooligans, want to eradicate humans to make a world only for Animalmen.
• The Breath of Fire series features a plethora of Beast Man tribes alongside humans.
• Crash Bandicoot initially had a justification for this: Crash and the other funny animals from the early games were mutants created by Dr. Neo Cortex, meaning that characters like Koala Kong, Pinstripe Potoroo and Ripper Roo are mutants just like Crash. As the series went on, however, this justification was abandoned, with later games such as Crash Twinsanity and Crash Tag Team Racing featuring anthropomorphic animals that are clearly not mutants.
• DuckTales: The Quest for Gold: The mummy looks very human, in contrast to the Dogface mummies from the show. This seems to be a slight oversight by the programmers.
• Humans, elves, dwarves and goblins in Dwarf Fortress live in the same world as several types of anthropomorphic animals (roughly one type for every type of animal, and even a few fungi). However, all beastmen species act like animals when found in the wild, or form hostile tribal societies if found underground. They need to be captured and trained by players until they become sapient and cooperative, at which point they can contribute to the player's fortress like any other race.
  • Forgotten Beasts are also sentient, but are rarely civilized due to being Always Chaotic Evil. It's not impossible for them to be civilized, though, as sometimes — and very rarely — they can accidentally murder their way into positions of power within goblin civilizations during the 250 years of procedurally generated history every game world goes through. If they pull that off, you might find yourself having a nice meeting with a goblin ambassator who just so happens to be a six-legged quadruped who can breath fire and is quite literally Made of Iron.
• Farnham Fables: Humans coexist with Humanoid Animals, who are basically human in every way except external appearance.
• Kingdom Hearts. Come on, you've got Sora fighting alongside Donald and Goofy.
• Lampshaded in Kingdom Hearts II, when you travel to the Pride Lands. All three of you are transformed into animals/slightly less anthropomorphic animals in order to blend in. Sora becomes a lion cub, Goofy becomes a tortoise, and Donald becomes a... bird. But with wings that function! Simba also comments on the fact that Sora looks different than he remembered, as he was a summon from the original game who fought alongside a human Sora, and suddenly he's a lion cub!
• Kuukiyomi: Being a Gag Series Minigame Game, it isn't surprising that it has both anthropomorphic and regular animals existing in this world.
  • Kuukiyomi: Consider It:
    • There's a situation where the player protagonist, who is a human, dates an anthropomorphic cow.
    • Another one is a situation where the player protagonist eats at the sushi bar while an anthropomorphic chicken is also in the same place. There's a type of sushi which the anthropomorphic chicken shouldn't eat.
    • In the Co-Op mode. There's a school specially for anthopomorphic animals.
  • Kuukiyomi 2: Consider It More! -New Era-: There's a situation where a human woman dates an anthropomorphic reindeer. However, there are also some situations involving regular animals with their human masters.
  • Kuukiyomi 3: Consider It More and More!! -Father to Son:
    • In the 55th situation, there's an anthropomorphic hare and a talking regular tortoise from The Tortoise and the Hare.
    • In the 95th situation, the player controls the human baby to look at the player protagonist and her spouse while the baby is on the baby bed in the hospital. And there are anthropomorphic baby animals between the baby, who are sleeping on their beds.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, there's an entire village full of nothing but animals. Justified as the whole thing is a dream of the Wind Fish. Even the dreams of space whales don't have to make sense.
• Littlewood: The cast is a mix of humans and anthropomorphic animals. The town the Player Character is restoring eventually welcomes both a bird man and a cat man. Elsewhere, they can run into a rabbit, a pig or a monkey. Both apaprently exist alongside Goblin-like creatures, orcs and elves, as the former are the go-to generic Non-Player Character race and the two latter are the other half of a couple Half Human Hybrids.
• Most of the cast in Lonely Wolf Treat is composed of anthropomorphic animals but humans and witches also exist.
• Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times has human main characters, but when it comes to the supporting cast? Some of them are Ambiguously Human (like Daisy, and a few of the students, such as Grace), some of them are Animate Inanimate Object-people or even Funny Plants, and, of course, some of them are animals.
• For great justice, Mario makes the cut. In addition to humanoids (the vast majority, and perhaps all, of them are part mushroom too), there appears a dragon-turtle hybrid with 8 offspring, bipedal dinosaurs with magical eating powers, walking flowers, several monkeys and gorillas, and to cap it all off, a bunch of slightly digital-looking nutcases. The WarioWare games play up this aspect - Gold in particular features a variety of different species in its cutscenes.
• Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream revolves around a Quirky Town that's home to a number of anthropomorphic animals...and plants...and twice as many standard humans that are plenty quirky in their own right.
• Overcooked!: The game's playable chefs consist of both humans and anthropomorphic animal people, as well as a few robots and mystical creatures. One of the game's signature chefs is a raccoon in a wheelchair.
• The world of Rocky Rodent is inhabited by normal humans and various humanized mammals such as rats, moles, armadillos... Rocky himself is some sort of bipedal creature, though he looks nothing like a rodent, but more like a punk version of the Tazmanian Devil.
• Rogue Galaxy: The world is populated both by humans and by animal people. If they're meant to be aliens, they're aliens that by and large look exactly like Earth animals. One of your party members is a boxer dog-man. The game also averts No Cartoon Fish in that there are lots of tropical fish-people.
• The Shining Series games have a lot of anthropomorphic characters that you can include on your force, though the majority of the characters are humans, elves, or centaurs. This descends into Furry Confusion at one point in Shining Force II, where a boss is a photo-realistic rat and one member of your team is an anthropomorphic one. Once Camelot stopped developing the series, this trait became much less pronounced, largely being ignored save for the occasional wolfling.
• The Shovel Knight world is populated by both humans and humanoid animals coexisting without much acknowledgement from the characters outside of the occasional pun. Given the fact that most of the "Knights" are fully armored and masked, it's very possible several of them are animal people as well. In fact, a hidden NPC one can find looks identical to Shovel Knight himself... only with a giant fish head on his shoulders instead!
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The games are set in this kind of world. In fact, the series seems to make a distinct differentiation between humans, anthropomorphs, and regular animals.^note Sonic and friends act largely human and are treated like another sapient species by the human characters. The tiny animals that Sonic rescues don't speak (and originally bounded away on all fours) and the other characters aren't able to communicate with Chao or Big's pet, Froggy either. The original animal friends (Pecky, Ricky, etc) are shown to be mildly anthropomorphic but otherwise live as normal Woodland Creatures. However, this wasn't all readily apparent until Sonic Adventure (which is partly set on a city) came out, as the old games took place on islands and Sonic's friends were all animals, leading many to assume that Sonic's world was populated by anthropomorphs and there were no humans. Even Sega of America and Sega of Europe fell victim to this misconception, and as a result created the backstory and lore of "Mobius", a World of Funny Animals where Sonic lived. This was the world where a lot of early Western Sonic adaptations were set, such as Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and the original run of the Archie comics.^note Though Mobius in Sonic SatAM would have turned out to be Earth All Along had it not been Cut Short, a reveal that later carried over into the Archie comics. However, this never held true in Japan, where the existence of humans was always taken for granted, and even the classic games and media had plenty of references and hints at them.^note Such as the fact that Eggman and Witchcart are humans, the presence of urban-themed levels, and Sonic the Screensaver and Sonic the Animation outright showing Sonic and his friends in human-populated cities.
  • Later spin-offs are a bit more vague; Sonic Boom is set on a tiny island full of such sapient species, with only Eggman as something resembling a human, but there are hints here and there that humans do exist outside of the island, and the Ancient clan that takes up a lot of the lore is so diverse in terms of species it is very possible a human did end up part of their ranks. Sonic IDW, on the other hand, takes after the games' "non-human world" exclusively, with nary a human in sight. Again, the "Mobius" term has been retired by SEGA internationally ever since Adventure, with no spin-off media created afterwards utilizing it, sans a brief mention of it in the junior novel adaptation for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022).
  • In 2022, the first episode of TailsTube had Tails clarify how the population of Sonic's world is dispersed: humans typically live on the planet's larger continents like the ones that Station Square, Central City or Spagonia are on, while anthropomorphic animals like Sonic and his friends are usually from the numerous smaller islands that can be found between them, with South Island and West Side Island being two standout examples.
• In Sticky Business, three of your regulars at your online sticker shop are Daisy (a cat), Inspector P. (an anthropomorphic raccoon), and "@notafrog", while the rest are humans and a vampire. Daisy's case gets subverted when the picture she sends you at the end of her storyline reveals that she's a human, while the cat is just her profile pic.
• In TinkerQuarry, some of the toys resemble humans, but most resemble animals. And then, there's Adeline, the only real human in the Dollhouse. Justified because the other characters are Living Toys, so they can easily be made to look like anything, regardless of species.
• Warcraft: With its Loads and Loads of Races and Massive Race Selection, the series features plenty of both traditional humanoids and anthropomorphic animals. Those of the latter category that are playable in World of Warcraft include tauren (and their antlered Highmountain offshoot), pandaren, vulpera, and arguably worgen (who can spend all their time in anthro wolf form) and draenei (who are somewhat like blue goat people). In addition to those, there are dozens of non-playable animal-like sapient species to interact with.
• Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure has Zack, a human Kid Hero pirate aboard a ship consisting entirely of rabbits save for his partner Wiki, who is a golden monkey bell.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner mainly features odd stylized characters that are variously not-quite-human and obviously-not-human, but also features human characters, usually shown in live-action, although a couple have been animated 'in-person' (Crack Stuntman, his fellow voice actors and his boss A. Chimendez — the Recycled IN SPACE! versions of Limozeen don't count because they're in a Show Within a Show). The Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People episode Baddest of the Bands touches upon the concept of humans co-existing with the odd denizens of Free Country USA, with a human named Wade leaving a message on Marzipan's answering machine in which he calls her a 'baseball-bat dude', and calls Strong Mad and The Cheat 'creatures', saying that they freak people out.

Webcomics

• Achewood does this in an abstract and weird sense: while the main cast consists of funny animals and a few robots, it's stated occasionally that they actually live in an underground world that exists alongside the human world (note this strip). This means that every once in a while they'll run into a human character, such as Mark Twain or the preserved head of Keith Moon.
• Played with in this Animal Crossing Awkward Zombie comic.
• In AntiBunny the anthropomorphic rabbits known as "lagosapiens" that make up most of the main cast are an extreme minority in a mostly normal human world.
• Jamie Barker's Chillzoo takes this trope to the max with its cast of humans, animals, a ghost and a robot.
• In the world of Concession, Word of God is that furry/human segregation has only been stopped in the past decade, and they still don't interact much, but they show up sometimes. A human customer at the movie theater claimed to be there to "pick up some fine, fine pussy", and then revealed his girlfriend to be a guinea pig. ("You were expecting-" "A cat, yes, would have completed the joke...") Joel's mother Lorelei is annoyed that her boss, the mayor, is human, and says she half-expects him to "chain me up in the backyard".
• Cycle of Luv features a World of Funny Animals that also features humans, non-anthropomorphic bugs, and objects that can think and sometimes talk
• Digger has a human village not too far from a pack of (sapient) hyenas. And of course, the main character is a wombat.
• Carson the talking muskrat of Dork Tower is, well, a muskrat. As in, a literal muskrat. Apart from a couple of people commenting on his fursuit, nobody seems to care, and he's even shown going to a hospital rather than a vet at least once.
• Freefall has Florence Ambrose and Sam Starfall (okay, an alien octopusoid in a suit), the first being a sort of science experiment, and the second being a former accidental stowaway. To a certain extent, subverted with Sam, who seems like the Alien In The Living Room, but is revealed to have been of a bit more interest before news spread around and First Contact with his species was written off as a wash. Florence is quick probably the only one of her species on the planet, and other than the greeting of "Doggy!" doesn't get much species-related attention.
• Frog Raccoon Strawberry takes place in such a world.
• Funny Farm. Only main characters are furry — pretty much if they've lived in the boarding house, or are related to somebody who lived in the house (and not even then all the time.) they are going to be an animal. Anybody who's only role is part of the massive corporate conspiracy Concordant will be human, which the exception of Mr. Seinbeck. According to Word of God, all the characters are supposed to be technically human. The anthropomorphic ones are just drawn that way for the benefit of the readers. Doesn't quite excuse some elements (for example, the constant gag about Ront's large nose).
• Fur Will Fly also features a human Trapped in Another World of furries. The sequel features a new human.
• Gene Catlow is a furry comic that features humans, and has had lengthy plots utilizing the potential for Fantastic Racism.
• Most characters in Goats are humans, but the central cast features a talking goat named Toothgnip and a talking chicken named Diablo. This might be explained by their connection to supernatural entities, but even people who don't know about that don't react to them. It's also implied this world has a population of (hopefully) unintelligent humans that the talking animals eat, averting Carnivore Confusion.
• Housepets! milks this for all its worth. It's a setting where police dogs can give Miranda warnings, a regular wolf might drop in for tea and have his own house for all practical definitions. Then we get into the magical animorphism and you get some really awkward questions.
• At one point in the past of the setting for Jack, thousands of years before the present storyline, the humans created the furries For Science. Then Jack, the very first creation, got genocidal and led his ilk into driving the humans into extinction. That's why he's Wrath.
• Kaspall takes place in a world that's mostly populated by anthropomorphic characters, but humans (and other species) frequently get transported there by accident and have to try to integrate into its society.
• In Las Lindas, there's actually even pretty good back-story for this. Admittedly there aren't that many humans around, but...
• In Newshounds, most animals are Funny Animals, to the point where domesticated species wear clothes (and white gloves, in a tribute to Bugs Bunny and his ilk); however, human ownership of animals still exists, and is treated as not too different from the real world.
• In Reynard Noir, humans freely intermingle with animals and no one finds this strange (offensive, in some cases, but not strange).
• Sequential Art has a main character sharing his living space with an anthropomorphic cat and a less furry but still anthro penguin. In fact, it soon begins to seem like normal animals are the minority in the comic (and most women are furries, but that's a different matter). This is lampshaded in one strip, in which the main character's attempts to gain police assistance are disregarded as the ramblings of a harmless lunatic when he mentions the species of his roommates. Though it might also have something to do with his previous calls concerning a boogyman.
• Although Sluggy Freelance is largely human-centric, there are two talking animal regulars (Bun-Bun and Kiki), and other talking animals occasionally show up as well.
• The world of The Story of Anima is populated by both humans and beastkin.
• Stubble Trouble has a world where over half the population is anthropomorphic animals and no one seems to care. Human/furry relationships aren't a taboo, either.
• Tales of the Questor starts off focusing on the Rac Cona Daimh, effectively two foot tall talking raccoons, but adds in humans as time goes on. After the Wham Arc, Quentyn ends up effectively stuck in human lands, with other furries such as the bat-like goblins, bulldog-like orcs, and the far more equine than normal centaurs.
• Vampire Bites takes place in a world that includes humans and anthropomorphic animals. Oddly though vampires, who the main characters are, are considered myth within the story.
• The Whiteboard: Originally the regular cast members were Funny Animals in a world where many of the people were featureless "bubblehead" humans, due to furries being easier to draw, but starting in 2012 the artist started using funny animals exclusively for all characters, regulars or otherwise. Fan-favorite recurring "bubbleheads" Larry and Daryl became squirrels, from suggestions on the forum.
• The World of Vicki Fox has humans in it, but they appear very seldom (usually only in crowd scenes) and have little impact on the stories.
• In Yokoka's Quest, the world of Cisum is populated with humans, demons (ranging from resembling pointy-eared humans to full-on beast people), people with animal features (both naturally and due to curses), people who can shapeshift into animals and dragons and such, animals who can talk (ranging from otherwise regular animals to acting like people), animals who can't talk (both real and fictional), spirits born from emotions, and mixes of many of the above.
• In Yuck Heads Most of the characters are Funny Animals but there are also a few human characters. Word of God says that most of the people in Yuckufo are animals because the town is like an animal ghetto.

Web Original

• In Darwin's Soldiers, anthros appear in the world and are treated much like humans are.
• The FreeRIDErs setting is primarily composed of humans turned into nekos by machines called RIDEs. Not everyone has a RIDE, but those who spend too much time in one has a chance of ending up as a catperson.
• Many of the animals in The Insane Quest of Unfathomable Randomness, to the point where it would be easier to list the ones that can't talk or act human. Seeing that this universe is also home to robots, Gods, demons, mythical creatures, and the like, it's not very surprising.
• The people of Metamor Keep are a mixture of Funny Animals and humans. This is justified as the titular keep was originally all humans, but a curse from an enemy kingdom turned one-third into half-animals. The remaining two-thirds were kept human but had permanent changes to their gender and age.
• Shifti
  • In the Paradise setting, humans and anthros co-exist in modern day Earth. Much like Metamor Keep above, this is justified as it deals with an alternate universe in which people have started changing into anthropomorphic animals called "Changed" and no one is rightfully sure as to why.
  • Similarly, Xanadu (Storyverse) creates this world as a result of a mass transformation; Only here, it turned people at a convention into their costumes, including anthro animals alongside fictional characters.
• The Tails Series is largely populated with talking animal creatures known as anthros. Said creatures are still trying to coexist with human beings, who aren't native to the galaxy the series takes place in.
• Humans are joined by various Funny Animals and monsters in the world We Are All Pirates' Revenge. Most of these non-human creatures act like normal people, although there are some that act more animalistic than others.
  • The main crew alone includes a giant bipedal rat (as the captain, no less!), a normal-sized rat, a shapeshifting dragon, an anthro lizard, a privateer raccoon, a cat lady, and a sentient treasure chest.

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