Like a duck takes to water.
"Aye, I come from a whole family of pirates. Gramps used to say, 'The Krabs Clan has been pirates for as long as we've had claws.'"
— Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob SquarePants, "Grandpappy the Pirate"
In the World of Funny Animals, different species have professions based on their stereotypes. Beavers are construction workers, moles are miners, kangaroos are boxers, dalmatians are firefighters, pandas are martial artists, etc. But the animals that take up the nautical professions tend to be semi-aquatic.
Naval careers, such as sailors and pirates, are often taken up almost entirely by semi-aquatic species such as ducks, loons, seabirds, otters, seals note , turtles, frogs, and crabs. The octopus and squid also tend to take up naval careers. While squids are fully aquatic, some octopuses have been observed crawling around on land for short periods of time. Even when other animals are present in the crew, the captain is still usually one of these. This is likely because these kinds of jobs are done at sea, but not underwater most of the time.
Sub-Trope of Animal Stereotypes and Animal Occupation Stereotypes. Instances where a Pirate Parrot takes the form of a pirate don't count, since parrots aren't actually seabirds. Same thing can be said with merfolk, since they aren't real-life animals. Examples involving crabs (the invertebrates most prone to this trope) are likely to cross over with Penny-Pinching Crab, because of Pirate Booty, of course. See Rabbit Magician for an animal with a more fantastical (or fantastic-seeming) occupation or profession. See also Captain Fishman.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- My Hero Academia: The pro hero Selkie's quirk gives him the powers and appearance of a humanoid spotted seal. He and his team patrol the ocean, performing search and rescue operations and fighting modern-day pirates. Tsuyu Asui, whose quirk gives her the powers of a frog, naturally ends up with him for her hero internship.
Comic books
- Rasmus Klump has Captain Skæg, a seal who commands the Mary.
Film — Animated
- Ice Age: Continental Drift: Flynn the elephant seal and Silas the petrel (with feet like a blue-footed booby) are members of Captain Gutt's pirate crew.
- Seal Team (2021) plays with this. They are technically naval officers and the intro shows Claggart on a ship, but otherwise they are more overtly styled after '80s action heroes.
Film — Live-Action
- Muppet Treasure Island: The role of Captain Smollett is naturally given to Kermit the Frog. Aditionally, instead of having a parrot named Cpt. Flint on his shoulder, Long John Silver has a lobster named Polly.
Literature
- In Dr. Franklin's Island Semi gets turned into a manta ray like creature and after being turned back is still a Little Bit Beastly and able to breathe water for a while. Escaping the island as quickly as possible on a small boat, she reveals to the audience for the first time that she's a reasonably capable sailor, and catches fish several times by just going into the water and hunting them.
- Redwall:
- The majority of otters are sailors or fishermen. The leaders are typically known as "skippers", a term usually referring to the captain of a boat or small ship.
- In addition to the aforementioned otters there are also many 'Sea Rat' pirates (while rats are not generally found in water they are still excellent swimmers), and the Guosim shrews (who are basically a band of nomadic riverboat sailors) are probably supposed to be Eurasian Water Shrews
.
- Marlfox has the Riverhead tribe, made up of Irish-accented watervoles who keep a number of small boats and are shown to be good sailors. One of them (Burble) joins the heroes on the quest after the Riverheads unwittingly (and unwillingly) provide the heroes with a boat when Burble steals it (the heroes had traded a jewel for it, but Burble stole both from their selfish self-appointed leader before he could double-cross them).
- The Water Rat (vole) in The Wind in the Willows loves messing about in boats. Toad is a subversion; he's initally introduced in a boat, but he's not very good at it and quickly passes over it for new hobbies. While these animals stay on the river, the Sea Rat is a grizzled old sailor who has travelled across the world in ships.
Tabletop Games
- In Ironclaw the portrait of an otter in the species chapter is fishing with a harpoon, while the seal appears to be diving for shellfish.
Toys
- In Fabuland, the resident sea captain is a Warm-Hearted Walrus named Wilfred Walrus.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing:
- Gulliver is a seagull who is also a sailor.
- Kapp'n is a sea turtle (though he's a kappa in the original Japanese release) who takes the player to nearby islands with a boat. He also speaks in sailor slang (as does the rest of his family).
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduces Gullivarr, Gulliver's Identical Stranger who is also a seagull, but unlike him, he's a pirate.
- Club Penguin: Captain Rockhopper, a penguin, is a Friendly Pirate. He travels beyond the island on his ship, the Migrator, and he often visits the island and brings back treasures.
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: The Snowmads are a viking crew of animals from Grim Up North. Although the crew consists of a variety of animals, the leader, Lord Fredrik, and the Elite Mooks, the Waldoughs, are walruses.
- In Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, the crocodilian Kremlings have a pirate motif. Their leader is also fought on a boat in the original.
- The cruise ship S.S. Literally Can't Sink from A Hat in Time is captained by a walrus and crewed by seals. Despite their semi-aquatic status, they aren't particularly good sailors.
- High Seas Havoc: Havoc and Tide are seals who are Friendly Pirates. The main antagonist, Bernardo, is a pirate captain walrus. However, the other members of Bernardo's pirate crew are non-aquatic animals.
- Pirate101 features the full spectrum of this principle in it's anthropomorphic characters. There are frog smugglers and pelican fishermen, playing it straight, but there are also pirates who are completely aquatic, such as sharks and crabs. But it's not an exclusive rule, and you'll find sailors of all races, from rodents and dogs to monkeys, and even unicorns. Of course, since it takes place in a World in the Sky, there's no reason it would seem especially attractive to species with an affinity for water.
- Discussed in Viva Piñata. The Quackberry (duck) house is a shipwreck, and its description asks why pirates kept Parrybos (parrots) as pets if Parrybos can't swim.
- Xenogears: The Thames has an unnamed captain who's a walrus and his second mate is a dolphin called Hans. Bart's ship Yggdrasil also has a dolphin crewmate who's responsible for operating the radar and who likes to record various sounds.
Web Animation
- Happy Tree Friends: Russell the sea otter is a pirate.
- Puffin Forest: Ottie Otterton is, as indicated by the name, an otter. He quickly reveals to the W.O.R.S.T. that he's a sailor.
Web Comics
- In Beyond the Western Deep the otter-like Lutren are one of the two races of Sunsgrove known for their seafaring. Though the other, more piratically-bent, species, the Polcan, are more like ferrets.
Web Original
- Sagan 4: Though not capable of speech and perhaps only slightly anthropomorphic, a handful of "shrews" from the Alpha timeline such as Marine Tamows, Tamjacks, and Seashrogs are based on semi-aquatic mammals (beaver and two otters, respectively) and construct floating boat-like nests to live out at sea. The nests of Seashrogs in particular are very boat-like, having a flat deck for them to stand on.
- This caricature of Australian Olympic sailor Nathan Outteridge as a sea otter, as a pun on his last name.
Western Animation
- A non-anthro example in the Bob's Burgers episode "Mutiny on the Windbreaker"; the cruise ship's captain, Captain Flarty, has a pet capybara named Kiki.
- BoJack Horseman: Neal McBeal is a seal and a Navy SEAL who fought in the naval forces in Afghanistan.
- Donald Duck: Donald Duck may be the Trope Maker, being a duck and a sailor.
- DuckTales (2017): In addition to Donald Duck, there are seagull and pelican sailors who frequent the Duckburg harbor.
- Bill the Platypus from Fluffy Gardens lives on a boat and wears a sailor hat.
- In Muppet Babies (1984), Baby Kermit the Frog wears a sailor suit, in contrast to his nearly-naked adult counterpart. "The Daily Muppet" begins with him having a dream where he gets roped into a naval submarine with other frog sailors.
- The Octonauts: Three members of the crew fit this trope: Peso who is a penguin, Barnacles who is a polar bear, and Shellington who is a sea otter. The rest of the crew includes one fully-aquatic creature, Professor Inkling the octopus, and the rest are all land mammals.
- Peep and the Big Wide World: Quack, a duck, always wears a sailor hat (that looks a bit like a paper boat.)
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Although the whole series takes place underwater, it's notable that the character who uses the most stereotypical sailing motifs is Mr. Krabs, a crab — crabs can live both on land and in the water.
- Squiddly Diddly: Played with. Squiddly is an octopus, an animal that is mainly aquatic (though they can move on land), yet spends most of his time on land. He wears a sailor cap, sailor's shirt, and kerchief.
- The episode "The Old Spinosaurus And The Sea" of Dinosaur Train depicts the amphibious dinosaur Spinosaurus acting like a stereotypical fisherman.
- The Wuzzles: Crocosaurus, who is half-crocodile, wears a sailor captain's hat.
