Silly Animal Sound

See-and-Say: The pig goes "Wank"!
(Stewie is surprised, he pulls the cord again)
See-and-Say: The cow goes "Shazoo"!
Stewie: It most certainly does not! (pulls the cord again)
See-and-Say: The rooster goes "Gickery-gee"!
Stewie: Where? Where does the rooster say that?! (pulls the cord again)
See-and-Say: The monkey goes "Macack"!
Stewie: Oh, no, no, no! It does not! (pulls the cord again)
See-and-Say: The elephant goes "Thwoamp"!
Stewie: Oh, yeah, kinda.

— Family Guy

In fiction, animals make a lot of sound. With some animals such as dogs, cats, chickens and cows, the sound is very familiar (and often represented as a Written Sound Effect). With some animals, their real sound is not very well-known, but there is a Stock Sound Effect that represents them in media (such as the characteristic screech of the Red-Tailed Hawk used for any sort of bird of prey, or chimpanzee chatter used for any kind of monkey). Occasionally an animal that is normally mute will be given some sound for threatening effect (for example, sharks letting out a growl as they open their jaws). Even though the latter sounds are not realistic, they are so commonly used that we don't even notice them.

Sometimes though, the creators just throw away any — real or perceived — realism and make up a sound for the animal in the name of Rule of Funny. Either they have no idea what sound the animal makes and just come up with something silly, or they intentionally give the animal a different sound that the audience expects for comedic effect as a form of Vocal Dissonance. Occasionally the animals will straight up Pokémon Speak, or let out the Signature Roar of a famous movie monster (as a literal Shout-Out). Another possible Shout-Out is the animal singing the theme tune of a famous work — such as a "Jaws" Attack Parody where the famous "dun-DUN'' music directly coming from the shark itself. Often, a big sound will come out of a small creature or vice-versa. Sometimes, the justification is that the animal is "speaking a foreign language". If an individual animal makes a noise it's not even personally known to make, expect Voice Change Surprise.

Subtrope of Noisy Nature and Incorrect Animal Noise. Compare Animal Talk, when animals sounds like humans due to Translation Convention (which is usually not Played for Laughs). Compare Sound Defect and Wacky Sound Effect, where other unlikely sounds are deliberately used nonsensically.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• One Piece:
  • In the Waters Seven arc, Chimney's pet rabbit Gonbe meows because he thinks he's a cat.
  • In the Enies Lobby arc, Usopp finds himself face-to-face with a rooster as he's trying desperately to sneak up to an enemy and snatch the key he needs. Usopp is worrying himself silly that the rooster will crow and awaken his opponent, only for it to tweet. This doesn't wake anybody, but Usopp yelling out in surprise at the wrong sound does.

Films — Animation

• In Dumbo, at the circus parade scene, when a gorilla shakes the bars of his cage, he lets out a scream similar to Tarzan's yell. To be fair, Edgar Rice Burroughs describes Tarzan's yell as "the victory cry of the bull ape", but real gorillas sound nothing like that.
• In Finding Nemo, Dory is a blue tang fish that can speak Whale, which is represented as her making whale sounds that sound vaguely like English words.
• In The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, the Grinch invokes this by making the cows make bell sounds and the Cat in the Hat moo using his sound-manipulating technology.
• Happy Feet: One of the Adelie penguins says, "Ribbit" (the sound of a Pacific tree frog) in the song he sings.
• In Mulan, Hayabusa the falcon, who normally sounds like a Red-Tailed Hawk, lets out a chicken's cluck when he loses his feathers.
• The Aracuan Bird from The Three Caballeros is, supposedly, named that because of a peculiar song he sings. The real-life bird that is called "Aracua" in Brazil not only looks nothing like its cartoon counterpart, but also sounds completely different.
• The woodland rabbits seen in Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit suddenly start to howl like coyotes at the moon (while pounding their chest like a gorilla) after the giant were-rabbit does it. The were-rabbit himself can be excused, since he's a fantasy creature shapeshifted from a human, but the other rabbits are supposed to be real rabbits.

Films — Live-Action

• In Frogs, when Crockett starts hallucinating that his trophy animal heads are making noises, one large taxidermy-preserved freshwater fish makes dolphin sounds.
• George of the Jungle: In the original Jay Ward cartoon series, the titular Idiot Hero has a pet elephant named Shep. The live-action film goes one step beyond and ups the silliness by making Shep run, bark and pant like a dog.
• Miss Velmas Most Incredibly Magnificent Christmas Week, an absolutely bizarre Christmas Special made in the 70's, shows the animals in Jesus's manger having the following conversation:
  Racoon: I'm the Racoon! Arf Arf!
  Cow: I'm a cow! Mooo
  Bull: I'm the Bull! Bleugh!
• In Oz the Great and Powerful, the flying monkey moos when asked to make an animal sound.

Jokes

• A popular French joke says that ants "cro-ondent", which comes from an untranslatable Portmanteau Pun of the words fourmi ("ant") and four micro-ondes ("microwave"). The best approximation in English would be "crowave", but then the joke would be Lost in Translation.

Literature

• In Badjelly The Witch, the aptly-named grasshopper Silly Sausage barks. In the audio-book version, he also meows and makes other non-animal sounds.
• In the kids' book Bark, George!, a mother dog tries to teach her son George to bark, but he makes goofy sounds instead.
• Bunnicula: Played for laughs in the conclusion of Return to Howliday Inn, where Harold the dog and Chester the cat, who've both learned ventriloquism, use their newfound abilities to astound their family by making it look like Harold's meowing and Chester's barking.
• In Dip The Puppy, the eponymous puppy meows instead of barking. There was previously a horse who quacked, too.
• The children's book Duckcat is about a cat and a duck who pretend to be each other (the cat swims in the lily pond, the duck pretends to hate swimming, etc) and they also make each other's noises.
• In Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo, the tigers catch Felicity's cold, which somehow makes them meow instead of roar.
• Thud! and Where's My Cow?: Is that my cow? It goes HRUUGH! It is a hippopotamus! That’s not my cow.
• Winnie the Pooh:
  • Tigger is a tiger, but when he's not just speaking, he'll say, "Worraworraworra" instead of growling.
  • Pooh writes a hum about how "the cows are almost cooing and the turtledoves are mooing".

Live-Action TV

• Farscape. In the DVD Commentary for "I, E.T.", the actors playing Aeryn and D'Argo mention that the script called for them to make "terrifying alien sounds" because We Need a Distraction, but as the actors hadn't really established their characters at that point, they had no idea what the aliens they are playing would sound like.
• In this scene from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, two men play two cops, while two women provide the sound effects they make. At one point, one of them suggests they should make animal sounds to distract their opponents. One of them makes duck sounds - "quack quack". The other makes elephant sounds - also "quack quack".

Music

• "The Fox (What Does The Fox Say)" by Ylvis, the singer wonders what do foxes sound like. They come up with several humorous suggestions such as "Wap-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow" and "Hattee-hattee-hatte-ho".
• According to Li'l Deuce Deuce's ditty Beep Beep I'm A Sheep, sheep go "beep beep." And further, cows go "meow meow." It's a subset of Refuge in Audacity in songwriting: As Long As It Rhymes.
• In "Under a 'C'", a parody of "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid (1989), a dumb student mistakenly thinks dogs say, "meow".
• The Spike Milligan poem "The Ning Nang Nong", later set to music, is about a place where cows say "bong" and mice say "clang", as well as trees and teapots making sounds ("ping" and "jibber-jabber-joo", respectively). On the other hand, the monkeys all saying "boo" doesn't seem too far off the mark for the real world.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street:
  • In one episode, a duck gets a disease called "The Moos" where she moos instead of quacking.
  • Attempted when a cat tries to bark and a dog tries to meow, but they can't.
  • Ralphie, Baby Bear's parrot, can speak Hamster.
  • In one cartoon skit, a cow tweets, a dog meows, a bird barks, and a cat moos. The boy switches the doors and this somehow brings them back to normal. The cow then crows like a rooster but then reveals she was joking.

Radio

• I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue: Part of the "Celebrity Animal Smugglers" game. The first half is one team sneaking in the names of celebrities into their dialogue, the second is the opposite team smuggling animals. Since this round is usually only done when a comedian with vocal impressionist skills is on, the celebrities are quite good. The animal noises... not so much.
• Three Storyteller skits in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme feature Mr Floofywhiskers, a horse who was raised to believe he was a cat, and therefore makes a peculiar noise that sounds like a cross between a whinny and a meow.
• Also by John Finnemore: Cabin Pressure: Martin and Arthur are driving a baggage cart 20 miles across the Spanish countryside to fetch a plane engineer, singing 'One Man Went to Mow' to pass the time. Arthur replaces the 'woof woof!' with 'wah wah!' ("That's what French dogs say") because they're abroad. On the return journey, the plane engineer adds Spanish versions of Silly Animal Sounds to the mix.
  Martin: Carolyn, Douglas, this is Diego: a fine engineer, a useful light baritone, and a man with an inexhaustible knowledge of how Spanish animals go. Diego, do your Spanish cockerel.
  Diego: Quiquiriquí!
  Martin ...yep, that's my favourite one.

Toys

• Many toys squeak, but they depict a duck or a bear or some other animal that doesn't squeak.

Video Games

• In a Licensed Game of Sesame Street called "Elmo's Silly Mixed-Up Farm", some farm animals make the wrong sounds and it's up to the viewer to re-sort them.
• Escape from Monkey Island: If you have Guybrush "use" the duck he finds wandering around Lucre Island, the duck will occasionally moo instead of quacking.
  Guybrush: "Moo"? What kind of weird duck are you?
• Plants vs. Zombies: In the Almanac, Cattail, who is a cross between a cat and a cattail plant, is shown to woof like a dog. She says that it's because she hates to be stereotyped.
• In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Cecile is under the impression that rabbits make a faint cheeping noise, insisting that this is something that you will only recognise if you are someone who has kept a rabbit. It actually manages to make Big Boss crack up.
• Mewgenics: All of the cats are voiced via cameos received through Twitter / X during early 2023- most of the voices are accurate impressions of meows, but some rarer ones are clearly just saying "meow" out loud, and even rarer voices might make your cats quack.
• Super Mario Bros.: Chain chomps, which are monsters that look like a metal ball and chain with teeth, make a goofy "bark, bark" sound. This makes sense since they are basically a minimalist version of an Angry Guard Dog.

Web Video

• Joueur du Grenier:
  • Jean-Michel Bruitage the inept sound designer originated in the Excalibur 2555 A.D review, where a Giant Scorpion makes a noise like a dying whale.
  • During a sequence that parodies animal-based martial arts on Manimal, Fred copies a bird that makes a "wehk!" sound. He then tries it against a mugger... who dies instantly.

Western Animation

• In the Betty Boop cartoon "Crazy Town", among tons of other backwards and crazy things, Crazy Town's zoo is full of incorrect sounding animals including a lion that Cock-a-doodle-doos like a rooster, barking cats, a meowing rhino and a mouse that roars like a lion.
• In Bilby, after the bilby beats up an eagle, it flies away clucking like a chicken. One could say it's chickening out of the fight.
• In Ed, Edd n Eddy, the all-too abundant slapstick is accompanied by randomly edited animal sound effects: elephants, horses, pigs and chicken among others.
• In one Cutaway Gag of Family Guy, Stewie plays with an European See-and-Say. He gets baffled by the unconventional sounds that, according to the toy, the animals make. Unlike most Cutaway Gags, this is actually referenced in a later scene. As Stewie and Brian use a Time Machine and end up in an unfamiliar place, Stewie correctly deduces that they must be in Europe from a cow saying "Shazoo".
• Hero: 108: "Deer Castle" features deer and the Deer King who sound nothing like actual deer. As the matter of fact, the sounds they make are those of a horse.
• Looney Tunes:
  • According to the "Road Runner and Coyote" cartoons, roadrunners say "meep-meep" or "beep-beep". They actually sound like this. In some countries of the world, like Italy and France, the character has even been renamed "Beep-Beep" or "Bip-Bip", making it sound like if it was a fake animal talking in Pokémon Speak, since roadrunners are pretty obscure birds outside of the US.
  • Oddly, averted with the Tasmanian Devil. Although the creators of the cartoon took great liberties with the animal's characteristics, his incomprehensible grunts and growls are actually pretty close to the actual sound of the animal.
  • In the Looney Tunes short Duck Amuck, Daffy Duck makes a kookaburra call (a Stock Sound Effect associated with jungles) during a Sound Defect scene.
  • In the 1939 short A Day at the Zoo, the mother ostrich clucks like a hen after laying an egg.
• Oggy and the Cockroaches:
  • The titular character from the episode "The Neighbor's Cat", who, in addition to being treated like a dog by his owner, barks like one.
  • In "Penguin Pandemonium", when the penguin hiding in Oggy's fridge the whole time falls in love with Oggy (who is then dressing up like a penguin), Oggy tries to dissuade it by meowing. To his surprise, the penguin meows back! It then takes Oggy to (allegedly) the South Pole, where all the penguins meow!
• The Magic Key: In “The Sound Monster”, due to the sounds of the world being all mixed up, Floppy the dog finds himself meowing instead of barking.
• In an episode of The Penguins of Madagascar, a giant lobster roars like the Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park.
• In the Peppa Pig episode Granny and Grandpa's Attic, Mummy Pig finds a vinyl record of a novelty song she used to listen to when she was a child, "Birdy Birdy Woof Woof", all about this trope.
  The birds go, "Woof" and the dogs go, "Tweet",
  Woof, tweet, woof, tweet, woof, woof, woof!
  The sheep go, "Moo" and the cows go, "Baa",
  Moo, baa, woof, tweet,
  Woof, baa, moo, tweet,
  Woof, woof, woof!
• In The Simpsons episode "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", one brief gag features a rabbit chirping like a dolphin at the moon.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Snails, including Gary, Spongebob's pet snail, meow like a cat. Meanwhile, worms bark like dogs.
  • In "Who R Zoo?", SpongeBob plays with different animals and hears them making mismatched noises: an elephant moos like a cow, a giraffe barks like a dog, and a baboon quacks like a duck.
• Teen Titans: For some reason, whenever Raven manifests her magic it shrieks like a red-tailed hawk instead of cawing like a raven.
• Invoked in an episode of Teen Titans Go!: after every sound in the world disappears, the Titans find themselves tasked to recreate the sounds with their voices, resulting in stuff like dolphins saying "Booyah" in Cyborg's voice, Starfire's pet Silkie sounding like Starfire doing a Fat Albert impression and a giant monster meowing because Starfire had no fitting sound examples in her mind.
• In the Tom and Jerry short "The Milky Waif", Jerry the mouse, upon seeing Tom spanking his adopted child Nibbles, goes into Papa Wolf mode, and produces a lion-like roar before giving Tom an epic thrashing.
• Played with in Quaqquao. The main character is a duckling that in every episode meets a different animal, and at the end of every episode he now makes the same sound as that animal. Then his father comes up and teaches him to quack again.

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