Woodland Creatures are a group of animals commonly associated with the forest. They are commonly used to symbolize the presence of Mother Nature. Expect to find them in a clearing in an Enchanted Forest.
Although they are often several separate species, they will show great affection for each other and will rarely act or appear separately; in point of fact, it's common for species that would normally be predators and prey to appear side by side. A human being accepted into the group is almost always a sign of them being a Friend to All Living Things. The animals tend to be very shy and easily startled, but if a character is pure at heart, she will be allowed among them and they will even come to her aid. If they decide to take matters in their own hands then it will inevitably lead to a Gaia's Vengeance.
They usually appear to have to some degree a shared consciousness, or may be a part of the forest's soul itself.
The Egomaniac Hunter and the Corrupt Corporate Executive will constantly be on their tail and try to chase them away from their home. It will be required that a sympathetic human (usually a plucky kid, a female green activist and/or an initially cynical but ultimately friendly adult male) helps them.
How the Carnivore Confusion is treated depends on the story: sometimes the two groups will make a truce against the common enemy; sometimes the carnivores are shown to be mindlessly aggressive brutes, in which case playing them against the humans will be the best option; oftentimes, meat-eaters and plant-eaters simply appear side-by-side with no tension and no mention of what anybody eats. Rarely, Predation Is Natural and accepted without much fuss.
If they are the focus of the story, they might be Talking Animals (with the suggestion that they are using an "animal language" that each of them can understand), and they may form an Unusual Animal Alliance.
Even if they have no acting role, they will make an appearance in stories with a Green Aesop.
If this trope is subverted, they will become the Disney Creatures of the Farce.
The group will almost always contain the following animals:
- A deer, which will be either an innocent fawn or a noble stag.
- One or two rabbits.
- A flock of small birds.
- A bunch of mice, squirrels or chipmunks (cute but often mischievous).
with the additional talent of:
- The mischievous raccoon.
- The wise owl, or another Noble Bird of Prey.
- The gruff but noble badger.
- The flirty but smelly skunk (if it's a North American setting).
- The cool, but slow, turtle.
- The hard-working beaver.
- The fun-loving otter.
- The clever fox.
- The friendly bear (unless you mess with her cubs).
- The bumbling moose.
- The burrowing, often blind, mole (sometimes a gopher or groundhog).
- The noble wolf (unless you mess with his pups).
Rarer members of these ensembles include ferrets/polecats, waterbirds (mostly ducks or geese), opossums, porcupines (or hedgehogs if it's a European setting), frogs, newts, snakes, wild boars, bats, quails and occasionally (if it's a Japanese setting) the mysterious Tanuki. Insects such as butterflies, ladybugs and bees may also join the company.
They may sometimes be antagonized by certain predators (unless they are in the crew too, usually as Token Evil Teammates, Antiheroes or just gruff but ultimately decent characters), such as:
- An aggressive bear.
- A prowling wild cat, such as a lynx or cougar.
- A pack of savage wolves or cruel coyotes.
- A sneaky weasel or fox.
- A Brutal Bird of Prey.
- A malevolent horde of rats.
See also: Animal Stereotypes.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Yama Nezumi Rokki Chakku, based on Burgess Bedtime Stories and known in English as Fables of the Green Forest, is about a group of cute forest critters in the eponymous Green Forest.
- Some of the Pikachu shorts in Pokémon: The Series show off a Pokémon version of this, with Pikachu and friends encountering friendly forest Pokémon like Hoothoot, Bellossom, Elekid, and Exeggutor.
Asian Animation
- Boonie Bears features bears as leads, with a squirrel, a mole, and an owl serving as background characters. The exceptions to the woodland theme are Tiki and Babu, a pair of monkeys from a circus.
Eastern European Animation
- The Little Mole: The bulk of the cast consists of these. Beside the eponymous mole, there's a mouse, a hare and a hedgehog as his closest friends, a wise old owl who serves as a mentor, and a broad range of birds, frogs, insects and other animals as minor or background characters. In some shorts they are antagonized by a fox or weasels.
Film — Animated
- Disney makes notorious use of this. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty both feature their pure-hearted princesses gaily frolicking with assorted woodland animals — rabbits, birds, squirrels, and so on — while Bambi focuses on the woodland critters themselves, chiefly the titular deer and his rabbit and skunk friends.
- Homaged and parodied in Enchanted, where in the real world, Giselle summons cockroaches, pigeons, and rats all over New York to help clean Robert’s apartment the way she has done it with forest creatures in her world.
- Parodied in Hercules, where Meg encounters a talking rabbit and gopher who turn out to be Pain and Panic in disguise.
- The Princess and the Frog: An assortment of these animals briefly shows up at Tiana and Naveen's wedding in the swamp.
- Brother Bear features mostly bears and moose but contains many of the other creatures you'd expect, with the addition of mammoths.
- Some supporting characters in The Fox and the Hound include a motherly owl, a finch and woodpecker duo, a caterpillar, a porcupine, a grouchy old badger and a vixen, whom the fox protagonist falls in love with.
- The Last Unicorn: These inhabit the unicorn's forest at the beginning of the film.
- My Little Pony: The Movie (1986): The ponies live alongside a number of these, primarily squirrels, chipmunks, a variety of colorful songbirds and the odd raccoon, which participate in their festivals, help them with tasks, and can communicate with them despite being otherwise speechless. Notably, none of these critters appear in the sequel cartoon series.
- Once Upon a Forest features a trio of woodland creatures (a woodmouse, a hedgehog and a mole) trying to find the cure for their young badger friend (a rare cute badger) after a truck carrying toxic gas crashes and poisons the forest.
- Open Season: The film stars a grizzly bear and a mule deer, with a supporting cast of flirtatious skunks, Scottish squirrels, beavers, ducks, rabbits and a porcupine, who ultimately unite against a group of hunters and other threats in the following sequels.
- Over the Hedge: The main cast consists largely of such creatures, counting a raccoon, a turtle, a squirrel, a skunk, an opossum father and daughter and a family of porcupines, who live together and interact in a North American woodland that is converted into suburbs.
- The Son of Bigfoot: Dr. Harrison (aka Bigfoot) befriends creatures such as a squirrel, bear, woodpecker and a family of raccoons during his time in the woods, as he Speaks Fluent Animal. He encounters a wolf and a moose in the sequel, but since he is unfamiliar with those animals, they aren't so friendly to him.
- Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild: The CGI-animated sequel has Stuart befriending a skunk named Reeko on a family camping trip, later teaming up with him and the other animals to stop a dreaded mountain lion.
Film — Live-Action
- Furry Vengeance revolves around a real estate developer being plagued by vengeful animals as he plans to destroy their forest home.
Literature
- The books of Beatrix Potter are known to star woodland animals, including rabbits, mice, hedgehogs, squirrels and foxes.
- Burgess Bedtime Stories focused on various animal characters based primarily on the wildlife found in the author's homeland of Massachusetts, accompanied by a Green Aesop.
- Fantastic Mr. Fox: A family of foxes star in the books and movie adaptation, with a supporting cast of other animals such as badgers, weasels, moles and rabbits, living in the English countryside.
- Franklin: The titular turtle and his friends. The village they live in is even named Woodland.
- The Gruffalo follows a mouse taking a stroll through the forest, encountering a fox, owl, snake and the titular Gruffalo, who all desire to eat him.
- The Horse and His Boy: When Shasta arrives in Narnia, a group of woodland creatures gathers around him, starting with a hedgehog and including a deer. Because this is Narnia, the last arrival ends up being a dwarf.
- Little Bear: The books and TV adaptation star a young bear making various animal friends (and a few Token Human ones) around the forest.
- The Lorax: The Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-swans and Hummingfish are the Seuss-esque fantasy equivalents of these, being cute fuzzy mammals, birds and amphibious fish that frolic around in the Truffula forests.
- The Mitten revolves around different forest animals huddling together for warmth in a discarded mitten, starting from small creatures all the way up to a bear, until one last visitor note causes the mitten to burst.
- Redwall: The protagonists of the books are invariably this sort of creatures, albeit anthropomorphic — mice are the most common and the archetypal heroes, but squirrels, voles, rabbits, hares, shrews, otters, badgers and the like all appear quite often, as do numerous types of birds, all acting in accordance to the usual Animal Stereotypes. In contrast, rats and most other mustelids make up the bulk of the villains.
- The Wild Robot revolves around a robot encountering and befriending various wild animals as she survives on an island, where nature itself isn't as sweet as this trope often portrays it.
- The Wind in the Willows: The classic children's novel chronicles an anthropomorphic toad, mole, water vole and badger living along a riverbank in late Victorian/early Edwardian England.
- Winnie the Pooh: While most main characters are Living Toys (plus a Token Human child), Rabbit, Owl and the minor characters referred to as "Rabbit's Friends and Relations" (including other rabbits, mice, a hedgehog, a squirrel, a newt and a handful of bugs) are living animals who qualify for this trope. The Disney adaptations leave the Friends and Relations out, but introduce the new character Gopher.
- Wyrd Sisters: At one point in the book, Lancre Forest's wildlife comes to pay Granny Weatherwax a visit — in this case with the predators in tow. They appear again at the end of the book, where they finish off the Duchess. "Even the rabbits."
"I don't know what this spell is," [Granny Weatherwax] said. "But I'll tell you this for nothing — when it wears off, some of you little buggers had better get moving."
Newspaper Comics
- The Far Side: In one strip, two people come across a large crowd of woodland critters... who in this case seem a bit too happy.
- Over the Hedge: Like its animated film counterpart, the strip involves woodland creatures (specifically a raccoon, a turtle and a squirrel) adapting to suburbia.
- Rose is Rose:
- These creatures accompany Pasquale and his grandmother on a nature walk.
- After Pasquale thinks his echo must be lonely when he's gone, we see the echo surrounded by creatures and rainbows and other "good emotions" bits.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: The "Conjure Animals" spell lets the caster summon a number of animals (it's recommended the DM make the creatures in accordance with the environment), with the number increasing the weaker the creatures are. A high-level caster could in theory summon 24 squirrels, badgers, wolves, moles, etc. with a single spell. "Conjure Woodland Beings" instead summons The Fair Folk.
Toys
- Sylvanian Families is a toy line that features a host of anthropomorphic families consisting of rabbits, bears, foxes and other common woodland animals.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy V: Featured as a level 1 ability called "Animals" or "Critt", a ranger can summon animals with various effects, from rabbits and squirrels to more formidable examples like wild boars and unicorns.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: In the fifth case, Queen Amara summons a deer, birds, a chipmunk, and a tiger before giving testimony.
- In the Pokémon games, most regions have at least one early-route forest where the majority of the Mons that appear are based on these sort of animals. They tend to be small, cute rodents (Rattata, Pikachu, Bidoof, etc.), songbirds (Pidgey, Spearow, Tailow), and the occasional hoofed mammal (Stantler, Deerling). The majority of them tend to be Normal-types.
- Shadow of the Colossus: When Mono wakes up in the end credits, numerous wild animals appear and visit her.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- The early installments revolved around Sonic stopping Dr. Robotnik from using woodland creatures to power his 'badniks'. These "Animal Friends" as they're called were Demoted to Extra as the games developed larger plots.
- In fact, most of the cast are woodland animals, with exceptions being Knuckles the Echidna, Blaze the Cat, Espio the Chameleon, and Vector the Crocodile.
Web Animation
- Happy Tree Friends: The cast mainly consists of forest animals - a rabbit, a moose, a chipmunk, a skunk, a squirrel, an anteater, a couple of beavers and raccoons, a mole, a porcupine, a deer, several bears, a marmot and a flying squirrel - along with a sea otter and a sheep. The show, however, is a gruesome subversion of what you'd expect.
- Natural Habitat Shorts is an Edutainment Show that teaches animal facts within a World of Funny Animals. The show's main setting as well as many of the animals fall into this.
Webcomics
- Housepets!: Despite the title, arcs occasionally shift focus from the housepets to the residents of the forest behind Babylon Gardens and their lower stake antics, featuring Predation Is Natural and Animal Religion among other themes. The cast contains all of the usual suspects; Magpies, deer, possums, raccoons, badgers, foxes, and the like.
Western Animation
- In the Adventure Time episode "Up A Tree", Finn is met by a porcupine and a squirrel, each of whom trying to stop him from climbing up a tree to retrieve a flying disc. He eventually finds out the animals are part of a creepy cult that keeps anything that winds up in the tree, shortly before being imprisoned by them. However, he manages to befriend the squirrel, who in turn helps him escape with the disc.
- American Dad!: The episode "Buck, Wild" involves Stan bringing Steve on an annual hunting trip, where the latter is ridden with guilt for orphaning two fawns and runs off to raise them himself. A year later, he rallies the deer and all the forest animals to fight back against Stan and the other hunters.
- Andy Panda: The short "Life Begins for Andy Panda" features typical forest animals, plus kangaroos and, of course, the titular panda, whose birth is the center of their attention.
- The Angry Beavers: The beaver brothers Daggett and Norbert and the supporting animal cast. Humans are portrayed more as dimwitted in this case.
- The Animals of Farthing Wood, as the title implies, follows the adventures of a band comprising most of the small wildlife common in British woods — a fox, a badger, a pair of hedgehogs, a pair of newts, assorted birds and rodents, and an adder. The series, however, goes with the Nature Is Not Nice interpretation and is full of Family-Unfriendly Violence.
- The Bluffers: The heroes are a squirrel, a mouse, an owl, a fox, a bear, a snake, a porcupine, an eagle (though he looks more like a buzzard), and a goose. There are also two rabbits who get billing in the credits, but almost never show up in the actual show.
- The Pixar short Burrow features a rabbit, moles, mice, hedgehogs, newts, frogs, beetles, chipmunks and a badger living as neighbors in an underground network of burrows.
- In Christopher The Christmas Tree, a group of woodland creatures take up residence in Christopher, making him feel not so bad about not being picked to be a Christmas tree. They include a deer, a raccoon, a rabbit, a squirrel, a chipmunk, a couple of mice, a couple of birds, a beaver, and yes, a flirty skunk. (And an owl, but he was there first.)
- Drawn Together: Princess Clara (a parody of the Princess Classic) has the ability to summon woodland creatures to join her when she sings a song. This is exploited in the episode "Requiem for a Reality Show", after half the cast is denied food privileges after losing a contest. Spanky and Wooldoor eventually resort to tricking Clara into singing her song again so they can hunt the gathering animals for food. She then finds out that her singing also reanimates the animals' cooked remains, and kills the last of the critters so he won't tell the others.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: A bunch of woodland critters shows up during a musical number in "If It Smells Like an Ed".
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- In "Vicky Loses Her Icky", Vicky is turned nice and summons many woodland creatures to help her clean Timmy's room. Unfortunately, she ends up reverting to her nasty self and drives away the animals with her shrieking.
- A bunch of these animals is briefly shown chasing after Crocker at the end of "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker".
- In "Squirrely Puffs" where Timmy's dad and mom lead competing camping trips for respective expies of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the latter (called the Creampuffs) are joined by singing woodland creatures. The Creampuffs eventually end up being trapped by a storm, and the animals refuse to stop singing, not to mention weaving poisonous berries into their hair; when they finally snap, the animals turn on them.
- In "Force of Nature", Timmy wishes that the animals living in a park were able to clean up the trash left by humans. The animals eventually become fed up with all the littering and seek revenge.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the episode, "Camp Keep a Good Mac Down", both Herriman and Madame Foster become one with nature during the Horrible Camping Trip; the former reverting to a feral state among wild rabbits and the latter forming her own army of animals (including the bear and bees that previously attacked the campsite). They go back to their normal ways by the end, with Herriman rejecting the rabbits when they ask for a place to stay. They manage to steal his wallet and head to the mall with it.
- Harvey Beaks: Much of the cast, including the titular protagonist, who is a bluebird. There are a few exceptions such as Fee and Foo, who are imps.
- Kissyfur: The animals live in a swamp rather than a forest, but are otherwise a fairly standard mix of bears, boars, rabbits, beavers, mice and chickens.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Fluttershy's talent and passion is caring for animals, and she lives in a house full of her animal friends — squirrels, white mice, rabbits, ferrets, ducks and colorful songbirds are the most commonly seen, but goats, tropical birds, chipmunks, hedgehogs, raccoons, owls, skunks and Harry the bear have all shown up. Notably, Fluttershy's woodland critter collection also include some creatures which don't appear in this category terribly often — there's at least one spider among them, and snakes and bats appear with some regularity. More exotic animals like the occasional monkey also appear.
- The ponies in general, with their whole "custodians of nature" schtick, deal with woodland creatures on a regular basis, especially when it's time to change the seasons (for example, they tell the animals when to hibernate and when to wake up). This is actually related to one of the things that scares the ponies about the Everfree Forest; forget the fact that it's home to dangerous mythological beasts, perfectly ordinary woodland creatures go about their woodland business without the ponies telling them to! It ain't right!
- The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog: The show provides an odd mix of non-sapient animals, talking animals and humanoid animals living together in a woodland town, offering nature lessons with a detective twist.
- Peace on Earth: Woodland creatures inherit the Earth once humans kill themselves off, building a far kinder society.
- The Powerpuff Girls: Parodied when one of the woodland critters accidentally becomes Bullet the Powerpuff Squirrel.
- The Raccoons: Deconstructed. At first it seems to be like this but in reality the tone of the series was more like a sitcom setting with some dramatic overtones.
- Screwball Squirrel (1944) seems like it's going to follow this trope at first with chirping birds and a cute squirrel collecting nuts in a basket, until Screwy appears on the scene and beats up the cute squirrel.
- South Park: Subverted in the episode "Woodland Critter Christmas", where the woodland critters are trying to raise the Antichrist. As characters in a story made up by Cartman, they show up again in the Imagination Land episodes, where they rape and kill things.
- Tex Avery, who was definitely not a fan of this trope, plays with it in the short Little 'Tinker, about a skunk looking for a mate and being constantly rejected.
- Tumble Leaf follows an all animal cast living in the titular forested island. Fig the fox and Stick the caterpillar fall under this trope, as do most of the other characters.
- Van Beuren Studios: The bird protagonists of A Little Bird Told Me, who live in a forest village.
- A few episodes of Wander over Yonder feature alien versions of woodland creatures. A notable example: in "The Breakfast", Wander feeds a group of these animals a loaf of bread he baked for a sleeping Sylvia. These same animals would later chase and attack Lord Hater when he tries to steal Sylvia's breakfast.
- We Bare Bears:
- Charlie the sasquatch frequently makes friends with forest animals, especially snakes.
- The Bear Trio themselves could count, living together in a cave just outside the forest. Although since their species (grizzly, panda and polar bear) are out of place in the show's California settingnote , they zigzag this trope.
- Winnie the Pooh: In the series, the "Living Toys" idea is much more ambiguous than in the books and movies, and Pooh and his friends largely appear as a mix of talking animals living and having adventures in an idyllic wood.
- The World of David the Gnome: Many episodes revolve around David helping local woodland creatures.
- Zip Zip revolves around a group of animals consisting of a fox, two wild boar siblings and a blackbird who grow tired of their tough wilderness life and seek refuge by living as domestic pets.
