Web Animation / Natural Habitat Shorts

Clockwise from top: Jason, Batrick, Albie, Mouth.

Natural Habitat Shorts is a TikTok-based Edutainment Show created by Brennan Brinkley, Nicole Low, and Tyler Kula. It teaches its viewers about animals and their behavior by showcasing "animals in human situations" — that is, how day-to-day life in a World of Funny Animals must be laden with Furry Reminder.

The series has become very popular on its native TikTok, and also has pages on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. They also have a fair amount of merchandise, including stickers, shirts, and plush toys.

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Natural Habitat Shorts contains examples of:

• Attending Your Own Funeral: Lisa ends up in a coffin while she was hibernating because she was mistakenly thought to be dead.
• Art Shift: For Christmas 2023, the stroke of midnight turns the short from cel-shaded 2D animation into static-model 3D animation.
  Michael: Kevin! Did you ask Santa to put us in a Rankin/Bass Christmas special?
• Bag of Holding: In "Airport", an opossum is asked by an airport security agent to empty her pockets for scanning. She then reaches into her pouch and pulls out her many, many babies.
• Bat Out of Hell: Averted; Batrick the bat is usually benevolent, and is the Series Mascot.
• Big Little Brother: In "Fast Fhood", the biggest and strongest of the three owlets is given his food first, leaving some scraps for the other two. It's then revealed at the very end that said big owl is the youngest in the family.
• Black Bead Eyes: Characters are drawn with these. This ends up Played for Laughs in "Open Mic", where Gregorio the frog has the Black Bead Eyes when acting anthromorphically (speaking in human speech and holding a guitar), but they turn into the more realistic frog eyes when he drops the guitar and does the passionate croaking actual frogs do.
• Bloodsucking Bats: Batrick seems to specifically be a vampire bat, as shorts like "Cranmas" and "Fine Dying" show him drinking blood.
• Bodily Fluid Blacklight Reveal: Platypi will naturally glow under blacklight, as this unfortunate bellhop found out.
  Chris the Platypus: What? Is there something on my face? [looks down at self] Why am I blue? Does everyone glow blue?
  Bellhop: [shakes head with horrified expression]
  Chris: What does blue mean?
  Bellhop: [Thousand-Yard Stare]
  Chris: [looks around at the various glowing blue stains in the room, horrified as he puts two and two together] WHAT DOES BLUE MEAN?!
• Brooklyn Rage: The rat in "GPS Rat" has a New York accent, likely playing off the idea that New York City is teeming with rats, as well as tying into how his attire and dialogue is reminiscent of a taxi driver.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Albie the rabbit never seems to catch a break. He gets his hands stuck in a mouth of a chipmunk and is stalked and harassed by said chipmunk. As well as getting scalded by hot coffee by Batrick hanging from the ceiling.
  • Lisa the hedgehog keeps ending up in unfortunate situations, from suffering balloon syndrome to being Buried Alive in a funeral because her hibernation was mistaken for death. It gets to the point where her catchphrase is nervously humming.
• Ceiling Cling: In "Happy Fall", Batrick is hanging upside-down (as bats tend to do) while drinking coffee. Because he's upside-down, the coffee spills out of his cup onto Albie, who's screaming in pain because the coffee is scalding him.
• Christmas Episode:
  • 2022 has "Cranmas", where the animals are all having Christmas dinner and Batrick brought "cranberry sauce" (which is actually blood).
  • 2023 has "A Natural Habitat 3D Christmas", which is rendered in a 3D art style reminiscent of Rankin-Bass Christmas specials.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Upon learning how Lois's lotion is made in "Frotion", a raccoon mother covers her kid's eyes so he doesn't have to look. Unfortunately, her hands were covered with the frog-produced lotion, making things even worse.
• Cowardly Lion: Lisa normally is a walking pincushion of nervousness, but she gets a brief moment of this on Halloween. When Batrick appears to have become a vampire, she's the one who tosses (a jar of) garlic at him. She then grabs a wooden spoon with intention to stake him - meaning, she was perfectly willing to get up close and personal with what she thought was an actual vampire. When Steve is taken to the hospital with rabies, she's still brandishing the spoon when Batrick is wheeled by on a stretcher, suggesting that she feels he still deserves a staking.
• Crossover: Did one with YouTube animator JavaDoodles in which Batrick listens to one of the animator's auto-tuned talking mugs (voiced in the video by Sarah Natochenny) go on about remembering wanting a time machine from Santa Claus for Christmas. As the mug talks, Batrick asks the star-nosed mole barista if the mug is supposed to talk and if he could still drink the hot cocoa from the mug, which he does after the mole just shrugs, causing the mug to scream.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Batrick in "Echolocation". He's a small and cute guy, but he has a very loud yell. And since he's a bat, he often uses that yell to find where things are through echolocation.
• Dead All Along: "Funeral for a Bird" depicts a crow coming across a group of other crows having a funeral and quipping "Looks like we got a murder over here!" After no one reacts to his joke, it's revealed that he's a ghost and the funeral is his own, hence why no one heard him. He then has a Delayed "Oh, Crap!" moment and elicits a "Crowstly Wail".
• Detachment Combat: "Tailed" has a gerbil thief detaching its own tail and using it to threaten the police.
• Disrupting the Theater: "Movie Theatre" features a geeky rabbit who whispers to his friend while watching a movie. The owl sitting in front of him is annoyed by this, and constantly turns his head around to give him a Death Glare.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Played for Laughs, then played straight when Batrick dresses as a proper vampire for Halloween. The others retaliate by splashing him with Albie's "holy water" and then tossing a jar of garlic at his forehead before Batrick insists it's just a costume. The others assume the garlic is proof that he really is a vampire, but Batrick points out that getting a jar thrown at your head is going to hurt, regardless of what's in it. Then he himself admits that the holy water really hurt and wonders if he is really is a vampire... but Albie admits it's just tap water for his costume. Turns out it's rabies, which causes hydrophobia in creatures afflicted by it.
• Excrement Statement: In "The Popcorn Incident", Johnson the binturong is embarrassed by his boss Andrew pointing out he smells like popcorn; he gets his revenge by defecating on him.
• Family Business: In "Family Business", a black-footed ferret named Andrew, here portrayed as the boss of a company, "fires" his four-month-old son from the family (as four months is the age at which black-footed ferrets are able to fend for themselves). This is a pun, as a group of ferrets is called a business.
• Feathered Fiend: In "Gull Gum", after an entire class of seagulls realize a young Batrick has gum, the teacher, after asking if Batrick has any to share to which the young bat proceeds to eat all of his gum in response, commands everyone to "seize him", to which all of Batrick's seagull classmates proceed to do.
• Fun T-Shirt: Lisa the hedgehog (who is always seen holding a balloon with her name on it) wears a T-shirt of herself holding a balloon and wearing a T-shirt of herself holding a balloon and wearing a...
• Furry Reminder: Practically runs on this trope. Every short is based around a certain animal and their behavior in the wild.
• Gratuitous Japanese: One of the raccoons to leave the handicap restroom is a raccoon dog, AKA a tanuki. As he leaves, he says, in Japanese, "Taco Tuesdays, am I right?"
• Halloween Cosplay: The crows in "Scared-Crow" are dressed up as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.
• Halloween Episode:
  • "Scared-Crow", where a crow dresses up as a scarecrow for a Halloween party and ends up scaring himself and his girlfriend.
  • "Mouth II", where the chipmunk from "Mouth" comes back to "haunt" Albie the rabbit cashier.
  • "Mouth III: Owlween", in which Albie accidentally pepper sprays a young owl he mistakes for the chipmunk, with the whole town burning his house down after his attempt to explain things... As it's later revealed the owl was faking his tears to turn everyone against Albie, as ordered by the chipmunk.
• Harmless Freezing: According to Nature Habitat Shorts, "Wood frogs can freeze solid in the winter for up to 8 months and then thaw in the spring unharmed". This shows up in the respective animation where the scarfless frog ends up freezing in place. Another frog just says "I'll see you in the spring when you thaw". The scarfless frog ends up with scarfless regret, though.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Downplayed. While the titular rat in "Gym Rat" is already wearing earbuds from the very beginning of the short (as she's working out at a gym, and most people listen to music while they work out), when the Jerk Jock skunks behind her get into a fight, she turns up her music to drown them out.
• Husky Russkie: The cuckoo who replaced Robert the cockatiel is enormous compared to his "brother" and he has a heavy Russian accent.
• Hope Spot: When Lisa is about to be Buried Alive in a funeral because everyone thought she was dead, one attendee asks the funeral to be stopped, to Lisa's relief... because she would've wanted to be cremated.
  Lisa: *Shrieks of fiery terror*
• I Ate WHAT?!: In "Cranmas", when Lisa the hedgehog is told that the "cranberry sauce" Batrick served at dinner was actually blood, she clearly looks horrified.
• Inflating Body Gag: Lisa swells up from lactose intolerance and slowly floats up like a balloon. Truth in Television as hedgehogs in real life cannot drink milk and often suffer from bloating.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: Predictably, "Funeral for a Bird" takes place on a rainy day.
• Jerk Jock: The two skunks in "Gym Rat" are both muscular "gym bro" types, and they're portrayed as very aggressive and quick to fight each other.
• Kill and Replace: Robert, the cuckoo bird replaced the actual cockatiel Robert. After his twin brother expresses concerns that Robert is going to hurt him, his dad brushes it off before tucking them both to bed. We then see Robert attempting to unscrew the top bunk while taunting his "brother".
  Robert:    More pancake for me   
• The Klutz: The titular squirrel in "Squirrel" keeps knocking things over with his tail.
• Latin Lover: Implied: Gregorio has a Hispanic name and successfully seduces a female frog in "Open Mic". They then engage in passionate kissing.
• Make-Out Kids: After Gregorio (a frog) seduces a female frog with his mating call in "Open Mic", the two of them make out in front of everyone at the cafe. They eventually get so intimate that everyone is grossed out and leaves- except for one gerbil, who's into it.
  Everyone: (groans in disgust and leaves)
  Gerbil: (beat) YEEEEEAAAUUUHH!!!
• Major Injury Underreaction: One short has Batrick suffering from rabies, yet he's still fully lucid and shows no signs of any pain. The only rabies symptoms he does display are frothing from the mouth and a fear of water.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Albie had a pair of unsettling encounters with a chipmunk named "Mouth". After the second incident during Halloween, with Mouth disguised as a ghost, he sprays the ghost with mace the Halloween later... only to learn it's actually a young owlet. Albie then attempts to explain himself to his concerned neighbors but the way he does comes out as horribly, horribly wrong. Like... "burn your house down" wrong.
• Mistaken for Romance: "Subway Creatures" has an otter hold hands with a gerbil while napping on the subway. An elderly bird sees them holding hands and mistakes them for a couple.
• National Animal Stereotypes: The Tanuki in "Handicacoon" only speaks Japanese.
• The Navigator: The titular rat in "GPS Rat". Because rats in Real Life have an amazing ability to remember where things are and locate them, this rat is used as a "GPS" by a weasel, giving him directions while he's driving.
• Nerdy Nasalness: The mole barista has a very nasal voice.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: The chipmunk character from "Mouth". He just wants food, but his insistence on storing everything in his mouth, lack of manners, and deep voice results in Albie becoming terrified of him. In fact, his next appearance, "Mouth II", is a Halloween Episode.
• No Poker Face: "Poker Face" shows the rat giggling and boggling (bulging his eyes in and out, something rats do when they're very happy) when he gets a good hand during a game of Texas hold 'em, prompting his opponents to fold. Despite this, the rat actually seems to be winning since he has more chips than everyone else.
• The Nose Knows: "Coffee" features a star-nosed mole (an animal that has very poor eyesight and uses its nose and the touch receptors on them to "see"). He works as a barista, and in order to ensure his customers get what they ordered, he'll press his nose up against them and sniff them.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Again, the star-nosed mole in "Coffee". All of his customers are grossed out by the way he presses his nose up to others and sniffs them.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We never see what kind of mess the raccoons made in the handicap stall, but it was horrible enough for Albie to make a sign of the cross.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: When Jason the ferret visits his prairie dog girlfriend's family in "Little Kiss on the Prairie", her father Gerald is hesitant to greet him with a kiss (as is typical of their species). He tries to just give him a handshake and a hug before his wife reminds him to give Jason a proper kiss, which he does in a drawn-out, clearly-not-wanting-to-do-it way.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: In "RIPossum", Jeremy the opossum claims his father is really good at playing dead. It then cuts to an opossum skeleton sitting on a chair, obviously meant to be his dad. Furthermore, his mother is shown to clearly be mourning her dead husband. And yet Jeremy is still convinced he's just pretending.
• Ominous Owl: The owl in "Movie Theatre". When he hears someone talking during a movie, he turns his head around 180 degrees to shoot him a Death Glare, and eventually carries him off to really get him to shut up.
• Parental Favoritism: The father owl in "Fast Fhood" gives his biggest and strongest child their food first, and the other two are left to eat whatever he has left over. This is a reference to how owls will always feed their strongest baby first.
• Percussive Maintenance: "Otter Tools" shows an otter trying to fix his car engine by hitting it with a rock. It doesn't work, and the engine bursts into flames.
• Plant Hair: The two sloths in "Sloth and Lust" have what looks like colored hair, but is actually algae growing on their hairs.
• Platonic Kissing: In "Little Kiss on the Prairie", we meet a prairie dog family who greets each other, and their guests, by kissing them on the lips. This is how prairie dogs greet each other in Real Life.
• Playing Possum: "RIPossum" focuses on opossums and their tendency to play dead. It features an opossum named Jeremy who "dies" in front of his friend Batrick to prank him. After he realizes it's a prank and congratulates Jeremy on how convincing he is, Jeremy says "If you think I'm good, you should see my dad!" It then pans over to the corpse of his dad, whom Jeremy is convinced is just pretending to be dead.
• Pokémon Speak: Mouth the chipmunk gets his name because the only word he ever says is "mouth."
• Pool Episode: "Water Park", which features a beaver at a water park who can't stand the sound of the lazy river (which is actually why beavers in Real Life make dams; they hate the sound of running water). He then tries to dam it up with inner tubes, and the lifeguards reprimand him for it.
• Potty Emergency: "Handicacoon" features a rabbit with a broken leg waiting outside the handicap stall. Apparently, it's being used by a large group of raccoons (and one Tanuki), who were all using it at the same time.
• Punny Name: In "Gull Gum", the bat's name is revealed to be "Batrick".
• Puzzling Platypus: In "Blue Prints", a platypus named Chris glows during a UV light inspection, something even Chris himself doesn't understand.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: The star-nosed mole refuses to help Lisa when she suffers balloon syndrome because she didn't tip better.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: In "Eulisagy", Lisa is about to be Buried Alive in a funeral because everyone thought she was dead, since hedgehogs lower their heart rate and body temperature when they hibernate.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Every single character! Due to this series's art style, every single animal ends up looking adorable, even those that aren't very cute in real life.
• Rule of Funny: Explicitly mentioned in "Fast Fhood". Owls typically feed their strongest baby first, but in practice that's usually the oldest chick; the Big Little Brother gag is improbable, but much funnier.
• Sapient Fur Trade: In "Frotion", Lois the rabbit, who owns a beauty store, is asked what ingredients are in the lotion her store sells. Lois then reveals that she makes it with the help of a waxy monkey frog (a species that secretes a waxy substance from its body that acts as a natural sunscreen and moisturizer) named Jerry, who sits in a tub all day and whose secretions are collected and bottled up to make lotion. It's an unglamorous job, but at least Jerry gets paid.
• Screaming Plane Baby: In "Airport", a black-footed ferret has to endure a plane ride where the only two passengers that aren't screaming opossum babies are him and the mother opossum. To make matters worse, the baby seated behind him kicks his seat non-stop.
• Serenade Your Lover: "Open Mic" has a Furry Reminder variation, in which Gregorio the frog goes up on stage to sing a song for his girlfriend, and said "song" ends up being a long croak (which is used by frogs to attract mates).
• Shaped Like Itself: Lisa wears a costume of herself for Halloween, with the fake head having a mouth that shows her actual face.
• Shower of Angst: The platypus bellhop, Chris, in "Blue Prints", after (he thinks) he figures out what glowing blue under a blacklight means, throws himself in the shower.
  Chris: (illuminated sobbing)
• Shown Their Work: Descriptions in each short talk about the context of a featured animal. For example, Batrick screaming in the grocery store, just to find acorns for a customer, is based on how real bats use echolocation (or sonar).
• Sluggish Sloths: Inverted in "Sloth and Lust". As soon as the female sloth screams, a bunch of male sloths barge into her house at breakneck speed. This is because the short is based on three-toed sloths, and they move very quickly when angry or excited.
• Small Taxonomy Pools: The show sometimes averts this by depicting more obscure animals. For instance, the skunks in "Gym Rat" are spotted skunks, rather than the more commonly seen striped ones.
• Smelly Skunk: The skunks in "Gym Rat", of course. Once one of them sprays the other, they both retch at their own scent.
• Stealth Pun: The deceased crow in "Funeral For A Bird" is named Russell.
• Stock Animal Diet:
  • The chipmunk's groceries in "Mouth" consist entirely of nuts.
  • Batrick is frequently shown drinking blood.
  • The rat in "GPS Rat" is shown to be very fond of cheese.
• Strip Poker: The rat mistakenly thinks he's playing this with the skunks, but for some reason he removes his own clothes even though he just won a hand. He's quite disappointed when he finds out they're not playing strip poker. Apparently, this is a regular thing, since one of the skunks says he always does this.
• Subways Suck: In "Subway Creatures", an otter falls asleep on the subway and grabs onto a gerbil's hand (as in Real Life, otters hold hands while sleeping so they don't drift away). The problem arises when the gerbil has to get off the subway and can't escape the otter's iron grip.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The chipmunk's face in "Mouth" when he insists on his groceries being put into his mouth (instead of in a bag).
• That Came Out Wrong: After accidentally pepper spraying a young owl child, Albie's desperate attempt to explain his awkward history with the chipmunk in "Mouth III: Owlween" leads to the horrified civilians burning his house down.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Batrick has died at least twice.
  • One episode has him, a vampire bat, give up blood. He collapses in the middle of date after rejecting some from a waiter.
  • One Halloween Episode has him suffering from rabies to the point he hypersalivates and has an urge to bite people, meaning he was already more-or-less doomed at that point.
• Tickle Torture: To obtain information from a rat in "Tickle Mobster", a member of The Mafia reaches towards him (presumably to attack) but the rat assumes he's going to tickle him and starts preemptively laughing. Apparently, rats are very ticklish.
• Toilet Horror: Whatever the raccoons did to the bathroom stall in "Handicacoon" was not pretty, since it prompts Albie to cross himself before he ventures inside.
• Toilet Humour: "The Popcorn Incident" has this as the punchline. To recap, Johnson the binturong gets offended by Andrew the ferret's remark that he smells like popcorn. In the next scene, Johnson winds up to take a hot deuce on Andrew from the ceiling of the latter's office. One Smash Cut later, Andrew's tiredly letting some other employees know that he let Johnson go.
• Too Kinky to Torture: As seen under Tickle Torture, the GPS rat weirds out his kidnappers with his proclivities, even pointing out that they weren't the ones who tied him up.
• Unsound Effect: Being TikTok videos, these shorts have subtitles. This comes up in a video where, after a frog gets frozen, the subtitles say "*scarfless regret*".
• Valentine's Day Episode: "Sloth and Lust", based on the fact that female three-toed sloths scream to attract mates. It was first uploaded to YouTube on February 8, 2024.
• Vegetarian Vampire: Deconstructed in "Fine Dying". Batrick attempts to abstain from drinking blood, and he ends up dropping dead in the middle of a date (because blood is a vampire bat's only source of food).
• Visual Pun: "Gym Rat" has two spotted skunks that offer to spot the titular rat during her workout.
• Vocal Dissonance:
  • The chipmunk from "Mouth" has a very deep voice that does not fit his small size.
  • The strongest of the baby owls has an unnaturally deep voice.
• The Voiceless: Some shorts indicate that Lisa the hedgehog can talk, but the viewer never sees her do so. At most, she makes a humming sound whenever something bad happens.
  • A couple shorts show her thinking in images which are superimposed on the screen, suggesting that while she can use language it's not her natural way of processing the world.
• Woodland Creatures: The majority of the animals tend to be these.
• You Dirty Rat!: The rat in "GPS Rat" wears dirty clothes and lives in a glovebox filled with trash.

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