History Main / FantasticFaunaCounterpart

* ''Franchise/WalkingWithDinosaurs'': The franchise uses this to some extent when characterizing prehistoric animals.

* The numerous times anteaters have evolved is an excellent example of how convergent evolution works: many unrelated mammals have independently evolved narrow snouts, powerful curved claws and long sticky tongues for feeding on ants and termites and breaking into their hives: these include the true anteaters of South America (distant relatives of sloths), the aardvarks of Africa (a distant relative of elephants and manatees), the pangolins of Asia (scaly mammals thought to be related to ''carnivorans'' more than anything else), the echidnas of Australia (egg-laying monotremes), and the numbats (marsupials). The sloth bears of India also evolved some anteater-like traits (large curved claws to break anthills, elongated snouts), though they are not ''as'' specialized as the others, and still complement their diet with more typical bear-like food like fruit, honey and carrion.
* The most common large, herding plains herbivores in Africa are antelopes. In Australia, however, this niche is instead filled by ''kangaroos''. Antelopes and kangaroos also fill similar niches to deer in wooded environments, and kangaroos were often compared to deer in the journals of the first Europeans to visit Australia.
* The aye-aye lemur is in a way a Madagascan equivalent of a woodpecker, as it bores through bark with its sharp incisors to feed on grubs and insects that tunnel in the wood.
* The mongoose can be seen as this to the weasel: both are long-bodied small predators adapted to chasing small prey down their burrows. However, they belong to completely different branches of the carnivoran family tree: while weasels are more closely related to dogs, mongooses are more closely related to ''cats''.
* Hummingbirds fill the niche of flying nectar-feeders in the American continent, which is filled by large insects, primarily moths, in other parts of the world. In the deserts of North America, certain kinds of bat fill this role instead, and have developed long, sticky tongues very similar to a hummingbird's to feed on nectar.
* Baboons, mandrills and drills fill a similar niche as wolves and other canids, and are essentially the primate equivalent of wolves. This is especially apparent with their skull shape, which is essentially a primate skull stretched out into a caniform shape.
* Cranes, storks, and herons are three distinct groups of birds that all evolved long legs, necks and bills due to their similar habitat and diet (wading birds living in wetlands, mostly eating small vertebrates). Each family is more closely related to certain smaller waterbirds than to one another -- cranes to crakes and coots, storks to boobies and cormorants, and herons to ibises and pelicans.
* With jaguars native to the Americas, tigers native to Asia, and lions native to Africa, and all being the feline apex predators of their respective continents, they can be seen as Fantastic Fauna Counterparts/Palette Swaps of each other.
* Certain prehistoric animals filled niches that modern animals now occupy:
** A notable case are the pterosaurs, who convergently evolved many similarities with birds of today, such as ones that sieved food from water like a flamingo, or ones with throat pouches like pelicans for catching fish. The azdarchids, a group of very large pterosaurs adapted for moving around on land, filled a niche very similar to that now held by cranes, storks and herons, just scaled up to the size of a giraffe.
** Chalicotheres were prehistoric, knuckle-walking, odd-toed ungulates that were essentially horses trying to be gorillas (or [[{{Pun}} from a certain perspective]], a ''literal'' VideoGame/DonkeyKong). They also filled the same ecological niche in the Old World as giant ground sloths did in the New World, being large, slow-moving, knuckle-walking herbivores with big claws on their front limbs.
** The long-necked, long-legged ''Paraceratherium'' was essentially a rhino adapted to fill the niche of the sauropod dinosaurs, and giraffes later adopted many of these same traits.
** Aquatic vertebrates have repeatedly developed a number of similar traits -- in particular, sharks, ichthyosaurs, and dolphins are habitually used in science textbooks to show convergent evolution. Similarly, the elongated primitive whale ''Basilosaurus'' was essentially a mammalian mosasaur.
** ''Prionosuchus'', a large Triassic amphibian, greatly resembled a crocodile and likely filled their niche as aquatic ambush hunters ages before the true crocodiles evolved.
** Many Mesozoic mammals and protomammals are very similar to modern species. Examples include the aquatic ''Castorocauda'' that had a paddle-like tail similar to a beaver, the gliding ''Volaticotherium'' that glided like a flying squirrel, or the stocky dinosaur-eating ''Repenomamus'' that are similar to honey badgers of today.
** The shape of ''Tyrannosaurus'' skulls and close relatives indicate that it was something of a precursor for all modern land predators, with it being one of the earliest predators to have binocular vision, which was so good that it even surpassed that of modern hawks. In a way, that makes all modern carnivores (canids, bears, and felids) [[FantasticFaunaCounterpart FantasticFaunaCounterparts]] of the tyrannosaurs, who could be considered a prototype of modern land predators.

* African wild dogs can be seen as an African equivalent to gray wolves[[note]]though there actually ''is'' a wolf native to Africa, but it is morphologically more similar to a jackal, to the point that it was mistaken as one before being reclassified[[/note]]. They are both intelligent social canines with rivalries with big cats (mountain lions for wolves, lions for African wild dogs.) They have similarities in pack structure, with packs being centered around a monogamous pair, and older offspring either dispersing or staying to help raise younger siblings. African wild dogs hunt antelope, which are superficially similar to the deer wolves hunt. You can also argue that spotted hyenas have some similarities to wolves, especially the extinct dire wolf, although they are not actually canines.
** Mammalian carnivores resembling dogs have evolved so many times in the fossil record that it probably deserves a term like carcinization (caninization?), with mesonychids (carnivorous ungulates), creodonts (primitive mammal carnivores), Tasmanian tigers (marsupials), amphicyonids (the "bear dogs") and hyenas both modern and extinct being examples of animals that assumed a form uncannily similar to true canines. Even baboons and mandrills have a similar skull shape. Even the gorgonopsids and therocephalians, primitive mammal-relatives (therapsids) from before the time of the dinosaurs, were rather dog-like in size and body proportions.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation Carcinisation]] is a very specific convergent evolution phenomenon where crustaceans just keep taking on crab-like shapes, whether true crabs or not.
* Due to them being the only big cats that live in social groups, lions are basically the feline equivalent of wolves.
* It's been theorized that it's possible for some alien life to look superficially similar to Earth life because of convergent evolution. We already see this on Earth with some animal species looking similar to other species they are not closely related to. StarfishAliens are also probably a thing also. It's not a either/or thing.

* ''Film/{{Avatar}}'': Pandora's wildlife has a number of species that have a clear counterpart on Earth. The Na'vi are humans, of course, but the thanator is essentially a giant panther, the titanothere is a rhinoceros, the prolemuris are monkeys, the direhorses are [[HorseOfADifferentColor horses]], etc. The extended cut also features sturmbeest, which for all intents and purposes are buffalo (even being hunted by the Na'vi on horseback to further their resemblance to Native American hunters).

* Puffle creatures in ''VideoGame/ClubPenguin'' are puffles that are usually based on a real-life animal. Examples include dog puffles, cat puffles, bunny puffles, and even dinosaur puffles.

* An interesting variant in ''VideoGame/TheEternalCylinder'', where the Trebhum's planet is filled with bizarre StarfishAliens unlike anything seen on Earth, and yet many wildlife behave similarly to terran wildlife. Examples include the Onkifurt, a LivingGasbag that broods in nests and hunts from the air like a bird of prey, the BellyMouth Omnogrom that is a large woodland omnivore similar to a bear, and the insectoid Hophopop that as a small jumping grazer is similar to rabbits and hares.
* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'': ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast A Link to the Past]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkBetweenWorlds A Link Between Worlds]]'' have a number of creatures in the Dark World and Lorule that take the place of more familiar and mundane beings in Hyrule, typically moving and attacking in the same way but with more alien and monstrous appearances. For instance, the crow enemies encountered in Hyrule are replaced by Dactos, small {{Ptero Soarer}}s, while large bats common in Hyrulean dungeons are replaced by Chasupas, giant eyeballs with bat wings. This also occurs for Hyrulean monsters; the octopus-like Octoroks, for instance, are replaced by the more alien-looking, antennaed Slaroks, while the fishlike Zora are replaced the cyclopean Ku.

* Puffle creatures in VideoGame/ClubPenguin are puffles that are usually based on a real-life animal. Examples include dog puffles, cat puffles, bunny puffles, and even dinosaur puffles.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'''s fauna is a combination of real-world animals (penguins, octopi) and MixAndMatchCritters made from real-life animals. The latter often stands in for their real-world counterparts -- turtleducks (ducks with turtle shells) inhabit ponds, polar bear dogs are fearsome predators, et cetera. In one scene, Team Avatar is very confused that the Earth King's [[CoolPet pet bear]] is a regular bear and ''not'' a Mix-and-Match Critter.

Common in fantasy and science fiction as well as in SpeculativeBiology. Specific variants include AllAnimalsAreDogs, AllFlyersAreBirds, HorseOfADifferentColor, SeahorseSteed, and TRexpy. When these are counterparts to livestock specifically, this will likely overlap with FantasticLivestock; when they're vermin, it will instead overlap with FantasticVermin. If the animals are even ''named'' after their real-world counterparts, that's CallASmeerpARabbit. Compare AnimalisticAbomination, where an EldritchAbomination shows resemblance to a mundane animal; CallARabbitASmeerp, where the fantastic species is identical to the mundane species apart from its name and small cosmetic differences; and InformedSpecies, when an animal is intended to be a mundane species but doesn't look much like it. More often than not, these will be MixAndMatchCritters. Might be subject to BinomiumRidiculus if the writer wants to be [[FantasticScience scientific about it]]. Also compare FantasyCounterpartCulture and FantasyCounterpartReligion, where fictional cultures and religions replace real-life ones in a similar manner.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rango}}'' takes place in a MouseWorld inhabited by FunnyAnimals, but some species, rather than being anthropomorphic, take the place of domestic animals. Roadrunners are the counterparts to [[HorseOfADifferentColor horses]], and [[SeldomSeenSpecies javelinas]] (small wild pigs) are draft beasts filling the role of oxen. Then it becomes weirder when one background character, a blacksmith, is an ''anthropomorphic'' javelina...

* Among the kroot's bestial offshoots, kroot hounds are essentially alien dogs, krootoxes are alien apes, and knarlocs are alien theropods -- the great knarloc, in particular, is a straightforward TRexpy.
* The grox is a 5-meter-long extraterrestrial reptile-like animal whose highly aggressive nature is made up for by its extreme value as livestock (very delicious and nutritious meat, high environmental adaptability, [[ExtremeOmnivore extreme omnivory]]), such that it's very widespread across the myriad worlds of Imperium, taking the role that cattle do in real life.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Among the kroot's bestial offshoots, kroot hounds are essentially alien dogs, krootoxes are alien apes, and knarlocs are alien theropods -- the great knarloc, in particular, is a straightforward TRexpy.

* ''Fanfic/PrehistoricParkReimagined'': Many of the prehistoric animals take on behaviors, environmental roles, and niches similar to many modern day animals, with several larger herbivorous dinosaurs taking on roles similar to elephants and rhinos, dromaeosaurs and other raptors behaving similarly to jackals and wolves, the smilodon populator behaving a lot like lions, some prehistoric carnivorous fish like ''Dunkleosteus'' and ''Onychodus'' behaving similarly to sharks and eels, and even temnospondyls and pelycosaurs behaving similarly to crocodilians and monitor lizards.

** ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'': The European species of ''Iguanodon'' is given zebra stripes, and makes a zebra-like whinny at one point. ''Utahraptor'', a fast and stealthy predator, is given a cheetah-like coloration with black dots on a yellow base, complete with tear stripes. ''Anurognathus'' is treated as the Jurassic equivalent of tickbirds, flying on the bodies of sauropods and hunting insects on their skin[[note]][[ScienceMarchesOn Now it's believed to be]] much more like the counterpart of a bat, a small nocturnal flying predator covered in fur-like pycnofibres[[/note]].

** The shape of ''Tyrannosaurus'' skulls and close relatives indicate that it was something of a precusor for all modern land predators, with it being one of the earliest predators to have binocular vision, which was so good that it even surpassed that of modern hawks. In a way, that makes all modern carnivores (canids, bears, and felids) [[FantasticFaunaCounterpart FantasticFaunaCounterparts]] of the tyrannosaurs, who could be considered a prototype of modern predators.

** Mammalian carnivores resembling dogs have evolved so many times in the fossil record that it probably deserves a term like carcinization (caninization?), with mesonychids (carnivorous ungulates), creodonts (primitive mammal carnivores), Tasmanian tigers (marsupials), amphicyonids (the "bear dogs") and hyenas both modern and extinct being examples of animals that assumed a form uncannily similar to true canines. Even the gorgonopsids and therocephalians, primitive mammal-relatives (therapsids) from before the time of the dinosaurs, were rather dog-like in size and body proportions.

* The shape of ''Tyrannosaurus'' skulls and close relatives indicate that it was something of a precusor for all modern land predators, with it being one of the earliest predators to have binocular vision, which was so good that it even surpassed that of modern hawks. In a way, that makes all modern carnivores (canids, bears, and felids) [[FantasticFaunaCounterpart FantasticFaunaCounterparts]] of the tyrannosaurs, who could be considered a prototype of modern predators.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'': ** The descendants of hamsters filling every concievable niche on a terraformed, seeded ''Serina''-like planet, such as the grazing ungulopes filling the niches of deer and gazelles, the giant aquatic seavers filling the niches of baleen whales, the predatory carnohams filling the niches of big cats and bears, and flying ratbats filling the niches of birds and bats, with one flightless ratbat group, the blubbats, filling the niche of penguins and polar bears and the scaly, near-ectothermic rattiles filling the niche of many different types of lizards and even tortoises. The oceans in the meantime are devoid of fish, and thus shrish, descendants of krill, fill the niches of various fish such as sardines, sharks, eels, stingrays and flounder.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'' has the descendants of hamsters filling every concievable niche on a terraformed, seeded ''Serina''-like planet, such as the grazing ungulopes filling the niches of deer and gazelles, the giant aquatic seavers filling the niches of baleen whales, the predatory carnohams filling the niches of big cats and bears, and flying ratbats filling the niches of birds and bats, with one flightless ratbat group, the blubbats, filling the niche of penguins and polar bears and the scaly, near-ectothermic rattiles filling the niche of many different types of lizards and even tortoises. The oceans in the meantime are devoid of fish, and thus shrish, descendants of krill, fill the niches of various fish such as sardines, sharks, eels, stingrays and flounder.

* While this is common all around [[VideoGame/TheElderScrolls Tamriel]], this trope is exemplified in [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Vvardenfell]], where most of the wildlife is some variety of either ArmlessBiped or BigCreepyCrawlies, with Nix-Hounds, Kagouti, and Alit replacing dogs, wolves, and other predators, Nix-Oxen, Guar, Kwama, and Netches replacing livestock, and Silt Striders acting as beasts of burden, similar to elephants.

Common in fantasy and science fiction as well as in SpeculativeBiology. Specific variants include AllAnimalsAreDogs, AllFlyersAreBirds, HorseOfADifferentColor, SeahorseSteed, and TRexpy. When these are counterparts to pest animals specifically, this will likely overlap with FantasticVermin. If the animals are even ''named'' after their real-world counterparts, that's CallASmeerpARabbit. Compare AnimalisticAbomination, where an EldritchAbomination shows resemblance to a mundane animal; CallARabbitASmeerp, where the fantastic species is identical to the mundane species apart from its name and small cosmetic differences; and InformedSpecies, when an animal is intended to be a mundane species but doesn't look much like it. More often than not, these will be MixAndMatchCritters. Might be subject to BinomiumRidiculus if the writer wants to be [[FantasticScience scientific about it]]. Also compare FantasyCounterpartCulture and FantasyCounterpartReligion, where fictional cultures and religions replace real-life ones in a similar manner.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': Illithidae, animal-minded aberrations related to illithids in the same manner in which common mammals are related to humans, often resemble, and occupy ecological niches largely equivalent to, more familiar animals. Cessirids look and act like much like wolves, kigrids fill niches equivalent to those of aggressive omnivores and scavengers such as boars, hyenas and bears, and saltors parallel near-human apes. Embracs are the only exception, as the closest analogy to their niche would be a predatory animal that acts like a carnivorous plant.

To qualify for this trope, it is not a requirement for ''every'' species in the setting to have a real-world counterpart. For example, the setting can have giant monsters or magical beasts which, naturally, don't have any real-life equivalent. Regular, mundane animals can also appear in the setting (even if they might have [[CallARabbitASmeerp different names]]). As long as there is at least one species that plays the role of an obviously different real-life species, it counts - but of course, the more such species there are, the better. If the only fantastic species like this is the counterpart to a [[AllAnimalsAreDogs dog]] or a [[HorseOfADifferentColor horse]], add the example to the respective subtropes instead.

Common in fantasy and science fiction as well as in SpeculativeBiology. Specific variants include AllAnimalsAreDogs, AllFlyersAreBirds, SeahorseSteed, and HorseOfADifferentColor. When these are counterparts to pest animals specifically, this will likely overlap with FantasticVermin. If the animals are even ''named'' after their real-world counterparts, that's CallASmeerpARabbit. Compare AnimalisticAbomination, where an EldritchAbomination shows resemblance to a mundane animal; CallARabbitASmeerp, where the fantastic species is identical to the mundane species apart from its name and small cosmetic differences; and InformedSpecies, when an animal is intended to be a mundane species but doesn't look much like it. More often than not, these will be MixAndMatchCritters. Might be subject to BinomiumRidiculus if the writer wants to be [[FantasticScience scientific about it]]. Also compare FantasyCounterpartCulture and FantasyCounterpartReligion, where fictional cultures and religions replace real-life ones in a similar manner.

* Cranes, storks, and herons are three distinct groups of birds that all evolved long legs, necks and bills due to their similar habitat and diet (wading birds living in wetlands, mostly eating small vertebrates). Each family is more closely related to certain smaller waterbirds than to one another - cranes to crakes and coots, storks to boobies and cormorants, and herons to ibises and pelicans.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rango}}'' takes place in a MouseWorld inhabited by {{Civilized Animal}}s, but some species, rather than being anthropomorphic, take the place of domestic animals. Roadrunners are the counterparts to [[HorseOfADifferentColor horses]], and [[SeldomSeenSpecies javelinas]] (small wild pigs) are draft beasts filling the role of oxen. Then it becomes weirder when one background character, a blacksmith, is an ''anthropomorphic'' javelina...