Talking Animal



"''"Be afraid. ''Be very afraid. ''Be bloody terrified. After all, you've just entered the household of the Happy Talking Spiders.""

- from a Walkthrough for Exile III

Many cartoons have them—some animation companies have made their entire core casts out of them. Very simply, these are animals who talk. They are a lot better at it than the Speech-Impaired Animal. They can easily hold down a conversation with human members of the cast. It's not like every human Speaks Fluent Animal either; the animals themselves are able to talk and that's just the way it is.

Despite their ability to speak, they are still animals in almost every other way, particularly when it comes to instincts, priorities and motivations. They very rarely wear clothes, and they are often vocally proud of the fact they aren't human. They may even choose to talk to no one but a single human, who typically finds this very disturbing. They may even break the Fourth Wall and talk only to the viewer.

A Talking Animal is different from:
 * A Civilized Animal: who is an animal that shows some form of civilized manner and generally has half the mannerisms of a human, but otherwise occupy their species's natural role and have the basic body shape of their species.
 * A Funny Animal: who has more than half, most, or almost all of the mannerisms of a human being, but still have the basic body shape of their species.
 * A Petting Zoo Person: who is an animal that has almost all, if not all, of the mannerisms of a human being and actually has a human body frame.

A good comparison: Ralph the mouse (from The Mouse and the Motorcycle) is a Talking Animal; he lives in a mousehole, dodges cats, and runs around naked (save for his fur), yet he enjoys motorcycles and regularly talks to the human boy Keith. Mickey Mouse is a Funny Animal; he lives in a house, drives a car, wears clothing, and sprays his garden with pesticides (think about that for a second).

Like many Speech-Impaired Animals and Nearly-Normal Animals, many Talking Animals lack hands and walk on all fours, negating the possibility of performing many human tasks and behaviors. A few examples are bipedal even if their species isn't naturally so. However, when required by a joke, the Talking Animal can sometimes act like the more anthropomorphic Civilized Animal or Funny Animal.

Since these are otherwise normal animals who are able to talk, the issues of Furry Confusion don't usually come up. The issue of What Measure Is a Non-Human?, however, is far more likely to affect a Talking Animal than a Funny Animal. That said, Talking Animals are likely to voice just what they think about humans...

The Fairy Tale is more likely to feature a talking animal than a fairy. (Although they do often turn out to be humans under a curse. Or even ghosts.)

Lots of verbal jokes involve talking animals, with the humour usually deriving from a trait of that animal or a pun based on the word for the animal. A common subversion of these jokes is to replace the punchline with something along the lines of "Holy crap, a talking horse!"

Fun fact: As ridiculous as it sounds, there are some books like Charlotte's Web that were banned in some areas of the U.S. because they had talking animals in them.

Many Weasel Mascots, Non-Human Sidekicks, and Team Pets are Talking Animals. Talking birds are a separate subtrope. Compare Intellectual Animal, Sapient Steed, and Uplifted Animal. For the next step "up" in the latter, see Partially-Civilized Animal, Civilized Animal, and Mouse World. See also Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism.

Compare Animal Talk. Contrast Pantomime Animal.

Advertising

 * Many GEICO commercials have a talking gecko with a British accent, who also serves as a mascot for GEICO.
 * A 2000s commercial for Connect Four has a group of animals watching a boy and girl playing the game and bragging them to do it again.
 * A Rozerem commercial has a talking beaver sitting next to Abraham Lincoln at the table.
 * There is also a commercial for Tidy Cats with talking cats.
 * Inverted in one of ESPN's Winter X Games XV commercials of 2011, in which two mule deer are "talking" with subtitles.
 * Played straight and played with in a series of commercials for Budweiser. First there were those three frogs "Bud." "Weis." "Er."), then along came two chameleons, one of which wanted to replace the frogs. To that end, the chameleon hired a ferret who was The Unintelligible.
 * In one U.S. anti-drug Public Service Announcement, a young girl's dog talks to her and asks her to give up marijuana. The Narm results from the fact that if your dog is talking to you than either, A.) You have some serious mental health issues, or B.) That's not marijuana you took, but LSD. In either case, marijuana is not the problem.
 * Many cereal mascots, like Toucan Sam, the Honeynut Cheerios Bee, and the Trix Rabbit; guys like Sugar Bear and Tony the Tiger cross over into Funny Animals.

Anime and Manga

 * Kimba the White Lion, anyone? Not to mention that they literally all speak to humans! And they learn the dub language in like 5 seconds!
 * Meowth of the Team Rocket trio from Pokémon. The anime shows through flashbacks just how hard it was for him to learn to say something other than "Meowth", which other members of his species say. One could consider Meowth some manner of prodigy, as he is also capable of translating "Pokémon" to human language from species of Pokémon other than his own.
 * There is also an Alternate Universe where all the Mons are able to speak like humans, namely the one depicted in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. It's likely a case of the Translation Convention, since there are no humans in the Mystery Dungeon games save the protagonist(s). Even then, one only expresses surprise at being able to understand the other Pokémon at the beginning of the original game. The protagonist of the sequel worked with Pokémon before his transformation.
 * Don't forget Mewtwo. Or Slowking and Lugia. Or Jirachi, or Unown!Entei, or Arceus or Zorua, or...screw it, let's just go with "any Pokémon that can use telepathy."
 * In the Pokemon universe, all Pokemon can understand each other. So it isn't anything special on Meowth's part when he translates from Pokemon to human language because, as a Pokemon, he automatically understands what any other Pokemon is saying, regardless of species. It is shown many times, for example, one Pokemon of one species trying to convince another Pokemon of a different species that these humans are friends and those humans are bad and things like that.
 * Bizarrely, only one character (a random trainer) is ever shown to be impressed by Meowth's ability to speak like a human and even tried to capture Meowth.
 * Animals in the Magical Kingdom can talk in Himechan no Ribon such as having birds as messengers.
 * Chopper from One Piece. He's a reindeer that can not only talk to humans, but other animals as well. Of course, this is because he had eaten a devil's fruit which gives him this ability. There's also Pappug, a starfish who learned to talk because of a pun related to the pronunciation of "I'm a human" (hito desu) and "starfish" (hitode). Trafalgar Law also has talking polar bear, Bepo, on his crew, though we're not sure what his deal is yet. Recently, a talking lion named Pekoms has been introduced, but how he is able to talk is as much of a mystery as with Bepo.
 * The entire cast of Mori no Ando, considering they know which words humans would use and what words animals would use.
 * Luna, Artemis and Diana from Sailor Moon. In one of the Sailor Moon films (Sailor Moon S: The Movie) Luna becomes human through magic.
 * This is slightly different in the original manga. While the first time Luna is changed into a human is presented in the same way as it is on screen, later it is established that all three of the feline characters can take on human form at times of great crisis, because they are actually aliens. A villain from their home planet is presented as being a Human Alien at all times. Why the trio is limited to times of crisis is unknown. Or why only they have the Crescent marks on their forehead that when damaged turns them into ordinary cats. Or why Diana keeps her tail in human form but her parents don't.
 * Fuji, Yankumi's dog in Gokusen, is a slight subversion of this trope—he runs through an internal monologue and has surprisingly human thought processes, but he's actually making strange dog sounds and the other characters in the show don't understand him.
 * He also walks upright and wears a jacket. Nobody notices this.
 * Teika Midarezaki from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, who is a talking lion. He's very proud of this.
 * Generally, Wolf's Rain can be considered this. Telepathy or not, they can verbally communicate with humans and this is how the majority would describe them anyway. Not only can the eponymous wolves speak telepathically, they use illusions to disguise themselves as humans. When they fight, the illusions are understandably dropped and they are very clearly wolves.
 * Every dog in Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin and its sequel, Ginga Densetsu Weed.
 * Jillas the fox and Pokota, the, um... critter from The Slayers.
 * Shamisen, Kyon's cat in Suzumiya Haruhi, for a short time. Of course, normal cats don't talk and this is all Haruhi's fault.
 * Chamo from Mahou Sensei Negima! it's heavily implied that he was a mage that broke the laws and is being punished by being trapped in an animal form.
 * Muta in The Cat Returns. Although he does begin to sway toward being a Funny Animal when at the Cat Bureau, and also in the Kingdom of Cats.
 * Clara (a cat) and Poipoider (a porpoise) in Mars Daybreak. Poipoider's ability to speak stems from translators built into the Powered Armor he uses to walk on land, but Clara is able to understand him even outside of it.
 * Happy and Charle from Fairy Tail are two talking cats..
 * Emusa, the pink alien bunny thing in Transformers Zone.
 * Ruby from Rave Master, who's most likely a penguin.
 * The title character of Omamori Himari can appear as one, though she usually prefers to appear as a human or Catgirl
 * Naruto has multiple animals, such as toads, dogs, and giant slug just to name a few. Most but not all of them are summons.
 * Tama from Hayate the Combat Butler, who can only aspire to the importance of being a mascot. He only talks to Hayate, and is only occasionally bipedal.
 * In Axis Powers Hetalia, Canada's bear Kumajiro and Iceland's puffin can talk. When the Nekotalia strips happened, all the nation cats can talk and at one point, Japaneko talked to his master Japan, causing Japan to react with shock.
 * Kyuubei of Puella Magi Madoka Magica sort of counts. He actually communicates via Telepathy, but is still perfectly fluent in Japanese, and understands human speech just fine..
 * In Wild Fangs, Gido is a sentient talking furball.

Comic Books

 * In the German comic Rudi, apparently ants and slugs not only are this, but are also organized like a fascist state and actively planning to bring down human society. Especially, eat all their food. In other words, not only Humans Are Bastards in this comic.
 * Captain Marvel's buddy, Talky Tawny the Tiger.
 * Detective Chimp in The DCU can actually communicate with all animals, but according to him humans are the best conversationalists.

Fairy Tales

 * The Gray Wolf in Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf.
 * The Goose Girl's horse Falada—even after its head is chopped off.
 * The wolf in The Golden Mermaid
 * Puss-In-Boots
 * The hare in The Golden Backbird
 * The fox in Don Joseph Pear
 * The fox in Mac Iain Direach—note that in other variants, the fox is an enchanted human.

Films -- Animation

 * The Disney Animated Canon has more examples that you can shake a stick at. At many times it tries to maintain a semi-realism with animals being able to talk to humans. For example, it would seem logical that mermaids would be able to communicate with other living beings in the ocean or that a human raised by animals would understand the animal language. A couple of unusual exceptions to this rule were used in Cinderella where Cinderella and the mice were able to communicate with each other in English without real explanation for it and in The Rescuers films, where children were able to communicate with multiple species of animals (often donning clothing).
 * At the end of The Rescuers, when Penny is being interviewed by the TV reporter, she tells him that she talks to Bernard and Bianca. The reporter is surprised. It can be chalked up to that in the Disney world, kids can understand/communicate with animals, but adults can't. Also, let's not forget the array of wild animals Cody could talk to in The Rescuers Down Under: kangaroos, wombats, mice, lizards...
 * Donkey, the Three Little Pigs, the Three Blind Mice, and the Big Bad Wolf from Shrek.
 * Up features dogs with special collars that translate their thoughts into speech. Said thoughts are... not that deep.
 * SQUIRREL!
 * Prince Charming thinks that he is going nuts when he sees the talking mice and sentient bluebirds in Cinderella III: A Twist In Time.
 * The Lion King plays this trope straight, not only since the characters are animals, but also that many of them may live far away from humans.

Films -- Live-Action

 * Not For Kids example: Grouchy old warhound Blood in A Boy and His Dog.
 * Most of the non-human characters from the Narnia films: Aslan, Reepicheep, Fenris Ulf, Mr. and Ms. Beaver, and so forth.
 * The agents in the Disney movie G-Force talk, though they use a device to translate animal speech..
 * Subverted in Enchanted. Sure, all the animals in fairy-tale land Andalasia can talk (and sing), but once Pip the Chipmunk is transported to the real world, he loses his ability to speak, and instead communicates using equally-improbable gesticulating, miming and (more probable) chipmunk sounds.

Jokes

 * "A [insert Talking Animal of your choice] walks into a bar..."

Literature
"Abruptly the bird spread its flaming wings and, soaring from its perch, cried out harshly: "Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!" and with a wild screech of horribly human laughter, rushed away through the trees to vanish in the opalescent shadows."
 * In Harry Potter, every animal is just as intelligent as humans, but with their own languages. Example: snake language is called Parseltongue.
 * Total, the little black Scottie from the Maximum Ride books.
 * In His Dark Materials, arctic foxes can speak some small amounts of english, as can the "armored bears".
 * A lot of Diana Wynne Jones' stuff. Mini the elephant from The Magids' Merlin conspiracy and Sirius from Dogsbody spring to mind.
 * The Devil's entourage in the Soviet-era Russian novel The Master and Margarita includes an enormous walking, talking, chess-playing cat named Behemoth.
 * Fang, the Learned English Dog, from Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon. It also got a robot duck in it. Thomas Pynchon is a weird writer.
 * Discworld: Gaspode the Wonder Dog... although he's sneaky about it, because everyone knows dogs can't talk.
 * Other Discworld examples include the eponymous characters from The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents, the cat, mouse, duck and rabbit from Moving Pictures, the raven Quoth from the Susan/Death novels, and Cohen the Barbarian's horse from the short story "Troll Bridge".
 * Grimya, from Louise Cooper's Indigo series, is a sentient mutant wolf who usually poses as the heroine's guard dog. She's telepathic (at least where the heroine is concerned), and can also speak out loud (albeit in a raspy growl, and with significant effort)..
 * In John C. Wright's The Orphans of Chaos, the dog Lelaps.
 * One of the hallmarks of CS Lewis's Narnia. Note that Talking Animals are specific creatures and differentiated from ordinary, non-talking animals, which can still be eaten or used for labor.
 * Peter S. Beagle's A Fine And Private Place features a talking raven.
 * I seem to recall some guy named Edgar Allan Poe did this also.
 * In Peter S. Beagle's Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros, the rhinoceros talks. It also maintains that it is a unicorn.
 * The Cat in Coraline, which can speak in the Other Mother's World.
 * In Charlotte's Web there is Wilbur, Charlotte and Templeton. As well as quite a few others.
 * Played with in the works of S.J. Perelman; the narrator, a semi-fictionalized Author Avatar, occasionally had his pets "speak" in times of stress. Just one line, then they went silent. They might be stress-induced hallucinations.
 * The novels about "A Dog Called Himself" by Kenneth and Adrian Bird. Himself has been taught to speak by a cruel circus owner, and after escaping takes up with an Irish tinker with whom he has a series of adventures. The dog's unusual name comes from what the tinker exclaimed on hearing the dog speak: "It was as if himself were talking!"
 * Pretty much every animal except Toto that makes the trip to Oz can talk there..
 * The great hound Huan in The Silmarillion spoke three times. It's quite possible he wasn't a hound after all but a Maia (angel-like creature) in animal form—Tolkien doesn't seem to have made up his mind about this.
 * Wargs, on the other hand, can talk all the time.
 * As can eagles.
 * Tolkien's other works feature these as well, since they were often crafted as fairy tales for his children.
 * The animals in The Neverending Story can all talk. Not in the movie version.
 * Apparently, from The Dresden Files,.
 * The Age of Five: Mischief and other veez, although their ability to talk is rather limited.
 * In Robert E. Howard's Shadows in The Moonlight, Conan the Barbarian and Olivia realize that things are bad from a talking parrot:


 * According to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the wizarding world contains a number of nonhuman creatures capable of speech to some degree, including centaurs, sphinxes, and merpeople.
 * Ralph Von Vau Vau is a genius mutant German Shepherd who appears in many of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon stories. He works in talk radio.
 * In The Cry of The Icemark there are giant talking snow leopards.
 * Animal Farm
 * Stephen King's The Dark Tower features Zoltan the crow, who enjoys the poem "Beans, Beans the Musical Fruit", and Oy the billy-bumbler, who speaks mostly to Jake Chambers.
 * All of the prehistoric animals on Dinotopia have their own languages. Some of them even speak human languages.
 * The titular Snails in Of Snail Slime, often times to an annoying degree due to their loud, squeaky voices.
 * In the Belgariad series, Polgara casts a spell to let the Emporer's bird speak, in order to convince him exactly who she is. The animals in general have their own languages that sorcerers can learn. Wolves in particular, seem to have human level intelligence, and one of them can understand human speech, and implies that she could speak it if she wanted to, but is worried about biting her tongue.
 * In If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the eponymous mouse spends the entire book speaking to demand a variety of things.
 * Rats in Septimus Heap have the ability of talking. This leads to the establishment of the Message Rat Service.
 * While most mammals in the Spellsinger novels fit the Funny Animal trope, species with hooves (except for swine) retain their quadruped stance and belong under this one, as do the equally-handless cetaceans.
 * In Who Cut the Cheese? by Stilton Jarlsberg, a rat driving a tiny sports car shouts words at Ho. Later, once Ho arrives at the CheesyUniverse depot, other rats brag about the various third options they used to get there. All rats, including the rats Snitch and Scamper from the opening, are later discovered to be talking.

Live-Action TV

 * Mister Ed, of course.
 * Princess Fantaghiro's horse.
 * Many Toku have talking dogs. Denshi Sentai Denziman for instance has IC.
 * Muffy the mouse from Today's Special. Lived in a mousehole (although she upgrades it a bit later), but on speaking terms with the rest of the staff—the security system considered a disaster damaging her home a bad thing, for one.
 * Parodied in a series of That Mitchell and Webb Look sketches featuring a farmer who clearly thinks his horse is a talking animal, and makes numerous efforts to try and break the ice, only for the horse to 'snub' him each time. This tends to result in a very emotional tantrum on the part of the farmer very quickly. The horse, however, actually doesn't talk for the same reason that most horses outside of this trope don't talk.
 * Wishbone, from the show of the same name. Though in the stories he imagines himself in, no one sees his character as a dog.
 * Darwin the dolphin in SeaQuest DSV is able to talk due to a translation machine Lucas has built. That doesn't make him any easier to understand, though.
 * All the animals on PJ Katies Farm.

Myths and Religion

 * Balaam's donkey in The Bible was temporarily granted the ability to speak.
 * Evangelists love this story because they like to point out that the donkey tells his master that he is a fool that is not following God's plan with the gift of speech he had just been granted. The joke being that if you have a donkey of all things calling you a fool then you are not doing very well spiritually.
 * Hera temporarily gives Achilles' horse, Xanthos, the power of speech for a few minutes in The Iliad.
 * Older Than Dirt: A few ancient Egyptian stories have these; most are of the fable variety. It's not clear, on the other hand, just what the talking serpent lord of the island is in the tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. The sailor certainly treats it as (the manifestation of) a deity.

Newspaper Comics

 * In an odd case, Snoopy from Peanuts is a Talking Animal who doesn't (usually) talk. Despite this, he's certainly one of the most verbose and eloquent of the characters, verbalizing his thoughts via balloons. His pal Woodstock might surpass him except that we don't know what Woodstock says exactly.
 * Though despite said eloquence, he can't write to save his life.
 * The same applies to Garfield.
 * In one book Garfield and the other animals in his hometown break their rule against using speech to warn their owners about a natural disaster that is quickly approaching.
 * Chip Dunham's Overboard has several of these characters. One of these, a dog named Raymond, speak out loud (presumably in intelligible English), walks on his hind legs, and wears a fedora hat. Another dog, Louie, walks on all fours, thinks "out loud" via thought balloons, and wears no clothing. Several mice and rabbit characters also appear more or less regularly.
 * Also, Bill Watterson's beloved Hobbes, of Calvin and Hobbes is only animate when alone with Calvin, as a general rule, yet seems to live quite an independent life from Calvin, chasing critters in the forest and reading comic books with interest. Hobbes is very often the more sensible, the more sane, and the more eloquent of the title duo, though he does have his moments of primal savagery (which he works off by attacking Calvin whenever he comes home from school, or having Calvin throw a slice of jellied toast for him to "catch").
 * In Get Fuzzy, pretty much every animal character seems to have this ability.
 * Most of the Pearls Before Swine cast regulars are talking animals, while most one-time characters are humans. They have no trouble treating the talking animals like people. Lampshaded in a certain strip introducing "Chuckie, the non-anthromorphic sheep", who can't speak in English and can only communicate in "baaahs" like a normal sheep can.
 * TNT the collie from Rip Haywire.
 * Gorgon from Barnaby, who rambles on, tells shaggy dog stories, and eventually has to be bribed into shutting up.
 * In a strip of The Far Side, a scientist invents a canine-to-English translator, only to discover that every bark simply translates to the word "hey".

Tabletop Games

 * Giant eagles and owls are able to speak in most editions of Dungeons and Dragons, presumably as a Shout-Out to The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Also, raven familiars have speech as their unique ability, and the 3rd edition spell Awakening can convert normal animals into this trope.

Toys

 * Bionicle has a few, such as Tahtorak.

Video Games

 * Blanca, from Shadow Hearts: Covenant, is a wolf who occasionally shows himself to be at least as smart as the main cast, plus a fair bit more savvy. Like Snoopy, he doesn't actually talk—except in a sidequest of his where he converses with other wolves.
 * Not just Exile III but most of Spiderweb Software's games feature feature giant talking spiders. Exile III (and its remake Avernum 3) also include giant talking cockroaches.
 * ALL Spiderweb Software games include the Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders (GIFTS) Usually as an Easter Egg.
 * in Psychonauts. Since other local animals have psychic abilities, it's possible they're not the only ones.
 * There are a few in the Quest for Glory series of adventure games. There's Fenris, talking rat and familiar to the wizard Erasmus, a fox who gives you some advice in the first game, and Manu the monkey in the third game.
 * Daxter and Pecker in the Jak and Daxter series, in addition to.
 * "The mabari is clever enough to speak, and wise enough to know not to." --Fereldan proverb.
 * Kaepora Gaebora from The Legend of Zelda series.

Web Animation

 * And The Cheat from Homestar Runner is probably one of the smartest characters in the cast, but is a vaguely feline/rodent critter who is shaped like a wedge of cheese (or maybe an anvil) and speaks in an incomprehensible language of his own.
 * The Cheat has little problem speaking English when making his own cartoons, doing pretty decent impressions of everyone in the show. (Pretty decent for a The Cheat. For a regular person, not so much.)
 * The Show Within a Show Cheat Commandoes features (supposedly) the same species as The Cheat who can speak fluent English.

Web Comics

 * In Holiday Wars, Ground Hog's Day is personified as a talking animal, which can be seen in this episode.
 * Kiki and Bun-bun from Sluggy Freelance are halfway between this and Funny Animal. Both display the instincts of their respective species; for example, Kiki, being a ferret, is prone to hide shiny objects and mess behind the couch and Bun-bun, being a rabbit, is prone to chewing on things in his environment. However, both also often act like people, although in Bun-bun's case, it's a rather sociopathic person.
 * There is also Frog a high-ranking member of Hereti-Corp, Percy a cloned wolly mammoth, and Teddy Weddy who appeared briefly in early comics and later on was brought back as a host of a literature segment, although Frog and Percy are both cases of genetic modification.
 * Spark, Dominic Deegan's pet cat, has just about as much deadpan snark and dry wit as anyone else in the cast.
 * Sniper Wolf's pet wolf, Berthold, from the Metal Gear fan webcomic The Last Days of Foxhound doesn't actually speak, but is a telepath somewhat more intelligent than the human cast. He has spoken to Liquid, Octopus, and Raven and has a varying degree of disdain for any human who isn't Wolf. He got his brain fried after being electrocuted while trying to stop Gray Fox and seems to behave like a normal wolf towards the end of the comic as a result.
 * In The KAMics the Penguins would qualify, although only other penguins, and the reader, can understand them.
 * Autumnside has a talking wolf, as well as a few talking pumpkins.
 * While no one knows exactly what Red XIII is in Ansem Retort, he's certainly treated as a pet, and he can speak telepathically. Oddly enough, the only ones that understand him are Diz and Xemnas.
 * Coleman, the tiny blue polar bear from Sore Thumbs, albeit with a speech impediment.
 * Woo from Sandra and Woo is a talking raccoon. All the animals, including Woo's friends Shadow (a fox) and Sid (a squirrel) speak the same language, but only Woo is able to communicate with humans. He's not talking to anyone but his owner Sandra, though, since he is afraid of ending up in a laboratory otherwise.
 * Kieri from Slightly Damned can speak while in the form of a snow bunny. It could be because she's an angel, it could be because it's a partly botched curse, or it could just be magic.
 * In Order of the Stick, it was always known that Vaarsuvius' familiar Blackwing is capable of speech. The look of shock in the picture above is because that's the first time the bird has deigned to speak V's language, due to having previously held the elf in disdain.
 * Bob and George Trying to deny
 * Odin of Von Slayer is the heroine's talking Scottie dog, Scottish accent included.
 * Wizard/Sorcerer familiars can talk to people in Our Little Adventure. The two so far are Angelika's rat familiar Norveg, and Simonicus' (so far unnamed) cat familiar.
 * Krosp from Girl Genius, a sarcastic cat-based construct.
 * Pibgorn The horse
 * Familiar Grounds—the main characters.
 * Nature of Nature's Art stars them nearly exclusively, with a few unspeaking humans and a perfectly mundane Cadillac filling out the rest of the cast where applicable.
 * Question Duck Except for the duck, it seems to be a normal universe.
 * Poe from the Kitty. None of the other cats can speak with the human cast.
 * Skin Horse Explained by the animals being the creations of mad scientists. In the Once & Future story ark Unity discovers that although the local animals aren't the talking to humans variety they have picked up the bureaucratic traits of the local Notaries in their own language & Lives.
 * In Sinfest, a more realistic strip turns Squidley from a Funny Animal to a talking one.
 * Wizard School has Goatsie, a talking goat who is Graham's familiar and is obsessed with eating shoes.
 * A horse in Thornsaddle can talk, but is rather rude when he chooses to do so.

Web Original

 * Dusty from Sailor Nothing is another example of a talking cat helping out a magical girl. Although he can talk and can give people powers, he was initially just a normal cat.
 * Rufus, from Gaia Online/zOMG, is Ian's pet cat... who for reasons that are never adequately explained, can talk. He's smart enough to run a store, but prolonged absence from his owner seems to have an adverse effect on him. (He even starts using LOL Speak instead of English.)
 * Apparently he's from a long line of talking cats that manage shops.
 * The eponymous Vatsy and Bruno are, respectively, a talking feline-like thing and a talking chimp.
 * Alexandria from Marble Witch is a talking crow, even though she was originally human. Others, like Strawberry and Cosyn are magical so talking is expected
 * From the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, Rex the Wonder Dog is a mutant American Mastiff whose "mutation" has granted him human-level intelligence and the ability to speak like a human. He uses these powers to fight crime as a member of New York City's "Crimebusters".

Western Animation
"Luke: Lots of dogs have been born here. Refresh my memory. Which one were you again? Brian: I was the one who could talk. Luke: Brian! Come on in!"
 * All animals in My Gym Partner's a Monkey.
 * Most of the entire Looney Tunes cast of characters are Civilized Animals or Funny Animals, but there are a few Talking Animals as well.
 * Daffy Duck sometimes acts like a Talking Animal, especially in the earlier cartoons where he's being hunted by Porky Pig. His transition to a Funny Animal in later cartoons is probably due to Anthropomorphic Shift.
 * Sylvester Cat and Tweety Bird are Talking Animals. Note, however, that while the audience can understand, Granny doesn't seem to know they can talk... so maybe it's just Animal Talk.
 * Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner, although they rarely speak.
 * Only applies in the animation—in comics, the Road Runner can be as eloquent as any of the other characters.
 * All insects from Hyperion Animation's The Itsy Bitsy Spider franchise (execpt the cat, Langston).
 * Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker and many of funny animals.
 * Many of the characters in the Hanna-Barbera stable.
 * It could be argued that Brian in Family Guy is actually more human than most of the Griffin family, but he is a dog. When he visited his birthplace...

"Homer: You know, I have been meaning to take a spiritual journey, and I would... (the coyote is chewing his pant leg) Hey! Knock it off! (kicks him) Coyote: (sheepishly) Sorry. I am a coyote."
 * American Dad, in the same universe as Family Guy, has Klaus and Reginald. Klaus is a german olympic skiier whose brain was put into the body of a goldfish, and Reginald is a homeless man whose...brain was put into the body of a koala. Both are seen openly talking to/interacting with people outside the CIA/Smith family (Klaus interacts directly with Jeff, and Reginald and Hayley have gone out together in various public places), and neither are ever reacted to as an oddity.
 * Twinkle the Marvel Horse from Dave the Barbarian.
 * The eponymous dog from Courage the Cowardly Dog, amoung many other animals in the show. And trees. And foot fungi.
 * Courage is a rather unusual case, who shifts between Speech-Impaired Animal and talking depending on the situation and who's listening. At one point even calling Murial, since he can't use full English around her in person.
 * In the 2003 series of Strawberry Shortcake, Custard (a cat) and Honey Pie Pony can talk, while the rest of the animals cannot. Also Papaya Parrot and Raven, although they're one-shot characters (but Raven appears again in the European-release-only second Strawberry Shortcake GBA game).
 * Kim Possible: While Rufus mostly speaks in gibberish, he is capable of basic elocution for some of his favorite words, including Cheese. More disturbingly, he seems to know not only what Cheese is, but what the context is regarding asking about cheese. One can wonder if Rufus was ever accidentally hit with an intelligence ray of some sort.
 * He actually was hit by exactly that in one episode, though he spoke prior to it.
 * In A Sitch in Time, Rufus' descendants are shown to be muscular, articulate, hyperintelligent mole rats.
 * The title character of Martha Speaks.
 * While it isn't clear if the animals in Christopher The Christmas Tree can talk to humans or only to each other, there is an owl who can't 'talk' and can only hoot.
 * Dukey of Johnny Test was a normal dog until he got experimented on by the Test Twins. Then, he can talk and seems to be smarter than Johnny. He hides the fact that he can talk from everyone except Johnny and the twins since 1) he will get experimented on by the Government and 2) Johnny and the Twins will get in a lot of trouble if their parents find out.
 * The Teen Titans encounter both talking alien dogs and talking card carrying gorillas. Also, velociraptors speak, but in their own language.
 * Nearly every animal, including the title character herself in the Christmas special Olive the Other Reindeer. Most are just treated like average people.
 * The Simpsons: When Homer meets a coyote in a dream sequence:

"Homer: Huh? Golf course? Did I dream that whole thing? Maybe the desert was just this sand trap. Oh, and I bet that crazy pyramid was just the pro shop. And that talking coyote was really just a talking dog. Dog: Hi, Homer. Find your soulmate. Homer: Hey, wait a minute! There's no such thing as a talking dog! Dog: [barks] Homer: Damn straight!"
 * And when he wakes up...


 * Fishtronaut: Almost the entire cast is made of talking animals, lead by the title character, followed by Zeek and other fishes, and all animals in the park. Humans are minority, there.
 * Ni Hao, Kai-Lan is filled with these.
 * Scooby Doo Mystery Inc: Scooby has pretty much been upgraded from Speech-Impaired Animal; he has a lot more dialog and doesn't begin every word with an R sound.
 * A few show up on Jimmy Two-Shoes, among all the Funny Animals.
 * Rocky and Bullwinkle.
 * Newton, the newt from Ned's Newt, is usually a normal newt but transforms into a six-foot-tall blue humanoid freak whenever he eats some special "Zippo" food—and yes, he then he speaks and gains the ability to shapeshift. He's still a newt though, and this sometimes comes up.
 * The birds in the Disney animated shorts "Melody" and "Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom", which make up the Adventures In MusicDuology.
 * Fran the squirrel from Higgly Town Heroes
 * The Talking Dog was a Recurring Character in The Powerpuff Girls. Unfortunately, while he could talk, he tended to be a poor conversationalist, making a lot of blunt, abrasive, and even insulting remarks (whether intentional or not, it's hard to say). In the appropriately-named episode "Shut the Pup Up" where he was featured exclusively and the Girls had to keep him as a guest, it didn't take them long to wish he'd just stop talking.
 * Zigzagged with Monroe in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. He can talk (with a Scottish accent), but only other magical beings (who are Invisible to Normals) can understand him. Muggles perceive his speech as ordinary barking. June has commented that this is the only reason her friends love him so much, seeing as they can't hear his rudeness and general bad attitude.
 * (Possibly) most of the Dog Star Patrol from Krypto the Superdog (animation) due to alien physiology or from exposure to chemicals that gave them superpowers.

Real Life

 * Humans.
 * Gef the Talking Mongoose. Assuming he was real and not a hoax, the jury is still out as to whether he was in fact an animal that could talk, a poltergeist, or a cryptid.
 * Hoover the seal showed an ability to mimic "Get outta here!" in a thick New England accent.
 * Alex the talking parrot. Alex (along with Griffin and "Wart", all of which were African Gray Parrots trained by Dr. Pepperberg) seemed to understand the English language, and seemed capable of cognitive thought and even emotion, revolutionizing scientific views of animal intelligence.
 * And some other examples on Wikipedia.
 * Several apes, mostly chimpanzees, have been taught how to use American Sign Language, including, but not limited to, Washoe, Loulis, Nim, and Koko.
 * Chimps seem to be perfectly capable of processing language (they can understand quite complex spoken instructions) but can't use their vocal tract in the complex way humans do- it's too high in the throat and doesn't have anything like as many motor neurones working the muscles.