Nearly-Normal Animal

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Ever notice in fictional works aimed at children, animals tend to have much more (or at least a little more) intelligence than they should?

Nearly Normal Animals don't talk (though Largely Normal Animals can have some sort of Animal Talk) and are usually quadrupedal if they are that way in real life. They are very much animals, particularly when it comes to instincts, priorities and motivations and they very rarely wear clothes. Like many Speech-Impaired Animals and Talking Animals, Nearly-Normal Animals lack hands and walk on all fours, negating the possibility of performing many human tasks and behaviors.

Nearly-Normal Animals come in three types: largely normal, mostly normal, and almost normal.

  • Largely-Normal Animals clearly have thought processes and often human-level intelligence but don't talk freely with humans. These animal characters may talk to each other, essentially having their own language, but humans won't understand them. That is, unless they can talk to animals or if the language is able to be learned. Their thought processes and personality is still very much like that of whatever animal they are. Many of them are able to make human-like arm and hand gestures and some can even grasp objects as if they have opposable thumbs. A few examples are bipedal even if their species isn't naturally so, but the majority of them stay on four legs if they are a four-legged animal in Real Life. A few Largely-Normal Animals can sometimes act like the more anthropomorphic Civilized Animal or Funny Animal when required by a joke.
  • Mostly-Normal Animals have clear thought processes as well as a few human and/or some or several doglike characteristics (greater frequency of uttering sounds, human-like expressions) that still don't detract from their animality. Like Level 3, but unlike Level 1, they don't talk Animal Talk. Their thought processes and personality is still very much like that of whatever animal they are. These animals usually don't go beyond being able to make human-like hand or arm gestures sometimes. They stay on all four legs if they are four-legged animals. This is the level between Largely-Normal Animals and Almost-Normal Animals.
  • Almost-Normal Animals have very few human and/or a few doglike characteristics (e.g., greater frequency of uttering sounds, human-like expressions) that don't detract from their animality, but they allow an audience not well versed in the way of animal behavior to understand what's going on in the animals' minds. Can be merely a result of Did Not Do the Research or completely intended. They don't make human-like arm or hand gestures and they stay on all four legs if they're four-legged animals.

This is the low end of the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism. The next step up is Partially-Civilized Animal.

Related to Amplified Animal Aptitude. Largely-Normal Animals are often but not always Intellectual Animals.

See Speech-Impaired Animal and Talking Animal for Largely-Normal Animals that can talk freely with humans.

Examples of Nearly-Normal Animal include:

Largely-Normal Animal

Anime and Manga

  • Ein from Cowboy Bebop. He is smart enough to read, play chess, figure out stuff Spike and Jet can't and even hacking. Problem is, he's otherwise a totally normal dog—he just has human-like intelligence—and thus he can't speak, only bark and point out stuff.
  • The cats in Chi's Sweet Home

Comic Books

  • Hot Dog of Archie Comics would act like this in his own title, where he was revealed to have a high-tech super-structure underneath his common dog house. The series didn't last long.

Film

Disney and Pixar

Literature

Live-Action TV

  • The titular kangaroo of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo not only showed a remarkable understanding of English, but would often imitate human behaviors like playing a piano or the drums.
  • Lassie can not only understand, but also bark in some sort of code that humans understand to mean Timmy in a Well.

Newspaper Comics

  • The four-legged Garfield in the earlier comic strips.
  • The four-legged Snoopy from the earlier Peanuts comic strips.

Web Comics

Web Original

  • From the Reincarnation Fantasy Isekai web novel Tori Transmigrated by "Aila Aurie", Tori's cat Alexander (who turns out to be a specimen of a possibly-supernatural breed of cat) is clearly intelligent enough to understand human speech and even hold conversations with humans, even if the only thing he can say in reply is "nyaow". Similarly, Toni's horse Layla appears to possess near-human intelligence as well. In both cases, it's suggested that the animals have been affected by a variety of magic from the setting that can provide intelligence buffs.

Western Animation

Video Games

  • Mabari war hounds of the Dragon Age series are said to be smart enough to talk, wise enough not to. They're certainly able to understand what people say and Hawke's mabari was able to learn to play cards. Dwarven enchanter Sandal even seems to have figured out how to speak "mabari speak."

Mostly-Normal Animal

Film

  • The penguins in Mr Popper's Penguins
  • Azreal in The Smurfs. He bangs his head on a table (in a way that only a human could) in one scene, and aside from that looks like a normal cat (to the point where he looks like motion capture of a real cat in the CGI scenes)
  • The equine cast in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron have some slightly doglike behaviour and expressions. They have human eyebrows and visible, white sclera. The narrator is a horse, and the horses have a sense of humour and can plan ahead. At least some individuals also have romantic love, although Spirit's home herd seems to follow the normal stallion/harem order.
  • Dragon the cat from The Secret of NIMH, as in the book.
  • The hawk from Rango

Disney and Pixar

Literature

Western Animation

Almost-Normal Animal

Anime and Manga

Film

  • The otherwise completely normal moth that Gargamel saw in The Smurfs is able to carry out his order to send a swarm of moths. His order backfired and the moth sent a swarm of flies instead, but still.

Disney and Pixar

Literature

  • In the book Indian Paint, the horses were almost normal, and completely unable to talk. This is particularly interesting because part of the book was told from the point of view of one of them.

Western Animation

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