Sapient Pet: Difference between revisions

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* In [[Silver Age]] [[Supergirl]] comics, her horse Comet, who is really a humanoid who is in love with her but has been transformed into a horse. When a comet passes the earth he becomes a human for a short period of time.

** Also Krypto the Superdog for [[Superboy]]. A doglike creature from the planet Krypton, he "spoke" through thought balloons much like Snoopy.

* In the film ''[[Barnyard]]'', and early episodes of its spin off series ''[[Back at the Barnyard]]'', the farm animals all act like dumb, domesticated animals unless they're wearing disguises when humans are around, but stand on two legs and throw parties when humans aren't around.

* ''[[Myth Adventures]]'': Gleep the Dragon. All the human(oid) characters hear him say is "[[Verbal Tic Name|Gleep!]]" but it turns out he's [[Eloquent in His Native Tongue]]. He's just too young to have developed the muscle control to speak humanoid language.

* In the ''[[Star Wars]] RPG'' Sourcebook, "Cracken's Rebel Operatives", Moff Jarnek's [[Cool Pet]] Daerlar is a Covallon. Because Covallon walk on all fours, it isn't widely known that they're a fully sentient race. Dearlar chooses to keep this fact secret rather than seeking his freedom because {{spoiler|he is a spy working for Cracken, and his position is the perfect "cover".}}

* The ''[[Wonder Pets]]'' are ordinary classroom pets, until school ends, and they put on capes, fly in a flying ship and rescue baby animals.

* [[South Park]] has Lemmiwinks, the adventuring gerbil. Although he never speaks he is intelligent enough to use tools such as weapons and solve problems no gerbil would be able to solve while humans aren't around. Around humans he's just a gerbil.

* [[Futurama]] Has Nibbler the Niblonian, part of an ancient race of geniuses who pretend to be stupid in order to protect and monitor "lesser races" like humans. Any time the masquerade breaks, they simply erase the memory of all who saw the break.

* Fat Cat in the pilot episode of ''[[Chipand Dale Rescue Rangers]]'', and ''only'' in the pilot. After his owner Klordane is arrested, he becomes anthropomorphic completely.

* [[Tenchi Muyo!]] has Rio-Ohki, the cabbit. Around her caretakers she is as smart as a human child. Around everyone else, though, she's a pet.

* In ''[[Zero no Tsukaima]]'', magic school students are required to summon a familiar as part of their second year final exam, and the familair summoned is considered a pet, regardless of what ends up being summoned. The students themselves have no idea what will happen as the spell chooses their familiar for them.

* Luna and Artemis from ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' can talk and have powers, but only do so to the Sailor Scouts.

* Salem Saberhagen from ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' is a warlock transformed into a black cat as a punishment for trying to take over the world. Around other witches and warlocks he is (mostly) treated as a person but around [[Muggles]] he acts like a normal pet cat owned by Sabrina. The premise is the same in the live action TV show.

** It was also adapted into an animated television series, in which not only was Salem a talking cat, he would also occasionally stand upright and wear clothing, but typically only when not around [[Muggles]].

* In Disney's ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'', Jafar's parrot Iago is intelligent, but hides this from people like the sultan in the first movie.

* [[Mister Ed]] pretends to be a normal horse, and only talks to Wilbur.

** In ''[[Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension|Across the 2nd Dimension]]'', he [[Broken Masquerade|reveals his]] [[Funny Animal]] side to the two titular boys. In the end {{spoiler|Phineas and Ferb and everyone else involved, have their memories erased of the entire day, thus maintaining the masquerade}}.

* Unlike in ''[[Barnyard]]'' and early episodes of ''[[Back at the Barnyard]]'', the later episodes of the same show has the animals' [[Masquerade]] grow more lenient to the point that their status leans toward the Openly Sapient Pet varaint.

* Michigan J. Frog from the ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' cartoon, "[[One Froggy Evening]]," sings and dances when his owner is around, but just acts like a normal frog when any other human is around.

* Kat from ''[[Kid vs. Kat]]'' is a hyperintelligent cat-like alien. He can't speak in the conventional sense, but he is very anthropomorphized in his actions. However, around everyone except Coop, Dennis and later Fiona, he seems like just an ordinary house cat.

* Team Rocket's Meowth from ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]''

* In ''[[Alejandro Jodorowsky|The Incal]]'', Deepo, a so-called "concrete" seagull and pet of the protagonist John [[Di Fool]], gains the ability to talk thanks to an encounter with the mystical Incal artifact.

* Donkey from ''[[Shrek]]''. In fact, this one could be the page quote: "I'm sorry, the position of annoying talking animal has already been taken."

* In Heinlein's ''The Star Beast'', Lummox is undoubtedly sapient ... {{spoiler|as is John Thomas Stuart}}. The former escapes most people's notice due to [[Eloquent in My Native Tongue|language difficulties]].

* ''[[Beetle Bailey]]'': Sgt. Snorkle's dog Otto wears a uniform and walks around on two legs.

* [[Dilbert]]'s dog Dogbert is openly intelligent.

* In ''[[Furcadia]]'' Wyrmes keep furres as pets. Also, furres are not afraid to keep each other as pets. Generally the furres in question do not mind, either because [[Happiness in Slavery|they are well-treated]] or [[Brainwashed]].

* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' it's trivial to do a [[Game Mod]] to turn any sentient species into one which can also be a pet, just by adding the [PET] tag to the right place in the right plain-text file. Of course, since the game designer never intended sentient species to be pets, this can lead to strange results, like a sentient pet being elected mayor.

* The comic ''[[Housepets]]'' is about a group of [[Funny Animal]] housepets who act more like children to their human families rather than pets.

* Keidran from ''[[Twokinds]]'', by some of the nicer humans (of course, they're also seen as a source of cheap labour by more dickish humans). The Keidran are officially slaves.

* Frequent in ''[[Homestuck]]''. Both Jade Harley and Jane Crocker have godlike First Guardians as pets, which clearly display malign but ultimately protective sapience. Both Terezi and Tavros have clearly sapient lusii; Tavros even plays bizarre alien card games with his.

* Wonder Dog in the 1973/74 season of ''[[Superfriends]]''. A [[Non-Human Sidekick]] and [[Speech-Impaired Animal]], he was as intelligent as a normal human being even though he couldn't talk

* ''[[Family Guy]]'': Peter's dog Brian Griffin.

* Jake from ''[[Adventure Time]]''.

* [[James H. Schmitz]] short story "Novice". Telzey Amberdon's pet crest cat Tick-Tock changes from a "Masquerades as a Normal Pet Around All Humans" (including Telzey) to "Masquerades as a Normal Pet Around Some Humans" during the course of the story, as her sapience (and those of the other crest cats) is revealed to Telzey and several few high-placed human officials.

** Dragon cub [[Our Dragons Are Different|Spike]] is sort of like an adopted son or little brother to [[Unicorn|Twilight Sparkle]], but in some ways he is much like a pet; Twilight Sparkle's friends know him, he very much enjoys the attention he gets from them, and like a loyal dog he often works for them and tries to protect them, and he can be very dangerous when his behaviour gets out of control. Yet Spike also talks, and has some ideas that, had they been listened to, the ponies could have avoided a lot of trouble.

** [[Everythings Better With Bunnies|Angel Bunny]] doesn't talk, but clearly understands what [[Pegasus|Fluttershy]] is saying to him, and often tries to communicate his response in non-verbal ways.