Speaks Fluent Animal: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"Are fish really worth talking to? Our genius scientists taught a gorilla sign language, and do you know what we learned? 'Banana is pretty! Banana make gorilla happy!'"''|'''[http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/aquamanb.htm Seanbaby]''', on ''[[Aquaman]]''}}
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In the prototypical version, which usually ends up being the main character and the focus of the show, this means having full-on conversations with them, rendered in English via the [[Translation Convention]]. Most of the time we will, at some point, be shown the [[Translation Convention]] explicitly by showing the Doctor Dolittle making, say, squirrel sounds back and forth with a squirrel. Oddly, he or she can also converse verbally with animals that don't use vocal communication at all.
Note that this makes every animal in the world qualify as a [[Speech-Impaired Animal]] of sorts, since they're all at least intelligent enough to use a language. This makes carnivorousness [[Carnivore Confusion|morally sketchy]] for both animals and humans. [[Elephant in the Living Room|Don't expect this to be addressed one bit.]] (Imagine what would happen if one of these characters ended up in a slaughterhouse!) Not only can someone who
It seems as if the presence of someone who
The ability to talk to animals is also a common superpower. In the early days, it was fairly common, but due to the perceived lameness of Aquaman-style "talking to fish", it's now most often given to the [[Super Team]]'s [[Wacky Guy]] or [[Plucky Comic Relief]] as a sort of [[What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?|joke power]]. It's more useful when you can [[The Beast Master|command the animals you communicate with]]; sometimes, the communication part is left out, and they can only really command animals to do things, rather than actually converse with them. This tends to avoid the problems mentioned above, in that you might be able to assume the animals are simply being compelled to do the commands by whatever magic or [[Applied Phlebotinum]] gave the character the powers in the first place.[[Heart Is an Awesome Power|Sometimes a character can make both work for them.]]
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== Folklore and Fairy Tales ==
* Shows up in tons of folk and [[Fairy Tale
** A boy learns to talk to dogs, frogs, and birds, representing [[Elemental Powers|three elements]] or states of matter (earth, water, air).
** A man saves a snake who counsels him to ask for this power as his reward from her father. Only drawback is he can't tell anyone about it, or he'll die. His wife bugs him over a related issue that he finally decides to tell her, but then a passing rooster makes him reconsider and order her to just stop asking. (Well, the original involved him ''beating'' her until she stopped, but....)
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* In ''[[Seventh Sea|7th Sea]]'', those who possess a certain type of shape-shifting sorcery can talk to animals as well, with the catches being the farther away the sorcerer is from their home land or the more domesticated the animal is, the harder it is to communicate with it.
* Gnomes possess this as a racial ability in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', and both druids and rangers gain access to similar abilities through spells.
** Xvarts (aka svarts or xivorts), a race of blue-skinned little humanoids, can speak with bats and rats in some editions of the game. 4th Edition explicitly makes them [[Evil Counterpart
* The Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants advantages in ''[[GURPS]]'' do [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|exactly what they say]] with the caveat that some animals are barely sentient and most plants don't experience the world in a way remotely similar to us.
* The superheroine Lynx in the ''[[GURPS Supers]]'' supplement ''Supertemps''. She's a [[Friend to All Living Things]] as well,
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