Anthropomorphic Animals in Fiction

BusyHoneyBee said:

What do you think of them?

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I enjoyed Forests of the Night, for what that's worth.

I did, too. I think it depends on how it's handled by the writer.

This is one of those things when I'll say, "As long as it has a purpose to the plot." Mostly because I'm tired of running into stories that would work just fine with normal human beings, but they've been switched out for furry-focused anthropomorphic animals.

BusyHoneyBee said:

What do you think of them?
*snip*
So, bottom line, do you think anthropomorphic protagonists/major characters have a place in non-fantasy Fiction Novels, or will they forever be connected to children's stories and the 'furry' phenomenon?

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Personally, I like to see anthro characters, *however* it depends on the story/setup/execution.

I believe it adds a level of dimension and complexity that a story with regular human characters wouldn't have. When I say this, I'm thinking that what if these anthro characters don't just look and act like humans, that they also have their animal instincts too. Say for example, if there was a tiger character; would this character still have a natural predatory instinct? Would this character just as soon eat you as apposed to making friends with you.

Yet, I don't want to see every author jumping on the the "furry" bandwagon and write everything with these types of characters because then it'll just turn into the old robot or alien themes of generations ago. Make sense?

This is just my personal opinion, feel free to disagree.

As with anything else, it's about how you do it. I would say that an author who tends to write anthropomorphic animals is, in general, more likely to be writing for children and/or genre fantasy. If the author is in fact writing a heavy literary novel, though, then it will still be a heavy literary novel in spite of that. And in that case, there would be a damn good, story-related reason for the animals to be there.

If it's set in a world with humans, as long as there's a good reason, it's fine. If it's a sort of alternate universe style story, then it doesn't really need explanation (I'm thinking Redwall and the Welkin Weasels, which I enjoyed a lot). It kind of depends on the story.

A couple non-Fantasy, Sci-Fi anthropomorphized/evolved animal stories:

City, by Clifford D. Simak

Ballad of Lost C'Mell, by Cordwainer Smith

John Scalzi also touched on this in one of his stand-alone SF novels, but that might constitute a spoiler so I won't name which one

Just off the top of my head...

So, yes, it can be done. It has been done. As Osulaugh mentioned, though, make sure there's a reason they're nonhuman; children will accept Badger and Toad as appealing human proxies, but SF readers will need a little more than that to keep them hooked... and that means going a little deeper than cliches (for example, all cats hate all dogs, so of course your cat-person and dog-person are always fighting, har har har.)

I'm not really a fan of anthropomorphic animals that aren't in a Star Fox game.

Now, for some reason talking animals are in a different category for me. That is, animals that look exactly like animals, but can talk and think. Animals with human features for some reason seems off to me.

Having written a nearly 800-page comic from the POV of an anthro wombat, you'll be fine. (Well, I did okay, anyway.) There's a fair number of such out there, and they aren't all relegated to the children's section. MCA Hogarth does military SF in the Pelted Universe with genetically modified animals, David Brin's Startide Rising won all the awards and featured uplifted dolphins, The Architect of Sleep is a fantasy about intelligent raccoons, the kzin are...well, the kzin...etc, etc, ad infinitum.

It can and has been done. Done well, even!

Just don't do the cat-like race of alien sex slaves. That's been done unto death and needs to never darken a slush-pile again.

I've written uplifted animals (dogs) in a near future setting, gods descended horses in a fantasy/sci fi setting, alien species (centauroids), and fantasy style wolf-like humanoids. Taking all that into consideration, I gotta say, I'm a fan.

There's a difference between animal characters that have been enhanced in a lab to be more human-like, e.g. Planet of the Apes or the Secret of Nimh, and animals that are just animals who have to have a human voice for the story to get told, e.g. Black Beauty, where the horse is totally a horse and only tells its story in English because you can't have a whole book of "neigh! neigh!"

Either can work if it's well written. These stories are going to end up being classified as science fiction (if the animals are enhanced in a lab) or fantasy (if the animals have any unreal or mythical qualities). They needn't necessarily be children's fiction - that would depend on the theme of the story. If the animals are adult-like, have sex and deal with adult orientated issues then it'd be adult fiction. Not sure how easy that would be to market, though. Lots of children love books with animal characters, hence the huge number of children's books with animal characters.

Has anyone here read Maus? It's a graphic novel, so the stylistic choice of using animal people flows a bit more naturally than "oh yeah by the way, the MC is a talking wolf for no reason", but it's a decent example of animal people used in genres outside children's lit and fantasy.

EDIT: Also, holy crap, I can't believe I forgot White Fang, by Jack London. Both it and Call of the Wild were some of my favourite stories growing up. How could I forget!?

In the category of talking animals that aren't "fantasy", don't forget Watership Down. Also Gabriel King's The Wild Road books, about cats. That's a well established type of book. The characters are anthropomorphised in that they have a human-like culture, but they're not anthro.

Actual anthro can definitely be SF rather than fantasy (see Guardians of the Galaxy) but as others have said, there has to be a reason for it.

Watership Down. Animal Farm. Narnia.

I don't want to have anthropomorphic animals in every book I read, but if it's done well ...

Yeah, I think there's a difference between animals who wear clothes, use tools in the way humans do, and live in what amounts to little houses, like in Redwall or Peter Rabbit, and stories with animals that basically look and act like real ones, but are given a more human level of sapience for the purposes of the story (like in Bambi, Black Beauty, Watership Down etc) without becoming little humans in fur suits. There's also the "wise beast" trope in fantasy (or SF) where certain animals are more intelligent than the norm for their kind, either because of magic or genetic manipulation (Narnia for fantasy and Startide Rising for SF come to mind, but there are others too). Also, there are animal-like aliens in some SF. Not super realistic, but also popular.

All these kinds of stories can work very well. Have you read Brin's Uplift Universe novels? Sherri S Tepper has a novel called The Family Tree that deals with genetically engineered, intelligent animals too.

Seconding (?thirding ?fourthing) David Brin's novels for serious SF with intelligent animal characters.

Random thought: has the prevalence of catlike aliens in SF got something to do with the prevalence of cats as SF author pets?

Becuase we need more budgie-like aliens.

Go for it and make it yours. S. Andrew Swann's aren't exactly animals, but they're great. And Shirley Rousseau Murphy writes mysteries solved by cats, who sometimes talk to people and always talk to one another. Then there are the half-animals, the shape-shifters who retain a lot of animal nature, like the hilarious ones in Shelly Laurenston's books or the more serious ones in Patrica Briggs's books.

In my opinion, a well-written anthropomorphic protagonist is on equal footing with a well-written German or Dutch protagonist.

I have a problem when animals are given human characteristics that seem to ignore their animal characteristics. Like, when the elephants in Babar wear human clothes, I spend too much time wondering why they need to wear clothes when they have tough hides, and whether they use their trunks to do up the buttons, etc. How does Franklin get his damn knapsack on, and what's the point of being a turtle and never going in the water? etc.

I know, they're just children's books.

But I had a similar problem with Animal Farm - for all the intelligent allegory, I was still frustrated by the idea of the pigs learning to manipulate tools with their damn trotters, or a bunch of animals being able to harness each other, etc.

And don't get me started on how all these animals suddenly developed vocal cords!

So, for my taste - if you have anthropomorphic animal characters, don't forget that they're still in animal bodies. Humans have evolved to be tool-users, while other animals evolved to use their bodies more directly on their environment. I think you miss a lot of the fun of animal characters if they're exactly like humans, except fuzzier.

Captcha said:

But I had a similar problem with Animal Farm - for all the intelligent allegory, I was still frustrated by the idea of the pigs learning to manipulate tools with their damn trotters, or a bunch of animals being able to harness each other, etc.

And don't get me started on how all these animals suddenly developed vocal cords!

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This is an aside, obviously, but all mammals have vocal cords (koalas even have an extra set). Birds don't have a larynx at all, but they have a structure called a syrinx that allows them to make an even greater array of sounds than mammals can. Most mammals are more limited in the range of sounds they can make than we are because of the shape of their jaw and tongue, and because of the distance between their larynx and the back of their throat.

I think you miss a lot of the fun of animal characters if they're exactly like humans, except fuzzier.

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I generally agree, though I don't have trouble suspending disbelief if the author does a good job with their storytelling. Animal Farm was so metaphoric that the pigs' transformation into humanoids made sense to me. I liked Babar when I was a kid, even though the idea of bipedal, clothes-wearing elephants who were not that much larger than Zephyr the monkey or the nameless Old Lady who was the only human in their world after the first book or two is rather silly.

I don't think there's any reason the OP can't write a story, especially a kid's story (but many adults enjoyed tales like Redwall too) with anthropomorphized animals. There are plenty of examples of ones that work for enough readers to be profitable.

I'm in the process of writing an epic fantasy. In the world, humans have vanished and sentient animals have taken their place. There are two classes, Highers and Lowers. The Highers were elevated by a phenomena called Second Genesis, and like our world, no one agrees or what happened or how. Only the primates can use tools, and for that reason, they're enslaved by the numerically superior cats, dogs, etc. To test drive the concept, I wrote a short story featuring two apes and a fox on a mission. It helped me see how one species would solve problems and how they'd have to rely on teamwork to get things done.

The novel is stagnating at 480 pages because I have had a LOT of stuff going on in the past year. I've been tempted to share it before it's finished just to see if what I've written thus far is any good. I feel like I've hit a wall, unsure of what should happen next or if I'm just burnt out.

But yes, I like talking animals. They were some of my favorites as a kid, and still are.

Red Wombat: yes, a million times yes, hentai has ruined so many things...

Albedo said:

Becuase we need more budgie-like aliens.

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I'd be up for some parrot like ones, seriously. The things are crazy smart, and the people I know who live with them say it's a bit like having a little alien in the house.

Cat like aliens are rather overdone, but my favorites of that type were CJ Cherryh's Chanuur books.

Roxxsmom said:

I'd be up for some parrot like ones, seriously. The things are crazy smart, and the people I know who live with them say it's a bit like having a little alien in the house.

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I live with six of them and have had over 20 (I used to be in parrot rescue). Some are wicked smart, like open their cages, turn on the faucet, give themselves a bath smart or open the (child-locked) cabinets to get to their food. They definitely come to associate words with certain behaviors/items (look up Alex the African Grey. But don't read Alex and Me unless you want to cry). I had an Amazon who, if I said "go to your cage", would fly from my hand, even if we were in another room, to his cage.

I read some passage somewhere that if an alien visited earth before primates started becoming dominant that they would think parrots as the most intelligent and likely to evolve to be dominant.