Talk:Talking animals in fiction

'Fiction' as Regards Religious Texts

I find that many of the religious (including myself) would object to the classification of religious texts (such as, in this article, the Book of Numbers) as fiction. Can this be changed?

Ephraimhelfgot (talk) 01:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Well given that animals do not talk, anything with a talking animal is by definition fiction. -mattbuck (Talk) 08:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Merger

I have proposed merging funny animal into this article. Funny animal was one of Wikipedia's most successful pieces of WP:SYN and WP:OR for many years, and has been cut down to a stub. The phrase, so far as I know, has never been in common usage except insofar as the invention of the article made it so (if there is a body of preexisting work that uses the term, I'd like to know). The meaning of the term is encompassed by what is covered in this article, a non-OR split from talking animal. Chubbles (talk) 11:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any opposition to this merger so I'll go ahead and do it. Chubbles (talk) 16:50, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 10 February 2022

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. After much-extended time for discussion, there is a clear absence of consensus for a move at this time. BD2412 T 05:41, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Talking animals in fiction → Anthropomorphic animal – The scope of the article is already outside of what its title implies, as the concept of a "talking animal" would only encompass a single section of it. The article is also already the main article of Category:Anthropomorphic animal characters. Moving it to a more descriptive title would allow its scope to be expanded to characters that act and talk like humans. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:16, 10 February 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Colonestarrice (talk) 12:57, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support. The ledes of the articles talking animal and anthropomorphic animal should be worded to make it very clear from the outset that they are about real and fictional animals, respectively, and they probably should have hatnotes to each other. Chubbles (talk) 17:34, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose It seems to me that "talking animals" is the WP:COMMONNAME, particularly in scholarly writing about literature and folklore. See for example the "Further reading" section, and compare number of Google Scholar search results for "talking animal" vs. "anthropomorphic animal". I think the current title is also more precise than the proposed one. "Anthropomorphic" has multiple meanings, one of which is "having the form of a human". (And in fact many of the google scholar results for "anthropomorphic animal" are using that meaning. e.g. Lots of results about generating human-like animal imagery via CGI, hand-drawn animation/illustrations, etc.) Colin M (talk) 18:50, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose.WP:PRECISE. There are plenty of talking animals which are not anthropomorphic. Parrots can talk. Showiecz (talk) 19:56, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Showiecz: An animal with a clear language is by definition being given anthropomorphic qualities, such as human-like sentience and personhood, if not the ability to think exactly like a human would. Anthropomorphism#Fairy tales cites "talking cows". As far as I can tell, it's entirely a subset of anthropomorphic ones. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 03:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Anthropomorphic qualities can include standing on hind legs, dressing in clothes, living in a house, etc. Talking animals is more precise and narrow. Mickey Mouse is an anthropomorphic animal. But he is not merely a "talking animal" like you would find in, say, Aesop's fables. It seems this article intends to cover animals living in a state of nature that happen to talk, not animals living in Disney suburbia. Walrasiad (talk) 14:11, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

But the article already kind of covers non-talking anthropomorphic animals (or aspects of anthropomorphic animals other than their speaking), and it probably should - I'm not sure it'd be helpful to have one article that discusses fictional speaking animals and a separate article discussing other humanlike things they do. Chubbles (talk) 22:58, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Wiki Education assignment: ENGL 273 - Children's Literature

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 14 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mswanson22 (article contribs).

I am planning on making some changes to the article in the next few weeks. First, I plan on copy-editing the lead section to make it more succinct and to give a better overview of how the page is organized in accordance to Wikipedia's recommendations. I also will be renaming the first two sections to make it easier for readers to understand, as it contains odd and confusing wording currently. I am thinking of organizing fictional genres into the two categories currently named "Talking creatures who are still creatures" and "creatures that portray humans" to show generally how talking animals are used for different purposes in different genres. Mswanson22 (talk) 17:11, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Differentiation Between "Talking Animals" and "Furries"

After a quick look at #Science fiction and the webcomic it entails (probably should be moved to Talking animals in science fiction, but that's another topic) a question of semantics had been brought to my attention:
What constitutes and differentiates an anthropomorphic talking animal, versus one that could be considered an anthropomorphic "furry" animal?

The webcomic in section seems like it could be marked as a furry webcomic (via WP:DUCK; looks like a furry webcomic, reads like a furry webcomic, and is registered under WikiProject Furry) but by cut-and-straight definition is a webcomic featuring anthropomorphic animals. However, the definition of the furry fandom is a group of people with an interest in anthropomorphic animals.^{[Original research?]} Therefore, could media targeted towards a demographic of furries (whether it be made by one or not) be considered into this article?

Explodicator7331 (talk) 18:26, 13 December 2022 (UTC)