Anthropomorphic Antics (original) (raw)

In this post, I’m going to look at the age-old question about how the talking Goofy and non-talking Pluto can both be dogs in the same universe.

This kind of thing often seems to happen with anthropomorphic animals. Hey, in Animal Crossing, there are frogs who live in houses and dress in clothes, but also others you can catch in the river. So are Goofy and his ilk super-intelligent animals, or just people who look like animals? Is there some kind of cross between the DNA of both? And how does reproduction work among such beings? I’ve noticed that creators of fictional worlds usually avoid this issue by making most couples two of the same sort of animal: Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald and Daisy Duck, Porky and Petunia Pig, Pete and Pelly (both pelicans) from Animal Crossing, Buster and Babs Bunny, etc. On the other hand, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow were together, and much more famously Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

I remember in A Muppet Christmas Carol, in which the two of them played the Cratchits, their male children were frogs and their female children pigs. I know this wasn’t really canonical (as far as the Muppets can be considered to have a canon), but those are some pretty insane genetics, I must say. Why doesn’t their being together count as bestiality? Or maybe it does, and it’s just that nobody cares. Come to think of it, aren’t Gus Goose and Gladstone Gander Donald Duck’s cousins? Ducks and geese belong to different subfamilies! The whole thing is so confusing that the Pluto/Goofy issue merely scratches the surface. I guess there really are areas in which man and manimal aren’t meant to pry.

This entry was posted in Animal Crossing, Animals, Cartoons, Muppets, Video Games and tagged anthropomorphism, babs bunny, buster bunny, clarabelle cow, daisy duck, donald duck, gladstone gander, goofy, gus goose, horace horsecollar, kermit the frog, mickey mouse, minnie mouse, miss piggy, petunia pig, pluto, porky pig. Bookmark the permalink.