Are animals allowed to be added as cast members?

My personal opinion is that they should be allowed, we also add animated animal charcters, so i see no reason why we should not add real life animal characters, but let's also hear what the rest of the staff says about it.

cheers
Juan

JuanArango wrote:
My personal opinion is that they should be allowed, we also add animated animal charcters, so i see no reason why we should not add real life animal characters, but let's also hear what the rest of the staff says about it.
cheers
Juan

I was not aware animated characters were here or that they were even allowed however they do have real human voices so that would make perfect sense, where animals do not except maybe "Mr. Ed." or "Francis the Talking Mule" or that Dog on "Dog with a Blog" I think it's called?

Animated characters are characters. Presumably the question is not do we add the animal characters, but the animals "playing" them. The animal actors, as it were.

That tends to get confusing. How many different dogs named Lassie played Lassie? And do we list them by their real name, or their "stage name" because all of the dogs were renamed Lassie when they joined the show as the title characters.

I suppose the first question is... are they credited? I don't recall Eddie on Frasier ever being credited. And the dog who played Eddie was named Moose. So we'd have a page for Moose and a page for Eddie Crane. All for an "actor" who I'm pretty sure was never credited onscreen.

Gadfly wrote:
Animated characters are characters. Presumably the question is not do we add the animal characters, but the animals "playing" them. The animal actors, as it were.
That tends to get confusing. How many different dogs named Lassie played Lassie? And do we list them by their real name, or their "stage name" because all of the dogs were renamed Lassie when they joined the show as the title characters.
I suppose the first question is... are they credited? I don't recall Eddie on Frasier ever being credited. And the dog who played Eddie was named Moose. So we'd have a page for Moose and a page for Eddie Crane. All for an "actor" who I'm pretty sure was never credited onscreen.

Hmm, this is indeed more difficult than i thought...

Also, for instance, Mr. Ed the character was played by two "actors": the horse was Bamboo Harvester and the voice was Allan Rocky Lane.

Mr. Ed was credited as "Himself" on the show.

Both are currently listed as Mister Ed, which seems to raise the same question that we had on superheroes who are listed as both their heroic identity and their secret identity. Although at least in this case, the body "actor" and the voice actor are different.

Good question, thanks for asking!

I think we shouldn't allowing adding these for now. As Gadfly stated, the data for this (the actual "animal actors" that portrayed the same "animal character") just hardly is available, so this doesn't really fit into our system.

(Moved to the Data forum)

david wrote:
Good question, thanks for asking!
I think we shouldn't allowing adding these for now. As Gadfly stated, the data for this (the actual "animal actors" that portrayed the same "animal character") just hardly is available, so this doesn't really fit into our system.
(Moved to the Data forum)

So I guess someone should remove this dog from this show I found? "Brandon the Dog"

If that's the definite conclusion, then yes. Lets give it a few more days to see if anyone else has additional insights.

But did a dog named Brandon play Brandon the dog on the show? Or was it a dog with a different name who played Brandon? And if the dog's real name was Brandon, shouldn't it say Brandon - as Brandon the Wonder Dog?

To take another example, Trigger the horse was born Golden Cloud. So is it Golden Cloud playing Trigger, or Trigger playing Trigger? Roy Rodgers later renamed Golden Cloud as Trigger,

But Dale Evans' horse Buttermilk was apparently always named Buttermilk.

I think it gets a bit silly when you start treating animals like human actors. They're animals, trained by people to do certain things on cue and given a carrot or sugar cube or whatever when they do. There may be a few actors like that, but essentially the animals aren't "acting." Trigger doesn't play the role of Roy Rodgers' mount. Trigger is Roy Rodgers' mount. Nobody went up to Mr. Ed and said, "Okay, here's your motivation for the next scene. Don't stay out too late at the Equus after-party, we'll need you bright and early tomorrow."

Gadfly wrote:
But did a dog named Brandon play Brandon the dog on the show? Or was it a dog with a different name who played Brandon? And if the dog's real name was Brandon, shouldn't it say Brandon - as Brandon the Wonder Dog?
To take another example, Trigger the horse was born Golden Cloud. So is it Golden Cloud playing Trigger, or Trigger playing Trigger? Roy Rodgers later renamed Golden Cloud as Trigger,
But Dale Evans' horse Buttermilk was apparently always named Buttermilk.
I think it gets a bit silly when you start treating animals like human actors. They're animals, trained by people to do certain things on cue and given a carrot or sugar cube or whatever when they do. There may be a few actors like that, but essentially the animals aren't "acting." Trigger doesn't play the role of Roy Rodgers' mount. Trigger is Roy Rodgers' mount. Nobody went up to Mr. Ed and said, "Okay, here's your motivation for the next scene. Don't stay out too late at the Equus after-party, we'll need you bright and early tomorrow."

Don't forget about "Nelleybell" or "Songbird", remember what they were and what shows they were in without Googling them?

Added to the policy now: Only roles portrayed or voiced by a human person are considered Characters; animal occurrences can't be added.