Intelligent Gerbil/Playing With

Basic Trope: Aliens clearly based on a terrestrial animal

• Straight: The Denya are large anthropomorphic pig people, who have extravagant mud bath facilities, spend large amounts of time looking for rare mushrooms and eat their meals out of a trough.
• Exaggerated: The aliens are called the Pigs, and look and act exactly like normal pigs other than being sapient and capable of speech.
• Downplayed: The Denya are Kemonomimi with pig snouts, ears and tail.
• Justified: The alien species is genetically engineered based on animals from Earth.
• Inverted: An alien planet's non-sapient species resemble humans.
• Subverted: Human astronauts going to another planet describe its inhabitants as being like pigs. When we actually get to the planet and see the aliens, it turns out they don't look like pigs, the astronauts were just being metaphorical.
• Double Subverted: ...They actually look like Tyrannosaurus rex.
• Parodied: The Pig People are at war with the Wolf People, The Pigs have to keep building increasingly strong fortresses that the Wolves won't Huff and Puff away!
• Zig Zagged: ???
• Averted: No aliens show up.
  • The aliens are Rubber Forehead Aliens or Starfish Aliens, and don't resemble terrestrial animals in the slightest.
  • The aliens look like an animal but appearance is the only similarity
• Enforced: ???
• Lampshaded: "Score one for the intelligent design theory. There's no way bacterium from another planet could evolve into furries."
• Invoked: ???
• Exploited: ???
• Defied: ???
• Discussed: "I can't believe you ate all my food! You're such a pig!" "Hey! There is no need for racial slurs!"
• Conversed: "These pig-people are potrayed as lazy, fat and greedy," "At least they're not the Na'vi!"
• Played for Laughs: The Denya invade Earth intending to conquer it and enslave the humans. The Humans thwart the alien pig invaders by threatening them with a giant BBQ pit!
• Played for Drama: Due to the fact that they so closely resemble and behave like animals, the aliens are treated as such.

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