Talking animal
A talking animal is a non-anthropomorphic animal with human-like attributes, usually intelligence and speech. They generally live life like an animal, except in the case of talking animal stories written for the very young, in which case the stories have less 'kid-palatable' elements of animal life ignored or glossed over.
The best known 'talking animal' stories are Watership Down and Animal Farm. Many comics, such as Faux Pas, are 'talking animal' comics, and many furries come into the fandom via a tangential talking-animal fandom (including The Lion King and Balto). Some other series (such as Redwall and The Secret of NIMH) are 'mostly' 'talking animal', although sticklers generally do not include tool use.
In some stories, talking animals coexist with regular animals. Gone Wylde has some scenes where anthropomorphic characters communicate with their wild kin. In one of The Chronicles of Narnia books, we find out that regular animals are used for food much as they are in the real world, but that eating a talking animal is tantamount to cannibalism.
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