I dare say, however, that if I, or any of us, was confronted with ANY animal that not only spoke but engaged us in discourse, we simply wouldn’t be able to handle it. Well, maybe those who recreationally use hallucinogens would be okay. The fact that we've become accustomed to having such a tolerance for animal pretend-speaking will surely be fodder for future studies of our age, if not some humorous anecdotal representations of us in that future's animation.
We were marveled in the time of animation's introduction by flat, crudely drawn characters mimicking some limited aspects of pop-culture from the early 20th century. The animated cartoon, replete with all kinds of "animoid" creatures, adapted itself to every media vehicle; from the funny pages to the silver screen to the television.
The animation industry, hyper-scrutinized and censored in its infancy, presented a fairly prescribed and myopic view of American life, best typified by Disney's Bambi and her boisterous (albeit vanilla) forest contemporaries. Most of what followed these works was a long, nauseating string of similarly subdued copycats. Then Looney Toons, Jungle Book, The Justice League, Tom & Jerry... and so on. Hats off to Fritz the Cat for pushing the envelope!
And then there was... Anime. Here, we're confronted with more quazi-anthro characters than one can shake Inu Yasha's sword at. (He’s a talking demon-animal, by the way.) Known early on as Japanime, anime’s various styles differed widely from anything Disney was making. Possibly the best, and most relevant, result of Anime's influence on how acclimated we've become to the integration of animals expressing themselves in our culture is the Neko phenomenon. Even the most basic Web inquiry for information on the subject will be richly rewarded.
We have all kinds of questions about how our species will survive. Consider the lifestyle differences we have with our predecessors. I suspect my Great-depression-surviving, WWII-fighting, American-infrastructure-building Booster grandparents wouldn't find much humor in the myriad animated, supposedly self-actualized animal characters that seem to dominate our culture as a whole today.
They might wonder why we spend a lot of our free time watching animals that talk to us, when we just keep finding ways to avoid spending much time talking to each other. I must admit I wonder this too, sometimes. But, I also really laugh my ass off every time I watch that episode of Family Guy where Brian (a dog), Stewie (a baby), and Frank Sinatra Jr. sing together. Because I also really like a freshly shaven leg... I can take or leave Alan Funt.