The aggressive bull who attacks everyone and everything with the color red. This stereotype can be found in many comic strips and cartoons and is based on bullfighting where the bullfighter taunts the bull by waving a small red cape (muleta). This has led to the urban legend that bulls will attack anything in the color red. In reality bulls are dichromatic and attack the waving cape instead of the color. The reason those capes have the color red is its association with blood and the tradition itself.

The dumb bull, cow or calf: Since cattle seems to do nothing more than stand in grassy fields, obstruct traffic and stare at everything passing by, people have portrayed them as characters who aren't very bright. In many languages being called "a stupid cow" or "dumb calf" is an insult. Being "treated as cattle" or expressing a "herd mentality" are also pejorative expressions.

When anthropomorphising a (non-human) animal there are stereotypical traits which commonly tend to be associated with particular species. Often these are simply exaggerations of real aspects or behaviors of the creature in question, while other times the stereotype is taken from humor12-mythology and the true origins are forgotten, or from a figurative point of view of some thing. Some are popularized or solidified by a single particularly notable appearance in media, for example Disney's 1942 film Bambi which portrayed the titular deer as an innocent, fragile animal with the exception of Ronno. In any case, once they have entered the culture as widely-recognized stereotypes of animals, they tend to be used both in conversation and media as a kind of shorthand for expressing particular qualities.

While some authors make use of these animal stereotypes "as is," others undermine reader expectations by reversing them, developing the animal character in the exact opposite direction (e.g. a fastidious pig or a cowardly lion).