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I Am Not an Animal

television series

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ5976033 ↗
Source-derived summary

I Am Not an Animal is a British animated black comedy TV series telling the tale of highly intelligent animals rescued from a vivisectionist laboratory and forced to live on their own. The series was made and directed by Peter Baynham. It was produced by Baby Cow Productions and ran on BBC Two in the United Kingdom from 10 May to 14 June 2004. It has also aired on the ABC in Australia.

The title comes from the famous quote in The Elephant Man.

Plot

In the laboratory Vivi-Sec UK, a group of six animals are part of the fourth batch of Project S, an experiment designed to create talking animals.

The animals are given a sophisticated lifestyle in order for them to develop their intellect, living a luxurious life run by computers in something similar to a four-star hotel, unaware they are really part of a laboratory experiment. They have human-like personalities and names, wear specially designed clothes, speak in a pseudo-intellectual fashion, eat gourmet food, drink fine wines, read books and magazines and generally live like humans in luxury. Meanwhile, the other animals outside Project S are tortured with horrific experiments.

The animals in the experiment include:

Philip Masterson-Bowie the Thoroughbred horse (voiced by Steve Coogan)

Winona Matthews the pit bull (voiced by Amelia Bullmore)

Hugh Gape the Japanese macaque (voiced by Kevin Eldon)

Claire Franchetti the rat (voiced by Julia Davis)

Mark Andrews (aka Glen Belt) the sparrow (also voiced by Steve Coogan)

Kieron the cat (voiced by Simon Pegg)

A group of animal rights activists break into the laboratory to rescue the animals.

Editorial summary

“I Am Not an Animal” enters the record as television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Animal, television and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Animal, television and series.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“I Am Not an Animal” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Animal, television and series provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5976033. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “I Am Not an Animal”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow I Am Not an Animal primary sources, I Am Not an Animal archive and Animal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “I Am Not an Animal”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “I Am Not an Animal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.