The shows are topical, and I recommend starting with the episode "in the garden" (episode 5). Snippets of the conversation between baby birds Ted and Stan discussing what they like ("diggin’ dwurt") and don’t like ("papoo" or what we would call poo-poo) in the garden have entered the Thomas family lexicon of favorite quotes. An elderly hedgehog interviewed who falls asleep in the middle of her thought, and then revives to finish her sentence, is just too funny. There is a woodpecker who can’t finish his sentences due to compulsive pecking, and a garden slug who can’t stop a ladybug from crawling on him as he has no hands. If you listen carefully to Gary and Nigel the slugs discussing gardening, you can hear that the crunching of a leaf is actually the click of a cigarette lighter that the real speaker was using during the interview. An instant later, a pill bug falls into the frame, masking the clunking of a beer bottle on a table.

Our next favorite won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Animated Short. In it, people living in a home for the aged are brought to life by zoo animals—imagine a Brazilian puma energetically talking about his need for “space” and "fresh meat." The bush baby whose eyes are magnified by her glasses is very funny looking when she takes the glasses off. Young (and old) boys will appreciate the scatological humor in the hippo pen that occurs in the background while the baby hippo admits that some of the animal pens are a bit, well, "grotty."

Our family enjoyed showing "the sea" (episode 4) to a friend who is a marine biologist. Microscopic protozoa talk about their relationship to water as various single-celled dramas unfold around them, drifting in and out of focus, with Pac-man making an unexpected entrance. Sculling in place, sea turtles and sharks discuss their fear of the deep. Jellyfish discuss swimming techniques and severe motion sickness, and the flounder admits to having been "under a lot of pressure lately."

Each of the thirteen shorts celebrates our uniquely human qualities and our variety. The repetition of the brief introductory theme song before each short is a bit annoying, but it’s worth enduring to get to the funny stuff. Little ones may have trouble with some of the thicker accents but will probably be content to just watch the animation, while adults will enjoy the parodies of human life presented by the animals.