And the Oscar goes zoo Academy Award-worthy animals

Behind every rock star, letter forger, magical nanny and pretender to the throne of England, there's an animal providing support. While the Academy Awards celebrate the humans behind the year's best movies, we're highlighting the creatures that stole every scene they were in.

Favorite Feline

Courtesy 20th Century Fox.‘Bohemian Rhapsody'

In the 1970s, Freddie Mercury's girlfriend gave him two cats: Tom and Jerry, to whom he dedicated his 1985 solo album. But the Queen frontman didn't stop there, eventually keeping as many as 10 cats at a time. In Bohemian Rhapsody, Mercury's feline friends are seen romping around his mansion.

Courtesy Fox Searchlight.‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?'

In Can You Ever Forgive Me, Melissa McCarthy's Lee Israel begins forging letters from dead celebrities in order to pay rent and, more importantly, take her cat Jersey to the veterinarian. Jersey is played by Towne, a cat that bucked the stereotype that cats are hard to work with. Director Marielle Heller insisted to Deadline that Towne should win a “Cat Oscar.”

Coolest Canine

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.‘A Star Is Born'

Charlie the Labradoodle steals hearts as a faithful companion to Ally and Jackson Maine, a constant presence through the main human characters' ups and downs. IRL, Charlie is owned by A Star Is Born director and star Bradley Cooper, who told AOL, “He's a great actor.”

Courtesy Netflix.‘Roma'

The family dog (and the prodigious amount of poop it creates) is an ongoing theme in Alfonso Cuaron's Roma. Housekeeper Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparacio) is continually tormented by her task of scrubbing the dog's excrement off the driveway as the turmoil of Mexico City in the 1970s unfolds around her.

Courtesy Fox Searchlight.‘Isle of Dogs'

In the dystopian setting of this film, enough pet owners decided not to vaccinate their dogs that an extreme outbreak of canine influenza caused all dogs to be banished from the Japanese city of Megasaki. We can only assume veterinarians have been banned from the city as well. The dogs in this movie talk and overthrow a government conspiracy, which is cool, although we at dvm360 must admit it's pretty weird that the citizens of Megasaki imported all English-speaking dogs.

To read about more amazing animal performers, see page 2!

Best Bird

Courtesy Fox Searchlight.‘The Favourite'

Forget horse races. Forget racing greyhounds. You've never experienced the thrill of racing until you see a group of eighteenth-century nobles' race ducks. In The Favourite, there's a whole group of them, but our favorite (ahem) is the duck that wins the race at the beginning and then goes on to enjoy perks like meetings with the queen and being lovingly carried around by a noble in a ridiculous wig. Relevance to the plot? Mostly to showcase how absurd rich people are.

Courtesy Disney.‘Mary Poppins Returns'

Everyone loves the cheeky penguins from the original Mary Poppins and now they've come back to dance with Lin-Manuel Miranda. It's an homage to the original and they've still got some sass but the real charm of these penguins is borrowed from their first appearance. (And the overwhelming charisma of their human counterpart.)

Courtesy Netflix.‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs'

In the vignette “Meal Ticket” we get a glimpse of a chicken who can do basic math: addition, subtraction and multiplication. And, according to its handler, he's self-taught and “has no formal education.” But surely a chicken who can calculate 18 take away seven had to have met with a veterinary behaviorist at least once.

chrismr / stock.adobe.com‘Vice'

The infamous 2006 incident where then-vice president Dick Cheney shot attorney Harry Whittington in the face during a quail hunting trip is revisited in Adam McKay's Best Picture nominee Vice. Now fully recovered, Whittington told the Corpus Christi Caller Times he'd see the movie, and because the fateful hunting trip was cut short, the innocent quail lived to see another day.