Are funny animal cartoons still popular?

I think one thing to look for is TV listings. Stuff isn't going to be on the air for long unless advertisers can make some sort of a profit, which translates into network profits. Animaniacs isn't on anymore (at least, I haven't seen it in years), and it's not due to a lack of quality -- it was produced by Stephen Spielberg and all -- it was more likely due to something else being more profitable.

And profit comes both from later sales but also production costs, which come earlier in the equation. This is one of the reasons there's so much reality TV out there -- it's just very cheap, production-wise, so there's less of a push for ratings because those shows have to jump over a much lower bar in order to become profitable. They are cheaper partly because of less (but not a complete lack thereof) scripting but also because the "talent" works considerably more cheaply.

But that's just TV. There are also, as you know, comic books. There are web comics, too -- lots of delivery systems for this sort of entertainment.

So I think your Google search (and yes, you should search for this on Google) should encompass things like Nielsen TV ratings, MPAA film profits and any objective gauges of popularity that you can think of for comic books. Just because someone's website claims that their comic is popular doesn't mean diddly. You need to get this information from an objective, independent third party and I'm sorry but I don't know who does the investigations into comic book popularity.

All I am interested in is knowing if this is still a popular genre.

I understand, but that involves research.

Here are some sites that may be of interest to you. They list the most popular comics and cartoons of all time:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2010/05/the-50-best-cartoon-characters-of-all-time.html

http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/page.cgi?p=cool_main

http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-best-cartoons-from-the-80s.php

http://animatedtv.about.com/od/showsaz/tp/top50chrctrs.htm

This site has youtube videos in 21 parts from a 3-hour special on the 100 greatest cartoon shows:

http://wn.com/100_Greatest_Cartoons

And you might like this site for getting ideas for your own cartoons:

http://www.helium.com/knowledge/8935-the-best-tv-cartoons-for-kids

This is Hulu's section of Animation and Cartoon genres. It even shows how many times certain videos have been watched so you can see if they are still popular:

http://www.hulu.com/genres/Animation-and-Cartoons

Here's another site that may be of interest to you:

http://www.watchcartoonsonline.info/category/cartoon-genres/

This is a 30 page article on cartoon realism by Jason Mittell

http://kirkarts.com/wiki/images/6/60/Mittell_Simpsons.pdf

TV.com has a database of cartoons that you can sort in many ways:

http://www.tv.com/shows/multibrowse/?network=21&pg=1&genre=17

Let me ask a question-do people still like funny animal cartoons or do they still prefer cartoons with "human" characters?

I was never really into the more "realistic" cartoons.

I watched some cartoons with "human" characters but I preferred to watch the comedic stuff. I never really paid too much attention to action stuff.

I think some of the funny animal cartoons were racist- there were no "black" cat or dog characters in Catillac Cats or "black" animal characters in Ducktales or Darkwing Duck. Did anyone else notice that?

People create animal characters because that's easy to do.