"... now why do I crave nuts and shiny things?"
"[Orell] can enter the minds of animals and see through their eyes."
This character doesn't just talk to animals and order them about; he or she can see through their eyes and experience the world through their senses. The range of this power goes from paranoia inducing to Superpower Lottery winner. On the low end, the character can see through one animal, usually a Familiar he or she is emotionally and spiritually tied to. On the high end, she can do this through more than one type of animal, or even several at once, making them close to The Omniscient. Depending on the level of control, she may be able to go beyond seeing through their eyes and create The Swarm out of local fauna.
Typically the animals are vermin or smaller, since their "small minds" are easier to control though bigger types aren't unheard of... but the tradeoff is they're harder to control. Depending on the type of bond, having one of these living listening devices killed may cause the character to faint from the feedback.
When the host is human or a sapient animal, this becomes Seeing Through Another's Eyes.
Compare Eye Spy. Contrast Surveillance Drone.
The witch Arachne from Soul Eater can see though the eyes of her spiders. Medusa is apparently able to do the same thing with her snakes (or anyone she's implanted with them).
Tanya, a Contractor in the second season of Darker Than Black has the power to summon clouds of insects and is shown to be able to use them for spying purposes. In one scene, she is able to listen and observe what's going on in another room by sending one of her bugs in there.
Mao gets a more in-depth version wherein he possesses the animal and can speak through it. Unfortunately, his human body got killed when he was out spying, so now he's trapped in the form of a cat.
A story from Rumiko Takahashi's Rumic World series called "When My Eyes Got Wings" involved an Ill Boy who could see the world through the eyes of a little bird.
Sei Arisaka from Himechan No Ribon can do this along with being The Beastmaster. For example, he can tell his cat to spy on somebody and be able to look through their eyes without being in direct control.
Ino from Naruto can use her clan's possession powers to do this.
Fairly standard practice for familiars in Fate/Zero. Kiritsugu is unusual in that he prefers cameras since they can't be fooled by illusions while animal familiars still can be fooled.
Hunter × Hunter: Flutter's Satellite Dragonflies allow him to see everything his conjured dragonflies do. This ability is later "borrowed" by Leol via Rental Pod, and Ikalgo while he's possessing his corpse.
Later on, there is another power called "Little Eye," which allows the user to see through and control the movements of small animals. Though it was created by and belongs to one of Prince Woble's guards, it, just like the Satellite Dragonflies, got borrowed (this time voluntarily) by Kurapika, who then transferred it to Woble's mother Queen Oito. She uses it to control a cockroach to spy on the other princes through the ventilation shafts, only to discover Prince Tserriednich's Nen Beast within them.
Four characters in all use this in Vampire Knight: Kaname with bats, Shizuka as Maria with a crow, Maria with an owl, and Sara with spiders.
The Falcon, of Marvel Comics, can do this with birds, with varying strength in doing so. Considering a bird's eye view, it could be pretty useful.
The page image comes from the comic North 40, Luane lucked out with getting just this ability. More incredibly, she handles the godlike power with incredible humanity, enduring dozens of fainting spells to help stop the unsealing of the Sealed Evil in a Can.
The Flea in PS238 appears to have this power at least to some degree when it comes to insects. After being swiped by a teleporter, the other characters were able to reunite with him by talking to random cockroaches, which he described as "better than cell phones."
In Dreadstar, the blind telepath Willow can see through the eyes of her pet monkey.
In The Sandman Bast is able to see through the eyes of cats, in one arc where Hell is up for auction she offers Dream information on his missing brother Destruction in exchange for Hell, but later on she confesses that she was lying and none of her people have seen him in fifty years, when his dog killed one of them.
In Seven Soldiers of Victory, Klarion is able to see through the eyes of his familiar Teekl, but has to cover up his own eyes to do so.
Depending on the Writer, Klara of the Runaways has sometimes demonstrated the ability to "hear" through her roses, most notably in "Homeschooling", where she detected soldiers approaching the Malibu house because her plants told her that they were coming.
Taylor in Intrepid is capable of doing this, much like in her source material. The difference is, she's not limited to just insects.
A Man of Iron: Like Varys, the Night's Queen uses "little birds" to spy on people. Unlike him, this is entirely literal, as she kills birds then reanimates them to serve her. Since she's possessing the body of Sansa Stark, who in canon is a latent warg, it's possible that she's combining those abilities with her own power to create wights.
In The Little Mermaid, Ursula uses her pet eels to spy on Ariel. Each have one magic eye that provides a stereo image back to a crystal ball in her lair.
As seen in a Deleted Scene, Shan Yu in Mulan was going to be capable of seeing through his falcon's eyes, but it was cut out both to save time and to avoid giving the villains too much focus.
The Skeksies of The Dark Crystal have bat like creatures that fly across the land and transmit visuals back to them through a piece of crystal embedded in their faces.
Eric Draven from The Crow has among his powers the ability to see through the eyes of the title bird.
In Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Claudia uses this trick to spy on Lilli in the forest.
The Beastmaster: Dar is able to see through his animal companions' eyes. Useful for scouting/spying in general and in the middle of a fight when his own eyes are damaged at one point.
Discworld has this as one of the most useful applications of Borrowing (possession magic). A mouse can walk through cracks, an eagle can fly high and fast, and an owl can sit on your shoulder and let you read through its eyes. The crystal ball has image quality problems.note if one is using a cracked green glass fishing floatand its efficiency drops with distancenote As seen during the Leshp war, when the wizards attempt to tune in on events in Leshp and even more remote Klatch: they can barely see for static. An Omniscope is hard to aim, and scrying without enchanted hardware may or may not exist at all,note it totally does: "we used to make do with a drop of ink in a bowl of water" so Borrowing has major advantages if the possessor is skilled enough.
And if they're not skilled enough, the possessor runs a severe risk of having their mind almost inseparably entangled with that of the creature they're possessing. Also, the possessor had better make sure they aren't mistaken for dead while they're off gallivanting around in some animal's body.
In Carpe Jugulum Count de Mapyre uses his vampiric abilities to see though the eyes of hundreds of magpies.
The Rat King from The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents can see through the eyes of animals. When Maurice feels its presence in his head, he closes his own eyes to hinder its attempts to locate him.
From Isobelle Carmody's The Legendsong Saga, Glynn discovers that is able to do this with the He-fienna while it is hurt. She also uses the link to experience occasional dreams like this with both the He- and She-fienna.
In The Bad Place, creepy twin sisters Violet and Verbina have this ability. They share a constant mind link with each other and the dozens of cats occupying their home. Craving wild and evocative sensation, they often drift outward to possess the bodies of hunting animals and their prey to feel both the thrill of the hunt and the pain of death. They cannot do this to humans however.
In Desperation by Stephen King, the body-snatching Eldritch Abomination Tak can enter and control animals, seeing through their eyes and feeling their thoughts, but only for short periods. Its presence inside living things causes them to wither and die and it has to hop from one to the other fairly quickly. It prefers humans because they last the longest.
In Tamora Pierce's The Immortals quartet, Daine talks to animals, sees through their eyes, and even had them sabotage an army for her.
E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman novel Gray Lensman. Kimball Kinnison makes mental contact with a spider and sees through its eyes as he uses it to turn off a Boskonian's thought-screen. He can do this with higher level animals as well.
In book twelve in The Wheel of Time book, "Towers of Midnight", Graendal does this to a dove in order to remotely see what her enemy Rand Al'Thor is up to.
In-universe, it's commonly believed that the Dark One can see through the eyes of carrion-eaters like crows and rats. This is explicitly revealed to not be the case- while the Shadow's forces can commandeer such creatures to act as spies, they have to report to a Myrddraal rather than having their own senses hijacked. Seeing through the eyes of such creatures, like Graendal does, is apparently a very advanced technique with the True Power that most of the Shadow's servants can't do.
In Harry Potter, Voldemort has this connection with the snake Nagini. When Harry starts having dreams where he sees what Voldemort sees, there are several where he is experiencing the scenes through the snake.
Wargs or skinchangers do this in A Song of Ice and Fire, mostly with wolves, but other animals are possible. With training, they can learn to actually control the animal, but this trope is the first hint that you've got the potential. All of the Stark children are potential wargs, though Sansa never learned how due to her direwolf being killed, and only Bran and Arya have shown themselves to be able to use it on anything other than their direwolves. This can also be done to humans, though they don't like it - when Varamyr tries to take over a human she gouges out her eyes and bites off her tongue in the fight for control of her body.
In the history of the setting, the infamous spymaster and Evil Chancellor Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers is implied to have been a secret skinchanger who used his powers to pry on people through the eyes of crows and rats. Reduced to an immobile husk literally rooted inside a cave in the main story, he continues the tendency. It's implied he's spying on the Night's Watch through Lord Commander Mormont's pet crow.
Herald Eldan, seen most prominently in By the Sword, has animal telepathy as one of his abilities, which gives him a touch of this as well. Many Heralds with strong "sight" Gifts can See Through Their Companions' Eyes, but Companions are not horses, despite being horse-shaped.
Despite having no other form of Animal Mindspeech, Amily develops this ability between Bastion and Closer to Home and develops it over the course of the latter book. It proves far more useful than it seems at first glance when she becomes the King's Own Herald. Having familiarity with the animal in question improves her range and stamina, but she can develop this familiarity by way of another animal. To spy upon one half of a simmering feud, Amily gifts a pet to the lord's daughter and "introduces herself" to the rest of the house animals by looking through the little dog.
In Malazan Book of the Fallen, Bottle the squad mage was taught how to access all of the various Warrens (schools of magic), but his most important skill is his ability to control animals in his vicinity, something he insists is not actually a form of magic. This proves instrumental in keeping his squad alive while they're crossing hostile territory, as he can spread out over a large number of creatures at the same time if all he wants is their sensory input.
In Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society, this is part of Bug's superpowers — limited to bugs, though.
The Bestiar mages in Kroniki Drugiego Kręgu.
Discussed in the Realm of the Elderlings series. In the Six Duchies it is generally assumed that the Witted can see through animal eyes. That is not so. As Fitz and others point out, they cannot see through their bond animals' eyes, yet the idea that the Witted could be spying on them creeps many people out to such an extent that — combined with other superstitions — it's a direct cause of Burn the Witch!
The protagonist of Worm does this with insects and arthropods, and it includes hearing and touching. It is incredibly useful, as she can do it with every insect in her range simultaneously. Within a radius of approximately two blocks, she is effectively locally omniscient by spreading her swarm over surfaces and capes.
Sword of Truth: Slides have an ability to look through animals' eyes and hear with their ears when sending people's captured souls into them. Nicholas used this to always stay one step ahead of Richard until he figures it out.
In American Gods Bast can see through cats' eyes, as in Neil Gaiman's other most-famous work. She uses it to keep tabs on Shadow.
In the Garrett, P.I. novels, the Dead Man uses Mr. Big the parrot to shadow Garrett's investigations, seeing through the bird's eyes and speaking through its mouth. John Stretch the ratman can communicate with normal rats, and (both ratman and rat vision being limited) uses them as Animal Spy Noses.
Heretical Edge: The theriangelos spell creates an animal that the caster can control and see through. This is one of the features of Sovereign, Aylen's cyberform hawk.
An early symptom of Bran's ability to warg is when this begins happening in his dreams.
The wildlings make good use of wargs like Orell as scouts.
BOB in Twin Peaks can see what goes on in the woods through the eyes of owls, although it may be that he can transform into them. It's ambiguous.
Series/Beastmaster: Dar and his animals.
Norse Mythology: Odin can see and hear through ravens Hugin and Munin. This is arguably the Trope Codifier.
Magic-users/wizards could do this with their familiars and homunculi.
There were a surprisingly large number of spells that allow to use other beings' senses, and not only the sight. Some work only on a limited group of creatures, such as the undead. Also, psionic powers.
The Forgotten Realms spell Spidereyes allowed the caster to see through the eyes of a spider.
By fourth edition the 'scry on familiar ability' has gone missing. Arcane users can see though the eyes of a owl familiar and several others allow you to determine line of sight from their point of view.
The Animalism discipline in Vampire: The Masquerade and Requiem allows kindred to do this with one animal.
In the DC Heroes roleplaying game, this was an available superpower called 'Eye of the Cat'.
In Shadowrun biodrones are vat-grown animals with concealed implants for remote control and usually surveillance. Unlike regular drones they look like ordinary animals.
Exalted: Lunars can do this with the "Sense-Borrowing Method" Charm. And inverts it with "Predator is Prey Mirror", where the Lunar causes their prey (possibly including humans) to see through their eyes, disorienting and terrifying them.
In Paladins, Cassie's ultimate uses her pet hawk, Zigs, to fly about and highlight all enemies to her team for a few seconds.
In Far Cry Primal, the protagonist can call upon an owl to scout ahead and highlight enemies and objects.
In Assassin's Creed Origins, Bayek can use his eagle Senu like in Far Cry: Primal and use it to highlight enemies and objects of interest. Connor's daughter Io:nhiòte has the same ability, which manifested when she needed to warn her father about a pack of wolves.
The same mechanic comes back for Assassin's Creed Odyssey, where the protagonist Alexios or Kassandra has an eagle named Ikaros.
Warcraft III: The Night Elves have two different spells: Sentinel puts an owl in a tree to provide vision until the tree is cut down, while Owl Scout summons a temporary but unkillable owl that can see invisible units.
Master Seer possesses a cat in TwoKinds to spy on the main character, but Lady Nora uses her shapeshifting powers to distract it.
He later possesses a horse. Its rider is suitably wielded out.
The protagonist of Cut Time is a blind girl with a "seeing eye falcon" and actually sees through its eyes.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Rat King is blind, but is able to "see" through the eyes of rats.
In Voltron: Legendary Defender Lotor's general Narti is blind and sees through the eyes of the cat-like Kova.