A long time later, the natural history professor Habakuk Tibatong develops a method of teaching animals to speak.

Because of the envy and attacks of his professor colleagues, he leaves his home to settle with Tim Inkblot, a little orphan boy, and the talking domestic pig Wutz on the small island of Titiwu.

One day an iceberg washes ashore with a large egg, from which, after a short incubation period, an Urmel hatches, which is then raised by Wutz and also learns to speak.

In the course of his childhood, Urmel has to endure various adventures, in particular the disempowered and therefore bored King Pumponell of Pumpolonien as a big game hunter after him.

King Futsch came to the island in a helicopter with his servant Samuel, known as Sami, to take the Urmel to Museum Director Zwengelmann in Pumpolonien.

On his escape from Futsch, Wawa hides the Urmel in a cave where a large crab lives on an island in the middle of an underground lake and where nitrous oxide leaks from a source.

All those buried are finally rescued in Wutz' "slumber barrel", which has been converted into a submarine, through an underground connection channel to the sea.

Also in 1995 there was a loose animated adaption of the book with a few episodes being adaptations of the book in which Tibatong is a female named Opheila Tibatong/Tiddlypom and instead of Tibatong teaching the animals how to talk she instead uses speech drops and Pig is given a name and is called Toots Tim does not appear in this adaptation, King Pumponell is renamed to Solmeyer/Slimeyer in the with references to him being king where being omitted where instead he is a Zookeeper and he and Zwengelmann/Swindleman dub swap roles Zwengelmann wants capture and kill Urmel and stuff him on display at his museum while Solmeyer wants keep him in a Zoo but always fail at the end.