In “101 Dalmatians,” the dogs of London defy their masters to sound the Twilight Bark, a kind of animal Amber Alert that spreads the word that puppies have gone missing.

That was their first warning.

On “Zoo,” a series that has its premiere Tuesday night on CBS, the animal kingdom is again rising up in organized rebellion. Only this time the insurgency has escalated: Animals are not on a rescue operation so much as a vengeful mission to search and destroy, as if Hitchcock’s “The Birds” were crossbred with the Liam Neeson movie “Taken.”

“Zoo” isn’t as scary or as exciting as either of those, but it has a more sedate charm of its own — an apocalyptic horror movie that is not too horrifying to look at. Animals, even savage ones, are a lot easier on the eye than masked psycho-killers (see MTV’s “Scream” franchise reboot, which also has its premiere on Tuesday) or monsters (see Season 2 of FX’s “The Strain,” arriving on July 12). And they can move a lot faster than zombies. (See AMC’s late-summer spinoff, “Fear the Walking Dead.”)

And there is no mutt shaming. On this series, the devolution of the species is caused by man’s inhumanity to wildlife and society’s reckless abuse of nature, so it’s not the animals’ fault. Some creatures are less blameless than others, however. Dog lovers will not be surprised to see that the first to lash out are the felines — foreign and domesticated.