Just beak-cause!L - R, top to bottom
The beak is one of the main defining parts of a bird, possibly even more than the wings or feathers. While Real Life birds can't move their beaks to make facial expressions, cartoon birds can often move their beaks like mouths as per Rule of Funny.
This can come in several different forms. A bird's beak may act like a nose, with a human-like mouth underneath, or their beak may be flat against the face and be moveable like a mouth. A less extreme case involves a small or nonexistent lower beak which the bird can use to express while still keeping the effect of a realistic beak.
Often results in Informed Species, or in worse cases, Unintentional Uncanny Valley. Subtrope of Funny Animal Anatomy and Artistic License – Ornithology. See also Feather Fingers and Toothy Bird for more common tropes involving anthropomorphic avians, Clamshells as Mouths for the bivalvian equivalent, Aardvark Trunks for the anteating equivalent, and Crying Critters for another instance of animals emoting in a way that breaks biology. Compare Expressive Skull and Expressive Mask for other faces that shouldn't emote but do. Not to be confused with the other definition of "mouthy", in that case see Polly Wants a Microphone for talkative birds.
Examples
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Advertising
- A 2020 commercial for Froot Loops was criticized online for its redesign of mascot Toucan Sam; among the complaints was that Sam had a Cheeky Mouth on the side of his face.
- Toucan Sam's original design is also an example in that his small lower beak acts as a mouth which he uses to smile.
Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
- Stardust Crusaders: Pet Shop, a sinister Stand-using hawk loyal to Big Bad Dio, gives a Psychotic Smirk despite being a bird. Iggy the dog wastes no time to lampshade it.
Comic Books
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Bean the Dynamite, a duck, has a pointed beak acting like a muzzle with a Cheeky Mouth like Sonic and his friends, only opening like a real beak when he opens up his mouth wide.
Comic Strips
- Woodstock from Peanuts has a beak that resembles a large rounded nose with a mouth underneath.
- Booker from U.S. Acres started out with a regular beak, but Art Evolution eventually made it look more like a nose. Roy and Wade, on the other hand, still retain their beaks.
Eastern European Animation
- „Kérem a következőt!”: Bird characters, including the owl protagonist Dr. Bubo, all have human-like mouths under their beak-shaped noses.
Film — Animated
- Iago from Disney's Aladdin has a beak that acts like lips and allows him to make several different facial expressions. As shown in the page image for Toothy Bird, he also has teeth.
- All of the chickens from Chicken Run and its sequel have the upper half of their beak shaped to resemble a nose, and the lower half replaced by a human-like mouth.
Video Games
- Kirby: Zigzagged with King Dedede. Averted the earliest games where he was shown almost exclusively from the side which emphasized his relatively normal and unmouth-like beak. Once Art Evolution kicked in, he started being shown more from the front, which made him fall into a type 2, right down to having teeth in some depictions. Currently it's downplayed with his current 3D model which, while still plenty expressive, is stiffer and longer, making it generally more evocative of his early more bird-like beak.
- In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the bird people known as the Rito look almost identical to humans except for beaks over their nose, with human mouths underneath. (By contrast, the Rito in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are far more bird-like, with almost no human characteristics and true beaked mouths.)
- The penguins in Club Penguin have strangely round beaks with the regular mouth on the short lower mandible and the bigger upper mandible functioning like a snout. The first design was more natural, with round beaks moving more like a beak yet with human expressions and the same small jaw. The stop motion animated specials use Cheeky Mouth on the still round beaks.
- A few monsters from "My Singing Monsters" are based on birds and some are them are like this like Riff, Yawstitch, Screemu, & Epic Tweedle
- Pokémon:
- Hawlucha has a regular mouth under its beak, which looks more like a nose.
- Togekiss is either a bird or a creature resembling one that has no beak at all, instead having a cute little mouth.
- The Babylon Rogues from Sonic Riders are a trio of birds who all have flat beaks they can use to fit in with the style (the mammal characters have short snouts) and make various facial expressions. Whether or not they have teeth depends on the artist; the games don't depict them with teeth, but the Archie comics do.
- This
◊ artwork from Yoshi's Story, has a Bumpty's beak flat against its face, almost resembling lips.
Web Original
- In this kids' song, the bird and his dad are drawn with mouths beneath their beaks, making the beaks look like noses.
- In Ashens 2012 Christmas Special he reviews a penguin toy whose "beak" is merely a painted on rounded triangle...
Ashens: It took me awhile to see that red thing as a nose, it's more like it's got a singing mouth or something.
- MeatCanyon's Regular Show parody "Gumballs in the Park" designs Mordecai with the "bill that's flattened like lips" variant to make him look more grotesque.
- Serina: The Vivas are a group of live-bearing birds whose herbivorous members have developed fleshy lips and snouts over◊ their beaks◊.
Western Animation
- In the 3-2-1 Penguins! episode, "Give and Let Give", the lawn flamingo aliens' beaks function more like noses, with mouths underneath them.
- Dodo and all other birds that appear in Animal Crackers have their beak as a nose, with a "normal" mouth under it.
- The bird characters in Birdz have beaks that look more like snouts, complete with teeth. That said, some character designs are more "beaky" than others, with Eddie and his family, as well as Miss Finch and Mr. Nuthatch, falling into the more "nosey" look, while most of Eddie's friends, Office Pigeon, and Mr. Pip having more realistic beaked faces.
- SwaySway and Buhdeuce from Breadwinners are ducks with lip-like bills that make them look more like frogs.
- The main trio of Chop Socky Chooks are chickens with beaks that look like human lips, making it difficult to identify them as chickens.
- The titular character of Harvey Beaks and his family have beaks shaped more like yellow lips, despite their family name.
- The Thunderbird on Hilda is drawn with a very snout-like beak, making it more greatly resemble a long muzzle than a real beak.
- The Jungle Show depicts the chickens Lil and Lily as having beak-like noses with functional mouths underneath.
- Oliver Owl from the early Looney Tunes shorts has a big wide mouth with a small hooked beak-like nose above it.
- Beaky Buzzard, another Looney Tunes character, has a small lower beak that acts like an expressive mouth.
- Pird, a minor character on OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, is a bird person designed to look like Pearl. His beak is a long, thin nose with a human mouth underneath.
- Not really a bird, but platypuses are often depicted with bills that are depicted as looking like regular mouths or noses in cartoons.
- Edward the platypus in Camp Lazlo has a beak that is flat against his mouth, resembling lips, but part of the beak also resembles a nose.
- Spliced has Patricia the Platypus, whose blue beak resembles a nose with a mouth underneath.
- Tiny Toon Adventures has Gogo Dodo, a green dodo bird, whose beak resembles a pointy nose with a mouth underneath.
- A good example occurs in the Disney Silly Symphony cartoon short Who Killed Cock Robin?, which features a cast of birds. The beaks of the feminine Jenny Wren and the effeminate Cupid are animated as red human lips; that they are actual beaks is made apparent from views of Jenny's profile and Cupid's silhouetted shadow.
Real Life
- An interesting Real Life example comes from the fact that the beak had to evolve before it could actually be borne by birds; early prehistoric birds, if they may be considered as such (that is, winged and feathered dinosaurs, from which group modern birds evolved) had profiles that were broadly similar to those of modern birds, but had multiple features that were more reptilian in nature, including a toothed snout rather than a modern beak.
- Potoos are birds with very small beaks and very wide mouths, which they use to catch bugs while in flight. The visual effect greatly resembles some versions of this trope, with the mouth overtaking the beak.
