History Main / BizarreSexualDimorphism

* ''WesternAnimation/MonsterBusterClub'': The show has possibly the most truly extreme example with Grampa Smith and Cathy. Grampa Smith, in his true form, looks like a sort of blue-skinned fish-fly thing with four limbs. Cathy's true form, on the other hand, has six tentacle-like limbs, white skin with pink spots, three crests on her head, and a squirrel-like tail. However, since Cathy’s parents are never shown, it is unknown if they are biologically related or if they are related through adoption. If they are biological related, one possible {{Fanon}} explanation is that along with all of their other ComboPlatterPowers, their species possibly has extreme environmental adaptation at birth that they lose when they reach their child or teen years and thus stuck with whatever form they got, with Grampa Smith possibly being raised in an aquatic environment while his granddaughter was not.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Redakai}}'': Zane and Zair are a minor example. Despite being siblings (therefore [[GenderEqualsBreed most likely]] the same species), Zane has [[LittleGreenMen green skin]], blue hair, and darkened eyelids -- while his sister Zair has light red skin, dark red hair, [[AnimalEyes catlike eyes]], and a [[RubberForeheadAliens strangely familiar]] patch of bumps on her forehead.
* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': The Gazorpians genders are so completely different, with the males being hulking ogre-like beasts with reddish skin and the females resembling tall humanoid women with telekinetic abilities. In fact, the only physical feature that they share is their three pairs of arms, with one pair being on their heads in place of ears.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Wakfu}}'': All male Sadida have their entire head, including the face, covered by green hair — and this is true for the juveniles too. The females also have green hair, but their faces are devoid of pilosity. Similarly, male Sram tend to be skeletal-thin or sometimes full-blow skeleton people, while female Sram look like attractive women with a skeletal motif in their clothing.
* ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder'': A DownplayedTrope with Zbornaks (Sylvia's species). In the episode “Family Reunion” , Sylvia returns to her home planet with it being revealed that females and male a few minor differences with males are larger, have rhino-like horns on their snouts, and a few spines on their tails.

* ''WesternAnimation/MonsterBusterClub'': A possible truly extreme example with Grampa Smith and Cathy. Grampa Smith, in his true form, looks like a sort of blue-skinned fish-fly thing with four limbs. Cathy's true form, on the other hand, has six tentacle-like limbs, white skin with pink spots, three crests on her head, and a squirrel-like tail. However, since Cathy’s parents are never shown, it is unknown if they are biologically related or if they are related through adoption. If they are biological related, one possible {{Fanon}} explanation is that along with all of their other ComboPlatterPowers, their species possibly has extreme environmental adaptation at birth that they lose when they reach their child or teen years and thus stuck with whatever form they got, with Grampa Smith possibly being raised in an aquatic environment while his granddaughter was not.

* ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder'': Female Zbornaks (Sylvia's species) resemble a hybrid of a horse and a kangaroo, while their males resemble bipedal rhinos.

* In ''WesternAnimation/ButtUglyMartians'', the [[TheSmurfettePrinciple sole female Martian]] is named Shaboom Shaboom. The male Martians are all bug-eyed and have skeletal faces, while Shaboom Shaboom is prettier and is noticeably a bit more humanoid in face and body shape.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Chowder}}'', both the titular character, Chowder, and his "[[StalkerWithACrush love interest]]" Panini, are said by WordOfGod to be the same species of [[MixAndMatchCritters bear, cat, rabbit...]] [[BuffySpeak thingies]]. Despite this, the former is grey and bares no obvious rabbit features, while the latter is pink and has prominent "bunny ears" that can cause some to mistake her as just a rabbit at first glance. Though they do have similar cat-like tails and sharp teeth and [[spoiler: [[GrandFinale the final episode]] shows they both have large, bear-like builds as adults.]]
* The Boudacians (Princess Mandie's species) from ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': the females look like [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe human women with yellow skin, purple hair, and antenna]]; the males look like werewolves.
* Truly extreme ''WesternAnimation/MonsterBusterClub'' example: Grampa Smith, in his true form, looks like a sort of blue-skinned fish-fly thing with four limbs. Cathy's true form, on the other hand, has six tentacle-like limbs, white skin with pink spots, three crests on her head, and a squirrel-like tail. This is assuming that Grampa Smith and Cathy belong to the same species; Cathy may well be adopted, seeing that we never hear anything about her birth parents. Or Grandpa Smith is just what happens when his species gets old.
* Zane and Zair from ''WesternAnimation/{{Redakai}}'' are a minor example. Despite being siblings (therefore [[GenderEqualsBreed most likely]] the same species), Zane has [[LittleGreenMen green skin]], blue hair, and darkened eyelids -- while his sister Zair has light red skin, dark red hair, [[AnimalEyes catlike eyes]], and a [[RubberForeheadAliens strangely familiar]] patch of bumps on her forehead.
* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' has the Gazorpians, with the males being hulking ogre-like beasts with reddish skin and the females resembling tall humanoid women with telekinetic abilities. The only physical feature they share is their three pairs of arms, one of which is on their heads in place of ears.
* A throwaway gag on ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' has a male Gelgamek, a stocky green individual marginally larger than a male human of similar age and social standing, mention that the Gelgamek vagina is three feet wide, and [[VaginaDentata filled with razor-sharp teeth]]. One can only imagine what the rest of the Gelgamek female looks like.

* ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' (as well as other Golden Era cartoon short series for that matter) had male cats and mice which still look like, well, cats and mice except they're standing on two legs. This is in contrast to the female characters such as Tootles who look much more anthropomorphic. A particularly glaring instance of this can be seen in the short "Muscle Beach Tom", where the girl cat that Tom ([[InterspeciesRomance and Jerry]]) is flirting with more or less looks like a human female with a cat's head. (She doesn't even have a tail!)
* From ''WesternAnimation/{{Wakfu}}'', all male Sadida have their entire head, including the face, covered by green hair — and this is true for the juveniles too. The females also have green hair, but their faces are devoid of pilosity. Similarly, male Sram tend to be skeletal-thin or sometimes full-blow skeleton people, while female Sram look like attractive women with a skeletal motif in their clothing.
* On ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder'', female Zbornaks (Sylvia's species) resemble a hybrid of a horse and a kangaroo, while their males resemble bipedal rhinos.

* In Creator/PhilFoglio's ''[=XXXenophile=]'': Huldra (female [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]]), in the story ''A Beautiful Tale'', were [[SuperStrength scary-powerful]] {{Cute Monster Girl}}s with [[CuteLittleFangs cute little]] ''[[CuteLittleFangs shark teeth]]'' and long tufted prehensile tails. We never actually see a male troll... but a human character who [[TakeOurWordForIt has]] infers that humans must not look dimorphic at ''all'' to trolls. (She's wrong; the huldra is fully aware that she's female and ''still'' wants to marry her. [[YuriGenre With all that that implies]].)

* In general, in most species where males and females are of disparate sizes, the ''[[StatuesqueStunner female]]'' is often [[TinyGuyHugeGirl the bigger one]], as she has to produce larger eggs as opposed to the microscopic sperm of the males. The exceptions are when males physically fight over females, with natural selection favoring bigger males: examples include cichlids, horned beetles, and many species of mammals, including humans.

** But wait, there's more! It turns out that the ''females'' come in orange and yellow too! Orange-throated females lay many small eggs and are very territorial. Yellow-throated females lay fewer, larger eggs, and are more tolerant of each other. This makes for whopping ten total possible combinations.

* The male musk deer, a tiny antlerless cervid, is distinguished by a pair of ''SABER TEETH''. Yes, a saber-toothed deer. The same can also be said for the Chinese water deer. This identifies both species as being more primitive than their cousins; all cervids had tusks until the development of antlers.

*** We and gorillas both have a gestation period of about 8.5-9 months. A healthy human newborn will weigh roughly twice what a healthy newborn gorilla will. A newborn human's brain is also almost as large as what an adult gorilla has and a human baby will be helpless for far longer. Because of this, human reproductive organs (both male and female) have to be larger.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'' Doppler, a canine-like alien, ends up dating Captain Amelia, a cat-like alien, and their children in the epilogue are shown to be a litter of kitten-girls and puppy-boys. While this could be GenderEqualsBreed, this trope is also a possibility. This possibility is made even more likely with the game ''VideoGame/TreasurePlanetBattleAtProcyon'', which features multiple dog-men and cat-women, but none of the reverse.

** ''Film/Godzilla2014'': The [[Characters/MonsterVerseMUTO M.U.T.O.s]]. The male has four legs and wings but is relatively small in size compared to Godzilla (about the size of a hawk if Godzilla was human-scaled), while the female is Godzilla's size and has six legs but cannot fly. However, in a subversion, the two are pretty much identical in appearance and recognizable as the same species. This is very similar to real-life insects, especially parasitic wasps, glow-worms, and lubber grasshoppers.
** A straight example occurs in the unmade Godzilla film ''Godzilla vs. Redmoon'', where two kaiju appeared named Redmoon (a sort of dragon-like monster) and Erabus (a wingless monster with a vaguely horse-like face). The JDSF lures the two together in the hopes they'll fight to the death, but instead it turns out they are respectively the male and female of the same species and they instead mate and produce a child. It goes FromBadToWorse when a greedy entrepreneur kidnaps, and accidentally kills the infant, causing the parents to go berserk and rampage, which awakens Godzilla.
* ''Franchise/JurassicPark''
** In ''Film/JurassicParkIII'', the female raptors looked much like the ones from the previous two films with a different skull shape and crests, and small, birdlike eyes. The males supports a small "mohawk" of quills on their heads on top of this, and have red eyes as opposed to the females' yellow.
** Film/JurassicWorldBattleAtBigRock: The female ''Nasutoceratops'' has a skull fairly close to the real animal and a noticable curve on its back, while the male has a skull closer to ''Torosaurus'', longer horns, a noticably flatter curve to its back, and a horn-like protrusion on its boss.

** In several fish species, males come in two varieties: [[TheBear conspicuous, muscular macho-males]] who use aggression to monopolize access to females, and [[PrettyBoy small, inconspicuous ones]] that [[AttractiveBentGender resemble females so they can sneak into harems and fertilize eggs without the macho-males noticing them]].

** The caribou is the sole deer species in which both sexes have antlers, though the females' are smaller. The males' are shed after the autumn rut, whilst the females retain theirs through the winter — it's thought this helps them compete for food with the larger males during this harsh season. This also means that all Santa's reindeer are females! (Not really implausible, as most of them, except Rudolph, have feminine names anyway...)

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' has, in general, six genders, approximately defined as male, female, hermaphrodite, female pseudohermaphrodite, male pseudohermaphrodite, and genderless. Due to the advanced technology in the setting, it's trivial for someone to switch from one gender to another.

* In ''VideoGame/Grandia1'', the women of Laine are just humans with pointy ears, but the men are anthropomorphic bulls (and double as NonstandardCharacterDesign with their chubby bodies and very round, cartoonish-looking faces with [[TheNoseless no nose]] and BlackBeadEyes). Making things strangers, only the adult men look like this -- boys who haven't come of age also look like humans with pointy ears, and apparently undergo the transformation into bulls very quickly as soon as their horns grow in, with the appearance of one boy that the party meets completely changing in the short time that it takes to go inside a house and talk to an NPC.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'':

* According to some traditions, the male equivalent of a [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent mermaid]] is a "merrow". Merrows are hideous but friendly to humans, as long as said humans don't try to steal their wives. Of course, mermaids are hot, so [[BoldlyComing humans try to steal their wives a lot, actually,]] thus incurring the merrows' wrath. In fact, lots of stories feature fugly (or at least HollywoodHomely) mermen and [[TheBeautifulElite drop-dead gorgeous]] mermaids, probably because MostWritersAreMale. There are always exceptions, such as mermen of Scandinavian folklore (who tend to be {{Bishonen}} as a rule), and mermen featured in more modern works (especially those penned by and for women).

** In several fish species, males come in two varieties: [[TheBear conspicuous, muscular macho-males]] who use aggression to monopolize access to females, and [[{{Bishonen}} small, inconspicuous ones]] that [[AttractiveBentGender resemble females so they can sneak into harems and fertilize eggs without the macho-males noticing them]].

** Yellow-throats look enough like females that they can [[SerialHomewrecker sneak into the Orange-throats' harems and reproduce with them on the sly]]. But they can't pull this trick off with Blue-throats, who have an easier time protecting their single mate and work together with other Blues.

** Fig wasps. Males are tiny compared to females and wingless. They also have short stumpy legs with which they clumsily waddle about inside the fig fruit. Once mated, he cuts open a hole in the fig for the winged female to escape and dies, never seeing the light of day outside the fruit. Additionally, mating is always between siblings!

*** Some of these body modifications can also result in some forms of artificial sexual dimorphism, based largely on those same cultural expectations. In a few examples, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayan_people_(Myanmar) Kayan people]] of Burma have women who wear stacked brass coils that appear to greatly elongate their necks (it is also said that these also provide protection against the bites of tigers (and, we assume, Vampires). In China, the notorious practice of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding foot binding]] meant that a good proportion of Chinese women had feet shaped differently than the males. This can even include things such as earrings and tattoos. Traditionally, earrings were seen as something only women wore and a woman with tattoos was seen as unseemly. While these may no longer apply in modern Western cultural standards, there are still some exceptions (for example, men don't normally wear earrings in both ears or large earrings like the giant hoop variety, and a woman with a fully tattooed arm is generally seen as unusual or noteworthy).

* Well-known pterosaur ''Pteranodon'' is known to have differed so much between sexes that, like the creatures above, the males and females were mistaken for different species initially. The male ''Pteranodon'' was much larger ([[GiantFlyer an 18-foot wingspan]] was the average and some findings suggest that even larger wingspans were possible) and had an enormous crest on top of his head. The female was smaller (12-foot wingspan) and had a tiny or even non-existant crest.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Mortasheen}}'' has the [[http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/qlex.htm Q-Lex]], which has a small parasitic male hanging onto the large, predatory female. This is based on actual mosquito sexual dimorphism, which is appropriate, given that this creature is a [[HalfHumanHybrid human/mosquito hybrid]].

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'':

* ''Manga/SetonAcademyJoinThePack'' is a world of talking animals. The males of any species are just upright, talking animals. The females are portrayed as [[LittleBitBeastly Kemonomimi]]. Which can lead to odd sights like a regular sized schoolgirl and a colony of talking naked mole rats.

* Creator/JackChalker's ''Literature/WellWorld'', in all its glory. Too many examples to list.

** Grogs. Adult females are large furry cones with mouths, which cannot move from the rock they attach themselves to. Young females are something like alien bulldogs and males are akin to chihuahua, neither of which are sapient. Adult females telepathically control the young into breeding, and use the same telepathy to force prey animals to leap into their mouths, since giant immobile cones aren't good at hunting.

** The Puppeteers, who are already fairly strange-looking, are a subversion. What they refer to as "females" are actually a different, non-sentient species with its own males and females; true Puppeteers are parasitoids, with both sexes sporting similar-looking genitalia used to [[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong deposit gametes in the flesh of a host "female"]].
** Grogs. The adults are large furry cones with a mouth, which cannot move from the rock they attach themselves to. Young females are something like alien bulldogs, and young males are akin to chihuahua, neither of which are sapient. Adults telepathically control the young into breeding, and use the same telepathy to force prey animals to leap into their mouths, since giant immobile cones aren't good at hunting.
* ''Unicorns'' are depicted this way in Creator/CharlesStross' ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'' novella, ''[[http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/equoid Equoid]]''. Males resemble extremely poisonous cone snails, while fertile females resemble cute, tiny horses. A fertilized female, with the male attached, eventually grows into a massive, gelatinous, immobile ''[[EldritchAbomination thing]]'' of no small sorcerous power, using the entranced little girl to draw in other humans for it to eat: one such experience was revealed to have traumatized H. P. Lovecraft for life. [[spoiler:Worse, near the end of its spawning cycle, the fertilized female can think and speak.]]

* [[http://rpowell77.deviantart.com/art/Extreme-Sexual-Dimorphs-294860775 This picture]] of a massive whale-like alien creature followed by tiny specks. A zoom in reveals that these specks are insectoid creatures and the males of the species (The description states that they are the size of a seagull).