It's no big deal if you lose your hair (or hairlike feathers) when you have fur or feathers underneath that, too.
"Does anypony have a toupee? This donkey is really, really bald!"
— Pinkie Pie, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "A Friend in Deed"
Baldness is an easy way to indicate age of a male character, or to try to make a character look older and distinguished (or evil or macho).
When applied to an Anthropomorphic Animal, the effect can be weird and is usually represented as a crown line of hair tufts around the back of the head, indicating that the character is an older man intended to be bald, and yet as an anthro animal still has a layer of "regular" fur under the place where their "human" hair used to be.
This can also create a situation where, ironically, the older men with the balding line of additional hair have more hair than the standard anthro characters with a normal animal's hair length. This especially applies to species who don't normally have hair, such as reptiles or insects.
See Also: Charlie Brown Baldness, where a character who has no hair is not intended to be bald, this is a case where a character with hair is intended to be "bald". Fur Is Skin, Furry Female Mane.
May be a form of Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Scrooge McDuck had a head of red feathers in his youth that disappeared by the time he was middle aged, leaving two feather tufts/muttonchops on the side of his head and the standard Disney duck feathers left on his head. With his mutton chops and crown line, Scrooge still has more "hair" than his nephew Donald or even Daisy Duck!
- His brother-in-law, Ludvig Von Drake also has the stringy hair/feather tufts on the side of his head, evocative of pattern baldness.
Comic Strips
Fan Works
- In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Fan Graphic Novel Of Mice and Mayhem, Gadget, poster child of the Furry Female Mane, is supposed to be bald due to recent brain surgery. However, she still clearly has the same fur all over her head. In the very same comic, she mentions that she's covered in fur when Chip is concerned about her post-mousenapping "nudity".
Films — Animation
- Hiram Flaversham, the father of Olivia in The Great Mouse Detective. And this is in a universe where most mice don't have human-like head hair.
- Professor Z from Cars 2 appears to have damaged wiring on his roof that gives him the appearance of a bald head.
- Sasha the bird from the Peter and the Wolf segment of "Make Mine Music" has a balding crown.
- Angus MacBadger from the Wind In The Willows segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad has a balding crown and an actual bald spot. He also doesn't have much fur.
- Friar Tuck in Robin Hood (1973) has a hairstyle like this, but unlike most examples he also has an actual bald spot on top of his head. Like the aforementioned example, he doesn't have much fur.
- Br'er Bear in Song of the South animated segments is shown to have a balding crown with an actual bald spot in his fur under his hat. This is a Brick Joke as earlier in the film, part of his fur was accidentally pulled off by Br'er Fox.
- Charlie from Finding Dory is a blue tang whose black markings don't extend all the way to his brows, giving him the appearance of baldness.
- At first, it seems like Mr. Ping Kung Fu Panda follows this trope. However a full view of his hatless head shows that he actually has a hairless (featherless?) area on his head to where his hat usually goes.
Films — Live-Action
- The elderly Fozziewig (Fozzie Bear) in The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Live-Action TV
- Subverted in The Sooty Show, where Sweep's pate becomes entirely bald after testing Sooty's hair growth potion.
- Humphrey from Sesame Street is a monster covered with pink fur, with thicker fur on the back of his head meant to resemble a receding hairline.
Video Games
- In the Pinobee video game series, Pinobee's creator is an older male bee who has a crown line of receding hair around his head to accent his age. No other insect in the series has hair, even the children.
- Dr_Death, the old Techo who runs the pound in Neopets has a receding hairline, despite being a lizard (making it another case where a "balding" individual has more hair than the standard example.
- Cranky Kong from Donkey Kong Country has the withered white crownline but then "normal" gorilla fur beneath that.
- In World of Warcraft, male goblins are generally always naturally bald even from infancy with only the females tending to have hair. Since they became playable, several male goblin hairstyles were added, usually receding crownlines or tacky combovers (which can become Fridge Logic for anyone well versed in how goblins generally appear for the past 10 years in the franchise) but the point remains that the "balding" "older" male goblins still have more hair than the "normal" "young" male goblins (who at most have enough hair for a ponytail).
- In Kings Quest (2015), Manannan gets turned into a black cat...that still manages to have a combover somehow.
Web Comics
- Several of the characters for Stubble Trouble are furries who shave off their hair and/or fur.
Western Animation
- The Godpigeon from Animaniacs had a small tuft of feathers on his head, suggesting a receding hairline. The three main pigeons had nothing.
- A few of the male anthro characters from Arthur fit this trope.
- Episode "The Scarlet Pachyderm" of Babar has Flamboyant Gay Pompadour losing his Louis XV-like wig with two mean Rhino border guards and feeling outrage saying "I'm practically bald without my wig!" (and yes, he does have some sort of remaining hair in his head). The curious part is that ALL elephants in the series of all ages and genders are bald.
- Fat Cat of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers wears a combover over his otherwise obviously fur-covered head.
- Darkwing Duck:
- Darkwing himself has a few feathers atop his head and wrinkles on his forehead, giving the resemblance of a receding hairline. Some flashbacks (inconsistently told by himself, should it be added) depicts him with a thicker tuft of hair-like feathers.
- Herb Muddlefoot has commented on his baldness, and sports a few strands on his otherwise feather-covered head.
- Fluffy Louise Lopart from Handy Manny sports a combover just like her balding owner, Mr. Leonard Lopart.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- A background character called "Mr. Waddle". He appears in the second title sequence of the series, and some episodes, such as "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well".
- Cranky Doodle Donkey from "A Friend in Deed". He is very sensitive about it—Steven Magnet mentions that all those years he was searching for Matilda, he was also looking for a cure to baldness. He is constantly seen wearing wigs or other equivalents (like, say, Steven Magnet's moustache) to compensate for his lack of hair.
- A background character
- Ren of The Ren & Stimpy Show claims he has no hair in one episode, despite being clearly covered in fur.
- While the vast majority of the characters in SpongeBob SquarePants, including the protagonist, have no hair because they're sea creatures, Squidward, an octopus, is the only one whose lack thereof is portrayed as a source of embarrassment, and he regularly shows an interest in hairpieces. What makes this especially curious is that his scalp is usually drawn as having what appears to be a sort of "stubble", and "The Original Fry Cook" portrays him with beautiful golden locks in a flashback, so he's at least had more hair in his lifetime than the rest of the cast has ever grown to begin with.
- ThunderCats (1985): Most ThunderCats, both male and female, have a full mane as well as very short fur. Not Panthro (who's hairless). Thunder Cats 2011 adds Hot-Blooded Sideburns and thicker eyebrows, making his baldness even more visible.
- T.U.F.F. Puppy: Recurring villain Bird Brain has red hair and is balding in spite of his hairless scalp being blue like the rest of his feathered body.
- Mr. Nezzer from VeggieTales is a zucchini with a balding head.
