In animated works, however, it's not uncommon for an entire herd of cows to be depicted as black-and-and white. This makes for an easy distinction between cows and bulls note — if you see something that looks like a cow but is otherwise black or brown, it's probably a bull. In some cases this will be doubled down with Animal Gender-Bender — male cows will be drawn with udders just to make it clear they are not bulls.
Note that this is when cows are all depicted as black-and-white within the same work. For cows being depicted as black-and-white across works, see Typical Cartoon Animal Colors. Subtrope of Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
Examples
open/close all folders
Film — Animation
- Charlotte's Web: Every cow in the barn is black-and-white.
Puppet Shows
- One of Jim Henson's favorite routines was a Who's on First? routine on what you call a group of cows. He first used it as Rowlf on The Jimmy Dean Show and used it at least twice on The Muppet Show. It starts when someone mistakenly refers to a "bunch of cows".Person 2: Not bunch. Herd.Person 1: Heard what?Person 2: Herd of cows.Person 1: Sure, I've heard of cows. Who hasn't?Person 2: No, no, I mean the cow's herd.Person 1: I don't care what the cows' heard, I've nothing to be ashamed of!
Video Games
- Milk Crisis: All the cows you have to milk are black-and-white.
Web Animation
- Cows With Guns: All the cows in the animation are black-and-white.
Western Animation
- Family Guy: In the episode "Farmer Guy", Peter buys a farm. All the cows are black-and-white.
- A bunch of cows show up in the school in the The Ghost and Molly McGee episode "Talent Show". They all are black-and-white.
- Gravity Falls: "Mabel's Guide to Art" has her milking a cow in a stall. The barn she milks the cow in appears to have only black-and-white cows.
- Every cow character that ever showed up on Peppa Pig is black-and-white.
