Non-Mammalian Hair



"Oh, Larry got himself an entourage, you know? I guess he's thinking to himself like he's a superstar now that he is a turtle with a white mohawk somehow. Turtles are not meant to be able to grow hair, I'll have you know. I know! It is something I had to learn myself the hard way back in kintergarden, when I mistook a turtle for a 100 gigawatt bolt of cloth! Then I was wondering why it wouldn't swim and I was rather the sad little critter."

- Raocow, being only semi-relevant to this trope.

Some non-mammalian cartoon characters are drawn with what looks to be real hair on their heads, despite the fact that real hair is exclusive to mammals and one of our defining traits. Bird characters tend to get away with this the most, since their "hair" can be Handwaved as feathers that happen to look like Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, namely long "hair" on female characters.

Lesser versions of this trope include non-mammals with eyelashes (another signifier that the wearer is female) or eyebrows to make human-like facial expressions. This trope is tricky to extend to aliens whose species probably can't be defined on our terms.

Compare Non-Mammal Mammaries, when something else is used to humanize female non-mammal characters.

Anime and Manga

 * Wargreymon from Digimon Adventure has short hair under his helmet.

Comic Books

 * Some of the female ducks in the Disney Duck Comic Universe have "hair" on their heads in addition to feathers, while most of the male ducks just have white "feathers" that behave like hair, as in the case of Scrooge's whiskers. Gyro Gearloose does have "hair", though, and Gladstone Gander's curls seem to vary between being feathers and actually being colored blond, Depending on the Artist.

Some male examples exist too. has a fringe of hair, giving the impression that he's bald (but he has feathers on the top of his head!). has a very full beard. In DuckTales (1987), Launchpad McQuack has a red forelock peeking out from his aviator's cap; whether the rest of his head is drawn with hair or feathers varies from episode to episode.

Fanfic

 * In the This Time Round Funny Animal subuniverse "This Toon Round", Author Avatar Daibhid Chelonidae is a tortoise with what his creator calls "an inexplicable dark-brown ponytail".

Film

 * Rango: Beans the desert lizard has curly locks of auburn hair. The gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake has a black mark under his lips that resembles a mustache.

Folklore

 * In Armenian folklore dragons (called vishaps) tended to have lion-like manes. One story involves a vishap tricking a boy into picking out the lice from its hair so he could eat the boy.

Literature

 * The Falleen reptilian humanoid species from the Star Wars Expanded Universe has a full head of hair. The Essential Guide to Alien Species notes that this is unusual, however.

Mythology

 * Mermaids, depending on how you classify them
 * Any mammalian/bird hybrid such as hippogriffs or griffin http://witchwarrior101.blogspot.com/2010/03/gryphon-vs-hippogryph.html
 * Medusa is an inversion of this: http://www.rickveitch.com/2008/08/01/snakes-on-a-mane/

Tabletop Games

 * Many Dungeons & Dragons monsters are portrayed as (usually female and beautiful) non-mammals with hair. Naga, mariliths, lillendi, harpies ... some of them are magical or demonic beings, but it's disturbingly consistent.
 * Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000: The Greenskins of are naturally hairless, because they're essentially sentient and extremely violent humanoid fungi. Most Greenskin hair is limited to topknots which are explained as being a specialized breed of squig (small, mindless and very hungry/aggressive beasties) that clamps onto the skin with its teeth and is used as a "clip on" hairpiece.

Video Games

 * The Great Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time has big eyebrows and a very remarkable moustache.
 * Neopets: Most characters from site events have some form of hair, regardless of what their species actually appears to be. To drive the point home, there is a fish with a beard and a penguin with black hair.
 * The Mario series does this if a female member of an otherwise assumed to be all-male species is introduced (Kammy and Koopie in the Paper Mario series, for example). Bowser also has hair, as do many of his sons (perhaps ironically, his daughter doesn't). A few characters have mustaches.
 * The Spyro the Dragon series does something similar to Mario, although non-mammal hair is rare among females. Beards on male dragons are fairly common.
 * The Sonic the Hedgehog series does this with both sexes.
 * Some non-mammalian Pokémon have hair on their bodies, such as Kriketune, a cricket with a mustache; and Jellicent, a jellyfish also with a mustache.
 * Though with the former the mustache may actually be a pair of feelers/pincers/antennae while the latter's mustache might be made of, well, jelly.
 * Q-Bee from the Darkstalkers series has what appears to be hair, although it (along with her cute mammalian face and other attributes) is a lure designed to trap foolish mammalian males.

Webcomics

 * In the NSFW Dreamwalk Journal, most of the anthropomorphic insects and arachnids, both male and female, have hairlike stuff on their heads. As well as the other humanoid characteristics you'd expect from an erotic comic.
 * Nip and Tuck: Subverted; lizard Hortense wears wigs.
 * Suicide for Hire: The reptilian pizza delivery boy/black market merchant Altair Annunaki has an impressive head of hair (though not as impressive as Arcturus' -- Arcturus has the excuse of being a mammal).
 * Kevin and Kell: Tammy Flambeau (a moth) has nice long white hair.
 * The tekk from Prophecy of the Circle have, depending on subspecies, something similar to manes, hair crests or even beards, despite being reptiles.
 * The trolls from Homestuck. They look like humans with horns and gray skin, but it's implied by their bizarre life cycle and a few references to their physiology that they're closer to insects. This doesn't prevent them from having hair--long, flowing locks of it, even, in some cases.

Western Animation

 * Madge the map turtle from the PBS Kids show It's a Big Big World has white "hair".
 * Daisy Duck from the Classic Disney Shorts presents something of an odd example, in that she originally didn't have “hair,” but in some recent variations, she's been given something much like this.
 * Saturday Supercade: An amphibian example is Ms. Frogger.
 * All the Duck related examples in the comic book section show up in DuckTales (1987) and Darkwing Duck, of course.
 * Tiny Toon Adventures: Shirley McLoon is another bird example.
 * Rock-a-Doodle: Chanticleer and Goldie.
 * Iago, the parrot in Aladdin, has what appear to be eyebrows.
 * The Jungle Book: The vultures, who sport Beatles-style mops of hair on their heads because they are supposed to be The Beatles if they were a vulture barbershop quartet. (Values Dissonance in the animation department...)
 * Robin Hood: Sir Hiss appears to have three strands of hair sticking out from underneath his hat.
 * Fish Hooks: Of the three characters, Milo the betta fish is the only one who has a dorsal fin on his head. Bea goldfish has long red hair while Oscar the catfish has a full afro. In fact a lot of the sea characters have hair, including an octopus and a pony-tailed clam.
 * Darkwing Duck: Saint Canard, J Gander Hooter also has the white fringes, with nice bushy eyebrows too. Most of these use hair not as a gender marker, but as an age marker. And yes, the girls (Morgana, Gosalyn, Sarah Bellum, Ammonia Pine) have hair.
 * Melissa Duck from Looney Tunes and Baby Looney Tunes.
 * Her successor in The Looney Tunes Show, Tina, also follows this trope.
 * Hata Mari, the Femme Fatale pigeon from the Wartime Cartoon "Plane Daffy".
 * In the short Tortoise Wins by a Hare, the female tortoise has hair.
 * Both Filbert Turtle and Bev Bighead from Rocko's Modern Life.
 * Lola (a bird) from CatDog.
 * Some of the animals in which both Merlin and Mim turn into during their Wizard Duel from The Sword in the Stone are for some reason either birds or reptiles that retain their respective hairstyles.
 * Similarly, toward the end of The Emperors New Groove, Kuzco is temporarily turned into both a tortoise and a hummingbird with his hairstyle before being changed back into a llama.
 * Roz from Monsters, Inc. is a large garden snail-like monster with a tuft of white hair on her head.
 * Also, some of the monsters, whether resembling either toads, slugs, or octopi, will inevitably have some form of hair on their heads.
 * Rare plant example: Some of the characters from Veggie Tales, such as Pa Grape (eyebrows and mustache), Mr. Nezzer (bald head), Mr. Lunt (Van Dyke) Esther (an onion with long hair), Petunia (a rhubarb with a ponytail), Madame Blueberry (brown at night, blonde during the day), Laura Carrot (pigtails), Scooter (bald head and mustache), and the Peach ('cause he has hair).
 * There is actually one song about Larry the Cucumber accidentally misplacing his hairbrush despite not having any hair on his head at all!
 * Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2 is an evil peacock with large eyebrows, a Fu Manchu mustache, and a goatee.
 * Almost Naked Animals takes it to its extreme. Species that wouldn't normally have hair, or at least not a full coat of it, still have the "shaved" appearance.
 * Played straight with most of the cast of Birdz. Those that don't have it just have a patch of feathers on their heads.
 * The sea serpent Steven Magnet in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, to the point that half of his moustache being cut off is a minor plot point.
 * Twilight Sparkle even uses her magic to give Spike the baby dragon an awesome mustache.
 * Crusty from Dink the Little Dinosaur.
 * Nessie from the Disney theatrical short "The Ballad of Nessie."

Real Life

 * Truth in Television: Kiwa hirsuta, the yeti lobster.
 * Many pterosaurs appear to have been covered in hair or fur-like structures. Which, interestingly enough, are thought to be more closely related to feathers, seeing as pterosaurs are archosaurs like dinosaurs and birds.
 * The Hairy Frog.
 * Terrestrial arthropods often have short hairs as sensory equipment. Some spiders can be described as positively hairy.
 * It's obviously not hair, but the Bearded Dragon, an agamid lizard that's popular as a pet, got its name because it looks like it has a beard made of spiky scales.
 * Some birds do look as if they have eyelashes. Owls, for instance.