Furry Baldness
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.
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. Scrooge McDuck, with his mutton chops and crown line 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.
Film - Animated
- 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.
- Rare non-animal example: Professor Z from Cars 2 appears to have damaged wiring on his roof that gives him the appearance of a bald head.
Film - Live-Action
- The elderly Fozziewig (Fozzie Bear) in A Muppet Christmas Carol.
Newspaper Comics
- Subversion: My Cage had anthropomorphic animal men go literally bald leaving no fur on their heads from their eyebrows up, creating a . . . very odd look.
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.
- Minor variation: 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).
Web Comics
- Several of the characters for Stubble Trouble are furries who shave off their hair and/or fur.
Western Animation
- A few of the male anthro characters from Arthur fit this trope.
- Rare plant example: Mr. Nezzer from Veggie Tales is a zucchini with a balding head.
- Rare female example: Fluffy Louise Lopart from Handy Manny sports a combover just like her balding owner, Mr. Leonard Lopart.
- The Godpigeon from Animaniacs had a small tuft of feathers on his head, suggesting a receding hairline. The three main pigeons had nothing.
- The second opening of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic briefly features this pony [dead link] whom fans have nicknamed 'Combover Liverspot' (Named Mr. Waddle), he also appears as a background character in the episode "The Mysterious Mare Do-Well".
- Cranky Doodle Donkey from A Friend in Deed.
