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| - Also known as wingers. You may have noticed that many non-primate animals have extremely un-humanlike limbs. They may have wings, they may have fins, they may have claws like a lobster or long grappling hooks like a sloth. But because Most Animators Are Human, they have a tendency to fall back on making the very different anatomy of animal characters -- even those who aren't, strictly speaking, anthropomorphic -- do things they'd be physically incapable of in order to closely mimic human actions. Therefore, every animal forelimb, no matter how little it resembles a human hand, is prehensile.
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| - Also known as wingers. You may have noticed that many non-primate animals have extremely un-humanlike limbs. They may have wings, they may have fins, they may have claws like a lobster or long grappling hooks like a sloth. But because Most Animators Are Human, they have a tendency to fall back on making the very different anatomy of animal characters -- even those who aren't, strictly speaking, anthropomorphic -- do things they'd be physically incapable of in order to closely mimic human actions. Therefore, every animal forelimb, no matter how little it resembles a human hand, is prehensile. The Trope Namers are all the otherwise non-anthro cartoon birds who can hold things in their primary wing feathers, such as Woodstock, Daffy Duck -- or any and all Anthro birds as well, such as Falco Lombardi who can pilot a fighter. The primary wing feathers sort of look like fingers, so naturally in cartoons they act like fingers. Not a heavily modified and specialized extension of their body covering (meaning that this makes as much sense as Prehensile Hair). This version tends to go hand-in-hand (sorry) with Acrophobic Bird. There is a variant of this trope in which thumbs appear on the front paws of many cats and dogs (and sometimes other animals) when grasping something or gesturing, but disappear when the front paws are just used for four-legged walking or otherwise in a default pose. This variant is sometimes applied to characters with Powerpuff Girl Hands, characters who don't have (apparent) hands. This is usually the very first step in a character/series' Anthropomorphic Shift. It's just easier for animators to draw a character playing the drums or baking cookies using the body motions based off human references. It takes a hell of a lot of dedication to avert this trope, as it involves having to stop and really think about how the heck a penguin could possibly manipulate a tuba. See also Cartoony Eyes, Toothy Bird, Anatomy Anomaly, and Invisible Anatomy. An extreme (and outright bizarre) variation is all those cartoon fish who are somehow able to walk on their tailfins. There's also a more subtle variation where an animal will be given a few human-like features that their real-life equivalents tend to lack (think of all those wise old turtles with hair, those birds with teeth, or Aladar's creepy fleshy lips.) For, shall we say, a less family friendly human-like anatomical modification of non-humanlike animals, see Non-Mammal Mammaries... Note: This is such a Universal Trope that, instead of listing every single cartoon animal in the world, we will instead list notable exceptions and subversions.
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