Bluey, I don't think those headphones are doing much.
Most mammals, including Funny Animals, have ears near the tops of their heads. Human ears, however, are roughly level with the eyes, and inventions such as headphones, earmuffs, telephones, and eyeglasses are designed accordingly. This is what happens when a Funny Animal story doesn't bother to change the design of such inventions to account for the characters' auditory anatomy.
Funny Animals in animation will often place their headphones or earmuffs on the sides of their head, where their ears would be if they were human — leaving their actual ears conspicuously uncovered while the items, seemingly, fail to serve their intended purpose. Glasses will often have arms that simply stick to the sides of the head. Examples also include such characters covering or whispering into "ears" which are actually just the blank side of the animal's head, while their ears are elsewhere.
Examples of Fantasy Helmet Enforcement featuring Funny Animals often see the characters' delicate ears sticking out of their helmets, where they would be easily damaged in a crash.
And of course, some animals' ears aren't on their heads at all, with some insects sporting ears on their thorax or legs, and many having no sense of hearing at all. If such creatures are treated as hearing with their heads, that's an example of this trope in action as well, while any acknowledgment of where insect ears really are would qualify as a noteworthy aversion.
Surprisingly, earbuds and earpieces tends to avoid this trope, and are placed in ears correctly most of the time. The headband that traditional on-ear headphones have restricts the cups to specific angles, and looks rather silly when used on anthropomorphic animal ears. Earbuds meanwhile, are smaller, not connected in the same way, and look much more natural as a result.
Contrast with Operator Incompatibility, for when the differences in cross-species ergonomics are pointed out in-universe.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Moomin (1990): Averted. The Snork has ears on the top of his head, and wears normal-style glasses, but they're held in place by string that's wrapped around his ears.
- Star Detective Pretty Cure!: Mashutan, Luluka's fairy companion, wears a pair of earrings on the sides of her head
◊, not on her actual ears.
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2018): Averted. Despite the umamusume appearing like a normal human save for the horse ears atop their head and tail, umamusume do not have human ears. As such, they're depicted using specialized landline phones that are long enough to reach their head and mouth or will talk on speaker when using their personal smartphones.
Films — Animation
- A Grand Day Out: In the spaceship, Gromit puts on headphones, which are certainly not over the big ears on the top of his head.
- Made fun of in Fantastic Mr. Fox: Before the hush heist on Boggis, Bunce and Bean, Mrs. Fox rumbles them, and asks, "Why is he [Kristofferson] wearing that bandit hat?", Mr. Fox replies, "His ears were cold"; said hat is not covering Kristofferson's actual ears.
- A notable aversion occurs in Zootopia due to its much more detailed animation than most animal stories; in an early scene, Judy wears earbuds, and they actually go in her ears.
- Most Zootopia characters who wear glasses have ears placed low enough to make it work, but Nick occasionally dons sunglasses (and, in Zootopia 2, a comical pair of novelty glasses), presumably held up just by his snout as their arms do not reach his ears.
Literature
- Discussed in James and the Giant Peach; among many other true-to-life factoids that the bugs share with James, the Old Green Grasshopper informs him that not everyone keeps their ears on the sides of their head:
Grasshopper: There are lots of things in our world you haven't wondered about yet. Where do you think I keep my ears?
James: In your head, of course!
Grasshopper: My ears are right here, one on each side of my tummy. What is so peculiar about that? You ought to see where my cousins, the crickets and the katydids keep theirs: in their legs. One in each front leg, just below the knee.
James: Nobody could possibly have ears in his legs, that's ridiculous!
Centipede: You know what I think is ridiculous? Having ears on the sides of one's head.
Video Games
- Arknights completely averts this, as all Terran characters have human ears in addition to their animal ones, justifying why, say, Amiya (a rabbit girl) can wear headphones normally.
- Final Fantasy XIV: Averted; when a Miqo'te (feline), Hrothgar (leonine) or Viera (leporine) adventurer is using a linkpearl, they do the Obligatory Earpiece Touch way up where their ears actually are, rather than just copying the position used by the races with more human ears. In the same vein, earring accessories (and a pair of headphones available on the Online Store) are accurately shifted to these races' ears.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: On the cover of Passion & Pride: Anthems with Attitude from the Sonic Adventure Era, Sonic is wearing headphones on the sides of his head, even though his ears are on top of his head.
- Star Fox 64: Fox's helmet always leaves his ears exposed. James McCloud's sunglasses seem to lack arms, the frames simply resting on his muzzle.
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby: Generally averted with the umas' ear placement used for repeated sight gags, such a bespoke rotary phones long enough to be comfortable, or wearing headphones upside-down with the headstrap against the back of the neck.
Web Animation
- Happy Tree Friends: Happens from time to time when characters like Sniffles and The Mole — whose ears are at the top of their heads — wear earmuffs or headphones.
- Natural Habitat Shorts: Andrew wears a headset below his ears in "Scent of a Wolverine".
Webcomics
- Paleo Pals: One of the apatosauruses has a pencil on their head like how a human would keep a pencil behind their ear... except they don't have any visible ears. The other apatosauruses wear glasses as well.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Common in Arthur, in which the characters wear headphones like a human, far from their actual ears, most famously in the episode "Binky's Music Madness", which features Arthur himself doing so. It has also been pointed out that Arthur's glasses shouldn't stay on his face either since they rest in the same position as the headphones. Averted in "Breezy Listening Blues", in which Brain is going to sleep listening to music with his headphones over his ears, probably made easier by the fact that he's lying down.
- The Backyardigans falls victim to the variant of the characters' ears being left vulnerable by helmets. Averted, however, when they wear earmuffs, which properly cover their high-set ears.
- In Bluey (2018), not only do the dog characters wear earmuffs and headphones this way, and hold cell phones (both real and imaginary) far from their ears, but also cover the sides of their heads when hearing unpleasant noises, leaving their ears exposed. The back cover to the music album Bluey - Up Here shows Chilli with a wireless earbud apparently suspended in mid-air at the side of her head.
- BoJack Horseman: The majority of the animal characters will hold their phone to the side of their head despite their ears being nowhere near it. Certain characters like Mr. Peanutbutter are the exception as their ears are much lower on their heads.
- Carl the Collector: Averted. Lotta is frequently shown to be wearing headphones or earbuds that are actually shown to be over or on her ears.
- Looney Tunes: In the short An Egg Scramble, after Porky demands to know why Prissy hasn't laid any eggs, Prissy whispers her reasoning into the side of Porky's head instead of his ear, which is covered by his hat.
- Sonic Boom:
- Tails wears his flight headset in the plane on the sides of his head in most episodes.
- In the Season 2 episode "Nutwork", Sticks, with the help of Tails, sets up a pirate radio station to warn viewers of the water supply going missing, with both characters shown having headphones below their ears and on the side of their heads. Notably, for a show as self-aware as this (moments earlier, the Mayor mentions the Gilligan Cut transition by name), this isn't Lampshaded or made fun of.
- Variant in SpongeBob SquarePants: Mr. Krabs has no ears at all but long eyestalks, so whenever he puts headphones or earbuds on, he places them on the sides of his eyestalks, as seen, for instance, in the episode "Jellyfish Hunter" and the movie The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. This still doesn't match the auditory systems of real-life crabs, which receive sound waves and vibrations via special hair strands connected to nerves (setae) and a set of internal organs (known as statocysts).
- Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Tiny Toon Music Television", the bear character Julie Bruin has earrings hanging from the sides of her head instead of her ears.
Real Life
- Some companies sell headphones that resemble animal-eared headbands. These headphones can make it look like this trope applies to you. It's unheard of for them to put fake headphones into the animal ears to suggest that they're your real ears.
- Inverted by many species of horned owl, which have tufts on the tops of their heads which are often assumed to be ears, but whose actual ears are behind their eyes like all other birds.
- Bone conduction headphones are designed to operate by transmitting sound waves to the inner ear through the wearer's skull, and are often used when damaged eardrums or blockage of the ear canal makes conventional hearing difficult but the inner ear can still process sound. While there aren't any models made explicitly for animals yet, some owners whose pets have suffered hearing loss have improvised with off-the-shelf headphones to restore some measure of their companions' hearing. Since the headphones in question are explicitly designed for human heads, the speakers tend to rest on the side of the animal's head as depicted in this trope.