Basic Trope: An animal character has physical traits that should only apply to whichever gender the character is not.
- Straight: Joey, a male kangaroo, has a pouch.
- Exaggerated:
- His best friends comprise a male cow, a female deer with antlers, a female peacock, a female lion with a mane, etc.
- Alternatively, it has a joey in it.
- Downplayed:
- Joey has no pouch, yet is greyish-blue in color, a trait of female kangaroos (assuming Joey is a red kangaroo by species).
- Clementine is a female orange tabby cat - while not impossible, this specific coloration is more common on male cats.
- Emily and Eddie are bald eagles, and Eddie is notably larger. While bald eagles (and most birds of prey) otherwise look alike regardless of their gender, the females are actually larger than the males in real life.
- Instead of physical traits being depicted incorrectly, it's behavioral traits: Harry is a male spotted hyena, and correctly resembles a male hyena, but is shown to be the leader of his clan despite the fact that real life spotted hyenas are matriarchal.
- Justified:
- Joey is intersex or Transgender.
- Alternatively, he's actually part of a kangaroo-like alien race whose males have pouches.
- Joey is a previously unknown species of kangaroo, of which both genders have pouches.
- In some cases, this is Truth in Television, often caused by a hormone imbalance.
- Orville is an orangutan without a throat pouch or cheek flanges, but this is because he's a young male - generally, male orangutans develop these traits later in life.
- Harry the hyena is shown leading a clan because there are no female hyenas in his clan, and/or they are unable to lead for whatever reason.
- Inverted: Both male and female are pouchless.
- Subverted: Joey is actually a female who just acts masculine; everyone presumes her to be a male.
- Double Subverted: Joey actually is a pouched male; not wanting to be made fun of because of it, he convinces everyone that he's actually a manly female.
- Parodied:
- Joey has not only a pouch, but also an udder, antlers, colorful feathers, mane, and/or any other trait linked only to one sex of a given species.
- Alternatively, Joey is a scientific experiment capable of male pregnancy.
- Zig Zagged: Joey was born female but had a sex-change operation, and never had the pouch removed. However, his brother was born male and has a pouch. And their other brother doesn't.
- Averted: Only the female kangaroos have pouches.
- Enforced:
- "Pouches are cool."
- The Coconut Effect, in many cases: "The audience probably won't recognize that Joey is a kangaroo unless he also has a pouch." (Though, if Joey also looks hardly anything like a kangaroo, this is somewhat understandable.)
- The creators of the series were unaware that the species they were basing the character on even had any noticeable sexual dimorphism to begin with.
- Lampshaded: "Why do I have a pouch, anyway? I'm pretty sure I'm a male!"
- Invoked:
- Joey's pouch was surgically implanted, or resulted from him taking female hormones.
- Callie, a female calico cat, is genderbent into a male, but still retains the calico fur color.
- Exploited:
- Joey uses his pouch to store items in.
- Someone needs to hide or get somewhere quicker, so they hide in Joey's pouch.
- Joey needs to convince someone into believing he's female for whatever reason, and his pouch makes it easy for him to do.
- Defied: A mad scientist makes a race of kangaroos, but explicitly makes sure that the males don't have pouches.
- Discussed: "I thought that kangaroo was the little joey's mom, but it turns out it's his dad."
- Conversed: "Isn't it weird when books have male kangaroos with pouches? What's the deal with that?"
- Implied: Joey has an Ambiguous Gender, but clearly has a pouch, meaning that they could be an example of this trope.
- Deconstructed: Joey is a male kangaroo with a pouch. Biologists notice this and capture him for scientific study.
- Reconstructed: One of the scientists is Jane Goodall, who, despite being an expert on chimpanzees and having not a lot to do with kangaroos, takes an interest in Joey and treats him nicely and eventually sets him free.
- Played for Laughs:
- Joey "cross-dresses" by putting on a fake pouch.
- Alternatively, he uses his pouch as a pocket.
- Played for Drama: Joey undergoes a female-to-male sex-change operation, but something goes wrong during the surgery, so that the pouch can't be removed without serious negative effects.
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