17 Amazing Animals With Eyebrows (With Pictures)
Eyebrows have many benefits to humans, from shielding our eyes from light and moisture to helping us better express ourselves.
But are we the only creatures with these brows? No. Other animals too deserve their benefits.
And while the eyebrows are visible in some animals, in others, as we shall see, it depends on how you define the features.
While learning about these 17 amazing animals with eyebrows won’t surely blow your mind, I can promise that it will expand your animal knowledge, whether you are a kid or a big kid.
And you better learn from the best, as we’ve rigorously researched every single fact before compiling this article to avoid misleading you with myths.
Let’s go.
List of 15+ Different Animals With Eyebrows
I guarantee you’ll find at least one animal here that will surprise you!
1. Penguins
We start with the animal with arguably the most adorable eyebrows; the penguins.
But not all penguins have eyebrows. Only the crested and rockhopper penguins are lucky to spot these features.
Running from the eyes to the back of their heads, the eyebrows of the medium-sized crested penguin are bushy, and have bright yellow shades for easy identification.
Penguins use their eyebrows to help identify members of their kind, especially when swimming. When birdwatching, you can also use the eyebrows to distinguish between different types of penguins.
Like how humans use their eyebrows, for instance, winking to seduce members of the opposite sex, penguins, specifically rockhoppers, are known to wiggle theirs to attract mates.
The best places to find these penguins are Falkland Island on the north coast and Antarctica Island from New Zealand to Chile.
2. Horses
Horses have eyebrows but theirs are different from humans.
How?
Their faces are covered with hair, including the region above the eyes, where you’d expect to find the eyebrows. But while that hair above the eyes is not distinct, the animals manipulate it by moving the surrounding muscles for different purposes. You can thus rightly say that horses have invisible eyebrows.
Horses use their eyebrows just like humans. When sad, scared, or surprised, they raise eyebrows. And as intelligent creatures, horses use their eyebrows as communication tools, passing different messages.
The eyebrows also protect horses from rainwater, sweat, and dust.
3. Camels
The ships of the desert, camels have thick, bushy eyebrows made of strands of keratin.
The eyebrows of camels stick past the face to shield the eyes of the animals from intense sunlight, which is synonymous with the arid areas where the animals live.
Alongside helping protect the animal’s vision, the eyebrows work in conjunction with the animals’ long eyelashes to prevent dust and debris from entering the eyes.
Furthermore, the eyebrows help the animals keep their eyes moisturized, diverting the flow of the desert wind.
4. Giraffes
The tallest living animal on earth, the giraffe, has a wrinkled skin above its big brown eyes, worthy enough to be considered eyebrows.
However, scientists are yet to unearth the role of their eyebrows.
5. Meerkats
Meerkats are small, cute mongooses that live in Southern Africa.
Meerkats have eyebrows, although it needs some special attention to spot them, as they’re just patches of miscolored hair growing above their eyes.
Like in the giraffe’s case, researchers are yet understand why these adorable creatures have these pseudo eyebrows.
But at least we know the eyebrows are one of the reasons why the meerkats are damn cute.
6. Primates
A few primates, including marmosets and chimpanzees, have visible brows.
As you’d have guessed, these primates use their eyebrows similarly to humans.
They can raise their brows to show emotions, including anger and a sense of pride.
With the help of other facial features, the eyebrows also act as communication tools. For example, when these primates sense danger, they lower their eyebrows, smack their lips and quickly flick their tongues.
7. Owls
Owls technically don’t have eyebrows. But we’ve included these birds in our list because some species, those with rounded heads, raise the tuft of facial feathers to mimic eyebrows.
Worth enough to be considered, eyebrows, these feathers-turned-eyebrows help owls in different ways. The owls can raise them to appear bigger and show aggression.
And differently from other animals, owls can raise their eyebrows to camouflage, looking like branches and twigs.
The round-headed owls which have the luxury of creating their own eyebrows include;
- Striped owls
- Easter-screech owls
- Tawny fish owls
- Great horned owls
- Eagle-owls
8. Common Raccoons
Common raccoons are small, ubiquitous mammals that live in diversified habitats, including prairies, forests, and marshes in North America.
Although you can’t keep them as pets, raccoons are cute animals, thanks to their distinctive black mask on their faces. This mask borders whitish hair stripes to create pseudo eyebrows.
While there are no documented roles of the raccoons’ eyebrows, we can all agree, similarly to human eyebrows, they play a part in making the animals adorable.
9. Bears
The largest carnivores in the world, bears are another group of animals with fascinating eyebrows.
Because bears give birth to hairless cubs, the young ones don’t have eyebrows. However, as they grow, they develop eyebrows alongside their thick fur.
And like in many dogs on our list, bear eyebrows are almost invisible until you pay close attention to their faces. Above the eyes, you can spot small ridges coupled with a bundle of hairs.
That said, you can struggle to notice the eyebrows because the animals’ bodies, including the heads, are covered by thick fur, indistinguishable from the one on the eyebrows.
There’s no research on the purpose of bear eyebrows, but it’s fair to assume they serve the general purposes as in other animals; shielding the eyes from sweat and dust particles from entering the eyes and protecting the animal’s vision from intense sunlight.
10. Dogs
All dogs have a set of eyebrows, although you might have never noticed them.
Unlike human eyebrows, which are accompanied by some hairs, dogs only have a brow ridge and facial muscles on their facial bone structure.
However, a few dog breeds, including Dobermans, German shepherds, and Rottweilers, stand out from the rest of their relatives, growing fur of different colors above their eyes.
The purpose of the eyebrows?
Alexandra Horowitz, a senior researcher at Barnard College Dog Cognition Lab, via cuteness, dogs are the only animals that can express themselves like humans, apart from primates.
When they sense something instantly, dogs usually twist their eyebrows. And when sad, the eyebrow movements make the eyes appear relatively bigger.
Dogs can also manipulate their eyebrows to convey various messages, including a curious, unbelieving, or questioning look.
And to humans, the eyebrows make these pets adorable.
11. Domestic Cats
Domestic cats have eyebrows, but they’re not defined by hair like in humans and other animals such as penguins. Although in cats with distinct color patterns, you can notice the eyebrows, thanks to the strips of hair that grow above the eyelids.
And understandably, these pets don’t need much-defined eyebrows like penguins and humans. After all, they don’t sweat and do everything to avoid water. Also, they don’t need eyebrow hairs to protect their eyes from dust because their faces have fur.
But because the invisible brows have facial muscles, the cats can manipulate them to work similarly to other animals.
Conveying various physical expressions like humans, cats can furrow their brows to show tension or raise them to signal to you they’re worried. Of course, these expressions are supported by other cat features, such as the ears.
12. Whinchats
Whinchats are small migratory birds that breed in Africa, Western Asia, and Europe.
The birds inhabit various habitats, including rough meadows, grasslands, farmlands, and coastal areas.
Whinchats have eyebrows as their most distinctive feature. In fact, the eyebrows are the only feature used to distinguish them from other small birds, especially the stonechat.
The eyebrows are bold white in males, and pale beige in females and juveniles.
Whether or not the eyebrows of these birds have facial muscles is unknown, so the feature is only used by humans for identification purposes – differentiating the male from the females and other birds.
13. Red Pandas
Red pandas are adorable, bushy-tailed arboreal mammals that spend almost 12 hours a day munching on bamboo leaves. When not feeding, the small animals spend their time sleeping.
But do you know what makes red pandas one of the most adorable creatures to humans? Their faces that look like human babies.
And although not distinct, one of the facial markings on red pandas that make the animals irresistible to humans is the ‘little-old-man eyebrows‘ as national geographic puts it.
Now, the characteristic white eyebrows of the red pandas do not exist only to make these animals adorable to humans. Alongside the teardrop markings, the white brows help red pandas reduce glares while providing camouflage.
14. Frogs
Don’t raise your eyebrows 😉. You read it right.
They’re the surprising animal you’ve been waiting for if you’ve not met one yet.
According to BBC News, researchers in Colombia unearthed a new frog species with characteristic yellow eyebrows. Remember, Colombia ranks among the top most biodiverse countries in the world.
Although not all frogs have eyebrows, at least one of their members, which researchers named Pristimantis macrummendozai, stands out.
However, the researchers are yet to discover if the eyebrows have facial muscles or if they only exist to make the frog beautiful and unique.
15. Tigers
Tigers are apex predators and the largest living cat. They are found in most numbers in the Indian subcontinent, Russian far east, Sumatra, and Indochinese Peninsula.
While being ferocious predators, tigers are some of the cutest wild animals, thanks to their dark/black vertical stripes on their orange-reddish fur. And among the numerous black patches on the animal’s body, just above the eyes, are eyebrows that, alongside the squiggles and cheeks, are as distinctive as human fingerprints, according to National Geographic.
But if it remains to be seen if the tigers’ eyebrows serve any purposes for the animals other than making them majestic and glorious to humans.
16. Sandpipers
Sandpipers are medium-sized birds with long bodies and legs and narrow wings. They’re found everywhere in the world, apart from Antarctica.
The sandpiper family hosts many species, including the wood sandpiper and common sandpiper. And while all these birds have eyebrows, the feature is unique in each individual.
For example, the common sandpipers have pale eyebrows, while in the spotted variants, it’s prominent and clean.
Other than distinguishing the different members of the sandpiper family, there are no other documented functions of their eyebrows.
17. White-browed Wagtail
The White-browsed Wagtail is a medium-sized bird and the largest in the wagtail family. Inhabiting freshwater wetlands, the birds are endemic to the Indian subcontinent.
The slender birds are known for their characteristic tails that are always wagging, but they also have prominent white eyebrows.
And as you have noticed in whinchats and sandpipers, birds do not have eyebrows for the same purpose as other animals, with penguins excluded. However, the features are visible and are mainly for identification purposes.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of animals with brows, at home and in the wild.
However, these features are visible in only a few animals. And in such animals, the roles are well defined as the eyebrows stick out of the eyes to play vital roles like protecting the eyes from dust and shielding them from intense sunlight. What you’d say are the ideal functions of eyebrows, at least in comparison to humans.
But still, you can’t ignore the eyebrows in other animals, even if you barely notice them. Rather these animals with invisible eyebrows are some adorable creatures we’ve around.
