ZS3403 The Wise Little Hen

This panel derives from the very first Disney comic book story featuring Donald Duck. It was published as a Sunday newspaper strip on September 16th, 1934, with story by Ted Osborne and art by Al Taliaferro.
At the time, Donald's hands and feet were still drawn in their probing state (see the panel); the right hand is remindful of a bird's wing and the feet have toes. If you then study Donald's left hand carefully you may be inclined to count 4 fingers and a thumb...

Black Pete must be one of the busiest characters in Disney's comic book stories, because he is dividing his time between the mouse universe and the duck universe. Barks used him in a little more subtle way, though, as he usually gave him different names in order to blur his true identity. But coming from the mouse universe Black Pete did, of course, wear gloves in Barks' stories. The reason is simple; in the mouse universe everybody wears gloves, but in the duck universe almost no one wears gloves.

The structure of the ducks' hands is rather enigmatic as we are never told much about their construction. As for the torsos and heads we know that they have feathers as the outer layer because we have seen ruffled feathers many times, but when it comes to the hands it would seem that the layer is white skin. Anyway, Barks never drew fingernails on the hands of any of his ducks, although it would seem natural that at least the females would have nails that could even be accentuated with coloured nail polish.

WDCS197 'Border Patrolman'

The ducks have worn a variety of gloves in the stories, but they are usually associated with specific situations such as metal gloves for a suit of armour (WDCS128 'Theater Rivals'), leather gloves for blacksmith's protection (WDCS239 The Village Blacksmith), and rubber gloves for sound surgery (WDCS297 Monkey Business). But usually, Barks left his duck characters with bare hands in almost all kinds of harsh weather. As an exception they were 'allowed' to wear warm gloves in some of the stories' winter panels but only when it was very cold outside.

Oftentimes it can be rather hard to determine if a character is wearing white gloves or not, as Barks only drew in black and white. This would mean that uninspired colouring artists back at the publisher's office would fill in colours as they saw fit.  Barks would normally accommodate this uncertainty by simply adding three parallel stripes remindful of stitching lines on the back of a character's gloves thus indicating that they are indeed wearing gloves. Donald's choleric neighbour does not wear gloves, so in this example Barks happened to draw the lines by mistake.

On rare occasions Barks happened to distort or disnumber the fingers on Donald's hands. Examples: In WDCS240 The Fraidy Falcon he falls from a rooftop and his left hand appears quite stunted; he is clearly missing his thumb, and he also seems to have an amputated finger. In WDCS278 Have Gun, Will Dance he is clearly missing one finger on his left hand when he reaches for the doorknob on his frontdoor.
In WDCS246 Lost Frontier, page 3, panel 2, Barks happened to draw one of the nephews with 5 fingers on one hand.

The Beagle Boys are the only primary characters in Barks' stories to wear gloves. Although they are portrayed as mindless and bungling thieves, the Boys must have a little common sense after all; they know about not leaving fingerprints on the scenes of their crimes! Still, their black masks and prison numbers on their chests are dead giveaways, anyway...

146-96 Heat Wave

When painting Barks would often use soft colours on the white ducks' hands making it look as if they had diverse degrees of suntanning. Still, ducks (or other birds) do not get either suntans or sunburns because of their special skin structure. Only humans and other mammals do. The sun would be scorching the protective feathers sooner than their skin.

WDCS190 'The Swimming Race'

In this panel Donald has been drawn with a left hand that defies normal anatomy. It is quite impossible to hold your hand in the position shown (the thumb should have been placed on the other side of the hand).
Barks made the same physical mistake when drawing neighbour J. Jones in WDCS289 Unfriendly Enemies, page 4, panel 6.

U$17 - March 1957

We are never told about - or shown - the ducks' hand lines, but it is plausible that they have them. At least Scrooge has according to this Barks front cover...