It feeds on insects such as crickets, cicadas, and ants in dense columns of vegetation formed by vines growing around trees.

Although it is classified as being of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it is threatened by habitat destruction and fragmentation and its population is thought to be decreasing.

The bare-headed laughingthrush was described as Allocotops calvus by the British ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe in 1888 on the basis of specimens collected from Mount Kinabalu, Borneo.

[4] In 2006, the British ornithologist Nigel Collar again raised the bare-headed laughingthrush to species status on the basis of differences in appearance.

[5] The Spanish ornithologist Josep del Hoyo and colleagues split Garrulax into 11 different genera in 2007, placing the bare-headed and black laughingthrushes in a resurrected Melanocichla.

[10] The bare-headed laughingthrush is one of 57 species in the Old World babbler family Timaliidae,[8] a diverse group of birds whose members are found in tropical forests in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast and East Asia, and Indonesia.

It has a featherless brownish to greenish yellow head, with the submoustachial region (area along the lower jaw) having a bluish tinge.

It is similar to the black laughingthrush, but differs in its bare head, brownish coloration, and slightly shorter bill, wing and tail.

It creeps about in the lower storey or midstorey of the forest in a lethargic manner, foraging in dense columns of vegetation formed by vines growing around tree trunks.

[15] Although it has not been recorded being sold in markets, it may also be threatened by hunting for the cage-bird trade, which is known to affect other species of laughingthrushes in Indonesia.