We've gotten good results for fur using the cellular node in place of an image map. Image maps do give a great deal of control for this, however, as you can 'paint' noise into them that can be translated into patches of fur so you're not limited to all fur or no fur. I would LOVE to see more threads out there exploring this use of displacement, as well as possibly some which might delve into the use of the math nodes with gradients and other features, especially in conjunction with animation.