The first photograph I had seen of an Aye-aye as a child was angled in such a way that I thought they had a longer body than they did; the tail was covering the back legs up so I thought they were further back than they actually were. When finally seeing the animals in person, their tails were bigger and bodies shorter than I expected, cuter though!
What animal looks different in real life to what you expected?
- Thread starter Grant Rhino
- Start date
kqpikachu
Active Member
I’m always surprised by the size of lions. Of course, you expect them to be pretty big, hence the name big cats, and they are. But the thing I never expected was their head size! They have big ol noggins.
Polar bears are also one I’ve both underestimated and overestimated. My local zoo has one large polar bear and one smaller one, so their difference always throws me off. I’m not particularly short (5”7ish), but I feel tiny next to the larger bear! Meanwhile, the smaller bear feels more like an unusually large dog (although that could just be the face. polar bears have very dog faces to me.)
I kind of thought lynxes would be bigger? Idk if the two girls at my zoo are just small, but they’re maybe the size of a small-medium breed dog like a hound or something.
Although my favorite is my mom’s reaction to the zoo’s aardvark! The aardvark is not out often, usually curled in a hidey hole with her tail out, so you can’t get a good grip of her size, but she’s decently big (although I don’t haven’t seen many aardvarks to compare her to). She was shocked, since she thought aardvarks were more the size of something like a mongoose or armadillo, not a pig! To be fair, an aardvark isn’t an animal who’s size you think of too often
ZoologicallyDepraved
Well-Known Member
Rhinos. Far larger than I expected.
Where did you see a bald uakari??
ifesbob
Well-Known Member
Taxidermy at the Field Museum
Ah, that makes more sense. I initially thought you meant you saw one that was alive.
Well they certainly could have - Los Angeles held them until a year or so back if I remember correctly…
Corangurilla
Well-Known Member
They have not, but I have! Still, hard to judge the size of a red and beige speck leaping around in the distance.
I don't really know WHAT I was expecting, but dolphins and manatees were a lot larger than I thought they might be.
TheImmigrant1
Well-Known Member
Indian Rhinoceros is what first comes to mind, I knew Javan rhinos and Sumatran rhinos were quite small from pictures and assumed the third Asian rhino would follow suit leaving the African species as the giants, but I was so so very wrong. Indian rhinos are absolute tanks easily on par with its African cousins. Dallas World Aquarium was also a humbling experience, as both the Sawfish and Manatee blew my expectations out of the water. I expected the sawfish to be about the size of the much smaller sawshark, and expected the manatee to be around pygmy hippo sized.
cloudedleopard611
Well-Known Member
Any time I get to see lions or tigers close up I am in awe of how big they are. Obviously many major zoos have opted for viewing that allows you to get very close to them and that seems to be the popular design choice these days but my local zoo still has older style open top pit-like enclosures for them where you are viewing from a good distance. It just makes it all the more striking every time I visit a facility where you can see them closer.
I totally hear you on the lion heads. One time I was at the Houston Zoo and the male lion was right up against the glass, his head was huge! Totally dwarfed my dog's head. (I had a 60 lb dog at the time) And another zoo, I think it was San Antonio, had an education cart with a lion skull and it was cool to get up close with that.
One time I found a dead North American river otter and it was a huge one! I'd seen the species at zoos but the ones at the zoo were smaller than this specimen.
Recently I've been trying to improve my artwork, and that means drawing more with references as well as taking some online courses. (including some that focus on animals and spend a lot of time on their anatomy) A tricky thing about drawing is that you're very prone to drawing what you THINK something is like rather than what it's actually like. Proportions are wrong, coloring is wrong, patterns (if applicable) and small details are wrong. So to make something accurate, you need to use references and study anatomy. And you learn that nothing looks exactly like you thought it did.
Reminds me of a similar situation a couple years back now; I was driving a backroad out between flooded fields looking for birds, and I passed what looked like a seal on the side of the road. Being as this was inland California several miles from the nearest river, I quickly pulled over to figure out what it was. Walked back to it and it was an absolutely enormous river otter - easily seemed twice the size of any I'd remembered seeing in zoos. Poor thing had been hit and killed by a car, real shame for how impressive the animal was. Still though, gave me a lot more respect for otters and I certainly don't want to get on the wrong side of one.
Yeah, we usually think of otters as cute little guys, so it's surprising to come across such a big one.
That reminds me of when I saw a (fortunately alive and well) golden eagle on the side of the road when I visited Big Bend National Park. It was hanging out with some turkey vultures and it was THE SAME SIZE AS THE VULTURES.
You must have seen a hawk. Golden eagles are much bigger than turkey vultures.
A small male Golden is not a whole lot bigger than a Turkey Vulture. By contrast even a big female Red-tail is still notably smaller than a Turkey Vulture.
Nasua
Well-Known Member
Binturongs. I mean I have seen a lot of species that were slightly smaller or larger than anticipated but the only one that had absolutely shocked me was the binturong. I imagined them being the size of a red panda maybe or of a raccoon more or less. When I just came around a corner in an indoor exhibit last year and I saw an active individual from up close and on eye level for the first time, it really gave me a scare. The individual I saw has an appearance like it could have the raccoon for breakfast.