What Is a Binturong? 12 Facts About One of Nature’s Most Critically Endangered Species. says the binturong is one of the most critically endangered animals
Zoological inaccuracies & mistakes
- Thread starter Elephas Maximus
- Start date
In 12 Creepiest Creatures Living Right Under Our Feet - Animals Around The Globe, centipedes are represented by a millipede, gall wasps by a vespid wasp and ant lions by an ant.
In 21 Venomous Animals That Frightens Arizona - Animals Around The Globe, centipedes are represented by millipedes. and the velvet ant by an ant
In The Role of Technology in Combatting Wildlife Trafficking - Animals Around The Globe, the Javan rhino is represented by an African rhino
In 15 Incredibly Loyal Animal Species That Form Lifetime Bonds - Animals Around The Globe, the emperor penguin is represented by a gentoo penguin
In 10 Animals You Did not Know Could Glide Through the Air - Animals Around The Globe, gliding ants are represented by humpback whales, sugar gliders by a dormouse possum, gliding leaf frogs by a red-eyed tree frog, gliding geckos by another lizard and flying fish by tuna
In 15 Smartest Ways Animals Outsmart Their Hunters - Animals Around The Globe, the hagfish is represented by a snail, stick insects by a caterpillar, gazelles by a white-tailed deer and impala (?) and leaf insects by a pupa (?)
In 6 Creatures That Can Survive Being Frozen Solid, Upis beetles are represented by a rhinoceros beetle
In 12 Most Colorful Snakes Found in the U.S. - Animals Around The Globe, the eastern coral snake is represented by a cobra, the scarlet kingsnake and western ribbon snake, glossy snake and ringneck snake by pythons (?)
In 15 Times Animals Disrupted Everyday Life in the U.S. - Animals Around The Globe, a monkey is represented by a chimpanzee
In 12 Most Dangerous Creatures You have Never Heard Of - Animals Around The Globe, the cone shell is represented by a land snail and the box jellyfish by a true jellyfish.
In 15 Creatures That Look Like They are from Another Planet - Animals Around The Globe, the blue dragon sea slug is represented by a blue dragonfly, the yeti crab by another crab, the vampire squid by another cephalopod and the star-nosed mole by another mole
12 Apex Predators and How They Dominate the Food Chain - Animals Around The Globe says the Bengal tiger is the largest big cat
The problem isn't really with the articles. It's with the people who choose the photos to accompany them
12 Sharks You Did not Know Swam U.S. Water - Animals Around The Globe says the smalltooth sawfish is a member of the shark family. Several photos show the wrong species, such as manta rays, whale sharks, dolphins and turtles
14 Real Creatures That Look Like Monsters - Animals Around The Globe says the aye's middle finger can be up to 3 times longer than its other digits. The aye-aye is depicted by a Tasmanian devil
I recall once I read multiple of these articles consecutively in search of mistakes. Needless to say was like finding a piece of straw in a haystack.
Many of the mistakes are indeed to do with pictures - a picture of a leopard to represent a cheetah for instance... other times it's an inconsistency with the article's title.
For instance with one article titled '10 Fastest Killers in the Animal Kingdom'. Which is a bit of a cr*p title in my opinion... like will the animals kill you fast or will it get to you quickly before killing you? But the idea is that the animals in this list are killers, and they are fast. And so we get a cheetah [represented by a leopard], we get a peregrine falcon [represented by an osprey]... so far so good... but where it goes downhill is when it shows Anna's Hummingbird. I recall I commented on this:
"The title specifies 'killers'. How would a hummingbird kill anything? Perch on a branch with some mites on it and suffocate them? Suck a flower to death?"
And down from there... with many other herbivores being shown as killers. Including a pronghorn - which probably has a decent chance of killing something, but I'm not sure if that's what they were going for.
Other times the inaccuracy is not to do with the animal itself. For example there is the article "11 species that travel thousands of miles to survive". Which includes amongst other things pronghorns, which do not in fact travel 'thousands of miles', but also includes the Arctic Tern - an animal which does. Great! Except... [as per my comment]
"The inaccuracy here is not to do with the animal itself... but rather the distance stated. "The Arctic Tern holds the record for the longest migration of any bird, traveling an awe-inspiring 44,000 miles annually from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back." The measurements of this particular unit seemed to vary on which source I used, but the safe number is 20,015 kilometres; or about 12,430 miles. I'm guessing if you stretch the number far enough and times it by two that's 44,000 KILOMETRES... if that... but it's only 24,860 MILES. Well, at least this animal actually travels thousands of miles."
So it's not so much with the animal itself, but that they got the metrics confused. And then the same article also mentions [at the climax] Christmas Island Crabs, which migrate from the jungle to the coast. A lovely natural event... except these crabs do not travel thousands of miles. How could they? Christmas Island is barely twelve miles between its farthest points!
And then there is the old-fashioned 'getting things wrong'. Which these articles don't do overly often.. but they still do from time to time. Like stating that anglerfish have a cartilage-based body structure, when they are bony fish... or that dragonfish have bioluminescent barbs which they do not have [as opposed to barbels] ... or implying that koalas can survive for months without food. On average the mistakes aren't horrendously big ... but they are small enough to make themselves troublesome to deal with.
Case in point, I recall "13 most dangerous predators in North America" [not a great title either... who are they dangerous to? anyways...] gave a maximum weight for the grizzly bear... which was problematic methinks.
"I'm uncomfortable with the weight for the grizzly bear being given as 'males weighing up to 1500 pounds'. Grizzly bears, as a sub-species, tend to grow to about 600 pounds maximum, with heavier individuals passing 700 pounds. Some brown bears do grow to 1500 pounds in weight [though this is more often attained by polar bears].... but these are kodiak bears. Bart the Bear was a kodiak... but of course because he was a Hollywood actor everybody knew him as a Grizzly. SAYING THAT the kodiak bear is sometimes called 'a subspecies of grizzly bear'.... which from a European perspective sends my head in a loop. I'm guessing it is in North America that the brown bear is just called the grizzly bear... so I guess this could be an error depending on who you ask."
So does "grizzly bear" refer to Ursus arctos horribilis or does it include kodiaks as well? Hell, Hercules was a Eurasian brown bear who was marketed as a grizzly. Was he a grizzly? And there was also a weird one with '15 animals that can outrun a human' with a kangaroo, which was given at 35 mph...
"The image is of a grey kangaroo, but the record the text mentions of 35 mph is that of a red kangaroo who was paced for 1 mile and eventually died. Guinness counts this as highest sustained speed... BUT the highest recorded speed for a marsupial is that of 40 mph, for the GREY kangaroo. So the kangaroo can jump faster than 35 mph. Eitherway... if the picture is wrong with the fact... or the fact is wrong with the picture... it's one mistake."
So in this case they gave a picture of a grey kangaroo where the fact related to a red kangaroo... BUT still one could make the point that a grey kangaroo is faster than a red kangaroo, depending on what one is measuring. And of course the article mentioned also the peregrine falcon... which I had a quip with... for sure a falcon can fly faster than a human, but can it run faster than a human?....
And so I think these articles manage to make me 'sufficiently uncomfortable' with how widely accessible they are. For the most part they are decently fine... but they have enough mistakes in them that I am uncomfortable with people taking them for granted... as they are. I wish this form of 'junk food content' didn't exist ... but alas it does. And this is the world we live in.
12 Deadliest Reptiles Still Roaming the Earth - Animals Around The Globe says the Gila monster is the only venomous lizard native to North America. The same article includes the beaded lizard.
How Snow Leopards Survive at the Highest Altitudes has a cheetah on the first page