Animal Stereotypes That You Hate

I’m pretty sure that only applies to deep-sea anglerfish, though, and not to frogfish, monkfish, or batfish. I could be wrong; if so, correct me.
 
Dodo2 said:
Blobfish are Ugly
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I agree with what you think. In their deep-water habitat, blobfish look like any shallow-water sculpin, albeit a little plumper. The pictures that people usually see are of blobfish after being brought to the surface, whose soft bodies bloat and turn to jelly outside of their pressurized environment of the deep ocean. While plenty of people probably would think of sculpins in general as ugly, blobfish at least don’t look particularly mushy in their natural state.
 
Corangurilla said:
I’ve got two, both for Australian wildlife:
  1. Koalas (and Giant Pandas to a lesser extent) are “useless” because some copypasta on Reddit said so. I’ll admit that I used to believe this, too, but now it comes off as bad taste in a post-bushfire world.
  2. Cassowaries are “the world’s most dangerous bird”. Technically true, but that number is astronomically low compared to cattle, for example. I thought we learned our lesson about labeling animals as killers with sharks, but ok.
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To be honest my greatest fear is Cassowaries. I told this to my 7th grade English teacher once and he pulled out his phone and looked it up, another kid asked what he was looking at and he responded “demon birds”.
 
Corangurilla said:
Cassowaries are “the world’s most dangerous bird”. Technically true, but that number is astronomically low compared to cattle, for example. I thought we learned our lesson about labeling animals as killers with sharks, but ok.
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Cattle are not birds. There are people who say that budgerigars and other parrots are dangerous birds as they spread psittacosis. Similarly, undercooked chickens are also dangerous.
 
Of course cattle aren’t birds. I’m pretty sure that what’s actually being said is that lots of things (not necessarily birds) are far more dangerous than cassowaries. I also think that Corangurilla wasn’t talking about birds that cause illnesses.
 
I agree that many things are more dangerous than cassowaries, but that doesn't mean that cassowaries are not 'the world's most dangerous bird'.
 
Dassie rat said:
I agree that many things are more dangerous than cassowaries, but that doesn't mean that cassowaries are not 'the world's most dangerous bird'.
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Of course they are the most dangerous bird going by attacks. I definitely wasn’t denying that.
 
Birdsage said:
I’m pretty sure that only applies to deep-sea anglerfish, though, and not to frogfish, monkfish, or batfish. I could be wrong; if so, correct me.
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You are correct. Only one group of anglerfish do, I can't remember the name. All species with parasitic males are deep-sea species, but not all deep-sea species have parasitic males. The females of species without parasitic males are often larger than the males, but this is common to many fish species, and the difference is not nearly as extreme as in some deep sea species.
 
The family you are referring to is Ceratiidae. There is also extreme size dimorphism in other families in the suborder Ceratioidea, but probably not parasitic males.
 
ChIkEn NuGrEt said:
To be honest my greatest fear is Cassowaries. I told this to my 7th grade English teacher once and he pulled out his phone and looked it up, another kid asked what he was looking at and he responded “demon birds”.
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They are actually quite deadly. At Australian Zoos, hotwire is in place to keep them in and all keepers, and visitors have to stay more than two metres away from the fenceline. They could easily get one of those claws through the fence. Quite a scary species, especially if disturbed. They can be incredibly territorial, especially around eggs.
 
While it is true that more people are killed annually by cattle than cassowaries, you do have take into the consideration that cassowaries are not kept in large numbers on farms, are not regularly herded, and generally do not spend as much time around humans as cattle do. So the fact that cattle kill more people than cassowaries may have more to do with the fact that people are much more often in contact with cattle than cassowaries, and not that cassowaries are less dangerous than cattle.
 
Anything Tierzoo says about the “viability”, “ranking”, etc. of an species. While explaining biological mechanisms in game-like terms may be a good way for some people to visualize them, some simplifications end up occurring because of this, such as representing a some abstract value representing a species’ capacity for change as “evolution points” that species spend at their own will. And before you know it, we have an orthogenetic (the “tier lists”), highly theistic (the “developers”) form of evolution.
Secondly, the whole idea of considering some species “better” and “more viable”than others (whatever this means) creates complications regarding the role conservation in this gamified version of the real world. The videos seem to imply the following things:
• The Giant Panda, Koala, Aye-Aye, ratites, marine sunfishes, etc. are hopeless, destined for imminent extinction, and don’t deserve to survive (or be saved by humans).
• 21st-century anthropogenic climate change is simply an “update” to the game conducted by the “developers” (i.e. a naturally-caused event). Likewise, ocean acidification is nothing more than a “prank”.
• Humans saving other species and engaging in conservation doesn’t happen in the “game”; it’s never been talked about so far, except in messages to the viewer.
Speaking of which, I suspect that the Team Trees and Team Seas fundraiser videos were only made due to the bandwagon effect, and not due to any genuine concern for environmental causes.
 
Discussion of equid evolution almost always speaks in relation to horses and forgets that asses and zebras exist.
 
Similarly, paleontological discussions about crocodylomorph evolution speak in relation to “crocodiles” as if the term includes to all living crocodilians. Even worse, sometimes all crocodylomorphs are referred to as “crocodiles”.
 
The living coelacanths of the genus Latimeria are called living fossils, when there is no actual fossil record of them. What is actually meant is that Coelacanthiformes is a Lazarus taxon that was first known from fossil members before the living species were described.
In fact, “living fossil” is an unscientific term itself. It refers to living members of a clade that superficially resemble fossil members. The clade in question usually contains relatively few living members.
Commonly cited examples include nautiloids, crocodilians, ginkgos, and pelicans. However, this doesn’t mean that said living members have a long fossil record, or any fossil record for that matter. This video explains it nicely:
However, if I had to select candidates for “real living fossils”; that is, living species that have a notable fossil record, there are not many I can think of: the ones that come to mind are California Condor (2.5 ma*) Sandhill Crane (at least 2.5 ma, and possibly 10 ma), and Giant Anteater (5 ma).
*mega-annum, or million years.
 
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Generic brown Cartoon Monkeys™ that go ooh-ooh-aah-aah, eat bananas, throw their feces, and/or hang from their tails regardless of location.
You simply can’t escape them!
 
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