Animal Stereotypes That You Hate

Corangurilla said:
Rhinos are foul-tempered, dumb brutes that’ll charge at anything, even the horn on their face.
Electric eels have sharp teeth and live in the ocean.
All armadillos can roll up into a ball and live in the Wild West.
Jellyfish stings are electric (did SpongeBob start that one?).
Chameleons can change their color to literally anything on a whim.
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In zoos rhinos essentially act like big puppies.
 
Great Argus said:
Average Red-tail is roughly comparable to a very large Grey Goshawk, if that helps with size reference. They are one of our bigger hawks here, but still well below the capability of lifting a child. I've never heard of any incidents with humans other than in nest defense.
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Ah thanks, that size comparison helps a lot.
 
I've mentioned this in another thread, but I'll put it here.

"Desert Roadkill" armadillos - they don't live in deserts!
 
@SusScrofa Posting this here to avoid sidetracking on a different thread, but some armadillos do live in deserts, but they are mostly lesser-known South American armadillos like the Pink Fairy or Screaming Hairy.
If you want my opinion, I think the single best "desert armadillo" in pop culture is Sillydillo from Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
Yeah, he falls into the same "looks like a nine-banded but rolls up like a three-banded" pit as most other fictional armadillos, but he also sneaks in a bit of Screaming Hairy Armadillo with his behaviors, such as letting out the distinctive scream before his third phase, and luring Kirby to his arena with a replica of a kidnapped character he was looking for (much like how the Screaming Hairy Armadillo attracts bugs by digging a burrow under a carcass).
The game's monkey enemies are also perpetually smiling, but their flavor text says that they're trying to scare their enemies, just like real monkeys. So I'd say that the folks at Hal Laboratories did their work, even if they gave the swan mini-boss a Red-tailed Hawk screech (eagles I get, but a SWAN?!).
(I was typing this before you posted here, hehe)
 
The whole "alpha and omega" wolf thing that was proven to be inaccurate by the same scientist who studied those wolves
 
On the whole kids yelling "King Julian" at Ring-tailed lemurs. Apparently this trend extends to Red ruffed lemurs as well.

At the NC Zoo right now some kid shouted, "look, its an ugly King Julian!" Her dad's reply - "Thats a brown monkey, baby girl. Not a lemur. They dont have real lemurs at this zoo."
 
I’ve got 3 more, all anteater-related:
  1. Anteater snouts are flexible like an elephant’s trunk, when they’re actually stiff irl.
  2. Anteaters eat ants by sucking them up like a vacuum cleaner instead of using their long sticky tongue.
  3. Two mouths. Two mouths. One at the base of the snout (kind of like an elephant) for normal mouth stuff, and one at the end (like an actual anteater) for the sucking.
All these errors can also apply to aardvarks, which are synonymous with anteaters to some people.
 
The flexible trunk is probably culprit of this guy:

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While for the two mouths, I think these are the starters:
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Speaking of unnaturally flexible animal body parts, another animal stereotype/trope that annoys me is long necks/tails/trunks/tentacles/tongues/whole snakes getting tied up in knots. I’m sure at least one poor real-life snake was killed by some bozo trying to twist it like a pretzel, not realizing that snakes have BONES.
 
Some more myths/tropes/stereotypes about snakes:
Snakes’ tail tips and/or tongues are venomous stingers.
Snakes won’t cross ropes, at least if the rope is horsehair/braided/X thick/etc.
Snakes putting their tails in their mouths and rolling like wheels.
Snakes size up their prey.
Venomous snakes have slit pupils; non-venomous snakes have round pupils; or more broadly, there are straightforward distinguishing features between venomous and non-venomous species (this myth is based on the characteristics of vipers and colubrids, the main families of venomous and non-venomous snakes respectively in most of North America.)
Snakes are slimy (there’s an entire song about how false this statement is.)
Snakes are deaf.
Snakes unhinge their jaws.
Constrictors suffocate their prey (used to be considered correct, but not anymore.)
 
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Birdsage said:
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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Come to think of it, what even is the "default zoo monkey"? In a lot of zoo-related kids media (and I mean really young kids), most bears are brown/grizzly bears and parrots are usually represented by the Scarlet Macaw, but monkeys?
What is the first monkey that comes to most people's minds? Spider monkeys? Capuchins? Just a chimpanzee with a tail?
 
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