Animals That Simply Don't Interest You

Pertinax said:
I think they are ugly, particularly the Browns. That said, I'm not a huge fan of New World monkeys in general, I far prefer the Old World species.

Other species that don't do it for me are Camels and to a lesser extent, Common Chimpanzees, though Bonobos are a different matter.
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I find myself agreeing with this post 100%, never really thought about camels but I have just realised that Bactrian camels do not interest me at all.
New World monkeys don't hold much allure either, possibly because of their ubiquit in captive collections. If presented with something a little out of the ordinary I'm far more interested.
Finally chimps are pretty unapppealing as well, I do agree that bonobos are a different story altogether.
 
I don't wish to speak badly of of lovebirds because I have one, or budgies, or cockatiels, but when I go to the zoo I have no interest in entering the aviary and feeding them. I have to be bored in order to do that, and to have seen the rest of the zoo. I also don't need to see the mini horse or the Shetland pony, not when I just dealt grooming the one at the barn as a favor to its owner, whom I will likely see again the very next day after the zoo trip, and will have to do the same again after dealing with my own full sized friend for life.

Okay, I will look at one, but only for a minute, the only thing to really get me to stay looking at it is if I get talking to the groom and sharing horse related gripes.

Also, I don't wish to speak ill of giraffes, but unless one is giving birth I don't need to look at them for more than about five minutes.
 
Chimps orangs and gorillas they fine expect they are to much like humans and half the stuff they do you do to so it is basically like watching a human
 
dunstbunny said:
Fish. For me a fish is food, or a decorative thing. Not as in fishtank, more like a stuffed clownfish framed as wall decoration. Or live decorating the seven seas. But aquariums are simply boring in my eyes.
(Jellyfish is a different matter, I could watch them for hours. It's sort of Zen.)
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:eek:Why fish are awesome
 
Oh yeah, I consider myself a lover of all animals. But I see what you mean. To me, personally I get bored easily with the Meerkats. I don't know what it is! When they burrow down into their holes. I'm just like ok, that wasn't very cool, fun, and exciting. However when the Meerkats come out to play, I love them! Really cool to see who the leader is!
 
wensleydale said:
I don't wish to speak badly of of lovebirds because I have one, or budgies, or cockatiels, but when I go to the zoo I have no interest in entering the aviary and feeding them. I have to be bored in order to do that, and to have seen the rest of the zoo. I also don't need to see the mini horse or the Shetland pony, not when I just dealt grooming the one at the barn as a favor to its owner, whom I will likely see again the very next day after the zoo trip, and will have to do the same again after dealing with my own full sized friend for life. /QUOTE]

Mmm I know what you mean WD but some folk never get the chance to feed the above, or even get close to a horse something they can relate too in that they can see them locally perhaps or from a car window, but not to see smell or touch one.
I have only just realised this lately, a couple of years ago we visited an open garden (private gardens open to raise funds often for local churches)
they made a big thing about being able to walk through a small field at the bottom of the garden, asking "when I had last walked through afield of long grass":rolleyes
:
I pointed out that the distant view of a mixed woodland and the fields bordering the lake is where I work 2 days a week so as it happened I had walked through a huge field only 2 days before. funny thing is they didn't ask me to put my opinions in a visitors book that they insisted every one should fill in. :confused:

Personally I still like to look at the amphibians and reptiles too see how they compare to the ones I do or did keep, especially when the notice says they are difficult to keep and breed and I had or have bred a dozen or so of them.
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Try telling me that other people don't usually see horses when they are loudly insisting that I need to spend half an hour staring at one. A better thing to say is "oh, I know this is nothing special for you but I want to stop and have a look."

Very rarely I will make friends with a zoo horse, but I find them to be aloof and uninterested in you unless you are their groom (I refuse to use the word keeper here) or have food for them. On the other hand I find zoo goats to be very sociable, and enjoy being massaged more than being fed. If you want to make one of the pregnant goats at Southwicks happy don't feed it, give it a really hard back rub.
 
Chimpanzees!
Przewalski's wilde horses
Reindeer
Parrots (with a few exceptions, like the kea)
Lions
Cheetahs
Raccoons
 
Resurrecting this thread if nobody minds.
Great Apes, I don't know what it is but great apes just don't do much for me. I still like them I just don't enjoy watching them.
 
It seems like there are quite a few people who don't get jazzed about the apes! I enjoy watching great apes, as they usually do something interesting and often interact with the visitors more than other animals do.

On the other hand, I really don't see why meerkats are so popular; they are never doing much besides standing sentry at every zoo I go to. Additionally, although koalas and pandas are cool to see, they are not exciting to watch at all.

I don't mind hoofstock, but I don't get very excited about them usually.
 
It's been forever since I posted here, and as an animal lover myself, I find lions very boring and overrated. I don't dislike them or anything, but they and giant pandas don't intrigue me much if at all. I've never seen a giant panda in person but in my honest opinion I think there's much more fascinating animals out there worth seeing in my eyes.
 
In matter of fact, I think ALL animals are fascinating creatures and I can enjoy watching for example a stick insect ( it hasn't to be even a rare species ) as much as watching a displaying Bird of Paradise !
2 major groups however are not within the ALL-animal group and these are sleeping animals - I can't spend more then a few minutes looking at a sleeping animal, no matter how special or rare it is - and un-natural mutants.
With un-natural mutants I mean the white tigers and white lions bred special for being white and in which father and daughter ( or brother - sister and so on ) are mated with eachoter just to get more white specimens. The same is true for loads of lizards ( bearded dragons, leopard geckos ), snakes, songbirds ( alone the number of terrible canary-forms bred from a species looking so fine in its natural-form ), parakeets, fish ( goldfish not looking like goldfish at all anymore ! ) and so on.
I can spend time on a natural occuring mutant - for example black springbock or albino lungfish but as soon as mankind start to get seeing some kind of ( financial ) profit in it, I'm out !
 
Lizard_boy said:
Chimps orangs and gorillas they fine expect they are to much like humans and half the stuff they do you do to so it is basically like watching a human
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This is what I find interesting about them. Trying to decipher the group dynamics can be like watching an American soap opera or reality TV show. (In fact the gorilla group in Prague had its own reality tv show that was very popular in the Czech Republic.)

Personally I don't understand the attraction of penguins, and tend to skip past their exhibits with nothing more than a quick glance. I also agree I don't want to go to the zoo to see animals I can see at home, like domesticated animals, native wildlife, etc. except I understand the need for petting zoo areas for children to interact and, the Bald Eagles. I'm old enough to remember when there were no Bald Eagles.
 
I seem to have a bias towards cuteness and no countervailing preference for large animals, and as such, large animals in general are more likely to leave me cold.

This is particularly true with large ungulates. Unless it's taxonomically distinct (as with okapis, pronghorns, and peccaries), or has either a really unusual feature (like babirusas) most ungulates leave me cold. Even some taxonomically interesting animals like rhinos and tapirs: I just don't get excited at seeing them.

As a rule, larger species that are "must-haves" for even mid-sized zoos like lions and tigers and giraffes don't interest me, though I might be interested in seeing Tsavo lions. (This is not true for smaller species. I will never get bored with marmosets, meerkats, or penguins. Even if they're sitting around seemingly doing nothing, they're so cute I enjoy watching them anyways.)

Someone mentioned domestic animals. Cows and horses and camelids of all breeds bore me, as do common breeds of other livestock. However rare breeds of pig, sheep, goat, and poultry do excite me.

Squamates and most ray-finned fish also bore me. It has to be unusual in some way (morphologically, ecologically, behaviorally or taxonomically) to catch my attention. Basilisk lizards and shrimpfish? Cool! Skinks and tetras? *Shrug.* Overexposure is also an issue here. Chameleons and clownfish are neat, but I've seen them so often that they just don't get my attention.

Probably the largest taxon that I'm completely interested in is tarantulas. OK, they're big spiders. So what?

With regards to vertebrates, I think I'm completely uninterested in colobine monkeys. I like primates in general. Lemurs, tarsiers, marmosets, baboons, and gueneons? All of these interest me. But even the proboscis monkey I will walk past with a shrug.
 
Hmm, while I can find a charm in each and every animal (my favorites being reptiles, many small mammals, ratites and penguins), some I find... Kinda dull.

- Meerkats. Removing my bias, I find them very entertaining. But guess what? I think of that of ALL mongooses. And while banded and yellow and dwarf mongooses are still obscure to the public eye, meerkats are eeeeeeverywhere... And sooo overrated too! So yeah, meerkats are the most famous mongooses, but I feel that they're overrated.
Plus banded mongooses smell nicer.

- Wildebeest: Yeah, I don't know why, but... Wildebeest don't appeal to me that much, to be quite honest. I rarely see them doo much, and they're kind of a vanilla animal to me. Waaay too many of them in pop culture. I prefer to look at any other type of antelope (Sitatunga are my favorites).

- White tigers, ligers, etc.: While I love big cats, I have an ambivalous relationship to seeing them in zoos. Most of the time, I see them lounging around, on the far end of a moat, which doesn't appeal to me much... But seeing them up-close with a glass window or a chain link fence between us is very engrossing. :) I prefer smaller cats though. Clouded leopards are my BAE.
Buuut in any case, I'm not a fan of zoos displaying white tigers, ligers, and any other unnaturally bred mutant feline. It just comes off as a ploy to get people to visit the zoo. I mean, sometimes they rescue circus animals, and that's fine, but normally I feel that they really overhype these frankly unnatural animals...

- Red kangaroo. Yeah, I love wallabies, pademelons, bettongs... But red kangaroos are surprisingly lazy! Like, hoooly hell, most of the time I see them, they're all lying down idly in the shade. I mean, sure, I'd do that too if food was assured for me every day. Buuuut yeah, I prefer their smaller cousins. I love walking among them in walk-through enclosures. :3

- Waterfowl. Kind of an honorable mention. When I go to new zoos, I take my time to observe them and appreciate them. But at my local Barcelona zoo, I can't be bothered to pay them too much attention, to be honest. Except for flamingos, screamers and penguins, of course. ;)

- Brown bears: another honorable mention. I just see them in every zoo I visit, and I'm quite frankly bored to tears by them at this point... I prefer any other type of bear than them. I find them so plain, to be honest. I mean, awesome animal objectively, but it's the meerkat effect; I see waaaay too many of these guys.
 
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I think that there is a thread with similar content somewhere, but I'm too lazy to search :p

In order of increasing interest:

0 > Humans.
1 > Any domestic mutant of a commonly seen species (domestic goat, house cat, dog, bugdie, goldfish...)
2 > Any domestic mutant of a less commonly seen species (tenebrose pheasant, black-winged peacock, lutino/blue "not so common" parrots, veiled-tailed tropical fishes...)
3 > Species seen too often (common pigeons or common species of insects in the wild, meerkats, camels, crowned cranes, yellow tangs etc in zoos) unless I don't have a nice picture of them
4 > Cichlids
5 > Species seen often, but from which I still have only bad pictures
6 > Species rarely seen from which I have good pictures
7 > Species seen often from which I lack completely any picture (raccoon dog for example)
8 > Species rarely seen from which I have bad pictures (would be especially pleased by a Pallas's cat)
9 > Species rarely seen from which I have no pictures
10 > Species rarely seen from which I have no pictures and from groups that give me goosebumps (cetaceans, rarer cats, butterflyfishes, rarer hoofstock...)
 
For me I love seeing almost every kind of animal, I say almost because there are very little animals that don't interest me, the only one is the Surinam Toad
 
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