Misidentified Animals

Sand Tiger Shark/ Great White Shark
Chimpanzee/Gorilla
Green Tree Python/ Green Mamba
Clouded Leopard/ Lynx
Bald Eagle/Vulture
Tiger/Lion
 
Oh so many choices. I do love some of yours... otter to a croc? Ok someone is special.

Sumartran tiger - lion which hello how did you get out of kindergarten and not know the tiger is the orange striped one. This father was actually correcting his child who called it a tiger and he responded no lions are orange and have the manes. Wow took all I had in me not to help the kid out.

Grey kangaroo - bunnies

Red panda - raccoon which as Canadians where the little dumbster bandits are common I just cant accept it. You should know they are grey. I am not saying you need to know a red panda but geez there are signs read a little.

Polar bear - grizzly bear and vice versa

Flamingo - duck

Capybara - hamster

Llama - giraffe. Ill be fair on this one. Toronto did stick the llamas in the old giraffe pen for about a year and I'm not certain the signs were change but still its an ABC animal.

Cheetah - leopard

Clouded leopard - cougar

Zebra - horse, donkey

Babirusa - baby rhino, hippo. I dont expect anyone to know a babirusa but come on how do you think its a rhino calf without a mom or a full grown hippo (the man actually said I thought hippos were bigger than that)

And my personal favorite a groundhog for an African beaver. Yep this person thought the groundhog munching on hay in the hippo exhibit was an African beaver. You know how rare those are. They were going on how it was weird its tail was so much smaller than a Canadian beavers and how rare they were. My friend couldnt take it and piped up it was a freaking wild Canadian groundhog. They had just hit their limits with obviously wrong IDs and this one pushed them over the edge. Best thing was the look on these peoples faces when they realized they had been going on and on about nothing. We pulled our friend away as he was muttering under his breath about ground hogs, laughing all the while. Only got better when he then couldnt find the pygmy hippo calf right in front of him and then we lost it and laughed so hard we had tears streaming down our faces. No one is perfect.
 
Ah, almost every time I visit my zoo, some one misidentifies our lone Japanese serrow. I will give the ittiest big of credit as the zoo seems to move him a lot and the signage doesn't always follow in a timely manner. But he isn't a pig, nor a hyena, nor an anteater... Hyena seems to be the go to and I have no idea why.
 
Any type of lemur- Monkey
Tortoises- Turtles
Pheasants- Chickens, peacocks
Manatees- Whales, dolphins
Pythons- Anacondas, boas, worst I’ve heard- “rattlesnakes”
 
A somewhat boring one -
A sitatunga at Marwell called a nyala.
To be rather fair the two species do indeed look similar, and since the nyala was in a mixed exhibit with sitatungas, it would make sense that a nyala sign was placed here, but perhaps a bit of a pity to get the zoo visitor confused..
 
For some reason, what irritates me more than anything is when people call Asian elephants African elephants :rolleyes:. And it happens all the time at my zoo.

Also king penguins and emperors, while they may look alike you can tell them apart.
 
When I was at the San Diego Zoo someone saw the pronghorns in the mixed species enclosure they share with the camels and said that they must be the baby camels. How.
Also, back home in St. Louis, someone confidently called the addaxes Texas longhorns when someone in her party asked what they were. They said "how do you not know that?". Granted, she did notice the signage and admit she was wrong.
 
cloudedleopard611 said:
When I was at the San Diego Zoo someone saw the pronghorns in the mixed species enclosure they share with the camels and said that they must be the baby camels. How.
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I've also heard that visitors call the Black Duikers 'baby Okapi' since they shared the enclosure with the Okapi. Honestly a decent guess though, they do look kind of like a smaller version of the Okapi.
 
@hari Jones how could someone mistake an Agouti for a Koala? I could understand if they thought a Sulawesi crested macaque was a Gorilla. Even I think Sulawesi crested macaques look like Baby Gorillas. I presume the people that made the mistake were novice Zoo visitors.
 
hari Jones said:
I got bit confused when people were looking at the agouti and said I think their koalas
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felis silvestris said:
How could people think a agouti is a koala :confused:
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At a stretch, I can see how people would think an agouti was a marsupial - when they sit on their hind legs to feed, they’re not dissimilar in appearance to a wallaby.

However, there’s nothing about them that screams arboreal - which is the first thing anybody knows about the Koala (they climb gum trees).
 
Martii said:
best thing I ever heard was at Edinburgh Zoo and someone thought a Chinese Goral was a wolf and a lady asked her partner if penguins were birds
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I've just googled "Chinese Goral" (because I didn't know what one was) but how on earth does anyone think its a wolf? o_O seriously, I know common sense doesn't really exist in some people but even so, how do these people manage day to day :eek:
 
Martii said:
best thing I ever heard was at Edinburgh Zoo and someone thought a Chinese Goral was a wolf and a lady asked her partner if penguins were birds
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Embu said:
I've just googled "Chinese Goral" (because I didn't know what one was) but how on earth does anyone think its a wolf? o_O seriously, I know common sense doesn't really exist in some people but even so, how do these people manage day to day :eek:
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That's absurd, they look absolutely nothing alike. It's crazy to see how unknowledgeable people are about animals these days. I've noticed it a lot, especially with the younger generation. People these days can not even see the difference between a wolf and a goral. :rolleyes: It's insane.
 
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