Misidentified Animals

merlin said:
@Kharzo and I went to Dvůr on Tuesday and oh god, I actually wish we did not go to the safari that day. Since I don't know of a better thread where to write this down, I decided to put it here.
We decided to take the safari truck, since we don't have a car and because the truck ride is longer than the bus ride. We both also enjoy the driver's commentary, we've always found those guys actually quite skilled. Well, until now.
We got on the truck and soon found out the driver is some old guy who's not very good at articulation. Then we realized that he has to be probably kind of senile and... not too knowledgeable.
It started with him calling the Nile lechwe "aboka". The czech name for Nile lechwe is "voduška abok", but he just went with calling them aboka. I decided to shrug it off, but not even a minute later he started talking about the marabou storks. But he said they were a kind of pelicans. He repeated it multiple times.
As our ride continued, things were getting worse and worse. He called the grey herons "little grey birds" multiple times. He also spoke about the wild mallards and geese living in the area. There were flocks of greylag geese at the pond. He pointed at them and said those were actually Egyptian geese, "the rarest kind of geese". Wow. Really.
He also said that drills are "little cute monkeys". That might sound like recession when written in english, but trust me it wasn't. And again - drills are called "dril" in czech, but he decided to call them "drila" for some weird reason.
When passing the African wild dogs, he started a strange monologue about them being the most beautiful dogs in the world and that you could probably buy them somewhere, but it would be expensive. And that they don't make good pets. Not because they were agressive or simply a wild species of canids. But because they're stubborn. And I don't think he called them "dogs" even once, he went with the word "doggies". Oh god.
Encouraging the visitors to pet and feed the giraffes at the safari was also something.
When passing the lions, he said that Dvůr has bred hundreds of them. And that they are being released into the African wild.
Oh, and if you didn't know, the Cape buffalo is the fourth most dangerous animal in the world! The only animals more dangerous than buffalos are tigers, lions and sharks.
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Actually, the third most dangerous animals were rhinos, not sharks! Which makes it even more interesting.
 
I was looking through some old books on the Internet Archive...
One thing I realised is that there were lots of books being published in the 1960s-80s... but not everyone would do great deals of research into what they were drawing.
So many illustrations of animals from this time are strangely misshapen or miscoloured, and especially in books for younger kids the words won't be very good either.
So I can only assume that this is 'part of the problem'...
 
One I am surprised isn't more common is people mixing up deer and antelope. I heard someone today calling lesser kudu deer. I can't remember another time I have heard someone calling deer antelope or vice versa.
 
I’ve got a few from over the years:
Macaw? Nope, that’s a toucan.
Whiptail Lizard? Wrong again. Gecko.
Florida Gar? That’s just a small swordfish.
Orangutan? That’s a gorilla now (and vice-versa)
Golden Lion Tamarin? Well I guess the “tamarin” part is optional to some people.
Lionfish? Apparently it’s a Porcupinefish.
And lastly, someone saying that a Brown-banded Bamboo Shark is “too small” to be a shark and must be a sturgeon or catfish of some kind.
 
Last weekend at Ueno Zoo I overheard the masked palm civet called both a tanuki and an anaguma (badger). Its name in Japanese is hakubishin, for the record.

I also heard multiple people refer to it as a paguma, the name of the genus of which it is the only species. I can’t immediately find any reference to the species being referred to as paguma in modern times online, so I wonder if these were tourists honing in on the wrong roman characters on the display sign (the vast majority of, if not all, of the signs were clearly signed in English as well as Japanese)
 
biggest_dreamer said:
Last weekend at Ueno Zoo I overheard the masked palm civet called both a tanuki and an anaguma (badger). Its name in Japanese is hakubishin, for the record.

I also heard multiple people refer to it as a paguma, the name of the genus of which it is the only species. I can’t immediately find any reference to the species being referred to as paguma in modern times online, so I wonder if these were tourists honing in on the wrong roman characters on the display sign (the vast majority of, if not all, of the signs were clearly signed in English as well as Japanese)
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Ueno has palm civet? Is that a new addition?
 
DaLilFishie said:
Ueno has palm civet? Is that a new addition?
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Couldn’t tell you how new it is. A species list from earlier this year lists it as signed but unseen, but I certainly saw it myself last weekend. It’s in the nocturnal house, across from the bats, just past the pangolin and lorises. When I saw it, it was initially sleeping but ultimately decided to get up and wander around for about 10 minutes during which I was totally transfixed, hence how I got to overhear so many misidentifications for it.
 
biggest_dreamer said:
Couldn’t tell you how new it is. A species list from earlier this year lists it as signed but unseen, but I certainly saw it myself last weekend. It’s in the nocturnal house, across from the bats, just past the pangolin and lorises. When I saw it, it was initially sleeping but ultimately decided to get up and wander around for about 10 minutes during which I was totally transfixed, hence how I got to overhear so many misidentifications for it.
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Chlidonias said:
It is in the second small nocturnal house (the one with the pangolin), not in the Small Mammal House.
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Ah, that would explain why I didn't see it. Ran out of time to see the second nocturnal house so didn't go inside.
 
Leaving this here. :p
gentoo-penguins-and-magellanic-penguins_Mesa-de-trabajo-1-1024x518.jpg
 
@Kharzo and I went to Prague together on Saturday and of course, we've overheard a lot of interesting commentary on animals. The most ridiculous one at the European bison exhibit.
There were two kids, probably brothers, and one of them yelled that the deers are not in there (at first I thought he was talking about the mooses maybe, but apparently not, since he was looking at the bison enclosure). As he passed by, the second boy ran to the bisons and shouted: "There are bulldogs in there!"
 
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I have, on two separate occasions heard, someone look at striped hyenas and tell their child that they are warthogs. If I had any faith in humanity left, I would have lost it.

And then the classic "look at the monkeys" when next to gibbons.
I sometimes get a bit passive aggressive. "Did you know that primates without tails are apes?"
 
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