The dumbest myths you heard about animals

Nature Talk
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Well, if you want to get technical about it, the earliest forms of what we would would recognize as birds were around at the same time as the big therapods. They had a common ancestor, which is why the terms avian and non-avian dinosaur are gaining traction. /pedantic

(No, the Doctor and I aren’t armchair palentologists; whyever would you think that?) :grin:

My current favorite dumb animal myth is that feathered dinosaurs aren’t scary. Says nobody who has ever been chased by an angry mama goose. (Or worse, a broody Sandhill Crane, as one of my best friends can vouch.)

P.S.: if the NYNHM is hiding dragons, who do I have to sweet talk to adopt a Night Fury?

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Don’t apologize for being knowledgable!

My “understanding” of the giant/dragon thing is that it’s not a Jewish people are hiding living dinosaurs in area 51 situation and more a they died/hunted to extinction? and AMNH is hiding the evidence for reasons?

I sincerely believe that if Dungeons and Dragons was a little more popular with the older generation we wouldn’t have nearly as many conspiracy theories

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When I was young, the older generation had conspiracy theories about that, too!

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Same with my grandfather! This can’t be a coincidence…

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You’re right, and the theories were silly!
When I was young we PLAYED D & D
And I AM the older generation now.
My hobby was detail painting the tiny figures…

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Some bird ones:

  • Black Vultures routinely do things like pecking out of the eyes of a cow and attacking and killing the newborn calf, and therefore they are a serious threat to livestock. (Mostly they would rather eat roadkill.)
  • Cowbird chicks in North America will push the host eggs and/or chicks out of the nest. (Cuckoos in Europe do this. Cowbirds just demand to be fed.)
  • Eaglets regularly push out of the nest and/or eat their siblings. (No.)
  • Here is a photo of hummingbirds that died from eating red-colored sugar water! (You should avoid food coloring out of caution, and because it’s unnecessary, but it’s never been proven to be deadly. Those birds hit a window.)
  • Orioles must only be fed with natural grape jelly with no high fructose corn syrup in it. (“Natural” on the label doesn’t even mean anything. HFCS is not inherently evil.)
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Orioles are such fussy eaters they exclusively feed on human processed food. (just joking, I just made it up)

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Thank you for mentioning the Eaglet and Cowbird ones, I believed these up until you posting this!! Is there ANY truth whatsoever behind the eaglet one? I remember hearing something about how the 1st borne chick will often outgrow the others and potentially directly or indirectly kill the runts or last born. Though again, I’m unsure if this is true whatsoever, or even if it happens with others birds.

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Is there ANY truth whatsoever behind the eaglet one? I remember hearing something about how the 1st borne chick will often outgrow the others and potentially directly or indirectly kill the runts or last born. Though again, I’m unsure if this is true whatsoever, or even if it happens with others birds.

Well, I only know about Bald Eagles, and I’m not an expert. But if you watch a Bald Eagle nest cam (there are many popular ones these days), it’s very obvious that the youngest chicks are smaller (they hatch days apart, not just hours), and it can get pretty rough at feeding times. The biggest chicks demand food and they can be aggressive getting it, but generally, the smaller ones just wait their turn. I wouldn’t be shocked if there were some injuries, but they aren’t murdering their siblings, that would be big news if it were caught on camera! Instead, it’s quite common for all of the eaglets to survive.

If you think about it, it’s unlikely that these nest cams would be so popular if the chicks were regularly killing each other (or getting each other killed). Deaths do occur, and it’s sad, but fledging success rates are very high. So it’s not a guaranteed happy ending, but it’s rarely a total tragedy.

When the youngest eaglets do die, it’s often due to exposure or disease, which simply affect them more because they are smaller and weaker, it’s not the fault of the older ones. Even if they just didn’t get enough food, that would be a case of the parents not feeding enough or of there not being enough food to be found, which are also not things that the older eaglets are responsible for.

So no, on balance, I don’t think that older eaglets are directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of their younger siblings. I’m not saying it can’t ever happen, but they’re certainly not deliberately trying to kill each other, so even if it does happen, I don’t see how it can be their fault!

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Thanks for the explanation! I’ll be sure to show my relatives this post next time this comes up on our birding trips :)

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I don’t think this one is too surprising, or that it has not been mentioned before, but any caterpillar with any kind of ornamentation (spines, hairs, tubercules, sometimes even very bright colors and bold patterns) here is taken as venomous, or more specifically, as capable of provoking very strong fever on whoever has physical contact with one. This is a very common myth. I think an instinctive component is important in this myth, since I have memories of being a child and naturally staying away from any brightly colored, spiky caterpillar.
But without some knowledge about lepidopterans, this myth can easily mislead people in many ways. The vast majority of spiny/hairy/colorful caterpillars are completely harmless and safe to touch. And the few venomous ones will give you a rash, rather than a fever, and a few will kill you…

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And I remember as a kid I thought the “horn” on a sphinx caterpillar was a stinger.

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Inter sibling competition between birds of prey does occur in many species and can result in the death of weaker/smaller nestlings. The link below describes observations of bald eagle chicks.
https://avianreport.com/baby-bald-eagles/

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Snakes are slimy.

A still-persisting myth that irritates me to no end when those leathery scales are the complete diametrical opposite of that.

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When I first moved to Australia, somebody told me that Masked Lapwings had venom inside the spurs on their wings. Idk where they got that information from but it was enough for 6 year old me to be terrified of those birds for a 2 years until I found out it was false :sob:

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Ah. The bird version of drop bears :smiley:

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Jacanas, close relatives of lapwings we have here in Mexico (and other places too), also have those wing spurs. The myth is also similar to what I mentioned before about horseshoe crabs.

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YOU CAN EAT ANYTHING YOU SEE AN ANIMAL EAT

Mmm, poison ivy. (Eaten by goats.)

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I’ve got a coworker that believes this. We don’t talk much.

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It’s an individual thing. :cat2::black_cat: one of my cats loves milks and demands it daily. The other cat is lactose intolerant.

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