The dumbest myths you heard about animals

Nature Talk
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There’s truth in what you’re saying, but if there was Great White in the water I couldn’t see too many people volunteering to jump in and test that theory out to be honest. I’ve seen people dive with GW’s but in my mind they’re tempting fate.

This attack happened within the last day or so and judging by the reports there’s a bit more to it than a shark just investigating what’s what. You could argue too that attack numbers aren’t as high as they otherwise would be due to people being made somewhat aware of the dangers e.g. recent shark sightings or activity in the local area, only swimming in designated areas etc.

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22

Yes that’s what meant :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:

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23

It’s not my intent to call those who believe these myths dumb, but some myths I hear:

All wasps are agressive (in my area only yellowjackets are aggressive, and only near nests, however any species will defend its nest if disturbed)

If you didn’t have an allergic reaction last time you were stung you wont next time (sting allergies can develop at any time, particularly if you have been stung in the past)

Allergic reactions are caused by the psychological trauma of getting stung by a group of wasps at once

The ant that bit/stung me was a fire ant (no fire ants here in upstate NY, though European Fire Ants, which are not actually fire ants, will be here soon)

The stinging potential of an unknown insect can be determined by its color

Most spiders have dangerous venom (actually most are bee like and dangerous only if you get an allergic reaction)

Ants and bees are taxonomically distinct from wasps

All bees and no wasps leave their stinger in you and die (here only the honeybee is likely to leave its stinger, not other bees, but in some parts of the world there are warrior wasps which can leave their stingers) Also note that any insect can leave its stinger in some circumstances

Native wasps don’t benefit the ecosystem

Black widow bites are fatal (they cause systemic toxicity, and can be serious, so please seek medical attention if bit, but death is quite rare)

Sucker fish are an invasive pest that eats trout eggs (brown trout are not native and suckers are)

Ticks jump onto you like grasshoppers

Tornadoes cannot form over (insert land feature here)

Any simple rule about bear safety

There are no wolves in the eastern US (there are a few, at least sometimes)

A single weather event either proves or disproves the existence of climate change

Dissimilar, unrelated, fungi are just different forms of the the same species (fungi are a kingdom, not a species)

Hemlock tress are deadly (no the poison is a different plant called hemlock)

Humans regularly swallow spiders in their sleep

I hear this so much from people who spend a lot of time in the woods I suspect some of the sightings are real

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24

I’ve heard it in Australia so much I decided to investigate myself, with mixed results. I would update the thread, but it’s closed unfortunately.

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25

There has actually been research that makes it pretty clear that if you want to die, paddling a surfboard over a great white hunting territory will probably do the trick. It would work because a person paddling a surfboard looks like a seal, not because the shark is hunting humans.

This article includes a pretty good discussion of this stuff.

The article you linked to describes the victim as a swimmer but the details of the story make clear that he was surfing. This quote:

“Locals said Todd had only moved to the area a short time ago and was not familiar with the surfing spot, which is known as a great white shark breeding ground.”

makes it clear that it was not just a random attack.

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26

As with anything I encourage fact checking my counter claim. But I was reminded of it yesterday when someone told me they were certain that a case was caused by one, and that they had even gone back to the house and found a whitetail (One of the most common spiders likely to be found in a house, among pholcus, and badumna in these areas). My sister also belives a ulcer she got was from a whitetail, although she never saw what caused the lesion.

Spiders are easy to mythologise, part of what draws me to being an advocate for them.

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27

In NZ we have some famous “Black Panther sightings” as well

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/123955518/how-the-debate-about-the-canterbury-panther-began--and-might-now-be-solved

Though it more illustrates one of the issues we have with managing feral cats, that they can get to 11(+?)kgs (Think of the largest Maine coon cats you see and add size). Its understandable that people may confuse massive feral cats with non-domestic cats.

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28

I’ve done a fair bit of local animal control, biggest one I’ve seen personally weighed in at 14.9kg. Terrible for the environment. At the same time though, I’ve seen kangaroos killed by a broken neck with their innards eaten out, and trees with big scratches down them, and freshly killed deer.

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29

Nice line of defense: “I did not hit him, I investigated his face with my fist”

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30

Large cat sightings are a phenomena that isn’t unique to the eastern U.S. They occur in lots of places where it is even more improbable for panthers to be roaming (the UK get’s quite a bit). There is an excellent chapter in the book The Ghost with Trembling Wings about why people tend to see large cats where there are none.

I used to work on an expansive camera trapping project with trap grids set up all across the eastern U.S. Not to mention so many hunters and other users have game cameras set up, and there has been virtually no confirmed documentation of puma. In reality, human perception is just really unreliable and animals on a ridgeline look way larger than they actually are. A common saying among birders is something along the lines of “size is the hardest thing to judge in the field and often the least reliable field marker”.

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Source here.

That being said, exotic pets have escaped before. But 99.999% of panther sightings in the eastern U.S. (north of FL) are a misinterpretation of a poor view of a house cat, dog, coyote, or bobcat.

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The one I keep hearing is “honeybees are beneficial to wildflowers” when actually quite the opposite is true since many wildflowers need specialized native bees for successful pollination.

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32

Native, specialist bees are certainly important for the ecosystems they inhabit. However, unless there is something odd about the flower (mostly thinking about buzz pollination), I don’t think it’s accurate to say wildflowers need the specialist bees. Somewhere around 50-70% of bees are generalist, depending on location, and those bees provide effective pollination services for many plants, including large areas of the globe where honey bees are native.

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“Does the ring of salt around your tent drive away bears too, or is that just snakes?” -grown adult

All moths eat clothing

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34

I don’t know about flowers in general, but the ones I do know about (some rare native orchids) honey bees just will not pollinate them at all, they will instead steal the nectar and the pollen, which is bad for both the actual pollinators (they get no food) and the flowers (they don’t get pollinated).

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35

That’s a good example. Are these the orchid bees you refer to? https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/orchid_bees.shtml

Large carpenter bees (Xylocopa) and short-tongue bumble bees will rob nectar from tubular flowers and bypass the pollen sacs, so it’s likely a shared generalist behavior in Apidae.

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36

I love the adder drop rumour. As someone who’s frequently disappointed by the lack of snakes in my local wildlife parks, I’ve often wondered if they actually put up false ‘beware of adders’ signs in the hope of attracting visitors.

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“Tiny variations with no meaningful observable or ecological difference other than range should be described as completely different species based on genetic analysis alone, and these changes should be forced on anyone who identifies anything”.

That’s probably the worst, and the most prolific.

As for mountain lions in New England, one was found in the area several years ago, hit by a car. It apparently dispersed all the way from South Dakoda! There likely have been other ones passing through too. It’s considered unlikely that there is a breeding population in the area, but some of the sightings could be real. People also really love to identify bobcats as mountain lions though. “I saw a weird mountain lion with a stubby tail” etc

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38

My grandma was told as a child that dragonflies will slice open your skin with their wings when flying by. I don’t even know whether that was established “folklore” at some point or whether her father just tried to mess with her.

In any case, she has feared dragonflies her entire life. :(

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“opossums give people rabies” – no they don’t, their body temp is too low to be a decent host for rabies.

“yellow ladybugs are poisonous to touch” – No, ALL ladybugs are poisonous to EAT, and for a human I imagine it would have to be a lot of ladybugs to have an affect.

“cats can drink cow’s milk” – this will give your pet stomach issues

“ThAt’S a GEckO!” (while pointing to a green anole) –

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(From https://www.anoleannals.org/2012/08/25/this-is-not-a-madagascan-day-gecko/)

Edit: Commenters on the Anole Annals site have provided even more mistakes in the page of this book:
“– 400 species of geckos? Try 1500 and counting!
– Most “mum” geckos lay hard-shelled eggs (~1300 species) while the remaining 200 or so species lay soft-shelled eggs.
– The largest extant gecko species is Rhacodactylus leachianus (256mm SVL) while the largest known gecko is the extinct Hoplodactylus delcourti (370mm SVL). As far as I know the largest tokay gecko was ‘just’ 170mm SVL. Still a monster but not the largest!” -Tony Gamble

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What does ‘SVL’ mean? Snout Vxxxxx Length?

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