I have talked to several people in SC and NC who swear they have seen mountain lions. Do I believe them? No not really, but I wish it was true.
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That North American Racers will chase you trying to eat you.
I have seen quite a few and can tell you that this is a myth. But I still can’t convince people.
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That snakes will not come out until spring after a freeze. Just saw one today, when last week it got down to about 26 degress.
I’ve heard the following:
There’s a black panther that lives in that cave.
Black Vultures killed my cattle.
My cat doesn’t kill birds.
That’s a skeeter eater.
A never ending list of myths said about daddy longlegs; usually after I’ve refuted their previous one.
Likewise with tick and chigger removal
If you cut a worm in half you get two worms.
These two dots on my arm are from a spider bite, probably a brown recluse. I got lucky I didn’t die like my cousin.
Cuckoos only sing if it’s about to rain.
That’s a snake hole.
Snakes can hold onto their tail to roll downhill.
I had to kill that snake. It was chasing my dog.
Owls are smart or dumb or a sign of impending doom (depending on culture).
Armadillos cause leprosy. Armadillos roll up into a ball to roll downhill.
There was a bird attacking my window. It was smaller than a robin but larger than a blue jay. How do I kill it? (Not sure there’s a myth in there, but there’s a lot wrong there)
and not animals but, Persimmons are only ripe after the first frost and if there is a spoon shape in the persimmon seed, we will have a cold winter.
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Black Vultures do sometimes kill very young calves, something that Turkey Vultures almost never do. Though calves that died from other causes and later found being fed on by vultures are often falsely attributed to vulture kills.
While “ripe” isn’t the right terminology, Common Persimmons are extremely astringent and near-inedible until they are overripe and mushy. The frost accelerates this the same way that freezing and then thawing a banana will get it overripe, mushy, and sweet for banana bread faster than letting it reach that point naturally.
While they don’t “cause” leprosy, the nine-banded armadillo is a reservoir host for leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) and can transmit it to humans (though most people have a natural immunity to the disease and it is not easily transmitted, so your risk is low).
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I often hear arguments that snakes should never be killed because they are not threat or it is more dangerous to attack them than to leave them alone, but when I was in the south where copperheads were an issue the reason people would kill snakes was not fear of unprovoked aggression, but the belief that a copperhead in the yard was dangerous becasue their kids could step on it by mistake while playing, so I really don’t see what is wrong with their logic
I understand moral arguments against killing, but the idea that killing snakes is never helpful from a safety standpoint confuses me
While this is a very difficult disease to actually catch (not very contagious), armadillos absolutely can carry it https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/transmission/index.html
My dog doesn’t chase deer.
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This is true. Almost 80% of snake bites occur during attempts to capture or kill snakes. Far fewer snakebites are caused by simply accidentally stepping on one.
What we taught my nieces/nephew was if they see a snake, they are to immediately go find an adult so they can all appreciate it from a safe distance. I feel like if a kid is old enough to be outside without an adult directly beside it, it’s old enough to learn some basic snake/wildlife safety.
Additionally, I think some basic Integrated Vertebrate Pest Management can be applied. If copperheads are a concern, removing cover they find attractive is going to be far more effective, because what one copperhead finds attractive, others will too.
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I don’t think you know much about Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners don’t make outrageous claims for their medicine. It is laypeople who develop mystical attributes to certain (a minority) items in Chinese medicine and many Chinese medicine practitioners try to correct these erroneous ideas, the same way people who are interested in spiders have tried to correct the stupid ideas that people have about them. There is certainly no reason for rhino poachers to correct these erroneous ideas falsely attributed to Chinese medicine because they are making money from poaching. And there are plenty of people who believe if it is really expensive it must be a really great thing - and these people are found throughout the world. Perhaps you should be a bit more careful about what you are calling mythical. I, personally, do not know any Chinese medicine practitioners who would not be greatly relieved if the BS about rhino horn went away. And, I know quite a few Chinese medicine practitioners because I am a retired Chinese medicine practitioner myself.
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Fair enough thank you for your perspective. I just wish poaching would stop (like anyone whose financial well-being doesn’t immediatly rely on it). And no I don’t know much about Chinese traditional medicine, nor any other kind of traditional medicine
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wasps are useless.
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"wolves will kill you. "
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There actually is such a thing as a white widow (Latrodectus pallidus), but it has weaker venom than other widow species.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/804726-Latrodectus-pallidus
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You might want to look into the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (AKA Akashinga). They are the most effective organization fighting poachers that I know of. All their rangers are women (trained by a former special forces guy, the founder) and they are embedded in the local economy. (They are recruited from the local economy and live there.) Poaching drops radically in the areas that they are responsible for. (I donate to them regularly and I no longer feel that poaching is an impossible problem to deal with. I just wish they were more wide-spread.)
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Beautiful and horrifying in a “why am I creeped out by a picture of something that isn’t going to hurt me?” kind of way.
Here I am, the guy who saves wasps.
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Down in the south I have lost several dogs to copperhead bites. Also a few relatives ended up in the hospital, the bites look pretty bad. So I do understand peoples fear of copperheads.
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What about Bahaba and Totoaba swim bladders?
Interested in the idea of harvestmen (grandaddy longlegs) having deadly venom.
Think there is confusion here between harvestmen and the Australian spider Pholcus phalangioides, commonly called a daddy longlegs.
As the article below explains It is still a myth when applied to the spider.
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/fact-file/daddy-long-legs-spider/
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As a fully paid up member of the fly lobby, I must say I find this an outrageous slur! ;-)
My main gripe about spiders is that they make a right mess of the specimens they collect.
(Though if I were a fly, perhaps I would be a little more concerned about arachnid envenomation… perhaps it’s the flies themselves spreading the porkies…)
To be fair - if I travelled outside of Europe I probably would be much more wary of spiders than necessary - fear of the unknown again, exacerbated by the knowledge that there are things that are at least more dangerous than the European ones.
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I tend to have issues with spiders when I take out my moth trap, when I was in Cornwall for a week the entire patio was infested with false widows which ruthlessly ate any moths, flies, beetles and any other inverts that bumbled into their webs ( including a very well marked pebble prominent moth.). Back home I don’t get this issue as much but it happens from time to time. Wasps are worse though, they viciously rip off the wings of all the moths they find before grabbing the body and aren’t afraid to war against moths 2-3 times bigger than them. Forest of Dean moth trapping was horrible with this and every night I would have 50-60 wasps crawling everywhere although I did see a spider wasp there too which was a nicer find.
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Baya Weavers put glowworms inside their nests to ‘provide light’ to their chicks ಠಿ_ಠ
I guess the idea came from someone seeing a weaver catch a glowworm to eat and go back to its nest and filled in the blanks with imagination??
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