We were told the same for catching blackbirds. I ran around with a salt shaker 
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Never did understand the salt-on-tail myth. Would be hard to get that close and what was it supposed to do anyway?
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Easy: keep little kids occupied and out of the adults’ hair. 
(Yeah, I may have been handed that particular line of malarky myself.)
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Actually I’ve always thought that was sort of the point. If you can get near enough to put salt on its tail, you’re near enough to catch it 
.
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Some similarity to you should never pick up a guinea pig by its tail.
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well that is actually true
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“Use the Force, Luke!” 
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I had a coworker insist that daddy-long-legs (Opiliones) could spit poison at you… from ten feet away, no less. She later insisted that she had killed a praying mantis that was two feet long (with a shovel, apparently). My laughter (which I could not control) caused her to harbor a dislike for me during our entire tenure as coworkers…
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Dinosaurs weren’t talked about before the 1900s therefore they don’t really exist. When in reality it’s just that was the first time that modern Europeans talked about them.
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Misidentification of a stick insect? (this still is likely an overestimation of size, but not by orders of magnitude)
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Not likely, the only stick insects in New Jersey are considerably smaller… but it’s nice of you to give her more credit than I did!
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I came across this. Says the same thing, but can be used for education, and is more visceral.
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I don’t know if this has already been posted (it’s a long thread), but the old myth that lemmings will jump off cliffs in a mass suicide whenever they sense their population becoming too large. Turns out the backstory is very dark: a Disney documentary actually paid kids to get them some lemmings, where they were transported to Alberta, Canada, and faked the whole scene. I don’t even know why, maybe for more views, but it’s such a ridiculous myth.
Here’s an article where I found more information:
https://hyperallergic.com/545742/white-wilderness-disney-nature-documentary/
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Fascinating stuff! Reminds me of the difficulty with feral horse management in the US, although obviously the situation is different given that the roos would ideally have a stable population in the region, as opposed to the mustangs.
Tadpoles?
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I’ve seen someone believe reptiles and amphibians are insects. I’ve been asked if Tyrannosaurus, pterosaurs, lizards, and frogs are insects.
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(By the way, @e2gb, the lion was directed at the people who can’t count critter legs, not you. Welcome to the forum!)
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“Ladybugs get a new dot each year”. That makes for some really long-lived ladybugs :D
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In case it’s not obvious from context, ‘vent’ means cloaca.
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