Am I the only one who finds themselves automatically trying to ID the plants & trees in the background of TV scenes? Or noticing when the flora don’t match the supposed location? Somewhat annoying to my partner who is actually trying to follow the plot.
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No, you are not alone! Bird calls and insect sounds are also often inappropriate.
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Of course you’re not the only one! We’re all nature nerds here.
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Exactly! Being frustrated when you hear a bird call from a different part of the world!
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Or when a screech owl is shown letting out great horned owl begging calls!
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Like when one movie called a Mexican red-knee tarantula a “Brazilian wandering spider”. 
And when a show/movie is scientifically accurate, you are absolutely pleased! E.g., Spider-Man (2002) shows captive filistatids (crevice-weavers) and delenine huntsman spiders and correctly identifies them as such.
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I do it all the time! I love trying to name what I see in the background of shows!
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i have always did that, since i was a little girl and noticed for the first time that showrunners play fast and loose with that. conifers in a location that is supposed to be a rainforest? check. birds making sounds of different species? normal. audience supposed to believe that magpie nest is that neat cup nest? gotta laugh aloud.
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A friend of mine used to have an IG account that posted star trek stills and identified the plants in them.
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Cooool!
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Unfortunately, this has ruined many TV and classic movie moments for me. For example, when Indiana Jones is confronted with “snakes” when in search of the Arc of the Covenant. Oh, that’s a Boa, oh, that one is harmless too, oh wait, that’s a legless lizard, not even a snake! What the heck. Sigh.
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Watching the movie Pocahontas was a bad experience for me. I got a headache trying to bring the background vegetation into focus so I could identify it. (Was that really Juncus effusus and if so, which subspecies? So much more interesting than the actor emoting in front of it.)
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I was just about to post about a Star Trek one too! I paused the show when a wasp landed on a character and could ID the animated wasp on a fictitious alien planet as a known earth genus
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It’s amazing how many alien planets seem to have earthly plants growing on them!
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In the opening of Wonder Woman 1984 the characters ride horseback on a slope covered in blooming Agave americana. And me I’m like cool they must be filming in Mexico or somewhere like that… nope it was the Canary Islands and the agave are invasive there and a lot of places I didn’t realize :(
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The classic one is Red-tailed Hawk doing voice-overs for eagles.
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Yes, but if humans can interbreed with aliens it shows that Earth life is spread throughout the galaxy, so not really surprising.
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And all the non-native species and post-industrial lichen-free tree trunks in historical dramas set in England.
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Love that! Is it no longer online?
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…or someone shows you a picture of someone they think is “hot” and you immediately name a tree and several plants in the background and the little bee on the flower, never acknowledging the person in the picture. I’ve done this kind of thing both unintentionally and intentionally. Sometimes it’s fun to be a “totally annoying nerd”
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