Weird and Strange Animal Myths

That porcupines can shoot their quills at predators.

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Reptiles are slimy.

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South Africa has legends about owls being unlucky.

We have owl rehab projects, visiting schools, or installing owl boxes.
That look of spellbound wonder on a child’s face, while they hold the owl for ringing, will stay with that person for life.

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In this part of NY mountain lions have not been seen in a long time yet some (usually not scientifically-oriented) people claim they have spotted them and that the DEC (NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation) is engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth that mountain lions are again breeding in the area a secret.

Large feral domestic felines or bobcats are probably what’s being seen. Confirmed reported sightings have been of escaped game farm or zoo specimens and they are quite rare.

I guess that’s less myth and more conspiracy theory.

People more rarely believe they’ve seen a wolf (large coyote).

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Similarly there are reported sightings of large cats in the UK. There are no large cats outside zoos, the only possibilities are a large domestic cat or a wildcat (in Scotland).

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The chupacabra is a long-standing myth here in the Southwest U.S. and that name is often applied to any animal that can’t be readily identified, such as a coyote with mange or even an unusual looking fish (a skate, in one instance) that had been found discarded, presumably from someone’s collection. It seems to have become a catch-all word for any odd animal.

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My friend and iNat user Trent Pearce also wrote a nice piece about the daddy long-legs (aka harvestmen, sometimes) myth: https://baynature.org/article/are-daddy-longlegs-actually-the-most-venomous-animal-on-earth/

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same with Chile, any owl is about death, and apparently is the same with others countries. Also, some people is scared from west peruvian dove vocalization.
In southern Chile, hearing the chucao vocalization is a good luck announcement. For others, hearing it on the right is a good omen, while hearing it on the left is a bad sign (If so, you must retrace your steps)
Also, my grandmother says that white butterflies (Pieridae) are of good luck :)

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“Ivy kills trees.” Our council has been known to cut ivy from trees in public spaces because it’s easier than trying to convince people it’s not true.

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When I was a kid somebody told me that if a Hadeda (Bostrychia hagedash) lands on your roof it means someone in the house is going to die.

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Dabbing a bit of Vegemite behind your ears before setting off on a hike deters dropbears from attacking… ^_^

And yes, the old Penrith Panther or regional equivalent. Borne from the public’s mistaken impression that feral cats are just pussycats that have let themselves go a bit. No, ferals are several generations deep into peak evolutionary selection for the biggest and fiercest survivalist traits. They really ARE that big and mean. Having a panther lurking around would almost be better, at least it would mean there’s only one unlike the feral cats :(

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In rural Brazil there is the myth that if you invade the territory of a caninana chicken snake (Spilotes pullatus, nonvenous), it will chase you until it snaps into your legs and use its tail like a whip to hit you.

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Out here in the western bit of NY state, I was recently privy to a standard “panther sighting” conversation that diverted into the most fascinatingly specific and detailed spinoff of that conspiracy theory- that in the 80s, the DEC had secretly introduced a population of mountain lions to Letchworth State Park in order to “control the deer population.” Complete with specific dates, the “my cousin was a DEC employee involved in the project who told me about this years ago” schtick, etc.

A similar conspiracy theory I’ve had ranted at me is that the DEC is currently secretly introducing Fishers to parts of NY and PA (that’s the kernel of truth- there was a successful, and public, Fisher reintroduction in western PA a couple decades back) for the purpose of scaring the rural folks out of the woods, because lefty treehughing DEC people hate the idea of humans interfering with nature, or something, and Fishers are of course insatiable little furry terrorists. Some versions of this assert that the animals are air-dropped from planes. All of the areas I’ve heard this story in already have well-established fisher populations and yield dozens of fisher pelts every fur season according to public DEC data.

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Some of my favorites:

“Snakes will chase you” - I hear this about Bushmasters, Fer-De-Lances, Cottonmouths, Mambas, Rattlesnakes… Anyone who has thought about this for a minute should realize that something of that size is going to have a very hard time trying to chase after people, not to mention that they have much better stuff to do than go around chasing people for no reason

That famous myth about the little boy who finds a bunch of worms that turn out to be copperheads/cottonmouths/rattlesnakes… Not sure where that came from but its pretty easy to disprove as well

Everyone’s favorite, the one where some girl who had a pet python was told by a vet that the python wasn’t eating and was lying next to her because he was sizing her up and wanting to eat her. Really not sure why people believe this

Way too many people have told me they thought scorpions = lobsters or lizards = salamanders or hippos are reptiles or something else equally ridiculous about taxonomy

Brown recluses / AZ bark scorpions in California facepalm (Yes I know there are bark scorpions in CA but they live in such a tiny area its almost impossible to find one. Certainly not in LA or San Diego)

Small scorpions / Scorpions with thin claws are more venomous… Hemiscorpius lepturus has big hands and is highly venomous. Androctonus australis is a big scorpion and the hands are pretty big too - but it is one of the most venomous species. While scorpions like Paravaejovis waeringi which have thin claws have a basically painless sting

The red-yellow coral snake rhyme… https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4672785 is not a coral snake, and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/548480 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/549639 are coral snakes (second one violates “black nose” rule too). This has probably killed some people

There’s more but this is what I can think of easily

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Really dumb question I do hope you’ll forgive me. Are fishers way bigger than I remember in that people would believe that they could attack humans, and are there any known fisher attacks?

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Not usually, but there are are a handful of incidents. Bearing in mind that raccoons and even squirrels attack humans on occasion. The only seemingly reliable records turned up by some googling were minor attacks on two young boys, a fatal attack on a small dog, and a lot of blame for disappearance of outdoor cats.

The largest recorded fisher topped out at 20 pounds- not exactly man-eater territory, but people have been messed up pretty bad by 8 pound housecats, and predation of canada lynx by fishers is well documented.

So basically, you probably wouldn’t want to try to snuggle one, but Fishers don’t present an outsize danger compared to other predatory wildlife.

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Florida has a few cases of weird local names that defy taxonomy. Gophers are reptiles (gopher tortoises) and salamanders are mammals (may be a ruined pronunciation of sandy mounders, Pocket gophers).

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Yes, same in Alabama. And the real salamanders are called spring lizards. Lots of taxonomic confusion in those local names.

At a small zoo here in the Southwest U.S., I overheard a volunteer guide who was talking to some visitors about the javelina (collared peccaries) they had on display. He explained to them that “most people think javelina are pigs, but they’re not [so far so good] – they’re really rodents.” I had to bite my tongue.

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Well that is a bit bigger than I thought, thanks.

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I’ve read that about sea snakes! Of course in reality they’re very capable of swallowing large fish whole / biting humans and completely ruining your year with muscle-breakdown side effects, but are just extremely mild-mannered. When I was on a South Pacific island (Niue) known for its large population of sea kraits, I was told by someone who’d grown up there that he and all his friends and family had no idea the snakes were anything but harmless until a visiting naturalist said something, since as kids they’d just pick them up and play with them not particularly gently, and no one was ever bitten.

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