Strange animal in my house!

[MotherOfBengals]

Growing up in an animal loving family I’ve always taken it for granted that people know their animal species. I currently have 8 house rabbits, and 2 cats.

Yesterday I had a guy out to repair a window and he saw one of my rabbits. He looked at her and asked what kind of animal it was. He genuinely didn’t know, and was amazed when I told him it was a rabbit and said he had no idea they were so big!

Talking to friends, one said a guy she worked with called 999 as he had a hedgehog In his house and didn’t know what was.

Another said she remembered her mum somehow thinking that a hedgehog and a badger were the same size...and another time her mum asked if the pet geckos had lungs 😐

This has made me wonder what other similar stories people have?

This reminds me Dd was about 14yo when she realised hedgehogs were real animals and not a mythical beast. 🤷‍♀️🙈😁. We live in the country..,.I’d have thought she’d have seen enough squashed ones. She blames me because I convinced her that haggis were real animals when she was young.

@CormorantStrikesBack
you mean Haggis isn’t an Animal..?🥺
😹😹😹

A man doing some work for us said how much he liked our rabbit as he was leaving. The rabbit had been dead for over 30 years, but we think he was confused by the Guinea pig.

@Springcleaninginsummer
Oh dear…
You are sure he wasn’t an animal psychic..? 😳

Are your rabbits Flemish giants? 😂

TBF I would guess many people haven’t seen a hedgehog or badger in the wild. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people have never seen a rabbit in real life either.

I imagine the lady who wondered if geckos had lungs meant gills.

I was sorely disappointed the first time I saw a giraffe. I expected them to be llama sized and cuddly. I was 3 though 😂 The giraffes in my toy Noah’s Ark were not to scale!

My friend thought reindeers were mythical. She wouldn’t believe me when I said I’d seen some at a Christmas market. Told me that she wasn’t that gullible 😂

@MotherOfBengals i gave my sis one of our spaniel puppies (white with black markings). Her son was walking back to their house with the dog and this little boy around 5 years old was walking in front with his mum, kept turning round and looking at the dog. eventually, kids said to nephew " is that a baby cow?" literally only 2 mile walk up the road and the mum could have shown him a whole field of real life cows!!!!!! I think that is so sad in this day and age!

Not sure if this is the right context for the thread but it reminded me of this....

My DH worked with a group of men. When we were still dating (15 years ago) he sent me a message whilst he was at work.

'What animal do buffalo wings come from? Because buffalos don't have wings... Do they?'

There would have been atleast 6 men in on that conversation. All aged between 25-50. Not a single one of them knew what animal buffalo wings came from and there'd been a hearty discussion trying to figure it out, until I enlightened them.

My dc1 was an early speaker. He knew the names of all the animals in his picture books, but only saw his first live horse at about 20m. He stared at it for a while, asked "What dat?" and then answered himself, "Big...BIG...dog."

From then until he was nearly four, horses and dogs were the same animal. A Yorkshire terrier once caused great excitement: "Look, Mummy, look! Hairy horse! Hairy, small horse!"

I always thought buffalo wings were buffalo ribs 😂 to be honest I’ve never seen buffalo wings in real life but …

I genuinely thought foxes where the size of cats and badgers where the size of dogs

Until I saw both (fox sat at the side of the road and a badger walked behind me as I sat down on a bench)

In my defence I grew up in a city and had never seen either until then

I remember my dad telling me he thought donkeys where mythical and was amazed at the size of giraffes at the zoo (he was a child at the time)

Dd thought dodos where living in the local farm (they where turkeys dd,not bloody dodos)

I remember a friend being amazed one day at some geese flying over, she genuinely didn’t realise they could fly.

When visiting a duck pond I said I wondered why they stayed there as it seemed dirty and DH said 'well what can they do about it if they were born here. How would they know where else to find another pond?' I said 'Im sure they can just fly around and find somewhere'. He stood gobsmacked, never knew ducks could fly. I have reminded him often!

I genuinely thought foxes where the size of cats and badgers where the size of dogs
Aren't they?? Dogs come in all different sizes!

I live in the country. I genuinely thought stoats and weasels were the same size as a fox until very recently. I blame wind in the willows

When my daughter was still living at home she had a couple of friends over and it was a lovely summer evening with everyone sat outside.

The bats as usual came out and one of my daughters friends thought it was a joke when bats were mentioned and insisted they were birds as 'bats don't live in the uk'!

My husband set her straight and she was shocked and then she started screaming and crying and ran indoors.

The girl was 17. She thought vampires were real and being bitten by a bat could turn her into one.

The girl was academically bright and a high achiever.

The mind boggles.

I've noticed people often confuse guinea pigs with hamsters, which is very surprising to me. They're completely different in terms of size, temperament, environment, diet...

My niece didn't know doves were birds. She was in her 20s at the time of this conversation.

When I first met my now DH we were driving along when he pointed out a pheasant, saying oh look a peacock! As a country girl I was very shocked, though not totally unsurprised when he didn't believe me the Highland cows were, in fact, Highland cows. He thought they were some kind of buffalo 🤣

@TousBous
lol, no, while she is the biggest of the downstairs 3, she is just under 3kilos. Larger than a wild rabbit, but not that big.

yes, hedgehog and badger are more understandable, and I guess too really wild rabbits. Unless you frequent places like pets at home you probably wouldn’t see rabbits anywhere.

geckos and gills is a possibility.

😹 come to think of it, the Noah’s Ark toys aren’t usually to scale

Haha! I can kind of understand it at that age. Shame though as you say, he didn’t know.

I once read about a lady who rang 999 claiming she had dangerous animals in her kitchen.
Woodlice..

That’s really funny.

Haha! My cousin when she first started naming animals saw a Horsey moo baa lol.. I’m not sure which it was now, I wasn’t there at the time.

I managed to convince my Dh that it was “one shep, two sheep.” Ie that ‘sheep’ is the plural of ‘shep’.

It was 25 years before he realised.