apparently tigers are female lions

[tomhardy]

my dp has believed this for 30 years. i honestly thought he was winding me up, but no. he really thought female lions are tigers

to make matters worse, i told my db about this and he was really confused. he thought that was right too!

wtf! aibu to be in shock that they believed this or is it a common misconception?!

I thought red squirrels were about knee height when I was little. I blame Beatrix Potter. I was gutted to find out they were as shit as grey squirrels.

What did these men think lionesses are?

Laiste so did I. I was very confused about how my granny had guitars up her nose.

Get him a My First Zoo Animals board book. LOL X

lightdrizzle I managed to get to 40 years old thinking moles were about rabbit sized. We're a family of animal lovers too!

It was only when DD1 (about 19 at the time) came into the house with one which she'd just found on the drive (rural) and was going to put safely on the back lawn that i found out they are only hamster sized. AND SO CUTE!

I am educated to post grad level. However I was in my early twenties when I was put right about battery hens. I honestly thought that eggs from battery hens were somehow not real, you know; battery operated hens!
In my defence I have an ASC and am inclined to literal interpretation.

BMW6 , not all lions live in Africa. There are also lions native to India (and other parts of Asia), so they could mate with tigers there, in theory.

We have a wooden Noah's ark toy with the requisite animals two by two. However, the toy includes two male lions, no females. Somebody wasn't thinking too clearly during the design process.

I've known several (clever, worldly, educated) people who believed this. See also: all cats are female and all dogs are male. No idea where such bat-shittery arose from - was there maybe some kids' book at some point which gave this impression and left it indented in readers forevermore?

I met an architect once who didn't know that you needed a cockerel if you wanted hens to produce hatchable eggs.

You definitely don't want to confuse him with Ligers and Tigons...

Someone I know thought tuna were tiny fish (because that's how they look in the pictures on cans).

I told here they were in fact pretty huge. Not sure that she believed me though.

Cats go on girls' t-shirts and dogs on boys' t-shirts, Comtesse. That'll be it.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can not know the basics ...a friend of mine thought that slugs were snails that were looking for a bigger shell!! I explained that she was thinking of hermit crabs as snails grow with their shells, and she said well why are there empty snail shells around!? . I then turned out another 2 women I knew had thought the same , I give up at times!! Pmsl.

Perhaps your DP had been to Blair Drummond Safari Park. I was there years ago with the DC when they were about 5 and 6. We got stuck in the queue of cars, inside the lion enclosure. Two large male lions approached our car and started having enthusiastic gay sex right next to the kids' window. Several bored lionesses watched from across the grass. There was a fascinated silence, before the inevitable: "Mummy - what are they doing?!"

At Woburn safari park a lady was explaining to her kids that the Lemurs were male rabbits.

At Crystal Palace park a woman was telling her kids the baby swans were 'called 'Swanlings', just like ducklings are baby ducks'.

I worked at a school and a 13 year old said 'isnt it funny how the chickens on a farm are called the same as the chicken you eat. but the chicken you eat is vegetarian'

My ex thought a bull and a cow were different species rather than male and female. He point blank refused to believe me because he was an abusive twat even though he knew I had grown up on a dairy farm!

I had to educate my mil who is in her 60’s the other week about how eggs get chicks inside them. My niece had asked her and she genuinely didn’t know, she thought only some hens laid chick eggs.
She also never realised until I told her that the egg shells are soft until the egg is out the hens body.

Any cow with horns is a bull. Fact according to my DH.

The whole 'cats are females, dogs are male' thing reminds me that when I started to learn french I couldn't get my head around ' le chat' and 'le chien' having to be masculine nouns - because what about all the female dogs and cats around!!!!

I knew a girl who was studying to be a vet and was amazed when she learnt that ponies don't grow up to be horses. (she also thought Wales and Scotland were just very big counties but that's another argument.)

Noodles, you've reminded me of a project our child at school did on birds. To quote from the book of Birds of the World we had, it said "not all blackbirds are black, and not all black birds are blackbirds"

So child faithfully copies this down,does some really nice artwork , and submitted it.He was very proud.

It came back with a red line drawn through it and the word Rubbish written over it.

So here's another -not all Great Tits have feathers - looking at you,Miss Haylesham.

Until I was in my twenties I thought that the lines across the road on the approach to a roundabout where there so that blind drivers would know that a roundabout was coming up.
My father has a lot to answer for!

Religion requires one to believe almost anything, so a vastly accelerated life isn’t much of a stretch.