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?!

Lol at rescuing a mole from their drive and putting it safely on the grass in their back garden... that will be regretted pretty quickly

(We had a mole in our back garden once, it made the most incredible shambles in a few days - NDN's cat was famous for catching them and got rid of it for us thankfully)

No, that's wrong. Lions are juvenile tigers and they only get their stripes as they age.

We have horses and a pony (pony and one horse are chestnut), and a while back came across a grandmother with a small child (around 4) watching them. She was in the middle of telling him about the chocolate brown baby horse and it's mummy when big 'mummy' horse decided to get get his naughty bit out and wave it around for.. I don't know, a stretch??
We took the opportunity to introduce her to the boys and explained the difference between a horse and a pony. I can understand how people don't know because it's not something that pops up every day but it did amuse me nicely.

Lots of these, though...

When I was young our local zoo had hybrids, ligers and tigons , ask them to explain that! ( They also had zeedonks but hybridisation isn't seen as a good thing anymore)

My ex FIL (an otherwise educated man!) looked at the lion cubs at the safari park and asked 'how old are they when they get their stripes?'

We overheard a family at a zoo pointing and saying “thems big rabbits”. They were looking at wallabies.

A friend didn’t realise that bulls and cows are the same species. She thought they were totally separate.

Did you guys know that zebras are horses who leant against a freshly painted fence?

Mad!!

Friend of mine lived with some medical students, who were apparently horrified when they had a lecture on birth and discovered that the placenta has to come out as well. My friend grew up on a farm and says she laughed so hard that she ended up sitting on the floor

Ligers do exist

A guy I worked with believed a baby could see out of its mother's belly button (like a periscope) and it was 'cruel' to cover up.

This thread is causing me physical pain! I'm not very bright myself but I can't stand such extreme ignorance when it comes to animals, especially when nonsense is being pedaled out as fact to children. I work with little ones and it makes me cringe if anyone refers to a chimp as a monkey, or a dolphin as a fish!

Foxes are definitely more like cats than dogs.

I saw a Facebook post/meme that said 'Foxes are dogs running cat software', which made sense!

And a uni friend thought that pigeons who had brown feathers ate brown bread when they were babies.

TomRavenscroft

I like that quote.

I thought the Male lions had manes n females didn’t?

Erm... I used to think this I used to live abroad and did some English teaching. I asked a class if they could be any animal, what animal would they be. One man said he would be a tiger. I told him that it was great not to be tied to a gender and why not! The class just looked at me strangely and I just assumed gender politics was a bit over their level of English. It wasn't until I got home and told my flatmates and saw the same bemused look on their faces (this one in fact ) that I realised my mistake...

Well that is a new one on me!
Bit sad though isn't it?

My dh presumed that those tall towers in fire stations were so the fire fighters could go to the top and look for fires in the town. He was well over 25 when I discovered this.

How stupid is that?

My mum and I were at the zoo a few years ago, and came across the llamas. Mum looked at them for a few seconds, puzzled, and then said "but I thought llamas had 2 heads!".

It took a split second for her to realise the stupidity, but we roared. Proper full-on, sitting on the ground crying actual tears laughter.

DH was very puzzled a couple of years ago when he tried to explain dandelions to DS. He'd shown him the yellow ones, but then saw the fluffy ones and realised they were called dandelions too. Not knowing how this had happened, he asked me "Are both those flowers called dandelions?". I said yes. "It's a bit weird to have 2 different flowers with the same name". He was astounded when I explained they were the same flower at different stages.

Because my parents happened to have the same birthday, I believed until my late teens that you changed your birthday as well surname to your husbands when you got married . Embarrassing really.

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

'Swanling/s' isn't incorrect it's just less used than cygnets.

When I was little I thought that all babies had willies and they somehow fell off as a child grew older !!

My toddler brother had one and I didn't so that had to be right!

During Christmas dinner one year it became apparent that my DSs girlfriend thought that turkeys were male chickens.

DH was very puzzled a couple of years ago when he tried to explain dandelions to DS. He'd shown him the yellow ones, but then saw the fluffy ones and realised they were called dandelions too. Not knowing how this had happened, he asked me "Are both those flowers called dandelions?". I said yes. "It's a bit weird to have 2 different flowers with the same name". He was astounded when I explained they were the same flower at different stages.

I was told this at 29 and refused to believe it until I saw a sped up video on Youtube showing the different stages.