It has always amused me that the tourists to the US that I’ve spoken to are often very excited to see raccoons, and disappointed if they don’t see them before they leave.
Some others I’ve noticed on the east coast of the US are blue jays and cardinals. Boy, do people get excited about those if they’ve never seen them before! Very pretty birds of course, just very easy to get used to and see as uninteresting as well.
It’s not a native species, but in some German cities, you can see a lot of rose-ringed parakeets. They really stand out between the other local birds, so if you go to places like Cologne or Heidelberg, it’s quite likely to spot them, especially since they’re so loud. A few months ago, I moved to a city without parakeets and frankly, I miss them a lot.
Fuckers will scare the shit out of you when they fly 40cm above your head while you’re on a bike.
Just minding your own business and suddenly a giant screetching flock of green will fly above your head from behind
Here in Australia, it’s drop bears and hoop snakes. People always want to see them… until it’s too late.
I’ve never heard of a hoop snake before, that’s awesome.
A drop bear got my auntie. All they found was her eskie… empty.
Typical. Those drop bears have no respect at all for a person’s eskie.
Thieves and murderers the lot of em. Just like my great great granddad before he was shipped here.
Some say that the drop bears are the true descendants of the first British convicts sent to Australia
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In UK people come from all over the world to see our royal family of great apes.
Sheep. Baaa.
Had an american who loved our robin redbreasts
Really? Where I’m from in the states there are robins fucking everywhere
American Robins are not the same as European Robins.
American Robins were named so because they vaguely reminded British settlers of their robins “from home”.
I am aware of the two different species. I never noticed a stark difference between the tone of red/orange between the two.
robins
🤔
Haggis
Surprised it’s not Nessie
None! I live in Korea, and the local wildlife was long ago mostly displaced or eaten by the seething mass of humanity. Once upon a time, there were some cool bears and tigers even. There are some nice, big herons still around I suppose. Oh, some tiny deer, too.
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I mean, an emo cow is just hilarious
Prairie dogs along the front range of Colorado, deer in the Colorado mountains…
I live somewhere where they’re common, lived here my whole life, but I still love to watch prairie dogs. They’re cute and cool and interesting
San Diego zoo has a racoon exhibit. I thought that was weird.
The Audubon zoo in New Orleans has a raccoon exhibit and it’s got a rusted out jalopy for them to play in. And a mouse exhibit where their natural habitat is a spice cabinet. Also, we probably have the only zoo with recipes on the wall next to some exhibits. They’re a relic of a bygone era and I asked the zoologists about it and they were like, “I mean, most of us are vegetarians but we just think it’s funny so we leave them up.” And there’s a fake loup-garou around a corner where you can scare your kids.
In grand New Orleans tradition, it’s also one of the few zoos that sells drinks and sometimes has live music. But it’s still probably one of the top 5 zoos in America for actual science and conservation. I haven’t seen one better besides San Diego and I frequent zoos. So, no one act like the giraffes or gorillas are upset. They get fed better than humans in most of the world and the climate is right up their alley.
Huh really? I have tons of trash pandas around me (central Ohio).
Well yeah this (also central Ohio) is their native habitat. I seem to recall Columbus or Cincinnati zoo having a local wildlife section
Opossums are also everywhere and are probably wildly exotic to people who aren’t used to there just being one marsupial in their garbage can and no others on the continent
The one which lives in my attic just moved out for the summer
At my house, one figured out how to use my doggy door and kept raiding my kitchen trashcan at night.
they probably fell into an empty enclosure one day and the zookeepers just rolled with it and put up a sign
I’m Dutch and a zoo near me has racoons too. But then again they’re an invasive species here so it’s not as weird.
Same at Denver, they are albino though.
Black bears, mountains southeast USA
Back when I worked at Disney, a subset of the Asian guests would get excited and take pictures of squirrels. Are there parts of Asia that don’t have many squirrels?
i’m from australia and i’m always excited to see squirrels… they don’t exist here at all
I have some friends in Australia and I always send them pictures of squirrels when I see them. Got TONS where I live.
Want some? Says the Canadian.
LOL
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We have squirrels in my country but I’ve never seen one in person to be frank. If you’ve lived in a heavily populated area your entire life then it’s not uncommon you’d be surprised to see common wildlife out and about
Squirrels are extremely common in (most of?) the US, even in cities. There’s an albino one that lives in my neighborhood, that one was interesting enough to stop and take a picture of.
Squirrels are not native in most of Asia.
Japan doesn’t generally have squirrels like in the US. I took my wife to DC and we spent a solid 10+ minutes taking photos and videos of squirrels around the mall.
I felt the opposite when we visited Brazil, they had these little monkeys everywhere like squirrels here but they didn’t know what a squirrel was haha, basically they had squirrels with monkey faces instead
Had some people visiting from Columbia. The squirrels absolutely blew their minds.
Colombia?
I’ve had kinda an inverse experience of this.
I was on a vacation to Mexico with my family and we decided to visit a local zoo. For the most part it was pretty similar to what we have back home with lions and gorillas but there was one exhibit that was drawing a large crowd so we decided to go see what it was. Once we are able to get a look inside there were just 4 or 5 white tailed deer grazing on some grass. We got a good laugh because back home these things are common to the point of nuisance. I don’t speak Spanish but I then started to notice several children pointing and mentioning “Bambi” to their parents and all the commotion made sense
Moose (mainland) or Polar bear (Svalbard)
Also reindeer
I was gonna say whales. Feels like a lot of tourists go up north to whale safaries.
