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.
I’ll answer the opposite way: in South America we have no crows, so it was by far the most fascinating animal I saw while in England.
That’s wild, I thought crows lived everywhere humans do.
Haggis
Surprised it’s not Nessie
Definitely kangaroos. But they have bad luck as I live in Austria and not Australia.
I was so amazed at how common they were. I spent a year in Australia and probably saw more kangaroos day by day than I see all wild animals combined day by day here in the UK (excluding birds).
Hell I grew up in North Wales and may have seen as many kangaroos day by day as I saw sheep here, and that’s saying something.
Austria!? Well then, G’day mate! Let’s put another shrimp on the barbie
Haha, never watched the movie but I might have to now. But she rounds rather Slavic. Here my favorite example of Austrian English!
Manm both Dumb and Dumber movies are great imo
It’s all about the koalas and kangaroos but then they see a cockie or a rosella, hear a possum late at night and shit themselves
Can confirm. The rosellas were delightful. The Ibis were pretty awesome as well -such a trashy looking bird. Ours at least hides its shame (kiwi).
I have a mate who lives in midwestern us and they utterly lose their shit over the fact we just casually have all these parrots everywhere like nbd.
Shitting themselves over possums isn’t hyperbole for any non-Australians reading.
Possums at night sound like a demon crossed with a chainsaw.
Here in Australia, it’s drop bears and hoop snakes. People always want to see them… until it’s too late.
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
Damnit. I googled it. Im from the US. Closest we have to drop bears here are snipes. I’ve been on a few snipe hunts myself.
I’ve never heard of a hoop snake before, that’s awesome.
Moose. We get European summer students and seeing one is the highlight of their animal watching when they’re here, apparently.
Personally, I’m more impressed with elk, a bull elk with a full rack is pretty awesome.
Who doesn’t like a full rack.
People are excited to see raccoons. If you’ve ever had to make major repairs to your property, this makes no sense to you.
People somehow don’t even think about hummingbirds. We get ruby throated hummingbirds through here, and they’re fascinating. Never had a visitor even mention them.
It’s wild to me that there are wild macaws in northern South America. Granted I haven’t seen them in person, but even videos of them look so weird, like a hundred people let their pets out on accident.
Peacocks. Where I live (central California) there is a local park that has a flock of wild peacocks. I had a friend visiting from Korea and he was so excited to see them.
Capybaras are pretty common in the area where I live, and really throughout most of Brazil. Don’t get me wrong, we still think they’re pretty cute, but I’ve seen some Americans get really excited about them.
Oh, and the maned wolf. To be fair, I think they’re pretty neat too.
Are capybaras as chill as their reputation suggests, or is that more a feature of cases that are used to captivity? If the memes/images/videos are to be believed, I’d expect to be able to just wander up to one in the wild and have it respond like a well-socialized pet dog.
I’ve hung out with capybaras and can fully verify that they’re chill as fuck. They’re more skittish than a quokka, but as long as you’re chill, the capybara is!
Quokkas win as far as cutest and chillest animals to bless this planet. Quokkas should be everyone’s spirit animal.
I’ve only ever heard of one incident with a capybara, when it killed my SO’s therapist’s dog, but it was supposedly protecting it’s cubs, so I would say as chill as a mammal can be
I would be SO EXCITED to see a wild capybara.
That maned wolf is really cool! I thought they were extinct but I must have them mixed up with some other canine creature. Something with stripes?
It looks like a long-legged megafox.
Thylacine? aka Tasmanian Tiger.
You’re probably thinking of the thylacine
Ah, thank you! Yes, the Tasmanian wolf.
I’m not Japanese but have been living here most of a decade. As no one mentioned anything from that side yet, the Nara Deer are probably the most famous followed by the hotspring monkeys. Tanuki are also something people might want to see, off the top of my head.
My wife was super surprised by all the squirrels in the US and loved taking pictures and videos. She suddenly realized we kept seeing more of them as we walked and, yep, they’re everywhere.
She was also super surprised that people just had cattle and horses when we’d be driving where my US family lived (countryside).
Went to Japan a few months ago. Deer and monkeys, yep.
What blew me away is how it was done - literally living side by side with the animals. Walking next to a deer or being a foot away from the monkey gave me amazing respect for Japan.
Where in the states, we either keep them in cages or fenced off, or we treat them like a nuance and if they come too close, respond with hostility (including the American Deer).
That’s really not normal here. The deer in Nara have special protections and are super accustomed to humans. They actually were menacing the residents of the area when tourists dried up. The monkeys can be real dicks and aggressive in general. Farmers are always trying to run both off. It’s basically the same as the US except I can’t just kill dear that come on to my property and eat my crops.
my property
Vs
their ancestral grazing lands
If they want to pay my property taxes and feed me, then we can argue that. At the moment, it’s my land (~8000 sqm) on which I pay taxes and on which I grow my own food. However, it’s all a moot point because, at least as of now, I’ve not seen deer on my actual property; it was just meant to contrast how things work in two countries with which I am familiar.
The actual problem around here is wild boar which are not ancestrally doing anything in my neck of the woods but have migrated north due to human-caused climate change.
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.
Royalty 🇬🇧
common animals
Royalty
“And here on your left you will see a prime example of the common European prince. No longer afforded a natural habitat, the nation of Britain has built special reserves for these princelings and other royalty, called palaces. On certain days you can observe royals being transported in specially equipped vehicles from one palace to another to encourage mating.”
All humans (which afaik includes royals) are animals anyway.
My ex’s family were pissed when I didn’t take her to see Buckingham Palace. There is NOTHING there to see. They make it as boring a possible on purpose. It’s on a fucking roundabout for cry sake, you’d see more driving past.
I was excited to see squirrels, lightning bugs and a racoon in the US.
When people come to Australia they obviously want to see kangaroos, koalas and platypus and quokka. Koalas are very rare to see in the wild, and a visit to a zoo will score you a sleeping ball on a branch. Kangaroos are frequently roadkill if you go outside the city. Quokka require a long trip to a really remote location. You’ll also almost never see a platypus, even the ones at the zoo you might catch a water ripple at best.
But if you’re headed to Sydney city, guaranteed you’ll spot the almighty and much maligned “bin chicken”, our Australian white ibis. Often not quite white from the bins. At night they serenade you with their collective honking from their tree, which can be easily spotted by the masses of white poop underneath. And you’ll see fruit bats in the evening. Hopefully not the daytime corpses hanging from electrical cables while they slowly rot, but that’s not altogether unlikely either, unfortunately.
Seeing the flying foxes around Sydney surprised me.
The bin chickens, I simultaneously felt a little sorry for, and enjoyed watching.
The bin chickens are my kin, I’m in the small minority here who appreciate them.
And yeah, the flying foxes are a surprise for most foreigners. They’re also pretty big and often fly low at dusk, so they can be slightly startling too, even though they’re just adorable fuzzy harmless nectar drinkers. It’s a pity they screech too, it might be easier to reassure non-locals that they’re not dangerous.
People are also often surprised to see all the other Sydney city wildlife and how much of it there is, especially rainbow lorrikeets. Everyone loves the lorrikeets, but people from the northern hemisphere are especially awestruck when they see them. It’s understandably almost a little surreal to have such brightly colored parrots hanging out in the middle of a city, if you’re someone who comes from a city that is just pigeons and sparrows.
Don’t forget the wild cockatoos! Those are a sight. (Source: my ex-step-sister lives in Melbourne.)
First time I landed in Australia on the Gold Coast I followeed a bin chicken for 20 minutes with a camera trying to get the perfect picture like it was some rare exotic bird. I’m sure the locals were sremoveding or openly laughing behind my back, I dont blame them
What about crocodiles? Alligators are in most reasonably large retention ponds in Florida. Most places just relocate them once they reach a certain size. They’re pretty common. Knew a guy in high school who had a side hustle of removing them from people’s swimming pools. They’re pretty weird if you’re not from a place used to them.
If you want to see a croc, just go walking near the shallow water of the top half of the country’s coast. You won’t see the croc for long, and it will be the last thing you ever see, but it will be up close and very personal.
Seriously though, you don’t go to see salt water crocodiles in the wild or even go near any body of water on the northern coast. If you can see one with the naked eye in the wild, you’re already too close. They’re extremely fast, extremely aggressive, and the males get up to 6m / 20ft long and 1000kg / 2200lb. They are very much a zoo only thing.
Sorry about you not seeing the lightning bug.
Insects are dying out a bit.
Oh no, i got to see them. This was a decade ago, and I was told even then that there used to be many more. I was happy to see any at all though, I had only ever seen them in movies and they almost seemed mythical. They are pretty magical, it’s very sad to hear they’re almost gone.
I’ve seen a vanload of tourists happily taking pictures of sheep on more than one occasion. New Zealand.
I mean, I grew up in the US by several sheep farms and I would take pics of the critters constantly because they’re cute.
There’s a certain kinship.
