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’m from the US and I still get excited when I see raccoons. I love those lil guys.
I’m like that with turkeys. They are hilarious weirdos.
They’re terrifying
Wild turkeys can be very aggressive.
Domestic turkeys can as well. I had to beat one of of my little brother cause it was bullying him. In our own front yard. My brother was very satisfied that Thanksgiving
I read this in Linda Belcher’s voice.
Monkeys in a very snowy forest. I remember feeding them nuts once.
They’re called macaques.
“Do you wanna see a macaque?”
- “I hope you’re not Italian!?!!!”
In the Pacific Northwest I’ve had visitors get really excited to see slugs.
I go bananas for them
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.
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
Want some? Says the Canadian.
LOL
I have some friends in Australia and I always send them pictures of squirrels when I see them. Got TONS where I live.
Not from Asia but I do that. Made a fool of myself following squirrels around the first time I went to a country that has them.
Squirrels are not native in most of Asia.
In South Asia, we have lots of different giant squirrel species. Maybe they’re not that common in East Asia?
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
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.
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.
Black bears, mountains southeast USA
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.
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.
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
At my house, one figured out how to use my doggy door and kept raiding my kitchen trashcan at night.
Same at Denver, they are albino though.
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
In Rural America- “people of Walmart”
I’m from the US but lived in Japan for a while. They have squirrels, but they’re not very common. They went nuts when they would see a squirrel. At least where I was (Tohoku).
They’ll probably go even more nuts once they start seeing the Indian Giant Squirrel. They look like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie.
They are beautiful creatures.
Australian white ibises. They’re kinda like the Australian equivalent to a raccoon in the US; they eat rubbish and their roosts stink because they tend to congregate in a single tree and then shit everywhere. But they are quite unique looking birds: long beaks, black heads and white plumage. So the tourists find them quite interesting and the locals call them bin chickens.
Ah the Bin Chicken
I have never heard of this before, and now I wonder whether we shouldnt be encouraging more animals to consume our waste.
I was one of the fascinated tourists taking a million pictures of bin chickens. But, I was at least aware of it… because I remember at the time joking with my wife that the locals were laughing at us basically taking pictures of pigeons/seagulls.
There’s three different species of Ibises in India:
- Red-naped Ibis
- Black-headed Ibis
- Glossy Ibis
But we don’t see them as garbage birds - they’re quite rare in cities, and you can only see them in towns, villages and forests.
It looks like our White Ibis and Wood Storks were crossed.
They look like the wading birds I liked seeing so much in Spanish rice paddies.
Had some people visiting from Columbia. The squirrels absolutely blew their minds.
Colombia?
Alligators…not sure if that’s considered “common” or not. We don’t see them on a regular basis depending on your activities. If you fish/kayak on a lot, you’ll see them. If you don’t, you generally won’t unless there’s a drought. Then they’ll be in intersections or in your parking lot at work looking for water.
They’re fairly common in Central Florida. Many large retention ponds have them and they just get relocated once they reach a certain size. It was still fun to be standing on a friend’s apartment balcony and spot an alligator laying next to the retention pond.
Relevant username!
God damn Canada Geese.
Also, I’ve seen tourists fascinated by seagulls in Vancouver which surprised me because I thought they were everywhere.
I love Canada geese! A family used to nest every year near where i grew up, and during breeding season traffic would halt multiple times a day while the whole family of goslings crossed the road. When in a rush in the spring, everyone knew not to take that road.
I think they are the bane of golfers and sports areas, but if that’s not a concern they are huge, beautiful birds.
I hate Canada Geese. I once stayed in a hotel in Manchester where they would squawk all through the night right outside the window.
I saw a Canadian Goose exhibit at the Prague zoo and almost died laughing.
