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.
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.
But the kangaroos run away when you try to sneak up behind them
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.
There is more and more budgies in big european cities. Some espace there cages, reproduced and live now among pigeons and sparrows. I was surprised to see they could live in region where the winter go bellow -5°C for weeks.
Austrian lorrikeets and rosellas will still surprised and amazed me though.
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.
Good to know! I’ll put the Ibis and fruit bat on my Australia bucket list, along with a Huntsman. Although the latter are so widespread that I’ve probably already seen some living in America. But I’m guessing the Australian Huntsmen are a bit different from the North American ones.
I’ve seen a vanload of tourists happily taking pictures of sheep on more than one occasion. New Zealand.
I liked seeing the sheep, but because it reminded me of Yorkshire.
There’s a certain kinship.
I spent two months or so travelling around the north and south islands and barely saw any sheep! Far more cows strangely. I didn’t feel like I had missed anything and wasn’t actively looking gor them, but it was surprising!
came to say just that
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
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It’s not a weird animal but cats. Stray cats are literally everywhere and aren’t afraid of people so many will stop to pet them. And on the other hand, when visiting other countries, the lack of street cats does strike me a bit weird.
Greece? Turkey?
Greece but pretty sure it applies for Turkey too
Tenerife too
i will pet every cat
I’ve seen puppies literally thrown into a bin. Y’all got issues with your pet/animal divides
I don’t know what happens with dogs (there aren’t that many strays) but most street cats were never pets, they’ve always been free. There is an effort to reduce them that’s definitely failing.
Reindeer, the four-legged derp zombies of the animal world.
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
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
Black squirrels. They aren’t very many if any at all in the south and when family/friends come to visit it blows their mind seeing them.
When we first moved to Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads, VA, my mom almost wrecked the car when she saw a group of black squirrels. We’re not sure why it’s so fun to see them, they’re just squirrels that are black, but it’s always a treat.
I saw them in New York! Brilliant!
Cows and monkeys in India
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You’re absolutely right. In India the most common species of monkey is actually the ones we see on our news asking us to vote for them.
People take pictures of those, too, I think.
Bears ☠️
They actually get dangerously close to them, to pet them and take photos of them and feed them, then these tourists wonder why are they being attacked…
Moose (mainland) or Polar bear (Svalbard)
for australia i think most people would assume kangaroos, and sure people are excited to see them but they’re not quite as common - youre probably only going to see them if it’s intentional
i think common AND excited is probably rosellas - they’re a bright red and blue/green parrot that are kinda eeeeeverywhere
As a local I smile seeing lorikeets and kookaburras, but rosellas are very rare where I am and I have to do a double take
Where I am the lorikeets and rosellas are often together, like double dating
