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.
In UK people come from all over the world to see our royal family of great apes.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Black bears, mountains southeast USA
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
If I was in Australia I’d be so excited to see wombats. Is also be scared of seeing spiders…
Still not seen a wombat outside of a sanctuary. They come out at night and leave square poos on the paths.
Honestly - even seeing one of their square poos would be quite a thing!
Chipmunks. I once went to a zoo in Chicago with someone who grew up in South Africa and he was more fascinated with the chipmunks running along the paths than with anything else at the zoo.
Okay, so it isn’t animals, but tourists in my parents’ town get stoked when they see how big the Monongahela River actually is. They think a nearby creek is the river and we’re like, “that’s a creek. Drive up the road a bit to see the river.”
The same tourists also lose their minds if they see a train filled with coal go by.
Here in the US, I find most of my EU friends want to see the American Texan in the wild. Weird fetish, but hey, you do you.
Swans. It’s a wonder to me that such an arrogant bird ever became the national pride of Denmark. But tourists freak out about them, thanks to H.C. Andersen.
San Diego zoo has a racoon exhibit. I thought that was weird.
Same at Denver, they are albino though.
they probably fell into an empty enclosure one day and the zookeepers just rolled with it and put up a sign
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.
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.
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
Moose (mainland) or Polar bear (Svalbard)
I was gonna say whales. Feels like a lot of tourists go up north to whale safaries.
Also reindeer
In Rural America- “people of Walmart”
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
Had some people visiting from Columbia. The squirrels absolutely blew their minds.
Colombia?
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.
