What misconceptions do you still have that you learned from TV/film as a child?

_number8_@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 41 points –

in charlie and the chocolate factory (2005) (the best version imo b/c i saw it as a kid and the magic only works around then) a lady said that chocolate is an aphrodisiac and i've completely internalized that as true.

i hope it is, it sort of makes sense. people buy chocolates on valentines day

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Almost all dinosaur-centric film/TV of the 90s-2000s imply (or state outright) that the dinosaurs are now extinct. As a result, this remains a deeply held and ubiquitously perpetuated misconception. Paleontologists have suspected since the 70s, and known for sure since at least the 2000s, that the avian theropod dinosaurs survived and became modern-day birds. Therefore, birds are dinosaurs. Wikipedia is pretty clear on this.

I've had my share of conversations with people who apparently don't want this to be true and somehow defend the misconception like it's a religious dogma. Let's see how it goes here.

Another related misconception is that the pterodactyl is a dinosaur. In fact, it is a pterosaur which is a separate clade from the dinosaurs. Unlike the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs really are extinct. When science videos refer to “the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs” they should really say “pterosaurs” instead, it would be more educational on multiple levels.

A lot more than the pterosaurs died out though. Most archosaurs, including the sauropods and the non-avian theropods, are gone. The ichthyosaurs and the majority of ancient crocodilians went extinct too (not dinosaurs, but related). So it's kind of odd to mention pterosaurs but not those others.

Well, in terms of species (could create fertile offspring), modern day birds are not dinosaurs.

However, we animals which are the same species as they were millions of years ago.

Anyone who has seen a shoebill stork knows that dinosaurs didn’t die.