In your country, what "common" animals are tourists most excited to see?

Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 267 points –

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.

275

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

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.

Fun fact. When in danger, Quokka parents drop their little quokka babies from their pouch as a distraction so the parents can get away.

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 went to the Buenos Aires zoo and Iguaçu and that capybaras can just roam freely in the zoo is amazing. And in Iguaçu (or Iguazu), coatis were fun. They’re devious.

I lived in the northeast for a few years in and around college and I was amazed by chipmunks. I had never seen one and was like, “Holy shit, a chipmunk!”

I’ve been to the Galapagos, Australia, multiple African countries and nothing shocked me like seeing a chipmunk for the first time. Nature shows let you know exotic animals exist but there’s no nature show that’s just like, “Check out this [chipmunk, hedgehog, etc.].”

Seeing a chipmunk was the same for me. And goddamn are they cute, I had no idea they were so small and precious. Alvin and the chipmunks are monstrosities by comparison.

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.

You're probably thinking of the thylacine

Fingers crossed that it isn't actually extinct. Unconfirmed sightings have been going up recently. My head canon is that a government agency is covering it up so they can bounce back without tourist destroying the ecosystem just to see "the last one".

Yep, I was going to say capybaras but also anacondas, although they are hard to spot, but I recall there's one in Butantan Institute, in São Paulo city.