animals

I grew up near Southport, Australia, so naturally I would go to the ocean quite a bit. I used to think if I got sunburnt then any sharks swimming in the water would think I was a crab and jump onto the shore to eat me. The longer I stayed in the sun and the redder I got, the more chance I had of being eaten. Needless to say, I didn't go swimming a lot.

I grew up in California and we dont have Fire Flies here. When growing up my mom made them out to be like fairies. So when I finally saw a mass of them I was in pure terror. This was at the age of 23.

Someone told me, as a child, that a hair, once swallowed, turned into a worm.
This was apparently to keep me from putting my long hair into my mouth:-)

When I was little someone gave me a "guinea" pig as a pet. She told me that, if I held it upside down...it's eyes would pop out. I never touched the guinea pig! (I never cared for any rodent-type animal!)

My sister and I thought cats and dogs were the same animal, the dogs were male and the cats were female.

My grandparents on both sides grew up on farms and moved to the suburbs as adults, therefore there was always this misguided farm wisdom in the city. One of my Grandfathers used to say that "Turkeys are so stupid that if it was raining they would drown." (by looking up into the sky and filling their mouth and nostrils with rain.) As a college freshman moving to Northern Wisconsin (major farms of all types) I thought that the Ginsing fields (which are covered entirely using posts and enormous tarps) were turkey shelters.

when I was a kid in the 70's there was an unusual abundance of white dog poo in the lanes by my grandma's house at the seaside. I believed this unusual stuff was produced only by little white poodles...

I was raised Polish Roman Catholic.

When I was a child, my father used to tell me that on Christmas eve when we were at mass that at exactly midnight animals began to talk.

This had to do with some blessing of the Baby Jesus to the animals in the manger.

For years I harboured anger at my father every Christmas Eve because I was dragged to mass and I really wanted to talk to my dog.

A friend believed that they used a tame shark during the filming of "Jaws".

I used to think that moths spent the entire day flying towards the Sun, that's why they weren't seen in the day. Then at night, when the Sun went down, they flew back towards the Earth and that's why they were all gathered around people's security lights & stuff. To be honest I'm still not entirely convinced that that isn't actually the case. I'm 26 years old.

I used to believe…

That cats were female and dogs were male... cause older guys at school used to chase girls all the time - just like our cat and dog :)

My elder brother told me that seagulls were only called seagulls if they were by the sea. If they were over land they were 'landgulls'. I believed him for years and actually managed to convince loads of people that it was true!

I used to beleive that all black cows were bulls, so would be terrified of crossing a field that had a black cow in it. I beleived this till i was about 13 then one day actually listened to what i said, could not believe that my dad and big bro had conned me all that time.

When my Grandmother saw a bird in the garden, she'd say "oh look, there's a dickie-bird". For years, I didn't know there were different types of bird, I just thought they were all dickie-birds.

I had a friend at school whose Dad had told her that tortoises had wings and that they were related to Ladybugs. We found this in a conversation about pets when we were 18 - cos you don't often talk about tortoises in everyday conversation she had never had anyone dispel the myth!

I used to believe that the little styrofoam beads in bean bags were actually dormant snake eggs that would only come out if you pinched them with your fingernails....