animals

For some reason, my father told me when I was very young that they don't have ducks in America. For years I would relay this interesting 'fact' to people as a piece of trivia, until I asked an actual American "is it weird not having ducks over there?" and was promptly laughed at.

When I was 4, my mom told me a story about the time a goat took a bite out of one of her dresses that was hanging out to dry. I took this to mean that goats loved eating clothes, and if I went near them they would surround me and eat all of the clothes I was wearing. I was terrified of petting zoos for years.

I used to believe that if you ate a worm or something else like that, that it would come out your nose. From this day on I stay away from the crawly bugs. Not that I believe in it but they still freak me out!!

When I was young somebody told me moths eat your clothes. From that day on I was terrified of moths because I thought they'd pounce on me, gnaw my clothes off, and leave me standing there naked. I'm 67 years old and I'm still scared of moths.

When I was 5, I somehow came under the impression that when a caterpillar went into a cocoon, that meant it was dead. This made for a slightly traumatic experience when I caught one and was convinced I had killed it a few hours later.

i have no idea where this believe came from but as long as i can remember i believed that baboons ate through their bums! i didnt find out the truth until i was 20 and was at my parents house and there was something about baboons on tv, and i said "they eat through their bums dont they?" everyone just looked at me really strangely and laughed, they have never let me live it down!

When I was little, I used to believe that corgis (a breed of very short-legged dogs) were made by rolling a puppy inside of a carpet so that it's legs wouldn't grow, and then let out as adults.

I also thought that boxers and rotweillers and other dogs like that were just born without a tail.

It's odd how things like that are completely normal and not a bit disturbing in a little kid's mind.

When I was little, I was playing with my brother and I saw an earwig crawl across the floor. My brother said it was called an earwig because it would go into your ear while you were sleeping and lay eggs. It freaked me out, I was so scared to go to sleep.

When I was around the age of 6, I saw cows walking sideways on the slopes of hills (on the drive going from Sacramento to San Francisco). I couldn't understand how they could walk on something so steep without down the hill, so I asked my father. He told me it was because on the "hill" side of their body, their legs were shorter so they could balance AND that they could only go around the hill in a certain direction. I believed him till I was 10.

I used to believe that if you killed a spider, for example stepping on it and crushing it, that in the final second before it died it sent out signals calling all other spiders within a certain range to the spot. So I was always careful, after killing a spider, to leave the immediate vicinity to avoid being swarmed by thousands of spiders!

I used to have this dog and my parents never got him neutered. So when i was little, I believe his ball sack is where his poop was kept until more poop came, and he'd poop out the previous poop, and the new poop would be kept in his ball sack, and so on.

When I was little, I thought that the baboon from the Lion King was roughly the size of a human. So, because all the lions were so much bigger than him, I thought that lions were HUGE! To this day I still I get a little disappointed when I see lions real lions and they aren't as huge as I thought they were.

When I was a young tot, I truly believed that all cats were female and all dogs were male. This also led me to often raise an eyebrow when seeing a female dog urinate and not lift a leg. And...well...cats I still can't tell...

When I was young, I believed in Unicorns. I also believed you could only "see" unicorns as unicorns if you were 'pure of heart' . I wanted to see a unicorn so badly I used to put my hand over white horses foreheads to see if I could feel a horn, just in case I couldn't see it because I was bad.

The amusing thing is, I never totally lost this belief until I was ten or eleven. It was worse then knowing there was no santa claus...or is there?

I used to love catching fireflies in jars as a youngster. I thought we could solve the planet's electricity problems by just filling rooms full of jars full of lightning bugs so that we would have constant light without electricity forever.

i used to believe that guerilla warfare was actually huge killer gorillas in the jungles of Viet Nam, leaping out of the trees with huge fangs and murderous intent on our troops. Still have problems seeing them at zoos.....

When I was young, about 8 or so we rescued a turtle off the side of the road. I few weeks later my mom came in the house and told him he "ran away." Obviously for some reason I believed her even though turtles are known for how slow they are. I am now 23 and my mom and I were talking about funny stories and she brought up how she ran over my turtle with the lawn mower. She thought I knew.

Growing up in northern California I used to believe an Earthquake was a bird like a huge woodpecker that would land on the outside of your house and shake it. During an earthquake I would ask to go outside and see it.