Analysis / Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying

General Errors

• There are a lot of mammals that are mistaken for rodents, including weasels (in Carnivora, closely related to seals and raccoons and more distantly to dogs), rabbits, hares, and pikas (order Lagomorpha, closely related to rodents but their own thing),^note They together form a single superorder Glires, Bats (order Chiroptera), and shrews, moles, solenodons, hedgehogs, and moonrats (order Eulipotyphla, only very distantly related to rodents). We should note here that the weasels, bats, and Eulipotyphlans are more closely related to each other than the rodents, and the rodents are more closely related to humans than either of those.^note Glires—the lagomorphs and rodents—form a clade with the Euarchonta—the primates and close relatives. This is partly why rats and mice make such good models for us.
• Mammal snouts will often be drawn as simply noses with a normal mouth underneath, like a mammalian version of the Mouthy Bird. This ignores the very definition of a snout, a protruding section of a face that consists of the nose and mouth. The elephant's trunk in particular is made up of the animal's upper lip as well as its nose.
• There is a slight tendency for some (but by no means all) furry artists to presume that all mammals go about sexual intercourse in ways similar to either Humans or Dogs, or at least how some people presume dogs to go about them. Then again, an Acceptable Break from Reality, as when did Rule 34 care about anatomical correctness even when it was just humans involved?
• Many a work draws certain mammals with noses shaped like those of cats or dogs without regard for what the real animal looks like. Particularly rodents, lagomorphs (rabbits and hares), apes, monkeys, walruses, and ruminants.
• The Urban Legend of the "Mexican pet", in which a naive tourist befriends and adopts a "stray dog" they find while visiting Mexico (or some other exotic location), smuggles it back home, then takes it to the vet and is informed that they actually brought home a rabid sewer rat. This tale loses any veneer of plausibility to anyone who has ever seen a rat up close, or knows anything about their behavior. Even an extremely near-sighted tourist would've surely caught on that an animal with grasping toes on all four feet, which climbs things and clutches food in its front paws while eating, can't possibly be a dog.
• Incorrect pupils, often for the sake of Rule of Scary or Rule of Cute. Bigger, predatory mammals like big cats or even wolves might be portrayed with slitted pupils when in reality they have rounded ones. Conversely, some mammals with vertical pupils, such as foxes and pandas, or horizontal pupils, like sheep and mongooses, are almost always drawn with round pupils instead.
• Domestic animals in period pieces looking like their modern day descendants. Most modern day dog, cat, and horse breeds are Newer Than They Think (with many being less than 300 years old). Going back millenia, prehistoric horses don't resemble most modern horses. They more resembled donkeys or Przewalski's horses: having brown/dun pelts, "primitive markings" (stripes, etc), short, upright manes, and stocky bodies.
• All Animals Are Domesticated is often applied to feral dogs and cats (those born in the wild and raised with little-to-no human socialization, not strays). You'll often see characters adopt feral animals without much issue. This only works for young animals. After a certain age, it's near impossible to adopt a feral cat, and even when you do they won't likely ever be as affectionate as a "normal" cat. Dogs are a bit easier to tame, but it's still a challenge.
• Mammals having an unnatural number of fingers and toes. Most prominent examples are elephants and hippos having only three toes per foot and primates having Four-Fingered Hands.
• Horns and antlers being considered the same thing. Antlers are bony structures possessed by cervids (i.e. deer) which are branched, covered in skin, and are shed when the growth is finished. Horns however end in a point, are covered in keratin, do not shed, and never stop growing.
• The prevalence of the Scavengers Are Scum means a lot of "cool" predators like lions, bears, and wolves are presented as solely hunting, when they actually scavenge a lot of their meals. On the opposite side, many scavengers are depicted as strict scavengers when they also hunt.
• Cat Stereotypes and Dog Stereotypes oftentimes go against the actual behavior of breeds:
  • Many supposedly "dainty, girly" breeds are depicted as lazy and passive lapdogs, no matter what the dog was originally bred to do or how they usually behave. In reality many aren't. For example, Standard Poodles were hunting dogs and are just as athletic as Golden Retrievers and, despite their pretty looks, Westies and Yorkies are terriers and are thus are as active and stubborn as their wirehaired brethren. Even Miniature Poodles were used for work before becoming preferred as lapdogs (and that's also where Psycho Poodle trope comes from).
  • Persians, Siamese, and Sphynxs get hit with Cats Are Mean the most but all three breeds are known for being affectionate and social cats.
  • Basset Hounds and Bloodhounds as perpetually lazy. Despite their goofy looking bags, they're active dogs.
  • Dachshunds in the popular media are often portrayed as friendly and Plucky Comic Relief, but they are one of the most-aggressive dog breeds in real-life. Despite their elongated bodies (which were bred to hunt badgers anyway), dachshunds are also known for being standoff-ish towards strangers.
  • Most "Pit Bull" breeds are used as Angry Guard Dogs in fiction. While many are naturally dog aggressive, they aren't supposed to be people aggressive (but bad breeding and bad training means some are even in real life). This is why they appeared as friendly Big Friendly Dogs in turn-of-the-century media like The Little Rascals.
  • Ironically, certain breeds of sheepdogs (mostly Old English Sheepdogs) are often cast as the stupid dogs due to the shaggy hair covering their eyes. Herding breeds are actually among the most intelligent of dogs; the hair doesn't obstruct their vision at all.
• Another example is to refer to saber toothed cats, mammoths, and other Pleistocene megafauna as dinosaurs just because they are fierce and extinct and/or portraying them as being around during the Mesozoic era. Saber toothed cats are several groups of now-extinct, big-fanged cats that first appeared during the Eocene, going extinct during the Pleistocene.
• Depicting Pleistocene megafauna as extremely ancient (or even Mesozoic); in fact, they shared the planet with early humans.
• All mammals being warm-blooded. Some mammals such as sloths and naked mole rats are cold-blooded or poikilothermic, meaning that their body temperatures change according to their surroundings.
• Many terms in media are thrown around that aren't used professionally:
  • The most common is "she-" when referring to female animals. A "she-bear" is really a "sow", a "she-dog"/"she-wolf" is really "bitch", a "she-cat" is really a "queen" (or "molly"), etc.
  • In another common case, cat "clans" are more correctly called cat "colonies" or "clowders". And "packs" of spotted hyenas are actually called "clans".
  • Not all canines come in "packs". For example, a group of coyotes is either called a "band" or a "pack" while a group of foxes is either a "leash", "skulk", or "earth".
• Most mammals being Covered in Scars is rarer than fiction portrays. Most scars are covered by their fur, with the exceptions of areas like the face that have minimal fur.
• Similar mammals such as aardvarks and anteaters, porcupines and hedgehogs or jaguars and leopards are often treated as synonymous. Granted, they don't live in the same places, but the distinctions between them still end up being ignored, creating cases of Informed Species (aardvarks are given the same curved snouts as anteaters instead of their pig-like snouts, porcupines are drawn as bigger hedgehogs with longer quills, the rosette markings on leopards and jaguars are pretty much the same - jaguars have smaller markings inside their rosettes and leopards do not).

Specific Mammal Groups

The categories in this list are organized by the molecular classification of placentals on Wikipedia.

Non-Placental Mammals (Monotremes and marsupials)

• Saying that platypi are the only mammals that lay eggs, forgetting about the platypus's close relative the echidna.
• Portraying the bills of platypi as being actual, hard beaks like ducks. The bill of a platypus is actually covered in skin for use as a sense organ.
• Platypi having their eyes open when diving underwater, rather than closing them and using their sensitive bills to feel around.
• Kangaroos and other macropods being depicted as hopping all the time. In reality, they mostly walk on all fours while using their tail as a fifth leg, known as pentapedal locomotion. In the case of the extinct giant kangaroos, they may not have hopped at all and were bipedal instead.
• People draw male kangaroos with pouches. The only extant (i.e., not extinct) marsupial with both sexes having a pouch is the yapok, a semi-aquatic opossum native to South America. The Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, exhibited this trait too, but it is now extinct.
• Referring to opossums and possums as one and the same. "Possum" refers to the Australian marsupials of the Phalangeriformes suborder in the order Diprotodontia, whereas "opossum" refers to the New World marsupials of the order Didelphimorpha. Referring to opossums as "possums" is technically correct going by colloquial usage of the word, but the reverse does not occur.
• Portraying opossums sleeping by hanging from tree branches with their tails alone. While real opossums do use only their tails to stabilize their position, they can only do it for short periods of time because of their body weight.
• It is often believed that eucalyptus leaves make a koala become inebriated, which is why they spend most of their time sleeping. In reality, koalas sleep because they are conserving their energy since eucalyptus leaves do not provide enough of it.
• Koalas in media are usually portrayed with only one thumb on each paw, despite real koalas having two thumbs. Although this may be because a two-thumbed hand is considered too unrealistic and freaky.

Atlantogenata

Afrotheria (Aardvarks, elephants, and sirenians)

• Aardvark Trunks, or depicting the snouts of aardvarks as being flexible like the trunk of an elephant (to which they are ironically related). While the tip of an aardvark's snout is quite flexible, it's largely bony and thus nowhere near as bendy as elephant trunks are. Not to mention they are sometimes portrayed having their mouths at the base of the snout rather than at the tip.
• Elephants being referred to as pachyderms. Pachydermata was a taxonomic group that included not just elephants but also rhinos and hippos, since these three animals have thick skin (hence the group's name meaning). But thanks to anatomical and ancestral differences, we now know elephants, rhinos, and hippos are from separate mammal groups, with rhinos being more closely related to horses, hippos to whales, and elephants to manatees.
• Another example includes elephants drinking with their trunks instead of sucking up the liquid with their trunks and then squirting it into their mouths, like real elephants.
• Sometimes, usually only in poor-quality animation, elephants are seen with their mouths in the tips of their trunks, like anteaters. The end of the trunk, itself a fusion of the nose and upper lip, sports only the nostrils surrounded by two to four fleshy digits with which to grasp objects.
• Elephants will usually resemble Indian elephants in cartoons, even when set in Africa. African elephants have larger ears than Indian elephants, rounded heads compared to Asian elephants' twin-domed heads, and the presence of tusks in both males and females. African female elephants being shown as tuskless is thus incorrect - while this is true for Asian elephants, female African elephants possess tusks like the males do. And even then tusks are present in some female Asian elephants, but these are very small and unnoticeable at first glance.
• Elephants and camels do not have "four knees". They have the same limb joints — shoulder, elbow and wrist in front; hip, knee and ankle in back — as with every other mammal. They merely have thick callouses on the anterior sides of their wrists, which look something like their actual knees' surfaces.
• Forgetting that elephant herds consist of only cows and their calves, led by a matriarch. Bull elephants are mostly solitary, only forming bachelor groups.
• Some works describe manatees and dugongs as being synonymous. Manatees however have rounded tails, while dugongs' tails are fluked like a whale's. Manatees are also generally larger and have shorter snouts than dugongs.

Xenartha (Armadillos, anteaters, and sloths)

• Similar to aardvarks, anteaters in cartoons are sometimes depicted with flexible snouts like an elephant's trunk. Real anteaters' snouts are bony, unlike the boneless, muscle-filled trunk of an elephant, and thus cannot flex their snout around like elephants. As with aardvarks, they also fall victim to the trend of depicting the mouth under the snout with the latter acting like a trunk.
• Depicting anteaters as walking flat on their hands. Anteaters walk on their knuckles with their hands facing sideways, so that their claws would be kept out of the way.
• Anteaters having teeth, when they are actually toothless and rely on swallowing their insect prey whole with their long tongues.
• Sloths being portrayed as lazy due to how slow they move. Their slow movement is because their diet of leaves actually provides very little energy, so they need to conserve energy by moving as little as they can. Another reason is that they need to warm up in sunlight to regulate their body temperatures, as they are one of the few mammals to be poikilothermic.
• All armadillos are portrayed with the ability to curl up into a ball when threatened. In real life, only the three-banded armadillo of South America possesses this ability. However, the nine-banded armadillo is the most well known and most often used in fiction (likely due to its larger range in both North and South America), but it cannot curl up into a ball.

Boreoeutheria

Euarchontoglires

Primatomorpha (Colugos, lemurs, bushbabies, monkeys, and apes)

• A common trend in fiction is for a character to call a chimpanzee, gorilla, or orangutan a “monkey”, upon which another character, typically a scientist, will vehemently insist that they are “not monkeys, but apes”, and even some documentaries lean into this mindset. Given how omnipresent it is in media, you would be led to believe that monkeys and apes are completely separate groups of primates but in reality, the distinction is far more pedantic, if not entirely misleading. To elaborate, the simians (all the primates closer to humans than to lemurs and other “lower primates”) are separated into two subgroups; Catarrhini (Old World simians) and Platyrrhini (New World simians), and apes are part of the former, meaning all the other Old World simians like baboons, macaques, langurs, colobuses and so on, which are always referred to as “monkeys”, are in fact more closely related to the apes than to the “New World monkeys” like spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys, marmosets, and howler monkeys. In other words, there is no true monkey/ape dichotomy in terms of phylogeny, so saying that "apes aren’t monkeys" is akin to saying that "humans aren’t apes". The persistence of this trope is likely a result of the Humans Are Special mindset being extended to our closest relatives.
• Long tails of monkeys are invariably portrayed as prehensile, even if the work is set in Africa or Asia. In real life, prehensile tails are a trait exclusive to New World monkeys. Also, most monkeys have legs longer than their arms, unlike many cartoons which show them having longer arms than legs.
• Mandrills are often confused for baboons, due to their faces being shaped similarly. Mandrills are larger and have colorful faces and stubby tails, unlike baboons. Mandrills were once considered a species of baboon, but although they are still related to them, scientific studies have found more similarity with mangabeys than with baboons. Mandrills are nowadays considered to be in their own genus, along with a similar but uncommon species of primate known as the drill.
• Many cartoon chimpanzees and gorillas are portrayed with brown fur. Brown and ginger chimpanzees do exist but they are typically black, likewise gorillas are covered in black fur in real life (although western gorillas do have brownish/reddish foreheads).
• Gorillas being portrayed as violent, aggressive, and predatory Xenophobic Herbivores. Real-life gorillas are actually gentle herbivores preferring to solve problems diplomatically; when faced with a threat, gorillas would use bluff attacks and only use violence as a last resort. Ironically, the "violent, aggressive, and predatory" portrayal is actually more fitting with chimpanzees (which have seriously injured humans, practice warfare, occasionally hunt big game and are known cannibals).
• Portraying gorillas as arboreal. Young gorillas may frequently climb trees, but adults do not due to their weight.
• The common portrayal of gorillas beating their chests with clenched fists while letting out a Mighty Roar. Gorillas actually pound their chests with open or cupped hands (their hands can't even form a proper fist), and they make hooting sounds on the rare occasion they vocalize while doing so.
• Adult male orangutans are sometimes drawn without flanges or cheek pads, making them resemble female or juvenile orangutans.
• In an inversion of Inexplicably Tailless, apes may occasionally be depicted as having tails, but no real species of ape has a tail. Chimpanzees and gibbons are most frequently prone to this, due to their resemblance to true monkeys. Similarly, true monkeys that have very short tails (such as mandrills and certain species of macaque) may be given much longer tails than what they have in real life.
• Howler monkeys making high-pitched howls or shrieks. In real life, a howler's call is deep and guttural.

Glires (Lagomorphs and rodents)

• "Rabbit" and "hare" being interchangeable terms. While they belong in the same family (Leporidae), rabbits and hares are two different lagomorphs. Hares are larger than rabbits, and they also have longer ears and hindlegs. Unlike rabbits which retain the same fur color all year long, hares change their fur color from brown to white during the winter.
• Rabbits and hares are often drawn with paw pads, which they don't have in Real Life. Instead they have thick fur which protects the bottom of their paws. Similarly, rabbits and hares also have fur covering the outer parts of their noses, in stark contrast to the hairless dog- or cat-like noses seen in most cartoons. They are also often portrayed as bipeds, when real rabbits and hares are quadrupeds, although they do rear up on their hind legs.
• Despite fiction and popular belief, a "bunny" is not a young rabbit. A young rabbit is a "kitten" or "kit". "Bunny" is an informal term for a cute, often small, rabbit which in turn has turned into the informal term for a baby rabbit.
• Rabbits having just two upper incisor teeth like rodents, which is a side-effect of confusing the two groups. Rabbits actually have four incisors, it's just that the outer pair is smaller and not generally noticeable.
• Rodents are usually drawn with white incisors, despite the fact that most species of rodents (with a primary exception of woodchucks, which actually do have white enamel) have orange or yellow incisors as adults. The reason why most rodents have orange or yellow incisors is because their enamel contains high amounts of iron, which makes their teeth stronger for the purposes of constantly gnawing. White or pale-colored teeth in adult rodents can be a sign of health problems, such as dental issues or malnutrition.
• In media, mice are heroic and kind while rats are sketchy and mean (or dirty and gross). In the case of pets at least, the opposite is true, not counting their related subspecies. Pet mice in general are harder to handle and less affectionate than pet rats. While rats living in sewers may kill mice if food is scarce, those who have socialized with mice don't have such aggression. It's true that wild rats carry diseases, but this is true of all wild animals to some extent, and the reputation of rats as plague-bringers is simply because they're more likely to be drawn to human settlements, where crowding make it easier for germs to grow and spread.
• Rats are often depicted in animation as having a mouthful of shark-like teeth. A real rat has four flat incisors in the front of their mouth, molars in the back, and nothing between. They certainly don't have pointed canines, or any canines at all.
• Portraying tree squirrels as hibernating through the winter. This may be because they are rarely seen in cold temperatures, but in reality they're huddling inside their dens to keep warm while not actually hibernating. Besides, why would they bury nuts for the winter if they're going to sleep until spring when their food will sprout?
• Many cartoon chipmunks, namely Chip 'n Dale, are usually drawn with short tails similar to a deer's. Real chipmunks have longer tails resembling that of a squirrel's, only thinner.
• Porcupines shooting their quills as projectiles, despite the quills being basically modified hair. North American porcupines swing their tails at their enemies so their easily detachable quills dislodge in their faces, while Old World porcupines ram backwards at their enemies.
• Likewise, portraying porcupines (and hedgehogs) as violent, aggressive, and prone to attacking people. Real-life porcupines, while notorious for killing their predators once cornered, are generally shy towards humans when not agitated.
• Lemmings are almost always depicted as killing themselves. While lemmings in real life do jump off cliffs, this is done for the purpose of migration rather than suicide. And given how small and light lemmings are, offing themselves this way seems pointless.

Laurasiatheria

Eulipotyphla (Shrews, moles, and kin)

• Moles being able to tunnel absolutely anywhere, even through solid rock. Moles prefer moist, loamy soil that's easier for their claws to break through. Some species are even known to be quite capable swimmers.

Chiroptera (Bats)

• Cartoons tend to flub the wings of bats, namely the number of fingers. Real bats have hands that eerily resemble those of a human's, with 4 long fingers that support the wing membrane and a small thumb used for walking and climbing.
• Bats being bipedal and taking off by jumping, instead of quadrupedal and vaulting with their wings.
• Portraying or describing vampire bats as bloodsucking. Vampire bats actually make small, harmless incisions on a victim and then lick up the blood.
• Whoever came up with the phrase "blind as a bat" really didn't know anything about bat biology, since most bats have good eyesight.

Ferae (pangolins, cats, dogs, bears, pinnipeds, and kin)

• Confusing pangolins with anteaters or armadillos. The group with the latter two is on a completely different branch of the mammal family tree, but it may come as even more of a surprise that pangolins are most closely related to carnivorans (e.g. cats and dogs).
• Feliforms (cats, hyenas, mongeese, civets, and kin):
  • Hyenas are often referred to as dogs and/or drawn as resembling a dog. Despite their canine resemblance, hyenas are actually more closely related to mongoose which in turn are more closely related to cats.
  • Spotted hyenas are sometimes portrayed as being dumb and exclusively scavengers. Believe it or not, hyenas are among the most intelligent animals on Earth, far smarter than lions, and have demonstrated complex social structures, problem-solving skills, and a good memory. They're also primarily hunters, killing 75% of their prey, while lions scavenge over 50% of their food. Spotted hyenas prefer to eat their prey alive, mostly due to lions stealing their kills (which, contrary to popular belief, happens more often than the other way around). With that said, some species of hyena are indeed primarily scavengers, namely the brown hyena and the striped hyena. By contrast, the fourth living species of hyena, the aardwolf, is an insectivore and doesn't even feed on carcasses.
  • There's the portrayal of the hyena's laugh as actual laughter, or as its main vocalization. In real life, the "laugh" of the spotted hyena is used to express stress or excitement (for example, when hyenas are fighting, or before eating). Spotted hyenas communicate using a wide variety of sounds, including a loud whoop, low-pitched grunts and groans, and a deep moo which is referred to as lowing, but these are rarely acknowledged in media.
  • Many Furry Fandom artists who draw cats draw them with torsos that taper toward the hind legs like dog torsos. Cheetahs may have torsos that look a bit like that, but other cats have more or less parallel torsos.
  • Big cats such as lions and tigers are often drawn with slitted pupils not unlike those of domestic cats, even though in real life big cats have round pupils.
  • Jaguars in cartoons often lack the dots in the center of their rosettes which distinguishes them from leopards, possibly because of confusion between the two big cats. Both jaguars and leopards will also sometimes have solid spots like cheetahs.
  • Similar to the above, jaguars are often drawn with longer tails like on a leopard. Real jaguars have shorter tails, unusual among the species Panthera.
  • Domestic cats being descended from (or at least closely related to) big cats such as lions or tigers. In reality, domestic cats are descended from much smaller, and obscure, wildcats.
  • Cheetahs are often depicted lacking the distinctive stripes on their tails and sides of their muzzles.
  • Portraying tigers as inferior to lions. Tigers are the biggest cats alive today, and one is more than capable of defeating a male lion in a one-on-one fight. That said, a male lion is just as likely to win against a tiger as shown in captive fights. It really depends on the size and strength of the two cats involved.
  • Black panthers being treated as a species. "Black panther" refers to a melanistic or black-furred variant of any species of big cat (though it's usually associated with jaguars and leopards). Don't forget that lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, and snow leopards are all panthers, since they belong to the genus Panthera.
  • It's commonly claimed that lions are the only truly social cats, even by professional sources such as documentaries. Most male cheetahs (but only rarely females) form coalitions (usually with their brothers but sometimes with unrelated males) that stay together for life to hunt, court females, and defend territories together. House cats may bond socially with other cats in the house, or if feral, form colonies in the wild. Tigers sometimes exhibit borderline social behavior; sharing kills (but not hunting together) and overlapping territories and interacting whenever they come across one another. This is in part due to Science Marches On, as for a long time domestic cats especially were thought to be solo animals.
  • All big cats having the ability to roar. Only lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards can do that, but snow leopards (not true leopards but a different species), and clouded leopards (also not true leopards and belonging to a separate genus Neofelis) cannot; pumas and cheetahs also cannot roar. On a similar note, portraying big cats as being able to purr like small cats.
  • Any work that shows a lion pride with more than three adult males or, much worse, fewer females. In reality, a lion pride is essentially a harem; lionesses outnumber the males in a ratio of 3:1, plus a lot of adult males in one pride means a lot of infighting. Additionally, the idea that male lions are poor hunters due to their large manes has been challenged as of late, since young males are kicked out of the pride and have to fend for themselves until they take over a pride. It seems one of the main reasons the male leaves the hunting to the lionesses is that he is saving energy for fighting off intruding males or rival predators such as hyenas.
• Caniforms (dogs, bears, pinnipeds, skunks, mustelids, and kin):
  • Many people mistake kinkajous for primates. Kinkajous are not primates (although they were originally considered such), but a member of the raccoon family within the order Procyonidae.
  • Many a work has depicted ferrets as being wild animals; even a few places where ferrets are illegal (particularly because under the belief that they are "wild animals that will wreck the environment if they get loose") have made this mistake, much to ferret owners' dismay. Ferrets, the pet animal, are a domesticated animal—specifically, domesticated European Polecats (a kind of weasel)—which have been domesticated at least since Ancient Egypt, which some ferret owners unfortunately forget when they "release" them into the wild if they get tired of the ferret, leading to a lot of dead ferrets. It may be mix-up with the wild black-footed ferret, but the latter are highly endangered and generally live only where prairie dogs have a large population. Domesticated ferrets come from European stock, while Black-footed ferrets are uniquely American.
  • The common association of weasels with cowardice in older stories is very odd, since weasels are actually fearless predators preying on animals larger than themselves and taking them down alone. Modern weasels, as well as those weasels used in Basilisk and Cockatrice legends, tend to avoid the "cowardice" association however (though the former also acts similar to a typical Evil-Detecting Dog, sometimes).
  • Generally in Western animation, such as Tiny Toon Adventures, skunk spray is depicted as gaseous rather than fluid and coming from the tail when actually coming from anal glands. It's also likely to be unleashed in just about any situation, never mind that it takes precious time and resources to produce, meaning real skunks prefer to threaten opponents away and won't actually spray unless absolutely necessary.
  • Bears being portrayed as carnivorous (with the exception of the giant panda, which is known for eating bamboo). The most common and well-known bear species (brown and American black bears) are mostly vegetarians; up to 90% of their diet consists of plant matter, and they save eating meat for special occasions. While polar bears are more carnivorous than other bear species, this is due to them evolving in a cold climate with little edible plant life.
  • The giant panda being considered a raccoon rather than a bear. Pandas were once considered to be a relative of the raccoon due to sharing similar traits, until genetic studies confirmed that pandas are bears. That said, bears and raccoons do share a common ancestor.
  • Due to their stubby looking legs, Dachshunds and Corgis are presented as slow dogs who can barely walk, nevermind run. While modern Dachshunds aren't quite as active as they originally were (and are more prone to back issues), both breeds were bred to work (as ratters and herders respectively) and are thus fleet-footed.
  • Traditional portrayals of werewolves, most specifically the Wolf Man, are often guilty of this as they usually contradict wolf biology (except when they don't). Besides having a taste for human flesh (wolves rarely attack humans let alone eat them) and having razor-sharp claws (wolves have blunt claws which they only use as tools for traction or digging), the association of werewolves with the full moon is partly based on the misconception that wolves howl at the moon. Sometimes werewolves will join a pack of normal wolves without discrimination, despite the fact that wolves are hostile towards outsiders. Some works will even show werewolves roaring, which canines are incapable of. However, modern works seem to have caught onto this, portraying werewolves as more benevolent, if not friendlier figures.
  • As pointed out on QI, dogs don't do it Doggy Style: due to the coupling knot, they should be depicted tail-to-tail facing away from each other during climax.
  • All Dogs Are Purebred applying to feral dogs. This isn't exactly impossible but is most prevalent in areas where street dogs aren't commonplace. In places where they are, within a few generations most dogs turn into generic mongrels. These mongrels are usually small or medium-sized dogs with erect ears, and they usually come in shades of brown or tan (though this depends on the area and the types of dogs that are popular there).
  • Wolves as a separate species from domestic dogs. Some examples are due to Science Marches On, but dogs are considered a sub-species of wolf. Some workers regarded them as separate species well into the 2000s, but this view has largely fallen by the wayside.
  • Wolves don't form packs as generally conceived by mass media. Wolf packs tend to be organized like families from the old country, in which the old patriarch is in charge of all his descendants until the family gets so large and tensions so great that one of the kids decides to take his descendants elsewhere. The lay understanding of canine social behavior is based on findings with wolves tested in highly artificial captivity before scientists understood the influences of environment. The findings have generally not been replicated, indicating that the reported structure was more how a particular group of unrelated wolves dealt with captivity. People generalized the findings to dogs because dogs and wolves are closely related.
  • Related, the use of the words alpha, beta and omega in relation to wolves is considered outdated now, the logic being that these words imply a strict hierarchy where lower ranking wolves constantly vie for dominance, rather than the usually unchallenged family unit that a pack is. Wild wolves do not normally fight over dominance, instead they leave and form their own packs. These words are more suited for wolves in zoos and the like, who being unrelated individuals, have the strict hierarchy and vie for dominance like it was once assumed that all wolves do.
  • Works tend to depict stray and feral dogs acting like wolves (or at least their preconception of wolves). This is incorrect as dogs have been bred for thousands of years to not be wolves. Thus, despite being very closely related, they're very different behaviorally and psychologically. For example, research on feral dogs suggests that dogs don't naturally form packs like wolves do. Dogs also scavenge more than wolves and they don't hunt with the same techniques as wolves. It's been described that hunting dogs look more like they're playing than they're killing, as they slash and bite wherever they can grip (unlike wolves, who are more precise when hunting).
  • As All Animals Are Dogs mentions, wolves in media tend to act much like dogs. Dogs, however, act like wolf pups. Many behaviors that dogs do are abnormal for adult wolves, including wagging tails and barking (which wolves seldom do).
  • No, wolves do not howl at the moon. Howling is how wolves communicate with other members of its kind, and they howl just as often during daytime as they do at night.
  • Portraying wolves (or beings based on them) as strictly patriarchal. In real wolves, females do as much hunting as males, and there are even sometimes female pack leaders.

Ungulates (horses and kin, pigs, camels, ruminants, hippos, and whales)

• Perissodactyla (horses, tapirs, and rhinos):
  • There's a myth that horses can't sleep lying down or they'll die. This often results in media always showing horses standing up while sleeping. Horses can, and do, sleep lying down. They can't reach REM sleep standing up.
  • "Wild" horses being portrayed as actually wild animals. Mustangs and brumby are actually feral animals that are descended from horses who got loose or were abandoned. Przewalski's horses are the only truly wild horse species that still exist.
  • Zebras as essentially being striped horses. Despite their close relationship, they are not identical animals. Zebras in fiction often sound like horses; however, real zebras sound completely different. They will also have horse-like tails, despite real zebras having longer tails. It’s also worth mentioning that zebras are more closely related to asses than to horses.
  • Rhino horns are not to be confused with the horns of other animals like cattle, which have a bone core with a keratin covering. The horn of the rhinoceros is actually made of fused hair, and is kept pointed only by wear from constant use. (This is also why rhinoceros horns are useless as traditional medicine - it's essentially nothing but keratin, as though it were powdered fingernail clippings).
  • Rhinoceroses in media will usually be depicted with the violent temperament not unlike that of the common hippopotamus, when they are actually not as dangerous in real life. The white rhinoceros, which is the largest extant rhinoceros, is actually a Gentle Giant most of the time and even social. That said, the black rhinoceros on the other hand is quite aggressive and high-strung, with most rhino attacks on humans being attributed to this species which may be responsible for the bad rep of rhinos. Less mentioned in fiction is the terrible eyesight of rhinos, which is attributed to them charging supposedly without provocation.
• Artiodactyla (Deer, sheep, goats, cattle, giraffes, camels, pigs, hippos, and whales):
  • Christmas movies and TV specials may show female reindeer (a.k.a. caribou) without antlers, or male reindeer retaining their antlers into December. But females of the species need antlers to guard their young from predators, whereas males shed theirs after the rutting season, unless they have been castrated. Older Christmas specials tend to show extremely dainty brown deer that don't resemble reindeer at all. Likewise, cartoons will sometimes portray the females of non-caribou deer as having antlers. Moose are common victims of this.
  • In almost all Christmas-related art or movies, at least for the animated ones, the reindeer tend to resemble Whitetail deer or Blackbuck antelope rather than actual Reindeer, being far too small and delicately built.
  • Christmas works also never show caribou with the correct type of harness for pulling a sleigh. A proper harness places the burden on an animal's shoulders and flanks; in holiday art, they're usually shown dragging Santa along by leads tied to their necks, which would strangle them.
  • The idea that bulls are enraged by seeing red. In reality, it is actually motion (i.e. the waving of a matador's cape) that provokes a bull into charging. Cattle actually cannot see the color red, although they're not completely colorblind as popularly assumed.
  • Cows are often depicted as being able to give milk anytime, regardless of whether they've recently had offspring.
  • Artists may show giraffes bending their necks, when they are actually very stiff. They may also be drawn with an exaggerated neck atop a gazelle-like body, when half of their height comes from their long legs. They will also be drawn with pink tongues, even though real giraffes and okapis have black tongues.
  • Gazelles invariably having large horns. In most species, female gazelles have shorter horns than the males. Works also tend to forget that in some species of antelopes such as impalas and kudus, females lack horns altogether.
  • Pigs being dirty animals who adore filth and mud. When pigs are left in open environments, they keep it clean by animal standards. They roll in mud to keep cool, since they don't sweat like humans do. The reason pigs on farms are confined to small pens is to make them dig up the soil to find roots, since it leaves the soil very fertile.
  • Pigs are commonly thought of as herbivores, when in reality they're omnivores that will eat anything they can so much chew (some crime dramas have caught on to this and feature murderers using pigs to get rid of dead bodies). They're even prone to cannibalism, so they would have no problem seeing pork.
  • Hippos in cartoons almost never have the right teeth, usually having square-shaped canines and lacking the lower incisors. Hippo teeth are also hidden inside the mouth, rather than sticking out (although the lower canines will sometimes protrude out if long enough).
  • Cartoons usually portray the common hippopotamus as a cute, friendly, lovable, and contented animal. In reality, hippos are extremely aggressive and violent, attacking anything that comes within their territory or even their very presence, to the point they're considered the most dangerous large mammals in Africa. That said, the pygmy hippopotamus (which is rarely seen in media and rare in real life anyways) is docile for the most part and will only bite when provoked.
  • Hippos are also almost always portrayed swimming. Despite being semi-aquatic, hippos actually cannot swim and walk underwater instead, since they sink to the bottom.
  • Hippos are commonly thought to eat water plants despite being grazers. Media also tends to forget that hippos are cathemeral and do their grazing at night.
  • Portraying hippos as fearful of crocodiles. In reality, it's the other way around; crocs typically avoid hippos, which are capable of biting crocs in half.
  • Mistaking cetaceans for fish. While it can be argued that all land vertebrates were descended from a kind of fish, no modern fish are even closely related to the ancestors of mammals, let alone cetaceans.
  • There's also those who insist that orcas, or killer whales, are just whales and not dolphins as well. Orcas are dolphins, which are toothed whales, so people are right about them being whales, but wrong about them not being dolphins. (Or those who insist that killer whales are not whales, but dolphins).
  • Confusing porpoises with dolphins. Dolphins have conical teeth and curved dorsal fins, whereas porpoises have spade-shaped teeth and triangular dorsal fins. Also, porpoises have shorter mouths than most dolphins.
  • Cartoons and other works often depict characters entering a whale's mouth and gut, then emerging through the blowhole in a spray of water. Cetaceans' digestive and respiratory tracts are entirely separate, and they expel exhaled air and only a small amount of water from the latter.
  • Whale blowholes are invariably drawn as a single circular hole. Toothed whales have blowholes like this, but baleen whales have two blowholes resembling nostrils. Sperm whales also have blowholes analogous to a left nostril, instead of on the top of the head like how they are always drawn in cartoons.
  • Any large cetacean being accompanied with the "song" of humpback whales unless if it actually is a humpback. Especially jarring when orcas are shown making these noises, despite being literally giant dolphins (they squeak, click or whistle).
  • Forgetting only baleen whales eat krill and plankton. Their baleens are specialized for sifting through water for small animals. If the whale has teeth, it's built for gripping flesh and eating larger animals. Sperm whales are often victims of this error, despite being famed for preying on giant squids.
  • Sperm whales with toothy, cavernous jaws. Real-life sperm whales have thin jaws, with teeth only present on the lower jaw (at least on modern sperm whales, prehistoric sperm whales such as Livyatan have upper teeth as well).
  • Toothed whales being drawn with belly linings, which are only present in baleen whales. The linings are only there to help the baleen whale expand its mouth as it feeds; toothed whales don't need to do this due to feeding on larger prey and ripping into them with their teeth.
  • Portraying the orca as a lesser predator than the great white shark. In real life, orcas are bigger and stronger than great white sharks and the only predator (besides humans and other great whites) that preys on them, with every account of an orca attack on the shark resulting in the entire shark population evacuating the area, including feeding grounds. Even a large great white knows better than to attack an orca, which have a method of killing sharks by flipping them upside-down and hold onto them until they drown. This is more of a case of Science Marches On, as recorded orca attacks on great whites are fairly recent.

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