Somewhere, a Herpetologist Is Crying

Similar to Artistic License – Ornithology, Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying, Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying, and Artistic License – Paleontology, this trope is about writers getting things wrong with reptiles and amphibians.

Since Most Writers Are Human and therefore mammals, people tend to get most of the facts messed up with these two very distinct lineages, whether by making them all scaly and snake-like or entirely green. These errors go as far back as Carolus Linnaeus, who tossed reptiles along with amphibians (and a few fish) into Amphibia. Also, he provided the page quote for Reptiles Are Abhorrent.

Of course, reality is often ignored due to Rule of Funny, Rule of Cool, etc.

Subtrope of Artistic License – Biology. See also Funny Animal Anatomy and Artistic License, as well as Terrifying Pet Store Rat for all those times harmless kingsnakes "play" dangerous snakes in live-action works. Supertrope of Green Gators, Hollywood Chameleons, Removable Shell, and Reptiles Are Abhorrent. For fictional creatures that combine reptilian and amphibian features with fish-like features, see Cold-Blooded Whatever.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The Geico Gecko is obviously not supposed to be entirely realistic, if only because he talks, walks upright and hawks car insurance, but real life day geckos do not have eyelids. In fact, one of the only types of geckos that does is the leopard gecko. Made worse in one commercial when he talks to a non-cartoon leopard gecko and it licks its eye like the type of gecko the mascot is supposed to be. Leopard geckos can lick their eyes, but usually only if there's something in their eye that's bothering them, so this is a double failure.^note Not to mention a small level of Fridge Horror for leopard gecko owners since it suggests that the makers of the commercial intentionally put something in the gecko's eye to make it lick it. This is due to the hash made of the family Gekkonidae in popular culture, since only the (appropriately named) eyelid geckos in the Eublepharinae subfamily can blink, but all eublepharines lack the sticky toe pads of "true" geckos, and most people expect all geckos to be able to walk up walls and blink, not knowing that the two traits are mutually exclusive.
• The "Travelers Assurance" commercial featuring a rattlesnake and a few jackrabbits has the rattlesnake rattle at potential prey (no predator deliberately frightens its prey). Perhaps the snake was only trying to intimidate.

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon:
  • "New Nobita's Great Demon-Peko and the Exploration Party of Five" had Gian getting menaced by a snake, which resembles a gaboon viper but constricts like a python. It is also unrealistically massive, almost rivaling Gigantophis in scale.
  • One of the modern episodes of the 2005 anime has a Komodo dragon become exhausted after a short chase after the gang. While modern lizards usually have a low stamina due to their ectothermy, Komodo dragons are not one of them (their unusually high stamina and speed are two of their well-known traits).
• In the third episode of Excel♡Saga, Tetsuko is poisoned when he's bitten by an anaconda, even though in real life anacondas aren't venomous. Considering the series' nature, this was likely intentional.
• The snake seen in The Vision of Escaflowne is very obviously a constrictor but Hitomi is told that one bite from it will be fatal. While Escaflowne is set in a fantasy world where anything is possible the disparity is still rather jarring.

Comic Books

• In Batman: Year One, Batman uses darts tipped with anaconda venom. Anacondas are nonvenomous constrictors. Might have worked if he was trying to bluff an enemy, something he is known to do, but the story plays it 100% straight.

Comic Strips

• FoxTrot:
  • Jason's iguana Quincy is initially never seen being fed anything other than insects. Eventually the author seems to have caught on and he's been fed fruits and vegetables in some strips.
  • In one strip, Quincy eats chocolate chip cookies with Roger. Chocolate is poisonous to most animals, including lizards.
  • In one of the more recent Sunday strips, Jason attempts to convince Andy to turn on the AC or else the heat will trigger "latent T. rex genes" in Quincy, despite the fact that lizards are not closely related to dinosaurs. Unsurprisingly, Andy is not convinced.
• Played for Laughs with the incredibly stupid crocs from Pearls Before Swine. However, the series does have smart crocodiles such as Larry's wife Patty and their son Junior.
  • On the other hand, Junior is portrayed as a vegetarian, when crocodiles cannot digest plant matter.
  • One Sunday strip describes caimans as "little alligators". The black caiman is even larger than the American alligator and is the largest reptile in the Americas.

Fan Works

• Apprentice and Pregnant features large, blue and yellow snakes in what-is-most-likely a British forest.

Film — Animation

• Kaa hypnotizes Mowgli in The Jungle Book, justified by Rule of Funny, but Kaa is waaay longer than is at all realistic, and able to move (for instance, rotating a constricted victim to free up a loop of body) and even though he's supposed to be some sort of python and he's so thin! Real pythons are extremely muscular and the larger ones get quite thick around the middle, since they need the strength to suffocate their prey.
• Leo:
  • The plot is kicked off when Leo, a tuatara, overhears that he has a lifespan of up to seventy-five years, meaning that he, at seventy-four years old, could die very soon. In real life a tuatara's maximum lifespan is far beyond that (some individuals have been known to live for well over a century), and it turns out he really will live a lot longer than seventy-five, much to his relief. Also a tuatara isn't technically a lizard, but part of an offshoot of reptiles slightly more basal than lizards (of which the tuatara is the only living representative).
  • Leo's identity as a tuatara is a little strange because this isn't a species kept as a pet anywhere (it's rare even in zoos), and is portrayed as native to Florida (they're native to New Zealand, and in fact a hot climate like Florida is actually fatal to them). He's also portrayed being bright green, like an iguana, and being omnivorous, rather than dull, greyish green and purely carnivorous. Leo is occasionally shown with a very long tongue that shoots out, like a chameleon (even though he explicitly states that he's not a chameleon, but strangely, he encounters a female of his species that can change colour), can walk on walls like a gecko, and is shown inflating a throat sac like a frog.
  • Squirtle removes his shell a few times with no problem and even mentions it's a hand-me-down from his sister. In real life, removing a turtle from its shell would kill said turtle, since the shell is fused with its spine and ribs.
• This trope is Averted/Parodied in Over the Hedge. A turtle is a reptile, but often mistaken for an amphibian. The writers knew this and pointed it out multiple times. Also parodied when Verne the turtle hears the exterminator sniffing the air and accurately rattling off a list of of suspected critters before possibly invoking the trope, and then subverting it.
• A strange example in The Princess and the Frog. Louie the alligator is correctly depicted with overlapping upper teeth, but the other gators have crocodile-like interlocking teeth.
• There's a lot of debate whether Brutus and Nero from The Rescuers are crocodiles or alligators. If the latter is true (as the concept art suggests), then they should have their lower teeth hidden inside their upper jaw rather than sticking out. Either way, they should also be black or gray instead of green.
• Speed, the tortoise from The Swan Princess, is portrayed as being slow and clumsy on land but lightning-fast in the water. In real life, tortoises are very poor swimmers.
• Pascal from Tangled for some reason is actually drawn with fixed eyeballs. In real life, a chameleon's eyeballs are independent from its skull, and that allows the entire eyeball to move across its head, giving the chameleon a larger field of vision. This was probably done to make him look more cute.

Film — Live-Action

• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets shows smaller snakes living in the Chamber of Secrets, which is depicted as damp and cold with no access to sunlight. It might suit a Basilisk, but it would not be a satisfactory home for normal cold-blooded snakes. The Basilisk also doesn't look like a snake, as it has eyelids, earholes, a jaw that appears to be fused in the middle and no scutes on its belly. These are all characteristics of legless lizards rather than snakes.
  • After Basilisk has its eyes gouged out by Fawkes, Riddle claims that it can still track Harry via hearing... even though snakes are basically deaf (they have no ears) and instead of detecting actual sound, rely on sensing vibrations transmitted through the jaw. The worst part? In the original novel, Rowling assumed that after losing its eyes, the Basilisk would rather track Harry by his scent, which makes much more sense. However, that part was changed in the movie for no reason at all.
• Love And Monsters: The giant mutant frog is depicted with the long, skinny tongue of a chameleon, instead of the shorter, flatter tongue of an actual frog. It could be explained away by mutation, but it would be odd for a mutated frog to develop a tongue identical to a chameleon’s when its regular tongue would fit the same purpose.
• King Of Snake, being a B-Movie about a giant snake monster took some artistic license with depicting serpents, notably running on All Animals Are Dogs when a regular snake exposed to high-tech diffractor rays grows giant-sized... and somehow eats out the hand of the little girl who adopted it while it's small, even though snakes can't be that docile or easily domesticated. In a later scene the snake's kid owner feeds her giant-sized snake monster pet tomatoes without any issues.
• In Ophelia, Mechtild faked her death by drinking a few drops of snake venom, which caused temporary paralysis and Ophelia does the same, while Gertrude drinks a whole vial to commit suicide. The venom of some snakes can in fact cause paralysis, which can be potentially fatal. Trouble is, venom has to get directly into the bloodstream to be effective, such as via a bite; swallowing venom is usually harmless (though not recommended) unless you have cuts or ulcers in your mouth, throat or elsewhere in your digestive tract. Therefore, it's unlikely that drinking venom would cause paralysis or prove fatal.
• The "coral snake" in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is depicted with huge, viper-like fangs - and coral snakes, though indeed front-fanged, are elapids which means these fangs are fixed, and on the small side (because the snake needs to close its mouth). And the coloration and large size mean it's likely a nonvenomous milk snake. Point moot?
  • Coral snakes outside of the United States do not always follow the "red touches yellow" rule, so it can have banding similar to a kingsnake and still be a coral. The other anatomical errors/exaggerations stand, however.
• Snakes on a Plane is a horrendous violator of biology, and even ignores rules which they mention within the film. The film is not meant to be serious, it is simply silly fun, and the day is actually saved because one character knows Mortal Kombat, but the biology does not even deserve an "F;" it gets an "Incomplete" because it did not even show up to enough classes to qualify as a full-time student:
  • The snakes are shown as shockingly aggressive, actively pursuing prey, whereas most snakes (including those shown in the film) are relatively sedentary; the snakes in the film bite repeatedly for no apparent reason, simply killing without eating the people or defending themselves, and then move to attack and kill other people who are neither a threat nor viable prey. The snakes are described as being so aggressive and violent because they are being stimulated by sexual pheromones, except that snakes are not praying mantids or black widows and do not kill their mates while they have sex. If snakes were to be brought into a violent frenzy when in the presence of sexual pheromones they would require separate pheromones for each individual species, and would be just as likely to attack each other as humans, as any other species would be as much of a threat/competition as the people would.
  • The Burmese python practically growls and flashes fang like an aggressive dog. Then it manages to kill the jerkass in moments, when in reality it would take much longer even if the guy had a heart attack almost immediately. Finally, the python has no problem getting human shoulders down its throat. Assuming it could swallow something that large, it takes quite some time for a snake to work large prey down its throat. At least the python seems to still have been working on its meal when the poor thing got sucked out the window.
• The Yogi Bear movie follows this trope to a T with a turtle that inexplicably sports a long, sticky tongue like a frog or chameleon. Turtles sometimes do have fairly long tongues, but they do not operate like a frog's, and some species actually have the tongue fused to the bottom of their mouth. Granted, the turtle in question is a fictional species and its frog-like tongue is presented as a abnormal trait unique to it. At least they mentioned turtle shells are not removable.

Literature

• Being a children's book, Crictor takes some liberties with snake behavior and biology in order to simplify the story:
  • Madame Bodot's son is said to be studying reptiles in Africa, and he sends her a package containing the titular Crictor the boa constrictor for her to keep as a pet. Although pythons are a species of constrictor snake that lives in Africa, boa constrictors are native to South America.
  • Madame Bodot nurses the young Crictor on bottles of milk to help him grow big and strong — in real life, snakes cannot digest the lactose in milk. Like all snakes, boa constrictors are carnivorous, but Crictor is never seen eating meat (just milk, and later taking afternoon tea with Madame Bodot where he appears to be sipping soda through a straw).
  • Crictor is said to enjoy wriggling in the snow when winter comes around — real snakes are ectotherms (cold-blooded), and would prefer not to be placed in the snow. Snakes that live in habitats where it snows will hibernate to escape the cold, while a Tropical reptile such as a boa constrictor might get very sick if it got too cold.
• In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the snake in the zoo winking at Harry. Snakes don't have eyelids. And he's talking to it although snakes can't hear very well, though that could be a Justified Trope since he was doing it magically anyway. The Basilisk, as a fictional species, is probably exempt from this trope, but it also can hear Harry and is described as ripping and tearing its prey in an unsnakelike manner. Nagini had a lot of behaviors most snakes would never actually do although this may be a result of being a Horcrux. Also, she had the floor of the tunnel approach to the Chamber being covered in skeletons of rats and such. Snakes don't leave skeletons when they eat — unless those rats were killed by the Basilisk's stare and their flesh decomposed.
• Holes:
  • The Warden's nailpolish includes rattlesnake venom, which she claims is "perfectly harmless... when it's dry." This is either Blatant Lies, False Reassurance, or simple bad research, because venoms are actually more potent when they're dried. Once all the liquid evaporates, what's left is the cytotoxins (and possibly neurotoxin, depending on the species). That said, it did leave a very nasty wound when she scratched Mr. Sir with her nails (they had been freshly painted and were still wet).
  • Holes also has a problem with its (entirely fictional) Yellow Spotted Lizards. They are said to be quite venomous, to the point that one bite is a death sentence when the Rattle-Snake bite could be survivable if treated (a kid intentionally provokes a Rattle-Snake at the beginning of the book to get out of Camp Green Lake) and Mr. Sir explicitly says that he keeps his fire-arm for the Yellow-Spotted Lizards. While the Mexican Bearded Lizard and Gila Monster venom is as potent as a Rattle-Snake, they have inefficient delivery systems that relies on chewing a victim to deliver the envenomed saliva rather than injection like a Rattle-Snake. In fact, surviving a bite from both creatures is quite likely (though death can still result, so don't try it at home... at best, you're going to be sick for the next week). The film takes it a step further and depicts the Yellow-Spotted Lizard as having snake-like fangs, while venomous North American lizards venom sacks are located in the lower jaw, not the upper jaw. In both the book and film, the lizards were also quite agile and quick... but the Gila Monster and Mexican Bearded Lizard are rather lethargic in real life. (Well, it was enforced in the film because the lizards were played by bearded dragons, a quicker lizard.)
• The Malloreon: Sadi feeds milk and cheese to his pet snake Zith (and, later, her babies). Granted, Zith isn't even close to a real-world species of snake.
• Linda Davies’ novel, Nest of Vipers, has a snake on the cover. However, the snake pictured is not a viper. It is a scarlet kingsnake which is a non-venomous constrictor. It was probably used because of its resemblance to the venomous coral snake which is also not a viper but recognizable to most people as dangerous ("Red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow").
• Invoked in The Reptile Room with the Incredibly Deadly Viper, which was named by Dr. Montgomery with the sole intention of tricking a number of herpetologists. (The viper was actually very friendly and harmless.) Played straight in that the thing cried at the end of the book.
• In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", the murderer trains a "swamp adder", supposedly the deadliest snake in India, to respond to a whistle and crawl through some ductwork and down a bell pull-cord to bite its victim. There are many problems with this:
  • There is no species of snake called the swamp adder (although it is a rarely-used nickname for the cottonmouth), and at the time the story was published (1892) there were no known adders in India. There is, coincidentally, a viper that fits the description of the speckled band's appearance, Daboia russellii, but see the last point; the venom of this snake would certainly cause conspicuous effects.
  • Snakes are generally hard of hearing, and it is debatable whether one could be taught to respond to a whistle. (This was fixed in the Russian series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, in which the snake is instead trained by tapping to produce vibrations it can feel.)
  • While snakes can crawl up and down solid objects, there's no way one can crawl up a cord.
  • Holmes deduces that the snake was trained by using a saucer of milk as a reward. No snake will drink milk. This appears to be derived from an Indian myth that pouring milk down a snake hole would placate it and bring good luck.
  • Snakes cannot be trained like mammals can. It would require different methodology than typical mammal training, and no one's bothered to put the time and work into psychoanalyzing snakes. While you can target-train a reptile (and most anything else), that would have required the murderer being in the room with the target, at which point no sensible person is going to use a snake.
  • Snakebites are seldom so inconspicuously-placed as the murderer counted upon them being, and an adder's bite would draw further attention to itself by localized swelling, reddish lines beneath the skin, or (in the case of anaphylaxis, the one result that might kill someone this fast) severe inflammation that spreads out from the wound to the face and throat.

Live-Action TV

• In the A.N.T. Farm episode "animal husbANTry", Olive claims that alligators feed exclusively on live prey. Crocodilians can and definitely will scavenge (although, knowing Olive, this may have been intentional malice on her part).
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Shadow" features a blinking cobra. Well, technically it's a giant cobra-demon with arms, but it started off a cobra.
• A video bonus question on Cash Cab identified a reticulated python as an anaconda.
• Even Reality Competition TV shows on Food Network are not safe from this. On Chopped, the contestants were given rattlesnake meat in the appetizer round. On the Confession Cam, one of the contestants outright says "rattlesnakes are poisonous if not cooked well." Surprisingly, the judges don't say much about rattlesnake or about snake anatomy, or the fact that rattlesnake meat is unlikely to contain venom in the first place outside of the head, and even if there is some left it's not harmful if ingested since venom works by being injected directly into the bloodstream and a person's digestive acids will break it down well before it ever reaches it. Somewhat justified: Most rattlesnake meat comes from rattlesnake roundups, which frequently use gassing (pouring gasoline down the hole of the snake's den) in order to collect snakes. Gasoline toxins, therefore, are still present in the meat, along with a great deal of stress hormones. These do not cook out.
• In one episode of Dinosaurs, an iguana was portrayed as an amphibian despite being a reptile.
• The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "King Dinosaur" both averts and lampshades this by having Crow point out that lizards don't stand erect and iguanas are herbivores, to mock the film for using an iguana to pose as a Tyrannosaurus rex.
• Averted in Out of Jimmy's Head. Crocco is actually an alligator in spite of his name, and he does have an overbite appropriate for an alligator.
• Averted (partially, since they used the inexact term "poisonous" rather than "venomous") in True Blood, which has a healer describing Komodo dragons as poisonous. This is true but was only discovered recently: previously, researchers thought that Komodo-dragon-bite victims died because of sepsis from bacteria in the lizards' mouths. Unclear whether the TV writers had heard of the brand-new research or were just making up something that happened to be right.
• Averted in Under the Umbrella Tree. Iggy (an iguana) eats vegetables, and his Trademark Favorite Food is turnips.
• The X-Files: Acknowledged in the episode "Die Hand die Verletzt" when a former member of a Satanic high school PTA (no, seriously) is swallowed by one of his pythons. Scully voices that it shouldn't be possible because eating such a large kill would take days rather than a few hours. It's also played straight when the snake eats the man feet first rather than start with the head.

Music

• The Shel Silverstein song "I'm Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor" is an example because boa constrictors kill their prey before eating them and swallow their prey head first. The snake in the poem swallows its prey feet-first. This may just be Artistic License, as the poem would be much shorter the other way, and owners will sometimes tell stories about how their snakes can sometimes get it backwards.

Video Games

• The snakes in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. The game labels them "cobras", which would make them Misplaced Wildlife as cobras aren't native to Greece, except that they look more like European adders, which are. Except that they use the exact same animation as the cobras in Assassin's Creed Origins, which means that they're adder-looking snakes that rear up in a cobra's defensive posture when disturbed. Whoops.
• EverQuest ended up creating a rather humorous example that reached memetic levels among the player community. Snakes that could kick you. Due to the game mechanics and the class systems, all NPCs in the game are associated with a specific class to simplify their combat abilities. Most NPCs and creatures who just straight up attack you and don't cast spells are the Warrior class, who gain the Kick ability very early on. This lead to funny instances where animals who don't even have legs, like snakes and fish, to kick you every now and then in between their bite attacks. It wasn't long before the kicking issue was fixed, but the developers would bring it back every now and then as a gag. The Shadows of Luclin expansion introduced a completely reworked interface and new player models. As part of the package, every time you zoned over from one area to another, you'd see random messages on the loading screen. One of them was "Teaching snakes to kick."
• The game Pocket Frogs for iOS for some reason had the title frogs hatch from their eggs as miniaturized adult frogs instead of tadpoles (they hatch by popping open their eggshells as if it were a bubble). That's a bit improbable, since very few frogs do so (notably the coquí of Puerto Rico). Worse, though, are the eggs themselves. The eggs' appearance is correct, with their shells being made from jelly with a little black dot inside representing the developing embryo. The problem is that such eggs have to be laid in water otherwise the egg will dry out and die, and the frog nursery doesn't have water...
• In Return to Mysterious Island, Mina digs up sea turtle eggs on the beach when she's desperate for food. The eggs she retrieves are oval-shaped, but real sea turtle eggs are spherical.
• This trope pervades the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
  • In Super Mario Bros. 2, Koopa shells can be pulled out of the ground and used to topple enemies. However, at no point are actual Koopa Troopas of any kind ever seen as enemies — it's possible that Mario and friends are actually pulling up part of a deceased and buried Koopa Troopa to throw at everyone else.
  • In Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island, shell-less Koopas resemble little shirtless humans.
  • Rattly from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest is labeled as a rattlesnake, but he lacks the rattle at the end of his tail which gives the species their namesake.
• The alligators from Where's My Water? not only have crocodile-like mouths but also curling tails similar to those of chameleons.

Web Animation

• In Wolf Song: The Movie, a character gets bit by a tiny, plain yellow snake. It's mentioned that the snake wasn't venomous and that it's supposed to be a python. To make it more off, the characters live in a North American or European-seeming forest.

Webcomics

• In Kit N Kay Boodle, most of the biological oddities can be put down to creative license. However, Skamm (the current antagonist) and his male love interest are supposed to be ridgetail monitors. The external genitals and hair are par for the course in a furry comic, but they also have external ears. Combine this with the fact that Skamm's a lawyer and it's impossible to think of him as being anything other than a weasel.

Web Original

• In the Dream SMP story The Wilbur Van (better known as Hitting on 16), it's noted that a king cobra "almost brought a sour end to the efforts" Wilbur was making towards handling his burger van. Other than a king cobra being blatantly out of place where the story is set, unless Wilbur was accidentally intruding on its nest and it was defending its eggs, the snake should not be bother him at all, as they are typically a very placid and non-aggressive (albeit still venomous) species and tend to avoid humans in general.
• One Not Always Right tidbit had a man in a petshop try to have a staring contest with one of the pythons for ten minutes before the owner had to remind him that snakes can't blink.

Western Animation

• Amphibia, with its heavy emphasis on Frog Men and other amphibians, has examples such as tadpoles shedding their tails and salamanders (such as Andrias, who is based on a Chinese giant salamander) being referred to as newts.
• Played with in an episode of Animaniacs, where a chameleon is subjected to multiple rapid background changes, changing his own colour and pattern to match. The poor lizard is given a plaid background, and loudly refuses to match it.
• On Batman: The Animated Series, Bruce Wayne realizes where Killer Croc may be hiding when a keeper at the zoo tells visitors that crocodiles make their lairs in underwater caves. Crocodiles do not make or occupy "lairs". They do build nests and wallows, but in warm sunlit spots suited to keep their metabolism lively.
• Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!:
  • Averted in one episode when one of the clues Velma used to expose the villain posing as Sobek was that the true Sobek has the head of a crocodile and therefore the lower teeth should be visible when his mouth is closed, but the fake Sobek had an overbite as the villain instead used the head of an alligator from a museum exhibit.
  • Lampshaded in another episode where Fred and Daphne refer to an alligator as a lizard and are called out by Velma for it.
• In the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Kiwi's Big Adventure", a crocodile gets its jaws tied shut and frees itself... by forcing its jaws open. There is a reason why crocodilians are rendered helpless when their mouths are tied (or taped) shut: the muscles that open their jaws are much weaker and smaller than the ones that close them.
• In the Franklin movie, Franklin and the Green Knight, Mrs. Turtle was shown pregnant, rather than Harriet hatching from an egg. Forgivable, however, in that the movie is meant to teach small children about dealing with a new sibling, which might have gotten somewhat lost in a more accurate depiction of turtle biology.
• One episode of the 2006 edutainment series Im An Animal had a crocodile with a bizarre dragon-like diamond shape at the end of its tail, as well as an alligator-like overbite.
• Averted in Jackie Chan Adventures in the episode "Snake Hunt" when a cameraman blinds a giant snake by shining the light on his camera in its eyes, commenting on it by saying "Hello! I'm blinding it; snakes don't have eyelids!"
• One episode of Justice League had The Flash attempt to stop the Heart of Darkness, a purple crystal that enclosed the vengeful spirits of an evil ancient race of snake people called the Ophidians who attempted to destroy humanity by possessing anyone who touched it. Also counts as Dark Is Evil as the Ophidians worshiped the moon and preferred the night over the light, which transfers over to the spirits' possession being broken through intense light and main attempt to destroy humanity by destroying the sun. Of course any herpetologist will tell you that since snakes are cold-blooded, they need warm environments to increase their metabolism as they can't regulate their own body heat. Cold environments like the sunless night would make them more sluggish.
• Krypto the Superdog: Lex Luthor's pet Iguana and Harmless Villain Ignatius often gets himself into trouble using the Phlebotinum or technology of the week to catch an elusive bug or make them bigger, or in another episode, using a time machine to go to the past and try to eat a dinosaur egg. In reality iguanas are complete herbivores, as any protein is harmful to their health. Although they may accidentally eat a bug or two in the wild, they never actively hunt for anything other than leafy greens, fruits, or vegetables.
• The Lion Guard:
  • Recurring cobra character Ushari is at first depicted without external hood markings, but in an episode where his species is identified as an Egyptian cobra (Naja haje), he is suddenly depicted with the hood markings of an Indian cobra (Naja naja). When he bites Bunga, Ono recommends sucking the venom out, an antiquated, useless, and even potentially dangerous treatment for snakebite (although that one could be chalked off as Ono's own mistakes: those are talking animals in a human-less, time-unspecified environment, so they might not know it's useless). In another episode, Ushari is shown constricting Bunga to restrain him. Very few venomous snakes do this and cobras are not one of them. He also has eyelids, something real snakes don't have.
  • Some of the crocodiles, most notably Makuu, are portrayed having only their upper teeth show when they close their mouths as if they are alligators. It gets jarring in that others, Pua and Kiburi in particular, are correctly shown with interlocking teeth.
  • "The Rise of Scar" introduces a group of skinks which do not resemble any known African species. Mainly because their colors and patterns are much too stylized.
  • Zig-zagged in "The Bite of Kenge". While they got it right that monitor lizards possess venom, the venom in that episode is portrayed as simply causing temporary paralysis as opposed to also inserting anticoagulants like in reality. Though that could have been deliberate to make the show kid-friendly.
  • "Undercover Kinyonga" perpetrates the myth that chameleons change their color to match their surroundings. Real chameleons also cannot change color rapidly like Kinyonga does in the episode.
  • The biggest offender comes in the latter part of Season 3, where Ora the Komodo dragon is able to stay active in cold weather with no signs of entering into lethargic stupor.
• Shouldn't Baby Kermit on Muppet Babies be a tadpole? Oddly enough, his nephew Robin is actually portrayed as (a talking) one.
  • There was at least one time in the show when he referred to having been a polliwog (synonymous with tadpole) at some time in the past. This leads to a bit of Fridge Brilliance; if he's not really a baby like all the others, perhaps that's why he's often the Only Sane Man.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Gummy, Pinkie Pie's pet alligator, is depicted with a snout more similar to that of a crocodile and a forked tongue akin to monitor lizards. And then there's the fact that he's toothless. "Not Asking for Trouble" also showed he is uneffected by cold weather despite being an alligator and thus ectothermic, which makes all the more egregious when previous episode "Tanks For the Memories" accurately showed a cold-blooded reptile becoming dormant when temperatures drop. Of course, Gummy doesn't seem to be any more normal than his owner is.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Alligators are drawn as more closely resembling crocodiles (i.e. V-shaped snouts, lower teeth visible when mouth is closed). "Druselsteinoween" had a gator with a more correctly shaped snout, but unfortunately still has interlocking teeth. The intro of "OWCA Files", however, briefly showed gators with proper overbites, but the ones that appear later on are given crocodile-like mouths.
  • "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer" has a cave salamander that is colored more like a surface-world salamander and has fish-like gills. Real cave salamanders are usually a pale-pink and have feather-like gills not unlike those of a young salamander or an axolotl. Although they receive credit for pointing out the features real-life cave salamanders have, namely external gills and lack of eyes.
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • Filburt is a turtle with a toothy lizard-like mouth rather than a beak. In the episode "Nothing to Sneeze At", he contracts an amphibian disease despite being a reptile.
  • The Chameleon Brothers look more like dinosaurs than chameleons.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Bart vs. Australia" had American bullfrogs become a pest to Australia by devouring corn crops, despite bullfrogs being carnivores. ^note This parodied cane toads, which are a notorious real-life invasive species in Australia. They still aren't herbivores and don't affect crops directly (in fact, they were introduced as an alternative to pesticides), but they do breed explosively, poison their predators, and over-compete with native insectivores..
  • Alligators, namely Captain Jack from "Kill the Alligator and Run", are drawn with the lower teeth sticking out the sides of their mouths. An alligator's lower teeth fits underneath the upper jaw giving it an overbite. They are also colored mostly green or yellow, which alligators don't come in (although "Havana Nice Weekend" showed alligators colored a more realistic brown).
  • In "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", Lucas stops Lisa from stepping on a rattlesnake egg. Rattlesnakes are live-bearers.
  • Lampshaded in "Stop! Or My Dog will Shoot!" when Bart dares Lisa to touch his new pet python Strangles.
    Bart: Hey, Lis, you want to touch Strangles? He's not slimy at all. He's scaly.
    Lisa: (touches Strangles) Eww! He is slimy!
    Bart: That's because I soaked him in slime!
  • Snakes are often portrayed with fangs, including ones that shouldn't be venomous such as pythons and boa constrictors.
• Static Shock once fought several unnamed snake-bangbabies at the beginning of the episode "Junior." They appeared as being cobras with snake arms and rattlesnake tails. One of them tries to attack him from behind, but gives himself away through his rattle. In Real Life, rattlesnakes only use their rattles as a defense mechanism by warding off potential predators. Similar to Roar Before Beating. Possibly justified in that the snake-men were implicitly mutated humans.
• In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons of the Eighties and Nineties the Ninja Turtles were often called amphibians (even by themselves). A tagline for one of the movies also called them "America's favorite amphibians." Turtles are reptiles, of course.
  • One episode even used "We're amphibians, so we can breathe underwater," as a plot point, which is double-wrong - most amphibians can breathe underwater through their skin, but not all of them.
  • On the other hand, developing the ability to breathe underwater would one of the milder examples of Artistic License – Biology taken during their Superhero Origin Story.
• One episode of T.U.F.F. Puppy has The Chameleon trying to get rid of the cold winter by raising the temperature until it reaches 151 degrees, which will fry everyone but him because he's a "cold-blooded lizard". In reality, that extreme heat will fry him worse than a warm-blooded animal since he cannot release body heat by himself.

Real Life

• There is an Urban Legend wherein a woman keeps waking up to discover her husband's pet python is stretching itself out alongside her in bed. She's also concerned because it was refusing to eat. She calls a herpetologist to ask about the behavior, and he tells her, "Get out of the house now!": The python, he tells her, was measuring her up in preparation to eat her. In reality no snake (or, for that matter, no predator at all) would ever waste valuable time or the element of surprise in trying to "measure" their prey. They'll figure that out when they actually get down to the eating part. If a python or other snake refuses to eat, take it to the vet or rehome it at once. Self-starvation is their method of suicide.
  • It should also be worth saying that, since snakes (and, by that extension, other reptiles), are cold blooded and can't really make too much their own body heat, warmth attracts them, which makes the legend all the more ridiculous.
• Sadly, most wildlife-rehabilitation facilities have had to treat turtles with cracked shells, whom some idiot tried to extract from their "little house" in ignorance of the fact that the shell is part of the animal's skeleton. A case of Television Is Trying to Kill Turtles in action.
  • Turtles with damaged or shattered shells (shells can also become misshapen due to disease) now have a chance thanks to groups like the Animal Avengers and the good techies at Colorado Tech University, where they've developed artificial shells using 3D printing.
• The idea that snakes somehow possess a hypnotic gaze probably stems from a few things. The first is that snakes lack eyelids, so their unblinking stares can be kind of creepy to humans. The second comes from stories of people who witness small animals sitting very still when snakes are nearby. This is standard prey behavior with just about any possible threat, freezing up so that predators who aren't already aware of them might not notice (if that doesn't work, run). This sort of behavior may be partly responsible for the myth of the Gorgon Medusa. And while we're on the subject, snake charmers don't really charm snakes with music (since snakes don't hear things the same way we do), the snake is just following the motion of the charmer's flute and hands. In effect, the snake charmer is hypnotising the snake.
• Many people will see a small tortoise minding its business and assume it's stranded on land, then toss it in the nearest body of water thinking it'll swim away, when in actuality the poor thing will drown since most tortoises can't swim. Here's a hint: if you see an animal not in any apparent danger, leave it alone.
• It's a common belief in some parts of the world that snakes enjoy milk, and will even "steal" milk from cattle and goats. Snakes are in fact entirely lactose intolerant; they're commonly found around livestock barns because they're warm places that contain lots of rodents. Snakes will only drink milk if they are extremely dehydrated.
• Gendered languages can do weird things to people's perception of animals sometimes. In French for example, there is a non-negligeable amount of people (especially children) who think toads and frogs are a male/female pair rather than distinct species, due to "crapaud" being a masculine noun and "grenouille" being a feminine one (regardless of their sex).

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