History Main / MisplacedWildlife

* The Wiki/SCPFoundation’s [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2761 SCP-2761]], a genetically modified pipefish that was released in the Everglades and adds genetic material from other animals to its genotype, apparently has whooping crane DNA despite that species [[https://myfwc.com/media/14255/whoopingcrane-map.jpg?format=webp&quality=65 not being found in that part of Florida]].

** A famous recent example are the "cocaine hippos" of Colombia. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar had built a private zoo with various wild animals imported from all over the world, with the hippos allegedly being his favorites. After his death the animals were all transported to more legitimate zoos. All except the hippos, since the government lacked the resources to move such huge animals. The hippos proceeded to break out of their enclosure and take over the rivers of Colombia. While the government initially wanted to kill the hippos (which can be very dangerous to humans, to say nothing of their environmental impact), they're actually very popular among the Colombian people and thus the current plan is to tranquilize and castrate them so they can't reproduce.

** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_parakeet Monk parakeets]] are a particularly notable example -- between being popular pets and fairly hardy in temperate or warmer weather, monk parakeets thrive in Florida, in isolated colonies in several other major American cities -- including Chicago -- and most of Mediterranean Europe. Technically these are "introduced" rather than misplaced -- they were released as pets or escaped on their own and have become feral versus winding up in the wrong place due to some natural phenomenon. This is unfortunately pretty common, as evidenced by the ''European'' Starling being ubiquitous across North America and the also European House Sparrow now being one of the most numerous birds on the continent, despite the latter's declining numbers in countries it is native to according to its article on [[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} That Other Wiki]]. Amazingly, both of these species were only introduced to North America in the last 150 years or so. A story mentioning flocks of House Sparrows in New York City would have qualified for this trope as being wrong not that long ago.

* ''Series/PowerRangersJungleFury'' (emphasis on '''Jungle'''), which sees the usage of a tiger, jaguar, cheetah, lion, chameleon, elephant, bat, shark, gorilla, penguin, antelope, wolf, and rhino. ''Power Rangers'' has done this for a long time, even when Saban ran the series: the original ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' had 7 Dinozords, [[StockDinosaurs only three of which were actually legitimate dinosaurs]]. At least ''Jungle Fury'' was originally planned to be named ''Beast Fist'', so it made somewhat of a bit of sense. ''Series/PowerRangersWildForce'' and ''Gaoranger'' might better be considered an AnachronismStew, since it's clear that the animals they chose were all over the place, jungle, desert, woodland, etc., and had no real one location, like a Jungle, Forest, etc. The only time Wildlife gets misplaced were with the animal-based weapons of the Jungle Sword (Lion, Tiger, Eagle, Shark, Bison) and Jungle Blaster (Falcon, Deer, Giraffe, Rhino, Armadillo.)

** The saber-toothed cats of the Oros valley (set in Central Europe) are based on American ''Smilodons'', [[StockDinosaurs as is common in media]].

* ''Series/{{The 100}}'', set in [[AfterTheEnd what was once the United States]], has an episode where characters are attacked by a [[NuclearNasty (possibly mutated)]] KillerGorilla. Since the gorilla's home seems to be the ruined remains of a zoo, it's probably meant to be descended from zoo gorillas who survived the nuclear war.

See also NoisyNature, IncorrectAnimalNoise, AnachronisticAnimal, DiurnalNocturnalAnimal, ArtisticLicensePaleontology, ArtisticLicenseOrnithology, SomewhereAMammalogistIsCrying, SomewhereAHerpetologistIsCrying, TerrestrialSeaLife, and PolarBearsAndPenguins.

** ''WesternAnimation/MulanII'' featured skunks and several other North American wildlife pestering the main characters during one of the songs from the film in what appears to be an Asian setting. It also has a brown bear, the range of which ''barely'' extends into China, but not the part of China where the movie is set.

* ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'' has an elderly Galapagos tortoise living in ancient China as one of the film's main characters, while the sequel featured evil [[KillerGorilla gorillas]] (native to Africa). The tortoise at least is justified, as his backstory has him being born in the Galapagos Islands and eventually traveling to China. In general, ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'' greatly averts this trope. Especially in the [[WesternAnimation/KungFuPandaLegendsOfAwesomeness tv show]], where the wildlife is ''so'' accurate that you [[SeldomSeenSpecies probably won't recognize some of it]]. In all fairness, the animals are highly anthropomorphized and live like humans. It's not unreasonable to suggest that, like humans, they moved around a lot, especially after acquiring new forms of transportation such as boats and carts.

[[caption-width-right:350:"I ''knew'' [[WrongTurnAtAlbuquerque I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque."]]]]

* At the end of ''Film/AlexanderAndTheTerribleHorribleNoGoodVeryBadDay'', the Cooper family discovers an array of UsefulNotes/AustralianWildlife in their backyard, including kangaroos, wallabies, an emu, a cockatoo… and an American alligator.

* ''Film/NineteenSeventeen:'' A loon call can be heard when the soldiers enter the deserted trench. Loons are native to North America, not Western Europe.

* ''Film/BringingUpBaby'' has a leopard from South America. Leopards are old world cats, found in Africa and Asia. South America is the domain of jaguars. The original short story identified Baby as a "panther" (i.e. jaguar), but a leopard happened to be available for filming, so the species was changed but they forgot to change her origin in the script (or more likely, didn't realise they had to).

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLionKing1994'' came close to avoiding this trope. That would be if it only wasn't for a line of leaf-cutting ants, native to South America. "I Just Can't Wait to be King" also features what appear to be spider monkeys (also South America) and anteaters (though perhaps they were meant to be aardvarks), though since it's the film's DisneyAcidSequence, it's debatable how much it counts. [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKingIISimbasPride The sequel]] also slips up by putting an exclusively rainforest-dwelling Okapi in the savanna… although it ''is'' an African species, just from the wrong part of Africa. [[WesternAnimation/TheLionKingOneAndAHalf The midquel]] also has Timon mentioning snapping turtles, even though those live in North America. If you ''really'' want to split hairs, meerkats (Timon's species) live only in Southern Africa in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, while Mandrills (Rafiki's species) are restricted to an area of western Central Africa comprising Equatorial Guinea and parts of Cameroon, Gabon and Congo. The trope ends up being played for laughs in the Look-And-Find adaptation in the first part. What else would some call a kangaroo, a red fox [[note]]One of the places they are found in is North Africa.[[/note]], a penguin [[note]]The African or Jackass penguin is found in Namibia and South Africa.[[/note]], a horned owl, a striped skunk, and a giant panda bear in the wilds of Africa anyway?

* More a lampshading than a parody, but in the Rankin and Bass's Christmas special ''WesternAnimation/SantaClausIsCominToTown'', set apparently in northern Germany, Kris Kringle (not yet named Santa Claus) meets a penguin who's trying to find the South Pole. Kris immediately says that the penguin is about lost as he could get.

* In the ''LetsPlay/TwitchPlaysPokemon'' saga, Pokemon [=FireRed=] was put through a "randomizer", allowing any Pokemon knowing any moves to appear anywhere. This has resulted in Feebas, one of the most elusive freshwater fish, to appear in ''the tall grass of Viridian Forest''.

* An in-story example of this can be seen in the ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' episode "Trespass". The creatures the native Talz are riding throughout the episode are Narglatch, fan-tailed cat-like creatures that are native to Naboo. Not only the wrong climate zone (Naboo is mostly tropical), but the wrong '''planet'''. What's even worse is the fact that since the Talz are not advanced enough to have space travel, so the appearance of the Narglatch could not be explained by the Talz having brought them to the planet. Furthermore, the Talz themselves are from another planet. This tends to happen a lot not only on ''The Clone Wars'', but in the Star Wars universe in general. On the series, it's somewhat justified in that they have a limited number of CG models and have to re-use creatures on several planets.

* Monkeys. The cutest monkeys, the ones with the round faces and prehensile tails, are exclusive to the New World. Old World monkeys have long, wrinkly, often brightly colored faces and bare, often colourful, butts with non-prehensile (most macaques, baboons and the colobus) or vestigial (some macaques, the drill and mandrill) tails, so any film in Africa or Asia featuring a cute little monkey hanging by its tail will annoy a naturalist like a [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespearean]] costume at Myth/KingArthur's court annoys an English historian.

** The Bugs Bunny short WesternAnimation/FrigidHare has a penguin at the South Pole. Penguins are only found along coasts, not far inland. In a human example, the Eskimo hunting him is on entirely the wrong end of the planet.

* Despite including a parody of this trope (listed below) Franchise/{{Disney|AnimatedCanon}}'s ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}'' messed up by having lemurs (native only to Madagascar) and a green tree python (native only to Indonesia, New Guinea, and Australia) in mainland Africa. At least they put a leopard in the place of the book's lion, which, given the jungle setting, is much more appropriate. The LicensedGame on the other hand, turns this trope [[ExaggeratedTrope Up to Eleven]]. Most of the enemies Tarzan has to avoid are misplaced, from South American toucans, macaws and squirrel monkeys to ''piranhas'' (yes, the game plays this example straight after the movie it's based on parodies it). The ring-tailed lemurs return from the movie, as do the vicious baboons; they're some of the ''only'' African enemies encountered. ''Tarzan 2'' features giraffes, wildebeests, and gazelles in the jungle. ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfTarzan'' had blue-and-yellow macaws and bald eagles (or perhaps the very similar-looking African fish eagle, which still doesn't live in jungles) in Africa, as well as the ring-tailed lemurs from the movie. There's also savannah animals like the aforementioned giraffes, zebras, spotted hyenas, and briefly what looked like a lioness (even after the original movie averted this) living in the jungle.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonLegendsArceus'' takes this UpToEleven with not just regionally but ''temporally'' misplaced wildlife; every so often, space-time distortions will occur that summon wild Pokémon that aren't native to Hisui yet, such as [[PreHistoria Shieldon and Cranidos]] (already extinct by events of the game), [[CyberSpace the Porygon line]] (computers are still a fantasy in this era), and Johtonian Sneasel (Sneasel have a [[UndergroundMonkey regional form]] in this era), plus your starter Pokémon (which were brought to Hisui by Professor Laventon from Johto, Unova, and Alola). There's also a few Alolan Vulpix, but these ones are justified as specifically belonging to a settler from Alola - caught Pokémon, not wild.

* Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/{{Spellsinger}}'' series takes place in a fantasy world where all mammals, birds, amphibians and turtles are sentient. Few of the animal species he encounters should be living on the same continent, let alone in the same village. At one point, after having met Australian animals, Jon Tom goes to a place where Australian animals exclusively live. Even there, the habitats ''within'' Australia are inextricably mixed together.

** A picture book based on the show apparently showed American Robins living on the Island of Sodor, which is supposed to be located between the real-life islands of Man and Britain.

* The ''ComicStrip/{{Popeye}}'' cartoon "Wild Elephinks" has Popeye encountering a ''moose'' in the jungle. He's also seen fighting bears and squirrels in the climax.