What animal looks different in real life to what you expected?

Steller Sea Lions, especially the bulls, are stunningly large; I always expect them to be California-Sea-Lion-size.

 

Southern Cassowary. Had this whole idea of A JP movie Raptor and saw this beautiful bird. I thought, this bird looks pretty harmless. Then it kicked the wooden door and the claw came through. I peed a little.

Storr's Monitor. Cute little odatria. Figured it'd be like others. It ran up my arm being all cute-like and backflipped down towards my hand and proceeded to try and remove my thumb. Vicious buggers.

Will agree with the Vegan on Steller's Sea Lion Bulls.

Jaguar. Weren't that big. I expected more. Reminded me of a Bully in stature. It bit into a boomer ball and carried it around. Made me think of a skull or something. Respect.

Fisher. Cute little fur ball. I expected something larger and always aggressive. They were extremely lazy animals. Laying in hollows in their exhibit trees. That was, until a groundhog found its way in. Didn't last long. The male and female had upper and lower halves across the exhibit and were devouring the innards. The female had her head buried deep inside and it looked like she was the upper half of a costumed animal.

Sphaerodactylus sp. Micro Geckos. I had seen some on a surplus list and ordered some. I received a box with viles that look like they held moss. Was not expecting them to be that small. Grabbed a vile and opened it in an area that was uncontained. Something shot out the end of the vile leaving a mossy trail. Much like a circus performer in a cannon. Trying to find the gecko was like the movie Honey I shrunk the kids. Ended up finding the gecko and more in one of the ficus trees five months later. Good stuff.

Polar Bear. Viewed across moats or behind glass or mesh is one thing. They're still large. Being beside an animal under anesthesia, was something else. Comparing hand to paw size and that blocky head attached to that elongated neck. One can never really appreciate until up close. Under sky light, moving the clear fur as it fell back into place can see how layered it gives the impression of being white. The shoulders once felt, one could appreciate the knocking on steel door to holding. His knock was like ramming a steel I-beam into the door.

Gorillas. Their hands are fascinating. The size of the digits and what they can do is amazing. Be so gentle and peel a grape, yet unscrew a 24" bolt in cement like it was nothing. All barriers were sunken as were the bolts under a concrete finish. Didn't stop the fecal flying fifty mph.

 

It strikes me that whilst there is quite a marked difference in size between Siberian and Sumatran Tigers, Lions and Leopards really show minimal difference in size from one form to another.

 

Yes, I'm resurrecting this thread! Plains zebras and kudus are smaller than I thought they would be. I have seen plains zebras before but at more of a distance. At the Como Zoo the male was very close to the path and he wasn't much bigger than a donkey. The females also weren't very big. Quite a size difference from Grevy's zebras. The only other time I had seen kudus was at a distance in Disney's Animal Kingdom and seeing them up close they were smaller than I thought they would be.

 

My first red titi surprised me too. I expected it to be as big as a Goeldi's monkey.

 

Tasmanian devils were larger than I expected. Orangutans manage to surprise me in being both larger and smaller than I expect- presumably, it's the difference between the two species. Calamian deer were larger than I expected.

 

I saw a manta ray in the wild last summer. Having one swim under you gives you a full appreciation for its size. The same goes for green sea turtles.

 

Leather back sea turtles (WAY larger than I expected)
Polar bears (larger than I expected)
Coati (bigger than I expected)
Malayan tapir (smaller than I expected)
Leopard seals (WAY smaller than I expected)
Hump back whales (WAY smaller than I expected)
And Australian fur seal (larger than I expected)

 

I grew up watching Animals of Farthing Wood - and thus was quite surprised to find that weasels and stoats are as tiny as they are in reality.

 

funny - that's the reverse of how I saw them.

 

I always knew that clouded leopards were small, but just how small really surprised me when i finally saw one in person I was expecting maybe snow leopard/puma size or just under but they're actually more comparable with a serval or lynx

 

Slightly off topic, bu what was the premise on that series? It sounds vaguely familiar. And I agree, weasels are pretty little.

 

Adaptation of the novel of the same name; basically a collection of animals from a woodland travelling to a new home in a wildlife park and the trials they encounter on their journey. It was famous as it came from that same era of animation as Watership Down and Plague Dogs in that characters did die - in fact in the TV series quite a few die (although not as dark as the other two films - Farthingwood had a brighter style of animation).

The group was led by a fox (later two foxes), a badger and a toad (who knew the way to the park); though it also had a multitude of animals small and large (including grey squirrels; an interesting choice given that the rest of the cast were primarily native or naturalised species).

The intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWcCYu8glNo

 

The 'blue foxes' were apparently based on Silver (Red) Foxes, not Arctic Foxes (in the books they're just another batch of Red Foxes).

And if I recall, on TV at least the newts' deaths were left deliberately ambiguous - fire swept through the area they were left in but the possibility of them escaping via water was left open.

The pheasant bit was grim, in context, as they were shot one after the other, with the second having seen the first cooked...

 

I'd never really thought about this before, but many of these suggestions are accurate. In particular, manta rays were smaller than I expected (Willard Price's "barn doors" anyone?), whilst beavers and giant otters were much larger. I blame the ASCOs.

The big one, though (literally and figuratively): tamandua. Despite having seen them in many zoos, I was shocked at the size of wild male tamanduas. They're massive! Definitely a species where in situ observations change your opinion of its captive husbandry.

Sounds like your 2016 predictions thread, Dave

 

It sounds like Game of Thrones of the animal kingdom!

 

I find that I perceive that a specimen in the wild always looks a size larger than one of the same species in captivity. It's not exactly an optical illusion and it certainly can really be true in some circumstances - but I think it's an the effect of the effort and concentration which you need to see a species in the wild.

Alan

 

Yes, I think I get that, but I've never found the effect so pronounced as in tamandua. Possibly it was the shock of seeing them so mobile.

Actually, you've got me thinking now about wild animal sightings and it seems to vary. I remember being really struck by the size of cape buffalo, smooth-coated otter, orca and capercaillie, but others surprised me by how small they were, eg. pine martens, leopards and tamarins.