Misplaced Wildlife: Difference between revisions

Notorious in the case of elephants for scenes in [[Darkest Africa]], since the only trained elephants available tend to be Indian, not African.

 

 

Also, scary things like snakes and spiders will consist of whatever the pet store had in stock. Never mind where these animals live. Never mind if they're even really dangerous either.

 

 

 

Occasionally, a movie or TV show will attempt to justify [[Misplaced Wildlife]] by identifying an animal onscreen, such as that White-throated Sparrow, as [[Lampshade Hanging|something ''completely'' different]] - even if it's a species that looks nothing like the creature onscreen.

** A related trope is any horror movie using rats for a grossout or [[Cat Scare]]. The rat will often be patterned, frequently be obviously a juvenile fresh from the pet store, and will ''always'' nonchalantly stare at the actor/camera instead of the instant fight or flight response that makes wild rats so unnerving.

* The calls of the Kookaburra and the Indian Blue Peacock most often embellish the soundtracks of Hollywood jungle movies.

* As can be seen below, many live-action works that need monkeys will use Capuchin monkeys, even if it's not set in Central or South America. This may be justified by the relative intelligence of the Capuchin which makes it easy to train, as well as other factors such as audience appeal or obtainability. Doesn't stop primatologists and the like from facepalming at works that place wild Capuchins outside of the New World, though.

* Most films with "dangerous" spiders making an appearance show tarantulas, or other similar scary-looking to a layman, but non-venomous spiders, in part because they look big and scary, and partially because they show up better on the screen. Presumably they're also used to limit the risk of crew-members getting poisoned.

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* ''Rascal the Raccoon'' is a 1977 anime series with a main character that is a raccoon. At the time it was very popular, leading to around 1,500 raccoons that were imported as pets each year after the success of the anime series, so it became something of a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]].

* The main island of Japan hosts a sort of urban-dwelling dove similar to a morning dove with a very distinctive call: ''hoot-hoot / low grumble.'' This call is heard in ''[[Kaleido Star]]'' even though the beginning of the story is set in [[Los Angeles]].

* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' has, among other things, tigers in Africa. When the author found out that tigers don't ''live'' in Africa, he admitted to not doing the research... and then, since it's a [[Gag Series]], lampshaded it in a flashback in a later chapter by portraying an African savanna with such diverse species as pandas, unicorns, dinosaurs, and a "dragon" that looks rather like a person in a costume.

* This is brought up in ''[[Pet Shop of Horrors|Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo]]'', in a chapter where D points out to Wu Fei that many of the animals that are considered normal in Japan were actually imported from other countries.

* The "Best Wishes" arc of the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime apparently featured Pikachu in the Unova region, which ironically did not feature such Pokémon (or ''any'' Pokémon from the first four generations) there. This was only because Ash brought the Pikachu with him, there have yet to be any appearances of the 493 Pokémon from prior generations in the wild. There were also instances of certain Pokémon appearing in a region in which they're normally not native to, especially during both the Hoenn and Sinnoh arcs. Some of these can be excused if they have a trainer who might have brought them there, but not so much when they're found in the wild.

* ''[[Kimba the White Lion]]'' has the title character living in a jungle while real lions live in savannas. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] when Kimba's odd home is made into a plot point involving the [[Ancient Egypt|heritage]] of the white lions. Although real ''African'' lions typically live in open grassland and low tree density savannah, it's not unknown for them to live in bush and forest habitats. It's even more normal for Asiatic lions where mixed open forest(or jungle)/grassland (high tree density savannah) habitat is more normal.

** Strangely, Louie was kept in both the [[Live Action Adaptation]] and "The Kipling group of Fables" in the comic book ''[[Fables]]'', despite being a Disney addition and neither part of [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s work nor a genuine "Fable". In the live-action ''Jungle Book'' it was at least [[Lampshade Hanging|acknowledged]] that Louie was out of place. But since ''Fables'' are influenced by people's beliefs about them, [[Fan Wank|it's not impossible that]] Louie exists simply [[Adaptation Displacement|because more people have seen the Disney movie than read Kipling's books,]] and [[Word of God]] is that he simply [[Did Not Do the Research]].

** The ''Jungle Book 2'' has an Ocelot make a small appearance during a song. Ocelots live in South America. Same goes to the hippos considering how they live in Africa.

* Abu in [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney's]] ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'', who looks like a New-World monkey in Arabia. There was mention in the animated series that Abu was imported as part of a traveling circus before he was adopted by Aladdin, and his tiny vest and hat was an artifact of this past, though this may have been an [[Author's Saving Throw]]. And Iago the parrot seems to be a very small version of a Scarlet Macaw. We had to wait for the [[Recycled: the Series|Television Series of the Film]] to get an explanation: during a jaunt to the Amazon, Iago mentions he left the area a while back.

* Despite including a parody of this trope (listed below) [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney's]] ''[[Tarzan (Disney film)|Tarzan]]'' messed up by having lemurs (native only to Madagascar) 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 boa constrictor that falls on Marian, even though constrictors aren't found in the arid regions of Egypt.

** ''[[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]]''

*** The siafu ("big damn ants!")are native to Africa, not Peru, and aren't nearly as big in [[Real Life]]. This could be a case of misidentified wildlife on Indy's part instead, as the Amazon notoriously does have similar army ants.

* In ''[[The Leech Woman]]'', our main characters are trekking through Africa. Although the [[Stock Footage]] is correct about what animals are in Africa (except for a typical alligator/crocodile confusion hodge-podge of shots at one point), scenes on sets have a New World monkey climbing a tree away from the characters, and an Indian elephant with African elephant-style ears glued onto its head.

* ''[[Night at the Museum]]'' has a blatantly New World Capuchin Monkey in The Hall of African Mammals. (And worse, they go to no effort to hide this -- the little guy is labeled in the movie as a Capuchin.) Another one of its denizens is only half right. The ostrich isn't a mammal, but it is at least native to Africa. The ostrich may actually be [[Fridge Brilliance]], since many museum displays show not only the animal but its prey, and the ostrich is prey to several African mammals.

* Speaking of Dracula, ''[[Nosferatu]]'' features a striped hyena in Transylvania. But in truth, it was probably meant to be a werewolf.

** Dracula adaptations seem to have this problem bad; the [[Furry Comic|furry webcomic version]] features Jonathan Harker the coyote (originally meant to be a fox, but the guy doing the strip likes coyotes), and a Eastern European ship's crew contained a kangaroo. This is particularly silly since Quincy Morris was from Texas, so making ''him'' a coyote would've been appropriate.

* Not even live-action Disney is immune to this. In ''[[Mary Poppins]]'' the robin that lands on Mary's hand during the "Spoonful of Sugar" song is an ''American'' robin, in England, well outside its normal range. Ironic, given that the American version was named after the [http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/robin.htm British robin redbreast] in the first place. Bonus points for showing [[Ho Yay|two MALE Robins]] building a nest outside the window.

* Justified in ''[[Jumanji]]''. The jungle that the Jumanji world is composed of is not a real-world environment, but a fantastical, magical creation of the game, hence all sorts of misplaced wildlife spring from it. For instance, Pelicans, lions, rhinos, zebra and elephants all don't live in the jungle.

* [[Alvin and the Chipmunks|''Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked'']] featured a meerkat (referred by Alvin as a [[Critical Research Failure|''honey badger'']]) living on a tropical island.

 

 

* Quite a few animals in ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' don't exactly run rampant in the Pacific Northwest. At least, not enough of them to feed a clan of vampires. Or blame mysterious deaths on.

* The latest ''[[Alex Rider]]'' book has monkeys in ''Australia''. Umm...

* In the book ''[[The Swiss Family Robinson]]'', the characters are shipwrecked on a tropical island which is home to Eurasian buffalo and onagers, African lions, South American ocelots and boa constrictors, Australian kangaroos, and Antarctic penguins. The movie makes quite a spectacular attempt to justify this: the characters theorize that the island is all that's left of [[Hollywood Atlas|a land bridge between continents]], and somehow representatives of every single place it reached got stuck there when the rest of the bridge eroded away. In this case it's because [[Science Marches On]]: before the theory of plate tectonics gave a plausible mechanism for continental drift, the idea that continents could ''move'' was considered fringe science, and land bridges were often invoked to explain similar fossils found oceans apart.

* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Desperation]]'' takes place in the Nevada desert during the summer and includes a few scenes with hordes of fiddleback spiders. Said spiders do not live this far to the west (we do have grass spiders with stripes vaguely reminiscent of the fiddleback, but the resemblance ends there), and they prefer a temperate climate.

* The [[Dr. Seuss]] book ''[[Horton Hears a Who!]]'' has an elephant and a kangaroo living in the same jungle. Highly unlikely in any case, but then again, this is Dr. Seuss we're talking about, so real world rules or any sort need not apply.

** 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.

* In one of Paul Doherty's mystery novels set in [[Ancient Egypt]], Queen Hapshetsut appears in court wearing an outfit trimmed with ''jaguar'' fur. Presumably the author meant to say "leopard", as jaguars are exclusively a New World big cat.

* "[[Leiningen Versus the Ants]]" demonstrates the power of a massive army ant swarm by having them devour a non-Amazon native elk.

* ''[[Pride and Prejudice And Zombies]]'' features a sequence where the Bennett sisters come across a tide of animals fleeing the "unmentionables". Said tide includes the North American animals chipmunks, raccoons and skunks, which were nowhere to be found in Regency England.

* The ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' novel "The Speckled Band" not only featured a nonexistent snake called the "swamp adder" as the titular speckled band, but also mentioned cheetahs and baboons living in India. In real life, cheetahs would have become extinct in India around the time the book was published, and baboons are actually native to Africa.

** The novel was first published in 1892. The last solid evidence for cheetah in India was in 1947 and they are officially regarded as extirpated in India in the 1950s. They would have been rare in the 1890s but not yet extirpated. The baboon reference may also have been ''Macacus rhesus'' (the Rhesus Macaque) which has very occasionally been called the "Indian baboon" in English (even though it's not a baboon at all).

* ''[[Will Rock]]'' features, along with other monsters, tigers, lions, and Nile Crocodiles in Greece.

* ''[[Jabless Adventure]]'' features Pokey, a talking cactus in the middle of [[The Lost Woods]]. [[Lampshade Hanging|You ask him what he's doing there, and he's not sure.]] Later in the game, you encounter Pokey again, in a volcano. He explains that he dug his way there.

* Not seen but heard in ''[[The Lost Vikings]] II'': one of BGM tracks in the Amazon Jungle contains sounds of various wildlife... among them '''elephants'''.

* Justified in ''[[Hatoful Boyfriend]]'', which takes place at a prestigious high school for sapient birds, and so attracts students and faculty from all over the world. The heroine still lampshades the unlikeliness of encountering a mourning dove in Japan.

== Western Animation ==

* An old [[Mickey Mouse]] short, ''Mickey Down Under'', features an ostrich deep in [[Misplaced Vegetation|the banana jungles of Australia]]. Obviously it was meant to be an emu, but the animators simply drew an African ostrich.

** The famous character Pepe Le Pew is a French skunk. There are no skunks in France. Might explain why he can't find a female of his own species and is reduced to pursuing cats with paint on their backs, though in his first appearance, it turned out he wasn't actually French and [[Characterization Marches On|just put the accent on in an attempt to impress the ladies when he was away from his wife and kids]]. Nowadays, some viewers speculate he's actually French-Canadian or Cajun, and it's the accent he's faking rather than the language.

** In the ''[[Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner]]'' cartoon, there was a Burmese tiger in the American Southwest. [[Rule of Funny|What did Wile E. expect when he dug a Burmese Tiger Trap?]]

** Another picture book based on this show was actually about Thomas and Stepney finding a [[Tyrannosaurus Rex]] skeleton on Sodor, despite that dinosaur being native to North America (they really should've either uncovered a Megalosaurus or a Baryonyx, both of which are actually theropod dinosaurs that are native to England). Well at least the dinosaur skeleton the Narrow Gauge locomotives found in the show is actually that of a Dacentrurus (a small stegosaurid native to England).

* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', despite taking place in a deliberate [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]], gets special mention for having a giant squid ''in a lake'' in "The Showstoppers".

* The ''[[Danger Mouse]]'' episode "The Bad Luck Eye of the Little Yellow God", ostensibly set in Brazil, is jampacked with African wildlife.

* One episode of ''[[DuckTales]]'' had Scrooge McDuck, the nephews, Webby, and Ms. Beakley go to Antarctica to protect a colony of penguins from a giant carnivorous walrus that was trapped in an ice cube for thousands of years, but was accidentally freed by Webby's tuning fork, causing said ice cube to shatter. In real life, walruses are native to the Arctic, not Antarctica. A leopard seal would be more appropriate however, since they are giant seals that live near Antartica which feed on penguins.

** And it doesn't just happen to birds either. A West Indian Manatee (more readily associated with Florida) spent his summer in Cape Cod in 2008.

** [http://www.brooklynparrots.com/ The Wild Parrots of Brooklyn.]

** The same Monk Parakeets thrive in Florida, and also in isolated colonies in several other major American cities including Chicago. Technically these are "introduced" rather than misplaced -- They were released as pets 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 [[That Other Wiki]]. Amazingly, both of these species have only been 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.

** The [[wikipedia:Common Pheasant|Ring-necked Pheasant]], so beloved of American hunters and artists and also the state bird of South Dakota, was brought to North America in 1857. They are originally native to Russia and are also naturalized in much of Western Europe.

** The Rock Pigeon<ref>or Rock Dove as it was called before ornithologist organizations adopted a name more consistent with the bird more often informally being called a pigeon than a dove</ref> ended up this way due to human intervention. The species's adaptability combined with feral populations ending up on every continent except for Antarctica ended up giving what originally lived on European cliffs a very wide range, to the point where their non-native status outside their original range isn't brought up much due to how common and widespread they are, as well as the fact that these countries often have their own native species of doves and pigeons, in contrast to how the House Sparrow and European Starling stand out in North America since their families are mostly restricted to the Old World; although the Americas have species called sparrows, they're actually in the same family as Old World buntings<ref>Details on the page for [[Call a Smeerp a Rabbit]]</ref>. The fact that Rock Pigeons outside their native habitat are descended from domesticated specimens also results in varying colors among individuals.

* The story of how [[Singapore]] got its name -- once upon a time, there was a fishing village called Temasek. Then a prince called Sang Nila Utama arrived, and upon reaching the shores of the island saw [[wikipedia:Malayan Tiger|a creature that looked like a giant cat, with a red body, a black head and a white chest]]. He asked his assistant what the animal was and [[You Fail Biology Forever|was told it was a lion]]. Hence the place was called the "Lion City" (i.e. ''Singapura'') from that point on.

* Dromedary camels are native to the North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where they are now completely domesticated. The only wild population is in Australia, where they were introduced.

* Many domestic species are like this: wild horses in the United States are descendants of animals brought over from Europe by Spanish explorers or that escaped from captivity. Likewise, feral populations of cats, dogs, goats, sheep, and pigs are now common in many places that they're not native to. Pigs in particular have proved so able to colonize new territory that they've become a serious ecological problem in places like California, Hawaii, Florida, and Australia.

* Non-native dolphins, sharks and seals sometimes turn up off the Atlantic coast of Britain.

* Pigs are native to Europe and Asia. Polynesians introduced them across the South Pacific. Spanish explorers introduced them to North America, South America, and everywhere else they went. Today, feral pigs are found from the US to Argentina, in Australia, and in a whole slew of other places they're not supposed to be. Unfortunately, due to their fast growth rate, high reproductive rate, ability to eat almost anything, and the general lack of predators capable of dealing with them, they've become a huge problem in most of the places they've been introduced to.

* The South American nutria (looks like a cross between a rat and a beaver) has invaded many parts of the USA and Europe after being introduced there by fur ranchers.

* The common starling was not native to North America until 1890, when Eugene Schieffelin and the American Acclimatization Society released 60-100 in Central Park as part of a plan to introduce every bird species mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare to America. They are now over two-hundred million strong and a major pest bird.

 

== Anime & Manga ==

** Done intentionally in the story "An Akane to Remember". The forested valley of Ryûgenzawa is filled with the most unlikely of creatures, including a [[Everythings Better With Platypus|platypus]], porcupines, herds of frill-necked lizards, cranes, koalas and one or two ''dodo birds''. However, it's noted in the story itself that they don't belong there and were in fact imported from other countries: in the original manga, Shinnosuke's grandfather used to be the caretaker at a zoo that was built there, while the anime explains them as exotic pets that the old man collected. Akane, Ranma and Ryôga were more concerned about the fact they were all [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|bigger than human beings]] anyway.

** At another time, Ranma, Genma, and Sôun must find a way to get past the girls bathing in a hot spring. Genma and Sôun have the bright idea of painting Genma's panda form so he more closely resembles a vicious grizzly. The problem? The only paint they have on hand is ''white''. The girls immediately see through this. ("Whoever heard of a polar bear in ''Japan''?") Cue the bucket to the face.

* There's a jungle in the Madonna movie ''Who's That Girl?'' with all the usual suspects; cockatoos, kangaroos, zebras, patagonian felixes, etc., but it's artificial (the biggest artificial jungle on the Lower West Side), so they were stocked into it anyway. And it's on top of an apartment building.

* Lampshaded in ''[[Monty Python's The Meaning of Life]]'', where a "tiger" attacks a British soldier in Africa. Several characters incredulously ask, "A tiger? In Africa?" only to be shushed by others in the scene.

** Then there's the debate over how coconut shells turned up in England. They could have been carried by an African swallow, but not a European swallow. But then, African swallows are non-migratory...

* In ''[[An American Werewolf in London]]'', David and Jack start half-jokingly speculating about what's making the howling sounds in the distance. David first suggests a coyote, and Jack retorts that there aren't any coyotes in England.

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[The Order of the Stick]]''

** Better done [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0564.html there], providing the page quote.

* ''[[Memoria]]'': [http://memoria.valice.net/?p=297 Rhinos as farm animals.]