Why We Need More Field Biology Courses

This HAS to be a prank, right?

"He gave it a pat,
And said, 'Nice little cat!'..."

I'd hope this was a joke, except that I spent years working with city kids in a zoo-less city. Asked by the tour guide at a nearby heritage 'working' farm museum if they knew the name of the animal they were looking at, the chorus of excited answers included, "Hippo!" "No, camel!" "It's a horse!" "Maybe a monster?"

Not one reached the right answer. They were looking at a pretty, pregnant brown cow.

This is soooo 'shopped.

what the hell is shopped about it (other than possibly blacking out the number).
Overuse of 'shopped' should be a crime.

Haha, the first picture is clearly taken from wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum

Which is to say, some would have been keeping an eye out for this 'cat', and possibly calling this joker.

@bee:

Those poor "city kids." It's hard to grow up surrounded by concrete, never having seen a cow on TV, in a book, or from the window of their car on the interstate. They probably haven't even seen a halfway decent drawing of one, seeing as depicting animals is taboo in most cities. It certainly is in mine. I mean I couldn't BELIEVE that they said it was a hippo or a "monster." Hah! It's almost like they were deliberately making stuff up. Well, I think it's sad they don't know what a cow looks like--that majestic wild cow, so untouched by the soul crushing factory of modern civilization. If they only knew what the cow really stood for, they would leave the city when they grew up and join the system that the cow lives in. The NATURAL system. But they don't know. They just stuff themselves at McDonalds, and eat ice cream instead. So sad. Kids should learn to respect nature. I'm glad there's programs helping them do that.

Yes! Field Biology kicks major butt! Here are some of my adventures as a Field Bio TA:

http://slybird.blogspot.com/search/label/Field%20Biology

Cheers,
Nick

Stuff came out my nose.

What I want to know is *how* someone that didn't figure out this wasn't a cat, knew the creature was male?

This has done the rounds as a possum (not Opossum) in Sydney (Australia), supposedly placed by asian students. Even then it seemed like a probable hoax.

But still funny.

lol. nice prank.

It was a joke. On the original (unblacked out) version, in Sydney, the phone number was...

the speaking clock.

And turned up in New Zealand (again supposedly an Asian student (female) and with a picture of Trichosurus vulpecula-)- it was sort of funny because possums are a pest infestation here (there are more of them than bloody sheep!) being extremely destructive
of both bush and indigenous wildlife (paticularly birds.)

funny very funny :)

I have mistaken a couple of other critters for cats, but only on dark nights.

Once I saw something moving behind a parked car, and thought "Yikes, that's the biggest cat I've ever seen!" Then it came into the light and I saw the mask. (Raccoon).

The other time was standing on a friend's porch, I saw what I took for an oddly clumsy cat eating from the cat-food bowl near the edge of the porch. I leaned over and asked "wanna pet?" It did, briefly, but... well, that was how I petted a skunk. It had looked "clumsy" while eating, because of those short legs, but on the move, it glided. (Skunks can be very friendly. But then, they can afford to be -- they've got Mace!)

Holy shit

Bonton, you may be surprised to learn that in many cities, there are large numbers of families of low to middling income who do not own cars and therefore do not spend much time driving "on the interstates". In fact, the city in which I worked with children for twenty-five years is in a country which doesn't even call its main routes "interstates", but that's beside the point, since I'm sure sometime in a colouring book you were made aware that there are other countries besides your own.

Television programming geared towards children and towards entertainment, and which doesn't include high end (read: expensive) cable or satellite packages, which is where one finds most nature programming, actually rarely shows cattle at all, except in old westerns as thundering, distantly seen herds.

If you show a child an illustration of a cow in a book, there is not much context in terms of size: the cow in a kid book could be four cm. tall or 4000 cm. tall - it isn't something a young child automatically translates.

There is an enormous difference in seeing a real, live huge cow and seeing a small picture of one. I can assure you those children were not "deliberately making stuff up".

I've no idea how you got from my post to all that "the soul crushing factory of modern civilization. If they only knew what the cow really stood for, they would leave the city when they grew up and join the system that the cow lives in. The NATURAL system..." stuff. Were you under the impression I think that way? All I was doing was pointing out that city kids with little exposure to real animals other than dogs and cats often have very erroneous ideas about animals, and that this is a quite common situation, requiring activities like field trips to farm museums, zoos, and other places where they can see the real thing.

Bee, you are a douche.

Oh my, what a joke! Teehee.

Bee, you are so right.

@Bonton

"What the cow stands for" & "depicting animals is taboo in most cities"

I am at loss for words. What does the cow stand for? Well, just to give you an example, in India (which by the way, is an emerging economic power and can be found in the map by looking at the top part of the Indian Ocean, and that is the biggy stretch of water on the right hand side of Africa, for the geographically impaired) it certainly is cared for, because it is sacred to most of the inhabitants. In Europe, we tend to look at the cow as a natural depiction of the state of mind actively pursued by the average american - it chews in a meditative state while bringing up cud and watching events unfold: the perfect image of liquid stupor. With the massive media hype of america as the land of the chosen in the US (I would say an anal retentive view of the world), along with an obvious trend towards making a hack job of teaching proper natural science, I am not at all surprised that "in most cities, depicting animals is taboo": you might just get dirty ideas, ban the thought: after all, they are NAKED (OMG!).

April 1st brings out some of the best stuff.

Pretty funny. I might have to consider plagiarizing it for a couple telephone poles around here.

might have rampid case of the rabies?

HA! They hopefully put the phone number for the closest zoo!