It has always amused me that the tourists to the US that I’ve spoken to are often very excited to see raccoons, and disappointed if they don’t see them before they leave.
Some others I’ve noticed on the east coast of the US are blue jays and cardinals. Boy, do people get excited about those if they’ve never seen them before! Very pretty birds of course, just very easy to get used to and see as uninteresting as well.
Definitely kangaroos. But they have bad luck as I live in Austria and not Australia.
I’ll answer the opposite way: in South America we have no crows, so it was by far the most fascinating animal I saw while in England.
I’ve seen a vanload of tourists happily taking pictures of sheep on more than one occasion. New Zealand.
We did a Mexican vacation several years ago and everyone in our tour group would surround and excitedly take pictures of iguanas. The local tour guides would laugh and talk about how that always happens and how they were like squirrels to them.
Back when I worked at Disney, a subset of the Asian guests would get excited and take pictures of squirrels. Are there parts of Asia that don’t have many squirrels?
Japan doesn’t generally have squirrels like in the US. I took my wife to DC and we spent a solid 10+ minutes taking photos and videos of squirrels around the mall.
I felt the opposite when we visited Brazil, they had these little monkeys everywhere like squirrels here but they didn’t know what a squirrel was haha, basically they had squirrels with monkey faces instead
i’m from australia and i’m always excited to see squirrels… they don’t exist here at all
I have some friends in Australia and I always send them pictures of squirrels when I see them. Got TONS where I live.
Black squirrels. They aren’t very many if any at all in the south and when family/friends come to visit it blows their mind seeing them.
When we first moved to Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads, VA, my mom almost wrecked the car when she saw a group of black squirrels. We’re not sure why it’s so fun to see them, they’re just squirrels that are black, but it’s always a treat.
Haggis
Here in Australia, it’s drop bears and hoop snakes. People always want to see them… until it’s too late.
I’m not Japanese but have been living here most of a decade. As no one mentioned anything from that side yet, the Nara Deer are probably the most famous followed by the hotspring monkeys. Tanuki are also something people might want to see, off the top of my head.
My wife was super surprised by all the squirrels in the US and loved taking pictures and videos. She suddenly realized we kept seeing more of them as we walked and, yep, they’re everywhere.
She was also super surprised that people just had cattle and horses when we’d be driving where my US family lived (countryside).
Most USians probably expect to see monkeys and capybaras crossing the streets here in Brazil. There’s a good chance to see the latter near most freshwater bodies, even in the capital, though monkeys will vary a lot more from place to place.
I went camping with my cousin and a blue jay came by our campiste, him and his wife are bird watchers and were amazed by it. I was amazed they didn’t have any where they live even though it’s only a few hours from the campsite
I’ve had kinda an inverse experience of this.
I was on a vacation to Mexico with my family and we decided to visit a local zoo. For the most part it was pretty similar to what we have back home with lions and gorillas but there was one exhibit that was drawing a large crowd so we decided to go see what it was. Once we are able to get a look inside there were just 4 or 5 white tailed deer grazing on some grass. We got a good laugh because back home these things are common to the point of nuisance. I don’t speak Spanish but I then started to notice several children pointing and mentioning “Bambi” to their parents and all the commotion made sense
Urban foxes
for australia i think most people would assume kangaroos, and sure people are excited to see them but they’re not quite as common - youre probably only going to see them if it’s intentional
i think common AND excited is probably rosellas - they’re a bright red and blue/green parrot that are kinda eeeeeverywhere
Sheep. Baaa.
