# How did you first learn about animals as a kid?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [January 5, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183 "2013-01-05T19:19:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/1 "2013-01-05T19:19:41Z")
I was talking with friends and this came up. As kids when did we learn about animals, where they live, what they eat etc.
I can remember singing _Old McDonald Had a Farm_ long before I ever saw real farm animals. Dad always watched _Wild Kingdom_ on Sunday afternoons. I vaguely recall playing in the living room while it was on. Coloring books always had animals and I can recall my mom telling me about some of them. Mom took me to see Disney’s _Jungle Book_ when I was about five and that made an impression.
At school I remember flash cards with pictures of animals, what they ate, and where they lived.
It may of been haphazard, but by the 4th grade I was familiar with the names of most animals.
How did you first learn about animals as a kid?
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### Author:  [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/2 "2013-01-05T19:29:31Z")
Can’t remember. They always existed, as far as my young mind was concerned. At least, there never was a time when I suddenly thought, “Hey, that’s animal!”
I do remember the first time I saw a black person, though. That was freaky.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/3 "2013-01-05T19:31:32Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#):
>
> Can’t remember. They always existed, as far as my young mind was concerned. At least, there never was a time when I suddenly thought, “Hey, that’s animal!”
>
> I do remember the first time I saw a black person, though. That was freaky.
This was my experience also.
First person of color I saw, at age 4, was a cook at a restaurant when I was on a trip to Florida with my folks. My response: “Mommy, look! That man has a black face!” She shushed me, and told me lots of people had dark skin like that.
Meanwhile, animals were all around me in my lily-white rural agrarian community of origin.
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### Author:  [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/4 "2013-01-05T19:33:27Z")
The Pittsburgh Zoo, I guess. I can’t remember going there, but I can remember remembering it. If that makes sense.
Lots of Wild Kingdom too.
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### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/5 "2013-01-05T19:38:34Z")
But you didn’t have lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, pandas, pythons, cobras, and so on in your agrarian community. 😉 _Wild Kingdom_ brought them to my living room as a 5 year old.
Not sure when I saw my first real chicken. Other than at KFC. 😃 Sounds like you saw more farm animals as a young kid then I did.
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#):
>
> This was my experience also.
>
> First person of color I saw, at age 4, was a cook at a restaurant when I was on a trip to Florida with my folks. My response: “Mommy, look! That man has a black face!” She shushed me, and told me lots of people had dark skin like that.
>
> Meanwhile, animals were all around me in my lily-white rural agrarian community of origin.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/6 "2013-01-05T19:40:20Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> But you didn’t have lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, pandas, pythons, cobras, and so on in your agrarian community. 😉 _Wild Kingdom_ brought them to my living room as a 5 year old.
When you’re two, seeing a huge cow or horse or boar up close and personal is just as impressive as seeing a lion or tiger or rhino, believe me.
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### Author:  [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/7 "2013-01-05T19:42:26Z")
Ditto on _Wild Kingdom_. (Ah, I can still hear my sister and I chanting “Mutual of Omaha!” whenever a segment was leading up to a commercial break.)
We also had an animal book that was some sort of grocery store promo – a blank album of black pages into which we pasted animal stamps that came in a pack Mom and Dad brought home from the store each week. One I distinctly remember from the book was the slow loris. It wasn’t all wild animals, though. I remember the stamp for _Felis domesticus_, too.
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/8 "2013-01-05T19:54:40Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> But you didn’t have lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, pandas, pythons, cobras, and so on in your agrarian community. 😉 _Wild Kingdom_ brought them to my living room as a 5 year old.
I didn’t know that. I grew up in the sticks as well so we owned most common animals and some uncommon ones as well since I was born. However, I didn’t quite get how big the world was or that some animals only lived in the wild far away when I was little. To me, the chance of seeing a lion or tiger come bounding out of the woods was just as great as seeing a horse in the pasture. I distinctly remember being 4 and getting dressed up in my toughest clothes when my grandmother asked me where I was going. I said into to the woods to catch a gorilla and I was dead serious. I wanted a pet gorilla badly and I knew that the only way I was going to get one was to catch it myself. She let me hunt for one a few times but they must have been out of season because I didn’t get even see one.
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### Author:  [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/9 "2013-01-05T20:25:45Z")
I can’t remember not knowing about animals. I grew up with household pets, we had cats and Great Danes when I was a wee thing, and my sister got a horse when I was about a year old. We always watched wildlife shows on TV, and once I learned to read I devoured books about animals. We had that Life Nature Library and I remember pouring over the [Mammals](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7802670-the-mammals) book, and the one about the oceans too. Going to the zoo and to a local nature preserve place that had sciency stuff and a petting zoo was a favorite.
I cannot imagine a life without animals in it.
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### Author:  [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/10 "2013-01-05T20:39:40Z")
I remember having an alphabet poster of some kind where many of the letters were represented by animals (E is for Elephant, G is for Giraffe, etc.) Storybooks were always full of animals. My mother is a huge fan of the [Richard Scarry](http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Scarry/e/B000AQ3290/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1357417979&sr=8-2-ent) books, which also featured animals. I’m not sure how old I was when I first went to the Animal Discovery Room at the [Lawrence Hall of Science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Hall_of_Science), but that’s where I remember getting up close and personal with rats, mice, lizards, snakes and other smaller animals.
As a small child my favorite animal was the rhinocerous. I’m not sure why.
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### Author:  [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/11 "2013-01-05T21:15:43Z")
Yeah, I still cringe when I remember me as a little kid, getting on a bus and noticing the driver.
“Mommy, is that a colored guy?”
He didn’t respond. Mom just pushed me along.
At the time, the term was acceptable but surrendering to black. Still…
Um, on second viewing, this should’ve had a quote from a previous post. About first sight of an African American being freaky. Not to equate black people with animals. Eeek. Sorry.
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/12 "2013-01-05T21:26:40Z")
Dr. Seuss. Animals wear hats & socks, drive cars & bicycles, steal Christmas and other things.
Then I learned all the boring stuff on Wild Kingdom and World of Disney movies (Charlie the lonesome cougar, for instance). Oh, and Jungle Book.
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### Author:  [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/13 "2013-01-05T22:44:28Z")
We had a cat and a goldfish when I was little, so I learned about those animals first, I imagine.
Oddly, I didn’t seem to be familiar with cows until I was maybe two or two-and-a-half years old. I remember going to my grandparents’ house, and there was a farm across the road. I saw cows there for the first time. At first, I thought they were some strange kind of horse.
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### Author:  [@InsomniaMama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InsomniaMama)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/14 "2013-01-05T23:07:34Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#):
>
> As a small child my favorite animal was the rhinocerous. I’m not sure why.
Because it’s badass! Jeebus, what a question! Mine was the triceratops. Same thing, really.
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### Author:  [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/15 "2013-01-05T23:26:41Z")
I came from a family of animal lovers; there were always dogs and cats and birds and fish and rabbits and… You get the idea. Some distant relative had a horse named Ranger and they used to sit me up on him and lead me around the pasture on him.
I had books about animals, watched anything on TV about animals. We went to zoos and museums. Like Saje above, I cannot imagine life without animals.
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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/16 "2013-01-05T23:31:09Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#):
>
> I do remember the first time I saw a black person, though. That was freaky.
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#):
>
> First person of color I saw, at age 4, was a cook at a restaurant when I was on a trip to Florida with my folks. My response: “Mommy, look! That man has a black face!” She shushed me, and told me lots of people had dark skin like that.
I grew up in a lily-white “restricted” suburb, and I remember being convinced that the cooks at my elementary school were cannibals. Oddly, my parent’s business had a black employee, and I don’t remember ever thinking anything similar about him.
This was the early '60s. I doubt the real estate restrictions had legal force by that time, but certainly they had moral force - more accurately, immoral force.
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### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2013, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/17 "2013-01-05T23:31:26Z")
Like others here, I can’t really remember.
But I do remember learning about them when I watched Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”
And my uncle had a book about nature I liked, with pictures of flowers, plants, and exotic animals from the tropics.
By the time I was ten I was, like many young girls, enamored of horses, although I’d never even ridden one yet.
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### Author:  [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2013, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/18 "2013-01-07T04:50:21Z")
Wild Kingdom was AWESOME.
Also, the first six years of my wee life were spent living in between 3 farms, so…yeah.
No tigers there, though.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2013, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/19 "2013-01-07T04:59:37Z")
I can’t remember a time I didn’t know about animals. I’m not sure what kind of isolated environment a child would need to grow up in not to.
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### Author:  [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2013, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-first-learn-about-animals-as-a-kid/646183/20 "2013-01-07T05:11:19Z")
For whatever reason, we had a ton of those time-life books and junior encyclopedias laying around the house so I remember reading a lot about animals from an early age.
I also loved wild kingdom as well as Jacques Coustou’s tv shows.
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