Leaving aside the whole ape/monkey thing, you should just fire back, “It’s hidden in my bum, just like yours” and then tell him about the coccyx, also known as the tail bone.
Are you saying you’re not “miscellaneous?” 
Letters to the Editor are veritable treasure trove of ignorance. There was a letter to the editor in the Shreveport, LA paper that railed against Daylight Savings Time. It seems that the writer already had a tough enough time keeping her lawn watered, and the extra hour of sunlight was just make it that much worse.
Well, there was the conversation in which my sister-in-law, Bitchface, MBA, CPA stated that she wouldn’t get a tatoo because she didn’t want AIDS. This was in 2006. I don’t have a tatoo either, but not because of AIDS, since I’ve never heard of such a case.
She agreed with our MIL that Africa was a backwards country in that same conversation. I was like, “Wait. What country?” to which she replied, “Africa.” She looked at me if I was some know it all hippie freak when I tried to explain that Africa is NOT a country but a continent with many sovereign nations just like Europe, Asia and the Americas. I’m sure my ILs spend a lot of time saying “Ooh, look at me! I’m Caricci. Sovereign nation, sovereign nation!”
There is actually a danger of transmitting blood diseases through re-using tattoo needles. Most (all?) states now have laws requiring tattoo parlors to use disposable needles, though, so its no longer a serious concern.
Oh, that reminds me of one. Several years ago, when I was working in the law firm, we were sending a package to the European Patent Office. The attorney on the case found the address for his secretary, and asked her to send it out. She came back into his office, looking confused, and said that the address had to be wrong. Why? Well, it says, “Munich, Germany.” What’s wrong with that? “Why would stuff for the European Patent Office go to Germany? Shouldn’t it be Munich, EUROPE?”
I had a gf in college who volunteered at the zoo and I would meet her there occasionally. We were walking around the monkey house one day, when we happened to stop in front of a cage of small gibbon type monkeys, I don’t remember the actual animal, just that they were small and jumpy. Right in front of the glass was two small boys, and standing behind them was (I guess) their mother. We all stood staring at the monkeys for a few minutes, and then the mother leaned forward and said ‘These are hyenas.’ The boys just nodded and they all wandered off to the next cage. Me and my gf had to leave the area so we could laugh. I mean, there was a freakin name plate right next to the cage.
I think I could write a book on all the ignorant things I’ve heard said in the name of religion. I had one Muslim try to tell me that all iron, all forms of iron, were sent by god and fell from the sky, and didnt form with the rest of the earth. The concept of iron ore stumped him. I had one Christian tell me that even if evolution was right, it was still a bad idea to teach it to children, because then they would think it was ok to question the church. While I was putting up fliers for the gaming group on campus, I was told by a huffy and red faced individual that D&D was evil because it forced people to worship satan and that I was gathering people to join me in hell. When I invited him to watch a game I was told that he couldn’t even go into building in which D&D had been ‘invoked’ in, because of all the evil. I sat through a lecture given by a visiting Buddhist monk, who we;comed questions after his talk. One guy asked ‘So whats the deal with the ying yang symbol then?’
I don’t really mind - or rather, I understand the confusion - when people assume I’m Wiccan, though if anyone demonstrates a shred of honest curiosity I’m happy to explain that Wiccans are not the only ones who find the pentacle symbol significant.
This reminds me of another one. In the bat house of a zoo, there was a small pile of rocks in a pile of straw in the back corner of a glass-front display. I saw a man point it out (it DID look rather like some kind of nest, really) and tell his kids those were bat eggs.
I’m originally from Nebraska.
When I lived in Texas and the subject of my home state came up, more than a handful of times I got, “Ooo! What time is it there???”
I hope it’s a lack of geographic awareness, and not a lack of understanding about how time zones work…
Not the most ignorant thing I’ve heard, but a surprisingly widespread and utterly ignorant belief, is that all rivers flow south. Because, south is at the bottom, right?
I remember trying to explain to a former work colleague that no, the Nile did not flow from the Mediterranean down into the centre of Africa. “So what, it flows uphill instead?”.
“No… it flows downhill, like every other river.”
“But look… [points at map] that’s up…”
:Gags:
I mean, never mind the Nile… You’re in the UK, right? Haven’t people heard of either the Rhine or the Seine?
My fourth grade teacher, when teaching us to use a compass, explained that magnetic north was a place where “There were lots of natural metal deposits, which are magnetized.” That’s why compasses point north, y’see.
The thing that gets me about it even now is how sure of himself he was. He also told us ‘they’ recently discovered another magnetic pole near the southern end of Africa (that’s right, it was in the continent of Africa. He pointed to the general area on a globe, I think it was Zimbabwe,) but the southern one wasn’t as strong as the northern pole. I still wonder what he meant by “recently”.
Your tax dollars at work, folks.
Probably doesn’t qualify, because it certainly isn’t the most ignorant thing, but it was recent and it gave me a bit of a laugh.
Just the other day I was reading a book on the subway. The book was by Winston Churchill and it was about his illustrious ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, entitled “Marlborough: His life and Times”.
A very nice person walked up to me and said, in all sincerity, “oh wow, I never knew that Churchill wrote a book about that cigarette dude!”
Sadly, I could think of nothing at the time to say to that, and I was at my stop and had to get off …
On the one hand, I wanted to, on the other I wanted her to go away. The district’s lawyer helped - the e-mail was written to only 3 people, my boss, my superintendent and the board president. The latter two co-wrote her a letter directing her to cease any such blather and issue a written retraction or we’d send the flying monkeys in.
She did, in writing, and all communications from them have since been from her husband, who is apparently taking HIS meds ok, because he’s a lot saner than she is.
You think that’s bad? I had a similar notion expressed to us as fact in high school by a teacher. Our History teacher. When I complained to the principal about it, he just shrugged and said, “Oh, she didn’t hurt anybody.” When I looked at him in shock and disgust, he looked genuinly surprised. “What?” he said. “There are no black students in that class!” (he knows this because we have only three in the whole school!)
Then my mother told me I was exaggerating, and none of it really happened. Then when I got beat up, she’d say I must have just gotten clumsy and wanted attention. And when I was a witness to a teacher beating up a student, she told me she believed the teacher over me any day, because I must have just not enjoyed his class (I loved that class! English was my best subject! He was an awesome teacher until he assaulted one of us! I used to brag about him all the time!) She must have eventually woke up, since years after I’d already graduated, she pulled my brother out of school and had him homeschooled. People were picking on him. I mean, he must be telling the truth, right? Sigh-h. And he was, and I’m glad she took him out of school, but a little more understanding with me would have been nice. 
Heh, last year at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, my husband and I were in the Night Exhibit, where I love to sit quietly on the little ledge and watch the armadillos running around. It’s very dark in there, and you must be very quiet, never speaking above a whisper if you must speak at all (don’t even get me started on how many rude people disobey this rule and come barging in yelling and screaming - besides being bad for the animals in there, it really spoils the effect of the Night Exhibit for those of us who enjoy the quietness). Anyway, a woman with two young children quietly enter, and they do really well with the quiet rule, stepping softly, speaking in soft whispers. I’m happy to see them following the rules and enjoying the exhibits. One of the little boys comes and sits near me, trying to follow my line of site in the darkness. Finally, he sees it - a round armadillo making his rounds, running in a pattern all around the exhibit. I hear his gasp when he sees this creature, something he obviously has never seen before. In wonder, he asks his mother in a whisper, “Mommy, look! What kind of animal is that?” I sit quietly, smiling to myself at this youngster about to learn a very cool new animal to think about, look up in his spare time, ask about to his teachers, whatever. The mother hums, and I can see her in the darkness looking around for a sign. The signs are directly above the displays, with a picture of each animal on it, so there can be no mistake. She looks at one sign, she looks at another sign, she turns around her and looks at the bats, she looks for more signs, all the while saying, “Oh, that’s a… um… that’s… let’s see… it’s a…” I wait patiently…
She gives up.
“It’s a monkey.” she says. Now I’m screwed, because the answer struck me as so ridiculously far out of left field that I’m standing up, hiding my face in my husband’s shoulder, because I’m trying very, very hard not to burst into uncontrollable laughter. They leave without noticing my convulsions, and I tell my husband to give them a moment to let them get further ahead of us before we exit. When we step out of the display and the daylight floods over us, Mr. Stasaeon could see the tears of laughter already running down my face. I let it all out. I mean…
A MONKEY?! Wouldn’t it just be better to admit you don’t know than to tell your child an armadillo is a MONKEY?! Go home and research it together! Something! It could have been a learning experience for everyone!
*
MONKEY?*
Ahem. Anyway, while this wasn’t the most ignorant thing I ever heard, it’s a pretty good one. I’m still thinking back to my hometown days. I’ve got lots from there. Scary ones, mostly.
In some Protestant sects, believers are taught that the gods of other religions are actually the Devil, who has tricked these people into worshipping him.
The worst was someone saying that x > y meant “x is less than y.”
The “logic” is that the “>” symbol was a mouth and it was “eating” the x, meaning the y was bigger.
Not that impressive, you say? It is when you find out this guy was a middle school math teacher. <shudder>
I remember the mouth analogy from my introduction to “greater than” and “less than.” The illustration was that if you were choosing between two slices of cake, you’d naturally eat the bigger one.
A lesson like that would probably attract negative attention today.
Well, yeah, sure, of course, but as you say,there are precautions and you don’t hear of it happening anymore, if ever. But she was sure it was a danger because people were concerned about it the '80’s.
Also she doesn’t allow her son to go to restrooms by himself because the gays might be there. Unless she’s drunk, then she doesn’t care what he does.