u/ReturnToCrab

The most horrendous example are of course dolphins. Every single time dolphins are mentioned, everyone starts suddenly spamming "interesting facts" like "DID YOU KNOW DOLPHINS RAPE PEOPLE AND TORTURE FISH AND DO DRUGS??!?". Yes. Yes I know. Except they don't actually rape people. First of all, sexual coercion was only observed in some species of dolphins, and second, there's barely any definitively documented cases of dolphins attacking humans with a clear sexual intent (and no account of penetration or something along these lines). Hell, you can just as well say that humans rape dolphins and that would be just as accurate.

And when it comes to other "evil" stuff dolphins do — hundreds of other species do the same. Mice males kill babies from other litters, but you don't see people calling mice evil. And when you bring this up, people claim that dolphins having high intellegence somehow means they should be held to a higher standard because they "understand what they are doing". Genuinely, how the fuck do you even know that? And what do you want from dolphins, to organise a dolphin police?

And before anyone says that this is an exaggeration for comedic effect - I have literally seen people commenting under dolphin videos that they would be more scared to swim around dolphins than around sharks, because they believed dolphins would attack and rape them out of pure cruelty, I presume. The attack, of course, can happen, although deaths from dolphin encounters are extremely rare, but everything else is idiotic.

And the worst part is how these overblown memes about dolphins has eclipsed everything else about them. These creatures are beautiful and very vulnerable, and I'm afraid that the proliferation of these stereotypes will hurt them like sharks before.

Other stereotypes are a lot more justified, but still can be annoying.

Honey badgers are normal animals, that are regularly eaten by other carnivores like leopards. People seem to think that they are some kind of invulnerable beasts, when they are just really resilient

Hippoes are dangerous, true, but they are also pretty cool, and I don't think they should be reduced to literal demons. People seem to have this idea that "the general public" views hippoes as kind and lazy and this stereotype should be dismantled, but I don't think I've ever seen a hippo characterised this way anywhere outside of cartoons (which do this to every animal). Also, buffaloes are also very dangerous, but no one acts like they are hellspawn

Hyenas don't have this rep as much, but memeing about their pseudopenis and matriarchy really starts to feel like fetishposting and chaser shit at some point

P.S. Also, while platypuses are weird (though not that weird if you think about their evolutionary place and definitely not "alien" or "unexplainable"), but it really annoys me when people say that "platypuses sweat milk" when they mean "platypuses lack nipples". Some folks now genuinely believe that platypuses just ooze milk all of the time, and that's just dumb