Decades ago, in a Dublin bar, I met a woman who thought that I, an Englishman, was Danish; I like
to think it was due to my height or my flaxen tuft, but I have a
feeling it was in reaction to my elided words (it had been a long
evening).
A still more disturbing
misidentification was that of the unfortunate “Ringerl”, pictured
above. Ringerl was a female Olinguito wrongly classified as an
Olingo, (Olinguitos were identified as a species only this year).
Between 1967 and 1976, in an effort to get her to breed, Ringerl was
paired to male Olingos in five zoos across the United States. Not
surprisingly nothing happened. It would be the equivalent of
expecting a woman to couple with a chimpanzee or even a fair-haired
beanpole who's enthusing about “fayltaksidermi”.
