"That's NOT a Hippopotamus!"

These are hippos though - in size order, even!

There’s a wonderful children’s book by Juliette MacIver that inspired this post’s title. It’s a colourful and energetic rhyming romp through a zoo that neatly demonstrates a human condition – confirmation bias.

Without delving into the fascinating psychology and physiology of it all (but read Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit” for a digestible deep dive), the truth is that humans are wired for habit. It’s suggested that taking shortcuts (e.g., making assumptions or following patterns) frees up the brain for critical life preserving functions and saves energy. This allows us to change gears in a manual transmission car without thinking about it, or enables us walk and talk simultaneously. Even a cue – the sudden appearance of an abhorrent relative, for example – can elicit a physiological negative response before you’re consciously aware of them.

The flip side of this is that sometimes the assumptions are wrong, and we fall headlong into the confirmation bias trap. We see what we think we should see, rather than what is actually there. 

... The relative turns the corner and we panic, then we realise as they pass by that it’s actually a complete stranger. 

... It takes Little Red Riding Hood several questions before she accepts that her uncomfortable suspicions about the begowned being in Granny’s bed are well-founded. 

... How many insect mimics have escaped predation by looking sufficiently like a toxic model? 

Usually the critical side of our brains (Liam in MacIver’s book) kicks in eventually and saves us from embarrassment or harm. But I was reminded of this all the other day on one of my birding rambles.

I was staking out a flowering mistletoe in the hope that something would arrive for a snack. In flew two little rufous-tinged birds, that flitted and hopped and swung around gleaning for insects and sipping nectar. Ah, the crombecs are here, I thought happily (I have a very big soft spot for little birds). I grabbed my camera and tried to get some decent behaviour photos and at least a first stab at pleasing composition – tricky in a busy scene (oh, for a camera with eye-tracking!) – and then they were off to the next restaurant, and I too moved along.

Later, when I had downloaded the RAWs and started to process a photo of one of the birds, I had my own Red Riding Hood moment.  It struck me that the crombec’s tail was too long… its eyes were dark brown… its legs were slate… and its beak was neither the correct shape nor colour! And come to think of it, the calls of the incoming birds was all wrong too… But I'd been so caught up in capturing photos that I didn't really pay attention to the African penduline-tits parading in front of me. 

An African penduline-tit masquerading in my mind as a crombec.

Expecting common moorhens, a family of lesser moorhens on a seasonal dam in Bulawayo took me by surprise!

It got me thinking – how often do we misidentify animals in the moment because we expect the familiar or our brains fixate on a feature that cascades into incorrect assumptions? It’s a reminder to see rather than look!

Of course, this was not a life-or-death situation by any stretch. That experience involved a “dead” black rhino a few days after a veld fire, where the rhino literally rose, phoenix-like, from the ashes. But that’s a story for another time!

[Photos (c) The Rambling Zimbo.  Camera body: OM System OM-5 Mk1; Lenses M.Zuiko 75-300 4.8-6.7 II and M.Zuiko 12-45 f/4 Pro. Post-processing in DXO PhotoLab 8].

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