They say that a person should never meet their heroes. I sometimes feel like a similar caveat should exist about meeting your favorite animals - at least, if you aren't prepared to have some illusions shattered. Few animals behave as we might be lead to imagine they will through popular culture. I feel like this is especially true about animals that we might think of as sweet or friendly.
Sloths don't especially enjoy being cuddled, in my experience, and there are few displays that are as simultaneously unnerving as they are ineffective as an irate sloth swiping at you with its claws. Koalas also don't enjoy cuddles very much and are more than happy to leave the scars to prove it. More than a few keepers may been mauled by giant pandas over the years (well, ok, it actually only has been a few... but when you consider how few zoos have giant pandas, the numbers look more impressive).
One group of animals which, in my experience, is definitely not as friendly as advertised are the penguins. They look so silly and sweet with their awkward waddle and their formal-attire feathers. Don't be fooled. I'm convinced that the reason that the warm-weather penguins are called the "jackass penguins" has less to do with their vocalizations and everything to do with their personalities.
Penguins bite, and their beaks are amazingly unpleasant, even discounting all of the raw fish juice that you know is on them. They'll slap you (well, from the knees down) with their flippers with surprising strength. When they aren't picking fights with you, they're happy to bicker with each other in a loud, braying, squabbling mass. True, they do have their admirable qualities, and pairs can be quite affectionate. I guess it's a "You and me against the world" mentality.
A penguin keeper I knew had constant cuts - some scarified - from her wrists to her elbows, the result of years worth of meddling in the affairs of pugnacious little seabirds. One summer afternoon, when she was wearing short-sleeves on her day off, she stopped off at a gas station and went in to get a coke or something. The cashier saw her arms, criss-crossed with red lines, and tried to talk to her about getting professional help. After a few confused minutes, the keeper (again, on a day off and so out of uniform) realized that the cashier thought that she'd been cutting herself.
"Oh, no, don't worry," she explained cheerfully. "It's not me doing it. It's the penguins." The cashier looked at her like she was crazy, gave her back her change, and backed away.
"Great," thought my friend as she recalled this story to us later. "Now they probably think I'm a cutter and a psycho. That's one more place I can never go back to..."
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