To see an alligator crossing the street in Florida is not unheard of.
They like to hang out with golfers on the golf course.
Just don't hit your ball in their
direction, so you have to go rescue it from the jaws of an alligator.
Hey guys, welcome back to Girl Gone London Channel.
If you're new here here. My name is Kalyn.
I'm a dual American and UK citizen.
And if you're not new here, welcome back.
In this video, aside from a hilarious
statistic I will share pretty soon, we're talking all about UK versus USA wildlife.
What animals can you expect roaming around in the wild around you?
What animals are found in one country and not the other?
And why does the American Badger,
in the words of one of my patrons, looks like it's about to mug you.
Speaking of patrons, this video was chosen by my patrons.
They get to vote on what topics they'd like to see and this was the winner.
If you would like the chance to vote
on content and tell me what you would like to see, make sure to check me out
on the Girl Guy London community on Patreon, which I will link below.
Now let's get onto the video.
Okay, so the first statistic I want to share with you has less about
the animals themselves and more to do with the people who live among the animals.
In a Ugo survey done in 2021, they decided to see how confident people
were that they would be able to beat an animal in a fight.
So they're pairing you up in a duel
against anything from crocodiles to gorillas to house cats.
And they want to know, do you think you would win?
Unsurprisingly on every single animal, Americans responded that they would be
more confident that they could beat this animal in a fight.
Genuinely. Take a look at this chart.
Only 2% of Brits were confident that they
could take on a gorilla in a duel, which makes sense to me.
Probably should be zero,
whereas 8% of Americans thought that they would win absolutely every time.
Good old American optimism.
Now the first thing I did after this hilarious survey was to look up and Google
animals in the UK and separately, a search on animals in the USA.
I thought this would give me a basis
for telling me what animals were popular in each place in the UK.
Google added them as dog lovers, with every image at the top of the search
being a type of dog from border collies to beagles to Terriers.
Basically, it just seemed like the UK was made up of a bunch of cute dogs.
Do the same thing with the American search
and the dog is the first response, but then you're seeing grizzly bears,
bald Eagles, polar bears, who knows what enough animals to fill a Zoo.
I literally had to cut off the images because there were so many.
Now this isn't surprising really the USA is 40 times larger than the UK.
That's a 40.
So it makes sense that there's more
of an abundance of animal species in the USA given all the different
terrains and climates that make up one country.
There just really isn't the room for that many animals in the UK,
particularly when many people can't even find parking in front of their own houses.
But it's not all down to size.
Quite a few of the animals that are currently existing and living and thriving
in the wild in the US were actually once in the UK, but they're now extinct here.
This includes Wolves who were popular.
When I say who were popular, like someone voted on them.
They were common in the UK after the last ice age, but they had died out due
to basically human hunting and extinction by 1760.
Side note, I had to really make sure I
said Wolves in this video because typically in my accent and many other
American ones, we would look at Wolf and say Wolf, which definitely does sound
more like a dog bark than what many Brits would pronounce as Wolf.
So I have to work really hard to pronounce the L in that one.
It's typically brought out at a party
trick amongst my friends to get me to say the word, because I do pronounce it like
Wolf naturally, but definitely I hear Wolf.
Anyway.
Brown bears too, for example, were common in the UK years and years and years ago.
They estimate that over 70 years ago there were around 130 Brown bears
in the UK, but over 10 years ago they had all gone extinct.
But let's go back to what animals nowadays
you can find in one country and not the other.
And side note here, I'm talking about wild animals in particular.
I'm not talking about whether an animal might live in a Zoo in either country,
and I'm also not talking about necessarily native species to that country,
but rather ones that however they got here, they are there and in the wilds.
Some animals that you can find in the USA but not the UK, I'm going to have to read
my list for this include grizzly bears, mountain Lions, rattlesnakes, Gophers,
Moose, bison, chipmunks, porcupines, bald Eagles, Prairie dogs, polar bears,
Bobcats, water, Mocks and copperheads elk, alligators, and Wolves.
And some animals that you can find
in the UK but not in the USA include hedgehogs, glazed glaze, European Badgers,
Scottish Wildcat Orkney vole, Little owl, and red kites.
If we're comparing the most common animals to find in that country in the UK,
we have things like rabbits, Ducks, Badgers, deer, frogs, hedgehogs,
squirrels, Foxes, mice, and livestock like cows.
Pinning down the most common animals in the US was a lot harder.
So if you can think about the different
climates that you can find in the US, the wild animals that are common
in Florida are entirely different from the wild animals found in Alaska,
which is much different than the animals you'd find in the desert or in the Plains.
But in general, I would say the US does share many of the most common wild animals
in the UK, like rabbits, Ducks, frogs, squirrels and mice.
We can add Beavers to that which are mostly found around Rivers
and bears, which are found in a lot more States than you think, including Florida.
Speaking of Florida, I'll add my own personal experience here
and say that Florida is teeming with wild alligators.
If there is a pond, a puddle, a Lake,
any type of body of water to be found aside from the ocean,
you are going to likely find that an alligator can make a home in it.
To see an alligator crossing the street in Florida is not unheard of.
They like to hang out with golfers on the golf course.
Just don't hit your ball in their
direction, so you have to go rescue it from the jaws of an alligator.
And also in the fourth grade, they found their way under my portable
classroom in my elementary school and all the kids had to be locked inside while
the teachers frantically called animal control.
Now while we're talking about dangerous
creatures, let's talk about the most dangerous animals in each country.
I was really interested to see how they would compare.
So if we're comparing the largest land predators, especially to other animals
in each country in the US, we're going to go with the polar bear as the top one.
But the polar bear is only found in Alaska in the US.
So if you're talking about the continental
US, it's going to be the black bear in the UK.
When we're looking at the largest land predator, it's going to be wait for it.
The Badger.
Now, they can be fierce, but they're going to strike fear more
in the hearts of other small animals than humans.
Speaking of Badgers,
the American Badger and the European Badger are related,
but not as closely as you might think as they're in different subfamilies.
The European Badger is larger than the American Badger.
But the European Badger is the cutest
thing ever and looks like something that you would snuggle up with at night.
While the American Badger looks like something that you would not want to cross
in a dark alley or really in an alley at any time of day.
The European Badger is no slouch when it comes to aggression.
But let's just say that the American Badger likes to eat
squirrels, snakes, Gophers and rats, while the European Badger feasts on things
like wild fruit, insects, small birds and worms.
Okay, now what about the most dangerous animal?
Full stop in the UK versus the US.
In the USA, there are quite a few dangerous animals to pick from.
Again, Brown bears are at the top of this
list, followed by multiple types of snakes like rattlesnakes, Sharks, black bears,
alligators, Cougars and the list honestly goes on.
In the UK, it's very possible to live
a life and not on the run from animals out to kill you.
As the most dangerous UK animal is the Adder.
It's a type of snake and it's bite can be
painful and cause issues, but leading to death is relatively uncommon.
So it's considered 40 times less dangerous than the most dangerous snakes.
And only 14 people in the UK have died from an outer bite since 1876.
So we're not looking at something that's incredibly common.
But considering the UK and what its
wildlife population is, the outer does rank as the most dangerous in the UK.
Now let's talk about some creepy crawlies.
When it comes to insects, the UK and the US differ.
Yet again. In the UK, popular species are
dragonflies, grasshoppers, flies, beetles, butterflies, bees, Wasps and ants.
In the USA, you'll find many of the same, but with some noticeable differences.
Firstly, the insect population as a whole.
In the US, whether you want to measure by square foot or square meter or
whatever, is more concentrated and more intense than in the UK.
In the UK, having a screened window is extremely uncommon, whereas in the US,
particularly in parts of the south, it is a necessity.
The UK does have mosquitoes, but the mosquito season and the numbers
of them are much lower than, again, in parts of the American South
and in America in general, which has a longer and more intense mosquito season.
Cockroaches, too, are a common part of life,
especially in the American South and particularly in Florida.
To see them on your ceiling,
in your house, just helping themselves, walking around, it's very, very common.
It doesn't mean that your house is dirty
or that there is necessarily an infestation.
You just live in amongst the cockroaches.
In the UK, I had to look up whether
cockroaches existed here, and it turns out they do,
but they're so uncommon that I was reading a threat of multiple people who said they
were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, had lived in the UK their entire life.
They had never at any point seen a cockroach in their house.
In the wild, wherever I've been here
for ten years, have not seen a cockroach, so they do exist, but very uncommon.
Whereas, like I said, in Florida and in other parts
of the American South, they just make themselves at home.
Now, there's a very special insect in the UK that's much prettier than
a cockroach, and it's one that not a ton of Brits may have seen before.
It's called a Firefly, and they're basically bugs that light up
and fly around, particularly in the summertime.
A lot of people associate fireflies with really nostalgic memories of being
outdoors, particularly of childhood, of chasing them around.
There are songs about them.
There are odes to how much people love
them, and in general, they're just seen as something that's pretty magical.
In the UK, there is a species of light up bugs that they call glow worms,
and these are similar to fireflies, but the version that they have in the UK,
the ones that fly around are the males and they don't light up.
The ones that do light up are the females
and they can be seen, but they're mostly going to be seen
in a very particular point of the summer and they're going to be crawling
on the ground or perhaps crawling up like a tree stalk or something.
So you need to look down and look for bugs
that are crawling, as opposed to the American what we would
call the Firefly, which are flying around, lit up.
Another American experience is the cicada,
which are insects that make a really loud mating call, particularly in the warmer
months, that can be genuinely hard to hear over top of in the worst of it,
if you watched my video where I did kind of a sketch about
the Florida Tourism Board welcoming a UK tourist, you will know that in that video
I had to stop filming multiple times because it was genuinely so loud.
From the sounds of insects outside,
from cicadas in the summer to the classic sound of crickets on the Bayou,
the US in general tends to be louder when it comes to the insect population.
They make themselves known.
The UK, on the other hand, does have cicadas, and actually in the UK
it tends to pronounce cicada, but in the US we say cicada,
they do have an elusive species of it that is generally found in the New Forest,
but my research shows that they haven't actually found them in the past ten years.
So this isn't something that is going to be creating the allencompassing sounds
like the American cicadas, I would say in general,
much like the Brits themselves, the insects in the UK are much quieter
and reserved and calm compared to their American counterparts,
who like to yell so loudly that you can't help but pay attention to them.
To fish out our creepy Crawley section, I've got everybody's favorites.
Spiders.
The most common Spider in the UK is actually just called the house Spider,
and it's found during Spider season from early September to mid October.
By Christmas, most are gone,
but it's definitely not uncommon to find these creatures in your house.
Again, it doesn't indicate that your house is dirty or there's something wrong
with it, you're just living amongst the spiders.
We found them in our bathtub,
in our ceilings, and there have definitely been some screams around this house when
we accidentally discovered the eight legged creature that we didn't know was
like sharing our pillow or a shower with us.
The spiders in the UK, unlike some spiders in the US, are not actually dangerous.
They do have the false widow, and that Spider can produce some pain when
it comes to the bite, but it's nowhere near as dangerous as
the actual black widow in the US, Spider season is definitely a thing
and it's in the fall, but this also varies by state.
So again, if you think about how big
the US is compared to how big the UK is, it would make sense that certain areas are
going to have more of an infestation than others.
As an example, I've seen more spiders
in my house and in the general surroundings in the UK in the ten years
I've lived here than I ever saw in Florida in the 20 plus years I lived there.
There are a couple of spiders to watch out
for in the US, including the Brown recluse and the black widow.
The bites from these spiders can be incredibly dangerous and actually deadly.
And as a child, if you live in an area where these are popular,
generally you are taught early on how to spot what they look like.
For the black widow.
It's usually the reddish hourglass shape on the back that you're taught about.
But honestly, I've never encountered
a black widow that I know of in the US despite living in an area that has them.
And I feel like by the time you get so
close to the shape on the Spider, you're getting too close anyway.
So possibly if you just see any Spider
in the US, you should turn around and go the other direction.
When it comes to reptiles, again, you're about to sense a trend here.
The US has many more dangerous snakes than
the UK, which as we talked about, is just the Adder.
So in the US, there are over 20 species.
I feel like I'm saying species weird in this video.
Species, species, species.
There are over 20 species of dangerous snakes, including the Cottonmouth,
including one that's very popular in Florida.
Again, I say popular like they won some election.
Common in Florida, the water Moccasin,
as well as the really, really dangerous ones like the rattlesnakes.
I had no idea how many different types
of rattlesnakes there were until researching for this video.
The most dangerous one, it appears, is the Mojave rattlesnake,
which basically kills its prey slowly with its destructive enzymes.
Charming parts of the US are also abundant with lizards.
This could range from the common Brown lizard, which is standard in Florida.
If you've ever been on holiday or vacation
to Florida, you probably will have seen one.
They were introduced, they came over from Cuba somehow over 100
years ago, and they are now the most popular type in Florida.
These creatures generally just get
everywhere they live, anywhere they want in your backyard,
in your front yard, seeing them in your house, not uncommon.
A lizard in your house is not something
that you would kind of just leave to its own devices.
You would typically look like a fool trying to chase it out,
but they do get in the house through cracks and stuff like that.
Another type of lizard commonly found
in the US is called the skink and it is as disgusting as it looks in the pictures.
If you see one in person and you've got Iguanas fun language fact,
most Brits I've heard say Iguana whereas most Americans will say Iguana.
So you've got them roaming around
and you've also got things like horned lizards.
So there you have it.
We have touched just the surface
of the iceberg that is the UK versus US wildlife.
And basically to sum it up,
if you're visiting the UK, you should expect a very generally calm
and friendly animal population that will let you get on with your business.
On the other hand,
visitors to America should generally avoid feel like making eye contact with any
animal until you're actually convinced it's a cute puppy as opposed to a Brown
bear who thinks you're food, a poisonous rattlesnake trying to kill you
or a cockroach which will not hurt you but will give you nightmares for days.
We haven't covered too many aquatic animals in this video but I'll just end
with a map of great white shark territories.
You can see that they're found in both
oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific in the US.
Whereas despite some unconfirmed spotting by fishermen, there have been no actually
confirmed spottings of great white Sharks in the UK waters.
I'm going to go ahead and guess that this
is something that our British viewers will be very happy about.
Hope you guys learned something today.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you want more videos on the UK versus USA, definitely make sure to subscribe
and hit the notification Bell so you know when I have more coming out and I haven't
done this in a while but I'm going to do another secret.
You made it to the end of the video signal.
So what should we have you say?
Okay,
if you made it all the way to the end of the video, I want you to comment
in the comment section on what you would do to fend off a great white shark.
So going back to that survey by yougo
Americans versus Brits who can take on these animals in a fight?
What would you do if you were confronted with a great white shark comment?
That in the section in the comment section below.
So I know you made it to the end of the video.
Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time.