Five continents??



At one point a character mentions "the five continents". Is that some sort of lame joke,
or was the writer too dumb to realize that there are seven continents?

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There is the same debate concerning a line from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Mrs. Bundy, the ornithologist, states, "The five continents of the world probably contain more than 100,000,000,000 birds!"
https://moviechat.org/tt0056869/The-Birds/58c708a74e1cf308b93904cd/why-does-the-old-birdlady-say-birds-of-the-FIVE-continents

It is believed by some that she was referring only to the continents with permanent inhabitants, and combined North and South America into "the Americas." The omission of Antarctica is an error because penguins can be found there, although it has been explained that this was an intentional statement because they are flightless birds and cannot migrate.

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Mrs. Bundy is a dingbat. There are seven.

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I agree that there are seven. I don't know who came up with five, and why there are two movies (The Birds and Willy Wonka) that have made this part of the dialogue. I wonder how many other movies or TV programs contain this erroneous statement.

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