Sometimes when switching or buying animals, it will show your original animal on screen and sometimes on the edit animal button. The bugged (wrong) animals can sometimes show with the correct animal's regular and fixed color(s), like the colors of hooves, talons and ears. If you switched to a patterned animal, it's patterns will also appear below your glitched animal. This glitch is usually related to connection problems. Inside your switch animal menu and your inventory, it will show the correct animal.
If your animal bugs on other people's screens, then they may see you as a different animal.
Your animal could also appear as the correct one on other people's screens, but bugged on yours.
Changing colors will cause the glitched animal icon to have the fixed colors and regular colors of the animal you actually are. On most occasions however, the icon is already glitched with these colors if you have a failed animal switch.
Elephant with pink tusks on animal icon:
If you switch animals and it fails again, it will still show you as the first animal you were on screen, however it will be the correct animal in your animal inventory and on the edit animal menu.
Sometimes you can see other people become bugged when they switched animals, but that is usually on your screen only.
This giraffe has pink hooves and ears because i switched into a rhino, which has a pink fixed color. The rhino i switched into had the same colors as the giraffe, so that's why it's still orange and brown.
If your switching from a land to a flying animal, the land animal will be shifted to the place where the flying animal would be. If it fails when you switch from flying to land, your flying animal will be shifted down to your nametag. If you move around, it will have no animation.