Wanikani is primarily a kanji learning tool, not a vocab learning tool. They primarily have vocabulary to teach more kanji readings and to show which readings are used when, but it’s not designed to teach you words for everyday use. It’d probably be a better idea to just use some vocabulary deck to learn some common words instead, besides, a not insignificant amount of common vocab is usually written in kana, so you won’t find those on WK anyways. 
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I’ll just drop a classic here:
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i am more than sure that as native speakers they have certainly studied it at some point… perhaps in junior high school, if not when they themselves were in elementary school
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豚 itself isn’t taught in elementary school. I can’t really see 河豚 being part of jouyou education at all… but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t encounter it at some point.
Which is weird, because it’s in the top 2,500 - 5,000 words used in written English (depending on how you measure).
Camping, parachuting, awnings, & garden fetes have them; there are entire shops that sell nothing but: https://thecanopyshop.co.uk/
Ebay has a section for them: Garden & Patio Awnings & Canopies for sale | eBay
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Which just underlines that any vocabulary can be useful or unnecessary depending on what your life looks like. I just never needed that word before therefore I never memorized it. Canopy has probably shown up a few times, I just didn’t notice because it wasn’t relevant. My first English lesson was 16 years ago after all, so if it’s really that much used it’s unlikely I haven’t seen it. I just got the context without having to look up that particular word.
Same goes for Japanese. There will be vocab/kanji that you will never need again your whole life despite it being a very common word and there will be others that even natives don’t use that much but they will be crucial for your ability to express yourself. Language is super fluid and so is the importance of vocabulary.
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that is not so much about “kanji” as about common use vocabulary, and the command of japanese language in general:
i’m willing to bet that at some point of their education up and including high school (which, since they are teachers, they are supposed to have graduated) they have encountered “河豚=ふぐ”
it might have been during a 国語 class, or some subject / topic in 社会科 or… since we are talking about living creatures in 生物
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Sure, that’s a lesson about jukujikun, and so the lesson includes some examples of jukujikun. Like I said, it wouldn’t be shocking for people to encounter it… Just like it’s not shocking for any individual Japanese person to have encountered little pieces of interesting English knowledge in their lessons here and there.
One time a kid’s question in one of my classes (I’m an ALT in elementary and junior high) prompted us to talk about English words for animal groups. Like pride of lions, pod of whales, murder of crows, etc. It was something that just came up organically and they found it interesting. So they got exposure to that thing. But they’d never see it in the required curriculum, so you can’t expect all Japanese people to have encountered it.
That’s what I’m guessing 河豚 is like. Not strange to have seen it, but also not strange to meet an adult who can’t read it.
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It’s not like we’re out here saying words like floccinaucinihilipilification while misusing the で particle in the same sentence.
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Thinking back to the 里心 dilemma, I realized I’ve never actually used the word “homesick” in my life, but it was my first (or close to first) time meeting rendaku and a composite vocab (like 山道) so I welcomed it fondly.
河 and 豚 are both jouyou kanji, so wouldn’t you expect people to have encountered the word at some point in school?
Just because a word can be written using jouyou kanji doesn’t mean that you’d expect it to be part of compulsory education. In addition to their common readings, kanji can also have many non-standard or less common readings which you’d never teach at school.
Take 上 for example. It’s a simple kanji taught in first grade, but not all of the readings are taught in first grade, and some aren’t taught at all.
Here’s a screenshot of the website kanjipedia, which shows readings that are part of mandatory education in pink, while readings that fall outside the mandatory education are in black. Pink readings with 高 marks are mandatory but not taught til high school, and 中 is for junior high.
So as you can see there, たてまつる and ほとり can, in theory, be written with this basic kanji all Japanese people know. But they aren’t going to be taught those readings at school, and they might only encounter them in extremely difficult pieces of literature written before their grandparents were born.
河豚 isn’t quite that level of obscurity, but you can see why just saying “they learn the kanji at school so they’ll see the word in school” doesn’t really play out that way.
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speaking from my personal experience of studying for and passing the first level of the Kanji kentei test, i would say that it is exactly those (外) readings that are probably the most difficult and mnemonically demanding part of it
being able to write (let alone read) the likes of 薔薇 痙攣 is relatively… relatively easy
the real difficulty is in learning that 上 has such readings as たてまつる and ほとり!
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Oh, speaking of weird readings, do you also get weird readings for common words in the test, like 女性 or is that out of scope?
Haven’t passed it obviously, but I would say almost anything you can imagine is fair game. One of the sections that they use for weird readings is where they’ll give a kanji compound that uses a kanji in a specific way, and then they’ll say “give the kunyomi for it that expresses the same meaning as the way it was used in the compound.” They have to be careful about how they create questions for some of the really obscure stuff, so as to not make it that a “normal” reading looks like a correct answer.
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yes, everything and anything goes there, including examples like yours
on the spot i can add 飲食 which reads as ”おんじき” in buddhist texts
some proverbs also contain “simple” words with non-conventional readings like
四十新造五十島田 where 新造 is read as ”しんぞ”
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I noticed 河豚 is in the sample sentences for 弱々しい for level 9 here; we should be well familiar by L28…if we are reading the sentences 
Came across 鰐口 the other day which, if I had to guess, would be alligator clips but it’s actually the metal gong that gets hit by the rope in shrines. I don’t think this is well known or used, just glad to see wani in the wild.
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Lots of good points in here, but one thing I’m not buying is “Wanikani isn’t for everyone.”
It has the potential to become something for everyone. If Amazon can do it, WK can. If Pornhub can do it, WK can.
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