Ranking the areas still requiring animals

[Mjmannella]

I do get that, but I think it more comes down to where they nest and where they spend most of their time. Though Frontier dropping a some small perchable trees would be amazing for bird representation.

Flying animations, even if fixed, would so such a long ways. Surely they could borrow the Pterosaur guy in the JWE branch for a workshop on how to make animals fly, no?

 

[RightWhale]

Flying animations, even if fixed, would so such a long ways. Surely they could borrow the Pterosaur guy in the JWE branch for a workshop on how to make animals fly, no?

Honestly “easy fix” just give some birds a special jump animation. Create some new perches, the birds can jump up to and hang in the tree.

 

[Frogstrich]

Okay after all the comments here's my verdict @call me Omi :

• North American deserts - go blue, that area is extremely well represented
• North American grasslands - go blue, who knew north america will get so much love
• Patagonia - goes yellow - poor Mara keeps us away from perfection. While patagonia has more animals to offer, the 3 omnipresent species in global zoos are rhea, mara, and cougar, and 2 of them are now with us. Once the third is here (fingers crossed) we'll be able to make decent pataonian representation in our zoos.
• South american rainforest - can go yellow. Reasoning below*
• South american grasslands - remains yellow, coati is missing, monkey is missing.
• Caribbean - remains grey as we are still under the 2 habitat species threshold.

South America rainforest reasoning
While I agree with @KönigDerKaffeebohnen that there's a chasm between south america's potential and its actual representation in the game, I went and looked back to the part of the thread where we were discussing the south american rainforests specifically, and the gaps raised there were:

• Coati
• Peccary
• More monkeys - in cateogries big, medium and small
• More medium sized animals for an area featured in the game only by charismatic megafauna compared to the weird medium and small critters of real life zoos.
• (And of course birds but we don't count them in PZ1 unfortunately)

The new pack adresses these gaps pretty well, giving us a big monkey (saki), 3 mid-sized lesser known critters (ocelot, bush dog, saki), and technically even two birds that touch on the region (flamingo and rhea). So if we judge this area the same we judged the previous areas as compared to what's feasible and likely in the game, I think we can now pinpoint two specific gaps (coati, tamarin) that keep us away from a realistic baseline roster for global zoos. That in addition to @IberianFlamenco🦩🦖 's good point that the orange category became less relevant as most of the areas were more fleshed out.

Objections?

Might As Well Point Out The American Flamingo Is Found In The Galapagos As Seen On This Range Map.

 

[Markiz]

Might As Well Point Out The American Flamingo Is Found In The Galapagos As Seen On This Range Map.View attachment 425622

Oh wow that's weird.

They are found on Galapagos but nowhere on West coast of SA/CA.

 

[Tinou97]

Oh wow that's weird.

They are found on Galapagos but nowhere on West coast of SA/CA.

Those in the Galapagos are some kind of sub species that genetically differs from the American Flamingo itself. The question is indeed how they ended up in the Galapagos in the first place. Because of human? Idk.

 

[jcp011c]

Here's my thought process for the Americas pack:

• North american deserts (bighorn sheep, coyote, ocelot) - blue, wth is even left thats not in the game
• North american grasslands (bighorn sheep, coyote) - blue, not much left here
• Patagonia (Greater rhea) - goes yellow or orange, as the only major species missing is the Mara (sadness), and now we have 2 basic species (cougar and rhea)
• South american rainforest (ocelot, white-faced saki, american flamingo) - can go yellow. We have 2 monkeys and decent roster, but the coati remains a major gap, alongside more monkeys like tamarins and other species
• South american grasslands (ocelot, rhea, bush dog, saki?) - remains yellow, coati is missing.
• Caribbean (flamingo) - remains grey as we are still under the 2 habitat species threshold.

Approvals? objections? thoughts?

This looks good. So much better for South America overall, if we look at just quantity of species (non-flying birds). Are there still species that should have been in, yup. But we got 4/5 more South American species out of it, depending on how you define the flamingo. So quantity representation wise, I can't complain. All that's really really critical from the continent now mammal wise is a coati and at least one more monkey, because even two is not really enough, and to a slightly lesser extend the Mara. I really feel like everything else is extra, even if that means not including a few species I definitely wanted.

 

[yoav_r]

Tangentially related, I was interested in building a roster for a zoo game with the intention of getting every biogeographic region you presented into the blue category. What's the process you used to determine how many species an area needs before it turns blue? Is there a set minimum required?

Community discussions. We went over each area to set a baseline to "green", and after that baseline has been reached, when Frontier add more animals to the region we discuss whether it is enough to go to blue.

You can see in the main post the split between "Good additions" and "oddball additions" for potential additions to each area based on how many people wanted it.

 

[yoav_r]

And the Galapagos islands?

We have Galapagos giant tortoise from the base game, at the same time, the American flamingo are also native there, so we will have 2 habitat animals from the Galapagos islands, so the color of the islands on the map may change.

Wth that actually counts. So yeah the galapagos should be green I guess? @call me Omi Never expected that to happen. How did those flamingos even get there?

 

[Mjmannella]

Wth that actually counts. So yeah the galapagos should be green I guess? @call me Omi Never expected that to happen. How did those flamingos even get there?

Seems like they diverged from the continental American flamingo 350-70kya (Page 9), so it's undoubtedly a natural radiation. They might've been vagrants at first but slowly gained a population over hundreds of thousands of years.
Edit: divergence time has been corrected. The original time for 1.1-0.7mya was the split between "Old World" and "New World" flamingos

Community discussions. We went over each area to set a baseline to "green", and after that baseline has been reached, when Frontier add more animals to the region we discuss whether it is enough to go to blue.

You can see in the main post the split between "Good additions" and "oddball additions" for potential additions to each area based on how many people wanted it.

Noted. I'll have a look through the early pages to see where I can find the baselines

 

[NachoB]

Wth that actually counts. So yeah the galapagos should be green I guess? @call me Omi Never expected that to happen. How did those flamingos even get there?

Idk but if they are invasive do they really count? Is like considering the red deer a southamerican animal.

 

[NachoB]

Seems like they diverged from the continental American flamingo 1.1-0.7mya (Page 9), so it's undoubtedly a natural radiation. They might've been vagrants at first but slowly gained a population over hundreds of thousands of years.

Noted. I'll have a look through the early pages to see where I can find the baselines

Oh so they do count then... But after all that time aren't they a new species?

 

[Mjmannella]

I don't think there's been any call for them to be considered their own species. Not yet at least.

 

[Mjmannella]

Hmm, I can't seem to find any hard numbers for each region. Maybe I'm looking for them in the wrong way? I've used just about every search term I could think of that'd be relevant.

 

[yoav_r]

Hmm, I can't seem to find any hard numbers for each region. Maybe I'm looking for them in the wrong way? I've used just about every search term I could think of that'd be relevant.

It's all summarized in the main post, under each region.

 

[Mjmannella]

It's all summarized in the main post, under each region.

I've seen the summaries, but what I want to know is what specific number threshold a region must reach to be green or blue. For example, the Arid Animal Pack shot the North African desert region up from yellow to blue. What was the number count for the region to turn green? How far blue is it? I'm less interested in specific species, and more interested in specific numbers to which species can be placed.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

I've seen the summaries, but what I want to know is what specific number threshold a region must reach to be green or blue. For example, the Arid Animal Pack shot the North African desert region up from yellow to blue. What was the number count for the region to turn green? How far blue is it? I'm less interested in specific species, and more interested in specific numbers to which species can be placed.

None, its all based on vibes and even those tend to differ.
Some people jump at the opportunity to ssy something needs to be moved up while others are more critically.
Best example is the South American rainforest Orange or Yellow example, because both sides have valid points for why the Bar should be higher due to potential and lower due to expectation

 

[Mjmannella]

None, its all based on vibes and even those tend to differ.
Some people jump at the opportunity to ssy something needs to be moved up while others are more critically.
Best example is the South American rainforest Orange or Yellow example, because both sides have valid points for why the Bar should be higher due to potential and lower due to expectation

I see, that certainly makes the goal of building a zoo game roster from these regions quite a bit harder with less scaffolding to meet specific goals.

 

[USzoofan42]

To be honest, it’s still hard to build a zoo focused on North American wildlife. No Black Bear, No bird (flamingo doesn’t count imao), no deer and much more.

 

[Marvinb]

Just general consensus of the people participating.
And imo its also about specific species as much as about numbers.
Also the number of zoo relevant species differ for every region, for sure cant compare african savannah with patagonia or the arctic for example

 

[SanRazo]

To be honest, it’s still hard to build a zoo focused on North American wildlife. No Black Bear, No bird (flamingo doesn’t count imao), no deer and much more.

I would say ABB is the biggest thing. NA sections I go to usually don’t have many deer. I have seen some but it’s not necessary