Bighorn Confirmed today! Any other New World ungulates you feel would be great additions?
For me personally it’s Musk Ox all day
There are a ton of ungulates that I would sort of like to see in Planet zoo, but not many that make me excited. I think the muntjac is the only one that is both great and would get me cheering, but it's an old world animal.
The
muskox is a very solid option. I would definitely use it sometimes.
For pure selfishness, I would probably add the
white-tailed deer next. I like its range of biomes and find it important for building local wildlife refuges. It is the only native ungulate where I've lived, and it is the national mammal of Honduras and Costa Rica. It can even be found in parts of South America. However, I think the WTD is kind of like the coyote in that people from other continents probably won't care about it at all, and many people who
do live here will regard it as a pest, backyard, or game animal more than a zoo species. Few would cry if it didn't show up. On the other hand, there are quite a few people who would sorely miss the
wapiti, which is majestic and has beautiful calls even if its range isn't quite as useful to me. The wapiti would probably go over better if we get a NA deer at all. I think the bear and a bird or two are more important than any ungulates at the moment.
For South America, I think a
pudu or
marsh deer could be somewhat cool as far as ungulates go. Pudus are tiny and cute, but I don't think they'd have many useful interspecies enrichment combos as the muntjac. I could be wrong about that, but I think their range is small. I like the orange coat and aquatic tendencies of the marsh deer. I could easily live without them, though. The
lowland tapir seems like the most important one although I'm personally fine with substituting the Baird's. I think that's the one people would miss most. I'm fine using alpacas and llamas in place of their wild counterparts, the
guanaco and
vicuña, and have little to no interest in a wild camelid.
Mountain tapirs seem fun and fluffy, but they are too rare in captivity and unrequested to be considered strongly. A mod would be cool, though.
In short, the wapiti, lowland tapir, and especially the musk ox are the main good/ok options left, and if support somehow goes on for ages, I wouldn't mind a South American deer and would personally like the white-tailed.
