I dont care about realism in a nutshell, what i care for is how usefull an animal is.
I dont care about how much i subjectivly like or dislike an animal irl or how they look aslong as they can be differentiated from other animals allready in game on a glance.
If you want to convince me on an animal, show me its range, tell me its biomes, what makes it special regarding its gameplay niche and what history it has to being kept.
The range and biomes determin how flexible and therefor usefull it is for thematic areas and general representation.
Yoavs ranking the areas thread is a good point of reference here, if the animal appears in 3 or more areas or atleast one in yellow or lower, thats a win.
Next is what sets them apart from other animals gameplay wise, their niche, be it game or area wide something like the swan being the games first waterfowl but the black swan being australias first while also looking distinct.
Lastly their history in captivity and/or how iconic they are as an actual zoo animal, be it by being extremly common, generally iconic even if quite rare like the panda or play an important role in a specific region like the golden snub nose monkey in china or the tassie devil in australia.
And if the animal checks out in 2 out of 3 categorys nice im interested, now just hope that there isnt on that can fill the same niche and actually be present in all 3, which most likly does exist.
For example the wood duck scores a clean 3 out of 3, buuuut the mallard does the same with tripple the range so theres a clear objective mallard > wood duck.
But some animals like for example the saiga are such unique creatures that theres no better stand in, so i dont care that it is rare in captivity cause who else is suppoused to fill that role of representing the central asian steppe? Theres no other animal thats not in the game thats more iconic to the area and comes even close to the saiga, so i can happily ignore that they are rare in captivity as theres no better alternative thats more common
