Well known animals - General Public Knowledge

[The_Riot22]

So it sounds like you are saying most well-known animals, rather than well-known zoo animals. In that case, here are a few...some are specific, others are more broad:

• African Leopard
• Wolverine
• Wombat
• Walrus
• Eurasian Brown Bear
• Fox
• Porcupine
• Wild Boar
• Red Deer
• North American Elk
• Small lizards like Geckos, Chameleons, etc
• Emu
• King Cobra
• Impala

 

[premierfong]

Next question: Why is it important that they know the animals?
Lets take the takin for example, why would anybody need to know what it is before its part of a dlc to appreciate it?
Its a beautiful golden mountain "cow" that looks like its right out of the land of myths and fairy tails. Im quite sure that if a Person still buys dlcs to this day, aslong as the animals are cute, pretty, cool or simply unique from what we allready have, they will propaply buy it.
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Ofcourse my view of what people know is propaply quite skewed as a german millenial from the area most densly populated by zoosbin the world, but from what ive seen most peoples animal knowledge really wasnt that bad.
We have to learn about our local ecosystems in school, zoos are common destinations for trips, dates and in parts just general public places. For example in the zoo berlin, i saw quite alot of people in suits and/or with laptops working or taking their break while sitting in the zoo.
Only rarly have i heard people label as something it isnt and even when it wasnt something outrageous like for example calling a rhea ostritch. Info cards are everywhere and most people seem to actually use them, atleast to look up the name of the animal.
But even then, the general audience isnt as stupid as it might seem, especally not for this game.

Foxy here even states herself as a great example.
Its allmost impossible to get into this game and be neither an animal nerd or on your way to become one. The only other real audience this game has are the true builders who do not care about the animals aslong as the props are good.
Most of us have Saalands Adventure "Zoo" (sorry if i butcherd the name) where hes over 2 years in without using a single animal in that giant project.
And its breathtaking.

And all the animals i mentioned for being common zoo animals are also in the same role like more well known animals, just to a lesser extend as id say its a fair assumptiom that the people buying dlcs for a zoo building game have been in a zoo before and still like to visit them, giving a boost for animals that they recognise from there.
Maybe they dont know what a coati is by name, but the funny ringtailed racoon monkey cat with the long nose for sure is something recognisable when you see them in a dlc.

Long story short: id really doubt being well known to what is presented as a persumed general audience with allmost no knowledge is of pretty much no importance for the 11+ dlc in a over 2,5 year old game.
Whoever still buys dlc really cant be put in this unkowledgeable sphere that would only buy what they know.
Afterall the SEA pack has a great feedback from most more casual players and i doubt that unknowing general aidience knew any of the animals in that pack besides maybe the giant leaf insect

I am chinese so i want Takin, my ty local zoo has two.

 

[SpookDoc]

I'm... really not sure if I can agree with this. Just because an animal is common in zoos doesn't mean that it's recognizable to the general public. In my experience, the general public (including friends, family members, people I have seen participate in online discussions outside of zoo/animal-related communities, random passersby overhead in zoos) are only genuinely familiar with the upper echelon of well known animals. They can tell a lion from a tiger and a hippo from a rhino, sure, but once you extend much beyond that things seem to get very murky.

Of the species you listed, I am very confident that the average American, at least, has never heard of a mara, rhea, mouflon, nilgai, takin, muntjac, marten, wombat, tree kangaroo, maned wolf, striped hyena, spectacled/sloth bear, or even the coatimundi and nene - species found in this country! Those that would recognize the wolverine, Tasmanian devil, fossa or echidna largely only do so based on their pop culture character representations, and almost certainly would not be able to identify the actual animal out of a lineup. I think the average American would identify a wallaby as a kangaroo and an emu as an ostrich, and while storks and swans are absolutely household names I don't think they could tell them apart from cranes or geese. And I'm quite certain that aside from, like, maybe mandrills, all monkeys (and some apes and sometimes lemurs) are just "monkeys" and all deer are just "deer", and any cat smaller than a bobcat may as well not exist.

I guess it's possible that my sample is somehow incredibly skewed, or maybe in general Americans are just that much more out of touch with zoology compared to Europeans (a notion that I've generally found to be the case, but perhaps even more skewed than I thought?)

Ultimately if I were to try and come up with a list of zoo species not in the game that I'd expect the general American public (I know I keep honing in here but I do want to stress how much my analysis is going to be colored by my own experiences) to recognize both by name and by visual, I think it would be limited to:

• Walrus
• Sloth
• Red fox
• Skunk
• Raccoon
• Coyote
• Armadillo
• American black bear
• Pelican
• Porcupine, although I'm not sure how I'd separate the species. I think most people would recognize the NA porcupine and old world porcupines as porcupines (obviously no species designation), but maybe not South American ones.
• Jackal by name and I think the majority of people know they're dogs but I'm not remotely certain they could identify them from a lineup of canids or would immediately say "jackal" if shown a picture of one and asked to identify the animal
• various domestics

Notably, of these, only the walrus, sloth, and jackal are non-US species.

As a fellow American, I totally agree with you that for the average individual here, being able to identify different species isn’t a priority. In fact, unless a species has highly unique visual anatomy, most animals are often lumped into “family categories” by general audiences. For example, most Americans would probably known what a Moose looks like/is, because of how divergent and large it is compared to other deer species. But for majority of other deer species (America-native or otherwise), they are often identified under an umbrella term. So a Caribou, Elk, White-tailed Deer, or Fallow Deer would all just be called a “deer”. Sure a good portion of Americans would claim they know what a Reindeer/Caribou is because of its correlation with the Christmas season, but it’s more-so the name of the species that they know and less-so its visual features. Pin up ten/fifteen images of different deer species on a wall and likely the only one they could confidently identify would be a Moose.

Honestly, I think you still are giving the average American too much credit in some ways. I really don’t think most could tell you more than one difference that separates the American Black Bear from the Brown Bear, or the differences between a Coyote and Grey Wolf, or even the Bobcat and Canadian Lynx.

Similarly, I think a lot of other popular animals fall into this “name game” that can happen with species often referenced in popular media, like the Reindeer/Caribou. The Wolverine, Tasmanian Devil, Roadrunner, Coyote, etc. all seem well-known because their names are often thrown around, but most Americans couldn’t actually identify the physical animals. I don’t think though that this implies the odds are somehow lessened we’ll see them in future DLC though. Two other high-requested species we recently received, the Leopard and Platypus, are prolific in popular media yet most people would struggle in positively identifying them. Ask the average person what the difference between a Jaguar and Leopard is, or what colors a Platypus actually is (hint, they aren’t blue and orange) and I think there would be some struggle there.

I also think that region/location greatly affects what index of species are actually known by the average person. In America, most people would be able to tell you what an Opossum or Raccoon looks/acts like, but go to Northern Asia and the story is likely very different.

And as I mentioned earlier with the whole “deer” situation and how many species often blur into one big conglomerate to the general public, this same situation also holds true for a number of other popular animal groups, even some with still no presence in PZ. For example, ducks, rabbits/hares, squirrels, and geese are all identifiable as a whole by most people, but how many species could the average person actually name? There’s tens to even hundreds of species from each grouping and most people wouldn’t even known one species from each, though they would know enough to tell you roughly what they’re looking at and that this category of animal is lacking in PZ. It seems that a lot of animal groups typically associated with/located near urban areas fall into this category.

All this said, there are still popular, terrestrial species/families that most people seem to be familiar with that PZ lacks, such as: Walruses, Sea Turtles, Pelicans, Sloths, Armadillos, Chameleons, Porcupines, Baboons, etc.

In terms of the most “recognized/well-known” species, your best bet would be domestic varieties though. Ask someone on the street what animals they’ve seen/are the most familiar with, and most would probably tend towards domestic breeds/species. Everyone knows that a sheep and a goat are different things, same for chickens and turkeys. But not everyone could tell you from memory some of the differences between a Jackal and a Coyote.