Would anyone accept a general leopard?
- Thread starter NZFanatic
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Having a generic species over 1 specific subspecies would certainly alleviate a lot of the debate. Having a single leopard would be very flexible, letting everyone win.
I think most people just pick Amur leopards because they're the most common and thus "proper" subspecies for zoos. Also, the meta wishlist has not-insignificant number of people who don't care about the subspecies. I strongly doubt a ton of people will be like, "OMG FrontEAr why didn't you make a [X] leopard instead of this terrible generic species???".
I must say, I would prefer a subspecies of the leopard, be it the Amur, the African or some of the others. In my opinion the subspecies are just to distinct from each other and it should be made like it was with the tiger. And I must say the Zoos I have visited always write which subspecies of leopard (also tiger) is shown whereas it is not the case with Jaguars somehow (are there subspecies of them? Wiki says no). In case of the Puma I cannot say much because I have never seen one. But I would have prefered that they have called it North American Cougar.
Cougars and jaguars are always (to my knowledge) exhibited without subspecies because:
a) the subspecies are remarkably similar in appearance
b) the number of subspecies is very limited, and
c) to my understanding, the taxonomy of both subspecies complexes (number and range of subspecies) is debated.
The ONLY exception to this rule is the Florida panther, which is sometimes exhibited with that name specified, but this is an endangered population, not a subspecies.
And I don't mean to sound rude, but why on earth would you want a North American Cougar above a generic Puma concolor/Cougar/Puma/Mountain Lion? The subspecies look basically identical, but picking just one would mean halving the represented range.
omg so pretty <3
In case of the cougar it does not matter very much I must say. I meant this because around the species we got it is not continious. But in the end it is okay for me that the Puma is the general species. On the other hand I would somehow find it really strange if we get a general leopard. In my opinion they are looking quite different.
Planet Coaster only ever got one anniversary "reward", and we've already had one in Planet Zoo (black-and-white ruffed lemur), so there's no reason to expect any more. The game also has a limited lifespan, so while it is possible that we could receive a second leopard after the first, it certainly isn't likely, largely because a leopard on its own would probably be developed as a 'clone' of the jaguar already.
Of course, the flip side of that is that we just got another caiman for some reason, so who really knows?
I’d be fine with just leopard, rather than a particular subspecies. Whilst there is morphological variation among subspecies, it’s lower than the variation found in some other in-game species. If, however, we get subspecies it’s, I’d like the persian better than either African or Amur… we have enough north-east Asian cats.
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This is potentially going to be a bit controversial….but….this debate seems to be driven by an element of ‘prioritisation’. I suspect that no one would object to multiple Leopard species out of anything other than the point that the second Leopard subspecies would likely mean one less other animal. But I’d be interested why it wouldn’t be possible for Frontier to deliver more new animals if they go down a ’multiple subspecies’ route in some cases. No doubt they would need to do some work to have different requirements for the different subspecies (taiga versus tropical versus grassland etc) and also some extra work for the look of the animal (thicker fur etc as per the great pictures on this thread). But Leopard behaviours are pretty consistent across subspecies, so it’s not really double the design work.
I like the new things with each release but I still feel limited by the animal choices - especially in franchise mode. I’d like the ability to be more selective on the subspecies of various animals and feel that Frontier could increase the animal choices relatively quickly by investing a small amount of (relative) time there.
Not trying to be ungrateful for a very good game - but feels like there is more choice for the building element than the actual animals themselves to some degree.
I like the new things with each release but I still feel limited by the animal choices - especially in franchise mode. I’d like the ability to be more selective on the subspecies of various animals and feel that Frontier could increase the animal choices relatively quickly by investing a small amount of (relative) time there.
Not trying to be ungrateful for a very good game - but feels like there is more choice for the building element than the actual animals themselves to some degree.
This is my reasoning too. The subspecies are visually too distinct for me to accept a generic leopard.
The Amur leopard is quite distinct from the others (not surprisingly, given its distinct climate, it is stockier and has longer fur) but the others are much less distinct. It’s hard to get a good idea of the morphological variation within subspecies and, therefore, to what extent their morphologies overlap (rather than just mean or typical morphologies) from anything I’ve seen online though.
Probably mix between:
1. temperate fluffy (amur and north chinese)
2. desert white (persian and arabian)
3. tropical yellow (african, indochinese, javan, indian)
Avialable sizes in game between a bit bigger than lynx (arabian) to persian leopard size.
Rosettes as 7 skin variations.
Since all of them have different lenght of legs and tails lets randomize it.
True generic leopard should be mix of everything.
"Science and conservation" recognize animals by more than their visual appearances. It'd represent all leopard subspecies at once for maximum flexibility. You could easily make a generic leopard with the following:
- Main model having the averaged proportions of the 3 subspecies most validated by the IUCN (pardus, melas, and orientalis)
- Main colour being brownish like a Javan leopard
- Light amount of fluff, not to the the extent of an amur leopard but enough to be passable
- 3 colour morphs - "albino" (black), "leucitic" (Persian colour), and "xanthochroic" (African/Indian colour)
- The same alpha manipulation used on zebras and tigers
No, absolutely not. I'd rather have two leopards, or no leopards, over one mix of an animal that doesn't exisit.
I think it's quite audacious that some sort of indeterminate leopard "doesn't exist". Is it truly impossible that not a single leopard in the world deviates from our pre-conceived views on taxonomic groups? (with a potentially dubious amount of support in some cases, mind you)
I couldn't tell you which subspecies to which these 3 leopards belong, and I think they could work in any sort of setting.
And so what? You stick a bit of extra fur on an Arabian leopard and make it more yellow. Does that really break the idea that the animal is Panthera pardus, even when all of its elements add up to the species in question?
I couldn't tell you which subspecies to which these 3 leopards belong, and I think they could work in any sort of setting.
And so what? You stick a bit of extra fur on an Arabian leopard and make it more yellow. Does that really break the idea that the animal is Panthera pardus, even when all of its elements add up to the species in question?
I mean that's just not an animal that exists though. And if the take has evolved that it should be only one general leopard because of zoo mixes, I don't think that's a good message to send at all because those animals shouldn't really exist either and mixed breeding isn't something I would consider a good thing to encourage.
Again, I think it's an incredibly bold claim to assert that not a single leopard alive has a mixture of features we normally assign to certain archetypes/subspecies of leopard. Are there really 0 African leopards with extra fur? Are there 0 Amur leopards with a yellowish colour?
And frankly, all these leopard subspecies are just subspecies. Who cares if African and Amur leopards mingle? It's all P. pardus at the end. We shouldn't be keeping subspecies separate. If anything, I'd encourage it to keep gene pools more heavily mixed, but that's a topic for another time.
And frankly, all these leopard subspecies are just subspecies. Who cares if African and Amur leopards mingle? It's all P. pardus at the end. We shouldn't be keeping subspecies separate. If anything, I'd encourage it to keep gene pools more heavily mixed, but that's a topic for another time.
not really sure what you mean TBH. A generalised, species-level leopard exists to the same extent as many other species that are in game ATM. To some degree morphological variation correlates with genetic distance in some species. In others, there is more morphological variation within subspecies than between them.
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