the problem with Red Dead animals

Comments · 1.3K

• TH

  @thought_gardener · 4 months ago (edited) · pinned

  ~CORRECTIONS AND AMENDMENTS~<br>Pinning a few corrections and amendments for inaccuracies in the video, with credit to the commenters correcting the information:<br><br>-Concerning the Loons (Common, Pacific, and Yellow-Billed), they can’t really walk on land. At least, they’re very bad at it and just flop around because their legs are so far back. This also means that they can’t take off from land. The game does depict them on land, and I show them walking on land in the video. I wish I would’ve pointed this out because it’s very interesting.<br><br>-Modern genetic testing shows that modern American Red Foxes aren’t as European as once thought. So while European importation did happen, so did range expansion by native American foxes. <br>(@jedihunter176) <br><br>-Also a possible explanation for the Green Iguana on Guarma could come from precolumbian times. The Taino, a people group indigenous to the Caribbean, historically introduced the Green Iguana to different islands. So in the historical fiction of the game, we can theorize that this also happened on Guarma. <br>(@jedihunter176)<br><br>-I mispronounced Gila Monster. It&apos;s pronounced &quot;heela&quot;. Residents of Albuquerque aren&apos;t going crazy. I&apos;m just wrong. <br>My excuse is that I haven&apos;t ever heard the name pronounced aloud. (several people)<br><br><br>-The Peninsular Desert Bighorn by and large isn&apos;t considered a distinct subspecies of Bighorn, and there are genetic studies to back this up. Rather, it&apos;s a population segment of the Desert Bighorn. <br><br>-The northern bounds of the Rocky Mountain Bighorn range is NOT in Alaska. It&apos;s in British Columbia and Alberta. <br>I think I misconstrued a range map that included Thinhorn Sheep, which have a range that stretches into Alaska.<br>(@moosehunter2477)<br><br>-The distinction between subspecies of cougars is very messy. <br>But genetic studies have shown that all cougars in the US and Canada are the same subspecies. This includes the Florida Panther and &quot;eastern cougar&quot;. What has happened with the Florida Panther is isolation and inbreeding. (very sad)<br>So the &quot;eastern&quot; cougar is extant, even if it doesn&apos;t exist in the eastern United States.<br>However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declared it extinct, and much of the reporting on this announcement referred to the eastern cougar as a subspecies. This obviously makes it more confusing. <br>Suffice to say that cougars in the eastern US aren&apos;t doing too good.<br>(@wolfbyte2468)<br><br>Also 2026 numbers for the Florida Panther might be higher than the 200 mentioned in the video. <br><br>-Additionally, the Eastern Elk is genetically identical to the Rocky Mountain Elk.<br>Only 3 subspecies of elk are widely recognized - &nbsp;the Tule, Roosevelt, and Rocky Mountain.<br>(also @wolfbyte2468)<br><br>The Sunglow Boa is actually a color morph of Boa Constrictor, not specifically the Rainbow Boa (a herpetologist friend)<br><br>I&apos;ll continue to update this if there are any more.

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• CR

  @crockstonyt · 4 months ago (edited)

  Fun Fact: The last captive Carolina parakeet, a male named Incas, died in the same enclosure that the last Passenger pigeon, Martha, died in at the Cincinnati Zoo.

  2.6K

• WI

  @WingedFish66 · 4 months ago

  Every snake blatantly reusing a rattlesnake model is hilarious to me

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• LO

  @love_life_leafeon5955 · 4 months ago

  Honestly what made me saddest about the epilogue rdr2 was how areas around strawberry like big valley were settled and lost a lot of their natural beauty

  682

• LI

  @lieutenantlobster6395 · 4 months ago

  Ngl i thought this was going to just be nitpicking about incorrect specific ranges, years, and/or behavior of the animals but this is much better

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• BO

  @boi248 · 4 months ago

  The Carolina Parakeet were also killed because farmers thought they were eating the seeds they were planting (they weren&apos;t)

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• MC

  @Mcchicktospice · 4 months ago

  One of the funniest things with animals in RDR2 to me is that for some reason, they only had one kind of deer, yet they had three pronghorns and three bighorn sheep (atleast to my memory)

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• SH

  @shuiaf · 4 months ago

  One more thing they get wrong is that loons have difficulty moving around on land and definitely cannot walk like they do in game. Their legs are positioned extremely far back on their body so it&apos;s easy for them to swim, but they are too front heavy to even stand up and end up having to flop around on land to move.

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• FE

  @federicostorione · 4 months ago

  evolutionary biologist and huge rdr2 fan here, thank you for this video

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• EX

  @executionerbelike · 4 months ago

  One of the most annoying tropes in games is the aggression of wolves, &nbsp;where they usually attack on sight. Which is simply incorrect as in the VAST majority of wolf encounters, do they avoid all contact with humans.

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• MO

  @MothMan-jl3qh · 4 months ago

  A note on wolves, agriculture lobbies are constantly trying to court conservation clubs and win over hunters by saying that the wolves are killing all of the game animals uncontrollably. So the millenia that elk and wolves lived side by side meant nothing, according to them. In reality, the ag lobbies just don&apos;t like losing any livestock whatsoever.

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• AL

  @AllTheRooks · 4 months ago

  Just finished a playthrough, and while you can mechanically make the Carolina Parakeet extinct, I&apos;m pretty sure if they were keeping track, Arthur and John would have singlehandedly make wolves extinct as well.<br><br>I checked the compendium, and without deliberately hunting one, ever, just defending themselves from wolf attacks, Arthur and John collectively killed over 400 wolves

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