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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1703 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 27, 2025

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What’s the wealthiest country with a non-marginal presence of each category of megafauna?

Temperate bears are easy- it’s the United States, if you say that doesn’t count for some reason(tinkering with the definition of marginal, I guess), then Canada. The next one seems like it’s probably Japan. Polar bears would be Norway, but let’s say those are a marine mammal.

For elephants, I’m guessing either South Africa or Malaysia, depending on exactly the range of Indian elephants. For giraffes and rhinos, I’m a bit more confident in South Africa.

For big cats I think this is Uruguay, with jaguars. Maybe there’s more leopards in Saudi Arabia than I think, though. Of course if you count pumas as big cats(they are after all both those things, but taxonomically different) then the US wins again.

For big grazers, this is the U.S., with bison. If you specifically restrict it to large antelope it might be Kazakhstan.

For apes, I’m pretty sure it’s Malaysia, with orangutans. Large monkeys would be Saudi Arabia, with baboons.

Big canines would be, probably, Norway.

Eagles are probably Switzerland.

Big snakes are, I’m guessing, either Malaysia or Singapore.

Any categories I’m missing? Any corrections?

I have a few thoughts.

Bears: I'm going to throw in a vote for the US. Black bears, brown bears, and grizzlies are all common. Russia might be in the running too.

Big cats: are you only including panthera, or "cats that are big"? The US might come back into the running with mountain lions if it's the latter.

Canines: the US probably wins here hands down if you include the larger eastern coyote. If you don't, it gets a lot murkier.

Big snakes: this might be the US these days. The Burmese python population is out of control in Florida, and they get enormous.

You might want to include a few more categories as well.

"Large browsers" are different from "large grazers". The US and Canada have moose and elk. Several countries in Africa have giraffe.

"Crocodilians" have representatives in the US, China, India, multiple South American countries, and at least Egypt. This probably goes to the US or China

"Aquatic mammals" is another interesting one, with freshwater dolphins (India, China, South America), manatees, and dugongs. This probably goes to the US, unless the dugong is more common in the Taiwan straight than I thought.

I'm not sure what the technical term is, but "giant honkin' birds" would be tricky. You have ostriches, and emus, but a few other that might fit as well. This gets complicated by the fact that the big two have been exported and farmed all over the world.n Australia probably wins here?

Australia probably wins for giant flightless birds. It also probably wins for giant lizards.

Crocodilians- I mean there’s american alligators, and theres saltwater crocodiles in Australia. Aquatic mammals almost certainly goes to US, with elephant seals even if manatees are too marginal.

For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.

Bears is definitely US or Norway. No way it’s Russia- it’s just too poor to win on widespread species. Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, all have bears.

For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.

Not for the bison? They're heavier, but less gangly.

Bears is definitely US or Norway. No way it’s Russia- it’s just too poor to win on widespread species. Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, all have bears.

I think I wrote that while I was trying do do some per Capita GDP vs megafauna math. If it's just "has animals", you're definitely right.

I mean, the winner of GDP per bear is probably some euro country with very few bears.

The Dubai zoo may end up winning all categories.

Scandavian winning again due to their socialized natural resources…

I would guess France, actually- a small but self-sustaining bear population with a large economy.

Not sure how you are doing wealth comparisons is it per capita? Total GDP? Median or average?

Norway has a higher median Wealth than the US but loses in total and on average. So big Canines might also be US again with wolves living there. But Norway also has brown bears and polar bears. So if they win the wealth game for canines they'd win it for bears too.

Same issue with eagles.

I'm also not sure if Singapore should win anything. Depending on how much work "non-marginal" is doing for the population counts. There might be more large snakes in zoos and private collections in the US then there are in Singapore.

That also brings up the invasive species issue. Florida has a bunch of large snakes. They are not native to the area, so do they count?

Also we could add crocodiles to megafauna. Florida/US probably wins that.

Wild horses is another potential category. They are large grazers, but it feels like they are pretty different from bison. There is a wild population of them in North America in Virginia and Maryland, and maybe out west still. But they are also an invasive species in North America.

The invasive species issue is more important than you might think. Texas ranchers have a surprisingly large number of large game animals for hunting purposes. Some of those ranch animal populations actually outnumber the estimated wild populations for those animals.

Hogs might also be megafauna. They are bigger than wolves, and certainly bigger than Eagles. America wins that depending again on the invasive species question.

The original question in my head was ‘how first world can you get without driving your big cats extinct’ which then evolved into the broader question with wealth as a proxy. ‘Marginal’ and ‘wealthiest’ are turning out to be more relevant questions than I thought.

Texas ranchers have a few big antelopes, but I don’t know that it makes much difference- bison are native to Texas anyways. I guess free ranging gemsbok makes a difference if you’re specific to big antelopes.

Reticulated pythons in Florida probably matters, though.

There are plenty of mountain lions in the US, and I think they're "big cats". I've also seen claims of jaguars' range extending across the border from Mexico, but relatively few documented encounters.

I've personally seen a bobcat, but that probably is too small to count.

If I see a mountain lion in my neighborhood, something has gone very wrong.

Whereas if I see a mountain lion in my US neighborhood, I have something mildly unusual to post about on nextdoor. Occasionally a mountain lion even makes its way into the heart of a major city, though that makes headlines when it happens.

There are fairly common news reports of them in several California and Colorado cities that I can recall offhand.

Oh, most certainly.

It’s my pseudo-suburban wasteland that ought to ward them off. We get yotes and bobcats.

Theres one gets shot in downtown Dallas every couple of years. Usually around the dump or in the trinity river floodplain. Their normal range peters out right around where the Fort Worth far suburbs turn into generic small towns.

The original question in my head was ‘how first world can you get without driving your big cats extinct’ which then evolved into the broader question with wealth as a proxy.

If so, I don't really think any answers to this question (your broader one) are really indicative of much because there is one glaring confounding factor in the metric you're using. Most megafaunal extinctions did not occur during the transition to industrial modernity; rather they occurred when all modern humans were still firmly in the hunter-gatherer stage. The giant ground sloths in South America, the mammoths and mastodon in North America, as well as Diprotodon and the marsupial lion in Australia were all driven extinct via a combination of human pressure + environmental shifts during the late Pleistocene. 65% of megafaunal species went extinct during this period, and when it came to animals above 1000 kg, 80% of them disappeared.

What really does this metric in is that this loss of megafauna wasn't exactly evenly distributed throughout the world, it was particularly severe in the Americas and Australia, whereas Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia were less affected. And the worst Pleistocene megafaunal die-offs occurred in regions which happen to correlate with first-world-ness today. Long before any human societies became recognisably first-world the distribution of megafauna globally was already very skewed, and relative megafaunal diversity in any region has a whole lot to do with whatever happened during the late Pleistocene and not quite so much to do with industrialisation.

There were jaguars on the Texas gulf coast until the 30’s. Tigers lived in thé actually populated parts of southern Russia until soviet times. Mountain lions lived through most of the east until the late nineteenth century and they’re still present in the outer suburbs of most American cities in the west- their ecological requirements aren’t that different from pantheras.

Wolves live up and down Italy. Bears are surprisingly willing to live near people.

Clearly large predators living near civilized people is a thing that has, in fact, happened.

Polar bears would be Norway, but let’s say those are a marine mammal.

...makes arbitrary decisions about categories of aquatic fauna purely for convenience

...is trad Catholic

Yep, checks out ;-)

Eagles are probably Switzerland.

I would say Australia is a very good contender for this. The wedge-tailed eagle has a massive wingspan and length and it is endemic to the Australian continent. They are often seen here and are in fact the most common of the world's large eagles. IIRC Australia also has higher median wealth per adult than Switzerland, though also lower average wealth (I suppose Switzerland's average is pulled up by a small percentage of really high net worth individuals) so I think it fits well here.

A possible runner-up is Japan (probably features third behind Australia and Switzerland because it's not super wealthy, and it represents the edge of the habitat range for the species in question). The Steller's sea eagle is one of the heaviest eagles and can be commonly found overwintering in Hokkaido (they are also found in South Korea and China but in smaller numbers, so depending on your definition of marginal you could count them or not). The actual core of their habitat is in Russia, but that country definitely isn't wealthy.

Big snakes are, I’m guessing, either Malaysia or Singapore.

Singapore definitely wins this, they have the reticulated python. This alone doesn't make them unique - many other countries have large snakes, but what really wins them the title is that they are also very rich.

But I would include Australia before Malaysia in that list. Northern Australia in particular has its fair share of large pythons like the Australian scrub python (which is one of the world's largest pythons, capable of preying on wallabies) and carpet pythons, which can get large: example 1, 2, and 3. Also here is an olive python swallowing a crocodile in Queensland. You're welcome.

I realise this reply is very Australia-heavy but I think people underestimate just how much actually gigantic wildlife there is in the country. They definitely win the "large marsupial" category with red kangaroos, too.

America has golden eagles, sea eagles, and bald eagles. How you measure wealthiest probably determines whether it, Australia, or Switzerland is the wealthiest country with lots of eagles- all three are way ahead of Japan, but there’s also Canada, Austria, etc in between.

You have a good point re- big snakes and Australia. The real question about whether Australia or Singapore wins that competition probably comes down to the definition of marginal.

Big Rats - The Motte.

Whatever the hell Moose are.

A moose once bit my sister.

Moose bites can be pretty nasti

No, really! She was carving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given to her by Svenge, her brother-in-law.

Everyone posting on this thread has been banned. The mods responsible for banning them have also been banned. The forum will now be moderated by llamas, until the police and/or French army turn up and say that this is all too silly.

She had it coming.

Moose

Meese

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