This thread is where you can talk about your own hypotheses on an animal species regarding their ecology, behavior, etc. If you're thinking of a what-if scenario for example, then this is the thread for you.
The point of this thread seems pretty obvious to me - random animal theories you may have, rewilding ideas, species you may think do well in captivity, ect. I think about those sorts of things a lot so may add to this thread at some point...
So the same general sort of stuff that Pantheraman was railing against in the rewilding thread because the people who post it are, he says, so stupid?
I understand why you'd think that, but no actually. I'm talking about your own natural history hypothesis. For example, why you might think a species evolved in a certain way or why some members of a species act a certain way in one area rather than in another area. Basically, the very first thing @birdsandbats said. Random animal theories. Nothing related to pleistocene rewilding. There's already a thread, or threads, where people can talk about that.
I'll start off with a simple theory I have - I've noticed that the Great Tits in Wisconsin are always either on the ground or in low bushes when not singing or visiting a feeder. I've never read about anything like that about the species' biology. Perhaps they do that to avoid competition with Black-capped Chickadees? One would think the larger and more aggressive tits would be dominant but perhaps not.
It does seem like basically the same thing though. On the rewilding thread you were listing random things people on Facebook had come up with as ideas for speculative rewilding, and saying how they are so stupid and they infuriate you. And yet here you are asking for people to come up with random things they have as ideas for "speculative animal stuff".
Here in the U.K. Great Tits are far and away the Tit species most likely to forage on the ground (and with a stronger and thicker bill naturally eat more seeds than the other species). Therefore the North American behaviour described just seems to me to be a continuation of their normal niche preference rather than being dominated by Chickadees.
