Group B continues with San Diego Zoo Safari Park (I still hate that name) up against Poland's Wroclaw. The topic? Miscellaneous mammals. As both matches today are European vs American zoos, both will be timed to conclude at around 10PM Chicago time. When the other Euro vs American contests happen in this group, both will be timed according to London time. The rules: You have three votes to award. If you think it's a tight match, award 2 votes to the stronger zoo and 1 to the weaker one. But if you think it's a wider margin than that, award all 3 votes to the winner. Your criteria for how you make your decision is entirely up to you, *except* that you must stay only within the given category. That includes ignoring the results of the other match: no strategic voting. All votes are public, and all votes can be changed. The purpose of the game is to provoke debate, so make your case for why people should vote the same way as you do. Be open to reconsidering your vote.
Argh. I was hoping you wouldn't ask that because I'm still prevaricating on something. Carnivores and primates have their own well-defined categories and are clearly out of scope. Perissodactyls and land-lubbing Artiodactyls both clearly fall within ungulates, and I'm sticking with past practice of including elephants in that category as well. Everything else - rodents, bats, xenarthrans, marsupials, monotremes, sirenians, aardvarks, pangolins, whatever hyraxes are called - all fall within miscellaneous mammals. The one I'm still pondering is cetaceans. In the past I included those with ungulates, but I'm not quite satisfied with that and am considering moving them across to miscellaneous as well. Thankfully not something I have to figure out in time for this particular match-up.
Wait. Are there any zoos in the field that actually have cetaceans? I don't think so, now that I think about it. Unless Pairi Daiza has them?
Does the safari park even have any miscellaneous mammals? Maybe some wallabies? There doesn't seem to be any species lists for the park on the forum. This might be an obvious win for Wroclaw.
Isn't there already a rather long and contentious thread about whether it has one miscellaneous mammal species in particular? You may well have an excellent point, in which case I'll throw it open to the public for discussion. Do people want me to avoid match-ups that lead to wins-by-default? It does compromise the randomness of the system, but is that something people want in return for more interesting debates?
Especially with the possibility to score 3-0, I think it's important to not compromise the randomness. It's just protecting unrounded zoos from their weaknesses.
(Forgot tags. Again.) @ThylacineAlive , @TheGerenuk , @Giant Panda , @Arizona Docent , @LaughingDove , @Shorts
Thankfully, thy opened Walkabout Australia last year, so they have some misc. mammals. Western grey kangaroos, red-necked wallabies and Matschie's tree kangaroo if I remembered correctly. I'm voting 2-1 for Wroclaw.
I'd be interested to know what the reasoning is for @drill voting 2-1 for San Diego if they genuinely only have those three species - perhaps there are more he can enlighten us about?
Don’t they also have Rodriguez Fruit Bats in the small bat house near Nairobi Village? Even so, I find it hard to see how SDZSP can pull out a win here.
Just trying to think my way around Wroclaw. They certainly have most of those groups - not pangolins certainly, and I don't remember hyraxes - but all the others are represented, and often by oddball species (Red and White Giant Flying Squirrel, Bear Cuscus etc) or interesting displays (Afrykarium or the nice little desert house, for instance).
Aside from the new Walkabout Australia-- which I have not seen-- mammals which @TheGerenuk listed, SDZSP keeps Sugar Glider, Lesser Hedgehog Tenrec, Rodrigues Flying Fox, Four-Toed Hedgehog, Long-Tailed Chinchilla, and Cape Porcupine. Meanwhile Wroclaw keeps New Guinea Short-Beaked Echidna, Tasmanian Red-Necked Wallaby, Red Kangaroo, Sulawesi Bear Cuscus, Lyle's Flying Fox, Hammerhead Bat, Southern Three-Banded Armadillo, Egyptian Long-Eared Hedgehog, Black-and-Rufous Elephant-Shrew, White-Toothed Pygmy Shrew, Linnaeus's Two-Toed Sloth, Patagonian Mara, Capybara, Common Gundi, Naked Mole-Rat, North African Gerbil, Barbary Striped Grass Mouse, Northern Luzon Giant Cloud Rat, Sumatran Prevost's Squirrel, Red-and-White Giant Flying Squirrel, Javan Black Giant Squirrel, Swinhoe's Striped Squirrel, Caribbean Manatee, and Tanzanian Aardvark. So from my observation the score would be SDZSP 9 to Wroclaw 24.. Unfortunately miscellaneous mammals are the San Diegos biggest weak spots.
Think that pretty solidly locks down my initial 3-0 to Wroclaw then - it's not even close in any shape or form
Again I haven't been the new Australia exhibit at SDZSP but I think they would lose against Wroclaw here too tbh.. ~Thylo