American, European, and Oceanian megafauna survive.

Is there any non-ASB way to make the megafauna of Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, and Madagascar survive up to the present day? How would this influence modern (and ancient) culture and society nowadays? Any major butterflies that might happen due to now extinct animals appearing alive and well in zoos rather than dead in museums? Use any non-ASB POD you like.
 
Last edited:
I think of all the semi-large to large landmasses, it would be least ASB to have the Malagasy megafauna (such as the elephant birds and Megaladapis) survive as I believe Madagascar was the last "large" island to have a permanent human settlement. I think it would be simple to butterfly away the Austronesian migrations and have the island remain without a significant human presence until the 1500s. I stipulated in a scenario to save the dodo bird that Mauritius could become the personal property of some Arabian monarch or trader owning large plots of land where hunting is prohibited; the same can simply be applied to Madagascar. Thus we could have some large creatures survive into the 19th or 20th centuries if this happens.
 
New Zealand is easy, since Polynesians only reached it around a thousand years ago. You could easily have them set off later and just be unable to reach it before Europeans show up, or never discover it for one reason or another, and so there's no human colonization to destroy the megafauna until Europeans arrive. Some of the island's megafauna will probably go extinct anyway, but part will probably survive.

The Americas are much more difficult. The problem is that there was evidently a pump from Siberia to the Arctic region of the continents, as shown by the multiple migrations that have taken place along that route. It's hard to see how you could avoid or delay that altogether without invoking bats, and you probably need that to save a significantly larger part of the American megafauna until modern times than existed IOTL.

Europe and Australia are basically impossible. Humans have existed there for tens of thousands of years, so any megafauna there would have to be post-human megafauna, like in Africa. That basically calls for greatly slowing down human technological and social development so that new megafaunal species can evolve that are better adapted to the presence of humans than their original inventories, but that still doesn't really answer your question. Aside from something that prevents humans from emerging altogether, even early humans, I don't think you can preserve European or Australian megafauna.

I think of all the semi-large to large landmasses, it would be least ASB to have the Malagasy megafauna (such as the elephant birds) survive as I believe Madagascar was the last "large" island to have a permanent human settlement.
Madagascar was definitely settled a long while before New Zealand, though.
 
If you make it a fady (it's like a taboo) against eating/destorying eggs, slow animals and/or young animals in Madagascar they won't go extinct in certain regions.

Madagascar is an interesting place, many still hold the belief that the snakes there are poisonous despite the fact that no native snake there is dangerous to people.
 
Top