ZooChat Cup S2 Match #2: Oklahoma City vs Fort Worth

Small Mammals

  • Total voters
    21
  • Poll closed .
BigNate said:
Wait now i'm confused. So we have carnivores, ungulates, and primates now. What would then constitute a miscellaneous mammal that doesn't go in the other categories. Thinking quickly, i only come up with kangaroos and red pandas.

Edit: and rodents

Love the debate this has caused though :)
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pachyderm pro said:
Anything that isn't one of those three would be in this category. Marsupials, rodents, xenarthrans, as well as the examples that Thylo has mentioned above.
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'Miscellaneous mammals' includes monotremes, marsupials, aardavrks, sengis, tenrecs, golden moles, hyraxes, dugongs, manatees, armadillos, anteaters, sloths, treeshrews, colugos, rodents, lagomorphs, hedgehogs, moonrats, shrews, desmans, moles, shrew moles, solenodons, bats, and pangolins.
 
BigNate said:
Wait now i'm confused. So we have carnivores, ungulates, and primates now. What would then constitute a miscellaneous mammal that doesn't go in the other categories. Thinking quickly, i only come up with kangaroos and red pandas.

Edit: and rodents

Love the debate this has caused though :)
Click to expand...

For the purposes of this individual challenge just count the following:

Small carnivores, rodents, bats, marsupials, lagomorphs, monotremes, manatees, anteaters, sloths, elephant-shrews, pangolins, insectivores, armadillos, treeshrews, hyraxes, and the Aardvark.

For all future challenges just follow that list but without the carnivores.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
For the purposes of this individual challenge just count the following:

Small carnivores, rodents, bats, marsupials, lagomorphs, monotremes, manatees, anteaters, sloths, elephant-shrews, pangolins, insectivores, armadillos, treeshrews, hyraxes, and the Aardvark.

For all future challenges just follow that list but without the carnivores.

~Thylo
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Slight problem, manatees link more closely to elephants, which is why @CGSwans put manatees with ungulates and not misc. mammals.
 
While the timing may be unfortunate, I think the criticisms leveled at @pachyderm pro on trying to change the competition mid-round are a little harsh, considering that multiple people were calling on them to do it without specifying when or how it should happen.

Additionally, offering an alternate viewpoint, why should we allow these two competitors to play by different rules than the rest of the following matches? If "Carnivores" and "Miscellaneous Mammals" are going to be the two categories defining the rest of this competition, wouldn't it be unfair to let a zoo be eliminated in this round for a now-defunct category when they might otherwise have advanced? Especially since the only two rounds initiated so far are still open and nothing has to be retroactively changed...

That being said, I will respect @pachyderm pro's call on settling the matter in order to avoid further conflict, if that is the final decision.
 
Coelacanth18 said:
Additionally, offering an alternate viewpoint, why should we allow these two competitors to play by different rules than the rest of the following matches? If "Carnivores" and "Miscellaneous Mammals" are going to be the two categories defining the rest of this competition, wouldn't it be unfair to let a zoo be eliminated in this round for a now-defunct category when they might otherwise have advanced? Especially since the only two rounds initiated so far are still open and nothing has to be retroactively changed...
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I certainly do not disagree with you on it not exactly being fair to have the first two rounds follow different categories. However, my rationale is that, at least with this round, changing the category is almost like putting a zoo with an aquarium up against a zoo without one in a fish category* with FWZ being an easy winner. To me that makes things a tad more unfair than just continuing on following the different rules. Also, despite the fact that both challenges are still up for a few days each, it's very safe to say the majority of the voting takes place within the first day (I don't think the Bronx v Minnesota numbers have changed at all since yesterday, and if they have only by one or two votes). That combined with the fact that I've noticed the majority of voters don't actually contribute to the thread, it's safe to assume that many people would never come back to adjust their votes to the new categories, which is again more unfair than just pushing forward. I mean people who were contributing to the thread during the discussion on about the category change never even adjusted.

It's certainly not a perfect solution, and I don't know how the European cup handled their category change, but it's the best one I've seen put forward thus far.

*Did we agree on combining the fish and invert categories in with the herps?

~Thylo
 
pachyderm pro said:
Anything that isn't one of those three would be in this category. Marsupials, rodents, xenarthrans, as well as the examples that Thylo has mentioned above.
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birdsandbats said:
'Miscellaneous mammals' includes monotremes, marsupials, aardavrks, sengis, tenrecs, golden moles, hyraxes, dugongs, manatees, armadillos, anteaters, sloths, treeshrews, colugos, rodents, lagomorphs, hedgehogs, moonrats, shrews, desmans, moles, shrew moles, solenodons, bats, and pangolins.
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ThylacineAlive said:
For the purposes of this individual challenge just count the following:

Small carnivores, rodents, bats, marsupials, lagomorphs, monotremes, manatees, anteaters, sloths, elephant-shrews, pangolins, insectivores, armadillos, treeshrews, hyraxes, and the Aardvark.

For all future challenges just follow that list but without the carnivores.

~Thylo
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Thanks to all 3 of you. It will be tough to find out how which zoos have these, as they aren't often advertised. I've also always considered insectivores to be carnivores, which would limit this category even more.
 
In all of my visits to the Oklahoma City Zoo in the past 3 years, I fail to remember seeing bush dogs on exhibit in the canine row area (The area has had several empty exhibit spaces for a while now). In fact, the last photo of them on zoochat was dated in 2012. Upon searching through the zoos website I've failed to come across information regarding them still having bush dogs. I'm pretty sure Oklahoma city no longer has bush dogs, which seems to be what would be one of the rarer small mammals in their collection.
 
TheWalrus said:
Slight problem, manatees link more closely to elephants, which is why @CGSwans put manatees with ungulates and not misc. mammals.
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To be clear, this was more about recognising that manatees cannot, in any meaningful sense, be considered 'small'. This is also the case for cetacea. I put them with ungulates more for convenience than anything else.

I got a little bit frustrated by taxonomic fundamentalism. I cared more about how exhibits function and comparability of exhibits than about whether hyraxes are more related to elephants than rodents, for instance.
 
d1am0ndback said:
In all of my visits to the Oklahoma City Zoo in the past 3 years, I fail to remember seeing bush dogs on exhibit in the canine row area (The area has had several empty exhibit spaces for a while now). In fact, the last photo of them on zoochat was dated in 2012. Upon searching through the zoos website I've failed to come across information regarding them still having bush dogs. I'm pretty sure Oklahoma city no longer has bush dogs, which seems to be what would be one of the rarer small mammals in their collection.
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I looked into this, and it seems you are right; I can say with much certainty that Oklahoma City no longer holds bush dogs.

On a potentially related note, I'm two for two on vote switching so far...
 
ThylacineAlive said:
*Did we agree on combining the fish and invert categories in with the herps?
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@pachyderm pro, we should probably get a verdict on this before tomorrow's matchup, since there's a 50% chance it will be affected by this change.

Personally, I'd support dropping fish and invertebrates altogether to make 6 categories, or maybe combining inverts with the herps and dropping fish. If anyone wants to make an argument in support of fish I'll listen; personally, I think that's more the domain of aquariums and zoos that can afford to maintain an aquarium (which is not cheap...), so it's also not a great indicator of zoo quality. I can see one making an argument about taxonomic completeness or aquatic conservation, though.
 
Coelacanth18 said:
@pachyderm pro, we should probably get a verdict on this before tomorrow's matchup, since there's a 50% chance it will be affected by this change.

Personally, I'd support dropping fish and invertebrates altogether to make 6 categories, or maybe combining inverts with the herps and dropping fish. If anyone wants to make an argument in support of fish I'll listen; personally, I think that's more the domain of aquariums and zoos that can afford to maintain an aquarium (which is not cheap...), so it's also not a great indicator of zoo quality. I can see one making an argument about taxonomic completeness or aquatic conservation, though.
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Personally, I think "ecotherms" is too wide a category. I think the "herps" and "fish and inverts" categories are fine as they are.

If you feel something still must be done, I would split the "fish and inverts" category into "fish and aquatic inverts" and "terrestrial inverts".

I would not drop the fish because, as mentioned earlier, fish add taxonomic completeness to a collection, and some endangered fish are much in need of conservation.
 
birdsandbats said:
Personally, I think "ecotherms" is too wide a category. I think the "herps" and "fish and inverts" categories are fine as they are.

If you feel something still must be done, I would split the "fish and inverts" category into "fish and aquatic inverts" and "terrestrial inverts".

I would not drop the fish because, as mentioned earlier, fish add taxonomic completeness to a collection, and some endangered fish are much in need of conservation.
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The issue here if fish and invertebrates are often a lot less common in US zoos than other groups. Basically every zoo has a reptile house and a bird collection of some sort, and every zoo in this challenge will have at least a decent mammal selection, but many won't have fish or invertebrate houses and thus are at an extremely unfair disadvantage.

I agree that it does add completeness and that they are both very important groups of animals that I wish more zoos focused more on, but for the purposes of this challenge it seems a bit unfair to have so many zoos which would essentially be immediately disqualified should they be unfortunate enough to be picked for one of those categories.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
The issue here if fish and invertebrates are often a lot less common in US zoos than other groups. Basically every zoo has a reptile house and a bird collection of some sort, and every zoo in this challenge will have at least a decent mammal selection, but many won't have fish or invertebrate houses and thus are at an extremely unfair disadvantage.

I agree that it does add completeness and that they are both very important groups of animals that I wish more zoos focused more on, but for the purposes of this challenge it seems a bit unfair to have so many zoos which would essentially be immediately disqualified should they be unfortunate enough to be picked for one of those categories.

~Thylo
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Not if both competing zoos have bad collections. Then it would be fair. Maybe not fun, but fair.
 
birdsandbats said:
Not if both competing zoos have bad collections. Then it would be fair. Maybe not fun, but fair.
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But the selection is supposed to be random, no? So what happens on the many occasions where a zoo without an aquarium or insect house is put up against a zoo that just so happens to have even a small one?

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
But the selection is supposed to be random, no? So what happens on the many occasions where a zoo without an aquarium or insect house is put up against a zoo that just so happens to have even a small one?

~Thylo
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Then the winner is obvious. Not all the matchups are fair, even if remove fish and inverts.
 
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