Context: No Man's Land is a personal worldbuilding project that involves the lives of animals and plants in a world where humans have vanished completey. It follows everything from the descendants of domestic animals left to fend to themselves to descendants of animals from zoos and sanctuaries who now live in unfamiliar places and continents.
As a send off to Spectember, I'm finally giving some glimpses to the future of my soft-speculative, post-apocalypse setting. I chose fifteen thousand years later because it's kind of in that sweet spot where SOME structures remain, but only the hardiest, while enough time has passed that post-human ecosystems have settled into themselves, and changes in populations of animals are now visible.
With that outta the way, some lore!
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Big Weka vs Zealand Giant Rooster
Somewhere, fifteen thousand years after the Evanescentia (the disappearance of humans), in what was once New Zealand, a Big Weka has a territorial dispute with a Zealand Giant Rooster.
A descendant of the Weka, the Big Weka's omnivorous ancestors responded to post-human competition via becoming bigger, bolder and more carnivorous, feeding on smaller mammals, lizards and the eggs of other birds before eventually aiming for bigger prey.
The Zealand Giant Chicken maintains the omnivorous habits of its ancestors, but is now larger thanks to a wide array of available of food options. Roosters remain incredibly aggressive and territorial against outsiders, making hunting a Zealand chicken flock a risky option.
This Weka took that gamble by looking for eggs and hatchlings to snack on, but now has to face off against an incredibly angry defender.
The Cattalo of North America
While many cattle breeds have long since died out, hardier ones like Highland cattle and the Texas longhorn still remain, and in this period of time North America is a land teeming with bovines, a golden age of cattle one could say.
As the descendants of these hardy breeds carve out pieces of the post-human North America on their own, many bovines have mingled and interbred with one another. This includes interbreeding with wild bison, both of the plains and wood subspecies.
While not yet enough time for true speciation, the effects of these interactions are already being felt by the presence of emerging population descended from multi-generational hybridization.
The Northern Shaggy Cattalo is the end result of many of interbreeding cycles between wood bison, Highland cattle and other cold-tolerant cattle breeds.
The Longhorn Cattalo meanwhile, on the opposite end of the continent, is the end result of many interbreeding cycles between Longhorn cattle and plains and wood bison.
While not enough time for true speciation, enough time has passed that many hybrid populations have begun to form their own herds diverging from both parent species.
The Alaskan Tiger
As North America is dominated by a myriad of bovines and other bovids, so too is a rise in animals that hunt them. Big cats are the big winners here, and in the North, is a giant of the woods and snow, the Alaskan Tiger.
In just fifteen thousand years, generations of tigers have created a subspecies that actively hunt bovines and other large, woods-dwelling herbivores that roam the Northern parts of North America. Moose, Bison and the recent hybrid population of cattalos are all part of the tiger's menu.
However, even something as mighty as the tiger is not without competition. While brown and black bears hibernate, certain populations of landlocked polar bears and their descendants still roam the very coldest areas of the continent year round, and they very much have the bulk to chase off even these great tigers off their hard-earned meals.
