Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Unlikely. You're presuming this world works like Jurassic Park or some crappy RPG where every single animal automatically knows who the main character is, is waiting along the only path the PC can take, and immediately moves to attack them as soon as they enter aggro range.I am talking about the first explores that step off the boat. They are literally gonna get wrecked. Remember There is nothing like these beasts in Europe and has not been for thousands of years.
IRL a typical male tiger needs a hunting territory of 400 square miles to feed itself. Plop a dude off a boat on shore and the odds are very good there will be no tiger waiting in the reeds right next to him. It's probably in one of the other 399.5 square miles it hunts in, and he's going to come across tiger tracks a long time before finding a tiger.
Now since the megafauna is much, much bigger, the necessary territory to feed itself is also going to be much, much bigger. And, of course, these European explorers have actually already been to Africa long ago, so lions, elephants, giraffes, nile crocodiles, and water buffalo are all known quantities. We're not talking about modern city-dwelling rubes who've never seen anything bigger than a poodle before.