Trivia / TierZoo

• Author's Saving Throw: There are a few times where TierZoo rectifies scientific inaccuracies in his works, some of which were points of contention within the fandom:
  • In "The Problem with Cheetahs", he addresses an inaccuracy in the Big Cats video (Cheetahs getting their kills stolen by stronger competing animals) by mentioning that Cheetahs simply avoid making kills if there are competitors around.
  • In "Are Horses OP?", TierZoo rectifies an inaccuracy he mentioned in one of his most-watched videos on humans (the capability to sweat being uniquely exclusive to humans), mentioning that horses can sweat too but are nowhere near as efficient due to their body hair.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy: As it is an edutainment channel, the information presented in TierZoo's videos is accurate, for the most part. However, as with any show of this type, there's bound to be an occasional slip-up.
  • The cheetah was placed in the F-tier in the Cat Tier List video because it lacks the physical strength to fight more powerful players trying to steal their kills, and has a staggeringly high noob death rate (just 5% make it to late-game). It is not true, however, that cheetahs frequently lose their kills to lions or hyenas - they lose only about one kill for every ten made, can recoup such losses by simply hunting again, and can even kill jackals on occasion (which were listed as D-tier in the Dog Tier List). They're best played not as brawlers, but as high-mobility rogues who avoid losing kills simply by not making any when competitors are around. This has been acknowledged by the creator on the Reddit, though he still views cheetahs as bottom-tier in terms of PvP due to their Fragile Speedster nature. An updated video on Cheetahs does address these inaccuracies, straight-up mentioning that they avoid making kills when competitors are around.
  • "Cat vs Dog - Best Support Class", Tierzoo argues that cats do nothing to actually support humans and are only tolerated because they infect humans with Toxoplasma gondii. This completely ignored the fact that cats were domesticated to keep pests such as mice and rats from human territory and food stores, a role they performed very efficiently and still play in the modern age in some places. In addition, the effects of T. gondii on humans are heavily debated—though it's known to inhibit rodents' fear of cats, it's unclear that it makes humans think any differently of them at all—and not all cats carry the parasite. (Of course, it's pretty clear that he was also kind of trolling cat people in that video.)
  • The Spider Tier List claims that social spider colonies are held back by having to deal with freeloaders. "Freeloader" spiders are actually colony members who focus on rearing young rather than hunting, and colonies without them have been consistently shown to be less successful than those with them.
  • In the Ice Age Tier List, chalicotheres are said to be a D-tier mimic of the giant ground sloths despite predating them — the chalicotheres first appeared in the Oligocene and the sloths in the Pleistocene.
  • A minor case, but in "Top 3 Underrated Animals", the stat chart for the hyena shows that the build has mediocre intelligence. Spotted hyenas are actually known for being one of the smartest carnivore builds, with complex social structures and excellent group-hunting capabilities. Researchers have even found that spotted hyenas are able to solve puzzle boxes containing food, and remember the solution when encountering more boxes in the future.
  • He put nocturnal builds in his "Top 5 Worst Animal Designs" video, justifying it since "in most servers, the day lasts longer than the night." Except the day only lasts longer than the night during the spring and summer, and the night lasts longer than the day during the fall and winter. He later corrected this mistake in the comments section.
  • He listed the presence of gut flora (which he framed as providing bonus XP) as yet another one of the reasons humans are a invokedGame-Breaker. In actuality, gut flora are the rule rather than the exception in the animal kingdom.
  • In "Are Humans OP?" TierZoo mentioned that sweating was unique to humans, even though there are other animals capable of doing so. This was rectified later in the video on horses, stating that humans aren't the only animals that can sweat, but they are still the best at doing so since the sweat-capable horses have body hair that impedes this capability.
  • "The Time Earth Glitched" states that griffinflies quit the game at the end of the Carboniferous expansion, when they actually went extinct at the end of the Permian. Also, TierZoo suggests that if they were still playable today, they'd be able to hunt domestic dogs and cats, which is unlikely given they were actually smaller than modern-day crows.
  • In the Rodent Tier List, rodents are described as one of the builds that survived the K-T extinction patch, when in fact they didn't evolve until later.
  • He states that if hadrosaurs were brought back from extinction, they would be fairly low-tier as their lack of offensive or defensive abilities would make them vulnerable to attacks by modern predators. However, most hadrosaur species were quite large by the standards of modern animals and lived in herds which would make most carnivores reluctant to go after them. There's also some fossil evidence that suggests that they were actually capable of defending themselves despite not having any obvious weapons, mainly through trampling, using their long muscular tail as a bludgeon, or plain old biting^note The largest of the hadrosaurs, Shantungosaurus, would have been capable of casually biting a lion in half.
  • In "Are Cows OP?", he mentions that the bison is the largest extant wild bovid, although the actual largest is the Gaur.
  • Tardigrades are treated as bottom-tier for being resistant to hazards they would never realistically encounter while lacking resistance to the common hazard of physical damage. However, tardigrades are resistant to hazards they commonly encounter, like starvation and dehydration. Given that tardigrades have persisted through multiple mass extinctions, one could argue they're actually higher in tier than taxa like dinosaurs.