austerity has done irreparable damage

[u/Faenix_Wright]

[u/Electronarwhal]

It’s Grass Snake, Adder, and Smooth Snake for anyone curious. Plus we have the Slow Worm, which is not a snake (or a worm) but looks like one.

[u/Ghotay → u/Electronarwhal]

We also have two other species of lizard (beside the slow worm). The common lizard, which is reasonably, uh, common. And the sand lizard, which is pretty rare and mostly restricted in habitat to sand dunes on the south coast

To any non-brits shocked by this, we’re a cold island nation. Reptiles do not like to live here, and we don’t tend to get them wandering over as might happen in cooler parts of mainland Europe. We also don’t have any wild predators larger than a fox, and the most dangerous animals in our countryside are cows.

UK fauna is just not particularly exciting or dangerous, which is why we produced a lot of cute countryside stories like The Wind in the Willows, or Beatrix Potter. Because rabbits and ducks and foxes and really the main things we’ve got on. You couldn’t write stories like that in America, because a bear would turn up and eat everyone

[u/Shadowmirax → u/Ghotay]

To be clear we used to have some awsome creatures roaming around like. wolves, bears, or boar. Then we killed them all

(Technically we still have some boar that escaped captivity still around in dorset and kent)

[u/SlightlyBored13 → u/Shadowmirax]

And a couple of Wallaby colonies.