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So, I've gotten back into Skyrim New Edition and it's just as awesome as the first time. The game looks great, it's smooth, and I've fallen in love again. So, in rummaging through Geirmund's Hall, I noticed something strange when doing the first puzzle. There are no snakes in Skyrim. There can't be. It would be too darn cold for them to live in such a place (in Alaska, there are no snakes for this very reason). It's a biological impossibility. So why are they on ancient stones in burial sites?

Can anyone explain this?

Snakes are capable of living in cold climates if they hibernate throught the winter months. For example European adders and garter snakes.

Riften, Falkreath and the volcanic parts of Eastmarch seem like totally feasible places for snakes to live.

And if you remember, when escaping Helgen with Hadvar, he makes a comment: 'What next? Giant Snakes?' I don't think there are giant snakes in skyrim but probably there should be regular snakes.

It could be that Bethesda never had any time to add snakes in the game or they may have been driven to extinction.

Explanation #1:
Could be that Nordic legends / racial memory trace back to their time in Atmora which, I think, was originally heavy woodland - plenty of snakes there I'd imagine.

Explanation #2:
They have snake pictures in Skyrim for the same reason that the Nazcas made monuments that you could only see from the air, the Dogon knew details about distant Sirius that have required modern telescopes to confirm and the peoples of Easter Island made loads of giant stone heads:

There's plenty of references in the games about wildlife that you never actually encounter. You mentioned snakes, but there's also whales depicted in the ruins.

The simple explanation is nobody wants to have to put in that much extra work to make inconsequential additions to an already huge game world.

It's also a birth sign.

Explanation #1:
Could be that Nordic legends / racial memory trace back to their time in Atmora which, I think, was originally heavy woodland - plenty of snakes there I'd imagine.

A few pieces of evidence to support this theory:

From Notes on Yngol Barrow

All was so in Atmora
land of truth and our home
Man in his throne,
so should he be
Whale in the sea,
so should he be
Eagle in Sun's Sky,
so should he be
Snake in the weed
so should he be


From The Dragon War

In the Merethic Era, when Ysgramor first set foot on Tamriel, his people brought with them a faith that worshipped animal gods. Certain scholars believe these primitive people actually worshipped the divines as we know them, just in the form of these totem animals. They deified the hawk, wolf, snake, moth, owl, whale, bear, fox, and the dragon. Every now and then you can stumble across the broken stone totems in the farther reaches of Skyrim.

Cats, also. There's a book about cats in Skyrim your character can find, but besides Khajiits, there's no cats in Skyrim that I've seen. (Maybe that's why?)

storminmay wrote:Cats, also. There's a book about cats in Skyrim your character can find, but besides Khajiits, there's no cats in Skyrim that I've seen. (Maybe that's why?)

There are sabre cats in Skyrim. Not house cats which is probably what you're referring to, but still cats all the same.

There are chirping insects in the snow. I don't think the folks making the game really thought that one through. Heck, there are butterflies flitting about in the snowy roadsides of Stonehills.

These are some great responses and all very likely! My husband mentioned extinction, too. I have a climate change theory that possibly affected Skyrim and killed off the snakes. The totems and temple stones are hella ancient, so it's possible, no?

Yeah, cats is another thing. They are flipping everywhere in Fallout lol.

Dohva. wrote:These are some great responses and all very likely! My husband mentioned extinction, too. I have a climate change theory that possibly affected Skyrim and killed off the snakes. The totems and temple stones are hella ancient, so it's possible, no?

I have thus theory, but again they could have been driven to extinction.

Dark Spark wrote:There are chirping insects in the snow. I don't think the folks making the game really thought that one through. Heck, there are butterflies flitting about in the snowy roadsides of Stonehills.

One thing that bothers me is the panting dog like sounds foxes make. They don't really sound like that, they make more a whining sound almost like a bird (really creepy at night). I guess somebody just though "dog like thing" and made it sound like a dog. Also I don't like it because every time I hear it I think a wolf is about to attack
.

Would we prefer 100% fantasy creatures with no basis in reality? Because these ARE fantasy games, and though some of the content of the game may resemble or be derived from reality, none of it is meant to be an accurate simulation of the really real world. We can compare the sound a fox makes in our wilds, or the tendency of our cold-blooded creatures to favor warmer climates, or the way the grass bends all we want, but that seems to be forgetting that Skyrim is not a place on Earth, there is no real precedent for evolution nor extinction in Tamriel beyond what the developers fabricate, or that this is a fictional universe created for entertainment purposes and not scientific study. Turn the game off and go outside if that's what you're looking for.

Sorry if this sounds snide, but I sincerely think that while forming our own opinions about what we like and dislike or discussing the things that may or may not make sense is one thing (especially since we're talking about a commercial product), being overly critical when it comes to the pseudo-emulated ambiance is missing the big picture. As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in the wilderness, yes, I can tell that these games are made by people who seldom go outside trying to capture the essence of being there, and in a lot of ways they get it wrong. But, as someone who has been playing video games for ...a long time..., I can appreciate the environments that they've crafted fit very well into their narratives and are at least visually interesting and at most a welcome contrast to my current workaday reality, which is why I play them.

In summary, the only real explanation for any of these "oddities" is simple: because video games.

Zero_The_Dark wrote:

storminmay wrote:Cats, also. There's a book about cats in Skyrim your character can find, but besides Khajiits, there's no cats in Skyrim that I've seen. (Maybe that's why?)

There are sabre cats in Skyrim. Not house cats which is probably what you're referring to, but still cats all the same.

Ah, you're absolutely correct. Dunno how I forgot about those. I must've been thinking of purely domesticated cats, since there's domesticated dogs in the game.

Just because something isn't in a game doesn't mean it doesn't exist in lore. There were no children in TES IV: Oblivion, yet (lore-wise) there definetly were children in cyrodiil during the oblivion crysis.

Techinical reason: Bethesda didn't want to do the animation for snakes is the most likely reason or ran out of time to implement them.

Lore reason: Snakes may be a delicancy in Skyrim and the Nords eat them. They are likely to hunt anything for meat or for sport and snakes being quite plentiful could provide them with a delicancy. It could just be they were hunted to extinction in Skyrim by Nords to eliminate what they would view as a pest. Wouldn't explain the skeever numbers though. Draugr may have killed them on sight. Though, Snakes weren't mentioned in the Lore version of Skyrim. It could just be that Cyrodiil has snakes and it's common knowledge amongst Legionaires thus Hadvar either making a reference as something he rather not face or disbelief at the size of Skyrim's spiders.

A bit unrelated but just realised Bethesda missed the chance to refernece Harry Potter massive spider character. Name escapes me though.

'Massive spider character' evokes Shelob from Lord of the Rings, not the Bonespinner or Arachnox or whatever lame-assed name would have been used in a Harry Potter setting.