Bears or no bears?

You’re going to name constellations after things that you know well, so the fact that there are a lot of bears relative to other megafauna in northern regions means that in a way the original idea still holds, just not quite as basic.

or New York

new york (2) final.docx

Vexingly, not pronounced as new+found+land. Apparently it's something like Newfin-lan, with a stress on the first syllable.

Supposedly, its and Iceland's discoverers named them thus to trick potential future conquerors into going for the wrong one.

Have you tried with catnip?

but lions and tigers... guess they were harder to spot among the foliage

Lions live in the savanna and grassland. They can hide among the grass, but they generally hunt by chasing prey in turns until the prey tires. Tigers are ambush predators and excellent at hiding.

Healthy lions and tigers do not hunt humans. They can kill humans pretty easily, but prefer meatier prey. But when they get too old / sick to hunt wild animals, they might hunt humans out of desperation.

Also Asian lions have become used to humans since their protected area has tribal settlements and is surrounded by villages. Local people sometimes feed the lions, and on youtube you can find videos of people even touching them. (This is dangerous, messes with the lions' ecology and is illegal, but people do it and stopping them now might cause new problems.)

Actually dogs are a distinct lineage that shares a common ancestor with wolves. Our pals are more closlely related to african painted dogs or India's endangered dhols. Maybe dingos count, idk if jackals are dogs actually, but I think that's about it for wild dogs left.

When tigers prey on people it's usually when they are old. They get lazy and we are easy. Until the guns and poison come out.

There is a reason there are no lions left in Europe, we killed them. We killed most wildlife and only recently we have tried to bring those somewhat large predators back(wolves, bears, etc).

I am pretty sure if there were polar bears in the Mediterranean, and the rest of the history remained the same, they would also be considered extinct or endangered.

All you need is a lot of humans and time and eventually all big animal threats will be eliminated.

It was a joke. You see, I was suggesting that a place with lots of sharks might be called "Shark", in keeping with the point of the original post.

I am aware that most shark attacks are due to mistaken identity, but it wasn't meant to be taken too seriously.

Perhaps the reason sharks came to mind before any other animals is because I read this article a couple of days ago: https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/surfer-bitten-in-half-7232230.html

It stands out because the way it was reported makes it sound like the sharks executed a coordinated attack on the surfer. But, again, I didn't expect to get cross-examined on what I intended to be a humorous remark.