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Are all or certain animal populations endangered by the Dragonborn? Can I, by my hunting, drive the whole population of wolves, mammoths, and giants into extinction? Or will the game repopulate the world again? If so, is there a pattern?

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For regular animals: Is there a finite amount of foxes/wolves/horkers, etc.?. Don't know about giants and mammoths, though. –  SevenSidedDie Nov 30 '11 at 3:16
Yes, if you kill enough of any animal type, PETA activists appear. They're easy to kill but, being naked, they don't have any loot :( –  Coomie Nov 30 '11 at 5:03
That must be how I obtain human hearts for alchemy. –  Arkive Nov 30 '11 at 6:15
Naked? They're wearing human suits. –  Illiad Nov 30 '11 at 6:17

3 Answers 3

up vote 6 down vote accepted

I just fast traveled to

Secunda's Kiss

to check out whether giants respawn. I killed the giants there on my first trip from Riverwood to Whiterun by abusing the pathing.

The giants were back. They do respawn.

SevenSidedDie points to the answer for animals in his comment: yes, they also respawn.

I also recently revisited


and the dragon there had respawned, so even the static dragons respawn.

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+1 for doing some research on it :) –  Blem Nov 30 '11 at 11:21
Note that if you kill the same dragon multiple times, you can only absorb its soul the first time. –  Adeese Jan 25 '12 at 17:01

The Giants and Mammoths can become extinct if you check the elder scrolls wiki it says for ''the cursed tribe mission'' ''If every giant camp has already been cleared before completing this quest, the giants will be extinct, as will the mammoths.''

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The Elder Scrolls Wiki is notoriously unreliable. Use the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages instead. –  Raven Dreamer Aug 11 '12 at 22:09

I have killed every Mammoth and Giant at the Giant camp sites. When fast traveling back to the camp sites later, I have found that although the Giants do re-spawn, the Mammoths do not.

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I don't think this is correct. I'm pretty sure I've killed mammoths multiple times. Pretty much anything without a unique name respawns. –  agf Jan 25 '12 at 23:27

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