For all the animal species being part of the “World Photographer” missions there exist distribution maps which roughly assist the player in finding the animal on our huge globe.
However there are dozens of animal species not being part of photo missions, an for them there is currently no information at all, unless the developer mode is used where it is, at least, possible, to find out what species potentially exist in FS2024.
Given that it takes hours to find some of the species even when (mis)using the dev tools to locate them and given that it is virtually impossible to find many these animals in free flight without any aids, I suggest to add distribution maps for the remaining species as well. I am not yet sure how this could be best implemented but one possibility is to use the search window on the free flight world map, and when you have entered a species or group of species (say: “cheetah” or “chimpanzee” or “polar fox”) there would be a toggle to switch a the distribution overlay on and off.
Even better, the world map could just offer additional layers to enable, next to the airports and POIs (landmarks):
Sure, if the distribution of animals would follow real life, there would be no need for this. You can look up Wikipedia, your favourite “animals of the world” book or browse the web to find out. But it turns out that modelled distribution and real distribution rarely match, which is okay as it is not primarily a wildlife simulation.
I just think that it’s great how many different species can be found in FS2024, but this potential and development time is wasted by essentially hiding many of them from the users. People who like to do safari flights and like to get nice virtual photographs of animals would be happy if this task was a little easier.
On a somewhat related topic see also: Allow to toggle/hide animal distribution map in World Photographer world map
Similar request for FS2020: More POI and animal fauna with attached photos but that proposed solution does imho not work well with the random animal generation in FS2024.
. And in SU 5 they likely adusted the map to point at the new areas.