I was amused to discover that while following the tutorial, I placed a small population of foxes in a forest. Before the tutorial even prompted me to grant them sentience, they had already reached the Stone Age. From that point onward, the fox civilization remained one step ahead of the tutorial, progressing through each era on their own.
What puzzled me, however, was their complete refusal to settle the northern hemisphere. They happily expanded and advanced for ages, yet ignored vast stretches of habitable land. Only after reaching the early Space Age did they finally begin moving north.
Apparently, according to these foxes, crossing the equatorial grasslands was simply too much trouble. Building spacecraft and colonizing beyond their home world was evidently the easier option. For foxes, I would expect nothing less. X3