One thing that consistently bugs me about Bethesda - albeit it's kinda minor - is the way they're really good at world building but it never seems to occur to them to make the wildlife look plausible. Like you can get more than one sabre cat or whatever together, but they never have young or zones where certain wildlife is concentrated. I feel really bad in New Vegas killing a den mother and all her pups. Sometimes I'd leave searching the body of a bright follower because it seemed tight. It makes the game seem more real.
I think it's more immersive if the wildlife looks like it actually lives there, giving the illusion it's not just what it's really there for - spawning for you to fight it. It's easy to do because it's just downscaled versions of the same model. And they have different sizes of mudcrabs. And it could help level scaling by shifting the ratio of advlts to young as you get higher. I really like the alpha male deathclaws, deathclaw mothers and babies in a pack in New Vegas, and it baffles me why Bethesda don't add such a simple touch to their games.
I might feel more about wasting a bear if that necessitates wasting all its young as well. Or leaving them without their mommy.

Never thought of this before...
Good point.