Canon zone-metering vs Nikon pixeleated-metering?

I'm thinking about buying from the mid to top class of DSLRs and was just wondering whether the Nikon, using each time several thousand-pixel metering systems is significantly better than the 62-zone Canon one, especially in wildlife photography, and if so, how so?

Both brands have highly sophisticated metering systems. You wouldn't be able to tell the results of one from the other.

I wouldn't even think about it - especially i wouldn't base my decision of the camera system (which one basically will marry and use for life) on it.

Get whichever feels more comfortable in your hands and whose user interface makes more sense to you, that's far more important than a small part of the technical specs.

Toss a coin. Don't close your mind to Pentax, Olympus or Sony either, just yet - any one of them is perfectly capable of doing what you want.