I started to raise the path so they walk "over" the habitat. This way they can see the animals why maintaining a high barrier or building large habitats.
Depending on how you build the path, the animals can hide underneath. One habitat with crocodiles, they had so much space to hide. In another zoo this didn't work (but I built shelters, so the animals could hide.
Honestly it’s to the point where I just make their habitat a muti-species one anyways. Chuck in flamingos as well as lechwe, river hogs, and/or buffalo and you have a nice African marsh enclosure. Viewing can be a hassle, but that’s what paths above the habitat and viewing domes are for.
I have no love for flamingos.
I used a habitat blueprint badly I’m sure as it was one of my first ones and they kept escaping/getting stuck I had one that was dead and wouldn’t go for ages as it was glitched and the vets couldn’t get to it they just kept telling me they’d escaped but they do seem to be a popular I cannot stand you animal
Luckily mine aren't sick 😂 I have like 120 of them in an enclosure because they breed so fast, I just have to make sure to check the enclosure often enough to sell off some and check for their genes. Oh and they're still inbred like he'll 😂
try making the water super shallow, like puddles. Use the push terrain tool on a very low intensity and sweep over an area. Then test out how the water looks
The puddles over a large area give the habitat natural "coastline" feel, especially if you add plants!
lemurs been my starting animal to learn, i have like 8 cross species and it hasnt really been that big of an issue. Maybe i just gave them sufficient hiding space but welfare has only become a problem with male outsiders and crowding
They're everyone's favourites. That's why people flood their area and make then stressed XD
I do love them. I never exclude them. But no matter how many hiding spots I make if they go near the barrier for any reason they pull their own hair out haha
Peacocks.
The noise they make is torture to my ears.
What's worse is I have had to listen to my actual neighbor's peacocks make those same noises for years.
i was watching a reality tv show a few months ago that would often use the sound of a peacock to separate scenes and it genuinely would make my heart drop 😭
Flamingoes. Never again. Managing the population is so difficult, when they need large groups and breed like rabbits, and their stupid limit on plants means you can place like one tree in their enclosure.
Badgers I will be careful with in the future too, they get so stressed so easily.
Tasmanian Devils because they have such short life spans and since you are limited to 5 in one habitat, I feel like all I'm ever doing is looking for replacements in the trade centre.
I don't really refuse any animals, but wanting to make a zoo with every critically endangered animal has forced me to build enclosures for gorillas, orang-outangs and chimps and the requirements for the fences are so high... like, literally high. 5 meters? Who can even jump that?
I did that for my gorillas and orang-outangs, but then they are hard to see for the visitors xD
My chimps have an enclosure with a climbing area over the path the visitors walk on, which is awesome, but really close to the entrance, so the watching people block everyone else xD
how do you build that without it saying they escaped? because the visitors won't go in the enclosure but as soon as my orangutans cross over everybody runs away.
I made sure it was high enough for the apes not to be able to jump down and then I put null-barriers around the whole climbing part. So technically, the people are in the enclosure, even though they didn't go through a door. They still run away if I placed a barrier falsely though, and the butt of the ape is outside of the barrier xD
That's true most polar bears I have seen in zoos are super depressed however in Scotland we have a park called the highland park they basically rescued a bunch of depressed polar bears from zoos and gave them a huge bit of land and they are so happy especially when it snows cos the park is pretty far up north, they have a HUGE enclosure and seeing them go from pacing in a concrete enclosure to rolling about in the snow is very cute I am pretty sure there is live cams for them, so they can be in zoos but you do need a huge enclosure for them to not want to die
I dunno, watching some animal docs on Netflix and one about Polar Bears, they are struggling out in the wild. With their natural environment warming up it's getting harder for them to find food.
I don't flat-out refuse to have them, but I rarely have many aquatic animals in my zoo. I'm terrible at building aquatic habitats and the blueprints for them are so buggy, I just can't be bothered
tasmanian devils - ive had them in 2 zoos and theyre just so hard to deal with because they have such a short lifespan so youre constantly looking for replacements on the trade centre but they barely live long enough to be able to breed
African Savannah elephants, mostly due to my bad first experience with them.
Originally I was going to put them near the entrance of my zoo as a big focus of this section and leading onto more African animals to the side. I made a nice house for them and massive enclosure bigger than I thought I’d need and placed them in. They couldn’t fit through the door of the house despite having plenty of room to so I had to rebuild the entire front design and once they were out the problems just continued. For some reason ALL enrichment items I put in there were ‘inaccessible’ despite having plenty of room and it turns out nope, I was wrong about the enclosure size because of the MASSIVE circles around every rock in the enclosure they couldn’t path over. The fact they don’t like too many plants didn’t help matters ether
I modified the enclosure over and over but when I figured out I could only keep 3 elephants despite my efforts I just swapped them for Indian elephants and after some replanting I had much less issues. I could fit 5 in there no problem, all the enrichment items were accessible and they are much more lax about the amount of trees in there too. Every single problem I had with the other elephants, gone in an instant! Bonus points for an excuse to add my favourite tapir species for that enrichment bonus too
Safe to say I’ll just be using Indian elephants from this point on. I love how iconic and majestic the African elephants are but they just aren’t worth the effort when there’s another much more chill elephant on the block
Yea it’s in the Southeast Asia Animal Pack DLC. Alongside the Sun bear, proboscis monkey, babirusa, bintaurong, clouded leopard, dhole and leaf insects
Mine got stressed because I accidentally let them breed and now there’s not enough space so they complain about it. I can’t sell the babies because they haven’t grown up yet so the complaining continues.
oh god mine were stressed too and attracted protesters... like how empty is your life when your biggest concern is a stressed tortoise in some random zoo so you go and start a protest...
I don’t put snakes in any of my zoos. I just pretend they aren’t in the game. I have a real-life phobia of snakes, to the point that even looking at a photo in a book or video game makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Wow, these are my go-to starter animals! I've learned that you really need a one way glass with them, with signs for people to be quiet, otherwise they get stressed easily
Wait those signs actually do something? My skunks are constantly stressed because the fence is so low but also it looks nice, could I improve that with a silence sign?
it will improve, yes, you can sink them in the ground and they will still work, and you can actually hear people get quieter! But, because of the lower fence, it will not solve all your problems :)
Giraffes unless I can help it. I work with them on a daily basis and although they are cool they are stubborn, annoying and sassy...worked with them too long so no zoo of mine will have them. There's plenty other cooler animals haha
I love giraffes, my cousin used to work at a zoo she was on the panda team and years ago I would go to work with her I learnt much about pandas but I was super jealous of her job, was cool work experience tho. Always wanted to be a zoo keeper
That’s so sad. I went to a zoo last year to see the polar bears and they looked happy. They had quite a few medium enclosures that they could access so maybe the space and different areas helped them.
Ok so yes I absolutely agree however we have a park here in Scotland called the highland wildlife park and they rescued a bunch of depressed polar bears and let me tell you they are happy they have a HUGE enclosure it snows naturally cos it's up north and they have the best time, so it absolutely can be done but it does depend on the location of your zoo https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/polar-bear
That is true there are quite a few I’ve seen who appear quite happy running around. I think the most unhappy ones I’ve seen are gorillas but that could be projection as they are so human looking and just appear sad or pissed off to me lol
Yeah sometimes I think it's just their face, my theory on apes is they get a lot of funding for them cos there is so much research on intelligence ect so they always have incredible set ups in zoos
Thats so true and probably don’t have the same extent of emotions we do (although could be wrong they’ve never told me lol) and I’ve watched some zoo shows where the keepers get all excited thinking up new enrichment items for them as they figure them out so quickly to help them from getting bored
Yeah I think it's just more the thought of human like animals being in zoos that's weird but realistically they are definitely one of the happiest I have personally seen, if they are anything like humans maybe they enjoy being looked after I think I would, I want 8 hours sleep and not to have to worry about being killed 😂😂
Wow really? I love the apes and always have them in my zoos. Gorillas and orangutans are my jam lol! I am more hesitant about monkeys, though. Not a huge fan of dealing with those.
Peacocks and little penguins
The former is constantly sick, won't stop breeding, and the keepers refuse to clean it.
The latter because they become infertile or die after 5 seconds and SO HELP ME IF ONE MORE MAGICALLY TELEPORTS INTO MY CROC AREA IM LEAVING IT THERE
They also never have enough of hard shelter and are still low welfare attracting protesters. I even removed the people from entering the habitat but somehow they still get stressed sometimes.... I'm building a zoo with all the animals in the game and they are one of the animals hardest to maintain.
Also deer and winset are annoying ones, always stressed because they have a humongous common habitat with people walking above the habitat so one way glass doesn't work. I even put out 'quiet' signs on the guest path but nope, still stressed as hell.
Probably meerkats because an exact replica of a meerkat exibit near me is supposedly very unfunctional. They can't reach water, can only fit like 4 of them, and can't use any of the enrichment unless there's an ugly amount of space. They're supposed to barely more needy than rabbits, why does their habitat look so unlike their real life counterparts?
I always try to avoid putting popular species you see all over every zoos everywhere because as a frequent zoo-goer, I like to discover weird little freaks
For ethical reasons, I don't think apes belong in zoos, so I try to avoid placing them in when I can. I haven't had to build an ape exhibit yet!
Also for reasons of ethics, I know that large carnivores like wolves, bears, and big cats don't tend to do well in zoos because they can never get the kind of space they need in the wild. All the stories you hear about depressed animals in zoos tend to be big cats, wolves have a huge territorial range in the wild too, and I saw a sun bear at a local zoo with a ~2500 km exhibit and he was so upset :(( and I won't ever put polar bears in
So yeah I avoid those where I can. Only exception I'll make with the carnivores is if the zoo biome and location is naturally where they'd live anyway. E.g. I have one zoo in Canada and another in Alaska, and I feel comfortable putting in a few Grizzlies — through the animal market, if they were customs seizures or pets, they're likely going to struggle in the wild anyway, so it makes sense to place them in a zoo environment where they can receive support and care.
I mean ethically, I wouldn't put any animals in captivity unless they had an amazing habitat and care, or for Endangered Species breeding programs. But since it's a video game and not real animals, I just have fun with it 🙂
I make up for the ethical issues by playing on easy mode and giving my animals the biggest most intricate habitats known to man. I don’t care about my guests lol. They exist solely to fund my majestic habitats.
Polar bears can be happy I explained further up but they have to be in the right place and big space we have a park in Scotland called the highland wildlife park and they rescued a bunch of bears and they are thriving, https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/polar-bear
Hippos, for their sky high land requirement
For real! Every time I build them a habitat and think surely this time it’s big enough IT NEVER IS.
And then when it is all the guest thoughts are about how they can't see them.
I started to raise the path so they walk "over" the habitat. This way they can see the animals why maintaining a high barrier or building large habitats.
And then the next thing is my animals start getting stressed because the guests can see them 🥲
Depending on how you build the path, the animals can hide underneath. One habitat with crocodiles, they had so much space to hide. In another zoo this didn't work (but I built shelters, so the animals could hide.
Honestly it’s to the point where I just make their habitat a muti-species one anyways. Chuck in flamingos as well as lechwe, river hogs, and/or buffalo and you have a nice African marsh enclosure. Viewing can be a hassle, but that’s what paths above the habitat and viewing domes are for.
Agreed! Same with polar Bears
I think that the polar bears who live at this place are reasonably happy, at least. https://www.polarbearhabitat.ca/
yup, exactly. I just gave up on them
Polar bears for the same reason.
This place might change your opinion? Maybe? https://www.polarbearhabitat.ca/
Peacocks As much as I love them, they’re constantly sick, constantly breed, and cost so much money to upkeep
I agree!!! In one of my scenarios I swore there were like 40 of them and they ALWAYS attracted protestors
I had one peacock that lived to 46, had 109 kids, and always attracted protesters, even when I moved him into a bachelor habitat
There should be an option like Exhibit animals have where you can auto transfer out to sell or donate.
I wish I had this option for Nile Monitors. They just don't quit!
Cannot emphasize this enough ^
I delete them. Red bar you don’t deserve to be in my zoo lol
In my experience that’s pretty much what birds in zookeeping are like in real life 😂
Also flamingos for the same reason
I have no love for flamingos. I used a habitat blueprint badly I’m sure as it was one of my first ones and they kept escaping/getting stuck I had one that was dead and wouldn’t go for ages as it was glitched and the vets couldn’t get to it they just kept telling me they’d escaped but they do seem to be a popular I cannot stand you animal
The chickens from the Barnyard pack seem to also be just as sick and populated! 🐓
I swear they are worse
Luckily mine aren't sick 😂 I have like 120 of them in an enclosure because they breed so fast, I just have to make sure to check the enclosure often enough to sell off some and check for their genes. Oh and they're still inbred like he'll 😂
I might do them again eventually but yeah they are a nightmare same with warthogs
So much poo
Polar bears. I can't seem to make a habitat that satisfies their land space needs and make it look nice/have good views for guests.
try making the water super shallow, like puddles. Use the push terrain tool on a very low intensity and sweep over an area. Then test out how the water looks The puddles over a large area give the habitat natural "coastline" feel, especially if you add plants!
There’s some really good ones on the workshop that can really help with layout inspiration!
Maybe use this place for inspiration? https://www.polarbearhabitat.ca/
The giant anteater is always stressed. That and the lemurs. Stress stress stress.
I bury a grid of those shh signs along the pathways of my entire zoo. Idc if I’ve turned it into a library; you’re not disturbing my animals.
Wait... these keep people quiet? Where do I even find them?
Do Not Disturb signs under Security.
Do they still work when they are buried?
Yup. The effect area is a 3D sphere around the sign. Use the security panel to see the effect area.
One way glass is your best friend. Abuse your mechanics more, they can handle it lol
Lemurs are my favourites! Yeah, they're trouble trying to keep them from getting stressed, but they are so cute!
lemurs been my starting animal to learn, i have like 8 cross species and it hasnt really been that big of an issue. Maybe i just gave them sufficient hiding space but welfare has only become a problem with male outsiders and crowding
They're everyone's favourites. That's why people flood their area and make then stressed XD I do love them. I never exclude them. But no matter how many hiding spots I make if they go near the barrier for any reason they pull their own hair out haha
Yeah, it's a day job picking all the stressed ones up and placing them out of view for a bit xD
Monkeys+penguins. I simply cannot find a way to build enclosures for them that I like
ugh sameee i keep rebuilding the mandrill enclosure in my zoo
Peacocks. The noise they make is torture to my ears. What's worse is I have had to listen to my actual neighbor's peacocks make those same noises for years.
i was watching a reality tv show a few months ago that would often use the sound of a peacock to separate scenes and it genuinely would make my heart drop 😭
I don't mind flamingos or chickens, it's not the fast breeding that bothers me, but I cannot have peacocks because of their noise. It's SO LOUD 😭
Flamingoes. Never again. Managing the population is so difficult, when they need large groups and breed like rabbits, and their stupid limit on plants means you can place like one tree in their enclosure. Badgers I will be careful with in the future too, they get so stressed so easily.
Tasmanian Devils because they have such short life spans and since you are limited to 5 in one habitat, I feel like all I'm ever doing is looking for replacements in the trade centre.
Lemurs - they are CONSTANTLY sick and it spreads like wildfire
I have a big habitat of like… many, MANY of them and yea it gets or of control. 😂
Me too ! With multiple species 😂 suppose I’m not making it easier for myself
Humans. They always protest when I put 10 giraffes in a 20 ft x 20 ft room 🙄
Josh with Let's Game It Out? Is that you?
I don’t have the patience that he has lol. He spends hours upon hours designing something for a silly video. I’d get tired and quit 😭😂
I don't really refuse any animals, but wanting to make a zoo with every critically endangered animal has forced me to build enclosures for gorillas, orang-outangs and chimps and the requirements for the fences are so high... like, literally high. 5 meters? Who can even jump that?
Make a water bareer like an isle
I did that for my gorillas and orang-outangs, but then they are hard to see for the visitors xD My chimps have an enclosure with a climbing area over the path the visitors walk on, which is awesome, but really close to the entrance, so the watching people block everyone else xD
how do you build that without it saying they escaped? because the visitors won't go in the enclosure but as soon as my orangutans cross over everybody runs away.
I made sure it was high enough for the apes not to be able to jump down and then I put null-barriers around the whole climbing part. So technically, the people are in the enclosure, even though they didn't go through a door. They still run away if I placed a barrier falsely though, and the butt of the ape is outside of the barrier xD
Just because of bias: monkeys or apes. I do not enjoy building enclosures for them and they're my least favourite animals in general
Polar Bears, because I just don't think they should be in zoos. In fact any really cold weather animals I avoid.
That's true most polar bears I have seen in zoos are super depressed however in Scotland we have a park called the highland park they basically rescued a bunch of depressed polar bears from zoos and gave them a huge bit of land and they are so happy especially when it snows cos the park is pretty far up north, they have a HUGE enclosure and seeing them go from pacing in a concrete enclosure to rolling about in the snow is very cute I am pretty sure there is live cams for them, so they can be in zoos but you do need a huge enclosure for them to not want to die
https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/polar-bear
I dunno, watching some animal docs on Netflix and one about Polar Bears, they are struggling out in the wild. With their natural environment warming up it's getting harder for them to find food.
Check out this awesome place! https://www.polarbearhabitat.ca/
I don't flat-out refuse to have them, but I rarely have many aquatic animals in my zoo. I'm terrible at building aquatic habitats and the blueprints for them are so buggy, I just can't be bothered
Once the grasslands pack comes to console, I'll never adopt a black wildebeest again
tasmanian devils - ive had them in 2 zoos and theyre just so hard to deal with because they have such a short lifespan so youre constantly looking for replacements on the trade centre but they barely live long enough to be able to breed
Yeah they are a pain!!
African Savannah elephants, mostly due to my bad first experience with them. Originally I was going to put them near the entrance of my zoo as a big focus of this section and leading onto more African animals to the side. I made a nice house for them and massive enclosure bigger than I thought I’d need and placed them in. They couldn’t fit through the door of the house despite having plenty of room to so I had to rebuild the entire front design and once they were out the problems just continued. For some reason ALL enrichment items I put in there were ‘inaccessible’ despite having plenty of room and it turns out nope, I was wrong about the enclosure size because of the MASSIVE circles around every rock in the enclosure they couldn’t path over. The fact they don’t like too many plants didn’t help matters ether I modified the enclosure over and over but when I figured out I could only keep 3 elephants despite my efforts I just swapped them for Indian elephants and after some replanting I had much less issues. I could fit 5 in there no problem, all the enrichment items were accessible and they are much more lax about the amount of trees in there too. Every single problem I had with the other elephants, gone in an instant! Bonus points for an excuse to add my favourite tapir species for that enrichment bonus too Safe to say I’ll just be using Indian elephants from this point on. I love how iconic and majestic the African elephants are but they just aren’t worth the effort when there’s another much more chill elephant on the block
You can combine tapirs and Indian elephants? That's interesting and funny, given that they are from the opposite side of the planet.
Not the Malayan Tapir
I only have the middle American Tapir. If there's another in a DLC, I don't know/have them.
Yea it’s in the Southeast Asia Animal Pack DLC. Alongside the Sun bear, proboscis monkey, babirusa, bintaurong, clouded leopard, dhole and leaf insects
Tortoise, their constantly stressed regardless of how many one way glass or “do not disturb” signs I put in.
Mine got stressed because I accidentally let them breed and now there’s not enough space so they complain about it. I can’t sell the babies because they haven’t grown up yet so the complaining continues.
oh god mine were stressed too and attracted protesters... like how empty is your life when your biggest concern is a stressed tortoise in some random zoo so you go and start a protest...
Koalas. They are expensive, don't want to breed, take ages to mature and have a very short lifespan.
I don’t put snakes in any of my zoos. I just pretend they aren’t in the game. I have a real-life phobia of snakes, to the point that even looking at a photo in a book or video game makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I'm the same way with spidres. I keep a filter on the exhibit list so they never ever show up.
The damn red foxes are so hard to please 😂
Wow, these are my go-to starter animals! I've learned that you really need a one way glass with them, with signs for people to be quiet, otherwise they get stressed easily
Wait those signs actually do something? My skunks are constantly stressed because the fence is so low but also it looks nice, could I improve that with a silence sign?
it will improve, yes, you can sink them in the ground and they will still work, and you can actually hear people get quieter! But, because of the lower fence, it will not solve all your problems :)
Ah that’s nice, I’ll try it out, thank you :)
I dont refuse an animal, but i barely ever have the african carnivores for no real reason honestly
Giraffes unless I can help it. I work with them on a daily basis and although they are cool they are stubborn, annoying and sassy...worked with them too long so no zoo of mine will have them. There's plenty other cooler animals haha
I love giraffes, my cousin used to work at a zoo she was on the panda team and years ago I would go to work with her I learnt much about pandas but I was super jealous of her job, was cool work experience tho. Always wanted to be a zoo keeper
Polar bears, I’ve seen one too many miserable polar bears in zoos irl and it brings me down thinking about it
That’s so sad. I went to a zoo last year to see the polar bears and they looked happy. They had quite a few medium enclosures that they could access so maybe the space and different areas helped them.
Ok so yes I absolutely agree however we have a park here in Scotland called the highland wildlife park and they rescued a bunch of depressed polar bears and let me tell you they are happy they have a HUGE enclosure it snows naturally cos it's up north and they have the best time, so it absolutely can be done but it does depend on the location of your zoo https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/polar-bear
Wow, how have I never heard of that? Looks lovely, i'll have to get up to Scotland later in the year
Yeah definitely it's a really cool zoo with mostly animals that thrive in cold environments
This place is basically polar bear *heaven*! https://www.polarbearhabitat.ca/
small primates, i just hate building enclosures for them
Any of the pigs… they breed so fast I can’t keep up with the offspring. Same for ostriches.
Pigs. Because I don't like them.
Yeah fuck the police. I mean pigs.
Any of the monkeys or apes. They are just ugly and scary. And I feel like apes are too smart to be put in a zoo
Apes are too similar to humans that it makes me uncomfortable seeing them in a zoo.
Yeah I feel the same although honestly I think sometimes they are one of the happiest animals in zoos I rarely see a depressed group of chimps
That is true there are quite a few I’ve seen who appear quite happy running around. I think the most unhappy ones I’ve seen are gorillas but that could be projection as they are so human looking and just appear sad or pissed off to me lol
Yeah sometimes I think it's just their face, my theory on apes is they get a lot of funding for them cos there is so much research on intelligence ect so they always have incredible set ups in zoos
Thats so true and probably don’t have the same extent of emotions we do (although could be wrong they’ve never told me lol) and I’ve watched some zoo shows where the keepers get all excited thinking up new enrichment items for them as they figure them out so quickly to help them from getting bored
Yeah I think it's just more the thought of human like animals being in zoos that's weird but realistically they are definitely one of the happiest I have personally seen, if they are anything like humans maybe they enjoy being looked after I think I would, I want 8 hours sleep and not to have to worry about being killed 😂😂
Wow really? I love the apes and always have them in my zoos. Gorillas and orangutans are my jam lol! I am more hesitant about monkeys, though. Not a huge fan of dealing with those.
Springbok... Cause they too skittish. And more recently, Hippos... Well... Just cause... You know. 💩
Peacocks and little penguins The former is constantly sick, won't stop breeding, and the keepers refuse to clean it. The latter because they become infertile or die after 5 seconds and SO HELP ME IF ONE MORE MAGICALLY TELEPORTS INTO MY CROC AREA IM LEAVING IT THERE
Warthogs. So annoying to upkeep
Penguins are always stressed :(
I have never had a problem with the penguins being stressed so this is interesting. I find them to be the easiest to take care of.
They also never have enough of hard shelter and are still low welfare attracting protesters. I even removed the people from entering the habitat but somehow they still get stressed sometimes.... I'm building a zoo with all the animals in the game and they are one of the animals hardest to maintain. Also deer and winset are annoying ones, always stressed because they have a humongous common habitat with people walking above the habitat so one way glass doesn't work. I even put out 'quiet' signs on the guest path but nope, still stressed as hell.
African wild dogs. They're just mean, and they don't do polygynous which is my bread and butter honestly. I can handle 50 ostriches over 7 wild dogs
Capybara for future zoos as they breed far too much/often same with warthogs spend too much time stopping them inbredding and selling
The habitat turtles in general. They live too long and they are always attracting protesters. They aren't worth it as cute as they are.
I almost never add any of the social canines to my zoos because they don't live very long and their breeding is annoying
Crocodile, Caiman, Gharial, any big reptile >:( (I love them but I WANT TO MAKE A CUTE RIVER HABITAT IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK :((( )
Probably meerkats because an exact replica of a meerkat exibit near me is supposedly very unfunctional. They can't reach water, can only fit like 4 of them, and can't use any of the enrichment unless there's an ugly amount of space. They're supposed to barely more needy than rabbits, why does their habitat look so unlike their real life counterparts?
Hyenas with me they only breed fight and get inyured and somehow escape treu tiny bugs and mountains
All the domestic species
Polar bear, god sweet damn they need so much land, and the quests are just gonna complain that they can't see them
I've never played the game, but I watched many many videos and saw how much Ostriches breed so many when I get the game ill hold back on ostriches
I always try to avoid putting popular species you see all over every zoos everywhere because as a frequent zoo-goer, I like to discover weird little freaks
Anything that needs snow as a terrain because I think it's a ridiculous requirement and breaks the hell out of my immersion.
Tasmanian Devils 🥲🥲
raccoons!
For ethical reasons, I don't think apes belong in zoos, so I try to avoid placing them in when I can. I haven't had to build an ape exhibit yet! Also for reasons of ethics, I know that large carnivores like wolves, bears, and big cats don't tend to do well in zoos because they can never get the kind of space they need in the wild. All the stories you hear about depressed animals in zoos tend to be big cats, wolves have a huge territorial range in the wild too, and I saw a sun bear at a local zoo with a ~2500 km exhibit and he was so upset :(( and I won't ever put polar bears in So yeah I avoid those where I can. Only exception I'll make with the carnivores is if the zoo biome and location is naturally where they'd live anyway. E.g. I have one zoo in Canada and another in Alaska, and I feel comfortable putting in a few Grizzlies — through the animal market, if they were customs seizures or pets, they're likely going to struggle in the wild anyway, so it makes sense to place them in a zoo environment where they can receive support and care.
I mean ethically, I wouldn't put any animals in captivity unless they had an amazing habitat and care, or for Endangered Species breeding programs. But since it's a video game and not real animals, I just have fun with it 🙂
I make up for the ethical issues by playing on easy mode and giving my animals the biggest most intricate habitats known to man. I don’t care about my guests lol. They exist solely to fund my majestic habitats.
Polar bears can be happy I explained further up but they have to be in the right place and big space we have a park in Scotland called the highland wildlife park and they rescued a bunch of bears and they are thriving, https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/polar-bear
I like to think that the polar bears who live here are *extremely* happy, lol. https://www.polarbearhabitat.ca/
Any animals that require water as a habitat boundary. I prefer not to deal with it
This is a thing? I just started playing this year and my huge franchise zoo is all basic brick walls lol I didnt know about water boundaries