This is my idea for an Islands Animal Pack:
1. Tasmanian devil - Probably the flagship species for this pack, endemic to the island of Tasmania.
2. North Island brown kiwi - Another much-wanted Oceanian species, representative of New Zealand.
3. Goodfellow's tree kangaroo - Probably the best and most-desired option to represent the island of New Guinea.
4. Fossa - Probably the most unique Madagascan option, and probably the one required to make a Madagascan zone in a zoo.
5. Rhinoceros iguana - A large ground-dwelling iguana that would be a good Caribbean representative, although Cuban crocodile and American flamingo are also good options.
6. Lowland anoa - The smallest of the wild cattle, endemic to the island of Sulawesi.
7. Mindanao bleeding-heart dove - This mid-sized pigeon, endemic to the Philippines, is almost entirely ground-dwelling, quite commonly kept and threatened in the wild.
Alternative: Welsh polecat - Surprisingly similar in size and shape to the Asian small-clawed otter. While the 'Scottish' wildcat is often given as a British representative, they are now thought to not be their own subspecies and rather just part of the more widespread European subspecies, while the Welsh polecat
Mustela putorius anglia (also found in England and Scotland) is an endemic subspecies.
Exhibit. Because of the abundance of coral reefs around Southeast Asian islands, and the importance of terrestrial island ecosystems to the health of reefs, I figured an island pack could be the ideal place to add marine aquariums. I have chosen twelve species here, all from the Indo-Pacific and, more importantly, all twelve have been successfully bred in captivity.
The twelve species are divided up into four basic animation groups:
| Animation style | | | |
| Fish that spawn in association with an enrichment item* | Ocellaris clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris | Tiger-tail seahorse, Hippocampus comes | Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus |
| Fish that are restricted to the tank floor | Mandarinfish, Synchiropus splendidus | Ruby red dragonet, Synchiropus sycorax | Spotted garden eel, Heteroconger hassi |
| Fish that hover in the water, making only small movements | Banggai cardinalfish, Pterapogon kauderni | Azure damselfish, Chrysiptera hemicyanea | Green chromis, Chromis viridis |
| More active swimmers, making slow loops of the tank | Copperband butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus | Harlequin filefish, Oxymonacanthus longirostris | Flame angelfish, Centropyge loricula |
* Clownfish spawn with a sea anemone, seahorses with a patch of seagrass and cleaner wrasse with a flat coral that they hover over
