I have chosen species from my wishlist with low vote counts (fewer than ten votes), along with a couple I missed from my wishlist:
Golden bellied mangabey - Mangabeys are particularly prominent in mixed enclosures with gorillas; I have seen or heard of mixes of at least four mangabey species with gorillas. Although this is possibly the most rarely-kept of them and has only a single vote in the meta wishlist, it has a unique rich brown and golden colour pattern shared by no other primate in the game (most of the other mangabeys are mainly a combination of black, white and grey), is an Endangered species and is a playful species, as this video from Burgers Zoo shows:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmwQiiBf8Qs
Any number of ground birds - Only a handful of species (emu, secretary bird, crowned crane, shoebill, kiwi and great white pelican) have more than 50 votes and some of my most-wanted species, like the
bar headed goose,
ocellated turkey and
crested wood partridge have fewer than 5 votes; I feel they would all add something special to the game and fit in with all kinds of different enclosures.
Giant Asian pond turtle - A sizeable species of Critically Endangered freshwater turtle, one of the animal groups which zoos particularly in Europe are really working to keep and breed; I have chosen this species partly because they have more temperate requirements and are often kept in large outdoor enclosures and partly because my local zoo (Colchester) keeps them and they are amazing to watch.
More rodents - While the porcupine is a much-wanted species, there are a whole suite of rodents I would like to see, with my two top choices being the
Eurasian red squirrel (a cute species often kept in large walkthrough enclosures here in the UK) and the
South African springhare (a relatively large hopping rodent often mixed with aardvarks). Neither have particularly high vote counts on the wishlist.
I originally didn't think much of the idea of making
coconut crabs a habitat animal, but then I saw this picture of them in an aviary at Beauval Zoo in France (shared with Aldabra giant tortoises, Rodrigues fruit bats and various birds) and am now converted - I would love to have them in with the giant tortoises and see them clambering around:
To give some impression of the size and height of the aviary, you can just above see the crabs in this picture, just up from the centre of the picture:
I wouldn't mind a third tiger (
Sumatran makes the most sense, but I have seen a Malayan tiger before and they are stunning animals too) and a third brown bear (
Syrian is probably my preference, as they look so different to any other brown bear subspecies and are present in European zoos).
Finally a lot of zoos here in the UK, if they are adding a rhino, are choosing
black rhinos - Twycross Zoo replaced their elephants with them, at least three other zoos have brought them in recently and the new Bristol Zoo will also have them when they reopen in 2024. I would rather have the species as a whole rather than a specific subspecies, in order to get the broadest range of biomes for this more adaptable species (desert, grassland and tropical would all be suitable for them).
. Lots of zoos have them.
