The Cat Catch-all and Categorizing Thread (the Feline Fixation)

Personally I would have scrapped the Thomson's gazelle and included the Arctic wolf in the deluxe edition, leaving the fox for the Arctic Pack, but hindsight is 20/20.
This is propaply the best take i have ever seen in these forum, opening a slot for the racoon in the NA pack aswell.
I even made a thread before about how redundant the thomson gazelle felt and how much i would love to delete it in favor for anything else. And a racoon would be the best.
Truly a peak into the best timeline
 
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My timeline:
1. Thomson Gazelle still in deluxe. It looks cool and is neat reference to ZT2 alongside komodo dragon and pygmy hippo
2. Completely obliterate arctic wolf from existence and replace it with arctic fox. The less unnecessary canines the better. Literally all of them beside fennec fox served as cheap addition fillers, when Frontier could put anything else.
3. Include something interesting from North America like wolverine or black-footed ferret.
 
Completely obliterate arctic wolf from existence and replace it with arctic fox. The less unnecessary canines the better. Literally all of them beside fennec fox served as cheap addition fillers, when Frontier could put anything else.
That's a hard stance. I'd argue that the dhole isn't a bad choice for Southeast Asia; a lot of zoos keep them, compared with the Arctic wolf and dingo. That said even their detractors learned to love them eventually.

I can see your point about the gazelle, though.

I guess another take would be;
- Include the Arctic fox over the wolf in the Arctic Pack.
- Include the Tasmanian devil over the dingo in the Australia Pack.
- Include something else in the SEA Animal Pack over the dhole (banteng, perhaps? Some kind of pheasant?).
- Do a random "dog pack" that includes all three for a cheap price somewhere in the middle.
 
Hi, its me, the one weirdo who likes the dogs. Let me explain why i believe calling the canines cheap unnecessary filler is an unjust statement.

1. All 3 are relativly common zoo animals.
Both the dhole and arctic wolf are quite common zoo animals in zoos across all budget ranges. Even the dingo is the fifth most common habitat animal type outside of australia if we group the kangaroos species together, aswell as the wallabys, being something like 1. Wallaby, 2. Emu, 3. Kangaroo, 4. Cassowary and 5. Dingo.

2. Canines fill a very unique niche of a midsized terrestrial carnivore that lives in groups. Out of my head the only non canine fitting that describtion are lions and maybe giant otters if you disregard the terresstial.
This means, that wolflike canines have very distinct challanges when building a habitat for them and are often unlike anything else on theire biosphere.
Taking asia as an example, if i was to build a tiger, a dhole, a sloth bear and a clouded leopard habitat, all 4 of these should look different to fit the needs and challanges of each of the 4 animals, making all 4 of them a good addition from a gameplay point of view.

3. They bring diversity to the packs.
The best example of this would be the dingo. I dont argue that another animal like the wombat would have been nice, maybe even nicer but lets look at this pack and the most common animals from before. You might notice, 2 of them are very samey, being kangaroo and wallaby, as well as emu and cassowary, being both macropods and rhatites respectivly.
So they did a logical step of taking a very rare wild card thats also very unique and iconic with the koala and another iconic and the next most common animal with the dingo, both bringing very unique challanges compared to the other 3 australian animals.
The most common criticism of the australian animal selection in the game is, that we need, need, need a wallaby and an emu, but a dlc with two macropods and two rhatites would have been a bad, if not worse move by frontier for diversity in gameplay.
My take is, that there should have been the wallaby or atleast the emu in the basegame, with the emu being a perfect deluxe edition animal instead of the thompsons gazelle, but you get my point.

Even now this gameplay based assesment holds true with the inclusion of the platypus and while i still believe they should be in the game just because how common they are in zoo, from a straight up gameplay perspective the emu adds next to nothing as a less flashy cassowary and the wallabys main point of inclusion would simple be that its small, making animals like the burrowing wombat, the climbing tree kangaroo, the gracefull black swan and the small carnivore of the tassy devil a more appealing 4+1 pack then exchanging any of them for emu and wallaby.


Tdlr: Dogs are fine, gameplay wise each one was an allright decision, frontier pls oceania animal pack when?
 
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Literally all of them beside fennec fox served as cheap addition fillers, when Frontier could put anything else.
I don't even like canines that much and I think that's extreme, at least in the case of the dhole. It's a fairly unique canid because it's so visibly different from wolves, smaller, lives in different pack sizes, and whistles rather than howling-- plus that beautiful red color. It's easily a step above the other canids included, which are yet more Canis lupus (though I don't hate the dingo, I suppose). And the Arctic Fox, while my least favorite part of the NA pack, never struck me as cheap. It's quite different from the other fox, along with having that unique little snow-jumping thing.
 
For me the Arctic Wolf was the only dog like animal which I was really a bit disappointed. The Arctic DLC was the smallest pack of the whole game and in my opinion another unique animal like the musk ox would have made the pack just better. I mean the polar bear was a must and I like the reindeer and especially the Dall sheep. The dingo was okay for me but there would have been surely better choices. But in case of the Dhole and the Arctic Fox I like both inclusions.

Edit: In case of dogs I would say that there are 3 remaining which would make the game better. The maned Wolf surely because they have just a complete different living style compared to the other big dogs. The Bush dogs looks very unique but it seems unlikely to me that we are getting them. And the red fox would bring us a fox for a temperate climate.
 
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I don't even like canines that much and I think that's extreme, at least in the case of the dhole. It's a fairly unique canid because it's so visibly different from wolves, smaller, lives in different pack sizes, and whistles rather than howling-- plus that beautiful red color. It's easily a step above the other canids included, which are yet more Canis lupus (though I don't hate the dingo, I suppose).
You are right its unique canid. And there is problem.
I was exited to see dhole after SEA pack announcement, but then i saw it in game. Recently I read comment on reddit about worst made animals in the game and one comment about dhole just reminded me about it. Frontier didnt even tried to adjust it animations. They made it cheap filler, just like malayan tapir.
Frontier did dhole dirty.
I can give foxes pass, because Frontier put effort into them.
 
You are right its unique canid. And there is problem.
I was exited to see dhole after SEA pack announcement, but then i saw it in game. Recently I read comment on reddit about worst made animals in the game and one comment about dhole just reminded me about it. Frontier didnt even tried to adjust it animations. They made it cheap filler, just like malayan tapir.
Frontier did dhole dirty.
I can give foxes pass, because Frontier put effort into them.
That’s fair. I still wish we got the prettier winter coat, and the model is a bit odd since they wanted to use the wolf rig.
 
The Sumatran tiger is far more significant in terms of conservation than either of the tigers we already have, and in fact it's unlikely that there are actually any pure Bengal tigers in captivity at all outside of India and its surrounding neighbours. Historically zoos didn't differentiate between mainland tiger subpopulations so most "Bengal tigers" in zoos are actually hybridised with Siberian tigers.

Additionally the Sumatran tiger is the most common tiger in AZA and EAZA accredited zoos. On a personal level it's also a must-have for Australasian zoos.
The reason I say I'm less bothered about the Sumatran is whilst everything you say is a good argument for inclusion, the fact remains we have 2 tiger species and no small cats.

I want to have more diversity in the range of cat species and the lack of small cat species is a huge gap at the moment. In fact I believe the only non-Panthera genus cats are the Cheetah and the Clouded Leopard.

I did leave the Amur Leopard in as there isn't a 'classical' leopard as such, but in my opinion small cats are the priority.
 
Fun fact: Every cat in Planet Zoo belongs to Top10 biggest cat species.
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Pure hall of fame. Only huge famous predators.
 
Fun fact: Every cat in Planet Zoo belongs to Top10 biggest cat species.
View attachment 303948
Pure hall of fame. Only huge famous predators.
But to be honest. All these big cats (perhaps the clouded Leopard and lynx in a lower way) belong to the most popular Zoo animals. Big cats are always more charismatic than big dogs in my opinion. But I would be very happy if we would get some of the smaller ones. Caracal, ocelot and serval are all not that low in the meta wishlist. One or two (I would take all) should make it to the game. But I could imagine that these are place 11-13 in the list 😀.
 
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But to be honest. All these big cats (perhaps the clouded Leopard and lynx in a lower way) belong to the most popular Zoo animals. Big cats are always more charismatic than big dogs in my opinion. But I would be very happy if we would get some of the smaller ones. Caracal, ocelot and serval are all not that low in the meta wishlist. One or two (I would take all) should make it to the game. But I could imagine that these are place 11-13 in the list 😀.
How dare you question the supremacy of the African Painted Dog.

Screenshot 2022-04-25 13.18.11.png

I would make a canine version of this thread, but the answer is clearly we need all of them.
 
I think adding more variety to the small to mid-sized cat roster is more important now. I like Amur leopards and would probably use them frequently, but it didn't make my 25 animal roster simply because we need more small cats.

Jungle:
I liked the Asian golden cat. Never seen one, but it would be cool.
I would pick the margay over the ocelot. It's smaller, funny-looking, climbs trees, and hunts tamarins.

Desert/grasslands:
Serval
Caracal
Sand cat

Cold-weather:
Pallas, Scottish wildcat, or Andean.

I don't have a problem with more dogs either. I think we'd all benefit from another wolf-like (maned wolf, jackal) and fox (red fox, a fox that is grey in color). Others have also been pushing for tanukis, which could be fun.

margay-feat.png
 
Caracol - Desert, Africa/Middle East
Margay - Jungle, South/Central America
Pallas cat - Alpine/Temperate, Asia

Three diverse looking small cats representing multiple continents and ecosystems for ultimate exhibit building flexibility. Also they are all stinking cute.

Bonus cats I would like, but which aren't as important to me are:

Leopard (any, but I would like a distinct subspecies)
Asian Golden Cat (Pretty colors)
Several (Them ears)
 
I think we could use some species, though cats are not highest on the list for me. Besides the leopard, I believe we should have the following:
  • Caracal (unique species, wide range, quite common and ZT2 nostalgia)
  • Serval (easily one of the most unique cat, the feline equivalent of the maned wolf)
  • Ocelot / Margay (representing the South American rainforest, which is very needed)

Fishing Cat, Pallas's Cat or Sand Cat would be good options for a more generic looking species.
 
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