Animal Is Stressed and is Trying to Hide!

[NZFanatic]

"Multiple Habitat Problems".

Okay, so this is by far the most annoying aspect of the game for me. Generally I'm pretty positive about the whole thing, but this is a continuous issue; I get a little red flag that tells me Animal X has low welfare, I go to it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong except the animal is "stressed". It runs off to the shelter, hides, the social status goes back to 100%, then it emerges, eats, drinks, becomes stressed again, and off it goes. Over and over and over, the same message, sometimes for multiple animals in the same habitat.

Is this a bug? A feature? Am I doing something wrong? Every stat is perfect, but the "stress" seems to drop willy-nilly. Enrichment is at 100% otherwise I'd throw in more toys and such like I used to in Zoo Tycoon.

 

[[VR] Deggial]

The animals are stressed, when exposed to visitors. Furthermore, animals are differently sensitive to stress.

If you place all what is needed to provide food, water and animal entertainment very close to the visitors (and make them enjoy the good view), the animal’s stress level will rise. If you place the wellfare stuff far away from the visitors, the animals will feel better, but your visitors will be unhappy.

You will have to balance this. It’s a feature and there are measures, you can take. Invent and use one-way glass. Don’t expose every inch of your habitat to humans. Optimize your habitat layout.

 

[Dr4gon]

If it's just one animal in a group, there is often just one animal to many in that habitat. Keep it in your trde center for a while and bring it back with the others when one of them dies. See what happens. If all animals are individuals, that would be a real challenge matching a group together. I have one prohorn antelope with that same problem. Together with the bisons, the enclosure was real full. I have to wait until there is room again. But with all the young being born constantly, that may be a long wait.

 

[HeatherG]

It’s a feature. Using 1 way glass will take care of that. When I have Baird Tapirs I have to use 1 way glass otherwise they want to hide non stop.

 

[MellMarie]

I have found that even sometimes the one way glass doesn't help and the animals still get stressed. Placing the "Do Not Disturb" signs around the exhibit seems to help a ton!

 

[Dr4gon]

And when all else fails, send it to quarantine. It worked for me when there was a turtle explosion, and I had one-way glass not yet developed. I moved all turtles to a corner in the enclosure, but there was one turtle which stayed in the red. When it came back from quarantine it acted like nothing happened and the protesters finally left

 

[PeppyPepp]

I have a walkthrough habitat for pangolins and aardvarks. I've put shelters and food at the back of the habitat, away from the walkthrough path. I've put up Do Not Feed and Do Not Disturb signs up and it helps. My animals are never stressed.

 

[NZFanatic]

Well, this is a big savannah exhibit, with wildebeest, zebra, and springbok in it. The guests literally have a single overhead viewing platform but their view of the back of the habitat is obscured by a large rock formation. I have two hard shelters, neither of which is within the guest line of sight, and I already put a lot of the enrichment behind the rock formation (and the food and water inside one of the hard shelters).

The one-way glass fix worked with my cheetah and aardvark, but my springbok and wildebeest are still going nuts. There social needs are otherwise fine, it's just the stress.

One thing I considered - I have those educational speakers underneath each one of my education boards, and they produce sound; could this be a problem?

It only seems to affect certain animals, too. My Siberian tigers are relatively exposed and haven't complained once (guests can even see into the front of their cave). The warthogs are in a habitat not at all dissimilar to the cheetah and aardvarks and their stress is fine. It's almost as though it's only the "small" animals (except the wildebeest). No prpoblem with the zebras or giraffes next door, but the nyala, ostriches, springbok, and wildbeest that share their habitats just keep freaking out for no reason.

Oh well. In any case I deleted that zoo to start a new one (and got hit with a crash again, also for apparently no reason), as I tend to do when I feel like I'm getting better at using a certain feature, so maybe this time I'll try a few more things. I wondered if crowd congestion was somehow causing the animals stress, as the viewing platforms I had weren't enormous but were jam-packed with people. Wider paths might be a solution (do not disturb signs might work, but that is so not realistic; I've been to countless zoos, and see those signs in nocturnal houses, reptile/invertebrate houses, or indoor viewing areas, but never have I heard of a herd species being particularly bothered by crowd noise).

Even if this is a feature, I would say it's a bit buggy. I think after a certain amount of time, your animals should get "used" to certain things. If you only just put an animal in then sure it might be shy for a while, but eventually there ought to come a point where it becomes "just another day", so to speak.

Or they could give you more options to turn off in sandbox mode. We can disable aging and birth, disable death, disable fighting and disease, maybe it would be good if we could also disable stress just so sandbox players have one less thing to bother about.

 

[PeppyPepp]

Well, this is a big savannah exhibit, with wildebeest, zebra, and springbok in it. The guests literally have a single overhead viewing platform but their view of the back of the habitat is obscured by a large rock formation. I have two hard shelters, neither of which is within the guest line of sight, and I already put a lot of the enrichment behind the rock formation (and the food and water inside one of the hard shelters).

The one-way glass fix worked with my cheetah and aardvark, but my springbok and wildebeest are still going nuts. There social needs are otherwise fine, it's just the stress.

One thing I considered - I have those educational speakers underneath each one of my education boards, and they produce sound; could this be a problem?

It only seems to affect certain animals, too. My Siberian tigers are relatively exposed and haven't complained once (guests can even see into the front of their cave). The warthogs are in a habitat not at all dissimilar to the cheetah and aardvarks and their stress is fine. It's almost as though it's only the "small" animals (except the wildebeest). No prpoblem with the zebras or giraffes next door, but the nyala, ostriches, springbok, and wildbeest that share their habitats just keep freaking out for no reason.

Oh well. In any case I deleted that zoo to start a new one (and got hit with a crash again, also for apparently no reason), as I tend to do when I feel like I'm getting better at using a certain feature, so maybe this time I'll try a few more things. I wondered if crowd congestion was somehow causing the animals stress, as the viewing platforms I had weren't enormous but were jam-packed with people. Wider paths might be a solution (do not disturb signs might work, but that is so not realistic; I've been to countless zoos, and see those signs in nocturnal houses, reptile/invertebrate houses, or indoor viewing areas, but never have I heard of a herd species being particularly bothered by crowd noise).

Even if this is a feature, I would say it's a bit buggy. I think after a certain amount of time, your animals should get "used" to certain things. If you only just put an animal in then sure it might be shy for a while, but eventually there ought to come a point where it becomes "just another day", so to speak.

Or they could give you more options to turn off in sandbox mode. We can disable aging and birth, disable death, disable fighting and disease, maybe it would be good if we could also disable stress just so sandbox players have one less thing to bother about.

I understand. In my previous zoo I had a big enclosure with ostriches, thomson's gazelles and springboks and my gazelles and sprinkboks were stressed out a lot because I also had a large viewing platform that went around half of enclosure. I built them several shelters, put up the signs, but it was still not enough. I just think animals like gazelles and sprinkboks are just really shy and their habitats only work if there's only one small viewing points and that's it. I do think that the mass of people is definitely a factor as well. My platform was always so crowded.

 

[Cunabula]

Noise can indeed be a cause, it's also good to put down signs for guests to not disturb the animals - they keep quiet and this helps.

The noise problem ignores materials - if a group of guest are loud by a habitat wall even if they can't see through it, that's still a problem.

 

[Imagin]

In some cases I have to choose between guests complaining about the view or animals being stressed. I don't want to put everything behind one way glass. For my flamingo habitat I have a null barrier and rocks. It looks nicer. I'd like this turned off or toned down in Sandbox mode.

 

[[VR] Deggial]

Noise can indeed be a cause, it's also good to put down signs for guests to not disturb the animals - they keep quiet and this helps. ...

Do too many "Silence!"-signs annoy the guests by the way or is it possible to spam them?

Personally, I never scream or poke at barriers when visiting a zoo - and I am very annoyed by people doing so.
But it's still a zoo and not a poetry reading ...

 

[Cunabula]

I don't know I'm afraid, just that quietening guests in problem areas will fix stress.