Aquarium DLC
- Thread starter dwwayness
- Start date
I am thinking many a pack with 10 fish tank exhibit that comes in various size plus 2 to 3 habitat sea larger animals? Thinking about it just fish tank itself we can have 2 300 hundreds types of fish. I don't even mind having a pack with 10 different types of goldfish exhibit plus koi as habitat animal.
Nothing against small sharks, fish, various inverts, etc. (although they’re low priority for me) but I have zero interest in animals that do very, very, very badly in captivity like whale sharks, orcas or dolphins.
I’m 100% favorable to the addition of cetaceans. A lot of people want orcas, bottlenose dolphins, etc, ingame and if they’re not being added because “they don’t do well in captivity,” I’m pretty certain that some species currently part of the game do worse in human care than cetaceans. And also, a whole new demographic (cetacean enthusiasts) would be drawn to the Planet Zoo community, since it would be the first time their favorite animals are in a zoo simulator game since Zoo Tycoon 2, so it would be a big deal for both the community and the game itself. 
I’m 100% favorable to the addition of cetaceans. A lot of people want orcas, bottlenose dolphins, etc, ingame and if they’re not being added because “they don’t do well in captivity,” I’m pretty certain that some species currently part of the game do worse in human care than cetaceans. And also, a whole new demographic (cetacean enthusiasts) would be drawn to the Planet Zoo community, since it would be the first time their favorite animals are in a zoo simulator game since Zoo Tycoon 2, so it would be a big deal for both the community and the game itself.
Whether or not it would be popular is beside the point - I am expressing my opinion which is that I don’t want them. As to whether there are already in game that do worse in captivity ,which is debatable (tellingly you can’t name any), I would have preferred alternatives in those cases too. There’s no point my expressing my preferences for animals already in-game - just ones that could be added in the future.
At least give us a large grouper, walrus and elephant seal. haha
I didn't think Bottlenose Dolphins and Whale Sharks did too poorly in captivity, ik the whale sharks in particular don't breed, but dolphins do well, orcas I can agree on
My understanding (and I worked in an aquarium for over 5 years and now do research in ecology) is that whale sharks do very, very badly - aquaria that keep them have to replace them quite frequently (my disclaimer is that I’ve never studied them myself or seen them in captivity). Bottlenose dolphins do well in comparison to other cetaceans but that is a VERY low bar and very few have been successfully bred at all and, AFAIK, none have ever been bred for conservation (only so that oceanarium don’t ‘need’ to collect more from the wild. Quite a few international aquarium owners (e.g., Sea Life - the biggest group in the world) don’t keep cetaceans because they don’t consider it ethical (or, if you’re a cynic, because they think there’s a negative public perception of it)
Well if I were to make a 15 animal Aquarium DLC, not including species from my Coastal Animal Pack, these would be my selections
- Black-Tipped Reef Shark
- Southern Stingray
- Cownose Ray
- Zebra Shark
- Napoleon Wrasse
- Green Moray Eel
- Goliath Grouper
- Palette Surgeonfish
- Arapaima
- Red-Bellied Piranha
- Red-Tailed Catfish
- Ocellaris Clownfish
- Giant Pacific Octopus
- Lined Seahorse
- Moorish Idol
I can name one - the proboscis monkey. No western zoo was so far able to keep them succesfully, they would all die after a short time (from few weeks to a few years) Of course the breeding was also very unsuccessfull with only very few offspring, which also wouldnt survive for long. Only very few (SE-) Asian zoos close or within their natural homerage are able to keep them better so far, the most succesfull being the Singapore Zoo. About 10 years ago a Dutch Zoo tried to keep them again, but it was a huge failure. They got like 5-6 captive bred males from Singapore and after 4-5 years only 1 (or maybe 2) was still alive, which they then send back. However those difficulties arent reflected in PZ at all. You can just keep them in every part of the world with no problems at all (if you meet their ingame requirments, of course) and they breed like rabbits and live long and healthy lifes. I also dont think they mentioned the real-life problems in the Zoopedia, but its a long time ago I read it, so I cant say it for sure.
So I see no problem why Frontier shouldnt add other animals which are hard to keep in reality to PZ.
Compared to those monkeys, the bottlenose breeding programme is a huge success. (and even Sea Worlds Orca breeding was more successfull then that). And you may not believe it, but the EAZA also considers it a success. I rember reading its even one of their most succesfull ones, right now I just cant find the quote, but I will try to find it again.
May I ask what your defination of "very few" is? I wanted to make a little research/count about how many bottlenose dolphins are currently living in captivity in the world. I am still not ready and dont know if I ever will be, but I finished the EU at least and started the US with 5 places (both zoos with dolphins, all 3 Sea World Parks and Discovery Cove)
(*I cant guarantee my sources were all totally up to date, so there could be deaths and births not recored in it.)
So for the EU there are currently 282 dolphins. 58 were taken from the wild, while 224 were already born in captivity.
For the 5 US places I coverd, there were 147 dolphins in total. 18 were wild born (with at least 4 of them being resuced and non-releasable) and 129 born in captivity.
So for both we already have 353 captive born living dolphins and still missing most parks in the US and the world. Worldwide there must be at least over 600 captive born bottlenose dolphins living, if not more. Also then if we also count already decased animals born in captivity, I am sure there would be well over 1000 already born in the past. Even if we only counted those who turned at least 10 or even 20, there still would be alot.
In my opinion these are not just "a few". I didnt focus alot on their ages, honestly, but after what I saw and remember, the wild caught ones were mostly ranging from 30 - 45+ years old an the captive bred ones 25 - under 1 year old. But for both groups there were also older aswell as younger ones.
Also talking about breeding, apparently Galapagos giant tortoise are also pretty hard to breed in zoos and the only succesfull one in Europe seems to be the Zoo Zürich. Yet in the game they also breed like crazy.
The zoos who have them would disagree with you about that. Conversation isnt only about releasing animals. This also what pretty much all zoos will tell you, aswell as the big associations.
Conservation
AZA conservation efforts are designed to protect animals and their habitats and preserve them for many future generations.
www.aza.org
CONSERVATION » EAZA
www.eaza.net
Conservation Strategies - WAZA
Conservation Strategies Committing to Conservation: The World Zoo and Aquarium Conservation Strategy Published in 2015English (landscape format)English (portrait format)GermanPortugueseFrenchHungarianSpanishSimplified ChineseRussianJapaneseKoreanPromo Video Turning the Tide: A Global Aquarium...
www.waza.org
Also neither bottlenose dolphins nor orcas are counting as endangered, so currently there would be no need to release them. Which yes, can be both a reason for, aswell as against keeping cetaceans in captivity. But we better shouldnt get into that here.
Or how many meerkats get released by zoos each year?
And zoos do not even have release programmes for animals who are actually endangered - or how many zoo born polar bears, elephants, apes, cheethas, giraffes etc. get released by zoos each year? For many of those the answer is 0 to very few.
At least for Germany I can tell that most zoos say they also keep the animals to have genetic back-up, should anything bad happen in the wild. And who knows, maybe one day in the future, it might be possible to release zoo bred cetaceans back to the wild for conversation projects.
Your point about them starting to breed them so they wouldnt have to capture them from the wild anymore is true - but thats pretty much true for almost all wild animals in zoos. Thats pretty much THE reason while breeding projects were started in the first place. You should really look up how Apes came into captivity in the first place and how zoos actually helped to make their situation in the wild alot worse... Conversation only came later. But better late than never.
I'm personally ambivalent about sharks, dolphins, and whales myself, but I understand your reasoning here. FD's done a pretty good job with animal selection based on realism (with a handful of exceptions). They've also done really well with conservation and proper care for animals. The flip side of that, ironically, is that those are the animals that would be the "big draws" for most people I'd think.
Getting a bluefin tuna/mackerel/etc may not be controversial picks, but they also really wouldn't catch many people's eyes as selling points. Not taking people who are pretty much just wanting any kind of marine animals, which I guess that would be where I am more than any group that does or doesn't want.
If Frontier goes that route, I think the larger cetaceans are not likely. But I'd be prepared for shark inclusions, and we know what the most famous kind of shark is. Regardless of the GWS doing extremely, extremely poorly in captivity, it's definitely a "hook" - no pun intended.
You said it so PERFECTLY I’m building you an altar and worshipping you like a god,I can name one - the proboscis monkey. No western zoo was so far able to keep them succesfully, they would all die after a short time (from few weeks to a few years) Of course the breeding was also very unsuccessfull with only very few offspring, which also wouldnt survive for long. Only very few (SE-) Asian zoos close or within their natural homerage are able to keep them better so far, the most succesfull being the Singapore Zoo. About 10 years ago a Dutch Zoo tried to keep them again, but it was a huge failure. They got like 5-6 captive bred males from Singapore and after 4-5 years only 1 (or maybe 2) was still alive, which they then send back. However those difficulties arent reflected in PZ at all. You can just keep them in every part of the world with no problems at all (if you meet their ingame requirments, of course) and they breed like rabbits and live long and healthy lifes. I also dont think they mentioned the real-life problems in the Zoopedia, but its a long time ago I read it, so I cant say it for sure.
So I see no problem why Frontier shouldnt add other animals which are hard to keep in reality to PZ.
Compared to those monkeys, the bottlenose breeding programme is a huge success. (and even Sea Worlds Orca breeding was more successfull then that). And you may not believe it, but the EAZA also considers it a success. I rember reading its even one of their most succesfull ones, right now I just cant find the quote, but I will try to find it again.
May I ask what your defination of "very few" is? I wanted to make a little research/count about how many bottlenose dolphins are currently living in captivity in the world. I am still not ready and dont know if I ever will be, but I finished the EU at least and started the US with 5 places (both zoos with dolphins, all 3 Sea World Parks and Discovery Cove)
(*I cant guarantee my sources were all totally up to date, so there could be deaths and births not recored in it.)
So for the EU there are currently 282 dolphins. 58 were taken from the wild, while 224 were already born in captivity.
For the 5 US places I coverd, there were 147 dolphins in total. 18 were wild born (with at least 4 of them being resuced and non-releasable) and 129 born in captivity.
So for both we already have 353 captive born living dolphins and still missing most parks in the US and the world. Worldwide there must be at least over 600 captive born bottlenose dolphins living, if not more. Also then if we also count already decased animals born in captivity, I am sure there would be well over 1000 already born in the past. Even if we only counted those who turned at least 10 or even 20, there still would be alot.
In my opinion these are not just "a few". I didnt focus alot on their ages, honestly, but after what I saw and remember, the wild caught ones were mostly ranging from 30 - 45+ years old an the captive bred ones 25 - under 1 year old. But for both groups there were also older aswell as younger ones.
Also talking about breeding, apparently Galapagos giant tortoise are also pretty hard to breed in zoos and the only succesfull one in Europe seems to be the Zoo Zürich. Yet in the game they also breed like crazy.
The zoos who have them would disagree with you about that. Conversation isnt only about releasing animals. This also what pretty much all zoos will tell you, aswell as the big associations.
Conservation
AZA conservation efforts are designed to protect animals and their habitats and preserve them for many future generations.CONSERVATION » EAZA
Conservation Strategies - WAZA
Conservation Strategies Committing to Conservation: The World Zoo and Aquarium Conservation Strategy Published in 2015English (landscape format)English (portrait format)GermanPortugueseFrenchHungarianSpanishSimplified ChineseRussianJapaneseKoreanPromo Video Turning the Tide: A Global Aquarium...
Also neither bottlenose dolphins nor orcas are counting as endangered, so currently there would be no need to release them. Which yes, can be both a reason for, aswell as against keeping cetaceans in captivity. But we better shouldnt get into that here.
Or how many meerkats get released by zoos each year?
And zoos do not even have release programmes for animals who are actually endangered - or how many zoo born polar bears, elephants, apes, cheethas, giraffes etc. get released by zoos each year? For many of those the answer is 0 to very few.
At least for Germany I can tell that most zoos say they also keep the animals to have genetic back-up, should anything bad happen in the wild. And who knows, maybe one day in the future, it might be possible to release zoo bred cetaceans back to the wild for conversation projects.
Your point about them starting to breed them so they wouldnt have to capture them from the wild anymore is true - but thats pretty much true for almost all wild animals in zoos. Thats pretty much THE reason while breeding projects were started in the first place. You should really look up how Apes came into captivity in the first place and how zoos actually helped to make their situation in the wild alot worse... Conversation only came later. But better late than never.
. But all jokes aside, someone from the development team should read this! This sums up how the whole issue of “cetaceans do terrible in human care” is not realistic at all, specially for a computer game. Elephants and apes are as controversial as cetaceans – if not more – but they are in-game anyway… I genuinely don’t see why not include orcas and dolphins 
Great post - well argued and you undeniably make some good points. Nevertheless,...
Yep, Proboscis was what i first thought of as an example too. This is very much a species for which I would have prefered an alternative, partly due to being kept in so few zoos. On the other hand, survival and/or successful breeding are not synonymous with welfare (though they are sometimes indicators of it), some die with almost any stress, whilst others survive for a long time even when highly stressed: Some animals, for example, breed in response to stress (i.e., they breed more when their welfare is low).... I don't know how well Singapore does for their Proboscis monkeys in terms of welfare, but neither survival or breeding is necessarily a good measure - Various behavioral measures (e.g., Stereotypic behaviours) or physioilogical measures (e.g., corticosterone) are much better for assessment than survival or breeding (Ref). In addition, the number of animals born in captivity is not the same as the number of animals bred in captivity, since it includes the offspring of females that are pregnant when caught and females that became pregnant because of interventions like artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilisation -which don't tell lyou much (if anything) about welfare - As far as i can tell , all these sources contribute to the reported numbers of Wild caught vs. captive born dolphins.
Meerkats do very well (in terms of welfare) in captivity, so the benefit to keeping them doesn't have to be as high to justify.
All of those animals, being (primarily) terrestrial are much easier to provide with substantial enrichment than cetaceans which, because of limitations to the environment that can be provided (because they are fully aquatic), can not be provided with anywhere close to the same level of enrichment.
Again, the better animals do in captivity, the less justification is needed to keep them in captivity. Insurance populations are a good reason, which justifies keeping animals that don't do so well becuase they are under threat in the wild. Bottlenose dolphins have low welfare in captivity and are not endangered in the wild - therefore the justification doesn't exist.
EDIT: BTW, I gotta say that it's VERY hard to find any decent papers on cetacean welfare - almost everything i've found is either very, very old (pre 1990), clearly potentially biased (in either direction), says nothing about absolute welfare (i.e., compared with wild animals, as opposed to noting that some measures increase welfare in captivity compared to other individuals in captivity), or just have terrible (or sometimes no) study design. So I will freely admit that I could be wrong.
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I really want to build for cetaceans. I think they’d be fun and challenging from a gameplay perspective
If I'm not mistaken, the Singapore zoo does not source its animals in their natural habitats, so the number of animals born should be equal to number bred, unless injured species are adopted for some reason. The population of monkeys in the zoo has been there since 1998 and has been doing well. If my memory serves me well, the only zoo in Singapore that does source animals in the wild is the SEA Aquarium which has a bad reputation with keeping its animals alive. It is also the only one not owned by Mandai Wildlife Parks but by Marine Life Resort.
I also think there is a difference in welfare and breeding success, which is why I don't agree with the argument "we have proboscis monkeys so we can have dolphins." In the case of the proboscis monkeys there is at least precedence of a captive population that has lived in a quite natural habitat for a long time (since 1998), while dolphins show many signs of extreme stress and there is a general consensus that no zoo or aquarium has kept them in a sufficiently large exhibit. Sure, proboscis monkeys have been kept successfully by a niche number of zoos, but at least there is precedence of good care, which is doubtful for dolphins.
Honestly I also dont know how good the welfare of these monkeys actually is in Singapore, however its a fact they were never able to thrive in other parts of the world and Frontier didnt care about that all. I checked and the problems really arent mentioned at all and even the food there given seems to be very badly for them.
So in regards to the game it would be much more realistic for zoo set in Europe or North America to have dolphins (even orcas) than those monkeys.
But you are right of course that breeding dosent always mean great welfare. However my point in that regard wasnt about welfare, but about your statement about only very few succesfull breedings, which in my opinion isnt true.
For bottlenose dolphins I know about no dolphin ever born to a mother who was caught pregnant in either Europe or the US. Which of course dosent mean it never happened, but if it did, those animals are probaly already dead or some of the older ones and so few, they must be already irrelevant for the current population. As there are no captures in the EU and North America anymore for (depending on the countries) at least 20-40 years.
Maybe this might happen more often in Asia, as there still are captures, though for EU + NA this could only happen if there was a pregnant rescued animal giving birth.
Now you might have a point about AI, however I would still count this as captive bred. Just without natural mating. A.I. happens more in the US however and is far rarer in the European places as far as I know. Even though I would make the claim that most bottlenose dolphins are still born from natural mating, at least from what I can tell. (And for orcas to my knowledge there were 7 successfull births from A.I., while all others worldwide still happened naturaly.)
I really wish the true, fully TT EEP was online, this would make things alot easier. (or maybe it is and I am just to bad to find it)
Taking the German zoos with dolphins as an example again (since I am German and honestly know more about them, compared to the other places), they both say their dolphins display no stereotypic behaviours whatsoever. I obviously can neither confirm nor deny it, but thats what they say.
Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski who usually studies wild dolphins, also came to Duisburg for a few times and couldnt find any significant differences in dolphin behavior between the wild and captive dolphins.
"I’ve been studying wild dolphins since the early 90s, and it’s been almost a decade for various captive dolphins. I’ve studied a couple groups of wild dolphins, dolphins [at Dolphin Encounters] and dolphins in Germany, in a man-made pool. And, by collecting data the exact same way, in all the sites, and analyzing it in exactly the same way, in all the sites, we can do direct comparisons. So, we looked at them to see if there are significant differences or similarities in dolphin interaction, and I have not found any significant differences in dolphin behavior when I’ve used those methodologies. So, when you have a group of animals that are healthy and happy and they have a good social environment, I don’t see any differences between wild dolphins and captive dolphins. I think that’s pretty cool given worldwide media."
An Interview with Dr. Kathleen Dudzinsk - Dolphin Encounters
For almost a quarter of a century, Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski has been getting beneath the surface – literally – duringRead More
www.dolphinencounters.com
Now of course this is just one opinion in that regard, but its still something to consider.
Anways, I remember a studie which says that captive dolphins are actually less stressed than wild dolphins aswell as that they get happy interacting with their trainers (both measured by hormone levels). Right now I however cant tell you how old or biased it was.
That is really true. Like the newest is probaly this one:
Towards understanding the welfare of cetaceans in accredited zoos and aquariums - PubMed
Cetaceans are long-lived, social species that are valued as ambassadors inspiring the public to engage in conservation action. Under professional care, they are critical partners with the scientific community to understanding the biology, behavior, physiology, health, and welfare requirements of...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
And here one could also argue that its too pro and also dosent tell alot about wild dolphins. It would be really nice if such studies would be done. And at best to being started by neither pro or anti people.
To my understanding cetaceans in human care are actually one of the species in zoos, who get the most frequent enrichment. I dont see why being fully aquatic would prevent that. It actually helps that with their diving space they have more space and more ways of enrichment. Which means they can get enrichment on the surface, stuff that sinks some that floats in-between, stuff that hangs above it etc.
As well as how the habitats are built nowadays, of course. More modern dolphin tanks arent only those barren things anymore.
Nürnberg also keeps the dolphins together with sea lions (at least partly, not 100% of the time, as far as I know at least) which I guess also gives them some enrichment. So far I didnt hear about any problems because of that.
And then there is of course all the training they get, both medical as well as for presentations which can enrich them both physically, aswell as mental.
Thats the thing, the "other side" disagress that they have a low welfare at all. And its also what I meant with not being endangered in the wild is a point for, aswell as against it. Against could be argued like you did, while a pro agrument could be that its actually better to already have populations ready, should it ever happen in the future. Its much better and also easier to take animals from a stable wild population than when they are already short for extinction.
Anyways to come back to the game itself, I make it no secret that I really would love orcas, bottlenose dolphins and others in the game and would be very happy about it. And yes, I strongly believe they would fit in the game.
I am also all for Frontier adding more animals which are very hard to keep and rare in zoos or not even in zoos (for whatever reasons), simply because a game dosent have the same restrictions as reality. It could be so much fun and still be educational. I think its also great we have the proboscis monkey.
However, I just wish they would also teach about the real life captivity problems more. At least in the zoopedia, maybe as a new page where they could talk about some of the most common welfare/ breeding success in captivity etc.
This is a misconception. Orcas do bad in captivity, but many dolphin species do really really well in captivity, with no signs of stress, but they get bad rep due to the species that don't/facilities that don't treat them well.
Whale sharks are in a weird position where more research would likely make it possible to keep them wuth good welfare, but that would require more 'experiments' with captive specimens.
So I'm only opposed to the specific species that do badly in captivity, but not species that fare well.
Reef sharks do fine in really big pools
Very happy to be proven wrong - i.e., paper or solar comparing welfare and / or behaviour of wild vs. captive dolphins…. I’ve looked and haven’t found anything good from either side of the argument. Expert opinion seems divided, though everything I’ve found saying their welfare is good is from experts who aren’t disinterested - mostly employees of parks that keep them.
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