Yes, I agree ... the skins would take just as much work, but the animations wouldn't, because exhibit animals wouldn't need animations for fighting, interacting with other animals, drinking and eating, etc. ....
Yes exactly. Although, and if I may contradict myself in a roundabout way, we also don't know how the exhibit animals work in terms of where they spawn. The game is an open map, you can go anywhere at anytime on the zoo map, but somehow the exhibit animals can "know" when you are present and when you aren't (which is how they change from one spot to the next when you aren't looking, instead of disappearing and reappearing somewhere else while you're watching). So there must be some other mechanism in place there that might take a lot of work to implement.