Let's play: The Traveling Zookeeper Problem

yoav_r

yoav_r
Let's play a little game, to pass the time until the next dlc.

The Goal
With the minimal number of zoo visits, how could you get to see all habitat species from the game in real life?


The Rules:
  • The game is on a species level, not subspecies level (no need for HBB)
  • Must be the correct species and not similar species
  • With that said, species which don't exist in zoos can be substituted for their relatives who do (sloth, water buffalo)
  • Due to extreme rarity in zoos, the proboscis monkey and chinese pangolin can be substituted if you so choose
Bonuses:
  • Bonus points for keeping it to as little countries as possible
  • Bonus points for including the exhibit species
  • Bonus points for completing the game on a subspecies level

You can use the planet zoo tierlist to create an easy visual for which animals you can see in which zoo.

In a month's time, the winner will get a funny meme
 
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yoav_r

yoav_r
YesIndeed said:
Imma come back too this later since it's hard topic to think about. I can already foresee everyone listing Singapore zoo for the proboscis monkey though.
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I think with the current roster the chinese pangolin and proboscis monkey are the biggest problems.
 

Lelka

Lelka
So far I got 100 species covered(96 habitat, 4 exhibit) with 11 parks from 4 countries. How many park, is currently out of my question.
Had to get general Asiatic Black Bear instead of Formosan, and European Brown Bear instead of HBB, and I cheated with European Beaver instead of American.
Map so far.png


I doubt I'll ever finish this.
 

yoav_r

yoav_r
Lelka said:
So far I got 100 species covered(96 habitat, 4 exhibit) with 11 parks from 4 countries. How many park, is currently out of my question.
Had to get general Asiatic Black Bear instead of Formosan, and European Brown Bear instead of HBB, and I cheated with European Beaver instead of American.
View attachment 354988

I doubt I'll ever finish this.
Click to expand...
That's really impressive! You can try one big european zoo to complete the rest.
 

KönigDerKaffeebohnen

K
Traveling Zoo Keeper: Germany Edition:
The first 4 zoos are in neighboring citys and would be my recommendations for a germany trip that should cover multiple zoos.
If you want to go to one place and stay, at the bottom is cheat sheat berlin with the zoos with the most species in the world and a second zoo thats 3 times the size of the main zoo where they exported many animals from the main zoo when they started to care about giving the animals a good life.
The zoos in the lower brackets catch outliers, both those rare in zoos and those that just happen to be neither in the top or berlin. Lower zoos also often have animals found in higher zoos and i granted many some for berlin necause literally covering 4/5 of the roster in 2 zoos is quite boring imo
my-image-2.png
 
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KönigDerKaffeebohnen

K
Fossa said:
So tian beetles are found in germany zoo? Cool,
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No, the goliath frog for example also isnt, but i 1. Dont care enough to fact check all of them and 2. Know that that zoo has animals atleast similar to all of them.
Has it north american bull frogs? No but carribean
Has it those exact scorpions? Idk but they have both desert and forest scorpions that look similar.
Add to that the fact that theres no reliable way to check what invertebrates zoos have and its just not worth the effort.
What it has are big jungle Beatles that look similar, and thats imo enough
 

Fossa

F
You sound kinda attacked, but I just was surprised because all those realism-peeps said there are no such beetles in zoo’s.
 

Chuditch

Chuditch
I would love to do this on a global level, but given I don't have time to go through the world's zoos at the moment I thought I'd take König's approach and just do the zoos of my home country. I guess Australia only having about half of PZ's species also makes things easier lol. I applied the "species which don't exist in zoos can be substituted for their relatives who do" on a local scale with the Bornean orangutan (substitute for Sumatran and hybrids), Colombian white-faced capuchin (for the varied white-fronted capuchin) and wild water buffalo (domestic).

Started with Adelaide Zoo, both because it's my local zoo and because a stop there is essential anyway due to having Australia's only giant pandas, and then put the zoos in order of how I would visit them if I was driving across the country, heading east and then making my way north up the coast.

wMsYTkpulSSwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg.png


Didn't include species not kept in Australia on the chart because there are way too many.

Also created a map of all the zoos to contextualise their location - they all fit neatly on a realistic roadtrip route, until all of a sudden you have to jump to the remote coast of the Kimberley on the other side of the continent to see the most beloved and least controversial of all PZ species, the spectacled caiman.

image.png
 
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yoav_r

yoav_r
Chuditch said:
I would love to do this on a global level, but given I don't have time to go through the world's zoos at the moment I thought I'd take König's approach and just do the zoos of my home country. I guess Australia only having about half of PZ's species also makes things easier lol. I applied the "species which don't exist in zoos can be substituted for their relatives who do" on a local scale with the Bornean orangutan (substitute for Sumatran and hybrids), Colombian white-faced capuchin (for the varied white-fronted capuchin) and wild water buffalo (domestic).

Started with Adelaide Zoo, both because it's my local zoo and because a stop there is essential anyway due to having Australia's only giant pandas, and then put the zoos in order of how I would visit them if I was driving across the country, heading east and then making my way north up the coast.

wMsYTkpulSSwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg.png


Didn't include species not kept in Australia on the chart because there are way too many.

Also created a map of all the zoos to contextualise their location - they all fit neatly on a realistic roadtrip route, until all of a sudden you have to jump to the remote coast of the Kimberley on the other side of the continent to see the most beloved and least controversial of all PZ species, the spectacled caiman.

image.png
Click to expand...
Nice! I think if you'd add the relatively not far Singapore zoo you'd get like half the remaining species.
 

YesIndeed

YesIndeed
Chuditch said:
I would love to do this on a global level, but given I don't have time to go through the world's zoos at the moment I thought I'd take König's approach and just do the zoos of my home country. I guess Australia only having about half of PZ's species also makes things easier lol. I applied the "species which don't exist in zoos can be substituted for their relatives who do" on a local scale with the Bornean orangutan (substitute for Sumatran and hybrids), Colombian white-faced capuchin (for the varied white-fronted capuchin) and wild water buffalo (domestic).

Started with Adelaide Zoo, both because it's my local zoo and because a stop there is essential anyway due to having Australia's only giant pandas, and then put the zoos in order of how I would visit them if I was driving across the country, heading east and then making my way north up the coast.

wMsYTkpulSSwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg.png


Didn't include species not kept in Australia on the chart because there are way too many.

Also created a map of all the zoos to contextualise their location - they all fit neatly on a realistic roadtrip route, until all of a sudden you have to jump to the remote coast of the Kimberley on the other side of the continent to see the most beloved and least controversial of all PZ species, the spectacled caiman.

image.png
Click to expand...
Taronga Western Plains dosent have water buffalo. They git banteng. I know cause I was there 3 weeks ago. Also I love you added sea world.
 

Chuditch

Chuditch
YesIndeed said:
Taronga Western Plains dosent have water buffalo. They git banteng. I know cause I was there 3 weeks ago. Also I love you added sea world.
Click to expand...
Ah thanks, I didn’t realise. They had water buffalo when I last visited them, which was some years ago now.

Also yeah, gotta include Sea World (which is not affiliated with the American franchise) given it’s the last place in Australia with polar bears lol.
 

Utahraptor Arcanus

Utahraptor Arcanus
i decided to give a shot and try to make a little bit of the challenge using only brasilians zoo and they animals, this is how far i get:
1683494368847.png


now some things that are worth to mention:
although being a joke there, capy can be found in Brasilia zoo.
one of the llama icons (brown) represents alpacas, i made this just to use it.
the São Paulo zoo don't mention what species of invertebrates they keep, so i had to trust my memory and images i found in the internet, the same thing happened with the black bear.
the white tiger in the São Paulo zoo is supposedly a bengal tiger, as mentioned in they site.
the sloth was changed to the other specie of sloth, and the buffalo was changed to it domestic version
the São Paulo zoo and safari are being count as the same thing cuz they are the same facility.

i just want to mention that the "no similar species" rule break my legs, mainly because multiple animals don't exists in brazilian zoos because there's similar species with a local range and become better opitions in the general, some examples are:
baird's tapir - SA tapir
both penguins - Magellanic penguin
red, arctic and fennec fox - hoary and crab eating foxes
ASCO - neo-tropical otter (with the giant otter being a more rare option)
non SA crocodilians - caimans in the general

anyways, i will try to finish it later with others zoos around the world.
 
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DarthQuell

DarthQuell
yoav_r said:
Let's play a little game, to pass the time until the next dlc.

The Goal
With the minimal number of zoo visits, how could you get to see all habitat species from the game in real life?


The Rules:
  • The game is on a species level, not subspecies level (no need for HBB)
  • Must be the correct species and not similar species
  • With that said, species which don't exist in zoos can be substituted for their relatives who do (sloth, water buffalo)
  • Due to extreme rarity in zoos, the proboscis monkey and chinese pangolin can be substituted if you so choose
Bonuses:
  • Bonus points for keeping it to as little countries as possible
  • Bonus points for including the exhibit species
  • Bonus points for completing the game on a subspecies level

You can use the planet zoo tierlist to create an easy visual for which animals you can see in which zoo.

In a month's time, the winner will get a funny meme
Click to expand...
Oh, I got this in the bag...

I'll make a zoo in PZ set in Texas featuring all these animals, then visit my virtual zoo🤪
 

abigenius

abigenius
This is my list:
As additional notes, I have visited the Guadalajara zoo a few times before but since the last time they have added certain species such as the Indian rhinoceros which is actually the only zoo in Mexico with this species.

It is also worth mentioning that little is said about the "problem" of zoos in Mexico, because Mexico, being a megadiverse country, has many native species from all biomes, so in zoos it is very common to see native animals over "exotic" animals making many species non-existent here as well as very rare, in fact the species on my list that you will see below only exist in that zoo or one more, a very similar problem happens in Australia but this "problem" is not widely talked about in Mexico

Only two zoos in Mexico belong to the AZA, these two being Africam Safari and ZooLeon.
both with many rare species. As for the zoo in the Capital, (Chapultepec) it does not belong to the AZA but it is gigantic with many unique species that are not seen elsewhere, that is why it is the zoo with the most species that are not I have seen, besides the home of the last Giant Panda that does not belong to the Chinese government

finally, one of the biggest problems for the zoos here is the fact of the laws that prohibit the importation of aquatic mammals (like sea lions, polar bears or otters), primates and other animals to Mexico, the last two gorillas live in the Guadalajara Zoo and due to this law they cannot bring a male to mexico
my-image.png
 
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