I mean, we could always take our likes away if the rest of the post isn't what we wanted
Planet Zoo in 2024: How would König do it eddition
- Thread starter KönigDerKaffeebohnen
- Start date
Spring 2025:
Our first pack for 2025 will be a little different. Planet zoo enterd its 6 year and lets be honest, we gotta start getting more creative here, get out some of the big guns remaining, so our first pack will be the Explorers Pack, a pack focusing on 5 different extreme enviroments.
For the scenery it will be themed around an explorers outpost, a base of operations for scientists that want to study in those extreme conditions.
The scenery pieces are mostly metal and glass, giving us finally a decent looking metall wall set, as well as some new science and basecamp themed scenery items with a mix of pieces that look like they belong in a lab, books, tools, supply chests and barrels, camping equipment, hammocks, etc, as well as some closets and cupboards, good to use for backstage areas and well outpost themed places, something rather commonly seen in zoos, especally for tropical and arctic areas.
The theme will also give us 4 new vehicle props, a snow mobile, a pickup truck, a biplane and a helicopter, all of them flexicolor.
For plants there will be a variety of plants from south and central america, the himalaya/alpine asia and the australian outback that im sure are people are better then me at picking specific species.
Now for the animals, first of we start our journey in the hot and humid amazonian rainforest, where we meet the aviary animal of the pack.
An eagle so large and mighty that it got named after monsters of greek mythology, we got the harpy eagle, the largest eagle in the world.
With a range from mexico down to brazil and pretty much all of the amazonian rainforest, the harpy eagle is not just but also has a large range, eventhough they sadly got very rare in central america.
They live up in the tree tops of tropical forests, the so called emergent layer, where they build their nests and perch in search of their favorite food, monkeys and sloth, but they arnt very picky. They hunt up to 116 different species in their range, mostly focused on larger tree dwelling mammals, which they catch using their talons, which carry the largest claw currently alive. While they mostly just wait on their perching point till they see a sloth, their by far favorite prey making up 79% of their diet, they hunt other larger birds by chasing them through the forest, using their short wings and superior agility like a hawk to catch macaws for example. But these are not all as they hunt everyhing smaller then a peccary on opportunity. It might not be a shocker after that to know, that the harpy eagle is together with the jaguar the undesputed apex predator of the south american rainforest.
In general while among the largest eagles and therefor living raptors in general in lenght, their body plan is actually more similar to a hawk.
For those that dont know, eagles are generally adapted for large open areas, where they can span out their wings and reach large wing lenghts, like lakes, mountains and grasslands to easier sore through the sky, meanwhile hawks have shorter wings and typically smaller builds, adapted to be more agile as they zick zack through dense forest, an enviroment where large wings would only hinder them. So while hawks and eagles are close relatives in general with similaritys, the harpy really acts more like the logical endpoint for hawks as the largest bird in its range, hunting everything that isnt to large for it to carry away with its long sharp talons
Harpy eagles live in pairs that bond for life, and while no specific mating rituals are known (yet) we do know that they favor to build their nests in the heighest trees they can find, most oftenly using kapok trees. In productive enviroments like the tropical rainforests they are mostly chill with other pairs, with no strict territorys and nest being found as close together as just 3 km apart. Something rather interesting for harpy eagles is that once their young become fledglings they typically leave sloths near the nest alive. This is ofcourse not an act of kindness, but for them to be used by the freshly flying youngs as their first training targets. Afterall its a sloth, thats pretty much the perfect target to hit.
Their endangerment status is a tricky topic. They are considerd near threatend due to their gigantic range, but also have been exterminated in many parts of it and if not are often seen as rare and endangerd, but eventhough they count as near threatend they got lots of conservation effort behind them with the last big project to study and release them in brazil being as new as last year. While only in 5 EAZA zoos and in a few AZA, their is a large effort of keeping a backup population in their native range to breed and release, so while i didnt exactly find infos about them in South American Zoos cause thats info hard to come by their conservation efforts need to breed them somewhere so its atleast likly that zoos are also part of the deal. But for the none south american populations theres also hope, as the peregrine fund, a raptor conservation organisation, strongly believes in them being bred in captivity and have been helping north american and european zoos aquire animals from breeding facilitys, with atleast 5 harpy eagles send to europe from brazil in the last 3 years.
The harpy eagle is a beautiful bird and while maybe not the most obvious choice for our first eagle, i do believe that not only are they unique enough to stand out next to other eagles, but also that an animal that has an interaction with allmost everything that has a pulse and is habitat animal sized in the amazonas would be a great way to expand on the tree tops of the amazonas in a more interesting way then another monkey (i know shocker but let me remind you all, all 5 last packs had one so we are in a timeline where monkeys arnt highest priority no more).
Moving down to the frigid cold waters of the antarctic, we find the gentoo penguin.
And now i have to ask a question, why arnt they more popular?
Everybody and their mother is asking for rockhopper penguins, which are all super rare in zoos, meanwhile there are 35 EAZA zoos keeping gentoos and they are kept in the AZA aswell so why is nobody ever asking for them? They even are cuter then rock hoppers so idk why they arnt the popular ones.
Another thing that i didnt know is that they are south american animals aswell, as their are colonies of them on the falkland isles and the southern coasts of argentina, which is a so far completly unrepresented part of the globe and would also give us an south american coastal animal.
Interestingly a french naturalist thought for some reason that both gentoo and king penguins are found on new guinea, giving them the latin name of Pygoscelis Papua. That french naturalist also never saw a penguin or was in new guinea, so theres that. Currently their speciefication is unclear, as they have been split into 2 subspecies, an antarctic and subantarctic for the longest time, but recently 2021 the theory was sugested that they actually are species complex of 4, maybe 5, different subspecies that are just very similar in appearance.
Besides their different coloration with the red beaks and white head stripe, they also differentiate themself in size as the third largest penguin species being 70 to 90 cm tall. For comparison, the african penguin is up to 70 cm tall, with the king penguin typically being 70 to 100 cm tall, making them fit neat in the middle. They are also the fastest swimmers of all penguins, reaching speeds of up to 36 km/h, but how much is that? Well king penguins swim typically at 12 km/h., blue penguins as slow as 6,5 km/h, with only the 24 km/h of the african penguin keeping somewhat up, making a significant difference.
Just as surprising, gentoo penguin populations have actually significantly increased due to climate change. While hardy and ready for the cold, they prefer rocky shores and tend to stay away from icy surfaces, meaning that the regressing glaciers of the arctic only open up more suitable coastal areas for them.
For predators, they are hunted by leopard seals, sea lions and orcas in the water and while adult penguins are able to hold their own against skuas and other predatory seabirds, their chicks and eggs are regulary preyed upon by them.
In game they would finally offer us a second antarctic animal, which is kept even more often then the king penguin, while also giving us the true speed demon among the penguins, while also expanding on the south american coast. Didnt thought before researching them that they would be so interesting, but im allways open for surprises like these.
Moving across the arctic ocean and into the australian outback, we find a scaley beauty, also known as the 4 largest lizard on the planet and the largest in australia, the perentie.
Living pretty much everyhere west of the gread deviding range, living in rocky gorges found all over the central australian desert.
Theyve been known for their range from the west coast to the great deviding range to the aboriginals for a long time, featuring in the ngintaka dreaming, where a giant perentie with that name travels from west to east, shaping the land in search of a grindstone, which he finally steals from a group of aboriginals and flees back westward with them in pursuit.
Hes also credited to being south australias largest mountain mount woodroffe also known as Ngarutjaranya, which was seen as Ngintaka taking a break on his was to the west, watching over the land.
Compared to the other monitors of its size, they are very lean and agile, being much faster then them and a good climber, the first new feature. Perenties are the first climbing monitors in planet zoo and use their lang claws to easily scale any surface, but thats not all. They are also very proficent burrowers, being able to excavate a burrow for shelter in minutes, making them the first reptilian user of the burrows. But thats not all as they also introduce a new special animation, where they rear up on their hind legs and look around. The so called tripoding is quite common among monitors, so its a shame that none that we have in the game do it.
As one of australias apex predators, the perentie eats pretty much anything from arthoprods over small mammals, all kinds of marsupials up to unsuspecting birds and even kangaroos. They seem to kill their prey with a venom similar to the komodo dragons and with sheer strenght of their jaw and claws, devoring it whole if possible but also smart enough to rip out chunks of larger kills or carrion like kangaroos. They are even know to prey on seaturtles and their nests, hiding under vehicles to surprise unsuspecting gulls and even hunting for aquatic life in shallow water. They are also known canibals and interguild predators, preying on all varanids smaller then them with a rather large part of their diet consisting of them, which could be an interesting management angle to allways have similar sized monitors, but idk if that wouldnt be to annoying to manage.
Regarding their captive presence im willing to trust chudditch that they are very common in australian zoos.
From what i could find they are currently kept in three zoos outside of australia, those being dallas, one in columbia and one in israel. The switzerland holding has sadly been given up this year and they send their animals to dallas.
In game they would be our first more agile monitor, aswell as our first climbing reptilian rig, making them very worthwhile for modders.
They also are just really pretty and would throw another bone to australia, which is allways a + in my book
From the driest continent we move northwards to the ceiling of the world to meet one of the few animals known to live on the higher parts of Mt. Everest, the himalayan thar.
Being hold in 35 EAZA zoos, they have been one of the big appreciators of the takin/himalayan area boom, being brought into 10 zoos since 2015, aka when most zoos started working on those, as told in the takin section in the first post of the thread.
The himalayan thar is a very fluffy and sexually dismorphic goat from the himalaya, with a range spanning Tibet, Nepal, Western Buhtan and the North of India.
In their range their are found on the rocky slopes of the mountains, preferably where theres still exposed vegitation for browsing, mostly eating hardy mountain grasses and the leafs and shrubs of smaller trees when they migrate to lower altitudes in the winter, with them being profficent at browsing on their hindlegs.
They live in small groups consisting of one male, some females and there young with up to 23 members. There are also younger males often tagging along with groups without a resident older male, which also not rarly spend most of their year solidary, only meeting up with a group once they rut. In their mating season, males of similar size compete in fights, but less so then other mountain goats. Most of their conflicts are settled by size and weight difference, aswell as coat colour with males with lighter coats generally ranking higher. All of this is to deminish actual fighting, as one false step can often decide over life and death in the steep slopes they call home.
Their mighty horns are mostly used for display, intimidating other males and wooing females, with horn size being an important factor of reproductive success.
The himalayan thar is also a very successfull invasive species, with populations in new zealand, argentina, the united states and south africa.
A main reason for their success is their great mobility and travel patters, as they typically spend the days high up in the slopes away from any potential predators and only coming down at night in the search of water and to browse on the bushes and trees in lower altitudes. Their very effective digestive track used to hardy and tough vegitation lets them eat allmost anything without an issue, ensuring that they will allways be able to sustain themself on whatever they find. Lastly outside of its range there are no predators that can contest them when they flee up the slopes of mountains, with only snowleopards being able to consistently hunt them up there, making them the thars main predator and in many parts of its range the thar its primary food source.
The thar would add a more far spread and "generic" ungulate to the himalaya, while still standing out from other goats due to their darker coloration, long and fluffy fur and manes.
This would help the area alot, as it currently lacks any ungulates in the base game and only has the golden takin in this fanfiction, which only appears in a small part of them.
They also outcompete their competition for other more general himalayan ungulates, as the blue sheep is less common and less interesting looking and the goral and argali not or next to not present in captivity. Also for the sake of this pack they are the most extreme of the bunch, as they climb up to higher altitudes then the others, making them all and all my by far prefered choice for a himalayan goat.
As you might have noticed, this pack gives us very usefull animals for each areas, but none that require that much effort or that much of a wow factor, as its "just" another penguin, goat and monitor (eventhough id say we spiced this one up by quite a bit) so where did we put all the special animal magic to sell the pack and give us something special?
Welp, i got the best single pack seller thats still left to carry this pack, joining us from the shallow coasts and rivers of the carribeans and the coast of brazil we have the west indian manatee.
Before you crucify me for a fully aquatic, lets quickly explain the first major part of the free update, the "how the hell do we put the manatee into the habitat", which is quite simple.
When choosing a fully aquatic species the player chooses the habitat and then a body of water in the habitat that meets the animals depth requirement. Then the keeper can just run in and bring them to the water. Problem solved. I unironically do not know why that seems for most people to be such a dealbreaker, as its really not a hard fix.
The west indian manatee is the largest of the sirenias, making for the second animal in this pack named after a greek monster, and also by far the most common in zoos due to being the only one found in zoos besides one rescue dugong in the middle east.
They are currently kept in 11 EAZA zoos with great breeding success, so much that the newest holding in the Zoo Duisburg of last year was designated as a baechlor group as we currently have more manatees then holders and more zoos being encouraged to create room for more manatees.
They are also quite common in america, especally in florida, where rescued members of the floridan subspecies are often cared for in zoos and when possible released again, sadly quite the common occurance due to their frequent injuries due to collissions with boats.
The west indian manatee is a very well studied animal and has been parts of active conservation efforts for over 50 years, facing an up and down along that journey with different threads for the antillean and floridan manatess, with the former mostly stuggling with habitat fragmentation and illegal hunting, while the ladder mostly are effected due to direct contact with humans, high stress which leads to many deaths in childbirth, pollution, the increasingly colder water and spreading harmfull algae bloom.
The manatee is very well adapted to its enviroment in the wild and have a nice boon for us, as they are able to swap freely from fresh to seawater, making them great for both kinds of displays. As relatives of the elephant, their snout is prehensile, enabling them rip out their preffered food of seagrass with greater strenght and precision. Their thick gray skin is coverd in short rough hair, making it easy for algae to grow there and build and extra insulating layer and provides them with an enhanced feeling of touch to things like water currents. Surprisingly despite their thick bodys, they have a rather thin layer of fat, making them quite badly insulated and dependent on warm waters. A large part of their thick appearance is due to their very large and dense bones, which counteract their layer of fat around them, giving them a more or less neutral buoyancy, letting them neither float nor sink while doing nothing, a very helpfull thing for them while eating, moving around and doing their other manatee shenanigans.
Due to their large size, manatees have no natural predators and no inherent fear of humans or boats, which combined with their gentle intelligence makes them quite currious creatures, attracted to boats and humans, something that sadly often ends quite badly for the manatee.
Manatess, while not affraid of solidarity, can be quite social creatures, often rousing together to herds near especally warm and comfortable water sources.
They seem to have a rather complex communication systems of many different sounds and seem to not only have individual "speech" patterns, but also being able to recognise them, something mostly seen between mothers and calfs. They are also recognised as part of the lombard effect, a social phenomenon where individuals speak louder when in a noisy group, something you all proppaly allready have experienced yourself.
For the game theyd be hands down one of the most interesting and exciting new additions, bringing us the one fully aquatic animal which due to its slow movement and metabolism does not feel like animal cruelty when kept in captivity.
They could be used for many different ways, but in most zoos where i have been they were kept in some kind of tropical house. Be it in a large underwater viewing surrounded by free roaming tamarins, sloths and birds in a south america house in duisburg, as the inhabitants of a central body of water in burger zoos tropical house or even having their very own mangroove houses fully dedicated to them with a white beach full of fidler crabs and free roaming iguanas and a large pool for them with many different viewpoints, which is the new home for them in burgers zoo, they are an incredible sight and allways a joy to see these gentle giants.
Not to mention open topped enclosures for them in zoos in warmer areas then temperate europe like florida for example, which shows how my allready very varied experience from 3 different manatee habitats ive seen isnt even close to complete.
Im sure im not the only one that would love these gentle giants of the see and while they maybe are a less extreme addition then the other 4 animals, their habitat of the island archipelagos and mangroove swamps still is extreme enough to me.
Our first pack for 2025 will be a little different. Planet zoo enterd its 6 year and lets be honest, we gotta start getting more creative here, get out some of the big guns remaining, so our first pack will be the Explorers Pack, a pack focusing on 5 different extreme enviroments.
For the scenery it will be themed around an explorers outpost, a base of operations for scientists that want to study in those extreme conditions.
The scenery pieces are mostly metal and glass, giving us finally a decent looking metall wall set, as well as some new science and basecamp themed scenery items with a mix of pieces that look like they belong in a lab, books, tools, supply chests and barrels, camping equipment, hammocks, etc, as well as some closets and cupboards, good to use for backstage areas and well outpost themed places, something rather commonly seen in zoos, especally for tropical and arctic areas.
The theme will also give us 4 new vehicle props, a snow mobile, a pickup truck, a biplane and a helicopter, all of them flexicolor.
For plants there will be a variety of plants from south and central america, the himalaya/alpine asia and the australian outback that im sure are people are better then me at picking specific species.
Now for the animals, first of we start our journey in the hot and humid amazonian rainforest, where we meet the aviary animal of the pack.
An eagle so large and mighty that it got named after monsters of greek mythology, we got the harpy eagle, the largest eagle in the world.
With a range from mexico down to brazil and pretty much all of the amazonian rainforest, the harpy eagle is not just but also has a large range, eventhough they sadly got very rare in central america.
They live up in the tree tops of tropical forests, the so called emergent layer, where they build their nests and perch in search of their favorite food, monkeys and sloth, but they arnt very picky. They hunt up to 116 different species in their range, mostly focused on larger tree dwelling mammals, which they catch using their talons, which carry the largest claw currently alive. While they mostly just wait on their perching point till they see a sloth, their by far favorite prey making up 79% of their diet, they hunt other larger birds by chasing them through the forest, using their short wings and superior agility like a hawk to catch macaws for example. But these are not all as they hunt everyhing smaller then a peccary on opportunity. It might not be a shocker after that to know, that the harpy eagle is together with the jaguar the undesputed apex predator of the south american rainforest.
In general while among the largest eagles and therefor living raptors in general in lenght, their body plan is actually more similar to a hawk.
For those that dont know, eagles are generally adapted for large open areas, where they can span out their wings and reach large wing lenghts, like lakes, mountains and grasslands to easier sore through the sky, meanwhile hawks have shorter wings and typically smaller builds, adapted to be more agile as they zick zack through dense forest, an enviroment where large wings would only hinder them. So while hawks and eagles are close relatives in general with similaritys, the harpy really acts more like the logical endpoint for hawks as the largest bird in its range, hunting everything that isnt to large for it to carry away with its long sharp talons
Harpy eagles live in pairs that bond for life, and while no specific mating rituals are known (yet) we do know that they favor to build their nests in the heighest trees they can find, most oftenly using kapok trees. In productive enviroments like the tropical rainforests they are mostly chill with other pairs, with no strict territorys and nest being found as close together as just 3 km apart. Something rather interesting for harpy eagles is that once their young become fledglings they typically leave sloths near the nest alive. This is ofcourse not an act of kindness, but for them to be used by the freshly flying youngs as their first training targets. Afterall its a sloth, thats pretty much the perfect target to hit.
Their endangerment status is a tricky topic. They are considerd near threatend due to their gigantic range, but also have been exterminated in many parts of it and if not are often seen as rare and endangerd, but eventhough they count as near threatend they got lots of conservation effort behind them with the last big project to study and release them in brazil being as new as last year. While only in 5 EAZA zoos and in a few AZA, their is a large effort of keeping a backup population in their native range to breed and release, so while i didnt exactly find infos about them in South American Zoos cause thats info hard to come by their conservation efforts need to breed them somewhere so its atleast likly that zoos are also part of the deal. But for the none south american populations theres also hope, as the peregrine fund, a raptor conservation organisation, strongly believes in them being bred in captivity and have been helping north american and european zoos aquire animals from breeding facilitys, with atleast 5 harpy eagles send to europe from brazil in the last 3 years.
The harpy eagle is a beautiful bird and while maybe not the most obvious choice for our first eagle, i do believe that not only are they unique enough to stand out next to other eagles, but also that an animal that has an interaction with allmost everything that has a pulse and is habitat animal sized in the amazonas would be a great way to expand on the tree tops of the amazonas in a more interesting way then another monkey (i know shocker but let me remind you all, all 5 last packs had one so we are in a timeline where monkeys arnt highest priority no more).
Moving down to the frigid cold waters of the antarctic, we find the gentoo penguin.
And now i have to ask a question, why arnt they more popular?
Everybody and their mother is asking for rockhopper penguins, which are all super rare in zoos, meanwhile there are 35 EAZA zoos keeping gentoos and they are kept in the AZA aswell so why is nobody ever asking for them? They even are cuter then rock hoppers so idk why they arnt the popular ones.
Another thing that i didnt know is that they are south american animals aswell, as their are colonies of them on the falkland isles and the southern coasts of argentina, which is a so far completly unrepresented part of the globe and would also give us an south american coastal animal.
Interestingly a french naturalist thought for some reason that both gentoo and king penguins are found on new guinea, giving them the latin name of Pygoscelis Papua. That french naturalist also never saw a penguin or was in new guinea, so theres that. Currently their speciefication is unclear, as they have been split into 2 subspecies, an antarctic and subantarctic for the longest time, but recently 2021 the theory was sugested that they actually are species complex of 4, maybe 5, different subspecies that are just very similar in appearance.
Besides their different coloration with the red beaks and white head stripe, they also differentiate themself in size as the third largest penguin species being 70 to 90 cm tall. For comparison, the african penguin is up to 70 cm tall, with the king penguin typically being 70 to 100 cm tall, making them fit neat in the middle. They are also the fastest swimmers of all penguins, reaching speeds of up to 36 km/h, but how much is that? Well king penguins swim typically at 12 km/h., blue penguins as slow as 6,5 km/h, with only the 24 km/h of the african penguin keeping somewhat up, making a significant difference.
Just as surprising, gentoo penguin populations have actually significantly increased due to climate change. While hardy and ready for the cold, they prefer rocky shores and tend to stay away from icy surfaces, meaning that the regressing glaciers of the arctic only open up more suitable coastal areas for them.
For predators, they are hunted by leopard seals, sea lions and orcas in the water and while adult penguins are able to hold their own against skuas and other predatory seabirds, their chicks and eggs are regulary preyed upon by them.
In game they would finally offer us a second antarctic animal, which is kept even more often then the king penguin, while also giving us the true speed demon among the penguins, while also expanding on the south american coast. Didnt thought before researching them that they would be so interesting, but im allways open for surprises like these.
Moving across the arctic ocean and into the australian outback, we find a scaley beauty, also known as the 4 largest lizard on the planet and the largest in australia, the perentie.
Living pretty much everyhere west of the gread deviding range, living in rocky gorges found all over the central australian desert.
Theyve been known for their range from the west coast to the great deviding range to the aboriginals for a long time, featuring in the ngintaka dreaming, where a giant perentie with that name travels from west to east, shaping the land in search of a grindstone, which he finally steals from a group of aboriginals and flees back westward with them in pursuit.
Hes also credited to being south australias largest mountain mount woodroffe also known as Ngarutjaranya, which was seen as Ngintaka taking a break on his was to the west, watching over the land.
Compared to the other monitors of its size, they are very lean and agile, being much faster then them and a good climber, the first new feature. Perenties are the first climbing monitors in planet zoo and use their lang claws to easily scale any surface, but thats not all. They are also very proficent burrowers, being able to excavate a burrow for shelter in minutes, making them the first reptilian user of the burrows. But thats not all as they also introduce a new special animation, where they rear up on their hind legs and look around. The so called tripoding is quite common among monitors, so its a shame that none that we have in the game do it.
As one of australias apex predators, the perentie eats pretty much anything from arthoprods over small mammals, all kinds of marsupials up to unsuspecting birds and even kangaroos. They seem to kill their prey with a venom similar to the komodo dragons and with sheer strenght of their jaw and claws, devoring it whole if possible but also smart enough to rip out chunks of larger kills or carrion like kangaroos. They are even know to prey on seaturtles and their nests, hiding under vehicles to surprise unsuspecting gulls and even hunting for aquatic life in shallow water. They are also known canibals and interguild predators, preying on all varanids smaller then them with a rather large part of their diet consisting of them, which could be an interesting management angle to allways have similar sized monitors, but idk if that wouldnt be to annoying to manage.
Regarding their captive presence im willing to trust chudditch that they are very common in australian zoos.
From what i could find they are currently kept in three zoos outside of australia, those being dallas, one in columbia and one in israel. The switzerland holding has sadly been given up this year and they send their animals to dallas.
In game they would be our first more agile monitor, aswell as our first climbing reptilian rig, making them very worthwhile for modders.
They also are just really pretty and would throw another bone to australia, which is allways a + in my book
From the driest continent we move northwards to the ceiling of the world to meet one of the few animals known to live on the higher parts of Mt. Everest, the himalayan thar.
Being hold in 35 EAZA zoos, they have been one of the big appreciators of the takin/himalayan area boom, being brought into 10 zoos since 2015, aka when most zoos started working on those, as told in the takin section in the first post of the thread.
The himalayan thar is a very fluffy and sexually dismorphic goat from the himalaya, with a range spanning Tibet, Nepal, Western Buhtan and the North of India.
In their range their are found on the rocky slopes of the mountains, preferably where theres still exposed vegitation for browsing, mostly eating hardy mountain grasses and the leafs and shrubs of smaller trees when they migrate to lower altitudes in the winter, with them being profficent at browsing on their hindlegs.
They live in small groups consisting of one male, some females and there young with up to 23 members. There are also younger males often tagging along with groups without a resident older male, which also not rarly spend most of their year solidary, only meeting up with a group once they rut. In their mating season, males of similar size compete in fights, but less so then other mountain goats. Most of their conflicts are settled by size and weight difference, aswell as coat colour with males with lighter coats generally ranking higher. All of this is to deminish actual fighting, as one false step can often decide over life and death in the steep slopes they call home.
Their mighty horns are mostly used for display, intimidating other males and wooing females, with horn size being an important factor of reproductive success.
The himalayan thar is also a very successfull invasive species, with populations in new zealand, argentina, the united states and south africa.
A main reason for their success is their great mobility and travel patters, as they typically spend the days high up in the slopes away from any potential predators and only coming down at night in the search of water and to browse on the bushes and trees in lower altitudes. Their very effective digestive track used to hardy and tough vegitation lets them eat allmost anything without an issue, ensuring that they will allways be able to sustain themself on whatever they find. Lastly outside of its range there are no predators that can contest them when they flee up the slopes of mountains, with only snowleopards being able to consistently hunt them up there, making them the thars main predator and in many parts of its range the thar its primary food source.
The thar would add a more far spread and "generic" ungulate to the himalaya, while still standing out from other goats due to their darker coloration, long and fluffy fur and manes.
This would help the area alot, as it currently lacks any ungulates in the base game and only has the golden takin in this fanfiction, which only appears in a small part of them.
They also outcompete their competition for other more general himalayan ungulates, as the blue sheep is less common and less interesting looking and the goral and argali not or next to not present in captivity. Also for the sake of this pack they are the most extreme of the bunch, as they climb up to higher altitudes then the others, making them all and all my by far prefered choice for a himalayan goat.
As you might have noticed, this pack gives us very usefull animals for each areas, but none that require that much effort or that much of a wow factor, as its "just" another penguin, goat and monitor (eventhough id say we spiced this one up by quite a bit) so where did we put all the special animal magic to sell the pack and give us something special?
Welp, i got the best single pack seller thats still left to carry this pack, joining us from the shallow coasts and rivers of the carribeans and the coast of brazil we have the west indian manatee.
Before you crucify me for a fully aquatic, lets quickly explain the first major part of the free update, the "how the hell do we put the manatee into the habitat", which is quite simple.
When choosing a fully aquatic species the player chooses the habitat and then a body of water in the habitat that meets the animals depth requirement. Then the keeper can just run in and bring them to the water. Problem solved. I unironically do not know why that seems for most people to be such a dealbreaker, as its really not a hard fix.
The west indian manatee is the largest of the sirenias, making for the second animal in this pack named after a greek monster, and also by far the most common in zoos due to being the only one found in zoos besides one rescue dugong in the middle east.
They are currently kept in 11 EAZA zoos with great breeding success, so much that the newest holding in the Zoo Duisburg of last year was designated as a baechlor group as we currently have more manatees then holders and more zoos being encouraged to create room for more manatees.
They are also quite common in america, especally in florida, where rescued members of the floridan subspecies are often cared for in zoos and when possible released again, sadly quite the common occurance due to their frequent injuries due to collissions with boats.
The west indian manatee is a very well studied animal and has been parts of active conservation efforts for over 50 years, facing an up and down along that journey with different threads for the antillean and floridan manatess, with the former mostly stuggling with habitat fragmentation and illegal hunting, while the ladder mostly are effected due to direct contact with humans, high stress which leads to many deaths in childbirth, pollution, the increasingly colder water and spreading harmfull algae bloom.
The manatee is very well adapted to its enviroment in the wild and have a nice boon for us, as they are able to swap freely from fresh to seawater, making them great for both kinds of displays. As relatives of the elephant, their snout is prehensile, enabling them rip out their preffered food of seagrass with greater strenght and precision. Their thick gray skin is coverd in short rough hair, making it easy for algae to grow there and build and extra insulating layer and provides them with an enhanced feeling of touch to things like water currents. Surprisingly despite their thick bodys, they have a rather thin layer of fat, making them quite badly insulated and dependent on warm waters. A large part of their thick appearance is due to their very large and dense bones, which counteract their layer of fat around them, giving them a more or less neutral buoyancy, letting them neither float nor sink while doing nothing, a very helpfull thing for them while eating, moving around and doing their other manatee shenanigans.
Due to their large size, manatees have no natural predators and no inherent fear of humans or boats, which combined with their gentle intelligence makes them quite currious creatures, attracted to boats and humans, something that sadly often ends quite badly for the manatee.
Manatess, while not affraid of solidarity, can be quite social creatures, often rousing together to herds near especally warm and comfortable water sources.
They seem to have a rather complex communication systems of many different sounds and seem to not only have individual "speech" patterns, but also being able to recognise them, something mostly seen between mothers and calfs. They are also recognised as part of the lombard effect, a social phenomenon where individuals speak louder when in a noisy group, something you all proppaly allready have experienced yourself.
For the game theyd be hands down one of the most interesting and exciting new additions, bringing us the one fully aquatic animal which due to its slow movement and metabolism does not feel like animal cruelty when kept in captivity.
They could be used for many different ways, but in most zoos where i have been they were kept in some kind of tropical house. Be it in a large underwater viewing surrounded by free roaming tamarins, sloths and birds in a south america house in duisburg, as the inhabitants of a central body of water in burger zoos tropical house or even having their very own mangroove houses fully dedicated to them with a white beach full of fidler crabs and free roaming iguanas and a large pool for them with many different viewpoints, which is the new home for them in burgers zoo, they are an incredible sight and allways a joy to see these gentle giants.
Not to mention open topped enclosures for them in zoos in warmer areas then temperate europe like florida for example, which shows how my allready very varied experience from 3 different manatee habitats ive seen isnt even close to complete.
Im sure im not the only one that would love these gentle giants of the see and while they maybe are a less extreme addition then the other 4 animals, their habitat of the island archipelagos and mangroove swamps still is extreme enough to me.
I think there’s another two zoos in the US with perenties at the moment, namely the Los Angeles Zoo and the Henry Doorly Zoo. In regards to Australia they’re not quite as widespread as something like a lace monitor but still pretty common - I know of 12 zoos with them, but given they’re also present in the private pet trade here (which speaks to their captive presence if anything) it’s also very possible that they’re kept in some smaller collections I’ve missed. I just really want them because they’re my favourite reptile and probably the most needed species for inland Australia.
I really like how creative this pack concept is!
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Ah i see, i just googled perenties in zoos and found a sight mentioning these 3 zoos and as i knew from zoo tierliste of both israel and the move of to dallas i had no reason to doubt it.
Also thank you!
The idear was in the back of my head for a while, ironically made to find a pack that fits the wolverine cause the idear of a wolverine in an mountain pack is something i just find lazy and unfitting personally. Orginal draft was something like Wolverine, Sandcat, Thar and Spider Monkey, which not only shows how old it is, but imo also that just going with the first thing you get in your mind isnt allways the best idear and that most things are better when left marinating for a while, but the idear of a pack revisiting some of the coolest enviroments of our planets to bring in some less popular but still important choices from them just felt like a great thing to do that will also benefit alot of different players no matter their preferences.
I generally want to be more creative with the next packs aswell, cause while the first 5 were my takes on popular pack idears, i simply do not like most popular pack idears currently being thrown around, as many are either rethreads or something that especally struggles to carry an animal pack, so hopefully they should only become more creative from here on out.
Spring 2025 Update:
Coming around to the update portion, the first part was allready mentioned in the manatee section of fully aquatic functionality.
When putting a fully aquatic animal into a habitat, you also have to choose a body of water that meets their depth requirement and then the keepers will just haul them there.
This will encourage beachy parts or backstage areas for their habitats, where keepers can come and go and do their job from the waters edge or overhanging paths. Simple, easy, efficent.
Next up something i forgot about. With the arrival of the macaws in the latin america pack, birds and butterflys got freed from their shackles so that they can move around freely with freely placeable enritchment that they will find organic cycles between. The same gets expanded to sloths and bats, with bats being able to hang from netting, mesh and branches. Imo its propaply to hard that they say that they can cling to any rock surfaces, BUT you could allways just put some netting or mesh there thats hard to see but will let the bats hang there, win win.
For the sloth, they will generate a climbable area like any other climbing animal and can use their allready existing animations to crawl along the climbing frames, BUT the big difference due to them being exhibit animals is that they can teleport around if the player isnt looking. They also gain the new ability to hang on trees and branches, aswell as ropes and vines, greatly increasing the customisability of their climbing frames. This will also allow to freely build them, with a toggle to completly disable their base climbing frame.
2 more Update features are the new pickup and helicopter rides. Pickup works just like the jeeps but is simply a new model to choose from when jeeps feel inappropriate. Their tracks will also gain a null variant. The Helicopter meanwhile will have a new start platform and can then be assigned a route with a tool similar to the camera tours, with the caviat of allways staying a certain height over any stuctures or the ground. Would i personally use these features? Propaply not but ive seen the demand for new rides and it be defenetly a cool show of feature for an update. We also allready made models for them, so why not use them in action?
Regarding new behaviors, its the anteaters turn of gaining the new carry, with them now being able to carry their babys around as parental taxis, which gives them a very cute new spin.
And as the last new feature, the dingo will join choruses together as they howl, but thats not all as dholes will now also whistle together while african wilddogs sneeze with each other. I just went into the game to check and im positivly surprised by the dholes and african wilddogs appropriatly different vocals, so id love to highlight them abit more.
For colormorphs, the first to get one is the snow leopard, gaining a more yellowish common morph.
The grey seal gets a more creamy with black spots color, the ones we have in game are mostly just one color with the spots being roughly the same, so this would be a fun change
And lastly the dingo gets two new colormorphs AND remove that "inbreeding with domestic dogs has brought different colors" fact from the zoo pedia, which just simply is not true and is false information that is used to justify the culling of other dingo color variants when in reality they have different colors depending on the area they live in.
Dark and tan dingos seem to typically live in the more tropical north and make up around 12% of all dingos, while cream colored are primary found in alpine regions and make up roughly 2% cause they have been extensivly culled. Fun.
In reality the orange color gene is simply the dominant one and all 3 colors can be found in purebred dingoes, its simply that the other 2 are rarer as when a ginger dingo has pups with another one they typically come out ginger. Funfact, humans are the opposite as a ginger hair color is a recessive gene in us with black and blonde dominant, mixing into browns. So yeah, more dingo colors, less missinformation, only makes the dingo finally shine like they deserve
The update might look a little smaller, but really its just that its big changes that i dont need many words to explain their functionality, so im still sure it would be more then worthwhile, especally for that long awaited dingo update. Poor guys, they really deserve to be fully fleshed out with all 3 of their main colors, chorus and no more missinformation.
Did not help a controversial animal to be ported to the game incomplete
Coming around to the update portion, the first part was allready mentioned in the manatee section of fully aquatic functionality.
When putting a fully aquatic animal into a habitat, you also have to choose a body of water that meets their depth requirement and then the keepers will just haul them there.
This will encourage beachy parts or backstage areas for their habitats, where keepers can come and go and do their job from the waters edge or overhanging paths. Simple, easy, efficent.
Next up something i forgot about. With the arrival of the macaws in the latin america pack, birds and butterflys got freed from their shackles so that they can move around freely with freely placeable enritchment that they will find organic cycles between. The same gets expanded to sloths and bats, with bats being able to hang from netting, mesh and branches. Imo its propaply to hard that they say that they can cling to any rock surfaces, BUT you could allways just put some netting or mesh there thats hard to see but will let the bats hang there, win win.
For the sloth, they will generate a climbable area like any other climbing animal and can use their allready existing animations to crawl along the climbing frames, BUT the big difference due to them being exhibit animals is that they can teleport around if the player isnt looking. They also gain the new ability to hang on trees and branches, aswell as ropes and vines, greatly increasing the customisability of their climbing frames. This will also allow to freely build them, with a toggle to completly disable their base climbing frame.
2 more Update features are the new pickup and helicopter rides. Pickup works just like the jeeps but is simply a new model to choose from when jeeps feel inappropriate. Their tracks will also gain a null variant. The Helicopter meanwhile will have a new start platform and can then be assigned a route with a tool similar to the camera tours, with the caviat of allways staying a certain height over any stuctures or the ground. Would i personally use these features? Propaply not but ive seen the demand for new rides and it be defenetly a cool show of feature for an update. We also allready made models for them, so why not use them in action?
Regarding new behaviors, its the anteaters turn of gaining the new carry, with them now being able to carry their babys around as parental taxis, which gives them a very cute new spin.
And as the last new feature, the dingo will join choruses together as they howl, but thats not all as dholes will now also whistle together while african wilddogs sneeze with each other. I just went into the game to check and im positivly surprised by the dholes and african wilddogs appropriatly different vocals, so id love to highlight them abit more.
For colormorphs, the first to get one is the snow leopard, gaining a more yellowish common morph.
The grey seal gets a more creamy with black spots color, the ones we have in game are mostly just one color with the spots being roughly the same, so this would be a fun change
And lastly the dingo gets two new colormorphs AND remove that "inbreeding with domestic dogs has brought different colors" fact from the zoo pedia, which just simply is not true and is false information that is used to justify the culling of other dingo color variants when in reality they have different colors depending on the area they live in.
Dark and tan dingos seem to typically live in the more tropical north and make up around 12% of all dingos, while cream colored are primary found in alpine regions and make up roughly 2% cause they have been extensivly culled. Fun.
In reality the orange color gene is simply the dominant one and all 3 colors can be found in purebred dingoes, its simply that the other 2 are rarer as when a ginger dingo has pups with another one they typically come out ginger. Funfact, humans are the opposite as a ginger hair color is a recessive gene in us with black and blonde dominant, mixing into browns. So yeah, more dingo colors, less missinformation, only makes the dingo finally shine like they deserve
The update might look a little smaller, but really its just that its big changes that i dont need many words to explain their functionality, so im still sure it would be more then worthwhile, especally for that long awaited dingo update. Poor guys, they really deserve to be fully fleshed out with all 3 of their main colors, chorus and no more missinformation.
Did not help a controversial animal to be ported to the game incomplete
Summer 2025:
I got something very special this time, which is why instead of pack first update second, we will do the update first.
The reason for that is that this time we are tackling an exhibit animal pack, which imo needs an exhibit overhaul to be worthwhile compared to a normal animal pack so first of we will discuss that.
The first major change to exhibits is that there are now null exhibits, but maybe not in the way you think.
If an exhibit is null, all the things inside the exhibit stay, meanwhile the glass walls aswell as the black top and bottom parts can also disappear..
In addition to that, there are also now size toggles for the height, with and lenght with intervalls of 1-4 meter marked by the colored walls and bamboo, making everything invisible and disable exhibit animal spawns outside of these parameters. For an exampls if the lenght was set to 2, the cutoff point would be where the woodwall is.
This system would allow for smaller exhibits while mostly just reusing the exhisting exhibit assets and only those few edge areas would need to be potentially adjusted, making for a less work intensive solution for frontier, provided what i just said is possible in the code. Im an idears guy, not a programmer but it sounds feasible to me to only load chunks of an object.
In addition to that, the enritchment items are adjusted by adding a few more that can be active in each different quarter of the habitat (2x2x2), ensuring that all but the smallest exhibits have atleast one enritchment item, aswell as just more general possibilitys for the larger exhibits as its just new toggleable enritchment.
All exhibit animals also gain a new minimum room requirement, so that for example an animal thats longer then a meter cant be put in a 1x1x1 cage.
The next structural change is that each quarter can now also be rounded, either to the inside or the outside, with either side being able to be the walled as Curve 1-4 and inside and outside toggles to null the wall, the inside or outside, have a glass wall, a background or a modelled backwall.
This will allow for a far larger amount of exhibits shapes to truly let out our creativity.
For change nr 3., if the walls of two exhibits are put next to each other on the grid, they can be merged with the wall being able to be toggled of. These merged exhibit must consist of animals that can be kept in the same exhibit, aka in the most cases just the same animal and would allow them to spawn in both and to be managed together.
Only exhibits types of the same biome can be merged, with the exception of aquatic, which can be merged with every biome and would change appearance of the 2 tanks, where the water level can be toggled to move around the same exhibit interior vertically to each of the height markers with a curresponding water level, which will gently connect to the land of the other.
Exhibit also can now freely switch designs, with the designs availavle curresponding to the animals biome tags, giving most exhibit animals but especally tropical ones a trick up there sleeve. Theres also a new water requirement though for all aquatic exhibits to ensure that they only have access to exhibit designs with an appropriat amount of water.
With this we start with the first big exhibit animals change, which is that alot more animals will be both habitat animals and exhibits, aswell as all walkthrough exhibit animals being able to be kept in normal exhibits.
These are:
And as the last exhibit related change, all toggleable logs, plants, etc of the exhibits are now available to be used as normal scenery pieces aswell.
For the second new change, lamps can now be toggled to be heatlamps. This will make them a heat source to warm what they shine on, but will also attract animals to rest below them, most notably reptiles. Heatlamps count as enritchment and increase their wellfare. Small change but im sure many people will love it.
The management systems for exhibits will also be put in place for habitat animals, to automate their management.
Lastly for the colormorph, our exhibits will gain some attention!
The first is the Boa constrictor, which gains a new Anerythristic rare color morph. Due to a lack of red pigment, they become silvery gray and im sure many would love them.
Next up, the gila monster recieves a new common morph that has a more vibrant orange
Another reciever of a new common color morph is the common death adder, which is just as often gray blackish as it is brown
Lastly we have another common color morph, the giant forest scorpion, which is typically not just shiny black but also with yellowish and brown spots, mostly inbetween the parts of their carapace and on their claws.
They are much more colorfull irl and really deserve to be more then just black
And thats it for now, looks small but certanly one of the most important updates for the game.
What do you guys think about the exhibit update? Would it satisfy you? Or is there still something youd be really aching for?
So far it has allways been we need one, but i have never heard anyone say what they actually want besides different exhibit sizes, which would be a ton of work to make all from scratch and would only be more pieces in a different size. Im sure for some people that would be perfect and i certanly wouldnt complain, but im also quite happy with the modular system i came up with.
I got something very special this time, which is why instead of pack first update second, we will do the update first.
The reason for that is that this time we are tackling an exhibit animal pack, which imo needs an exhibit overhaul to be worthwhile compared to a normal animal pack so first of we will discuss that.
The first major change to exhibits is that there are now null exhibits, but maybe not in the way you think.
If an exhibit is null, all the things inside the exhibit stay, meanwhile the glass walls aswell as the black top and bottom parts can also disappear..
In addition to that, there are also now size toggles for the height, with and lenght with intervalls of 1-4 meter marked by the colored walls and bamboo, making everything invisible and disable exhibit animal spawns outside of these parameters. For an exampls if the lenght was set to 2, the cutoff point would be where the woodwall is.
This system would allow for smaller exhibits while mostly just reusing the exhisting exhibit assets and only those few edge areas would need to be potentially adjusted, making for a less work intensive solution for frontier, provided what i just said is possible in the code. Im an idears guy, not a programmer but it sounds feasible to me to only load chunks of an object.
In addition to that, the enritchment items are adjusted by adding a few more that can be active in each different quarter of the habitat (2x2x2), ensuring that all but the smallest exhibits have atleast one enritchment item, aswell as just more general possibilitys for the larger exhibits as its just new toggleable enritchment.
All exhibit animals also gain a new minimum room requirement, so that for example an animal thats longer then a meter cant be put in a 1x1x1 cage.
The next structural change is that each quarter can now also be rounded, either to the inside or the outside, with either side being able to be the walled as Curve 1-4 and inside and outside toggles to null the wall, the inside or outside, have a glass wall, a background or a modelled backwall.
This will allow for a far larger amount of exhibits shapes to truly let out our creativity.
For change nr 3., if the walls of two exhibits are put next to each other on the grid, they can be merged with the wall being able to be toggled of. These merged exhibit must consist of animals that can be kept in the same exhibit, aka in the most cases just the same animal and would allow them to spawn in both and to be managed together.
Only exhibits types of the same biome can be merged, with the exception of aquatic, which can be merged with every biome and would change appearance of the 2 tanks, where the water level can be toggled to move around the same exhibit interior vertically to each of the height markers with a curresponding water level, which will gently connect to the land of the other.
Exhibit also can now freely switch designs, with the designs availavle curresponding to the animals biome tags, giving most exhibit animals but especally tropical ones a trick up there sleeve. Theres also a new water requirement though for all aquatic exhibits to ensure that they only have access to exhibit designs with an appropriat amount of water.
With this we start with the first big exhibit animals change, which is that alot more animals will be both habitat animals and exhibits, aswell as all walkthrough exhibit animals being able to be kept in normal exhibits.
These are:
- Giant Tortoises (Young Only)
- American Alligator, Gharial and Saltys (Young Only)
- Asian Water Monitor, Nile Monitor, Perentie
- Komodo Dragon (Young Only)
- Cuviers Dwarf Caiman and Spectacle Caiman
- Platypus
- Cotton Top Tamarin
- Black and Ruffous Elephant shrew
- Koala
- Butterflys
- Sloth
And as the last exhibit related change, all toggleable logs, plants, etc of the exhibits are now available to be used as normal scenery pieces aswell.
For the second new change, lamps can now be toggled to be heatlamps. This will make them a heat source to warm what they shine on, but will also attract animals to rest below them, most notably reptiles. Heatlamps count as enritchment and increase their wellfare. Small change but im sure many people will love it.
The management systems for exhibits will also be put in place for habitat animals, to automate their management.
Lastly for the colormorph, our exhibits will gain some attention!
The first is the Boa constrictor, which gains a new Anerythristic rare color morph. Due to a lack of red pigment, they become silvery gray and im sure many would love them.
Next up, the gila monster recieves a new common morph that has a more vibrant orange
Another reciever of a new common color morph is the common death adder, which is just as often gray blackish as it is brown
Lastly we have another common color morph, the giant forest scorpion, which is typically not just shiny black but also with yellowish and brown spots, mostly inbetween the parts of their carapace and on their claws.
They are much more colorfull irl and really deserve to be more then just black
And thats it for now, looks small but certanly one of the most important updates for the game.
What do you guys think about the exhibit update? Would it satisfy you? Or is there still something youd be really aching for?
So far it has allways been we need one, but i have never heard anyone say what they actually want besides different exhibit sizes, which would be a ton of work to make all from scratch and would only be more pieces in a different size. Im sure for some people that would be perfect and i certanly wouldnt complain, but im also quite happy with the modular system i came up with.
Sounds good to me, similar to the modular system I had come up with myself but probably better. I'd be really happy with this change.
Summer 2025:
After a bit of a delay, we finally are here for the exhibit animal pack.
But first of let me ask, why are exhibit animals so bad and why do they need fixing?
Part 1 of that ofcourse is the lack of customisability, the way to large boxes and the restricted creativity, but imo theres a second part thats just as bad.
The actual selection itself.
First things first, i think all the dlc made actually really good choices for the exhibits animals and all of them are worthy to be in the game (besides arid pack), but the base game meanwhile...
May i ask, who actually wanted these animals?
Lets look at africa, we got 4 base game exhibits.
A giant snail? Pretty cool
Puff Adder? Iconic but the modell is absolutly horrid
Goliath Frog? I guess its okay, but that it isnt kept in captivity is a bummer and the modell is also pretty ugly
Goliath Beetle? I guess kinda cool, it might be a common missconception that we dont even know their larvae form (we do just never seen in the wild, they are actually quite common in the pettrade and make their way into zoos from time to time)
So this is actually not that bad besides the models, but the real issue is whats not here.
All of these 4 animals can have their case made, even if id say that you could swap the goliath frog out for the tomato frog and nothing is lost, but really this selection is missing something basic and just more. Where are the snakes? Where are the chameleons? Where are the gekkos?`
And that was just africa, lets not look at australia or asia.
My biggest problem besides the actual model quality of the basegame exhibits is that we are missing generic options for basically everywhere, with many staples needing to be back filled through dlc. Australias only lizard is dlc, axolottle, one of the most common exhibits in zoos, dlc, europes everything, dlc, and it goes on like that. The only two continents that actually got their basic but great options are the americas, as we got our boa, our anaconda, our poison frogs, rattlesnakes, the gila monster but also many weirder things like the centipede, the desert scorpion and other more whacky things.
So what are the goals here?
We want to use these 8 animals to add some more basic options around the underapreciated regions that you can slap where ever and that do not feel wrong, so that together with the new habitat animals that are able to be kept as exhibit animals every place has atleast a few choices.
First of we start in the no where land, somewhere we have no animal from yet and that is on the isles of fiji, more specifically tonga and the lau islands, the Lau banded iguana. 68 EAZA holdings make this the by far most common in captivity animal from the fiji archipelago and the most common of its 4 iguana species.
The beautiful lau banded iguana is an around 70 cm long arboreal iguana thats endemic to the fiji archipelago and considerd one of its national treasures.
Colored in a striking emerald green, the males are layerd with turquoise bands along their bodys, while the females tend to be completly green or only have occasional turquoise spots and stripes. But these living jewels arnt just pretty, they are also part of the only native genus of iguana outside of the americas and have been part of the farthest rafting event ever recorded for a vertebrate, with them being over 800km away from the next place of iguana inhabited land.
Like many reptiles, they are capeable to lighten and darken their skin, being able to turn their bands allmost white and their green allmost black, thes use these both to heat up faster and as a threat display. They are very territorial especally the males and know little fear as the largest terrestrial animal from their islands, making them even attack humans when botherd, but sadly this isnt the greatest trait to have against the invasive cats and mungos.
In game they would be a hybrid animal, being able to both be kept in a tropical exhibit and as a habitat animal using the iguana rig with the highest amount of arborealism, needing more climbingspace compared to the others and hopefully also spending more time while climbing. Theyd add another very unique and beautiful oceanian animal that is as unique as it is visually striking and would give this region a non varanid habitat lizard and a tropical exhibit lizard, making for a great deal for the low cost of frontier freeing the iguanas, which in this timeline happend a year ago thankfully.
Sticking with green beautys from the east, we got a personal favorite of mine, the vitnamese mossy frog. Found in 69 EAZA zoos, these tiny frogs which females reach up to 10 cm and live in evergreen rainforests and suptropical forests in the highlands of vietnam, laos and southern china, where they are found mostly in caves and wet cliff sides or hollow trees where small pools of water form.
Due to their small size, beautiful appearance, sturdyness and rather gentle and silent croaks they are a popular pet in the pet trade, but sadly thats also one of the reasons for their decline in the wild. While technically threatend by logging, habitat destruction and illegal collecting for the pet trade, they are living in such remote locations over a large enough range that they are still considerd least concern, but with a recommendations for zoos to keep a back up populations due to their ease of keeping in case that the deadly amphibean funghi makes its way to their range.
In game they would make use of the tropical waterfall exhibit introduced with the cobra as their main exhibit, where they would predominantly be found in the pools of the rocky waterfall. They would give south east asia another nice general use species, the first amphibean for the area and a spin on the tree climbing frogs that currently are restricted in game to south america, making them a Win all around.
For our next hybrid, we stick to the lovers of the wet and go down to africa where we find the african dwarf crocodile.
Africa needs a crocodile and this pack is an easy choice to deliver that finale crocodilean, but why are we choosing this one?
First of, its the smallest extant species of crocodile thats found in 113 EAZA zoos, making it not only third most common crocodillian after the spectacle caiman and the nile crocodile, it would also leave only the nile crocodile, which isnt there as its practically just a salty with a not bad model, out of the 5 most common kept crocodillian species in the EAZA, with the cuviers dwarf and american alligator being the other 2 in the top 5, giving us a great croc representation.
Funfact! Allmost all extant species of crocodillians are not just kept in the EAZA, but also most of them in decent numbers of atleast 10 zoos. For those that dont know, there has been a large campaign to try to build up captive crocodillean populations for every single species in the sake of conservation, with even many new crocodile zoos opening up focusing on them and other reptiles. The EAZA activly encourages every zoo to keep atleast one species of crocodile, something that zoos gladly accept as they are not just popular but also quite space efficent. Thats why the two smallest species, the cuviers dwarf caiman that averages out at a lenght of 1,2 m and the dwarf crocodile that averages out at 1,5 m lenght, are such popular animals as they can actually be kept in the exhibit style boxes we got in the game and are great centerpieces for reptile houses that dont need much space.
For the dwarf crocodile itself, its found allthroughout tropical central and west africa, adding the first reptile to this region. They have a very diverse range of habitats, from rivers to swamps, mangroves to ponds in the tropical savannah and even atleast one cave dwelling population. Due to their small size they are easier prey for predator, pressuring them to develope stronger armored necks and and backs, coverd in osteoderms not only on its back but also on its belly and underside of the neck.
They are generalised predators that prey on anything that fits into their mouth, with fish, crabs and gastroprods making the bulk of their diet, but unlike most other crocodiles they also forrage on land for whatever tasty snacks they find. Typically nocturnal, they are one of the most terrestrial crocodiles and spend their days in self digged burrows that sometimes even are only accessable from submerged entrances, making them our first crocodilean to use the burrows and also introduce a new enritchment item, the underwater burrow entrance.
Regarding conservation in the wild, as a rather elusive, timid and nocturnal species they are very hard to study and even harder to count, so population data of them is hard to come by. They are generally considerd vulnerable due to their large range, rather high population density and being found in several protected areas, but at the same time logging and destruction of the enviroment is of great concern. Thankfully due to their more sturdy and boney skin, their hide is of low quality, so they are only rarely hunted commercially, but they still are the most common crocodillean found as bushmeat.
Overall the dwarf crocodile would give tropical africa one of its largest missing pieces in a croc and a reptile, while also bringing one of the most common crocodillean in captivity to the game, quite the great success from what is essentally the main "clone" pick of the pack. Also frontiers crocodile quality is through the roof, so im sure it would look absolutly fantastic!
Circling back to asia, we got our next exhibit animal and its a big one.
You know what bothers me about the game? We got a big fat hole in the roster and its python shape so whats better then including one of the largest of them all?
My answer to that is the reticulated python, a semi aquatic mega snake that can reach on average 6 meters in lenght in case of a female and 4 in case of the male. The species exhibists strong sexual dimorphism in size, with males only growing up to 2 third of the size of the average female.
They have a large range, covering pretty much all of south east asia and indonesia, from western india all the way down to sulawesi. Across their range they have a large variety in colors, patterns, size and even eye colors, but consistent among all of them are the large rhombus shaped pattern on the back and the pattern free head. They are also rather slim and agile for their size, being excellent swimmers. These excellent swimming abillitys are what allowed them to colonise allmost all indonesian isles, with only strong currents keeping them from even farther island hopping adventures, with their most telling feat being one of the first vertebrates to recolonise the islands of krakatau that got destroyed by a massive vulcano erruption in 1883. Being originally a dweller of swamps and tropical rainforests, they are surprisingly adaptable and live pretty much everywhere where they find a sufficent amount of water, from secondary forests, over rice fields and other agricultural areas as well as human settlements, being a common sight in the urban metropoles of Bangkok and Jakarta as two examples. For their behaviour, we actually do not know much about their behaviour. You see, how can such large predators coexist with humans even in large urban settlements? The answer is simple, by being shy, elusive, hiding all day and being a primarly nocturnal hunter. Most of the things we know about wild reticulated pythons are assumptions based on captive individuals and the few things we actually have observed. For example, we do not know what kind of hidingspots they prefer, but we assume that they seem to prefer dark and wet places due to the foundings of them in and under human housing. We also do not know how they hunt, we just assume that they are ambush predators and might be atleast somewhat arboreal hunters, as monkeys are a documented food source of them. We know from captive individuals that they tend to be rather calm creatures, but we also know from their largest prey sizes and a number of documented predation attempts on humans both in the wild and in captivity that we are atleast theoretically on their prey list, even if predation on humans is still very uncommon.
In game they would be one of the main users of the large semi aquatic exhibits together with the crocodiles, with the water depth being able to rise and fall from a shallow puddle to a deep body of water. Im sure they would be a slam dunk and instantly become one of the most commonly used exhibit animals for their sheer size and beauty alone, aswell as the fact that finally asia has a damn cool large exhibit animal as a centerpiece for exhibit houses. 10/10 if you ask me.
For the next hybrid we swing back to oceania to cover the pig nosed turtle, a large fresh water turtle from new guinea and tropical northern australia.
With 82 EAZA holdings they are among the most common Oceanian animals in zoos outside of Oceania and the only living member of its family, which is related to softshell turtles.
Once this family was spread throughout the entire old world, but it could only keep its food in the isolated marshes and mangroves of northern oceania.
Compared to other turtles, they are complete weirdos. They got flippers, long nostrils, long thin tails and a hard carapace under their soft and leathery skin, making them much less vulnerable then actual softshell turtles. With a carapace lenght of around 70 they also fit great into the game size wise.
While they do have flippers, they arnt actually fully aquatic, regulary taking sunbaths in shallows or on the river side and being capeable enough at moving at land, but even then its fair to say that one of the biggest strenght of them would be as another animal for implied aquariums, where they could stand out as the actual habitat between implied one. Theyd also round out nicly the oceanian aquatic fauna, as we would have the salty, the platypus and the tortoise to make nicly themed australian swamp sections.
For their behaviour they are highly agressive and territorial to members of their kind, only tolerating other turtles in the breeding season, with a lot of space or in the cooler dry season, when pignosed turtles flock to hyperthermic vents near the riversides to warm up. As these ressources are under to much pressure to be defended alone, they begrudngly form social hierarchys around them and tolerate each other until the weather gets warm enough that they arnt a nessecessity anymore.
One of the reasons that the pig nosed turtle is so common in zoos is sadly also why its in a strong decline, as people illegally harvest their nests in hopes of selling them for the pet trade or the south east asian black medicine markets. Most of the turtles that get rescued are released back into the wild, but when they have allready reached europe or north america theres also a decent chance for them to be taken into legal captivity to increase the captive backup population and refresh the gene pool, especally as their aggressiveness makes them pretty hard to breed. Zoos have done it before and the bali safari park in indonesia seems to be very successfull at it, but atleast with the latter all of these are released back into the wild.
In the game the pignosed turtle would be a great middle ground between an actual fully aquatic sea turtle and a general fresh water turtle, while also being one of the most common ones in zoos and great oceanian representation. Theyd fit into any tropical body of water be it in an aquarium, tropical house, oceania area, new guinea area, whatever and would also add a very new and interesting rigg to the game.
Moving back to africa and a full on exhibit animal, we find not a chameleon or snake, but what i find to be a very charming kind of lizard still absent from the game that would also be our second exhibit from madagascar, the Madagascar giant day gekko. With 161 EAZA holdings and a common sight in the pettrade, these are perhaps the second most iconic gekkos, just behind the asian tokay gekko.
These beautiful green fellows are well known for their varied patterns with no gekko charing the same pattern of red stripes and dots on their back and head. The rest of their 30 cm long body are bright green or turquois with a white belly.
Distributed through the tropical northwestern madagascar and some of the surrounding smaller islands, they are the largest gekko in their range, feeding on small insects and nectar, acting as a pollinator throughout its range. They prefer living near the coast and are most frequently found in tropical rainforests along the ocean shore.
Their males are very territorial and tend to fight heavily, only tollerating females in their territory. They can also be quite quick if they want to and are well known escape artists.
Like all other gekkos, they lack eyelids so to keep their eyes clean they lick them with their tounge, which would make for a great animation while idling.
Like most gekkos, they have a lamella structure on their toes, with many miscroscopic hairs which build up van-der- Waals forces, a chemical term reffering to the weak distance dependent interactions between atoms. The force build up by one hair is incredibly tiny, but the gekko has millions of these hairs on each toe, building up a force that can go up to 14 kg one some individuals, more then enough to carry the just 30-50 g heavy gekkos, even with just one toe.
But how do they remove them if they build up such a strong force? As mentioned before, this force is build up of many different tiny forces that come together, so they lift their toes slowy from the tip first, seperating only small fractions at a time until they have seperated them all. To do that their toes are able to retract upwards much further then most othe vertebrates, which you can try out yourself! When you close your fingers inwards, thats easily possible and you make a fist, but outwards theres a limit how far you can stretch the. Gekkos do not have this limit and can stretch them both down and upwards due to a more open joint structure, allowing them to slowly peel their toes of any given surface.
To help with that, they also produce a fatty liquid in their body, which is used in small amounts to coat their toes and make it easier for them to peel of.
In their exhibits the gekko could be on any surface, being another of the fun glass climbers and even being able to hang over top and walking on the ceiling, so im sure frontier could do a lot of fun things with then.
Besides their toes, gekkos also have a unique skin. You see gekkos do not actually have any scales but many small bumps made of a hair like protuberances. This structure makes it very difficult for water to stick on them, peeling right of, aswell as killing of bacteria.
In game they would finally give africa a generic and all be all exhibit animal thats not just common but fills any niche we could wish for, from lizard, over tropical exhibits, to madagascar houses. Their varried coloration, ways to stick to any surface in the exhibit and rather large size will make them an easy must include for any reptile house and will hopefully help a good bit with africas still rather lacking exhibit selection.
For our last hybrid, we take a trip to europe for our only non tropical animal, the european pond turtle.
Now this might surprise some of you as we allready just got the pig nosed turtle, so why another one?
In my humble opinion we need 2 new turtle rigs, one with flippers aka the pig nosed turtle and one for pond turtles/terrapins and as you might guess a part of the free update that was a secret till now is that the diamond back terrapin will now also be a hybrid and be able to be put in as a habitat animal.
To be frank, i have been to many zoos, i have seen many european pond turtles and many new world turtles but i have never ever ever seen a zoo that put them into a glass tank.
Every single time i saw them they were in a pond or lake, be it a nice small one just for them or as co inhabitants for waterfowl and crocodiles in both open ponds and tropical houses, so while im okay with the option to keep them in the box i really really crave for them to be free, allmost as much as with the iguanas.
The european pond turtle has a carapace lenght from 12 to 38 cm, making them around the same size range as both baby and addult meerkats depending on which side of the size spectrum we are looking at, so they very well qualify in size to be a habitat animal. They would be able to deep dive but more importantly to "climb". When the surface of an object sticks out above the water surface in a flat enough angle, terrapins and pond turtle will be able to climb on and rest on them, a behavior that would be prefered for them to do similar to koalas which prefer to climb, as that is the way you will most often see them in zoos.
Im sure they will be a great addition to our builds and open a whole new way of creative habitat building both for tropical houses and to live up any pond of our choosing.
But now why the european pond turtle and not another terrapin or an asian pond turtle?
First of, they are super common, in fact the most common animal of this pack, found in 255 EAZA zoos. This is two fold, as for one they are easy to just throw in whereever as they can easily have their own dedicated habitats which is something many zoos do that have aquired them recently, but they can also just be put in literally any body of water in the zoo and do rahter fine. The other reason is that the EAZA activly encourages zoos to keep this species. While only near threatend as a whole due to its gigantic size, they are locally endangerd in many different countrys and even have gone extinct in many, making europes only native freshwater turtle one of the species most common in rewilding efforts. This is also the reason why its one of the most common european animals in big abc zoos, as they are activly bred for rewilding purposes and also as mentioned before very easy to keep. Something that would differentiate them from the terrapin is that they tend to be much faster on land. While living in wetlands, they are only semi aquatic and also graze on land and wander around, with them being frequently found up to 4 km away from the nearest body of water, making their behaviour much more similar to american box turtles then terrapins. While starting out allmost fully carnivorous, as they age they shift more and more to a herbiverous diet, making them an omnivore in general. Interestingly, the european pond turtle isnt actually part of the old world pond turtles but of the new world pond turtles, with it and the sicilian pond turtle being the only two member living in the old world.
Their black skin and carrapace is dotted with yellow spots or stripes, making a clear visual difference from the diamondback terrapin.
In the wild, they are mainly threatend by habitat destructions, with many of the swamps and marshes that they used to call home not existing anymore and the sandbanks that they need to lay their eggs often being eroded away. Combine that with a very high mortality rate in their young and the introduction of new threats, most notably the racoon which can successfully predate even adult individuals and the european pond turtle had it rough, being critically endangerd locally in pretty much all of central europe if not straight up extinct.
But its not all doom and gloom. While extinct in switzerland, they have been successfully reintroduced in 2006 and have blossomed into one of the largest populations in europe.
Additionally in germany their reintroduction has become part of the main conservation goals and efforts, with many german zoos breeding the species and releasing them in many different suitable bodys of water yearly, slowly but surly reintroducing them to all major bodys of water in germany and strenghtening their population.
So all in all a very beautifull and different turtle that introduces a new very usefull rig, frees one of the existing exhibit animals and allows completly new kinds of habitats/cohabitations thats also extremly common in zoo and among the most relevant species for reintroduction and conservation in europe?
Id say the european pond turtle deserves to be in the game more then just a little bit and i really hope seeing them and even more hopefully with the ability to be used as a habitat animal, cause we can all try pretending as much as we like with the exhibits, but they will never ever be a natural pond and i really really hope we will be able to build turtle ponds at some point in the game.
Now for the last animal of the pack we will make our first step into the new world to include maybe one of the most iconic and fascinating insects in the entire world, the leafcutter ant.
From the start i knew i wanted atleast one invertebrate and just one animal from the americas and to choose something truly uniqe and whats more unique then our first usocial animal and the perhaps most iconic ant in the world.
Leaf cutter ants are a group of 47 species from south, central and southern north america from two different genera and i will directly say that i wont talk about any particular species. From the bit of research i did as zootierliste does only track vertebrates, there are multiple different species kept in the EAZA from both genera, so choosing one specific one is a job im gonna outsource to whoever person at frontier also thinks that they are pretty cool.
For differances in appearance, its quite straightforward. Species that belong to atta have smooth exoskelletion with 3 spikes on their back and those that belong to acromyrmex have a rough one with 4 spikes. In the picture below the 3 ants are from an atta species.
Ants have many extraordinary features, from their massive strenght, usocial intelligence, adaptability and even forming gigantic functional societys only rivaled by our own, all of these are taken to the extreme by leafcutter ants. They can carry up to 20 times their own body weight, build societys that can contain millions of individuals with citys that stretch up to 600m^2 and most extraordinary, are among the only known animals besides humans to practice agriculture.
You see, the leafs the leaf cutter ants cut and carry arnt actually their foodscource but fertelizer and substrate for domestic funghi species which they tend to and care to harvest as a nutritious and efficent food source. There are many different funghi that have been domesticated by different leafcutter ant species and live with them in a symbiotic relatshionship, something in general reffered to as ant-fungus-mutualism.
The ants take care of the funghus, feed it with cut grass and leafs, keep it free from pests and mold and even use the chemicals of a symbiotic bacteria that lives on the ant as antimicrobials to keep their funghi strong and healthy. The ants are sensetive to the different chemical reactions of the funghi, able to detect and learn when for example a kind of leaf is toxic to their funghi and stop bringing those to it. Once harvested, the bits of funghi are fed to the larvae, which cant survive without it while the addults are primarly feeding of of leaf sap, making not only the funghus dependent on the ants but also the ants larvae dependent of the funghi. Some funghi have even been domesticated to a degree that they dont produce spores to reproduce but instead produce a swollen, nutrient rich form as additional feed for the ants, making them completly dependent on them.
But thats not all as like all societys, the ants produce waste, be it dead ants, used substrate or unusable funghi parts, which are taken care of by a special group of mostly elderly workers, which bring out the waste to a waste pile and even shuffle it around to aid decomposition.
In game the leaf cutter ants would use a new and unique system of modular exhibits. There are a few new leafcutter ant exhibit in 3 sizes, a small square, a medium square and a big square, aswell as 3 sizes of barrel shaped ones. A leaf cutter exhibit would consist of atleast 3 of them, which can be classified in a drop down menu as "food", "waste" or "funghi". Funghi exhibits feature the main mount aswell as a partly exposed funghi, waste is a waste pile and food is a somewhat natural one where food is placed. All of them can have glass, no, image or 3d sides aswell as some enritchment in form of sticks, plants and mount "parts" like for example a look in chamber for the queen.
Speaking of the queen, instead of having each individual ant named and all, you only buy and name queens which each come with their own folk. Their size does not track their own size but the size of their mass of workers, which can be increased or decreased at the food exhibit, where the food can be toggled on a slider which corresponds to the size of the collony it can support, with the colony over time moving towards that slider.
To connect these singular exhibits, a modular system of tubes is used, which can be out of glas, bamboo or wood with toggleable windows like enritchment to look in. They can be snapped together like the brachiachion climbing frames and when those tubes connect 2 or more exhibits, ants will move between them, carrying food and leafs from the food exhibits to the mount and waste from the mount to the waste pile. We are gonna imagine that loading all those ants will not completly destroy performance and instead of actually loading many moving moddels id say it would use a looped animation that adds ants with higher population sizes, using the same loop just many more times.
Their number alone would defenetly be very tricky to integrate so while i dont expect them for that reason if frontier could find a way to make them work im sure theyd be among the best and most exciting exhibits to build for that would bring a lot of new opportunitys worthy to be the headliner of this pack.
And thats it for my exhibit pack, i hope you like it!
Im honest, even with these 8 extra picks i had a really rough time choosing as exhibit animals need love just as much as habitat animals if not more at this point.
Africa, europe, asia and oceania all have very lackluster selections and even the americas could really use a boost.
There were many species i considerd like the boomslang, black mamba. corn snake, cotton mouth, a chameleion, bearded dragon, tuatara, argentinan tegu, emerald tree boa, and and and but its just impossible to fit every needed exhibit animal into one pack, there are just way to many.
I tried to choose a well rounded bunch that fill as much of the glaring issues as possible while adding lots of fresh new opportunitys and riggs with the 2 new turtles and am quite happy with it, but im sure even then i could easily do one or 2 more of them till im satisfied with the exhibit selection.
Especally africa was kind of a bummer as i actually included none of the first 5 animals i thought about for the sake of diversity and covering general holes with the dwarf crocodile being a very logical choice for a clone pick and the gekko a great choice for a lizard, but when my prioirty were originally snakes you can see i deviated quite a bit.
After a bit of a delay, we finally are here for the exhibit animal pack.
But first of let me ask, why are exhibit animals so bad and why do they need fixing?
Part 1 of that ofcourse is the lack of customisability, the way to large boxes and the restricted creativity, but imo theres a second part thats just as bad.
The actual selection itself.
First things first, i think all the dlc made actually really good choices for the exhibits animals and all of them are worthy to be in the game (besides arid pack), but the base game meanwhile...
May i ask, who actually wanted these animals?
Lets look at africa, we got 4 base game exhibits.
A giant snail? Pretty cool
Puff Adder? Iconic but the modell is absolutly horrid
Goliath Frog? I guess its okay, but that it isnt kept in captivity is a bummer and the modell is also pretty ugly
Goliath Beetle? I guess kinda cool, it might be a common missconception that we dont even know their larvae form (we do just never seen in the wild, they are actually quite common in the pettrade and make their way into zoos from time to time)
So this is actually not that bad besides the models, but the real issue is whats not here.
All of these 4 animals can have their case made, even if id say that you could swap the goliath frog out for the tomato frog and nothing is lost, but really this selection is missing something basic and just more. Where are the snakes? Where are the chameleons? Where are the gekkos?`
And that was just africa, lets not look at australia or asia.
My biggest problem besides the actual model quality of the basegame exhibits is that we are missing generic options for basically everywhere, with many staples needing to be back filled through dlc. Australias only lizard is dlc, axolottle, one of the most common exhibits in zoos, dlc, europes everything, dlc, and it goes on like that. The only two continents that actually got their basic but great options are the americas, as we got our boa, our anaconda, our poison frogs, rattlesnakes, the gila monster but also many weirder things like the centipede, the desert scorpion and other more whacky things.
So what are the goals here?
We want to use these 8 animals to add some more basic options around the underapreciated regions that you can slap where ever and that do not feel wrong, so that together with the new habitat animals that are able to be kept as exhibit animals every place has atleast a few choices.
First of we start in the no where land, somewhere we have no animal from yet and that is on the isles of fiji, more specifically tonga and the lau islands, the Lau banded iguana. 68 EAZA holdings make this the by far most common in captivity animal from the fiji archipelago and the most common of its 4 iguana species.
The beautiful lau banded iguana is an around 70 cm long arboreal iguana thats endemic to the fiji archipelago and considerd one of its national treasures.
Colored in a striking emerald green, the males are layerd with turquoise bands along their bodys, while the females tend to be completly green or only have occasional turquoise spots and stripes. But these living jewels arnt just pretty, they are also part of the only native genus of iguana outside of the americas and have been part of the farthest rafting event ever recorded for a vertebrate, with them being over 800km away from the next place of iguana inhabited land.
Like many reptiles, they are capeable to lighten and darken their skin, being able to turn their bands allmost white and their green allmost black, thes use these both to heat up faster and as a threat display. They are very territorial especally the males and know little fear as the largest terrestrial animal from their islands, making them even attack humans when botherd, but sadly this isnt the greatest trait to have against the invasive cats and mungos.
In game they would be a hybrid animal, being able to both be kept in a tropical exhibit and as a habitat animal using the iguana rig with the highest amount of arborealism, needing more climbingspace compared to the others and hopefully also spending more time while climbing. Theyd add another very unique and beautiful oceanian animal that is as unique as it is visually striking and would give this region a non varanid habitat lizard and a tropical exhibit lizard, making for a great deal for the low cost of frontier freeing the iguanas, which in this timeline happend a year ago thankfully.
Sticking with green beautys from the east, we got a personal favorite of mine, the vitnamese mossy frog. Found in 69 EAZA zoos, these tiny frogs which females reach up to 10 cm and live in evergreen rainforests and suptropical forests in the highlands of vietnam, laos and southern china, where they are found mostly in caves and wet cliff sides or hollow trees where small pools of water form.
Due to their small size, beautiful appearance, sturdyness and rather gentle and silent croaks they are a popular pet in the pet trade, but sadly thats also one of the reasons for their decline in the wild. While technically threatend by logging, habitat destruction and illegal collecting for the pet trade, they are living in such remote locations over a large enough range that they are still considerd least concern, but with a recommendations for zoos to keep a back up populations due to their ease of keeping in case that the deadly amphibean funghi makes its way to their range.
In game they would make use of the tropical waterfall exhibit introduced with the cobra as their main exhibit, where they would predominantly be found in the pools of the rocky waterfall. They would give south east asia another nice general use species, the first amphibean for the area and a spin on the tree climbing frogs that currently are restricted in game to south america, making them a Win all around.
For our next hybrid, we stick to the lovers of the wet and go down to africa where we find the african dwarf crocodile.
Africa needs a crocodile and this pack is an easy choice to deliver that finale crocodilean, but why are we choosing this one?
First of, its the smallest extant species of crocodile thats found in 113 EAZA zoos, making it not only third most common crocodillian after the spectacle caiman and the nile crocodile, it would also leave only the nile crocodile, which isnt there as its practically just a salty with a not bad model, out of the 5 most common kept crocodillian species in the EAZA, with the cuviers dwarf and american alligator being the other 2 in the top 5, giving us a great croc representation.
Funfact! Allmost all extant species of crocodillians are not just kept in the EAZA, but also most of them in decent numbers of atleast 10 zoos. For those that dont know, there has been a large campaign to try to build up captive crocodillean populations for every single species in the sake of conservation, with even many new crocodile zoos opening up focusing on them and other reptiles. The EAZA activly encourages every zoo to keep atleast one species of crocodile, something that zoos gladly accept as they are not just popular but also quite space efficent. Thats why the two smallest species, the cuviers dwarf caiman that averages out at a lenght of 1,2 m and the dwarf crocodile that averages out at 1,5 m lenght, are such popular animals as they can actually be kept in the exhibit style boxes we got in the game and are great centerpieces for reptile houses that dont need much space.
For the dwarf crocodile itself, its found allthroughout tropical central and west africa, adding the first reptile to this region. They have a very diverse range of habitats, from rivers to swamps, mangroves to ponds in the tropical savannah and even atleast one cave dwelling population. Due to their small size they are easier prey for predator, pressuring them to develope stronger armored necks and and backs, coverd in osteoderms not only on its back but also on its belly and underside of the neck.
They are generalised predators that prey on anything that fits into their mouth, with fish, crabs and gastroprods making the bulk of their diet, but unlike most other crocodiles they also forrage on land for whatever tasty snacks they find. Typically nocturnal, they are one of the most terrestrial crocodiles and spend their days in self digged burrows that sometimes even are only accessable from submerged entrances, making them our first crocodilean to use the burrows and also introduce a new enritchment item, the underwater burrow entrance.
Regarding conservation in the wild, as a rather elusive, timid and nocturnal species they are very hard to study and even harder to count, so population data of them is hard to come by. They are generally considerd vulnerable due to their large range, rather high population density and being found in several protected areas, but at the same time logging and destruction of the enviroment is of great concern. Thankfully due to their more sturdy and boney skin, their hide is of low quality, so they are only rarely hunted commercially, but they still are the most common crocodillean found as bushmeat.
Overall the dwarf crocodile would give tropical africa one of its largest missing pieces in a croc and a reptile, while also bringing one of the most common crocodillean in captivity to the game, quite the great success from what is essentally the main "clone" pick of the pack. Also frontiers crocodile quality is through the roof, so im sure it would look absolutly fantastic!
Circling back to asia, we got our next exhibit animal and its a big one.
You know what bothers me about the game? We got a big fat hole in the roster and its python shape so whats better then including one of the largest of them all?
My answer to that is the reticulated python, a semi aquatic mega snake that can reach on average 6 meters in lenght in case of a female and 4 in case of the male. The species exhibists strong sexual dimorphism in size, with males only growing up to 2 third of the size of the average female.
They have a large range, covering pretty much all of south east asia and indonesia, from western india all the way down to sulawesi. Across their range they have a large variety in colors, patterns, size and even eye colors, but consistent among all of them are the large rhombus shaped pattern on the back and the pattern free head. They are also rather slim and agile for their size, being excellent swimmers. These excellent swimming abillitys are what allowed them to colonise allmost all indonesian isles, with only strong currents keeping them from even farther island hopping adventures, with their most telling feat being one of the first vertebrates to recolonise the islands of krakatau that got destroyed by a massive vulcano erruption in 1883. Being originally a dweller of swamps and tropical rainforests, they are surprisingly adaptable and live pretty much everywhere where they find a sufficent amount of water, from secondary forests, over rice fields and other agricultural areas as well as human settlements, being a common sight in the urban metropoles of Bangkok and Jakarta as two examples. For their behaviour, we actually do not know much about their behaviour. You see, how can such large predators coexist with humans even in large urban settlements? The answer is simple, by being shy, elusive, hiding all day and being a primarly nocturnal hunter. Most of the things we know about wild reticulated pythons are assumptions based on captive individuals and the few things we actually have observed. For example, we do not know what kind of hidingspots they prefer, but we assume that they seem to prefer dark and wet places due to the foundings of them in and under human housing. We also do not know how they hunt, we just assume that they are ambush predators and might be atleast somewhat arboreal hunters, as monkeys are a documented food source of them. We know from captive individuals that they tend to be rather calm creatures, but we also know from their largest prey sizes and a number of documented predation attempts on humans both in the wild and in captivity that we are atleast theoretically on their prey list, even if predation on humans is still very uncommon.
In game they would be one of the main users of the large semi aquatic exhibits together with the crocodiles, with the water depth being able to rise and fall from a shallow puddle to a deep body of water. Im sure they would be a slam dunk and instantly become one of the most commonly used exhibit animals for their sheer size and beauty alone, aswell as the fact that finally asia has a damn cool large exhibit animal as a centerpiece for exhibit houses. 10/10 if you ask me.
For the next hybrid we swing back to oceania to cover the pig nosed turtle, a large fresh water turtle from new guinea and tropical northern australia.
With 82 EAZA holdings they are among the most common Oceanian animals in zoos outside of Oceania and the only living member of its family, which is related to softshell turtles.
Once this family was spread throughout the entire old world, but it could only keep its food in the isolated marshes and mangroves of northern oceania.
Compared to other turtles, they are complete weirdos. They got flippers, long nostrils, long thin tails and a hard carapace under their soft and leathery skin, making them much less vulnerable then actual softshell turtles. With a carapace lenght of around 70 they also fit great into the game size wise.
While they do have flippers, they arnt actually fully aquatic, regulary taking sunbaths in shallows or on the river side and being capeable enough at moving at land, but even then its fair to say that one of the biggest strenght of them would be as another animal for implied aquariums, where they could stand out as the actual habitat between implied one. Theyd also round out nicly the oceanian aquatic fauna, as we would have the salty, the platypus and the tortoise to make nicly themed australian swamp sections.
For their behaviour they are highly agressive and territorial to members of their kind, only tolerating other turtles in the breeding season, with a lot of space or in the cooler dry season, when pignosed turtles flock to hyperthermic vents near the riversides to warm up. As these ressources are under to much pressure to be defended alone, they begrudngly form social hierarchys around them and tolerate each other until the weather gets warm enough that they arnt a nessecessity anymore.
One of the reasons that the pig nosed turtle is so common in zoos is sadly also why its in a strong decline, as people illegally harvest their nests in hopes of selling them for the pet trade or the south east asian black medicine markets. Most of the turtles that get rescued are released back into the wild, but when they have allready reached europe or north america theres also a decent chance for them to be taken into legal captivity to increase the captive backup population and refresh the gene pool, especally as their aggressiveness makes them pretty hard to breed. Zoos have done it before and the bali safari park in indonesia seems to be very successfull at it, but atleast with the latter all of these are released back into the wild.
In the game the pignosed turtle would be a great middle ground between an actual fully aquatic sea turtle and a general fresh water turtle, while also being one of the most common ones in zoos and great oceanian representation. Theyd fit into any tropical body of water be it in an aquarium, tropical house, oceania area, new guinea area, whatever and would also add a very new and interesting rigg to the game.
Moving back to africa and a full on exhibit animal, we find not a chameleon or snake, but what i find to be a very charming kind of lizard still absent from the game that would also be our second exhibit from madagascar, the Madagascar giant day gekko. With 161 EAZA holdings and a common sight in the pettrade, these are perhaps the second most iconic gekkos, just behind the asian tokay gekko.
These beautiful green fellows are well known for their varied patterns with no gekko charing the same pattern of red stripes and dots on their back and head. The rest of their 30 cm long body are bright green or turquois with a white belly.
Distributed through the tropical northwestern madagascar and some of the surrounding smaller islands, they are the largest gekko in their range, feeding on small insects and nectar, acting as a pollinator throughout its range. They prefer living near the coast and are most frequently found in tropical rainforests along the ocean shore.
Their males are very territorial and tend to fight heavily, only tollerating females in their territory. They can also be quite quick if they want to and are well known escape artists.
Like all other gekkos, they lack eyelids so to keep their eyes clean they lick them with their tounge, which would make for a great animation while idling.
Like most gekkos, they have a lamella structure on their toes, with many miscroscopic hairs which build up van-der- Waals forces, a chemical term reffering to the weak distance dependent interactions between atoms. The force build up by one hair is incredibly tiny, but the gekko has millions of these hairs on each toe, building up a force that can go up to 14 kg one some individuals, more then enough to carry the just 30-50 g heavy gekkos, even with just one toe.
But how do they remove them if they build up such a strong force? As mentioned before, this force is build up of many different tiny forces that come together, so they lift their toes slowy from the tip first, seperating only small fractions at a time until they have seperated them all. To do that their toes are able to retract upwards much further then most othe vertebrates, which you can try out yourself! When you close your fingers inwards, thats easily possible and you make a fist, but outwards theres a limit how far you can stretch the. Gekkos do not have this limit and can stretch them both down and upwards due to a more open joint structure, allowing them to slowly peel their toes of any given surface.
To help with that, they also produce a fatty liquid in their body, which is used in small amounts to coat their toes and make it easier for them to peel of.
In their exhibits the gekko could be on any surface, being another of the fun glass climbers and even being able to hang over top and walking on the ceiling, so im sure frontier could do a lot of fun things with then.
Besides their toes, gekkos also have a unique skin. You see gekkos do not actually have any scales but many small bumps made of a hair like protuberances. This structure makes it very difficult for water to stick on them, peeling right of, aswell as killing of bacteria.
In game they would finally give africa a generic and all be all exhibit animal thats not just common but fills any niche we could wish for, from lizard, over tropical exhibits, to madagascar houses. Their varried coloration, ways to stick to any surface in the exhibit and rather large size will make them an easy must include for any reptile house and will hopefully help a good bit with africas still rather lacking exhibit selection.
For our last hybrid, we take a trip to europe for our only non tropical animal, the european pond turtle.
Now this might surprise some of you as we allready just got the pig nosed turtle, so why another one?
In my humble opinion we need 2 new turtle rigs, one with flippers aka the pig nosed turtle and one for pond turtles/terrapins and as you might guess a part of the free update that was a secret till now is that the diamond back terrapin will now also be a hybrid and be able to be put in as a habitat animal.
To be frank, i have been to many zoos, i have seen many european pond turtles and many new world turtles but i have never ever ever seen a zoo that put them into a glass tank.
Every single time i saw them they were in a pond or lake, be it a nice small one just for them or as co inhabitants for waterfowl and crocodiles in both open ponds and tropical houses, so while im okay with the option to keep them in the box i really really crave for them to be free, allmost as much as with the iguanas.
The european pond turtle has a carapace lenght from 12 to 38 cm, making them around the same size range as both baby and addult meerkats depending on which side of the size spectrum we are looking at, so they very well qualify in size to be a habitat animal. They would be able to deep dive but more importantly to "climb". When the surface of an object sticks out above the water surface in a flat enough angle, terrapins and pond turtle will be able to climb on and rest on them, a behavior that would be prefered for them to do similar to koalas which prefer to climb, as that is the way you will most often see them in zoos.
Im sure they will be a great addition to our builds and open a whole new way of creative habitat building both for tropical houses and to live up any pond of our choosing.
But now why the european pond turtle and not another terrapin or an asian pond turtle?
First of, they are super common, in fact the most common animal of this pack, found in 255 EAZA zoos. This is two fold, as for one they are easy to just throw in whereever as they can easily have their own dedicated habitats which is something many zoos do that have aquired them recently, but they can also just be put in literally any body of water in the zoo and do rahter fine. The other reason is that the EAZA activly encourages zoos to keep this species. While only near threatend as a whole due to its gigantic size, they are locally endangerd in many different countrys and even have gone extinct in many, making europes only native freshwater turtle one of the species most common in rewilding efforts. This is also the reason why its one of the most common european animals in big abc zoos, as they are activly bred for rewilding purposes and also as mentioned before very easy to keep. Something that would differentiate them from the terrapin is that they tend to be much faster on land. While living in wetlands, they are only semi aquatic and also graze on land and wander around, with them being frequently found up to 4 km away from the nearest body of water, making their behaviour much more similar to american box turtles then terrapins. While starting out allmost fully carnivorous, as they age they shift more and more to a herbiverous diet, making them an omnivore in general. Interestingly, the european pond turtle isnt actually part of the old world pond turtles but of the new world pond turtles, with it and the sicilian pond turtle being the only two member living in the old world.
Their black skin and carrapace is dotted with yellow spots or stripes, making a clear visual difference from the diamondback terrapin.
In the wild, they are mainly threatend by habitat destructions, with many of the swamps and marshes that they used to call home not existing anymore and the sandbanks that they need to lay their eggs often being eroded away. Combine that with a very high mortality rate in their young and the introduction of new threats, most notably the racoon which can successfully predate even adult individuals and the european pond turtle had it rough, being critically endangerd locally in pretty much all of central europe if not straight up extinct.
But its not all doom and gloom. While extinct in switzerland, they have been successfully reintroduced in 2006 and have blossomed into one of the largest populations in europe.
Additionally in germany their reintroduction has become part of the main conservation goals and efforts, with many german zoos breeding the species and releasing them in many different suitable bodys of water yearly, slowly but surly reintroducing them to all major bodys of water in germany and strenghtening their population.
So all in all a very beautifull and different turtle that introduces a new very usefull rig, frees one of the existing exhibit animals and allows completly new kinds of habitats/cohabitations thats also extremly common in zoo and among the most relevant species for reintroduction and conservation in europe?
Id say the european pond turtle deserves to be in the game more then just a little bit and i really hope seeing them and even more hopefully with the ability to be used as a habitat animal, cause we can all try pretending as much as we like with the exhibits, but they will never ever be a natural pond and i really really hope we will be able to build turtle ponds at some point in the game.
Now for the last animal of the pack we will make our first step into the new world to include maybe one of the most iconic and fascinating insects in the entire world, the leafcutter ant.
From the start i knew i wanted atleast one invertebrate and just one animal from the americas and to choose something truly uniqe and whats more unique then our first usocial animal and the perhaps most iconic ant in the world.
Leaf cutter ants are a group of 47 species from south, central and southern north america from two different genera and i will directly say that i wont talk about any particular species. From the bit of research i did as zootierliste does only track vertebrates, there are multiple different species kept in the EAZA from both genera, so choosing one specific one is a job im gonna outsource to whoever person at frontier also thinks that they are pretty cool.
For differances in appearance, its quite straightforward. Species that belong to atta have smooth exoskelletion with 3 spikes on their back and those that belong to acromyrmex have a rough one with 4 spikes. In the picture below the 3 ants are from an atta species.
Ants have many extraordinary features, from their massive strenght, usocial intelligence, adaptability and even forming gigantic functional societys only rivaled by our own, all of these are taken to the extreme by leafcutter ants. They can carry up to 20 times their own body weight, build societys that can contain millions of individuals with citys that stretch up to 600m^2 and most extraordinary, are among the only known animals besides humans to practice agriculture.
You see, the leafs the leaf cutter ants cut and carry arnt actually their foodscource but fertelizer and substrate for domestic funghi species which they tend to and care to harvest as a nutritious and efficent food source. There are many different funghi that have been domesticated by different leafcutter ant species and live with them in a symbiotic relatshionship, something in general reffered to as ant-fungus-mutualism.
The ants take care of the funghus, feed it with cut grass and leafs, keep it free from pests and mold and even use the chemicals of a symbiotic bacteria that lives on the ant as antimicrobials to keep their funghi strong and healthy. The ants are sensetive to the different chemical reactions of the funghi, able to detect and learn when for example a kind of leaf is toxic to their funghi and stop bringing those to it. Once harvested, the bits of funghi are fed to the larvae, which cant survive without it while the addults are primarly feeding of of leaf sap, making not only the funghus dependent on the ants but also the ants larvae dependent of the funghi. Some funghi have even been domesticated to a degree that they dont produce spores to reproduce but instead produce a swollen, nutrient rich form as additional feed for the ants, making them completly dependent on them.
But thats not all as like all societys, the ants produce waste, be it dead ants, used substrate or unusable funghi parts, which are taken care of by a special group of mostly elderly workers, which bring out the waste to a waste pile and even shuffle it around to aid decomposition.
In game the leaf cutter ants would use a new and unique system of modular exhibits. There are a few new leafcutter ant exhibit in 3 sizes, a small square, a medium square and a big square, aswell as 3 sizes of barrel shaped ones. A leaf cutter exhibit would consist of atleast 3 of them, which can be classified in a drop down menu as "food", "waste" or "funghi". Funghi exhibits feature the main mount aswell as a partly exposed funghi, waste is a waste pile and food is a somewhat natural one where food is placed. All of them can have glass, no, image or 3d sides aswell as some enritchment in form of sticks, plants and mount "parts" like for example a look in chamber for the queen.
Speaking of the queen, instead of having each individual ant named and all, you only buy and name queens which each come with their own folk. Their size does not track their own size but the size of their mass of workers, which can be increased or decreased at the food exhibit, where the food can be toggled on a slider which corresponds to the size of the collony it can support, with the colony over time moving towards that slider.
To connect these singular exhibits, a modular system of tubes is used, which can be out of glas, bamboo or wood with toggleable windows like enritchment to look in. They can be snapped together like the brachiachion climbing frames and when those tubes connect 2 or more exhibits, ants will move between them, carrying food and leafs from the food exhibits to the mount and waste from the mount to the waste pile. We are gonna imagine that loading all those ants will not completly destroy performance and instead of actually loading many moving moddels id say it would use a looped animation that adds ants with higher population sizes, using the same loop just many more times.
Their number alone would defenetly be very tricky to integrate so while i dont expect them for that reason if frontier could find a way to make them work im sure theyd be among the best and most exciting exhibits to build for that would bring a lot of new opportunitys worthy to be the headliner of this pack.
And thats it for my exhibit pack, i hope you like it!
Im honest, even with these 8 extra picks i had a really rough time choosing as exhibit animals need love just as much as habitat animals if not more at this point.
Africa, europe, asia and oceania all have very lackluster selections and even the americas could really use a boost.
There were many species i considerd like the boomslang, black mamba. corn snake, cotton mouth, a chameleion, bearded dragon, tuatara, argentinan tegu, emerald tree boa, and and and but its just impossible to fit every needed exhibit animal into one pack, there are just way to many.
I tried to choose a well rounded bunch that fill as much of the glaring issues as possible while adding lots of fresh new opportunitys and riggs with the 2 new turtles and am quite happy with it, but im sure even then i could easily do one or 2 more of them till im satisfied with the exhibit selection.
Especally africa was kind of a bummer as i actually included none of the first 5 animals i thought about for the sake of diversity and covering general holes with the dwarf crocodile being a very logical choice for a clone pick and the gekko a great choice for a lizard, but when my prioirty were originally snakes you can see i deviated quite a bit.
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I know this is a WIP, but it does already feel like a pack that would be extremely helpful in fleshing out the currently lacking exhibit system of the game. I also never understood the base game selection of animals; still feels like a lot of no-brainer selections were missing that should have been there in the first place.
Pig-Nosed Turtle YES!
Pig-Nosed Turtle YES!
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Before making the pack i never really thought about it that much but it was a real eye opener.
A large part of why i dont use exhibits is because the individual animals largely just do not exite me.
Building full on exhibit houses or something is quite unappealing to me, as that just highlights most of their issues as a building system. Integrating them into other builds in a more creative way is not just more fun but also more rewarding to me them just putting down a bunch of squares but when you only have a small number of exhibits the lacking of species that can stand their ground is really apparent.
My most frequent pet peave is the lack of the african rock python, an animal i see so often as just a really cool extra in animal houses but has no counterpart in game, making me often play pretend with the boa constrictor, which is by far my favorite exhibit as its one of the few that works well as one without me craving the missed opportunitys of them as habitat animals (iguanas and terrapins), while also feeling like a worthy standalone inclusion.
Its just a very different feeling if your exhibit is a big cool snake or a bug or snail, which are important but really arnt that fun as standalones.
Every single one of your pack ideas are so well thought out and I loved reading all your explanations of why you picked different animals as well as your base game update ideas. This was a real treat to read!
@QueenCinna I heard you want me to tag you
Remember our elephant shrew conversation? The deed has been done
Remember our elephant shrew conversation? The deed has been done
Fantastic, I am still so genuinely impressed with these packs, I have skimmed some of the newer ones and will go back and do a proper read through too, I feel like every animal is just well reasoned and placed well, especially with the accompanying updates. I am truly loving the reptile pack too, especially the leafcutter ants. I recently spent ages building a custom implied leafcutter ant exhibit and I just want the real thing@QueenCinna I heard you want me to tag you
Remember our elephant shrew conversation? The deed has been done
The pain of the realisation that ants would most likly just destroy the games performance though
I still really want them
Also thank you! Thats the kind of feedback that makes me want to continue this thread ^^