Please fix the polar bears space requirements

Akuma223

A
As the title says, the polar bears spaces requirements are frankly ridiculous. I'm not sure as to why they were programmed to have the massive requirements they do compared to other bears, perhaps it was a misguided effort to replicate their naturally large ranges in the wild. This large range is simply nonsensical in captivity though. Unless you can prove that animals with large territories do so because they want to roam far and wide and not simply because its out of necessity for finding food, mates, and shelter it is not realistic and highly unnecessary. Furthermore if this was the reasoning behind the large enclosure requirements then the current sizes for any just about any other large mammal make absolutely zero sense since tigers, grizzly bears, elephants, and wolves also have very large ranges. There is zero logical reason for my pair of polar bears to require an enclosure more than 4 times larger than my Himalayan brown bears or grizzlys.


The result of this ridiculous land and water space requirement is me having to more than triple the initial size of the enclosure while still not quite hitting the green zone for the land portion, and despite all of my animals overall stats being in the green I have a herd of bloody protesters suddenly bringing my rating down in my franchise zoo! The cherry on top of this ridiculousness was the fact that I got no notification that protesters were coming at any point and found out during an inspection, and the fact that the protesters are a new development even after I had my initial pair of polar bears for something like 20 years of their life in my franchise (who produced 2 cubs in that time) in this exact enclosure with no complaints or issues. After those 2 adults died and my male cub matured I bought a new female for him to breed with and suddenly I got notified that there were protesters after an inspection report despite no negative change affecting either animal. I've put more effort into making this enclosure just big enough while also being beautiful than any other enclosure and for it all to be for nothing has really put me off from playing for a bit. I am monumentally frustrated at this.

I don't know if the lack of notification was a bug or not but I had one random protester complaining about the fact that I had a female dall sheep who I recently bought in quarantine for a bit while I waited for my male and female pair to mature (so she wouldn't age too far beyond them).
 

ShadowLilly

ShadowLilly
Animals who are to long in quarantine = low wellfare = protesters.

With the space of the polar bears is nothing wrong, frontier said it themselves: every animal has its own challenges :D . So you need to create a habitat with enough land and water to make it happy. To be honest, I don't see the problem, because with a little creativity you can make it work. Ive had them in 2 zoo's with 0 problems.

About the protesters, that is a thing i recognize. I forgot to look at my warthogs, so there were all of a sudden 34 :confused: their wellfare was low and there were protesters, but no notification.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
It sucks for Franchise and is totally out of line with reality. AZA recommends only 500m2 as a minimum for 1-2 polars bears and 150m2 for additional bears, plus a minimum of only 9m2 of water. The game does scale up space requirements on virtually all species, but really it should have been along the same lines as the grizzly bear and Himalayan brown bear. Enriching terrain is more important for bears in captivity.

The best place for polar bears in Planet Zoo is Sandbox Mode with animal welfare turned off. Then you can build a habitat to your heart's content without worrying about space.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
LillidarAn said:
Why is that? I've never had issues with polar bears in franchise.
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Yes I understand that you specifically have a very positive viewpoint of the way Frontier handled the polar bear. It should be clear by now that few others share that viewpoint. As I've heard it most Franchise players don't bother with it because it's simply too expensive in new zoos with virtually no return on the investment. You need to create a massive habitat for only a couple of bears and then keep up the cost of feeding (which IIRC is also inflated on them, or at least was). Pretty sure this is the reason there are so few non-Frontier polar bears in the Franchise market.

In any case while I appreciate that you don't mind the "unique challenge" of the polar bear you should realise that most people don't see it that way. Personally I don't play Franchise so it really doesn't matter to me (because as I said, Sandbox is better for this sort of thing anyway), but I absolutely understand other people's frustration with it.
 

onk

onk
I agree. It's a zoo game, and therefore it should have reasonable requirements that consider it's a zoo in a probably more or less urban area, people should be able to see the animals without binoculars. Also, subsidized or not, it needs to make money or at least not super huge losses. So it's always a compromise.

Maybe it would make sense, if there would be some kind of nature park mode. But, this would require totally different economics, keepers that have cars, no power and water treatment. Or at least with far bigger bubbles, and so on ...so on ...so on....
 

Nioell

Nioell
Agree, and for me it's also not some kind of challenge simply because you have to slap down a habitat that is insanely large compared to everything else we have in the game. A challenge would be if we had to build special enrichment for them that contains different things, more landscaping requirements etc. maybe even special staff or whatever to keep them happy. Maybe they could even get bored of their substrate and the foliage in the habitat as well so you have to take care of that and make sure there's always something new to keep them interested. But right now all it does is make your zoo and habitat look extremely unrealistic and barren without posing any real challenge when it comes to their actual husbandry.
 

Valinor

V
I don't even have the Arctic expansion, but I looked up the space requirements for polar bears in PZ and laughed when I realized that they require nearly 3 times more space than 2 African elephants. That's insane. Sorry, no other word for it.

Similarly, the hippo space requirements need looking into. The fact that a complete group of hippos (1 male and 29 females) require a habitat 31,124m^2 is utterly ludicrous. According to PZ, you can keep the same number of Indian elephants in an enclosure only 7,851‬m^2. lol
 

ShadowLilly

ShadowLilly
Valinor said:
The fact that a complete group of hippos (1 male and 29 females) require a habitat 31,124m^2 is utterly ludicrous. According to PZ, you can keep the same number of Indian elephants in an enclosure only 7,851‬m^2. lol
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Different animals have different needs ;)
 

Dinocanid

D
LillidarAn said:
Different animals have different needs ;)
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Doesn't change the fact that it's, well, ludicrous. On the subject of polar bear exhibits, I have one in franchise mode. While it's not hard for me to take care of them, that doesn't mean the space they require isn't ridiculously high. The polar bear exhibit is larger than any of the exhibits for my other predators, sometimes even multiple predator exhibits combine. It's not a challenge, it's just odd, and it's not even in line with real zoos. Although it's kinda of a "have your cake and eat it too" situation that frontier is trying to push with conservation, but it falls flat
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Dinocanid said:
Although it's kinda of a "have your cake and eat it too" situation that frontier is trying to push with conservation, but it falls flat
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That in itself always bugged me. I don't know why they decided to make that call on just the polar bear and not other animals. I mean, in the wild wolves range pretty god-damn far yet the Arctic wolf's requirements weren't anymore ridiculous than those of the timber wolf. Arctic wolves are also facing similar challenges to polar bears in terms of conservation, what with climate change and so on, yet they get no special treatment.
 

Valinor

V
LillidarAn said:
Different animals have different needs ;)
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Well, yes. Obviously. But that doesn't explain why Frontier decided these silly illogical space requirements would be the best way of showing this fact. No accredited zoo in its right mind would even consider keeping 30 Indian elephants in a space that size. There's no good reason for 30 hippos to get 7.6 acres of space when the same number of Indian elephants only get 2 acres (!) And 2 polar bears requiring 3 times the space of 2 African elephants is just as insane. If Frontier is going to explain away these inconsistencies, they need to come up with a far better argument than, "hur dur, different animals = different size enclosures".
 

Dinocanid

D
softhunterdevil said:
I searched online and found this article ... where it is mentioned that Polar Bear needs at least 8000 mtr sq space. And other strict requirements.

Captive polar bears – Bear Conservation

www.bearconservation.org.uk www.bearconservation.org.uk
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True (nobody's denying that iirc), but in the terms of the game it comes across as tone deaf that they try to push these requirements for polar bears and no other animal. Maybe if they made a "hardcore mode" where you basically have to build the equivalent of a wildlife reserve for every animal then it would make sense, but it doesn't make any sense when they pick and choose. A game pushing conservation and releasing animals back to the wild, not actually committing to that. (Also realistically the animals we release would most likely die quickly without survival training but that's another discussion)
 

Valinor

V
softhunterdevil said:
I searched online and found this article ... where it is mentioned that Polar Bear needs at least 8000 mtr sq space. And other strict requirements.

Captive polar bears – Bear Conservation

www.bearconservation.org.uk www.bearconservation.org.uk
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That's interesting, but it still doesn't explain why Frontier decided to die on this hill for polar bears alone, to the exclusion of any other animal in the game. It's incredibly inconsistent. If players are used to keeping three adult cheetahs in 927m^2, or 10(!) adult African elephants in a space that is SMALLER than that required for TWO polar bears, of course they're going to complain that this huge space allotment for polar bears is ridiculous.

All I'm asking for, personally, is consistency in-game without the arrogance that Frontier trots out with its polar bear (and hippo) supremacy. lol
 

softhunterdevil

softhunterdevil
Valinor said:
That's interesting, but it still doesn't explain why Frontier decided to die on this hill for polar bears alone, to the exclusion of any other animal in the game. It's incredibly inconsistent. If players are used to keeping three adult cheetahs in 927m^2, or 10(!) adult African elephants in a space that is SMALLER than that required for TWO polar bears, of course they're going to complain that this huge space allotment for polar bears is ridiculous.

All I'm asking for, personally, is consistency in-game without the arrogance that Frontier trots out with its polar bear (and hippo) supremacy. lol
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Please see the page for details polar bear enrichments. http://www.bearconservation.org.uk/captive-bear-welfare/
Frontier actually followed everything to the point for Polar bears.
I dont know where the got these guides for all the animals.

However as you people discussed, and yesterday I also built one Polar bear habitat, it is huge space taking up equivalent to atleast 3 different habitats.May be for the games sake Frontier could have kept half of actual (3000 mtr ground and 1000 mtr water).
Also I noticed Polar Bears come under stress a lot when the crowd is viewing it. I had to build shelter and crowd path little far away to reduce it. And also as soon as cub was born, again problem started with space requirement. So even a small cub is having lot of space requirement.
 
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DrBurrito

DrBurrito
softhunterdevil said:
Please see the page for details polar bear enrichments. http://www.bearconservation.org.uk/captive-bear-welfare/
Frontier actually followed everything to the point for Polar bears.
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Bear Conservation org. does indeed give out a valuable welfare message that polar bears do actually need a lot of space. However they don't claim other animals don't and would be ok with tiny spaces in captivity. I believe this inconsistency is what is off-putting for a lot of people. By consistency I don't mean all animals should have the exact same space requirements or even similar. But when a brown bear is assigned similar spatial requirements to a Nile monitor and an Indian elephant to a Komodo dragon, it is human nature to start thinking and compare different animals and their space requirements and try to understand whether it is fair or not.

Polar bears are indeed one of the animals that do relatively poorly captivity with inadequate space and enrichment, and thus stereotypic behavior is quite common in captive polar bears. Sadly many facilities are poorly managed, and their enclosures are inadequate. Organizations like Bear Conservation org. are therefore vital in raising awareness for animal welfare, but as I've said before, their area of focus is specific, thus a game that features a wide array of animals needs o see the bigger picture.
 
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