Polar bear space requirements

Maky1355 · Dec 18, 2019

I posted this comment on another thread about polar bears about their space requirements and how they are ridiculous, thought I should mention it here since these are "suggestions".

May I remind some of you - it's a game... it's supposed to be fun, not as hard as real life, animals put in the game are meant to be used and their exhibits made to look nice. Like anyone here thinks it a viable idea to buy a polar bear or pretty much any wild animal... Come on "it's supposed to be hard, they're not supposed to be kept...", we've heard it all before, yea well it's still nice to see them in a game, put a red warning sign in the zoopedia !should not be kept in real zoos! and let that be the end of it.

When I loaded the game and checked the polar bear (which I was most excited about) and saw it had a 12k + 4k requirements I honestly thought the devs made a typo... I had a nice space planned out for them before I even downloaded the dlc, almost as large as my "safari" habitat, lots of water and very nice to look at too, fit well with the zoo. I check how big it is 6k and only 2k water. I never thought this would be too small for any one species. So yea... I either make a huge ugly habitat that doesn't fit in with my zoo or I just give up on my fav. animal this dlc. I'll opt for reaching out and pleading for the devs to change this to at least half the current requirement if not a third, it's still a huge space, but it's not ugly HUUUGE.

EDIT!! They just posted it'll be changed to 6+2k

AndyZoos · Dec 18, 2019

I really hope they change these requirements. It's... Much too large.

Environmentalist · Dec 20, 2019

Apparently they did change it, but it is still insanely big! It should be lowered much more.. There needs to be a standard for all animals..

Maky1355 · Dec 20, 2019

Environmentalist said:
Apparently they did change it, but it is still insanely big! It should be lowered much more.. There needs to be a standard for all animals..

Yep, but now it's sorta doable. I'm gonna experiment with underground expansion and block it off and make it so uninteresting the bears never go there.

Environmentalist · Dec 20, 2019

Maky1355 said:
Yep, but now it's sorta doable. I'm gonna experiment with underground expansion and block it off and make it so uninteresting the bears never go there.

Sure, it is doable, the original amount was also doable. But that's not the point here. We were trying to point out to the welfare of all animals. Since it isn't possible to give all animals in planet zoo a ton of space, they should all get equal treatment by having their enclosure sizes determined using the same parameters.

vanecht · Dec 21, 2019

you can do it even if the requirement was 10 times of now, but that's not the point. it doesn't make any sense.

NZFanatic · Dec 21, 2019

What's with the "polar bears shouldn't be kept in captivity" nonsense? Who on Earth started that silly notion?

Frontier gave the polar bear an insane space requirement because polar bears are the hot-button topic in the conservation world. They wanted to give the polar bear special treatment, and tried to say it was in-line with ethics (which it is not, because that's basically the same as saying that no zoo in the world is ethical if they keep polar bears).

Elephants traverse huge areas of land in the wild, yet require less space in PZ. Primates are more prone to depression and other mental illness in captivity, yet the game only allows for the most basic of enrichment items. In other words, they've applied a standard to the polar bears that isn't being met by literally any other animal in the game.

They halved the requirement, but at the very least it should be halved once more. 3000m3 would be a lot more practical, and realistic, and still ethical. The biggest thing with polar bears in captivity is not so much space, but varied terrain, hence why most new, modern enclosures showcase a variety of biomes (rocky slopes, taiga, ice cap, water, and so on). Which is another problem, because even though the current standard is to showcase polar bears in a bunch of different environments, Frontier's polar bears are only happy in a barren wasteland, which is total nonsense.

Environmentalist · Dec 22, 2019

I wish we had the chance to not keep polar bears in captivity, maybe in the future that will be possible. Right now with how global warming is taking its toll, it doesn't seem possible.

However what matters is we do have polar bears in the game right now, and their needs has to be comparable to other animals in the game, both from a gameplay and animal welfare stand point.

Polar bears are not the only animals that exhibit stereotypical stress behavior in captivity. There are many animals that are affected from stress but each has their own way of showing it. Just because for us humans polar bear behavior is easy to read doesn't make other animals less important.

NZFanatic · Dec 22, 2019

Environmentalist said:
polar bears are not the only animals that exhibit stereotypical stress behavior in captivity. There are many animals that are affected from stress but each has their own way of showing it. Just because for us humans polar bear behavior is easy to read doesn't make other animals less important.

Polar bear behaviour is not easy for humans to read and this didn't factor into Frontier's decision.

In recent years the standards for keeping captive polar bears changed dramatically. Whereas before it was fine to have a swimming pool and a land area with some toys, now zoos need to provide an area of varied terrain for the polar bears to regularly explore. Frontier believes this makes their inclusion controversial, which is false. Frontier has basically drawn the wrong conclusion from this change in regulation, believing that the new regulation meant "more space" to a huge degree when the most important part is actually "varied terrain". They seem to believe polar bears only travel on the ice-caps (hence why the habitats end up looking so dull in PZ) when in fact polar bears often frequent the taiga forests and temperate coasts as well as obviously the tundra grasslands.

So really, they ought to change the space requirement to half again, but add foliage and make the bears able to climb rocks more effectively.

Environmentalist · Dec 23, 2019

NZFanatic said:
Polar bear behaviour is not easy for humans to read and this didn't factor into Frontier's decision.

In recent years the standards for keeping captive polar bears changed dramatically. Whereas before it was fine to have a swimming pool and a land area with some toys, now zoos need to provide an area of varied terrain for the polar bears to regularly explore. Frontier believes this makes their inclusion controversial, which is false. Frontier has basically drawn the wrong conclusion from this change in regulation, believing that the new regulation meant "more space" to a huge degree when the most important part is actually "varied terrain". They seem to believe polar bears only travel on the ice-caps (hence why the habitats end up looking so dull in PZ) when in fact polar bears often frequent the taiga forests and temperate coasts as well as obviously the tundra grasslands.

So really, they ought to change the space requirement to half again, but add foliage and make the bears able to climb rocks more effectively.

It is actually very easy to spot stereotypical stress behavior when it comes to polar bears. They display extensive head bobbing and swimming/walking in circles using the same pattern, even using the exact spot on glass to push using the exact same limb in the exact same manner/angle.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJzA7Y36h_Y

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaN4cM0epP0

However this isn't the case for all animals. Some animals do not display easy to read behavior but instead become less active and live their stress internally.
This doesn't mean they don't deserve equal treatment.
Not to mention a ton of animals like other bears, big cats, elephants, rhinos, apes, etc. that also display easy to read stereotypical behavior, yet even they don't get the same treatment in planet zoo.

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