Why are some animals sitting right next to food and yet starving?

Indiglow · Nov 11, 2019

Seems to happen a lot with peafowls. They starve and they are sitting or napping next to food. They then stand up and just walk by the food as if they can't see it. Yet it's right there and full. The food is accessible (as peafowls have been eating there for years) and it just walks right on by.

Do some animals just refuse to eat and starve themselves?

Urufu1997 · Nov 11, 2019

Indiglow said:
Seems to happen a lot with peafowls. They starve and they are sitting or napping next to food. They then stand up and just walk by the food as if they can't see it. Yet it's right there and full. The food is accessible (as peafowls have been eating there for years) and it just walks right on by.

Do some animals just refuse to eat and starve themselves?

I had this Problem with my Flamingos. The starving ones seemed to eat again after I placed more Foodbowls in the Enclosure (or maybe every Flamingo that was starving just died. But I think they began to eat after that)

Robbierotten · Nov 11, 2019

I had a hippo and flamingo die of dehydration today while they were in an exhibit that was about 75% water. Water was clean and accessible. Animals in this game just refuse to drink/eat.

Snufkin · Nov 11, 2019

I also had this problem with my flamingo habitat, and my mixed springbok and ostrich habitat. It seems like an enclosure is ok for ages and then suddenly, without anything changing, it just implodes - all of the animals start starving while there are bowls of food perfectly available in the same places they've always been, animals start phasing through the fences every 2 minutes and getting stuck outside and then starving, it's a bloodbath. I just ended up releasing/selling all the animals and putting something else in the habitat instead. Personally, from the two times I've seen it happen, I think it seems to be linked to relatively populated enclosures (like 20 animals or more). Although you're supposed to be able to have like 500 flamingos or something so I don't see the game coping well with that.

Wolfen75 · Nov 11, 2019

Put the animals in the quarantine for some time.
For me this fixed the rare issues of hunger strikes.

Dae · Nov 14, 2019

I have to say that even after the update the starving animal issue is not fixed. I had an alert for a baby ring tail lemur hungry (50% need) and followed it... it just wandered aimlessly in the habitat though there was food available. I finally had to send it to quarantine to avoid a starving death...

howardbells · Nov 14, 2019

Agree that this is not fixed. I have seen an animal swimming in the pond and being thirsty. Same with the food. They sit right next to it and yet starve.

Kai · Nov 14, 2019

Same here. Seems to me like my tiger cubs can bug out if I have a restraint feeder and/or pumpkin enrichments in the enclosure.
They just stop eating from anything until I QT them; not had any issues with using the pinyata, at least.

Crea_TivELA · Nov 14, 2019

I had this issue when I putted a roof above the feeding bowls, made a thread for it, but no one answered, so I thought it was just a random bug on scenario 4.

I had it with the bears, the peacocks, the turtles and the ungulate habitat... I just wanted to keep the food bowls "save" of rain & snow. The keepers where filling up the food, my animals sleept and played under it and had fully access to the bowls, but they started to starve while they were standing right nèxt to the filled bowl, they never had one bite from it and the food got bad.

This not "eating-starving thing" stopped right after I pulled out the food bowls into the free again, out of the roofed building and out of the pangolas I made.

I used ingame roofs and selfmade ones, all buildings were different made and fully accessable to the animals and keepers, so that wasn't the reason.
I lost one peacock on that

sad, but it could have been worse I think... .

After the new update now, I'll restart scenario 4 and will try if it's still happening there. Would help if someone else found that "bug" or if someone knows it's a random problem that can occure.

I'll inform you here if I could test it again in Scenario 4 (maybe it's just an issue there

)... I'm sure it worked in my franchise zoo in beta pretty fine.

Kai · Nov 14, 2019

Crea_TivELA said:
I had this issue when I putted a roof above the feeding bowls, made a thread for it, but no one answered, so I thought it was just a random bug on scenario 4.

I had it with the bears, the peacocks, the turtles and the ungulate habitat... I just wanted to keep the food bowls "save" of rain & snow. The keepers where filling up the food, my animals sleept and played under it and had fully access to the bowls, but they started to starve while they were standing right nèxt to the filled bowl, they never had one bite from it and the food got bad.

This not "eating-starving thing" stopped right after I pulled out the food bowls into the free again, out of the roofed building and out of the pangolas I made.

I used ingame roofs and selfmade ones, all buildings were different made and fully accessable to the animals and keepers, so that wasn't the reason.
I lost one peacock on that sad, but it could have been worse I think... .

After the new update now, I'll restart scenario 4 and will try if it's still happening there. Would help if someone else found that "bug" or if someone knows it's a random problem that can occure.

I'll inform you here if I could test it again in Scenario 4 (maybe it's just an issue there )... I'm sure it worked in my franchise zoo in beta pretty fine.

Interesting. My lions feeder is also under the same roof and had no issues on their side. Wonder if it's somehow related to the the tigers ignoring the rain, while the lions always go hide under shelter. If they bug out again I'll try deleting/placing a feeder away from the roof.

Annageckos · Nov 14, 2019

I've had this with peafowl the other day. Today it was dehydration with the peafowl. I always put a natural water source for my animals and they are all filtered. I got the notification about the peafowl needing water and checked the pond, all was good. Added a water bowl and they all raced to the pond to drink.

Agathorn · Nov 14, 2019

From what

Kai said:
Same here. Seems to me like my tiger cubs can bug out if I have a restraint feeder and/or pumpkin enrichments in the enclosure.
They just stop eating from anything until I QT them; not had any issues with using the pinyata, at least.

From what I have seen baby tigers/lions will NOT eat from cetain enichment items such as the blood pumpkin. One more reaso why the keepers only fillign cetain items sucks.

Crea_TivELA · Nov 14, 2019

Kai said:
Interesting. My lions feeder is also under the same roof and had no issues on their side. Wonder if it's somehow related to the the tigers ignoring the rain, while the lions always go hide under shelter. If they bug out again I'll try deleting/placing a feeder away from the roof.

It worked for me (I think still it's a very strange thing if it is because of the roofs)... maybe what happend to me helps you (and others) in the future. After I pulled the food bowls out, all the animald were running to it, like they didn't realize there was food there before and likd if the keeper just brought them new food.

I send a update to this weird thing when I tried it again on scenario 4... maybe the issue stopped with the new update or it is just related to scenario 4 (what would be strange too

). I'll tell you

Dae · Nov 14, 2019

In my case trays and enrichment items are not covered (thought I thought of doing it) so it's a different issue. Except if changing the place of the item reset it. If you place again the food inside will the bug repeat?

Crea_TivELA · Nov 14, 2019

Dae said:
In my case trays and enrichment items are not covered (thought I thought of doing it) so it's a different issue. Except if changing the place of the item reset it. If you place again the food inside will the bug repeat?

I didn't try that, I was happy the animals were eating again

I'll try it later and tell you

Kai · Nov 14, 2019

I mean some of the notifications are just silly. Like this for example: why on earth is it complaining it's thirsty?! I don't get why this is even a thing.

Jileha · Nov 14, 2019

It’s an extremely frustrating experience. In my first Beta zoo, a warthog piglet practically died in my arms right next to the filled food bowl. Sniff!

I have a theory: Frontier mentioned in one of their talks that the animals “learn” and remember where their food sources are located in their habitat. Based on that info and the message I got in my crowded flamingo habitat (not enough feeders for all the animals - although there was plenty of food available), I suspect that there is a certain ratio between food sources and animals and maybe also a certain usage ratio between food sources and animals. I.e. when an animal is born, it has to find its food source and remember its location. Maybe it will always go back to that location, and if it’s being used by too many other animals, it cannot use it. Maybe animals can claim a specific food source as “theirs” until all available spots are claimed, so a newcomer won’t be able to use it (or “find” it) once the max number of animals is reached - even if the feeder is filled and no other animal is currently using it.

Since I couldn’t add more of the large feeding platforms (under food enrichment) for my flamingos, I placed a couple more standard bowls in the habitat and things markedly improved. This could be a coincidence, but check it out and let us know if placing more food sources changes anything for you!

Crea_TivELA · Nov 17, 2019

Hey I just tried what I wanted and yes they refuse to eat again, when I place the bowls under a roof/pagola. When I move it out they start to eat again. It's really weird - you can see they walk right next to the filled bowls, but won't eat as long I have the bowls under the roof.

Like I said: It happens in scenario 4 in career mode, I can't tell if it's happening somewhere else - because I only played career since launch. It can be reproduced by simply moving the food bowls under a roof.

Issue Tracker Ticket: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/10019

danagamer7 · Nov 18, 2019

Indiglow said:
Seems to happen a lot with peafowls. They starve and they are sitting or napping next to food. They then stand up and just walk by the food as if they can't see it. Yet it's right there and full. The food is accessible (as peafowls have been eating there for years) and it just walks right on by.

Do some animals just refuse to eat and starve themselves?

I have been having similar issues. My Gharial's were starving so I put them next to the food and they would not eat. My keepers kept filling the food enrichment item only too.

Crea_TivELA · Nov 18, 2019

They filled the normal food bowls in my case and the enrichment items. The problem occured just when the bowls and items where roofed up

since the last update everything was filled up fine and Frontier wrote that enrichment items would be filled first.

The Keepers take a particular amount of food to the habitats, so that every animal has enough food. When you gave plenty enrichment items in your habitat already, the amount could already be used up for this, so you won't see food in normal bowls.

I usually do not have more than one enrichment item in a habitat, especially because animals will get bored of those and playable items... and they need to be changed regularly to keep the animals happy.
Maybe my explaination helps in your case - maybe you give it a try.