Wolves live in packs, not couples

So this is something that has been really bugging me about the game. I've been having a lot of fun with it until I adopted my first wolves. A couple of them, because that was all I could afford at the time. I built them a huge exhibit in anticipation of the pack growing and everything was great. They had their first pup and I thought, awesome, they're starting their pack now. But then the pup grew up and all hell broke loose. The wolves started constantly fighting because for some reason the game thinks wolves should only live in pairs or alone. The zoopedia even says about group size 1-2 animals, up to 1 male, up to 1 female. I'm sorry but that is wrong and ridiculous.

Since the pup grew up I never have all three wolves on display anymore because one is constantly carried off by the vets due to injuries, and because of that there's virtually no chance of getting any more pups. And they're not even fighting over alpha status. It's a free for all in there. Alpha male vs alpha female, alpha male vs pup, alpha female vs pup, they basically attack whoever is closest to them on sight, and the game says it's because of "invorrect number of animals in the habitat." Yet there's only three of them and they're all related. This shouldn't be happening. The wiki has it right, group size should be anywhere from 2-12 wolves. They're not solitary animals. If this was done because it was easier to do it this way than to simulate the hierarchy of a wolf pack then I'd rather have a wolf pack with no hierarchies like in the old Zoo Tycoon games than only a pair of rabid wolves who'll attack anything like mad if they happen to have a pup. Please fix this devs.
 
A lot real life animal behavior is wrong in this the way interacted with others as species such as wolf suppose be in the pack or even hippos barley in water during the day when in real life hippos spends all day in water so the sun does not burn their sensitive skin during the day.
 
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A lot of “alpha” behaviors on the game are wrong (most animals seems to take the social behavior of lions for some reason?), but wolves are particularly infuriating. Especially when alphas in wolves was debunked years ago and so many harm have been done forcing them to act like the “alpha hierarchy” media displays, when in reality wolves just like to live with their family and take care of each other. Overall it’s just a shame.

(I’m salty because this particular misconception affects dog training too, creating terrible “trainers” like Cesar Millar).
 
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A lot of “alpha” behaviors on the game are wrong (most animals seems to take the social behavior of lions for some reason?), but wolves are particularly infuriating. Especially when alphas in wolves was debunked years ago and so many harm have been done forcing them to act like the “alpha hierarchy” media displays, when in reality wolves just like to live with their family and take care of each other. Overall it’s just a shame.

(I’m salty too because this particular misconception affects dog training too, creating terrible “trainers” like Cesar Millar).
I am so glad you said that about 'alphas'. (y)
 
A lot of “alpha” behaviors on the game are wrong (most animals seems to take the social behavior of lions for some reason?), but wolves are particularly infuriating. Especially when alphas in wolves was debunked years ago and so many harm have been done forcing them to act like the “alpha hierarchy” media displays, when in reality wolves just like to live with their family and take care of each other. Overall it’s just a shame.

(I’m salty too because this particular misconception affects dog training too, creating terrible “trainers” like Cesar Millar).

Totally right.It seems like they just used the alpha tag,alpha behavior and slapped it onto almost every animal.Alpha Thomson's gazelle,alpha warthog,alpha springbok..
 
To add to it, even if some of the herd species do have alphas sometimes, their concept of alpha is “helps the group to decide where to go sometimes and is especially invested in protecting it from predators”. That’s it. They don’t fight with other males (they want them there, a big herd is a safe herd!), they don’t go around beating up everyone unless they can bang it. The considered alpha is only so because it’s particularly strong and so can do an attempt to fight predators in extreme conditions, but otherwise it’s a title with absolutely no bearing most of the time.

Some of these animals fight in mating seasons, but even then they very rarely actually hurt each other. Gazelles, antelopes, wildebeest, buffalos...they love mixed big groups. They like having company and it’s not limited to family like most canids. There’s no reason for them to fight, much less to hurt and kill each other.

Again, all these animals are taking the lion social structure of only one male, a group of females; and it’s completely unrealistic. The others that don’t take on only one male, one female (like wolves) which is also heavily inaccurate. For a game that should be teaching me about animals, it’s astounding how much is wrong.
 
Its kinda annoying.

As soon as a male animal grows up to an adulescent animal it will just take a few seconds and you see the notification: animals fighting for alpha position.

And if you dont take one of the males out of the exhibit, itll continue all the time.

With around 100 animals in my zoo now, im watching all the time into the nots, if there an animal is growing up, so i have to take it out. All the time and all the time again. Build a new exhibit and enjoy watching my new animals. suddenly: "wait, ive got to look if theres animal i have to take out cause it grew up."

After some time youre losing yourself in micromanagement and sometimes im afraid to let the game move on. Cause if im not reacting, animald start fighting, getting on low welfare our just starving, because they dont get their part of the food. Its pretty stressfull and sometimes i cant really enjoy it.
 
I was gonna make a separate thread about this but this seems like the right place - alpha behaviour definitely isn't perfect. I specifically agree with the previous post - alphas challenging one another happens in nature too and is not worth clogging up the animal alerts system.
 
Well at least on all those Antelopes, Bovines etc. it fits.

It's kinda weird that the African Wild Dogs are allowed to pack, but the wolves aren't.
My Wild Dogs in beta would constantly fight if there was more than 2 adults. Haven't tried them in release yet though.
 
Pretty sure itll be the same. Happens in all of my exhibits where just one male is allowed in the group related to social requirements.

By the way: kinda funny: the max population of gorillas is set to 6 adulescents animals. Ive got one male and 5 females (and 4 childrend). Nevertheless some of the females are fighting sometimes and i get a not that its related to a population that is too high.

Looking at the social needs of the animals theres no problem.
 
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To add to it, even if some of the herd species do have alphas sometimes, their concept of alpha is “helps the group to decide where to go sometimes and is especially invested in protecting it from predators”. That’s it. They don’t fight with other males (they want them there, a big herd is a safe herd!), they don’t go around beating up everyone unless they can bang it. The considered alpha is only so because it’s particularly strong and so can do an attempt to fight predators in extreme conditions, but otherwise it’s a title with absolutely no bearing most of the time.

Some of these animals fight in mating seasons, but even then they very rarely actually hurt each other. Gazelles, antelopes, wildebeest, buffalos...they love mixed big groups. They like having company and it’s not limited to family like most canids. There’s no reason for them to fight, much less to hurt and kill each other.

Again, all these animals are taking the lion social structure of only one male, a group of females; and it’s completely unrealistic. The others that don’t take on only one male, one female (like wolves) which is also heavily inaccurate. For a game that should be teaching me about animals, it’s astounding how much is wrong.
Absolutely spot on. Most of the herd animals live in herds of hundreds of individuals which, surprise surprise, aren't all female. It's stupid that I need to constantly ship out my Bison or Pronghorn males because they fight non-stop with everyone as soon as they grow up. The game seems to be very limited and incorrect when it comes to proper animal behaviours right now.
 
Its kinda annoying.

As soon as a male animal grows up to an adulescent animal it will just take a few seconds and you see the notification: animals fighting for alpha position.

And if you dont take one of the males out of the exhibit, itll continue all the time.

With around 100 animals in my zoo now, im watching all the time into the nots, if there an animal is growing up, so i have to take it out. All the time and all the time again. Build a new exhibit and enjoy watching my new animals. suddenly: "wait, ive got to look if theres animal i have to take out cause it grew up."

After some time youre losing yourself in micromanagement and sometimes im afraid to let the game move on. Cause if im not reacting, animald start fighting, getting on low welfare our just starving, because they dont get their part of the food. Its pretty stressfull and sometimes i cant really enjoy it.
I'm not even that close to 100 animals yet and I have started to have this problem where I'm constantly in the clunky trade center menus shipping out every young animal that grew up instead of enjoying building my park and watching my animals. Wrong as it would be, I honestly wouldn't mind right now if two animals fight for "alpha" status once, and that's it. The loser loses once and for all and never tries again.
 
The sad thing is that exactly that "one male -several female" or polygamy formula is applied to almost every animal in the game.

To be fair, you can have habitats with a single sex and then they don't fight, because there is nothing to fight for.
The behavior of animals in Zoos is different in the wild, mostly because of the small amount of space and the unnatural environment.

Absolutely spot on. Most of the herd animals live in herds of hundreds of individuals which, surprise surprise, aren't all female. It's stupid that I need to constantly ship out my Bison or Pronghorn males because they fight non-stop with everyone as soon as they grow up. The game seems to be very limited and incorrect when it comes to proper animal behaviours right now.

These large herds are also living on a much bigger area, group-dynamics change because of the limited amount of space.
And in the wild animals will die because of fights for mating. Zoos will try to avoid that for obvious reasons.


Managing a Zoo means trading and exchanging animals a lot.
Or having multiple exhibits to separate the groups for safety.
 
These large herds are also living on a much bigger area, group-dynamics change because of the limited amount of space.
And in the wild animals will die because of fights for mating. Zoos will try to avoid that for obvious reasons.
I see your point, but it's still irrelevant. I'm sure no one here is asking to be able to have exhibits with hundreds of animals in them. The point is that animals behave in a highly unrealsitc and unwarranted way. Their agressiveness has been heavily overstated. In the game if you have anything other than 1 male x females, or 1 male 1 female in some cases, you're asking for trouble. There will be no peace. This is obviously not what happens in zoos, especially when a lot of the environmental stresses from living in the wild are removed from animals.

They had this same problem with JWE I seem to recall. When the game released I remember people complaining that dinosaurs would be too agressive and attack anything on sight. I'm not sure if they fixed that, but it's unfortunate they would commit the same mistake again in another game.
 
I definitely second this. For all the supposed research that was done on animal behavior, there is no reason why a wolf pack should only have a maximum of one male and female. Not realistic in the least. The Druids in Yellowstone have been documented with over 35 individuals in the past.
 
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