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Any animals breeding will keep fresh meat just one click away.
Caravan animals allow you to take more things to sell at nearby settlements, some even increase caravan speed.
Some can be trained for combat, and even to haul.
Sheep produce wool, for clothes, sleeping bags, chairs.
Muffalo are a caravan animal that I think also creates wool.
My favorite is elephants, they can be trained to haul and fight and carry a decent amount in your caravans, and they don't need to be pulled on a leash. They can feed themselves on grass, but you need to zone them out of your crops. You can set them to do all the hauling outside the safety of your walls, keeping colonists safer. When they die (or you slaughter extras) you get lots of hide and meat, as well as tusks for more trade value.
The rest is more or less for roleplay. Two exceptions: chinchillas, as they have the "best" material to build chairs and couches from - and boomalopes for the chemfuel, as one would fuel like 2 generators. Niche would be hauling animals - but imho they´re not worth it. And any animals which should eat corpses are obsolete if You have harbinger trees. For fighting there are better options than animals, but it would also work if You mass breed elephants or rhinos or something like it - but all these need constant training, so You need work time for them...
Ibex and sheep are mediocre - all probably worse than horses for leather and meat, while not being pack animals. Muffalos are roleplay for colder biomes.
In the end it´s about the leather color You want for Your chairs and stuff. I for myself do iguanas now, because they give green leather - and dromedaries, because i play kinda muslims in the desert, and they give 130% travel speed...
For chicken You need so many that the game might lag only because of them - if You want them for food - and they give no leather.
TL;DR:
Actually "best" would be to be vegetarian, as the food source is the most stable one. And then keep a couple of horses for traveling, while they also breed, so You always have some - and then use that leather for Your chairs, which is a nice and neutral brown - and use the meat to produce mixed fine meals.
Of course it depends on the playstyle - but i didn´t find carry weight an issue for caravans.
Other animals are garbage sadly
You can sort by nutrition efficiency.
Best is probably the horse at it can be used for caravan speed and be used for food, but it depends on what you mean by best.
By Best I mean overall use to play easier.Seem I have to kill all Ibex and sheep.Oh BTW I got quest that give me one sanguophage colonist and it seeem I can make another one become sanguophage due to quest reward should I accept him to join my colony and take quest reward.I've read about it but still don't know is it worth cause I play with tunnel meme.
In the end You can use any animal in the game, but You asked for "best" - whatever that should be. I´d say: go for the color of their stuff. Muffalo leather is light blue, and their wool almost white. Since You can´t use dye on these chairs - or the stuff made out of leather.
The best leather is thrumbo fur. Or hyperweave. Then comes devilstrand and rhino leather - or perhaps dread leather. Then is the plainleather stuff, which is like "normal", while camelhide has better heat protection and muffalo leather better cold protection. I forgot about heavy fur, which is also better than plainleather.
One could also say that only light leather and patch leather and the like are worse - like human skin, or pig skin, or bird skin - like these are the stuff to use to get money via crafting hats, dusters, or corsets - or if You like the color.
Both are pack animals that are also milkable. Yaks can survive most winters on most maps without heated barns, unlike cows. Camels are milkable and are also ridable. If you don't need milk or meat, horses generally outperform most pack animals for the simple fact that they are also ridable and are easy to tame.
For a rancher playstyle, you'll also want a decently efficient source of meat. Yaks can do that too, but something like an Ibex is better for this specific purpose. Chickens can also be used for this, but while it's resource efficient, it's rarely work efficient, although chickens can also give you eggs. Chickens also can't handle extreme temperatures, but they have other uses such as shamblerbait and satisfying killthirst.
For attack animals, Megaspiders are almost certainly the best in terms of training efficiency to strength ratio, but you can't breed them. If you plan to breed attack animals, you might actually be better off just using huskies even though they aren't that formidable, simply because they require so little training. If you have REALLY good trainers and plenty of food, then elephants are better if you just want a big tanky animal to block enemies so you can toss grenades over them. It helps that elephants are also pack animals. Overall though clawer dryads sort of outperform all attack animals assuming that's the only thing you want those animals to do, largely because you can use a blind or otherwise useless pawn to generate and command dryads while you usually need a very high animal stat to make good use of most attack animals.
If you want cannon fodder animals. Surprisingly rats are the best choice. They take a lot of work since you need a lot of them, but they are easy to replace. 2 animal trainers can probably maintain about 50 rats and then you can zone them into an area to distract mechanoids or raiders for a while. Even if you fail to maintain them and they become wild again, it's not a big deal to just tame them again.
As much as I like rancher ideologies, the fact is that animals aren't a very efficient thing to focus on. You are usually better off just using some pen animals for pack animals or rides, and maybe having one species just for food production if you have enough space for a pen. As fun as attack animals are, they are almost always an inefficient waste of time, especially compared to mechanoids, trooper squads, allied reinforcements, etc. Heck, you can just use an animal pulsar if you want to sic animals on raiders, with the benefit that since you don't own the animals they won't count for colony wealth.
Material animals are situational depending on the environment.
^^ 100% correct, I confirm this. Also adding that chinchillas fur is the best cold protection material if you want to max that.
Boomalopes are great if you have the space for them but they are dangerous animals to keep as the die of old age and explode. One random indoor death will cause a crazy fire if you don't have foam systems installed in that area.
Honorable mention to Waste rats generally and specifically in toxic biomes because they don't need feeding and breed like crazy, I released 87 on mechaniods one time, 50+ deaths but no thinking required and tons of meat after. Training them is the only notable cost, keeping 50+ trained is hectic. Animal specialist makes this easier to manage. So meat/leather/disposable fodder. You will have to restrict their zones to the entire map minus Homes and fields to avoid rapid dirt buildup and them eating key crops.
vampires are something i usually theme a playthrough around, but you really don't have to. their coagulate ability alone makes them borderline OP, instantly treating wounds. keeping enough blood can become an issue early on, but get a couple prisoners (optionally, take their legs so you dont have to worry about them breaking out) and their blood needs are basically covered. or just use your other pawns as blood bags to feed from, that works fine as well.
If you want leather for clothing, you are usually better getting it from hunted animals rather than pen animals, although pretty much every leather is better than wool and cloth for protection if you don't need to worry about insulation.
The best leathers are from animals that are difficult to breed specifically for leather. If you want to ranch animals for leather, usually Ibex is the best as it gives you decent plainleather and meat. It's not typically worth taming and breeding animals just for the leather without the rancher meme as eventually you'll want to move on to actual armors.
For "start a new game":
I mean You don´t need "the best". You can also go on caravan on foot, and do Your early game "armor" made of cloth. Like You need cloth anyways, and if You want to use the early game armor it´s gonna be a flak vest and a flak helmet, which both don´t need leather. And after that You go probably power armor, which also doesn´t use leather - and it doesn´t make much of a difference which material You use for Your pants and button down shirt - if it´s not about some masterwork or legenday thrumbo fur or hyperweave thing, But most likely You will get these later in a playthrough, as You need to be able to hunt or tame a couple of thrumbos for it - and You need a lvl 20 crafter with an inspiration for it, or (instead of the inspiration) the production specialist to get almost guaranteed masterwork stuff. If You set the people to anything they would actually dress into thrumbo fur instead of the same quality recon armor, but recon armor also gives no move speed penalty, unlike the flak vest - and armor is secondary if Your guys stand behind a wall, and the enemy can´t shoot at You, because they´re engaged in melee.
Like if You have legendary gear made out of hyperweave, like the pants, shirt and duster, and add a masterwork flak vest to it, You are as well protected as with good marine armor if not better, while not having the movement penalty. But in practice You don´t need it, and can go with recon, marine, or cataphract armor - or simple plainleather gear for Your workers and second line shooters. And money is not really a problem once You produce any kind of textiles.
Like go with the animals You like best. In my last game i went with muffalos and horses, while i made all my gear out of muffalo leather and wool - and used the horse leather for the chairs and couches. I also played games in which i only used wild boars, which are really bad as farm animals. Or alpacas as they are easy to tame. Like i would never start a new game, only because i wanted other animals, as one can change them - and there´s no need to have "the best" in everything, as Your enemies will all be either bad, or mediocre. They only outnumber You. Like the enemy won´t have excellent guns or armor. Occasionally they have good quality, but mostly normal or poor. They won´t have good bionics to improve them - and the only reason You "need" these is to replace "broken" parts, as else Your people would get weaker over time. But with a simple setup You can have a defense, which only injures max two, or maybe four melee people, while You destroy everyone. *Insert screenshot, of which i don´t know how to add*. Like only these melee blockers actually need good armor, while it´s not bad to have a few dedicated ranged ones if You want to attack sites or go on caravan. I like the grenadier armor, but marine would have slightly better armor. But at home You could let them run around naked, and they wouldn´t get harmed - except for some drop pod raid, or lucky shot.
Like better than any armor You can craft is the "tough" trait, as it halves the damage, which is what this armor would also do (if it´s decent quality). But You don´t need everybody - or anybody - to have that trait either - just said it to bring it into perspective. And if You want "the best" armor - You´d need legendary cataphract armor and legendary hyperweave (Or thrumbo fur, of which You probably get more) button down shirts and pants. It would take a few weeks to get this crafted, even with a lvl 20 production specialist. While it´s still possible to get one shot with it - but in very rare cases, like via a lucky charge lance attack into the heart, as the game sometimes rounds the damage up or down, and a charge lance does the most damage. Like the charge lance does 30 damage, but the heart has 15 hp - and with perfect armor it can be that the damage is only reduced by 50%, so 15 damage. Like it rolls a number between 1 and 100 and compares it to the armor value, and if it´s higher than half the armor value, it would do half the damage. So effectively You´d need 245% sharp armor to deflect any (normal quality) charge lance shot, but legendary cataphract armor has "only" 200%, which is the highest You can get, and a legendary thrumbo fur shirt has 74%, so it´s more likely that the damage wouldn´t get halved again, and the brain only has 10 hp.