What are some good starting animals?

[CactusCraze]

I know warthogs, ostriches, turtles are good to start with but what about after that? In my last zoo I ended up going into the red because I expanded too fast with too hard to take care of animals. Ended up taking a break because of that. And yes I know sandbox is an option but its not what im looking for.

[Sreve]

Peafowls are good starting Animals. You can let guests walk through the their Area and get some easy donations.

You can also use Flamingos but they get stressed by large crowds in my experience.

[C00lCucumber]

Timber wolf, peafowls, Crocs, lemurs .... Mostley the smaller animals becourse they don't need to much space and aren't to expensive in feeding

[legione]

if you stick to the min population every animal is fine, you just need to be careful when you want huge herd\pack\pride of animals.

[kesi96]

I think if you don´t start with the most interesting animals like lions and apes you are fine, because they need to be fed with expensive food. I usually start with some herbivores, tapirs, pronghorn, antelopes, gazelles or anything like this. Or the animals already mentioned.

[j-klim]

I like doing American Bison with Pronghorns early on. Pretty inexpensive habitat to set up and you can do a very basic safari ride through it to make some easy cash. Just be careful to give the Pronghorn space to hide, they get stressed easily.

[sandelwood16]

African wild dogs are great. They are popular with guests, hardly ever get stressed as long as their needs are met and breed quickly, and have a lot of babies at a time. Sell or release the babies as soon as they mature. I started a franchise with them, a couple of exhibits and turtles and made money in no time. I was shortly able to move the dogs over a bit and place lions in their habitat, then add four type of herbivores and two more cats, with a very small set up and still lots of room to expand. That zoo is making money in the hundred millions, can expand and decorate til my hearts content.

[Sclurp]

A tip for you if you're struggling with money, don't build barriers! Create habitats with null barriers and ground paths with railings (which actually prevent animals from escaping). Guests get a great view and you don't have to pay for the cost of construction and then maintanence.

[MrRaccoon08]

advarks work great as starters

[christian_zockt]

all animals in vivariums are great to start with.

[chloelp456123]

Any animal that eats pellets or grains or other cheap foods but also has a high appeal rating is the best to start with, because they cost almost nothing to keep and generate tons of income. I like to go for aardvark, giant ant eater, red panda, and a tortoise to start with normally.

I typically make a small starter zoo off to the side with the four animal types that is shaped in a square with 4 quadrants, with all the staff facilities in the middle out of the way from the people. Let that run for like 5-10 years until you have around $500,000. (also NEVER forget the donation bins, they are key to making any money, ive forgotten and been so confused lol)

Then you go and build the beginnings of the real final layout of the zoo and start moving animals over to that. But you dont want to go crazy and buy a bunch of animals and build a bunch of stuff after u have ur 500000 because u gotta make sure you still have a good balance of income and expense and its easy to mess that up by getting excited and adopting a bunch of animals and building a whole bunch right after u make ur big sum of money, just do it very gradually to keep things going smoothly. Hope this is helpful. Planet zoo isnt super beginner friendly, took me a lot of trial and error zoos and youtube tutorials to figure out this formula, but it works really well if you do it right.

[poop77]

Originally posted by ZzcactuszZ:

I know warthogs, ostriches, turtles are good to start with but what about after that? In my last zoo I ended up going into the red because I expanded too fast with too hard to take care of animals. Ended up taking a break because of that. And yes I know sandbox is an option but its not what im looking for.

warthogs ostrich are bad lowest apeall possible. red panda one of best

[poop77]

Originally posted by j-klim:

I like doing American Bison with Pronghorns early on. Pretty inexpensive habitat to set up and you can do a very basic safari ride through it to make some easy cash. Just be careful to give the Pronghorn space to hide, they get stressed easily.

both 1 k apeall that is very bad

[poop77]

Originally posted by kesi96:

I think if you don´t start with the most interesting animals like lions and apes you are fine, because they need to be fed with expensive food. I usually start with some herbivores, tapirs, pronghorn, antelopes, gazelles or anything like this. Or the animals already mentioned.

They won't be able to afford those lion and apes those 1k credits apiece. all the animals you said don't have 2k apeall so not that good

[poop77]

peafowl good because even tho low apeall breed like flies.

[KinLaLa]

1) start with any animal that is adopted with cash and start breeding
(go for animals that require less space and short live period, that makes C.C. faster)

2) release every offspring from them until you store enough cash for a pair cheetah

3) breed the cheetah until they die, store 1 male and 1 female into the storage, release any other offspring for C.C.

4) use C.C. to buy new cheetahs to mate your existing cheetah in storage, preventing inbreeding

5) Repeat 3-4, you can do more than 1 habitat, buy better quality if you can afford the C.C., the release C.C. will also be better

6) when you have enough C.C., use the same method on tigers and lions to earn even more C.C.

I have used this method to collect 400k C.C. for now, starting my franchise mode from less than 1 week ago, it is that a pair of cheetahs, tigers or lions can always make profit even you buy them from the market and release every offspring

now my target is gene 100*4 tigers, lions actually easier to breed since 1 habitat can have many female lions to breed at the same time, making the breeding process much faster, just it will be a higher burden to your finance in the park (heavy food cost)