Black Tailed Prairie Dogs - Stress Issue

[JustAChillGirl]

Hoping somebody can help me out, in the zoopedia for the Prairie Dogs it says guests can enter the habitat, but when I have a walking path allowing guests in I get all these notifications about stress and welfare issues. It gets so bad that protesters show up.

So can guests enter the habitat or not, and if they can how do I do that without raising this stress issue?

[grampers62]

yeah, that can be a bit tough... I have one in my current zoo that has no issues so it can be done. So examine the details of the habitat.
Is it over sized for the number of animals? Extra space helps reduce stress.
Do you have quiet signs in and around the habitat? They really do help.
Is it a single entrance? Creating a walk through setup creates too much traffic.
Are all of the other needs for the animals met 100%? Just to eliminate other possible issues.
Is there too many males in the habitat? That isn't supposed to matter but for some reason it does.
I hope something here helps out your situation or you may have to move the habitat to a less busy place in the zoo.

[JustAChillGirl]

Publicado originalmente por grampers62:

yeah, that can be a bit tough... I have one in my current zoo that has no issues so it can be done. So examine the details of the habitat.
Is it over sized for the number of animals? Extra space helps reduce stress.
Do you have quiet signs in and around the habitat? They really do help.
Is it a single entrance? Creating a walk through setup creates too much traffic.
Are all of the other needs for the animals met 100%? Just to eliminate other possible issues.
Is there too many males in the habitat? That isn't supposed to matter but for some reason it does.
I hope something here helps out your situation or you may have to move the habitat to a less busy place in the zoo.

Thank you for all the tips. I’ll try them out and see if any help ❤️

[RunicArcher]

I have a small walkthrough Prairie Dog habitat in my current zoo, it works pretty good! They seem to repopulate really quick, so I keep a close eye on their numbers. The one habitat I always have trouble with though, in the same zoo, is a walkthrough Raccoon/Beaver habitat.... The Beavers are ALWAYS stressed... I reduced them to 1 female, 1 male, and 1 male and 1 female Raccoon also, but there's soooo many guests that go into that habitat, 2 entrances... That area of my zoo is already complete and I really don't want to redo that habitat, it looks great, I have quiet signs up, not sure what else to do... I don't allow guests to wander in that habitat, they stay on the path, I wish we could control how many guests can enter the walkthroughs...

[SLG]

Does their habitat have enough areas that they can hide from guests? It could also be that there are too many guests entering the habitat at a time.

[Roger That]

I would get that on every walk thru habitat I made like tortoises, fennec foxes, etc. Speakers with ambience noise, lots LOTS of bushy vegetation along the pathways to break line of sight, lots of verticle rocks to break line of sight, basically you have to give them a lot of areas so they can hide from visitors in a habitat that allows visitors to get up close to them.

Because of the stress thing I have found that burrows with cameras, walk ways with one way glass surrounded by habitat or overhead walkways that allow visitors to walk over rather than through the habitats, tend to help reduce frequent (and annoying) stress pop ups.

These layouts allow for the close visitor experience without the animal stress frequency that is common with a walk through habitat. It was a bit painful because I did not want to give up on the walk through habitat, I spent a lot of hours hand crafting a 'Jungle Book' like old temple for my Vladimir's Capuchins attraction. But the frequent stress pop ups while I has trying to craft another ride of exhibit.

[Varick]

Walk through habitats (not including those where roaming is enabled as that is a different situation) and animal stress can be problematic. While the game provides some tools to
help with stress, the game then falls back on "give your animals vegetation and other places to hide when they are stressed" or some such wording. The problem with this is that animals do not manage their stress. They wait until they are stressed and then try to find a place to hide, their stress goes down some, they go back in to guests' view and stress goes red, rinse and repeat. What I have found is the player has to manage the stress for the animals by using food, water, shelter, and enrichment items to force them to constantly move through stress zones (guest viewing areas) and stress free zones (guest non viewing areas). This works better with the active animals. It is also helpful to have a stress free zone that acts as a distraction area to grab entering crowds of guests' attention so they then will break off into smaller groups since unfortunately we can not limit the amount of guests.

For example, this is a screen shot from an old zoo I made with a friend. Habitat has platypus, red kangaroo, red neck wallaby, and koala. It was built in Sandbox but animal stress is not disabled. It has three major stress free zones - Over lapping boundaries which also act as distraction area, invisible shelter, and circular animal path that takes the animal out of guest's view. The screen shot shows the distraction area/stress free zone. The over lapping boundaries are with Savannah animals.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3451521667


The above animals are "confident" with humans. Here is a screen shot of a sloppy make over for a shy animal. The layout is the same; just changed the terrain paint, plants and enrichment items.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3451521852

In no way am I saying this layout the way to go. Just trying to convey that forcing animals to go through stress and stress free zones can be helpful in keeping their stress levels down.

[grampers62]

That's an interesting approach Varick. Looks like it should help most species that allow walk in habitats. Combine that with other techniques and one should have no issues at all.