Does it swim?

Have you ever wanted to create a habitat with a water barrier only later to watch your animal take the paw of its mate and swim off together into the sunset?

It's not stated anywhere in the game if an animal is able to swim or not so I took it upon myself to test it out with all the habitat animals in the base game (animals from any DLC are inferred from base game animals).

If you see any errors, don't hesitate to drop off a corrective comment!

Update: A common comment was that DLC animals were missing, so I tried my best guessing their swimming abilities.

In short

Animals not a primate, monkey, giraffe, peafowl, tortoise or red panda can swim. Koala, red kangaroo and Southern cassowary probably can't, but are unconfirmed.

A general rule of thumb is if an animal has a water requirement in the Zoopedia, it has the ability to swim (credit to R♥tabaga). However, not all animals with the ability to swim have water requirements.

... and the common ostrich seems to be a special case with the ability to run at full speed through deep water. I learn so much about animal behaviour from this game!
Any zoo worth its salt has an ostrich skipping competition.

Method

Base game animals
To determine if they are able to swim or not, I built a habitat in Sandbox mode where I separated the animals from their feeder by a deep pond of water. I tested that a swimming animal (specifically African buffalo) was able to reach the feeder by swimming. After some time, I removed the water to confirm that the non-swimming animal was indeed running over to the feeder to eat. For good measure, I added the water source back to confirm that the water was the reason for them not eating.

DLC animals
I can't test the swimming ability of them as I don't own any DLC so their swimming ability was inferred by the swimming ability of similar animals from the base game. This is obviously less accurate so it might contain some errors, which I'm happy to correct if sufficient evidence is provided (screenshot or similar).

Swimming animals

These are all the habitat animals I directly observed swim.

Base game

• Aardvark
  
• African buffalo
  
• African elephant
  
• African wild dog
  
• American bison
  
• Bactrian camel
  
• Baird's tapir
  
• Bengal tiger
  
• Black wildebeest
  
• Bongo
  
• Cheetah
  
• Chinese pangolin
  
• Common warthog
  
• Formosan black bear
  
• Gemsbok
  
• Gharial
  
• Giant panda
  
• Greater flamingo
  
• Grizzly bear
  
• Himalayan brown bear
  
• Hippopotamus
  
• Indian elephant
  
• Indian rhinoceros
  
• Nyala
  
• Okapi
  
• Plains zebra
  
• Pronghorn antelope
  
• Sable antelope
  
• Saltwater crocodile
  
• Siberian tiger
  
• Snow leopard
  
• Spotted hyena
  
• Springbok
  
• Timber wolf
  
• West African lion

Deluxe Edition (inferred)

• Pygmy hippopotamus (regular hippopotamuses swim)
  
• Thomson's gazelle (springbok swim)
  
• Komodo dragon (Nile monitors swim)

Arctic Pack (inferred)

• Polar bear (other bears swim)
  
• Reindeer (other similarly sized ungulates swim)
  
• Arctic wolf (other canines swim)
  
• Dall sheep (other similarly sized ungulates swim)

South America Pack (inferred)

• Jaguar (other felines swim)
  
• Llama (Bactrian camels swim)
  
• Giant anteater (aardvarks and pangolins swim)

Australia Pack (inferred)

• Dingo (other canines swim)

Aquatic Pack (inferred, but pretty damn obvious)

• King penguin
  
• Giant otter
  
• Grey seal
  
• Dwarf caiman

Non-swimming animals

The following habitat animals I did not observe swim.

Base Game

• Aldabra giant tortoise
  
• Bonobo
  
• Bornean orangutan
  
• Common ostrich
  
• Galapagos giant tortoise
  
• Indian peafowl
  
• Japanese macaque
  
• Mandrill
  
• Red panda
  
• Red ruffed lemur
  
• Reticulated giraffe
  
• Ring tailed lemur
  
• Western chimpanzee
  
• Western lowland gorilla

South America Pack (inferred)

• Capuchin monkey (other monkeys don't swim)

Australia Pack (inferred)

• Koala (superficially similar animals like primates and red pandas don't swim)
  
• Red kangaroo (superficially similar "upright" animals)
  
• Southern cassowary (common ostriches don't swim)

[charliegreen2210]

Girrafes can swim dude

[liobrook2944]

I can confirm the Aquatic Pack animals, they all swim

[Ellorien]

Proboscis monkeys DO SWIM. They escaped by swimming across a wide, deep river with a boat tour in both directions.

[Dark Serpent]

The Southern Cassowary can swim to update it.

[krisjosephson4]

Where is Europe pack?

[adrianna.lathrop]

Very clever and thank you for writing!

[krisjosephson4]

Red kangaroos can hop in the water.

[Pl♥maria]

@Isle That could've been easily inferred by the name of the DLC, if everything is part of a pack labeled "aquatic" then ,yes it has the ability to swim.

Also, Doden hasn't updated this, nor shown interest in this guide since me posting my findings for him. In said findings I tested all current DLC at the time (so before the europe dlc, and i didn't include the aquatic because it was inferred via the dlc name) and found that only the Red Kangaroo and the Capuchin Monkey couldn't swim from the new DLC animals.

[Isle]

EVERY ANIMAL IN THE AQUATIC PACK CAN SWIM

GIANT OTTERS CAN SWIM, KING PENGUINS CAN SWIM, GREY SEALS CAN SWIM, and DWARF CAIMANS CAN SWIMMMMM

[Isle]

um llama's can swim I have all the DLC's except the Artic and Europe Pack