Swimming
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 (excluding any DLC).
In short
Animals not a primate, monkey, giraffe, peafowl, tortoise or red panda can swim …
… 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.
Swimming Animals
These are all the habitat animals I directly observed swim.
- Aardvark
- African buffalo
- African elephant
- African wild dog
- American bison
- Bactrian camel
- Baird’s tapir
- Bengal tiger
- Black wildebeest
- Bongo
- Cheetah
- Chinese pangolin
- Common ostrich (probably a bug)
- 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
- Timer wolf
- West african lion
The following of these animals can have guests enter their habitat:
- Aardvark
- Chinese pangolin
- Greater flamingo
- Okapi
- Pronghorn antelope
- Springbok
Non-Swimming Animals
The following habitat animals I did not observe swim.
- 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
The following of these animals can have guests enter their habitat:
- Aldabra giant tortoise
- Galapagos giant tortoise
- Indian peafowl
- Japanese Macaque
- Red ruffed lemur
- Ring tailed lemur
I thought Japanese Macaques could swim. Why not in Planet Zoo?
Right! The Japanese Macaque is known for spending time in hot water springs in Japan, so I would imagine that they can in fact swim, so it’s weird that this was not implemented in Planet zoo