The South America Pack was the 2nd DLC for Planet Zoo!

Since everyone really loved the first post I made about birds & aquatic animals for the Arctic DLC, I'm back with #2! And boy is this one hard - while "Arctic" is a pretty niche ecosystem for captive animals, the biodiversity of South America made this sooooo difficult. The Amazon alone is home to so many birds and fish that this makes this one almost unreasonably limited.

With that said, I think there are some clear standouts, as well as some new thoughts.

Everyone is going wild over the thoughts of Macaws in the game, and truthfully I hope we have something similar to the Llama situation when this DLC was released - Ara Macaw as a genus, with a variety of color morphs (scarlet, blue-throated, etc.) representing different species. That way we can have a variety of beautifully colored flocks.

With that said, the hyacinth macaw is a completely different genus of bird! It has much rarer due to its conservation status, and much larger than its cousins in the Ara Macaw genus.

I may be cheating with hummingbirds but South America alone is home to over a hundred different species! If we can do butterfly walkthrough exhibits, then I certainly believe we can have a hummingbird walkthrough exhibit, than can double as a beautiful location for all the beautiful flora that comes with this pack.

The Andean Condor is an iconic and massive bird that represents the mountains of South America and very much fits with our Llama friends I mentioned earlier from this pack.

As for fish, again it felt like I was painted into a corner for some of the most popular and iconic fish in the world - the red-bellied piranha and the arapaima are no brainers (and the striking red colors of their models would be beautiful in fresh-water aquariums)!

On the other hand, the new aquatic features we're getting meant I wanted to throw in a curve ball. How COOL would it be to see the Marine Iguana swimming in our aquarium tanks with the fish, and then sunning themselves with the Giant Tortoises confirmed yesterday???? Excellent group habitat!

Lastly - I had to cheat a little with 1 specific honorary mention. The golden temple pieces that come with the South America scenery are so kitschy and fun. HOW can you possibly build your El Dorado themed zoo if you don't have golden dorados glimmering in their own aquarium tanks??????

What do you think? What other birds or aquatic animals am I missing? See you next Wednesday!

The Arctic Pack was the first DLC for Planet Zoo!

For wishlist Wednesday, I was wondering if they rereleased this pack for PZ2, what would be the birds and aquarium animals added? I picked these animals based off of the new features they've shown us so far, animals on theme with the "Viking" style decor, as well as unique marine animals that live in cold waters (not a ton that are common in captivity)! While I would love to see more seals or even a walrus in a future DLC, they are not necessarily part of that new "aquarium" feature so I wanted to focus on that with the aquarium picks!

The Common Raven would be a very popular corvid that could live in multiple habitats, as well as be released to many different reserve locations because of their range. They could also be a walk-through aviary (plus seeing a bunch of ravens in the snowy north is very cool). Odin's ravens are also very on brand for the Arctic theme. Albino ravens are also very striking!

I feel like Puffins and Snowy Owls are extremely popular picks, and Puffins could have very unique nesting height requirements with the cliffs, while Snowy Owls would be a beautiful and iconic owl to have both in zoos and reserves. Puffins are coastal water birds, Snowy Owls are more inland, so its good variety. ALSO - color variants for Puffins are so cute!

Atlantic Char are very striking and can become a beautiful bright red. A lot of arctic/cold water fish don't get particularly colorful, so I think this is a very good visual variant in the tanks.

Atlantic Halibut get HUGE but are also primarily bottom feeders! So to see the unique model in an aquarium tank would be SO cool. They're so silly looking when they swim, but what a unique creature to add (and a unique model to make).

King crabs are very popular crabs that have very select fishing spots around the globe. They're an iconic "big" crab, with all of their spikes and spines, and are known all over the world.

Honorary mention to Orcas, Greenland Sharks, Narwals, and other big arctic marine animals, but since we don't know Frontier's thoughts on these kinds of unrealistic/controversial captive animals, I decided to keep them out of this kind of series.

Do you agree or disagree? Do you have any other picks that fit this theme? If you like this, I'll do the other packs as well!