Caring for animals

🍲 Food and food bowls

Animals in enclosures get a little hungrier all the time. Press an animal to see how full it is.

1. Make food

   Build a factory (Buildings, Zoo page). When a drumstick pops up over it, press it to collect one food. Each factory you build costs a bit more than the last. Fed chickens and cows on a farm give food too.

2. Put down a bowl

   Press Food on the bottom bar, then press inside an enclosure. A bowl costs one food and holds 5 meals, one for every animal in a full enclosure.

3. Animals help themselves

   An animal that is 80% full or less walks to the bowl, munches for a moment and is full again. An empty bowl fades away. Dropping food on an enclosure that already has a bowl tops it back up.

The bowl fills with the right food for who lives there: meat for hunters, greens and hay for plant eaters, and kibble for a mix. Press a bowl to see how many meals are left.

💡 The Animal Diets and Conservation Center research make animals get hungry more slowly. Out of food? The Zoo Token Shop sells 50 food for 10 tokens.

🩺 Health and the vet

Now and then an animal gets a little less healthy. When its health is 30% or less it turns green: it's sick. An animal left sick for too long won't stay in your zoo.

• Build a vet (Buildings, Zoo page). Press a sick animal and press Send to Vet. A vet holds 2 animals at a time.
• Animals heal at the vet over time, even while the game is closed. The Vet Training research makes them heal twice as fast.
• Want it faster? Press a sick animal in the vet for a checkup: read what's wrong, pick the right tool, and it's better at once.
• Healthy animals walk back to their enclosure.
• Enrichment and water in an enclosure help animals stay healthy for longer (see below).

👶 Babies and eggs

• Two animals of the same kind in one enclosure may have a baby when both are at least 60% fed and healthy, and there's room (up to 5 animals).
• Babies are small at first and grow up after 15 minutes. Your first baby earns the Proud Parents badge.
• Enrichment in the enclosure makes babies come sooner.
• Every dinosaur starts as an egg. A dinosaur you buy hatches after 1 hour, and the egg wobbles more and more as it gets close. Press the egg to hatch it right away for 5 Zoo Tokens.

🏹 Hunters and predators

Every animal has a size, from tiny to giant, and some are hunters. A hunter that is 50% full or less catches any animal smaller than itself in the same enclosure, farm or aquarium. Plant eaters never hunt.

• Keep a full food bowl in hunters' enclosures. A fed hunter leaves its neighbours alone.
• Or give hunters an enclosure of their own, or share it only with animals their size or bigger.
• The game gives you a heads up when you put a hunter with something it could catch, and tells you if an animal gets caught.
• Adopted animals, animals at the vet and dinosaur eggs are never caught.

See who can catch whom

💧 Water and swimming

Paint water tiles inside an enclosure with the map editor to make a pond.

• Water lovers (like hippos, alligators and turtles) earn up to 20% more when about a quarter of their enclosure is water. They go for swims too!
• Every animal with water to drink gets sick 20% more slowly.
• No pond is fine too: animals never earn less without one.

Turtle Alligator Bear Polar bear Hippo Tiger Elephant Loch Ness Monster Spinosaurus Godzilla

🧸 Enrichment

Put plants, rocks, logs, hay bales, tire swings and balls inside an enclosure. Each piece (up to 5) gives that enclosure 5% more income and makes its animals get sick 15% more slowly. Babies come sooner too.

Oak Tree Maple Tree Willow Tree Cherry Blossom Palm Tree Rose Bed Wildflower Bed Hedge Topiary Rock Rock Boulder Rock Pebbles Rock Hollow Log Hay Bale Tire Swing Beach Ball Ball Ball Golden Topiary Pumpkin Spooky Tree Cornucopia Autumn Tree

💛 Adopt an animal

An adoption lets you name one of your animals. It gets a name plaque and a golden coat, and it's yours for good: it never gets too hungry or sick, it never breaks loose, and hunters leave it alone. Half of what an adoption costs goes to the Wildlife Conservation Society. Ask a grown-up before buying anything. More about adoptions

Animals can also wear hats and other things from the Dress Up button in their window. Dress up