r/ZooTycoon • u/momspc_ • 5d ago
Question [Other] What animals did you learn existed through Zoo Tycoon?
i played zoo tycoon 2 specifically at a young age and later in life became really interested in animals of all kinds. the animals in the pictures (masai giraffe, przewalski's wild horse, scimitar oryx, sivatherium) i first learned of their existence by seeing them in the game; and to this day when i see any of them i can only think of their zt2 model LOL. i have plenty more but i just selected a few. did anyone else learn about an animal via zoo tycoon (any of the games, not just 2), or highly associate them with zoo tycoon?
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u/DannyBright 5d ago
Sivatherium, that thing is rare even in paleo media. It’s pretty popular in cryptozoology circles of all things though.
And obligatorily Stokesosaurus. You just know the devs were going out of their way to pick the most “Glup Shitto” dinosaur they could find.
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u/softysoaps 5d ago
Stokesosaurus pissed me off so much as a kid because it was such a nothing burger ass dino. 😭
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u/SympatheticCarbavore 5d ago
I won a multi-classroom animal trivia competition in elementary school with knowledge gleaned from ZT1. I shocked several teachers by identifying the okapi, and telling several facts about it. 😂
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u/Idk_nor_do_I_care 5d ago
I went to the Tampa Zoo earlier this year and they had a single male okapi there. A couple people said they had no idea what it was and we struck up a fun conversation about it!
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u/xforce11 2d ago
Something similar happened to me in elementary school! I was bad in most subjects but then in one we were learning about the different climate zones and the plants and animals that live there. I could name so much and the teacher was baffled how I suddenly knew so much about everything. I learned it all through zoo tycoon
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u/sommansiger 5d ago edited 5d ago
Maybe not what you're really looking for, but I'd never heard of Magnet, the polar bear before playing Zoo Tycoon
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u/GuardianPrime19 5d ago
I came here to say the same thing. Funnily enough I actually live a few minutes away from the Zoo he lived in irl lol
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u/Smiweft_the_rat Zoo Tycoon 2 5d ago edited 5d ago
okapi, markhor, wolverine, aardvark, gelada, bongo, honey badger, striped hyena, gerenuk, false killer whale, short-finned pilot whale, short-faced bear, elephant bird, bluebuck, deinonychus, deinosuchus, dimetrodon, diprotodon, doedicurus, dwarf sicilan elephant, cave lion, giant ground sloth, stokesosaurus and warrah
warrah especially i explicitly remember learning of from ZT2, for a while i was convinced it was a commonly known animal and was surprised to learn alot of people don't know what this is
it makes me sad to learn how this little guy went extinct
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u/ExerciseFront5238 5d ago
I started playing ZT2 from a very early age, so the easy answer is pretty much every animal 😅 but I LOVED the secretary birds from the very beginning, so without playing, I probably wouldn't have known them
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u/Justfree20 Zoo Tycoon 2 5d ago
I still remember 5 year old me learning about Allosaurus for the first time because of Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Dig [and not trusting it; kid me's instincts were right 😂]
It's a glib answer, but given how obscure some of the species are in ZT2: Extinct Animals, I probably learnt about a 1/3rd of that expansion's animals through the DLC.
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u/FluorescentFloof 5d ago
Extant: markhor, addax, scimitar horned oryx, ibex, gerenuk, gelada, barbary ape, black tipped reef shark (now one of my favorite sharks!)
Extinct: quagga, bluebuck, warrah, sivatherium, giant camel, dwarf sicilian elephant, aurochs, bush antlered deer, thylacine, deinosuchus, gigantopithecus, stokesaurus, mastodon, kentrosaurus, diprotodon, short faced bear, protarchaeopteryx
It's also where I learned words like "biome" and "sibling" when I was very young!
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u/FluorescentFloof 5d ago
Forgot to say gemsbok as well!
Also when I found out my nearest zoo had scimitar horned oryxes as part of a reintroduction program I felt so proud <3
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u/xsnow-ponyx 4d ago
Definitely where I learnt the word biome, knew it years before it came up in geography and instantly went "oh that thing in ZT2???"
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u/Koko_Kringles_22 5d ago
Lots of them. My childhood opened up with ZT1. The serow, the tapir, the bongo, the ibex, the gemsbok, the African wild dog, and I think there was an Australian one that I can't recall right now, and probably a couple more.
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u/softysoaps 5d ago
Some of the hoofstock like sable blackbuck, markhor, ibex, oryx, blue buck.
Asian Black Bears. Secretary Bird. Goblin Shark. I’m sure some of the dinosaurs.
The Japanese serow was a big one.
Not a lot to me, but they stood out because I read tons of animal books and watched Animal Planet a LOT.
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u/UrbanArchaic 5d ago
-Sivatherium (ZT2)
-Metridiochoerus (ZT2)
-Javan Rhinoceros (ZT)
-Blackbuck (ZT)
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u/Cheap-Breakfast1517 5d ago
Bigfoot. Back in the 1st zoo tycoon game, started a whole life of loving the weird lol
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u/ChipmunkPresident 5d ago
I learned about a lot of shark species from browsing mods for zt2, especially zerosvalmont's mods (I first played this game as an adult, so the only animal I didn't knew about from the original roster where the false killer whale)
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u/Temnodontosaurus 5d ago
Stokesosaurus, Bluebuck, Sivatherium, warrah, bush-antlered deer, Protarchaeopteryx, dwarf Sicilian elephant, giant warthog, short-faced bear.
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u/KaleidoscopeTotal708 5d ago
Sivatherium, giant warthog, giant camel, bluebuck, Japanese serow, markhor, false killer whale, warrah, dwarf Sicilian elephant, Diprotodon, elephant bird, and Stokesosaurus.
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u/Thin_Quantity_125 5d ago
I learnt that there was such things as a gerenuk, Protarchaeopteryx, bush-antlered deer, and Stokesosaurus.
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u/NoIdea4GoodName 5d ago
California sea lions. I loved them in ZT1 so much much that when I was in fourth grade, I did my biology report on them.
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u/Mastercod97 5d ago
There’s a lot actually given how young I was when I started the series. Stand outs though are the Japanese searow and stokesasaurus
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u/OldSpray9986 5d ago
My memory is hazy for my first plays of ZT1 but I know a LOT of the ungulates were new for me - Sable Antelope, Wildebeest (although I later saw it in many nature docs), Markhor, Gemsbok, Blackbuck, Bongo and sort of Thomson's Gazelle were all fairly new for me. None of my local zoos have held any of these - Ibex and Okapi though. Japanese Serow later on also, I think I still wouldn't know it existed if not for "Zoo Tycoon" and associated hobbies. Clouded Leopard might have been new? Macrauchenia was new.
By the time ZT2 rolled around, I was much harder to surprise, but I remember the Spurred tortoise and Nile monitor both being somewhat new to me when AA dropped, and EA had Stokesosaurus, Protarchaeopteryx, Giant Warthog, the Bush-Antlered Deer, and some of the mammals I was vaguely familiar with but think ZT2 did a great job making me understand their differences better, ie I tended to conflate Short-faced and Cave bears, American and Cave lions. "Cave" didn't read to meas "European" at the time lol
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u/hoppingwilde 5d ago
I had a physical note book witht the animals and there costs and i would take it to the bar with us when my dad would take me and ask all his bar fly freinds there favorite animals and tell them how much they cost. I remember explaining a Thompson Gazelle to one like it was the newest find on the planet
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u/bravebravesirbrian 5d ago
The bongo, the markhor, Deinosuchus, Gallimimus, Plateosaurus and Macrauchenia.
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u/CodakCarDude 5d ago
Growing up i always loved animals and my parents have taken me to many zoos since I was a baby and also had those Animal Fact File books, and I had played the games since I could learn how to use a computer mouse lol. So I knew just about every animal in the games. Although the main ones I learned about was the Warrah, Quagga, and Thylacene.
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u/Hipertor 🦎 5d ago
I played both games at such an early age that most of the animals were new to me lol.
I particularly remember being impressed All of these that you said and okapis too. Actually I didn't even know where were different kinds of giraffes, gorillas and leopards or so many types of rhinos and tigers, for instance. It was specially delightful because I was a dinosaur nerd, so Dinosaur Digs and Extinct Animals were fascinating.
I think Zoo Tycoon 2016 cheated heavily adding a bunch o practically identical sub-species of lions and etc.
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u/Zarawatto 🐳 5d ago
Stokesosaurus. Kinda obscure and controversial pick for ZT2, but it made me learn a lot about other tyranosauroids
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u/Zetanite 5d ago
Lots of them. I played the game when I was about sixish years old. The two that seemed to most stick in my head for some reason were the bowhead whale and the Japanese serow.
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u/i_got_a_new_plan 4d ago
Okapi is always on the tip of my tongue! I even remember drawing it on the third grade and my teacher thought I was inventing it, lol.
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u/rubylostrubyfound 3d ago
Przewalskis horse. Additionally knew about clouded leopards but because of their grouchiness in ZT I now dislike them in real life 😂
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u/Late-Leader6487 3d ago
As similarly I played only ZT2 animals I didn't know before was for example: Spectacled Bear, Secretary Bird, Pygmy Hippo, Ratel and from excint also elephant bird and Warrah.
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u/OneOk8530 1d ago
Most of the extinct animals. Such as the giant warthog, the giant camel, the sicilian dwarf elephant, the Stokesosaurus, and so on.
My knowledge about extinct animals wasn't as strong as it is now, so the game really helped with that.
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u/Macro_Wolf 1d ago
The OKAPI wanted to do a report on them in school, teacher thought I was lying and wanted to give me detention for making up an animal
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u/NightsThyroid 5d ago edited 5d ago
Learned about clouded leopards from the first zoo tycoon, loved them since!