Animals

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For the skill of the same name, see Skills.

For a complete search, see List of animals.

Wild animals spawn on the map according to the biome and from random events. Unlike animals on, say, Earth, animals on RimWorld are all potentially dangerous. With just a little luck, a rat or squirrel, and certainly something as vicious as a tortoise or a wild turkey, can often take down and even kill a casually armored colonist, or at best leave them wishing they had never met the horrible beast. At least until you have some first-hand experience with them, do not underestimate wild animals!

These wild animals, and their tamed counterparts, will wander and graze on vegetation, including player-grown plants, regardless of type. Growing food outdoors can sometimes attract animals to your base perimeter. Animals are an important source of food by the meat they provide once hunted and butchered.

Raiders will target tamed animals as often as colonists.

Animal trainers receive 90 XP per training or taming attempt. When tamed "cute" animals nuzzle a colonist, it counts as a social interaction and is logged in the social tab of both the colonist and animal.

Friendly fire can happen with domesticated animals.

Animals tab

The Animals tab is in the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. The default hotkey is F4.

• The Animals tab lists all the colony animals. Clicking an animal name will center the map to that animal.
• A button lists the animal's master, if it has one. Click the button to assign a new master.
• Allowed areas are also listed here including Unrestricted, Home area, and animal areas. Each animal stays in its assigned area unless its master is drafted.
• Gender and life stage informational columns
• A "Slaughter" checkbox column to allow easy slaughtering of multiple tamed animals at once
• Checkbox columns for each trainable skill to allow easy training of many animals

Allowed area

One of the best ways to control animals is to assign them an allowed area. This prevents them from wandering into danger. Be certain to include their sleeping spot and their food. Livestock cannot be assigned an area and must instead be assigned to a pen. You can use these to rescue animal(s) with high toxic buildup to stop from going outside during toxic fallout.

Appearance

Most animals appear to have no limbs, just as colonists do. Some animals have different appearances between males and females.

Behavior

• Wandering: Animals will wander the area when they have nothing else to do, e.g. eating or hunting. When wandering, some species of animals will tend to stay together in a herd. Others will spread out alone across the map.
• Roaming: Tame farm animals will occasionally attempt to leave the map if not in a pen or if a door is obstructed, with its frequency determined by the animal's roam interval stat.
• Filth: While walking on constructed floors they can leave animal filth. The rate of producing filth is proportional to body size and wildness. Farm animals tend to produce massive amounts of filth. This can be mitigated by the straw matting floor type, reducing filth by 95%, or by simply keeping them outside.
• Forbidden food: Hungry tame animals will eat forbidden food and non-farm animals may even leave their allowed area to eat food.

Mating

For each non-sterilized, tamed, awake male, once per hour, there is either a 1/12 or 1/8 (depending on species) chance that the male will search for a non-pregnant/non-fertilized, non-sterilized, tamed, awake female of the same species within 30 tiles to initiate mating. Female animals do not ever attempt to initiate mating themselves. In rare cases, more than one male can mate with the same female at once. The female will stand there, allowing the male to mate with her. The female then has a 50% chance to become pregnant in the case of gestational animals, or a 100% chance to become fertilized in the case of egg-laying animals.

In order to maximize the rate of offspring for a given population size of adults, the ideal is that the moment one female becomes pregnant or fertilized, another gives birth or lays an egg and becomes available to be mated. If there was no randomness involved in mating, the female:male ratio that would achieve this is given by awake_proportion×gestation_time/(2×mate_mtb) for gestational animals, or awake_proportion×egg_interval/mate_mtb for egg-laying animals. As the proportion of time spent awake can be approximated to be about 2/3 for a rest effectiveness of 0.8, and mate_mtb is usually 12 hours, this can be simplified to 2/3×gestation_time or 4/3×egg_interval in most cases.

However, as the randomness involved with mating becomes more significant with smaller population sizes, slightly more males will be desired for smaller populations. On the contrary, animals that can be milked will want more females than this ratio suggests, as the gains from milk will offset the losses from time spent not pregnant. Animals that can lay unfertilized eggs can similarly afford a higher female ratio.

Wild animals do not mate. Incest is common and has no effect on animal health.

Fleeing

Passive animals will mostly flee when harmed. They will not flee if they are engaging in melee combat with an adversary.
More aggressive animals have a revenge chance on tame fail stat and may retaliate instead of fleeing. Be aware that packs of animals may seek revenge together, quickly overpowering a single colonist.

Animals that have not turned manhunter will flee from gunfire, and will leave their herd and even the map if their path intersects with the map edge.^{[Detail needed]}

Aggression

Sometimes a single animal may go mad, or every animal of the same species be driven mad by a psychic wave event, and attack any humans not behind closed doors.

If injured by a colonist or tamed pet, certain species of animals will become maddened into a manhunter state and will relentlessly seek out humans to attack. Sometimes nearby animals of the same species will be simultaneously enraged. Unless otherwise neutralized, a maddened animal will eventually return to a normal mood after sleeping. Animals in manhunter state will attack doors if colonists try to go in and out of them.

Manhunter chances are listed in the Wildlife tab of the map screen with a red lightning bolt next to their name, and also on the Info tab of each individual animal's information window.

Predation

Most carnivores are predators. When hungry, a predator will prefer an easy meal. They'll first go for meals or food types within their diet. They may go for a downed or dead animal or a fresh human corpse.

When a hungry predator has no other food nearby, they will hunt, kill and consume almost any animal smaller than them, including your tamed animals and your colonists. This can especially be a problem on maps with little wildlife, like on Ice sheets when a polar bear wanders in. Still, predators tend to prefer more vulnerable and weaker animals, and wisely avoid boomrats and boomalopes.

Predator attacks usually stun their prey, leaving the victim unable to fight back. A predator will focus all attacks on their prey, so if they do down your colonist or livestock, immediately order the nearest comrade to rescue the downed pawn. It's the difference between life and death.

Predators include the Arctic fox, Arctic wolf, Cat, Cobra, Cougar, Fennec fox, Grizzly bear, Lynx, Panther, Polar bear, Red fox, Timber wolf, Warg.

If you successfully hide all colonists and tamed animals away from a predator's reach, it will hunt any other available wildlife.

It is not possible to view the Needs tab of a wild animal, so you may have to deduce whether or not a predator is hungry based on its behavior. They sometimes remain near the area where they last killed and ate an animal for about a day. Bloodstains or partially-consumed animal corpses on the ground are a fairly reliable guide, as well as a source of free leather and delicious leftovers. Be careful not to let a hauler take away a predator's food before it has finished eating. It will still be hungry and will hunt your colonist instead.

Remember that fences and fence gates do not count as impassable for all pawns except for farm animals, meaning that predators can leap over.

Body heat

Animals will give out body heat, slightly heating up their surroundings. This is insignificant most of the time. In enclosed barns with many animals packed, the heat can become a problem in warm weather or hot biomes, and a benefit in cold biomes or during winter.

Reproduction

Animals are born by live birth or by hatching from a fertilized egg.

Live birth

See also: Pregnancy

Female Animals which give live birth (e.g. mammals) have a chance of becoming pregnant after mating with a male. The gestation time stat specifies how many days a species' pregnancy will last. A pregnant animal suffering from malnutrition or injuries may miscarry, but spontaneous abortions are not possible in game. Miscarriages are noted by an in-game message and loss of the baby, but the mother is otherwise unharmed and may reproduce normally again. Pregnancies may also be aborted through surgery.

For the first 600 ticks (10 secs) the pregnancy condition will be invisible, after which point a message will come up mentioning the pregnancy and the following hediffs become visible.

Stage	Begins at	Symptoms
Early-stage	>0 Severity	Vomiting (MTB of 2.5 days)
Middle-stage	>0.333 Severity	-15% Moving
Late-stage	>0.666 Severity	Vomiting (MTB of 5 days) -30% Moving
Birth	1.0 Severity	Symptoms end Offspring is born

Live births occur at the end of the gestation time. They produce filth in the form of amniotic fluid, but no blood loss or damage occurs to the mother or baby. A species' litter size is a probability curve of the number of offspring possible from one pregnancy

Eggs

Egg-laying animals include the Cassowary, Chicken, Cobra, Duck, Emu, Goose, Iguana, Ostrich, Tortoise, Turkey as of 1.1. Females become fertilized after mating with males, causing them to lay fertilized eggs. Most animals will not lay unfertilized eggs, with the exception of chickens, ducks, and geese.

Fertilized eggs display their progress on the inspect pane and hatch when ready.

Fertilized eggs can be ruined by temperature if not kept within their safe temperature range of 0 °C – 50 °C (32 °F – 122 °F).

Eggs start to freeze below 0 °C (32 °F).

Eggs start to overheat above 50 °C (122 °F).

The inspect pane will indicate 'Overheating' or 'Freezing' followed by a percentage rising up to 100%. It increases by 0.003% per 1 °C (1.8 °F) outside the safe temperature range each tick. This status is halted when safe temperate is restored, but it is not reset - if the temperature is unsafe again, it will pick up where it left off. If it reaches 100% the egg is 'ruined by temperature' and will not hatch even if returned to a suitable area. A ruined egg still has full nutritional value and can be used to make a meal (or eaten raw, with a mood debuff).

Sterilization

Main article: Sterilization

Animals can be sterilized by way of an operation to prevent them even attempting to breed with another animal. As such they will never reproduce.

Diet

While most carnivorous and omnivorous animals (such as pigs and boars) can eat raw meat, corpses, kibble, and meals, Wargs can only eat raw meat and corpses.

All herbivorous and omnivorous animals can eat live plants (except trees and agave), vegetables, liquor, drugs, meals, and haygrass.
Dendrovorous animals such as the alphabeaver and thrumbo can eat trees, in addition to other herbivorous foods.

Because all animals except wargs can eat meals, kibble, and pemmican, it is possible to feed meat to herbivores and plants to carnivores if it is prepared first.

Health

Animals have the same set-up as humans when it comes to health, minus the ability to operate on them (except euthanasia)(The option to amputate an infected limb can become available once infection sets in, at least on Thrumbos—assuming other animals as well). They feel pain, and have all of the different health stats that human pawns possess. Animals can become addicted to beer, and they suffer the same negative health alcohol effects as humans. Keep them away from alcohol. Animals need to have an animal bed (or sleeping spot) in order to be healed.

Like humans, they have a life expectancy, and are affected by chronic diseases. There is no way to cure them in the base game other than Healer mech serum, which would be incredibly expensive.

A tamed animal that requires tending will find the nearest animal bed or animal sleeping spot in their allowed area and rest there until it is either fully healed or dead. Pawns assigned to doctoring will tend its wounds or illnesses and feed it, just as they would do for a humanlike pawn. If all human colonists are absent or unable to care for a sick animal, it can die of starvation even if there is food nearby and it is capable of walking.

Animals have a Toxic Resistance of 50% by default, compared to the human default of 0%.

Hunting

Wild animals may be marked for hunting, done by hunters with ranged weapons, who will proceed to shoot them at maximum range, before executing them with a neck cut when they are downed (except explosive animals). After killing their target, they will haul the carcass to a stockpile zone even if they are naturally incapable of hauling, but will not start hauling it again if they're interrupted.

Animals harmed by hunting that were not killed yet may become enraged and if its a pack type, its full horde may turn hostile against the entire colony. If they are non-aggressive animals they usually flee instead.

Hunting may take longer during bad weather since there's a shooting modifier while it's raining or snowing that makes it more likely for shots to miss.

• Fog (with or without rain): hit chance multiplier is 50%.
• Rain or snow: hit chance multiplier is 80%.

To mark animals to be hunted use one of the following methods:

• Click Wildlife, Click the first red X to the right of the animal you want to hunt and change it to a green check mark
• Click Orders, Hunt, then click one or more individual animals.
• Click Orders, Hunt, then click and drag a box to surround and select multiple animals.
• Select one or more animals, click Hunt.

Hunting tips

• Animals can be hunted manually instead of just using the hunt order by drafting a colonist and right clicking to fire at animals. This allows the killing of multiple animals in one session, or hunting from close range. Closer range reduces the chance of missing shots or unintended friendly fire, but raises the chance of provoking animal revenge.

• Wounded animals (either hit with arrows/bullets or cut in particular) tend to bleed. Heavily bleeding animals die after a certain period of time if left untended. Thus it is possible to wound a target and wait until it bleeds to death or drops unconscious due to blood loss. This way you can avoid unnecessary damage to the corpse (and avoid being caught in the explosion left by boomalopes and boomrats). Keep in mind that a wounded but mobile animal can wander away. Unconscious animals can be "saved" - essentially transported to sleeping spots assigned as medical - but without medical treatment they will still die. A valid, if hardly humane, way to hunt.

• In the occasion of a full horde revenge, early-stage colonies may easily become overrun, leaving all colonists downed. But down is not out. Eventually, one or more of your colonists may recover. With luck, this miracle may take place at nightfall, when wildlife sleep (except for the most enraged beasts among those), or they have wandered far enough, opening a chance to rescue everybody else. The manhunter status of the horde will disappear overnight.
  • Melee blocking could be a valuable tactic to defeat the rampaging animals. In addition to making it easier to defeat the animals even when outnumbered, it also keeps your downed colonists near your base for easy rescue.

Life stages

Animals all have three different life stages - baby, juvenile and adult. The growth at which they enter the juvenile and adult life stages is determined by each species' growth time stat. Animals may have different graphics for different life stages (e.g. deer) or may simply appear smaller. Some animals have a specific name for this stage (e.g. chick or puppy). Animals have different sounds (call, anger, wounded, death) for different life stages, too. Babies may simply make a higher pitched sound or have a different sound altogether (such as chicks).

Eventually, they reach their final body size and fertility in the final life stage, adulthood. Only upon reaching adulthood can animals produce wool or milk. Eggs may be layer by juveniles.

	Baby Bird	Baby	Juvenile	Adult
Body Size	10%	20%	50%	100%
Hunger	40%	40%	75%	100%
Max Food	60%	60%	75%	100%
Health Scale	25%	25%	60%	100%
Market Value	40%	40%	75%	100%
Move Speed	50%	50%	90%	100%
Melee Damage	50%	50%	75%	100%

The reduction in Body Size of babies and juveniles also affects several other stats, such as Meat and Leather Amount

Needs

Animals require food and sleep and will fulfil their needs on their own.

Food: Animals will eat any available food according to their diet. Herbivorous animals of the colony can be left to eat grass on their own. Note that animals require different amounts of food compared to humans, as represented by their Hunger Rate.

Rest: Animals will sleep as needed. Tamed animals will sleep in animal sleeping spots, animal sleeping boxes, or animal beds. If none of which are available, the animal will crash out on the ground inside its allowed zone. A tamed animal will not sleep as long as its master is drafted.

Animal husbandry

Animals can be tamed and put to use in the colony, providing several benefits. Some species can be trained to perform one or possibly more tasks (Guard, Attack, Rescue, Haul), and will wander about your colony freely. Other species, which can loosely be considered "farm animals", can only be tamed and then put in a pen. This second category can never be trained.

Taming

Wild animals can be tamed by a animal handler with sufficient Animal skill and available food. Tamed animals may be bred, trained, traded, slaughtered, or farmed.

Wild animals may be marked for taming using the Tame order.

An animal handler will attempt to tame marked animals using food fitting that animal's diet. The chance to tame an animal depends on the animal's wildness (displayed on the info window) and the handler's 'Tame animal chance' stat. This stat is determined by the colonist's animals skill, manipulation, talking, and hearing. When a handler fails to tame an animal there is a cooldown period of 30,000 ticks (8.33 mins), or 12 in-game hours, before another attempt can be made. There is also a chance it will turn manhunter and start attacking the handler and others. The revenge chance is shown on the Wildlife menu. After a while the handler may drop unused food.
Tamed animals will wander around the map until they are lead to a pen with a pen marker, for pen animals, or restricted to a designated area, for all other animals. Restricting non-pen animal movement using areas is usually necessary to prevent unwanted food consumption and animal filth.

Tame chances

Besides the animal handler's own skill, the wildness of the animals also counts.

Tame chances undergo a post-processing curve.

• An animal with 0% wildness has a x2 taming chance.
• An animal with 50% wildness has normal taming chance.
• An animal with 100% wildness cannot be tamed at all.

Currently, the hardest to tame animal is the Thrumbo with a post-processed taming chance of 3%.^{[Fact Check]}

Animals with 0% wildness remain tame forever. An animal with a wildness above 0% (shown on the wildlife tab) needs to have maintenance training in Tameness. If it loses all Tameness it will go back to being wild.

Minimum skill

Most animal species have a Minimum handling skill stat which determines the Animal skill necessary of a handler pawn. The game will briefly produce a warning message if no colonist has enough skill to handle the animal.

• Animals that can be handled with 0 skill include: Alpaca, Cat, Chicken, Cow, Dromedary, Husky, Labrador retriever, Pig and Yorkshire terrier.

An animal's minimum handling skill is calculated as follows:

Skill = 9 * (wildness - 0.3) / 0.7^{[Fact Check]}

So animals with a wildness of 30% or less won't require any handling skill whatsoever.

Starting pets

For most scenarios, new colonies will include a random pet that is already tamed. These pets will have a random name and have a chance to be bonded with a pawn. The animals available are determined by the handling skills of the starting pawn(s), as the game will not provide a pet that cannot be handled by the colony. This rule is broken when all colonists have animal handling disabled, as the game will still provide animals that require periodic taming.

The chance of getting an animal is influenced by the "petness" stat, with a higher value resulting in a higher chance. The selection of animals also influences the chances, as a Husky has a 26% chance of being selected with the highest handling skill at 0, while at level 8+ the chance is only 12%. Hares, snowhares, capybaras and cobras are all under 1% chance due to the petness being so low and the animal handling being so high.

Animals that can be starting pets

Animal	Handling skill required	Petness	Chance (with 8+ handling)
Yorkshire terrier	0	1	12.06%
Husky	0	1	12.06%
Labrador retriever	0	1	12.06%
Donkey	0	0.6	7.24%
Yak	0	0.3	3.62%
Cat	1	1	12.06%
Horse	4	0.6	7.24%
Iguana	4	0.15	1.81%
Rat	4	0.15	1.81%
Monkey	5	0.5	6.03%
Warg	5	0.5	6.03%
Guinea pig	5	0.3	3.62%
Chinchilla	5	0.2	2.41%
Boomrat	7	0.2	2.41%
Fennec fox	7	0.1	1.21%
Red fox	7	0.1	1.21%
Arctic fox	7	0.1	1.21%
Hare	7	0.08	0.97%
Snowhare	7	0.08	0.97%
Capybara	7	0.08	0.97%
Cobra	7	0.05	0.60%
Timber wolf	8	0.1	1.21%
Arctic wolf	8	0.1	1.21%

Bonding

Animals may bond with their handlers or doctors, and starting "pets" (see previous) have a chance to start the game bonded with a random starting colonist. A bond gives a +5 mood bonus to the animal's "owner", and the animal may follow the owner around. If separated for an extended period, that changes to a -3 penalty, and if the animal dies there is a -8 mood penalty for 20(!) days.

• When an animal has its wounds tended by a colonist, there is a constant 0.4% chance that the animal will bond with the colonist, regardless of Animals skill. If the animal is wild, the animal will instantly self-tame, disregarding wildness.
• When tamed, an animal also has a 1% chance to bond with the tamer.
• For starting animals, the % to start bonded with an owner appears to be related to the innate wildness (i.e. horses and camels will start bonded more often than cobras or wargs). Domestic animals (wildness 0 - dogs, cats, some farm animals) will always start bonded.

Bonded animals are also easier to train (5x multiplier on chance). Animals are given a unique name upon bonding.

On the death of the pawn an animal is bonded with, it can go into one of two animal mental breaks; manhunter, in which it will attack all nearby entities, or confusion, in which it will wander around, uncontrollably, similar to dazed humans.

Interaction

Some animal species can be trained by colonists. With Guard trained, they will follow their master around if designated to do so.

Some species may be harvested to produce milk, chemfuel, or wool. Still others passively lay frequent eggs.

Occasionally, some animals can nuzzle colonists, giving the colonist a mood buff. Animals can nuzzle anyone regardless of handling skill.

When injured, they will go to animal sleeping spots/ beds for rest and treatment.

Naming

Newly tamed or purchased animals are distinguished by numerical designations(“Muffalo 1”, “Muffalo 2”, etc.). When an animal forms a bond with a colonist, it is given a unique name. Names can be changed by the player from the "Training" tab in the inspect pawn pane. Names of tamed animals are not shown on the map unless the option is turned on, via Menu, Options, 'Show animal names'.

Animals may have a gender-specific name (i.e. hen, rooster, buck, doe), or a lifestage-specific name (piglet, puppy), or even a gender/lifestage-specific name (cockerel).

It is possible for animals which have been lost or sold to reappear later as part of a wild herd. This will only happen with animals which occur naturally on your colony's biome. They will still have the name you gave them (including automatic names like "Muffalo 2"), but will need to be tamed and trained again.

Training

Tamed animals may be trained depending on their trainable intelligence. Click the animal's training tab to specify training targets and view progress.

The stats of the training pawn, including Animals skill or Global Work Speed, have no effect on how fast each training session is completed. Instead, increased skill improves a pawn's Train Animal Chance, resulting in the animal requiring fewer training attempts in the first place. After a training attempt on a tamed animal, there is a 6 in-game hour waiting period before that same animal can be trained again.

Once Guard is trained, they can be assigned a master which they will follow. You can configure when the animal will follow their master, by toggling whether or not the animal will follow while doing field work (hunting/taming), or while drafted, from the Animals menu.

Many skills require multiple steps to fully train. Guard has three steps, rescue and attack have two, and haul has 5. An animal also has five stages of tameness to maintain.

Animal skills decay over time. The speed at which skills decay is dependent on wildness of the animal. For many species, their wildness is high enough such that their tameness decreases over time and they may eventually return to the wild. For this reason, if you do not have handlers meeting the animal's minimum handling skill, it is best to sell or slaughter before your animal returns to the wild. Animals requiring a pen will never lose tameness.

Guard

Guard: (Training intelligence required: Simple, Steps: 3)

An animal trained in guard will follow its master and attack nearby aggressors. An animal's master is listed on the Training tab and on the Animals menu. Multiple animals may be assigned to a single master. Note that assigning an animal to the pawn it is bonded with will give that pawn a permanent +5 moodlet, and if a bonded animal is not assigned to its bonded pawn, that pawn gets a permanent -3 moodlet. Mood effects stack with multiple bonded animals, and one pawn can have both the positive and negative moodlets from two bonded animals.

Attack

Attack: (Training intelligence required: Intermediate, Steps: 5)

Using the 'attack' command, animals may leave their master's immediate area to attack enemies. When the 'Animals Attack' command is turned off, animals will guard their master and only attack enemies nearby.

Rescue

Rescue: (Training intelligence required: Advanced, Steps: 2)

Animals trained in rescue will rescue its master as well as nearby colonists in a radius of 75. Only species of sufficient size can rescue.

Haul

Haul: (Training intelligence required: Advanced, Steps: 7)

Animals trained in hauling will haul just as colonists do, although each species has a specific carrying capacity according to its size. Only species of sufficient size can haul, but the size required is less than it is for rescuing, meaning some animals can haul items but cannot rescue. Animals will perform hauling intermittently with an MTB of 1.5 hours. Apart from being able to move, animals also need an intact jaw in order to haul. Animals will only haul within their allowed area if they are assigned to one.

Animal	Move Speed	Carrying Capacity	Haul Throughput	Wildness	Hunger Rate	Filth Rate	Juvenile Age	Maturity Age	Min Temperature	Max Temperature
Arctic wolf	5	64	320	85%	0.29	2	12	30	-55	40
Carrier dryad	2.4	50	120	0%	-	1	-	-	-50	50
Cougar	5	75	375	80%	0.32	2	15	30	-25	40
Elephant	4.8	300	1440	75%	2.57	24	18	39.96	-12	50
Grizzly bear	4.6	161	740.6	80%	0.56	4	12	30	-40	40
Husky	5	65	325	0%	0.8	1	15	30	-50	40
Labrador retriever	5	56	280	0%	0.64	1	15	30	-30	40
Megasloth	4.8	300	1440	97%	1.6	24	19.98	40.02	-55	40
Megaspider	3.6	90	324	40%	0.56	1	1.8	12	-40	60
Panther	5	75	375	80%	0.32	2	15	30	-8	50
Polar bear	4.6	161	740.6	85%	0.56	4	12	30	-55	40
Spelopede	3.65	60	219	30%	0.4	1	1.8	12	-25	60
Thrumbo	5.5	300	1650	98.5%	2.8	8	45	79.92	-65	50
Timber wolf	5	64	320	85%	0.29	2	12	30	-40	40

Combat

Once Guard is trained, animals will gather around their master upon drafting, and will attack nearby threats, or (unintentionally) block ranged attacks for their master. This is configurable and can be disabled by disabling follow during drafted.

With Attack trained, animals can be released to attack threats from a distance. Even colonists incapable of Violence can send their assigned animals into battle.

Animals can be downed during combat, and can be rescued by colonists or other animals capable of Rescue.

Products

Certain tame animals produce milk, wool, or eggs. Shearing sometimes fails, indicated with a brief "product wasted" message.

Eggs

Animal	Eggs Per Clutch Average	Egg Laying Interval	Eggs Per Season Average	Can Lay Unfertilized Eggs
Cassowary	1	3.33	4.5	false
Chicken	1	1	15	true
Cobra	1.5	10	2.25	false
Duck	1	1	15	true
Emu	1	3.33	4.5	false
Goose	1	2	7.5	true
Iguana	1.5	5.661	3.97	false
Ostrich	1	3.33	4.5	false
Tortoise	2	6.66	4.5	false
Turkey	1	1.333	11.25	false

Milk

Animal	Milk Amount	Milking Interval	Daily Milk Average
Caribou	10	2	5
Cow	14	1	14
Dromedary	18	2	9
Elk	11	1	11
Goat	12	3	4
Yak	11	1	11

Wool

Animal	Wool Amount	Shearing Interval	Daily Wool Average
Alpaca	45	10	4.5
Bison	120	15	8
Megasloth	200	20	10
Muffalo	120	15	8
Sheep	45	10	4.5

Chemfuel

Animal	Chemfuel Amount	Milking Interval	Daily Chemfuel Average
Boomalope	11	1	11

Slaughtering

Tamed animals may be slaughtered selecting the animal and clicking the Slaughter button, or by using the Slaughter tool from the Orders menu. An animal marked in this way will be slaughtered by an animal handler. The handler need not be equipped with a weapon. You can also set up an auto-slaughter order in the animals tab, configurable to limit the amount of male, female, and pregnant animals in a pen.

Animals killed through means other than slaughtering (hunting, combat, etc) suffer a 66% multiplier to Meat Amount and Leather Amount.

Ordering a surgeon to perform a "euthanize by cut" operation on an animal counts as carefully slaughtering them.

If you try to slaughter a bonded animal, the game will warn you about it due to the mood impact this has on the animal's master.

Caravans

Main article: Pack animal

These animals can graze, meaning they don't usually require food during a caravan. (This may not be true when traveling across cold or inhospitable biomes, like tundra or deserts, or in winter in general.) When carrying items in their inventory, they will appear to have packs on, which disappear when unloaded.

Release to Wild

Unwanted animals can be released to the wild using a command next to the slaughter button. Releasing bonded animals also causes a mood debuff to master of the animal.

Social

Each animal has a Social tab that lists that animal's bonds and relations. Clicking an entry jumps to that bond's counterpart. Bonded humans have a persistent mood bonus, unless they have the psychopath trait, while set as that animal's master. Animals do not have such thoughts or bonuses.

Certain tame animals, will nuzzle your colonists. Animals can nuzzle patients in bed. A colonist who is nuzzled receives a +4 mood buff for 1 day.

The following animals can nuzzle: cat, guinea pig, husky, labrador retriever, monkey, and yorkshire terrier.

Trade goods

Tamed animals may be sold to traders. Animals purchased from traders will be already tamed. Bulk goods traders offer pets and farm animals while exotic goods traders carry most of the wild species. Traders offering animals will attempt to at least carry a breeding pair of a core farm animal.

Raising animals

Feeding animals

The simplest way to feed non-strictly-carnivorous animals is to create a large pen where animals can graze on the wild grass and brambles. The pen marker will show the number of animals the wild plants can sustain (measured in cows, goats, and chickens. When the weather is too cold or too hot though, plants grow slower or even stop growing. Furthermore, plants become totally inedible when the temperature drops below -10 °C (14 °F), because they all are considered leafless, grass as well as trees. This unrealistic mechanic is not explained in-game, and is quite puzzling to unaware players. It looks like animals starve on top of good-looking grass. See Plants#Temperature for more info.

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Growing haygrass

While the land can sustain a sizable population of animals grazing on it, it doesn't have an infinite supply and can still be depleted. Winter can also stop grass growth, leaving nothing for your grazing animals to eat.

If you need to raise a lot of animals, e.g. an exponentially growing flock of chickens, you will need to grow haygrass to sustain them all. You also need to have a stock of haygrass to keep animals fed through the winter.

Haygrass gives a total of 0.9 nutrition (18 units of hay) when fully grown and harvested, compared to 0.5 of grass. However, you have to keep your hungry animals from getting to it otherwise they'll only get a max of 0.2 nutrition from eating the plant.

Making kibble

Kibble is a kind of animal feed made with both plant and animal sources. It can be made using haygrass and any kind of meat, including human or insect meat. Producing kibble at a butcher table costs 1 nutrition of vegetables or hay and 1 nutrition of meat or animal products, and produces 2.5 nutrition of kibble.

All animals except wargs can eat it, so it makes a good way to feed your animals using mixed sources of nutrition, including those that animals won't normally eat. Kibble also lasts forever under a roof so you can store it and use it to feed animals when in need, such as in winter when there is nothing to eat.

When you feed a population of herbivorous or omnivorous animals kibble made from their own meat or milk, the formula for their nutrition efficiency can be calculated as:

nutritionEfficiency(kibble) = 2.5×nutritionEfficiency(raw vegetables) - 1

If effect, this means that for any animal population that has a nutrition efficiency of at least 0.667, it is more efficient to feed them kibble rather than hay. It is worth noting, however, that this will increase the amount of butchering and cooking labour needed to support the higher animal population required.

Pens

Main article: pens

Pens are areas which farm animals are assigned to. These pen animals will be passive, meaning that hostiles will not attack these animals, and vice versa. Tamed pen animals must be put in a pen, or they will occasionally attempt to leave the map, meaning they disappear forever. Colonists will automatically rope roaming farm animals and place them in the pen. The borders of pens can be marked with: solid walls, doors, fences, fence gates, and animal flaps. To mark an enclosed area as a pen, place a pen marker inside. The pen marker also tells you the amount of animals that can be sustained in a pen with wild plants, measured in cows, goats, and chickens. An attached, roofed, and heated/cooled coop can be built with an animal flap as a door instead of a regular door for animals to stay warm or cool down during extreme temperatures.

Corpse freezer

In typical RimWorlder fashion, you can use a freezer to preserve the corpses of raiders (or dead colonists if you're desperate) so you can feed omnivorous and carnivorous animals. This allows you to make use of corpses while avoiding heavy mood penalties from butchering humans or eating their flesh.

Pet care

Tamed animals that have a social bond to a person will affect the master's mood positively while living and negatively if killed (-8 for 20 days). This bond will either improve resistance against mental breaks or cause them. Because of the effect they cause on feelings, these creatures should be given special treatment, or any animal worth keeping alive.

These are a few tips to keep them safe:

• Keep them indoors by creating a new animal zone within a room.
• Keep them at the Home area after building a base wall.
• Prey pets should not be left wandering around in unrestricted area.
• Hunt their predators to prevent surprise attacks (or just wall the base in to prevent predators from coming in).
• Patrol your perimeter by zooming your view out to a larger scale but not to full, just enough to spot their sleeping animation of flying ZZZs while they rest at night. Sweeping your surroundings once every night shall keep you aware of threat presence.

Note: The first three of these tips only apply to pet animals. Farm animals are passive while in pens, though if the pen is built with fences, predators can still pass through.

Version history

• 0.12.906 - Animals can now be tamed and trained. Animals now sleep. Animals can be pregnant and give birth. Animals can be named when tamed or when nuzzling. Animals produce animal filth. Animals have “life stages” related to their ages. Eggs, Milk and Wool production added. Nuzzling added. Animals have life expectancies.
• 0.12.910 - Rebalanced animal hunger rate and animal hauling.
• 0.13.1135 - Added new animals, some of which will hunt people. Some animals are now predators, including colony pets (e.g. cats catch squirrels). Animals can gnaw corpses apart directly now. Animal bonding added.
• Beta 19/1.0 Update - Obedience training steps 1 -> 3. Nuzzle target search distance 15 -> 40. Nuzzled memory duration 0.5 days->1 day, stacked effect multiplier 0.95->0.5, stack limit 10
• 1.1.0 - Changed animal rescue radius from 30 to 75. Fix: Jawless animals can still haul.
• 1.2.2719 - Removed naming animals through nuzzling. Animals only get names by bonding, or if given names by the player (so you can implicitly tell which animals are bonded by seeing which have names).
• 1.3.3066 - Major overhaul to animals: added multiple animal-related buildings, added pens, decreased trainability of boomalope to none, added sterilization, added release to wild.

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Animals

Herbivorous

Alpaca • Bison • Boomalope • Capybara • Caribou • Cassowary • Chicken • Chinchilla • Cow • Deer • Donkey • Dromedary • Duck • Elephant • Elk • Emu • Gazelle • Goat • Goose • Guinea pig • Hare • Horse • Ibex • Megasloth • Muffalo • Ostrich • Rhinoceros • Sheep • Snowhare • Squirrel • Turkey • Yak • Toxalope

Dendrovorous

Alphabeaver • Thrumbo

Omnivorous

Boomrat • Grizzly bear • Human • Husky • Iguana • Labrador retriever • Megascarab • Megaspider • Monkey • Pig • Polar bear • Spelopede • Raccoon • Rat • Tortoise • Wild boar • Yorkshire terrier • Waste rat

Carnivorous

Arctic fox • Arctic wolf • Cat • Cobra • Cougar • Fennec fox • Lynx • Panther • Red fox • Timber wolf • Warg

Dryads

Barkskin • Berrymaker • Carrier • Clawer • Gaumaker • Immature dryad • Medicinemaker • Woodmaker