Zoo Tycoon

The girls received the Zoo Tycoon (http://zootycoon.com/default.htm) expansion packs for Extinct Animals and Marine Mania for Christmas. They have been having fun making their zoos with more options.

The Extinct Animals has more than thirty extinct animals. They can also hire a paleontologist to search and dig for fossils, they can experiment in the Research Lab, and put together the fossils once they have a complete set. Animal bones look different than human bones, so its been fun figuring them out! Georgia has also learned about DNA, cloning, and disease curing. If she has a diseased animal she can send samples to the lab to find out what's wrong, and then work to cure the animal or work on a cure for the disease. They have a lot of information about dinosaurs and other extinct animals in the Zoopedia. Some of the animals include the Cave Lion, American Mastodon, Bluebuck, Dodo, and the Sivatherium.

The Marine Mania has twenty new animals, including the Manta Ray, West Indian Manatee, Sea Otter, and Rockhopper Penguin. The girls can also train animals, like the orca or bottlenose dolphin, to perform tricks. In this game the girls have to learn about tanks and filters, and how to keep them clean. And as in all the Zoo Tycoon games, the girls learn about the species, their habits, diet, and general care. They work on a budget and have to hire maintenence workers, or their zoo gets overrun with trash, and also zoo keepers, or their animals do not get groomed and fed. The game also has enrichment items for each animal. When we went to the National Zoo last May the girls were pointing out the animals toys and saying, "Hey, look what they have for animal enrichment!"

Zoo Tycoon (Microsoft) also donates part of their proceeds to the World Wildlife Fund. http://www.worldwildlife.org/