Planet Zoo 2 achievements: all 39 with a checklist and tips

Planet Zoo 2 has 39 achievements, plus a Platinum on PS5 for getting the lot, and between them they poke at nearly everything the game does. Some arrive while you build your first zoo without you trying. Others want a very particular list of animals, a giant aquarium, or a lot of patience. (Mostly patience.)

All 39 are in the checklist below, lined up in a sensible order to tackle them. Tick them off as you go and it remembers, so you can close the tab and come back later. Prefer to grab the easy ones first? Sort it by how many players have each one so far. The trickier groups get their own sections underneath, with animal picks from our Planet Zoo 2 animal table, and there’s more on the Planet Zoo 2 hub.

Achievement checklist

Tick as you go. Your ticks are saved in this browser only, so they won’t follow you to another device.

Easy ones first

The first six on the list are barely work: adopt an animal, get a baby, adopt one aquatic, one avian and one land animal, research a single species, set up an educational tour and finish one Conservation Project. Most players already have the first few (over 88% have Let’s Get Started, so no medals for that one). If you want a cheap Earth, Wind and Water, the Long-Tailed Parakeet is the smallest bird on the table and any small reef fish will do for the aquatic one.

Start these early

Two achievements are really just clocks. They Grow Up So Fast wants an animal born in your zoo to reach 15 years old, and an animal you adopted young doesn’t count, so the sooner a zoo-born animal exists, the sooner the timer starts. First Steps wants ten critically endangered animals born in a single zoo, and only land and water animals count, so the critically endangered birds don’t help.

On paper, the quickest breeders from that list are the African Penguin (a baby every 12 months, and colonies can be enormous) and the Gharial (litters of 2 to 9, every 9 months). The Hawksbill Turtle lays 2 to 4 but waits 2 years between clutches, and the great apes wait 4 to 8 years, so keep them for later.

Plan Shared Accommodation early too. It needs five species in one land habitat that all share a Thriving relationship with each other, and the research screen lists which species get on with which. Thriving requirements only show up once a species is fully researched, so Student is secretly step one for this whole chain. Check relationships before you buy the next animal, not after.

Animal collections

These ones ask for particular groups of animals rather than a big number, and everything below comes from the base game list.

Bears first. The Eurasian Brown Bear, Grizzly Bear and Sun Bear are the safe three, and the Giant Panda is an Ursidae too if you fancy a fourth. (The panda needs the least land of the lot, 650 m², but its fence is strength 4, so it isn’t the cheap option it looks like.) For Cats and Dogs there are only two canines in the whole base game, the Grey Wolf and the African Wild Dog, so you need both. The Eurasian Lynx and Snow Leopard are the easiest cats to house, with fence strength 2 instead of 3.

Primates are simple: three of the five (Ring-Tailed Lemur, Siamang, Sumatran Orangutan, Western Chimpanzee, Western Lowland Gorilla), and they all want 18 to 33 degrees, so it doesn’t matter which three you pick. Birds are the opposite. There are eleven aviary birds and you need five, so go for the Long-Tailed Parakeet, Javan Green Magpie and Toco Toucan, which take the least room, and leave the Greater Flamingo for later. It wants a group of at least 20.

Butterflies next. The vivarium has six, and the Cloudless Sulphur, Monarch and Menelaus Blue Morpho are happy between 21 and 28 degrees, which keeps the Walkthrough Exhibit simple. And Just In Case is the odd little one, an aviary roof on a penguin or pig habitat. The Common Warthog needs the least land of the pigs (290 m²), so it’s the cheapest way to get it.

Aquarium achievements

Full Tank wants five species in one aquarium. Reef fish that like the same water are the easy way in: Clown Anemonefish, Palette Surgeonfish, Yellow Tang, Schooling Bannerfish and Threespot Damselfish all sit between 24 and 28 degrees, all list the Reef biome, and need 50 m² of deep water each. They’re all saltwater too, so set the tank’s filtration network to saltwater before anyone moves in.

The Ocean Sunfish is the odd one out. It reaches down to 10 degrees, colder than anything else in the aquarium list, and wants 300 m² of deep water, so give it a tank of its own, set the temperature at the staff gate and put the network on saltwater. Mola Mola Likes You is 100% welfare for one, so keep that tank cool, big and clean.

A Few More Hoses (a 25 million litre aquarium) and Sieve The Day (a filtration rate of 5,000 in one network) go together nicely. A giant tank needs a strong filtration network anyway, so build one huge aquarium, connect the network to the node on the staff gate rather than the barrier walls, and keep adding filters until the number passes 5,000.

Wildlife Reserves and conservation

Green Thumb sounds scary at 1,000 trees, but about a fifth of players already have it, so just plant a few every time you visit a reserve. Naturalist (10 ecosystems), Paradise (a five-star reserve), Snap! and Where Am I? (10 km in the Research Vehicle) are the slower ones. For Snap!, rare animals score higher than common ones, so get close and frame the shot tight.

The conservation ones chain together. Budding Conservationist is a single project, and Ultimate Conservationist wants one of every type, so write down which ones you’ve done. Conservation-aire is 10,000 CC, which comes from projects and releases. They Do Move In Herds (a group of more than 10), Job Well Done (20 groups) and Worth Its Weight in Gold (an animal with Gold Genetics) all come from the same habit: breed a lot, check the genetics, release in groups. Each species has its own Release Group requirements, which show up as you research it, and only species with a suitable reserve can be released at all, so check that before you plan a herd.

Career and Franchise

Good Start… and Excellent Finish are Bronze and Gold in every Career scenario. Read the Gold goals when a scenario loads, take Bronze or Silver if you’re stuck, and come back for Gold once you have better animals and tools. Animal welfare and nutrition are the goals that matter most.

Goodwin Park (a five-star reputation) comes from happy guests, good welfare and Thriving animals. Credit Where It’s Due is the top accreditation level in Franchise, and Tier 5 needs at least two zoos and three Wildlife Reserves, with three Reputation Stars in each zoo and three Biodiversity Stars in each reserve. Show-Pony (Gold marketing) belongs with it, because better marketing unlocks as accreditation rises. Credit Where It’s Due and Lessons Learned both say non-Sandbox, so don’t count on Sandbox for those.

Research and education

Student is one species fully researched, and Professor is 80 of the base game’s 130, so it’s a slow burn that ticks along if you keep research staff busy. Did You Know? wants every Education Topic unlocked for one species and Lessons Learned wants a five-star Education rating. Do both in the same zoo.

Trophies and Gamerscore

The list is the same everywhere: 39 achievements on Steam and Xbox (1,000 Gamerscore), and 40 trophies on PS5, the extra one being the Platinum for getting all of them.