I have not seen any wild animals around my town. No wild horses, no deer (I didn't even know those existed in game until I looked through this forum) not even any small animals like snakes, chipmunks etc. The only place I've seen animals other than horses, dogs and cats is the pet shop. Where is all the wilderness?

It probably depends to some extent on your computer's performance. Just like it might take a few sessions of playing, saving and reloading to see certain neighborhood visual effects, so maybe try that and see if you'll start seeing any?

a lot of the wild animals look like other animals. The raccoon, for example, looks a lot like a cat.

I made a new family in the new hood that comes with Pets. I picked the 6x6 lot in the event I decided to make them legacy (I didn't). This should give you an idea where on the map I'm referencing.

Within 2-3 days I had a herd of horses camp out on my lot overnight. They seem to move about freely in the hood and stay in the lower side in the rural areas. If you look around you'll eventually find them. A few nights later a deer ran through my lot. They are harder to spot since they appear at random, including the park in the city.

After about 5 game days I was most surprised to see a bird sitting on the ground. I wasn't aware they were in the game or I would have been looking sooner. Something new to collect! Yay! Birds/lizards/snakes/turtles can all be seen from about the same height you can see metal and gems and other collectibles. And the cool thing is that those areas are "hotspots." Collect the animal and tomorrow a different animal will show up.

If however you are referring to playing in Riverview or wherever with an existing lot and you added Pets and nothing has happened yet, then you may need to wait. The same thing happened to me when I added Late Night. I played for like a game week or two before a single Celebrity appeared in Riverview. I tore down an entire street and replaced it with clubs and stuff in the hopes they would appear and still never got a Celebrity. I bitched and screamed on the EA forums and got no sympathy from anyone since they were quite happy with their celebrity families. Then suddenly Celebrities started appearing and holy hell. My entire family spontaneously became famous and vampire paparazzi were photographing my children in their sleep. Boy do I regret ever wanting celebrities in my hood. But I digress.

It's possible that in regular existing hoods where Pets is added onto it, the random animals won't appear until the game does some sort of internal cycling, like it did with Celebrities when LN came out. Give it about a game week and see if they start appearing. If you have the collection helper they should appear on it so you'll know when it happens.

I'm having this same issue, but I've been playing Pets for 5 and a half Sim weeks. So it is a much more ongoing issue for me. I get quite a few stray dogs, but that is it, and nothing really cool like wild horses. Which sucks, because my family is breeding horses and I would love to get some cool ones in the mix.
I'm going to check and see if my story progression isn't working properly, but I kinda get the feeling that has nothing to do with it...

I'm having the same problem as well. I miraculously ran into a raccoon the other day, but have yet to see any wild horses or deer. I have only came across maybe 4 stray cats and dogs and that's it.

there are only 2 racoons in the world at a time, and only 3 deer.

I can't remember what cats and dogs have but don't forget to look at your pets buyable Lifetime Rewards. The horses have such a reward that makes them attractive so wild horses will show up more on your lot. They also have rewards such as Animal Steel Bladder (No need to pee! Yeah!), the ability to learn faster and several that will make raising an animal much easier!

O_______________________________________O And we have a freakin' HERD of wild horses? ...this sucks.

I don't know if I would want anymore deer, I like my towns not destroyed by rambunious deer XD Though a few more raccoons would be awesome, I remember seeing raccoons all the time when I lived in a rural area. I'm sure there's some around here too. And my cat fought a raccoon, had to have surgery because he was only a kitten and the raccoon pwned his tiny furry bum XD Now he's like 23 pounds and HUGE, he could murder the raccoon if he wanted too :P

there is an XML for it, you can change how many there are. There is a minimal and maximal for each type.

LOL. I was just sitting here with my mouth hanging open at the thought people not being able to find wild horses, while I'm begging, hither and yon, for someone to please get rid of the damned things.

I saw a wild horse in Grey Meadow today, it is a custom world. It just passed by a City Hall LOL, what a cool place for them. However, I don't think we can have smaller animals and birds in custom worlds by default. I found small animal spawners and bird spawners in the fish spawner category of the debug menu, when i was making a pond, so I placed a few spawners here and there, and am waiting for the animals to regenerate in a few sim days. They're just like all other collectibles. As for deer, I haven't seen it yet, and there are no spawners for deer, I think they are generated like horses.

It would really be great to be able to adjust the number of each of the wild animals... There are so many different kinds of worlds and not to mention, different types of players. *gets shifty eyes on and starts to prey on poor modders passing by*

New mod by Claudiasharon for strays... if you want something different though, instead of preying on modders, why not do your own? XML modding is pretty straightforward http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php..._Tuning_Modding

Several folks have reported finding minor pets in custom worlds, without having added spawners, and in WA worlds too. So I believe there is actually some code to either add spawners near or at existing spawner locations, or to modify existing spawners (rocks, seeds etc) to spawn minor pets as well.

Remember that a cat can hunt anywhere... basically a minor pet or beetle will "auto-spawn" whereever the cat is hunting... so there IS something more dynamic about the spawn locations for these new critters.

Minor pets are spawned by foreign spawners automatically. it is also in the XMLS.

So, I found a rather large bird the other day. It was called a spotted Sixam. What can you do with a wild bird? The only interaction option available for the bird was to watch it. So there's this big bird calmly grooming itself on the ground while 3-4 sims standing around looking at it. Is there another things we can do to a bird? I doubt my sims gonna be friend with the bird by simply watching it. I brought my cat to the park and the only option available for the cat was to watch it also.

From what I've heard catching minor pets may be some sort of a hidden skill. Sixams are the rarest large bird, you may need to work your way up to it. I have seen people catch them successfully before.

Can you cook it?

I found a falcon the other day. I love predator birds (give me a hawk or falcon over a parrot any day) but I was not given the option to try to catch or whatever it is. I was able to catch a cockatoo which is nowhere near as fun. Hmm, reading above, if you have to raise some hidden skill, I wonder if you can hunt with the birds later. Would be cool!

the ugly thing is that falcons, sixams and crows sound and behave like parrots

If you build a community garden lot, the deer will show up and eat all the plants so quick it will make your head spin. Especially the lettuce, tomatoes and potatos for some reason

Hmm, maybe I'll try putting a lot next to my home lot with a million carrot plants, and see if THAT makes the wild horses show up.
I have three horses on my home lot, all with the reward to attract wild horses, I also have the wildlife gnome and STILL... NOTHING!
Very frustrating because my Sim has the wish to meet and adopt a wild horse.

There should be an option to catch the wild livestock for meat. Wild Horse Burgers! Hot (Stray) Dogs!