GTA 6 animals: every species Rockstar has shown

Grand Theft Auto VI keeps a running list of the animals you meet. Wildlife encountered around Leonida, or seen in captivity, can be examined and then ticked off, a mechanic Vice picked out of “Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look”, the 26 minutes and 48 seconds Rockstar Games put out on August 27, 2026, 73 days before the November 19, 2026 launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. KeenGamer calls it a compendium, meaning a field journal that fills up as you go, the same idea Red Dead Redemption 2 used in 1899.

What Rockstar has actually put on screen is a short list, spread across two trailers, the box art and the official press stills. The total came from Game Informer: more than 170 species, including 60 kinds of birds and 30 land mammals, plus sharks, whales and jellyfish at sea, VGC reported on September 29, 2026.

Species	Where it has been seen
Alligator	The Grassrivers wetlands, in trailer 1 and three press stills; a whole panel of the box art
Crocodile	The wetlands of trailer 1, counted separately from the gators in IGN’s breakdown
Shark and dolphins	An aerial ocean shot in trailer 1: four dolphins and one shark
Flamingo	The wetlands of trailer 1, plus a speedboat chased by a flamingo on the box art
Mountain lion and deer	A Mount Kalaga still: the big cat wades into a pool where several deer are drinking
Iguana	A Keys main street, and the close-up added to the official stills on August 31, 2026
Sea turtle and moray eel	An underwater shot over a coral reef in the Leonida Keys
Dog	Petted by Jason in the opening of the Extended Look; a chihuahua in a purple tutu closes the final montage
Cat	Climbing out of the bins on a street in trailer 2

The iguana got a run of its own. Rockstar added 30 screenshots to its press site on August 31, 2026, and the lizard close-up is the frame Push Square and Pure Xbox both singled out. Push Square also noted where some of them had turned up first: “Some of these images were shared exclusively among influencers first, so it’s possible you may have seen these floating around on social media, like the iguana for example.”

What you can do with an animal

Three verbs keep coming back in the hands-on reports from Rockstar’s offices: pet, scold, study. KeenGamer listed them on August 28, 2026, and GameSpot added on September 3 that fish and animals alike can be inspected, dogs included. ComicBook mentions treats bought in stores to feed an animal.

Hunting is the one that pays. Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, told YouTuber TGG in an interview reported by GameSpot on September 3, 2026 that it unlocks through a friend of Jason’s, a character TGG says has appeared in none of the footage released so far. Rockstar Games writes the word hunting exactly once, on May 6, 2025, in the description of Mount Kalaga National Park, and names no prey at all.

A zoo rounds it out. Dexerto listed it on August 28, 2026 among the open-world activities, with animal facts to learn on site, which gives a second way to fill the journal without leaving town. It sits among the twenty activity categories pulled out of the video, covered in our guide to what there is to do between missions.

Killing an animal costs you

Push Square reported on August 27, 2026 that petting a dog triggers a positive icon, while killing an animal or shooting a corpse drags down the criminal profile, the behaviour record Rob Nelson described to IGN as the successor to the Honor system of Red Dead Redemption 2. Neither the penalty nor the reward has been given a number.

Rockstar was already joking about it in trailer 1, back on December 4, 2023. Among the fake social accounts on screen, IGN spotted “POACH”, short for Protection of Animals and Controlled Huntings.

Two unknowns are left standing: what the completed list unlocks, and whether it counts toward 100 percent completion. The manatee, so far, exists only as a team name, on a football jersey reading “Manatees” in trailer 2. And the big cat answers to two names depending on the scene: PC Gamer described a panther hunting a deer in trailer 2, while the animal wading toward the pool in the Mount Kalaga still is a mountain lion. In Florida they are the same animal. Fishing follows a close cousin of the same rule: catch it, look at it, put it back.