The verified current Ecos: La Brea playable roster has five animals: Dire Wolf, Western Horse, Saber-tooth Cat, Ancient Bison, and Columbian Mammoth. The official Roblox description names all five. The official Ecos fauna page also names Orcutt’s Coyote and Harington’s Pony near a coming-soon notice, so they belong in an upcoming list until the public animal-selection screen or a dated Ecos Team release announcement confirms a live launch.
Use this index to choose a role and find the correct guide. It deliberately separates selectable animals, unlock conditions, NPC fauna, and announced animals. A creature appearing in the world or on a development page does not automatically make it playable.
Current playable index
Dire Wolf
Diet and role: carnivore, pursuit and pack pressure.
Access: practical starter choice in the documented unlock route.
Main decisions: target selection, stamina, latch timing, pack spacing, and territory.
Officially playableWestern Horse
Diet and role: herbivore, migration and escape.
Access: practical starter choice and the community-documented route to Bison.
Main decisions: early marking, flee mode, open terrain, herd direction, and migration.
Officially playableSaber-tooth Cat
Diet and role: carnivore, concealment and ambush.
Access: official badge requires hunting and killing a Peccary.
Main decisions: pounce placement, ring accuracy, short pursuit, and safe disengage.
Playable; official badge unlockAncient Bison
Diet and role: herbivore, herd defense and charge.
Access: official badge requires marking a predator.
Main decisions: herd formation, migration, charge line, stamina, and jousting.
Playable; official badge unlockColumbian Mammoth
Diet and role: large herbivore and ecosystem engineer.
Access: official badge requires completing the mammoth quest.
Main decisions: fossil route, turning room, environmental actions, and herd movement.
Playable; official quest unlockChoose by the activity you want
Pick Dire Wolf for sustained pursuit, small-prey practice, and coordinated pack hunting. Wolves can learn the carnivore loop without first completing an animal badge. They are also the natural choice for the Peccary kill that unlocks Saber-tooth Cat.
Pick Western Horse for map learning, migration zones, and avoiding rather than forcing combat. The horse’s mark-and-flee loop teaches threat awareness. Community guides use it for the official Ancient Bison badge condition.
Pick Saber-tooth Cat for ambush. Community documentation describes pounce placement and a ring contest against larger herbivores, making patience and accuracy more important than a long chase. Pick Ancient Bison for defensive herd play, charge management, migration, and social jousting. Pick Columbian Mammoth for a large-body playstyle with tree and water interactions after a map-focused fossil quest.
Unlock status
The public Roblox badge descriptions are the strongest available unlock source. Saber-tooth Cat requires hunting and killing a Peccary. Ancient Bison requires marking a predator and explicitly tells players to read settings for controls. Columbian Mammoth requires completing the mammoth quest. These badges are linked to save data, and their official descriptions warn that deleting them may cause progress loss.
Open the Unlocks hub for a three-route overview. Exact keyboard buttons, quest start points, fossil spawns, and credit behavior require current in-game confirmation, so the individual guides label those details separately from the official conditions.
NPC fauna you will meet
The official fauna page lists Dwarf Pronghorn, Prairie Rattlesnake, Flat-headed Peccary, Turkey Vulture, Brush Rabbit, Great Blue Heron, and Botta’s Pocket Gopher as NPC animals, with Steelhead Trout shown as coming soon. NPCs can still matter for food, hunting missions, Instincts, ecosystem behavior, and unlocks.
Flat-headed Peccary is the key example: it is not a selectable animal, but the Saber badge requires hunting and killing a Peccary. Dwarf Pronghorn and Brush Rabbit appear in community hunting and mission documentation. Turkey Vulture, rattlesnake, and other fauna can appear in daily objective examples. Always use the live mission wording instead of assuming an old NPC task is active.
Announced and upcoming animals
Orcutt’s Coyote and Harington’s Pony are officially named on the Ecos fauna page. The same page presents a coming-soon message for new playable animals. Community sources discuss a June 29, 2026 development update and later testing, but neither testing footage nor a fauna listing establishes public access by itself.
Use the Upcoming Animals guide to check the evidence ladder. Do not accept predicted release dates, invented badges, or guessed diets and abilities. The live roster changes only when a normal public player can select the animal or Ecos Team publishes a clear release statement.
Facts to recheck in Bio stats
Community animal pages publish group limits, diet details, attacks, coats, sex differences, stamina behavior, and balance values. Those details are helpful for understanding roles but can change. When you spawn, open Bio stats and settings to verify the current diet, health, group information, action names, and binds.
Do not use a single number to rank all five animals. A larger body or stronger hit can be offset by turning, stamina, visibility, group rules, or an opponent’s escape tool. The right animal is the one whose decisions you can execute in the current terrain and group.
Roster checks after an update
Check the public selection screen, official Roblox description, official fauna page, public badge list, and a dated Ecos Team announcement. Record whether each animal is selectable, locked, NPC-only, announced, testing, or expired from an event. Keep those states separate.
If a guide claims a new playable but cannot show the public selector or a developer release note, treat it as unconfirmed. If the game description still lists five but the selector shows a sixth, document the live observation with a date and then look for the announcement rather than hiding the disagreement.