Ichthyosaurus

Behavior
Ichthyosaurs are a very friendly species to most creatures, and will often swim towards you and around you out of curiosity. They will push you ashore if you run out of stamina and can't surface for oxygen in time. They act a lot like modern dolphins. Ichthyosaurs in the northwestern waters can be found killing and eating wild Kairuku.

Appearance
An Ichthyosaur is a mid-sized marine reptile, taking the rough shape of a dolphin. It has large eyes for spying fish and squid in the dark depths, a long snout for catching said prey, and a large brain that gives the animal its inherently curious nature.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Ichthy.

General
The Ichthy will flee once you or your tame attacks it.

Strategy
There are two ways of doing this:


 * It's recommend using a fast water mount and chasing it down, which is the most effective and fastest way.
 * The more wasteful and time consuming way is to get a fast flying mount, pick up a friend or tribe mate, and have them get a gun or bow/crossbow and shoot it from above.

Weaponry
Any aquatic mount or even just spears can take out an Ichthyosaur. You may also need SCUBA Flippers if you don’t have a mount.

Dangers
While not a dangerous animal itself, the Ichthy can attract dangerous creatures such as or. Be prepared to fight more than just an Ichthyosaur if you do go hunting for one.

Weakness
These animals don't have that much health, so killing them isn't that difficult in general.

Taming
The Ichthy is unable to be tamed through the standard tranquilize-and-feed methods, and must be tamed non-violently.

To feed it, place meat or kibble on the last slot of your hotbar, then when approached press use (default ) to feed it. You cannot feed them all the meat required for taming at one time, you must wait every couple of minutes until it is hungry again to feed it more until it's taming meter is filled.


 * The Ichthyosaurus will nuzzle up to tamed creatures, so using them to help tame them is recommended.
 * The Ichthyosaurus may try to swim away while you are taming it.
 * If you find the Ichthyosaurus keeps running away you might be able to get between it and the open ocean forcing it to run to the shallows where it could get stuck for you to tame it. It's still likely it may get away though so blocking it in even further might help as well.It is advised not to try and tame them in open water.
 * It will co-habitat with Megalodons and Mantas, which together with the water can make taming them a bit dangerous.

Utility

 * Scout: A tamed, mounted Ichthyosaurus will NOT be ignored by every terrestrial predator in the game no matter where you are, as long as you don't attack them. Even then, you can still dart away unharmed, making them the perfect aquatic scout for small rivers and deep oceans. If you give lots of points to movement speed then this creature is perfect for scouting the oceans of Ark in no time. Perfect to find some underwater creatures when you need them.
 * Black Pearl Farmer: It can be used to farm Eurypterids since it is the only mount besides the Angler that has no knockback, which usually has a massive effect on the Eurypterids, and because of that they may be constantly attacked and killed effortlessly by the Ichthy. A big advantage compared to the Angler is that the Ichthy does not gain any torpor, which the Eurypterids can massively inflict (Level Health and Melee Damage).
 * Travel: Ichthyosaurus is remarkably fast even with normal speed, and the player can be more than capable of going extremely close to predators and dash off without being caught when riding this animal (Most predators ignores it however). If you give lots of points to movement speed and some stamina than the Ichthy is the perfect creature to scout the whole oceans of Ark in no time.
 * River Access: Because Ichthyosaurus is smaller it can easily maneuver through rivers and other areas that the larger sea creatures can not. Although the Ichthyosaurus can travel up rivers it will get stuck in water that is too shallow for it to swim lucky a fish basket can help to get Ichthyosaurus unstuck.
 * Security: Predators in shallow water will ignore a player mounted on Ichthyosaurus, even the most dangerous like Baryonyx and Megapiranha. However the predators will retaliate if attacked, in which case it's easy to escape if your route isn't blocked.
 * Transport: With it's decent speed it could take you with your items/resources in no time without being bothered by sea predators, except that it has not much weight like most sea mounts. (Level up movement speed, weight, and stamina if needed.)
 * Taming Mount: You can hold weapons while riding an Ichthyosaurus, so feel free to bring your crossbow, making it useful early underwater taming mount for early levels without waiting to endgame levels in order to acquire SCUBA gear to swim fast. The Ichthy swims very fast and can outswim most sea predators so you don't really need SCUBA gears for that, and if you gave lots of points to movement speed your Ichthy doesn't even have to sprint. Here's the tactic: Ride your Ichthyosaurus, find your desired sea creature, pick your finest position to shoot the creature (DO NOT UNMOUNT), everytime the angry creature get's close to you swim away while riding your Ichthy from it but not to far, then turn around and repeat. Don't get hit too often due to it's low HP unless if you add lots of points to HP or confident enough. This tactic is very useful to tame any sea creatures on early level (if you have at least a crossbow and tranq arrows) from Angler, Megalodon to larger sea creatures like Plesiosaur and even the Mosasaurus if you are patient enough and can be done by any survivors if they know the Ichthyosaurus' utilities. It became time consuming however if your wanted sea creature is high level so you probably need to scout the island to find deep sea loot crates for good quality crossbows if possible, because you can't shoot tranq darts underwater. Or you can just wait to have harpoon launcher and tranq spear bolts which is an endgame item (on mobile they don't have harpoon launcher and tranq spear bolts), so crossbows is still one of the most used underwater weapon/knock-out tame. The only downside is that you could drown if you don't wear SCUBA gear, so get up to the surface every time once your oxygen drops very low and go to the deeps again after you recover your oxygen. To do this method you'll need to add lots of points on your own oxygen in order to stay in the water for a long periods of time, but once you have SCUBA gear, you don't need to resurface in order to recover oxygen ever again.

Notes/Trivia

 * Before patch 183.2, Ichthyosaurs would die if even a fraction of them was above the water.
 * Prior to being added, Ichthyosaurus was referred to in the "upcoming week patch notes" as Shastasaurus which is a much larger related species.
 * When the Ichthyosaurus was added as the first creature to be tameable non-violently, there was plans to make all herbivores have this option as well. However, this was never implemented.
 * They are one of the few species in Ark to retain their eating animation after they are tamed. However their eating animation is slightly glitched as their long snouts actually cross each other.
 * Ichthyosaurus are attracted by other tamed Ichthy and Megalodons.
 * Although being attracted to water pets may be a benefit for players looking to tame one, not moving for even a few moments could attract enough to stop your Plesiosaur or Mosasaurus from moving.
 * Despite the common belief that Icthyosaurus is playful and curious in ARK, they can actually be quite aggressive to wild terrestrial creatures. So long as a player or tamed animal is nowhere in the vicinity, Icthyosaurus are very aggressive, similar to Megalodons, and will attack just about any land animal that gets into the same vicinity of them. Although they can be found in the north killing and eating Kairuku, they often tussle with Carbonemys in warmer waters; they will attack Ankylosaurus, Carnotaurus, Raptors, and even Rexes if there is no player in the immediate vicinity. This is most likely a bug.
 * If you tranq a creature, like a Parasaur, and it slides into the ocean where Ichthies are present, they will attack and eat the drowned creature.
 * The largest icthyosaur in real life, Shonisaurus sikanniensis, was more massive and nearly twice as long as a sperm whale, weighing in at an incredible 75 tons, and measuring in at an astounding 21 meters in length. Shonisaurus is the largest extinct marine animal ever discovered.
 * On Ark Mobile, for some reason when a ridden/unridden tamed Ichthyosaurs attacking aggressive sea predators (including Mosasaurus and Tusoteuthis) they doesn't seem to fight back the Ichthy at any circumstances except they only fight back when you shoot something towards them while riding the Ichthyosaur in order to aggro them to you. Similar to the Arthropleura, this seems to be a bug.
 * Oddly enough on maps such as Valguero, Ichthyosaurus tend to commit suicide by moving too close to the water's surface
 * In Addition to this on Valguero the Ichthyosaurus can be found beached as a resource node providing a easy source of and
 * These Carcasses also give despite the living ones only providing