Animal Hospital Symptom Checker
Start from what you can actually see. The checker maps each clue to a decision and shows the anomalies that match it.
Quick answer: a confirmed mismatch on any available layer is enough to reject, and every layer you could check passing means treat. If a layer is unanswered, keep checking rather than deciding on a partial result.
Symptom Checker
What are you seeing, and what does it mean?
Answer for the layers available in your current shift. The checker stops treating the moment a layer reports a mismatch.
- 1Visual
- 2Photo
- 3CCTV
- 4Document
What Each Detection Layer Can and Cannot Tell You
| Layer | Where it comes from | What it reveals | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visual | The patient in the room | Face, body, posture, colour, size | Rejects sight-only fakes immediately |
| Photo | The clipboard photo | Face, eye, mouth, and ear differences | Catches patients that pass the room view |
| CCTV | The camera feed | Face and body changes, camera-only tells | Reveals behaviour hidden from the room |
| Document / Scanner | Records and Scanner results | Record and patient mismatches | Confirms when records are available |
How the Detection Layers Work Together
Animal Hospital does not give you a single reliable test. It gives you several partial ones and expects you to combine them. The room view is available from the first shift, the photo arrives shortly after, and the camera and records follow as the shift difficulty rises. Each layer sees something the others cannot.
That design is the reason a clean visual check cannot be treated as confirmation. An anomaly built around the photo layer looks completely normal in the room and only exposes itself when the clipboard image is compared. An anomaly built around the camera layer behaves correctly in front of you and reveals its real form on the CCTV feed. Rejecting on sight alone catches the obvious cases and misses the rest.
The layers also work in the opposite direction. When a patient looks strange but passes every layer you can check, you are looking at a normal patient with an unusual appearance, and the correct action is to treat. That situation is the single largest source of unnecessary rejections, because the visual oddity is real and the conclusion drawn from it is not.
The practical rule is to separate what you observed from what it proves. An observation is a layer reporting a mismatch. A proof requires that layer to be one you actually have. If the photo, camera, and records are all still locked, then a strange-looking patient has failed nothing, and treating is the better decision.
Clue to Decision Reference
| What you observed | Layer | Decision | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extra or missing features | Visual | Reject | Compare against the roster to confirm which feature is wrong |
| Unusual colour or size | Visual | Reject only if a layer fails | Unusual colour alone is not proof; some normal patients look unusual |
| Photo disagrees with the patient | Photo | Reject | Trust the photo comparison over your first impression |
| Photo is static or blank | Photo | Reject | A corrupted photo is itself the mismatch |
| Camera shows a different form | CCTV | Reject | Confirm on the camera before acting on a suspicion |
| Camera feed twitches | CCTV | Keep checking remaining layers | Camera artifacts can appear without an anomaly |
| Records disagree with the patient | Document | Reject | Record mismatches are a direct confirmation |
| Everything matches | All layers | Treat | Continue with the normal treatment flow |
The Normal Baseline Behind Every Decision
Every check on this page is a comparison, and a comparison needs a reference. That reference is the 10 normal patients in the roster. Players who know the roster by sight make faster and more accurate decisions than players who are still learning it, because the first question, is this a normal animal, resolves immediately.
The roster matters most for the visual layer, but it supports the others too. A photo that disagrees with the patient only means something if you know what the patient should look like. A camera view showing a different face is only suspicious if you can recognise the original. Build the baseline first and the layers become much easier to read.
Keep the patient roster open during early sessions. Once the normal animals are familiar, the anomaly pages become a difference reference rather than a list to memorise, and the checker in this page becomes a confirmation step instead of a guessing aid.
Anomalies by Detection Layer
18 confirmed anomalies grouped by the layer that exposes them.
Photo (2)
CCTV (7)
Skinwalker-type (1)
Symptom Checker FAQ
What is the Animal Hospital symptom checker?
It is an in-page decision tool. You pick what you can see at each detection layer, and it returns treat, reject, or keep checking along with the anomalies that match the clue you selected.
Does the checker replace the anomaly checklist?
No. The checklist walks you through the layers and records pass, fail, or unavailable on each one. The checker starts from the symptom instead, which is faster when you already know what looks wrong.
What if only one detection layer is available?
Answer for the layers you have and mark the rest as not available. The checker treats an unfinished layer as unfinished rather than assuming it passed.
Why does the checker say keep checking?
Because no layer has reported a mismatch yet and at least one layer is still unanswered. Treating at that point is guessing, so confirm the remaining layers first.
Is a single failed layer enough to reject?
Yes. A confirmed mismatch on any available layer is sufficient to reject. The layers exist separately so that a patient who passes the room view can still be caught by a photo, camera, or record check.