Variant - gkazan/ZAWA GitHub Wiki
A Variant (misspelled varient in files) is the skin or texture used by an animal. There are two types of variant: color and species.
Both kinds of animal variant can breed with each other, and the offspring will be one of the parent variants.
Some animals, like bengal tigers and moose have breeding-only variants that can only be obtained by breeding two tamed animals.
Color variants
Color variants are for animals that are a single species, but have several different colors or markings. Color variants can also be sexually dimorphic, which means there are different texture for male and female animals. A good example of an animal with color variants is the red kangaroo, which also has separate male and female textures.
Species variants
Species variants are for an animal that represents several different species. Animals like cichlids or macaws have multiple real-life animal species represented by a ZAWA mob. Different species variants can be different sizes, and some are also sexually dimorphic.
If an animal has species variants, you can choose what spawns. With a spawn egg in hand, shift right-click without looking at a block and the name of the species that will spawn will pop up. Using the spawn egg after this will spawn the species you selected.
This works for all animals, in both ZAWA and addons, that have separate species variants defined in the data book JSON.