Which Aniimo can swim?
10 of the 86 can swim, and 8 of those can be caught in the wild rather than raised.
That is 12% of the dex, so you are not short of options — but the ones that matter to you are the 8 you can go and catch today, and they are first below. Everything after them has to be evolved into, which is a different kind of answer to being stuck. The dex also grades the ability, so each one is listed with the level the publisher gives it rather than as a flat list of names.
Catchable now
Raised, not found
These have no habitat in the dex, which means evolving one is the route. Follow the chain back on each page.
What the level means, and what it does not
The dex grades this ability rather than just listing it. Every Aniimo on this page carries a number next to it — Swim Lv.1, Swim Lv.2 and Swim Lv.3 — and the split here is 5 at Lv.1, 4 at Lv.2 and 1 at Lv.3.
What the number gates is not stated anywhere. The level sits beside the element and the habitat as one more property of the creature, with no note attached about whether Swim Lv.3 clears an obstacle Swim Lv.1 cannot, covers more ground on one use, or only moves faster. Those are three different games, and nothing in this one separates them.
So this page does not either. The level is printed because it is a real property of a real creature and a reader choosing between two of them should see everything the game bothered to record — not because we can tell you what to do with it yet. If the obstacle in front of you is the one thing standing between you and the rest of a region, the safe read is that a higher grade is not a downgrade; the useful read is the one that comes from playing, which is what we are doing now.
- Swim Lv.1 Skippy, Susuta, Popota, Panpanta, Fahloo
- Swim Lv.2 Pranky, Leafy, Erlath, Glacy
- Swim Lv.3 Piopiota
Where to go looking
The 8 catchable Aniimo on this page are spread across 5 regions. Echoback Landing has the most at 3, then The Mistwoods at 3 and Forest of Falling Stars at 2. A creature can be listed in more than one region, so those numbers count sightings rather than creatures.
Habitats are the game's own, not ours. Where a page here shows a region the game does not put that creature in, it is a mistake and not a tip — what we will and will not print.
Does it come attached to an element?
Worth checking before you build a party around one answer, because an ability you can only get on a water Aniimo is an ability that costs you a slot in every fight it is bad in. Here it leans water — 9 of 10 — with the rest across grass (1).
That is a distribution, not a rule. The dex gives no reason why the two travel together and we are not going to invent one; what it is good for is narrowing a search, and knowing before you start that the Aniimo which solves your map problem may not be the one you wanted in your team.
The ones that clear two things
Fahloo and Erlath carry a second traversal ability as well as swim: Fahloo also flies at Lv.1 and Erlath also flies at Lv.3. One Aniimo covering two obstacles is one slot in your party instead of two, which matters more than it sounds when the party is small and the map is not.
Which one should you get?
Not answerable yet, and not answerable anywhere else either. Every Aniimo on this page clears the same obstacle, so the question is which is fastest to obtain. That needs a measured drop rate, which does not exist for this game today, here included.
That is what we are measuring now. How it works. Nothing here is estimated.