Bear food for one day Here is the Bear food for one day. 12 apples 6 oranges 12 carrots 6 pears 6 cups of nuts 12.5 lbs of chow (missing from pic) The bears always get apples and oranges. Every other day they get either carrots or cooked sweet potatoes. Their extra fruit/vegetable (which is pears in this pic) varies each day between pears, avacados, berries, peaches or plums, heads of lettuce, grapes or raisins, and corn on the cob. EachRead more
Posts filed in: Enrichment & Training
Contingencies
Hey all! Have you ever wondered, “How did they get that animal to DO that??” It’s all about contingency management. What’s a contingency, you ask? A contingency is a relationship between a response (or a behavior) and some environmental consequence. (And by consequence, I don’t mean the normal, everyday definition of that word…like when a small child does something wrong and the parents say, “You’re going to get a consequence!” Nope, that has an implication that consequences are always bad.) Read more
Forget the porridge, give me cotton candy!
Every Thursday the animal department staff (along with any volunteers or museum staff that can tolerate the keepers) go to lunch together somewhere off campus. Occasionally we splurge and go to Golden Corral. A few weeks ago some of the keepers noticed there was blue cotton candy in the dessert section. We decided to take all the cotton candy they had (of course, we waited until we were on our way out to snag it all) so that we could seeRead more
The Bears- June 26.
What a lovely day yesterday was- cool and only 80 degrees- so we were worked in the bear yard: scooping poop, weed-eating around fences, spreading food, etc. From a service road near the Butterfly House, I pruned a bunch of Russian Olive plants that had ripe berries and put them in the bear yard, along with the bear food and “fruity-ice blocks” for the bears. I happened to have a camera with me and took a bunch of photos toRead more
Training Progress
I posted in March about my progress training the Ring Tailed Lemurs. At that point they were staying in their crate for about 4 minutes on average. I’ve worked up to about 10 minutes, including taking them right outside of the lemur house. Yay! But here is where it gets tricky- we spoke with our vet about giving them one or two treats the morning of their physicals. Since the lemurs have to be sedated, she does not want themRead more
Introducing Myself
Hello, Museum of Life and Science Family! Sherry already did a Spotlight post on me, but I wanted to introduce myself to everyone. I’m Dr. Julie Grimes, the Behavior Management Consultant for the Museum of Life and Science. I have a company (well, it’s really just me and my cell phone, but the IRS keeps insisting it’s really a company) called Animalworks, LLC that provides Behavior Management services to institutions with animals in captivity. I’ve worked with zoos, museums, scienceRead more