EnrichBits: A monthly look at Animal Enrichment Our newest bear enrichment toy comes from the people at Boomer Ball. It’s made for polar bears, I think, but we thought we’d see how our Black Bears took to it. Remember as you watch this terribly suspenseful video, that it’s really enriching for the animal when they have to think about things and make choices! And the longer they stay interested, the better the enrichment! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMjrpe7Gahs[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXgYcqERdFM[/youtube]Read more
Posts tagged: #animals
I’m heading to NY
A date is set for me to pick up our new male red wolf, #1369. I leave on Sunday November 2 and will return with him Monday afternoon/evening. If you want to be the first to see him, stop by the Museum on Tuesday November 4…after (or before) you vote of course. Click here to see a photo of him. Our new female, #1227, will be arriving by plane. Date TBD, but sometime during the first two weeks of November.Read more
Pool party
Once a year, when the stars align, our animal keeping staff performs a ritual task that keepers have done since the beginning of time– we clean the bear pool! This is a pretty big undertaking (made bigger because we didn’t do it last year due to the drought) and to get it done (plus all of our regular work for the day) it took 5 keepers, 1 director, 1 volunteer, 2 other museum staff (shout out to Grover and Courtney),Read more
Big Word of the Month: Biodiversity
This month’s big word is not that obscure or difficult to pronounce but the concept behind it can be a bit large to grasp. Biodiversity is a word and idea that tries to capture the complex relationships among different forms of life. It came into widespread use beginning in the 1980’s in scientific and political circles as an organizing theme in discussions of conservation. The rise of the word coincided with a change of focus for environmental groups from theRead more
I was cleaning the goat yard this AM, and took a break for a minute to check over the goats and scratch them for a few minutes. After a bit, I figured I should get back to raking and leaned over to give Rocky a final pat and a hug around the neck. To which he responded by burping loudly in my ear. I think this face says it all.Read more
Water Bears in Space!!
This post is not directly related to any of our animals here at the museum but I thought it was cool enough to squeeze in anyway. One group of animals you’ve probably not heard of are the water bears which belong to the phylum Tardigrada. (If you don’t remember your taxonomy you can read my earlier post.) They are one of the few microscopic things that people regularly refer to as “cute”. You can see from this micrograph from theRead more