EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Food is a major component to our enrichment program here at the museum. Remember Enrichment and how important exhibit design is? Well, Feeding and Foraging is another big category of enrichment that we apply to our captive animals’ lives. There are quite a few ways in which we can vary, prepare, and distribute our animals’ daily diets in order to keep things interesting for them. They’d spend much of their waking time inRead more
Posts tagged: #animals
Spotlight: Dr. Allen Cannedy
We’re fortunate to have several veterinarians helping us care for our animals. One of our veterinary specialists is Dr. Allen Cannedy. He is what’s called a “large animal veterinarian”. These are the vets who see domestic farmyard animals, like pigs and cattle. Dr. C comes when one of our Farmyard mammals needs care. He comes to check on them at least twice/year, but is usually here more often. We’ve been working with Dr. Cannedy for about 10 years. He comesRead more
Creature Feature: Red Wolf #1390
We currently have three Red Wolf brothers that are 2 years old, but arrived at the museum when they were only 7 months. We have spoken about our two other Red Wolves in previous posts, but Red Wolf #1390 is the one featured here. Red Wolf #1390 is the alpha of the three brothers (which means he is the highest-ranking wolf and is dominant over the others), probably due in part to him being the healthiest. He is not asRead more
“Is bleach on sale??”
I’m the keeper whose job it is to buy all of our supplies. One of the great things about that is hearing the comments I get from people around town as I’m buying those supplies. See my previous post about Stocking the Animal Department Kitchen. We use about 10 -12 gallons of bleach a week cleaning animal cages, exhibits, and pools, and I ususally end up buying large quantities of bleach (100 bottles) at a time to be a littleRead more
Big Word: Anthropomorphism
Are owls really wise? Are raccoons nature’s bandits? Could a bear love some bears while disliking others? These questions reflect the tendency of humans to attribute familiar emotions and intentions to animal species. The behavior, also known as anthropomorphism, springs from our desire to know the mental status of those around us. While this capacity usually serves us well at parties, scientists try to avoid anthropomorphizing about animal behavior. We can never really know if an animal is “sad” orRead more
How many keys do you carry?
Most people have a couple keys on their key chain: a house key, a car key or two, maybe one or two others. The animal keepers, however, carry about 17 keys, and I carry 23 keys. Let me list them for you:Carolina Wildlife exhibits, education animal rooms, bunny barn, outdoor animal exhibit padlocks, bear padlock, Museum gates, snake cage, venomous snake cage, drug cabinet, drug box, needle cabinet, “gator” vehicle, “mule” vehicle, alligator cage, Science Resource Center, “Master key”, boatRead more