EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment As you probably already know by now if you are a regular reader, enrichment is all about giving our captive animals the opporunities to exhibit their natural behaviors. Well, on a 95 degree afternoon, the natural behavior for a lot of our outdoor animals is to find a cool shady spot and sleep. These are afternoons where there is no interest in new scents, none of the animals seem to want to exploreRead more
Posts tagged: #EnrichBits
EnrichBits: Roommates
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Enrichment is all about providing opportunities to our animals that help them to exhibit their natural behaviors. Opossums wouldn’t find many recycle bins to snooze in out in the wild ( well, at least not many bins they’d be welcome in!) but they would find a similar shaped place, like a hollow tree stump, that was a sheltered and hidden nook. Bears wouldn’t be flipping over traffic cones looking for bear chow inRead more
See it, smell it!
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment So I’ve tried to explain a lot of the categories of a full enrichment program (if you click the EnrichBits link on the side bar, you can read them), but we haven’t talked about olfactory or visual enrichment yet. Our animals need interesting things to look at and unusual scents that may encourage exploration! For interesting visual stuff, we use windsocks, shimmering wind twirly things (yes, that’s their official name), and other objectsRead more
EnrichBits: Novel Item enrichment
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Do you ever feel the need to rearrange the furniture at home? Or maybe, you just have to get out of town for the weekend, to be in a different place. Perhaps you always grab a different type of cereal at the grocery store, so you aren’t eating the same thing every morning, or maybe you splurge for this spring’s latest fashion, just because…it’s new. Novelty is very much part of human lifeRead more
EnrichBits: Paper mache
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Often our youth volunteers will help us do enrichment projects for the animals, and paper mache-ing balloons is a project I usually offer up to them, thinking it’s a good break from all the cleaning we ask of them. After the balloon dries we pop it and use the paper shell as a non toxic and ok-if-a-little-is-ingested toy that can hold hidden treats. This is use of both tactile and feeding/foraging enrichment.To myRead more
EnrichBits: Tactile Enrichment
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment We’ve talked about Exhibit Design and Feeding and Foraging as two categories of a good animal enrichment program. Another important way we keep our animals challenged is by providing them with different textures and sensations. Big or small, warm or cool, soft or hard, bumpy or smooth, round or square– these are all different textures that we use for diets, toys, or exhibit “furniture”. By using different things like burlap bags, piles ofRead more