I was flipping through the many photos on our camera and thought I would share a few with you. This is one of our box turtles doing some painting for enrichment. Our spotted turtle (male) likes to “bother” our painted turtle (female) in Carolina Wildlife. Our canebrake rattlesnake kept getting an abscess on her face. We did some work on her and she hasn’t had any recurrence yet. It’s hard to see, but that’s one of her fangs being manipulatedRead more
Posts tagged: #science
Spotlight: Kristen Pormann
This is Kristen. (Can you guess what she has on the other end of her rope?)Kristen started as a volunteer at the Museum- I think back in 2001. She was so good we hired her about seven years ago. Her job is little different than the rest of the Keepers. As the Lead Keeper: Operations, one of Kristen’s main responsibilities is to make sure all the supplies we need are on grounds. Every Wednesday she heads out to the groceryRead more
Bears & Watermelon
Some photos of our bears when we toss watermelons in the pool. It happens like this: Bear comes over to pool and tries to get watermelon without getting in the water. Many attempts made to reach watermelon with paws. Gus in particular seems to not want to go in the water too much. Give up and head into water. Use paws to stabilize watermelon enough to get a good bite. Once watermelon is secure in teeth, paddle to shore. ArriveRead more
Spotlight: Volunteer Chris
Chris has been volunteering with us for four summers. Kristen met him and thought he would be a great addition to our summer team. We get almost 300 hours from him each year.Chris will do anything we ask him to do, although doing dishes is not his most favorite thing. He’s a good sport though, because the keepers tease him about hating to wash dishes and he just laughs with them. Most of the time he helps us inside, caringRead more
Wildlife wins: refuges get to stay refuges
In a series of previous posts, I have discussed many different threats to the wild red wolf population in eastern North Carolina. About a year ago there was another topic that, had it not been abandoned, had the potential to threaten red wolves and several other wildlife species, as well. There was a proposal to place a naval outlying landing field (OLF) in the areas surrounding two of eastern North Carolina’s wildlife refuges. This Navy landing field would have beenRead more
EnrichBits: Training
EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Kristen doing some operant conditioning with the ringtail lemurs Marilyn mentioned operant conditioning in her latest post about Gus the Bear, so I wanted to explain it a bit further. You can click here for a technical definition of operant conditioning, but it can really be summed up with one word: “training”. Training is the final big area of all those important enrichment categories (remember?…exhibit design, olfactory, visual, auditory, tactile, social, novel objects,Read more