Environmental enrichment is all about encouraging natural feeding and foraging behaviours, stimulating activity and provoking curiosity in animals using unusual objects and situations.
Environmental enrichment can range from puzzle feeders and wind chimes to unusual scents and empty cardboard boxes. Paignton Zoo has won awards for its enrichment work and has hosted a major conference on the subject.
In the zoo environment animals do not have to walk miles in search of food, to escape predators or to migrate with the seasons. Environmental enrichment helps to occupy the time of animals such as primates, elephants and big cats. The result is that the animals are more active, physically healthier and apparently more contented.
Curators, keepers and the Research Department are constantly coming up with new ideas, discussing them, trying them out and analysing the results to see what works. Staff from different zoos share ideas with each other at conferences and by e-mail.
We are currently populating the database on enrichment devices. This database will include information on how to make enrichment devices and which species they can be used for.
|
