The Zookeepers at the Houston Zoo strive to get natural behaviors from their animals by providing novel enrichment items. Enrichment helps to improve an animal’s well being by stimulating them mentally and physically in order to encourage natural behaviors. Each enrichment item is geared to stimulating one of their basic senses: sound, taste, sight, touch and smell. You can help provide items for your favorite carnivore at Amazon.com.
If we want to encourage a Jaguar to hunt like they would in the wild, we will hide a barrel with meat inside on exhibit. It’s not room service every day at the zoo!!! In this example the Jaguar smells the meat but cannot see it. He would have to use his sense of smell to find the food source and then he has to manipulate the barrel in order to get the meat out. Manipulating the barrel stimulates the Jaguar physically and mentally, often turning into play as well.
The Carnivore Department provides a different type of enrichment every day. To prevent repetition and boredom we are constantly changing our enrichment schedule and trying to come up with fresh ideas. Some of the most popular enrichment items for Carnivores include novel food items, bones, ice pops, various scents, bedding and boxes.
Bonita, our Maned Wolf loves it when we give her a box of crickets. The noise and movement created by the crickets stimulate Bonita’s hunting behaviors and she loves tearing the box apart.
We recently installed a zip line for our African Wild Dog exhibit. The zip line gives us a whole new way to present bones, hides and large chunks of meat to the African Wild Dogs. The dogs have to chase their enrichment item and then pull it off the line. You can see in the photo below it’s a group effort! Chasing, tearing, pulling and working for their food are all behaviors the Dogs would exhibit in the wild.
By encouraging natural behaviors through enrichment guests visiting the Houston Zoo can see Jaguars hunting, Maned Wolves pouncing and African Wild Dogs chasing. Hopefully these kinds of moments at the Zoo will foster an appreciation for the plight of all animals in the wild.
Enrichment Day at the Houston Zoo is Saturday, September 24th. This is a great opportunity to come and join in the fun. Come out and see all of the animals enjoying special enrichment, hear keeper chats and loads of fun games for kids of all ages! Enrichment Day celebrates the meaning and joy of enriching our animals and visitors!
Find your favorite animals and see what they’re wishing for at Amazon.com. Then just sit back, shop, click and send your animal of choice a wonderful gift to enrich their life! They really do appreciate it and so does the Houston Zoo!
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