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What is enrichment? 

Enrichment is part of the Zoo’s mission of inspiring others to join us in caring for animals and conserving the natural world. 

Enrichment is the addition or modification of an animal’s environment that encourages the animals to make choices, exhibit natural, or species-appropriate behavior, presents mental challenges, encourages physical activity/exercise and enhances the animal’s overall well being. 

An animal’s life can be enriched in a variety of ways. Enrichment often takes the form of modifications to exhibits. This provides animals with additional three-dimensional space for climbing and resting . It also provides visual barriers from cagemates as well as the public, which can help to alleviate social pressures. Viewing platforms can be built into exhibits, allowing carnivores the opportunity to view typical prey items in other areas of the Zoo.  

The YouTube video above shows some enrichment items being prepared, and various animals interacting with enrichment items in their exhibits.

So why is enrichment so important?

In the wild, animals spend much of their time hunting for food, building nests and warding off predators. The animals at the Toledo Zoo are provided with the highest quality of care. This means they are fed well balanced diets that include ample amounts of food, they receive regular medical exams, and they are free from predation. Often, that very quality of care can discourage the animals from exercising some of their natural behaviors and talents, because they’re no longer necessary. A well rounded enrichment program can provide the animals with activities that simulate these natural behaviors. More specifically, a well thought out enrichment program can also 

• Increase animal activity and exercise 

• Decrease the occurrence of stereotypical and other aberrant behavior by directing animal energy into more productive activities
  
• Provide the animals with choices and control over certain aspects of their environment (what to eat, temperature and lighting gradients, whom to interact with, etc.)
  
• Improve breeding success and conservation efforts by housing animals in appropriate social groups that allow for normal physical and psychological development
  
• Increase visitor appreciation by displaying animals in stimulating and naturalistic environments, allowing guests to view the animals in situations that mimic those of their wild counterparts. 

Enrichment is an integral part of daily animal care. That animals need stimulation and opportunities to make choices in their environments is no longer a question. It is now a new challenge facing animal caregivers to provide the animals with environments that meet all of their physical and psychological needs. Enrichment comes in many forms, whether variety within their habitat, food, scents, items to manipulate, investigation, and even animal training.

Enrichment

The incorporation of environmental (behavioral) enrichment in the daily husbandry practices of the animals cared for in AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums is required by AZA Accreditation Standards .  The AZA Behavior Scientific Advisory Group (BAG) defined enrichment as a dynamic process for enhancing animal environments within the context of the animals’ behavioral biology and natural history. Environmental changes are made with the goal of increasing the animal’s behavioral choices and drawing out their species-appropriate behaviors, thus enhancing animal welfare. 

Types of Enrichment 

It is important to have knowledge of a species’ natural behaviors and physiology when developing enrichment program. Several categories of enrichment are then used to enhance that species’ behavioral, physical, social, cognitive, and psychological well being. These categories are not mutually exclusive and often overlap, however each, if relevant to the species, should be incorporated into an animal’s enrichment plan. 

Environmental Enrichment Devices 
Environmental enrichment devices (EEDs) are objects that can be manipulated by the animal. These objects may be novel or pre-existing. Natural EEDs may include browse, large and small branches, wood wool, hay, and flowers however these items should be kept clean to prevent bacterial growth. Man-made EEDs may include premade items such as car wash roller brushes or strips, Boomer balls, tires, and Kong toys, or constructed items such as puzzle boxes, piñatas, and various PVC contraptions. 

Habitat Enrichment 
Habitat design is an important consideration for providing enrichment. Habitats should provide a variety of substrates, levels, and complexities. Considerations should be given to useable space versus total space, and ease of reaching or changing platforms, tiers, ropes, nesting/denning areas, feed/water dispensers, and crevices/crannies for EED/enrichment food hiding. 

Sensory Enrichment 
Animal sensory systems are typically specialized by species and play crucial roles in their survival. Sensory enrichment is designed to address the animal’s sense of smell, touch, hearing, vision, and taste and elicit species-specific response, territorial, reproductive or hunting behaviors. Olfactory stimuli may include natural predator, pheromone, or prey scents or novel scents such as spices or perfumes. Tactile stimuli may include a variety of EEDs that can be manipulated including materials of different textures such as straw, soft blankets, paper, burlap, cardboard, or wood. Auditory stimuli may include the presentation of natural sounds or animal vocalizations recordings. Visual stimuli may include EEDs of different colors, those that move by wind or water current, animals in the line of sight from other habitats, video presentations, or mirrors. Gustatory stimuli include food enrichment items, flavored sprays, or beverages. 

Food Enrichment
Food can be presented in a variety of ways elicit feeding, hunting, foraging behaviors, problem-solving strategies, and to facilitate behavioral conditioning. Food may be fresh, frozen, soft, hard, smooth, rough, heavy, light, cold, or and may be incorporated into puzzle boxes, hidden in or scattered about the habitat, or buried in the substrate. 

Social Groupings 
Social groupings should resemble those observed in the wild to facilitate feeding, grooming, social, territorial, and courtship behaviors. Mixed species exhibits may also provide symbiotic or complementary activities between the species. 

Behavioral Conditioning 
Behavioral conditioning for animal husbandry and research behaviors provides cognitive stimulation that increases the intellectual focus of an animal. Animals voluntarily participate in these training sessions to maintain established or learn new behaviors. 

Enrichment Plans 

Goal-oriented enrichment plans should be developed that identify what species-specific behaviors are desired from the animal, how the enrichment will be created or developed to elicit these behaviors while ensuring animal safety, and a means to assess and document the animal’ responses to it. Each plan should take into account the species natural history and individual history. The plans should be tailored to address these factors and also be dynamic to ensure that any changes needed to improve the enrichment or accentuate the behaviors can be well-documented. 

Enrichment Schedule 

Enrichment devices and strategies should be presented on a varied schedule and in a variety of contexts to make sure the animals do not become desensitized or habituated to them. The animal care staff should maintain a detailed schedule for what type of enrichment will be introduced for a specified date, time, duration in the habitat (if it is appropriate to remove it), location, and type of presentation that is randomized. These records should also provide a summary of the animal’s responses to the enrichment to ensure that safety continues to be a priority and that the animals are still stimulated by it.

Care & Enrichment

  • by the minesota zoo

  • What is environmental enrichment?

    Animals in zoos don’t have the same opportunities for physical and mental stimulation that wild animals do, so zookeepers provide the animals with objects or changes to their environment that will stimulate the behaviors of healthy wild animals.

    Enrichment gives animals something to think about, encourages exercise, and gives animals a degree of control of their environment by giving them choices.  Basically, enrichment helps keep life interesting and challenging.

    Imagine that you are sitting in your room, feeling a little bored, and you suddenly notice a strange new something hanging from your ceiling. Somethingbrightly colored, kind of round, with – could it be – a snickers bar inside?

    Chances are you’d be figuring out a way to check out this new thing pretty fast. Could you stand on a desk or chair, do you need a ladder, could you knock it down? You’d be using your natural human problem solving skills to try to figure out what this new thing was and what to do about it. That is enrichment!

    Types of enrichment

    Zookeepers provide different types of enrichment to stimulate all of the senses and encourage a wide range of natural behaviors.  Categories of enrichment include foods & feeding, sensory, novel objects, environmental as well as behavioral & social. Click on one of the following for more information.

    FOOD/FEEDING

    Food is frequently used as an enrichment tool because it solicits the natural hunting and foraging behaviors of animals. Providing task oriented puzzle feeders and presenting food in different ways encourages animals to think and work for their food, as they would in the wild. Food with interesting textures or new flavors, and food that is hidden in hard to reach places, all make good enrichment. Many animals love “Popsicles,” not the kind people eat but special ones zookeepers make like meatcicles for tigers or fruitcicles for primates. One of the Zoo’s tigers used to put her bone popsicles into the tiger pool to make them melt faster!

  • Sensory

  • Senses are extremely important to animals; it helps them to understand their environment and who is in it. Sensory enrichment includes visual, olfactory (smell), auditory (hearing), taste and tactile stimulation. Playing music or sounds of nature provides auditory stimulation that can both excite or calm an animal. Tactile stimulation might be a scratching post or a pile of snow! Providing new smells in an animal’s exhibit can encourage exploration and sometimes triggers territorial behaviors like rubbing and scent marking. A wide variety of scents are used for enrichment including spices, cooking extracts, perfumes and animal urine. The tigers love “Obsession” and “Charlie” perfumes. The tapirs, tree kangaroos, binturongs and gibbons go for banana extract!

  • Novel Objects

  • Novel objects are enrichment items that can be manipulated in some way with hands, paws or hooves, mouths, horns or even tails. Placing these objects in an animal’s environment can cause the animal to display all kinds of natural behaviors ranging from exploration to play. Paper mache piñatas to stalk and tear apart, boomer balls to bat around, a telephone book or box to shred and even kong toys and chew ropes (the kind you might use at home for your pets), can all be lots of fun for animals. Non-natural objects, such as balls and boxes, are usually used in the animals’ off exhibit spaces but novel objects can be natural too. Gourds, coconuts, pine cones, pumpkins and fir trees all make great enrichment. Depending on the size of the animal, branches or whole fir trees are put into exhibits for the animals to investigate, move around, and tear apart. These items help the animals perform necessary behaviors during natural seasonal cycles. Placing branches in the moose and caribou exhibits during rut, for example, helps the animals to shed the velvet on their antlers.

     

    envirnemntal

  • Environmental enrichment refers to enhancements made to an animal’s space that provides changes in structures or adds complexity. It might be new vines or branches added for climbing, pools or wallows for bathing or cooling off, or a variety of substrates for foraging.

  • training/behavioral/social

  • For wild animals, social behavior is key to their survival. Courtship and reproduction, feeding and foraging, territoriality and defense can all be social in nature. We strive to maintain our animals in appropriate social groups (housed alone if they are solitary or in herds or families if they are social). Many of our exhibits house multiple species which presents both behavioral challenges and opportunities. Positive, appropriate interaction between keepers and animals helps build trust and aids in the daily care of the animals. Beyond the day to day routine interaction, our zookeepers/trainers also use operant conditioning techniques to train many of our animals. Training provides necessary mental stimulation because it involves learning. The animals learn to perform behaviors in response to the trainer’s cues and are rewarded for correct responses. In addition to providing beneficial mental stimulation, training husbandry behaviors allows the zookeepers and vets to examine and care for the animals without using procedures that are more invasive and stressful. Animals are taught to go on scale for weighing, to present various body parts for examination and even to allow staff to perform ultrasounds, give vaccinations or take blood. By teaching the animals to cooperate in their care, we can provide them the best care without undue stress.

  • Measuring our success by monitoring behavior

    Planning effective enrichment starts with researching the natural history of the species.  Knowing how wild animals navigate their environments, what foods they eat, what their primary senses are etc can aid in planning appropriate habitats and activities for our Zoo animals.  Setting behavioral goals and planning how to achieve them is only the beginning.

    Monitoring the behavior of our animals is part of the equation too.  Knowing where and how the animals are spending their time can aid in planning new initiatives or in evaluating whether the activities we are doing are effective.

    For example, behavioral data collected on our three brown bears can tell us how much time each bear spends fishing, climbing, or sleeping as well as how they interact with each other and their environment.

    Animals have individual personalities and preferences. If enrichment is placed in the trees versus the pool, which bear is likely to get it?    Enrichment planning and evaluation is aimed at meeting the needs of the species and the individual.

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