Christmas Ideas

Welcome to the Oakland Zoo
What a great idea for giving the gift to that someone who has everything - support your local zoo!
Give the gift for ANIMAL ENRICHMENT

WHAT IS ENRICHMENT?
Enrichment is a term that describes a vast array of activities provided for captive wildlife. These activities can stimulate natural behaviors, such as scent marking, aggressive posturing, vocalizations or play behavior. Enrichment activities increase natural behavior and improve quality of life.

Enrichment activities can be a number of things. From spraying perfume on logs to get lions to scratch, rub or scent mark, to highly complex, computer run, random, mechanical food dispensers that simulate hunting. Some animals are offered live fish to catch in pools, others receive “puzzle feeders” to lengthen the time they spend feeding. Many activities are put on a schedule, and rotated to retain their novelty. This keeps the game fun. Other activities just need to be time consuming, and give the animal work or purpose.

Variety is the key to providing satisfying activities. Introducing new scents, objects, sounds and tastes keep the animals stimulated, and interested in their environment. This not only creates a healthier animal, but provides our zoo guests with a more educational experience. Enrichment can provide the opportunity to watch giraffe use it’s 18-inch, prehensile( grabbing) tongue to obtain food from a puzzle feeder, and you will have observed how a giraffe browses in Africa!

How do we come up with activity ideas? This is where knowing the animals is important. The keepers are often the ones to create new plans, based on both the natural history of the species, and
knowing the individual animals themselves. You would not want to offer branches on ropes if an antelope will eat the rope- this could make them sick. Or, chimpanzees may like popsicles made with fruit and juice, but for a lion, you better make a BLOOD-sicle! Creativity and animal experience are a necessary combination for generating new enrichment activities.

ENRICHMENT WISH LIST
Things you may already have around the house:
Perfumes
Spices
Towels
Tennis balls
Raffia
Cornstalks
Large nuts in the shell
Cardboard baby books
Plastic garden toys (flamingoes)
Telephone books
Blankets

Things that can be purchased at most pet stores:
Kongs
Manufactured parrot toys
Jolly balls
Large catnip cat toys
Any horse toy

For more information contact Margaret Rousser at Margaret@oaklandzoo.org