ANIMAL ENRICHMENT - At the Phillidelphia zoo

The health and wellbeing of the animals we care for are the Zoo's highest priorities. Our two full-time vets treat any ill or injured animals and carry out a Zoo-wide preventive medicine program. Our nutritionist designs diets that provide the proper nutrients and quantity of food for everything from a flamingo to a polar bear.

But our priorities and efforts don't end with the physical health of our charges. Of equal concern is the psychological wellbeing of our animals. Keepers and other staff devote much of their time to improving exhibits, procedures and programs that address these specific needs.

How do we do that? We have developed a range of programs that are generally grouped under the term "environmental enrichment," "behavioral enrichment" or just "enrichment." These programs focus on a variety of animal needs, which include companionship, feeling safe and secure, experiencing novelty and variety, and having opportunities to engage in natural behaviors. The Zoo's animal training program also supports our enrichment efforts, and we work closely with the greater zoo community as we continue to learn more.

Companionship | Safety and Security | Novelty and Exploration | Natural Behaviors |
Training Program | Zoo Community
Companionship
It's important to provide the right social environment for our animals. Many animals live in groups in the wild, and social interactions are an essential part of their lives. We always keep naturally social animals in groups at the Zoo to allow for that all-important interaction. Some species, like tigers, spend most of their time alone in the wild. These species are usually not kept in permanent pairs or groups, because there would be a high risk of fighting and injury.
Safety and Security
Providing the animals under our care with a sense of safety and security is vital to their psychological health. For example, we try to increase our animals' sense of safety by making sure that we design hiding places for those species that will use them. For animals that would normally escape from a predator by climbing a tree, we fashion tall exhibits so they can be well above the "dangerous" floor.

A positive relationship with their keepers is also very important to a sense of safety and security for the animals. Keepers use positive reinforcement, a quiet reassuring manner and simple "quality time" to establish and maintain positive relationships with the animals under their care. In a Zoo visit, you may see many examples of keepers interacting positively with the animals.


Novelty and Exploration
The Zoo provides animals with new experiences and a chance for exploration. Keepers achieve this by offering animals unfamiliar objects, new food items, changes in exhibit furnishings and unfamiliar scents, like spices or perfumes.

In addition to brand new items, keepers can use a range of familiar items to provide diversity on a day-to-day basis. For species like monkeys that eat a range of different food items in the wild, diet is a major area in which we focus on creating variety. So for these animals, we provide a large array of fruits and vegetables and change them from day to day. We're still learning about this area. For example, if an animal has apples and bananas in its diet, is it more "enriching" to get bananas but no apples for a week and then switch—more diet variety between days—or is it better to get both every day—more diet variety within a single day but less day-to-day variation?
Natural Behaviors
The Zoo gives animals opportunities to express their species-typical range of behaviors. Every kind of animal has its own repertoire of behaviors, and we want to make sure that the environments we provide give them the chance to perform those behaviors in a way that's as close to "natural" as possible. On an obvious level, this means that we give climbing animals the chance to climb and swimming animals the chance to swim. But sometimes, the goal is more subtle. For example, we need to make sure we design comfortable resting places that are right for each kind of animal, since most animals spend a lot of time resting.

We also try to make sure that we encourage animals to spend the "natural" amount of time doing each activity. Many animals spend a large part of their day in the wild looking for and gathering food. So at the Zoo, we often make food "harder" to find by scattering small food items in the grass or in a pile of hay or hiding food inside a cardboard box or paper bag. We also offer food items that are time-consuming to deal with, like a hard coconut or a leafy branch.


Training Program
Our animal training program is important to our overall enrichment efforts. Penguins voluntarily step on a scale so we can weigh them easily. Lemurs walk into portable kennels, making it easy and stress-free to move them if needed. A tiger allows a veterinarian to take a blood sample from her tail. At a subtle cue from his keeper, a gorilla opens his mouth so we can inspect his teeth.

Many of the benefits of these programs relate back to the enrichment goals. An animal that will enter a kennel voluntarily probably feels much safer than one that has to be actively caught and put in a kennel. The interactions create a more positive relationship between the animal and the keepers. And the opportunity to learn new cues and behaviors provides exciting variety and novelty for the animals.

Another benefit to the training program is that it gives animals under our care a greater degree of choice and more opportunities to control their environment. All participation in the training program is voluntary. If they do participate and respond "correctly," they are rewarded, typically with a small amount of a favorite food item. Research with some animals has shown that working for food is a rewarding activity and that an animal will keep performing behaviors to earn food rewards even if the same food is available "for free," sitting in a nearby dish.

http://www.philadelphiazoo.org/index.php?id=3_2