Animals - Enrichment

Environmental enrichment improves or enhances zoo environment for the animals, stimulating them to investigate and interact with their surroundings. Enrichment allows zoo animals to perform natural behaviors, permits them to be more active and increases the animals’ control over their environment. It also allows the animal the physical and psychological need to make choices.

Enrichment comes in many forms, including:

Food
New and different foods to smell, taste, and discover. Whole foods that must be peeled or bitten into; foods frozen into ice blocks; food hidden in boxes or throughout the exhibit. Foraging for small bites of seeds or foods is also a form of enrichment.

Experience
Balls, barrels, kegs, puzzle feeders, plastic crates, and smells from perfumes or spices

Enclosure design
Hillside, bushes, hollow logs, pools, barriers

Interactions
With same species, other species, or even humans.

Enrichment is about creating an interesting, ever changing, challenge for zoo animals to enhance their everyday lives.