Reid Park Zoo’s Enrichment Committee builds, fixes, and uses their creativity to produce items for the animals at the Zoo. Enrichment items are specially designed to encourage the natural behaviors and choices of any species. Providing many different types of enrichment to the animals at the Zoo is part of a Zoo Keeper’s daily routine.
“One type of enrichment that is often offered is foraging enrichments. In the wild, animals aren’t served food in a bowl,” Enrichment Committee Co-chair Jessica said. “They have to hunt, climb, swim, or dig to find it. As a way to replicate this natural behavior we’ll provide puzzle feeders at various heights for our primates to climb, we’ll hide fish among the rocks for the otters to hunt, or we’ll place mealworms in different substrates for the meerkats to dig through.”
The committee will reuse old donated firehose to weave together foraging feeders, which can tuck away food into the weave like a tree or shrub. The two pictured here will be set aside for the Reeve’s muntjac habitat in Pathway to Asia. Keeper Maya pulled out their drill and made a scratching post to add to the new sand cat habitat in Pathway to Asia.
When there are puncture holes from jaws and claws, the Enrichment Committee pulls out their tools donated from the DreamList wish list to give new life back into well-loved enrichment items.
The heavy duty enrichment ball is being sanded by Keeper Delaney after being carried around in the powerful jaws of jaguar, Bella.
“We get really excited about hardware tools because we make a lot of the enrichment items for all of the animals,” said Enrichment Committee Co-chair Ashely. “But it is also fun when we receive ready-to-go enrichment items because we can give them to the animals almost immediately and see an animal interact with it.”
Right now the committee is hard at work preparing enrichment items for the new animals coming to Pathway to Asia this year. The official animal wish list has been updated with items that come ready-made that can be placed directly in habitats once they arrive.
If you’re interested in helping bring a wave of enrichment items to Tucson for the animals arriving, check out the animals DreamList wish list items here: https://www.dreamlist.com/for/reidparkzoo
Please email [email protected] when you purchase a gift and include your contact info and item(s) purchased so we can send our appreciation (and cute photos) your way!