Animal Keeper's Association of Africa

ENRICHMENT

Salad Dressing
Bears are such fun to enrich.
At the National Zoo in South Africa during winter we tried something new; as they do not necessarily eat during winter we tried scent enrichment. They went nuts over salad dressing - rolling, smelling and rubbing it all over themselves.

Coconuts
The National Zoo bears get ice-treats on a regular basis. They are thrown into the water moats where the bears have to collect them. They have gotten so clever that they have figured-out that they defrost, heh :) So when I gave them coconuts they tried to defrost them, silly bears. But, lo and behold, the nuts refused to defrost and it took the bears several minutes to figure this out before knocking the daylights out of the coconuts to get into the juicy bits.