What is an example of environmental enrichment?

Environmental enrichment is the systematic process of creating a challenging environment for animals to meet their social, physical and mental needs. Through environmental enrichment, the animals’ living environment is changed in such a way that it encourages them to make choices, induces species-specific natural behavior, presents mental challenges, encourages animals to move more and thereby increases their overall well-being. For example, structural enrichment can mean relocating existing objects in the enclosure, as well as adding new objects to it. At the same time, new substrates are also added to the enclosures and rolling areas and mud pits are created. In addition, various resting and sheltering places are created, such as swings made of hoses. Another example is food enrichment, which includes new food items, and food is served in many different ways, such as food being hung on a pole, hidden under the substrate or in some object so that the animal has to move a little to get its prey. Cognitive enrichment is also an example, where animals are allowed to solve various tasks or are offered new toys to play with, and the goal is to stimulate the mind. Sensory enrichment is another example, which includes all means that stimulate different senses of animals, such as different smells, sounds, materials and food objects.

Food based enrichment is the most widely used method of enrichment as all animals require food to survive and the animals are also more inclined to interact. Food based enrichment can be as simple as leaving the fruit and vegetables whole and throwing them onto the roof so that the animals have to pull the food through the mesh. It can also be cut very small so that it can be scattered through the enclosure so that the animals have to forage through the substrate. Other methods include hiding food in boxes or paper sacks and hanging it from pulley systems and wires. Cognitive enrichment includes novel objects that occupy the animal’s time in a captive setting. The sort of objects that you may see used in this way include Boomer balls, Kong toys, tyres, cardboard tubes and fireman’s hoses. Cognitive enrichment is used to provide and enhance an animal’s mental stimulation, by creating puzzle feeder training sessions where food is hidden in a number of ways and within a number of different objects, such as those mentioned above, to make the animal think about how to access food hidden inside. Social enrichment involves housing animals of different species with others that they would naturally associate with or encounter in the wild. For example, this can be seen in the variety of species that share the Kingdom of the Wild paddock. A number of ways is to adapt and utilise the physical space for enrichment, including hiding food within the spaces in the enclosure, incorporating further enrichment objects to encourage natural behaviours, and developing and enhancing the space further to provide mental stimulation.