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The main goal of wildlife parks is to employ breeding programmes to help the future of endangered species.
For the welfare of these animals it is important that in captivity, they continue to live their lives as close to the way they would in the wild.
Environmental Enrichment allows animals in captivity to have more choice in their behaviours and to carry out behaviours they would in the wild by interacting with their surroundings.
Environmental Enrichment can be split into five main categories:
1. Social e.g. interactions with other animals
2. Cognitive e.g. puzzle feeders
3. Physical habitat e.g. providing vegetation found in the animals natural habitat
4. Sensory e.g. smells found in natural habitat
5. Food e.g. scatter feeds.
A lot of enrichment will fall under more than one category.
Here are some examples of Environmental Enrichment at
Shepreth Wildlife Park:
• A puzzle food disk in the raccoon enclosure – raccoons are very intelligent animals who have to use their brain a lot in the wild to find food. They are famous for foraging in dustbins in America to get food! The puzzle food disk requires them to twist the disk until the openings match up so they can get their food out.
• Boomer balls in the tiger enclosure – in the wild tigers have to stalk their prey in order to eat, playing with balls encourages this predatory behaviour as well as giving them some exercise.
• Kong toys filled with catnip in the coati enclosure – it’s not just cats that go mad over catnip! The scent of the catnip encourages exploration and play; coatis also like to bite so a strong Kong toy works very well as enrichment for them.
• Stream in the otter enclosure – in the wild otters enjoy swimming and get most of their food from the water. The stream in the otter enclosure allows them to swim whenever they like, their food is also thrown into the stream for them to dive down and catch just as they would in the wild.
• Group of Lemurs on Lemur island – Lemurs would live in groups in the wild; on Lemur island the group of Ring-tailed Lemurs have a social structure similar to that in the wild.
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