The BP Challenge
Zoo: Behavioural Enrichment Challenges
Latest: Zoo Challenge 2008
A few years ago, zoo enrichment programmes were a novelty. Now they
have become accepted practice. The goals of behavioural enrichment are
to encourage animals to use their natural abilities, increase their
activity, allow them to make choices and to give them new experiences.
Animals in a stimulating environment have fewer physical problems,
breed more successfully, are better parents and live longer.
Challenges and stimulation make animal life in captivity more normal
and visitors are more likely to see natural behaviour from
behaviourally-enriched animals.
Food, or rather the way an animal gains access to food is a major
component of behavioural enrichment. Presenting food in a way that
makes animals search, forage, climb, jump and cooperate, will stimulate
them.
At Hamilton Zoo, Dave Croucher, a retired
engineer, is a volunteer who has designed and constructed some really
innovative “toys” for the zoo’s kea. He has used technological
principles to construct these toys, which are regularly placed in the
birds’ environment.
These birds have responded so well to Dave’s toys, working out the
strategies needed to access the food, that Dave has had to modify them,
or invent new ones.
Dave Croucher with a toy which requires two kea to cooperate to
get a food reward.
Click here and here to hear Dave explain how it works.
Here, the kea have to solve a maze, tipping it so the plastic balls,
filled with goodies, will roll out from under the perspex
Dave has made many toys and enrichment activities for the kea and
other animals. We asked him a few questions about his work:
Click on the questions to hear his answers.
This ingenious toy requires the birds to rotate a lever, which
will eventually move the food for them. To see a short
video, click here and here
Containers with food are pulled up the chute until the keas can
reach them
Click here to see a video of kea on
the chute. Also here
See another toy
Nicola, the keeper working with the kea, appreciates Dave’s
inventions:
“The kea at Hamilton zoo have responded
very positively to the enrichment toys that Dave has made for them. The
turntable has been a huge hit with the kea, with all birds in the
aviary having a go. To illustrate the intelligence of the kea, when a
new toy "the handle/zig zag maze" was put in, it took only 15 minutes
for the birds to figure it out and retrieve the food reward.
The kea have not yet been able to co-operate to retrieve food
rewards from the the co-operation toy.
When one of Dave's enrichment toys is brought down to the
enclosure the birds gather round in anticipation. They are always
straight into the toys and can spend a lot of time with them even after
the food is gone.”
