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 Imagine
that you are sitting in your room, feeling a little bored, and
you suddenly notice a strange new something hanging from your
ceiling. Something brightly colored, kind of round, with - could
it be - a snickers bar inside? Chances are you'd be figuring out
a way to check out this new thing pretty fast. Could you stand
on a desk or chair, do you need a ladder, could you knock it down?
You'd be using your natural human problem solving skills to try
to figure out what this new thing was and what to do about it.
If a scientist had placed this strange thing on your ceiling in
order to get you to think and interact with your environment,
she would have given you a form of environmental enrichment.
 The
basic goal of environmental enrichment is to get animals to interact
with their environment and use their natural skills and behaviors.
Animals in zoos don't have the same opportunities for physical
and mental stimulation that wild animals do, so zoo keepers provide
the animals with objects or changes to their environment that
will stimulate the behaviors of healthy wild animals. This kind
of enrichment gives animals something to think about, it gives
them exercise, and it helps them to feel in control of their environment
by giving them choices. Enrichment helps keep life interesting
for zoo animals by presenting them with challenges and new things
to explore.
"What exactly do zoo keepers use for enrichment?"
you might ask. The answer is that there are a number of different
tools, and zoo keepers are developing new enrichment ideas all
the time.
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