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Behavioral Enrichment Protocols

Animals at Play

 

What is behavioral enrichment?
It is the environmental enhancement of the lives of captive animals by providing them with mental and physical stimulation to increase natural and healthy behavior. In other words making our animals' lives fun!

Why is it necessary to provide behavioral enrichment for our animals?
Captivity can drastically affect animal behavior. Confining an animal to a cage or enclosure reduces the complexity, and increases the predictability in an animal's behavior. It can induce different behavioral responses, such as boredom and stereotypes. Enrichment should be random, interesting and novel. The goals of enrichment are to offer a sense of control by allowing animals to make choices and to stimulate species-appropriate behaviors while interpreting these behaviors to our guests. If the animals maintain natural behaviors in captivity, they will be valuable for education and research programs, enhancing the visitor and volunteer experience through individual and group activities.

Raccoons at Halloween

 

The Phoenix Zoo considers it a priority to evolve the materials and methods used in our practice to reach the highest level of care in management. We have extended our purpose to:

  • Exhibition
  • Conservation
  • Captive breeding
  • Rehabilitation and reintroduction
  • Public involvement
 

All of these components require managing animal behavior through Environmental Enrichment. The USDA recognizes six elements as critical to environments and programs that promote psychological well-being of captive species:

  • Social grouping
  • Structure and substrate
  • Foraging opportunities
  • Manipulanda
  • Stimulating all five senses
  • Training

The management of the Phoenix Zoo maximally promotes Behavioral Enrichment by providing a successful, goal-oriented, self-sustained program that integrates into the daily management of the animals.

Behavioral Enrichment ArticlesPedro with rake

Do you have questions regarding Behavioral enrichment? Contact Us - use Behavioral Enrichment as your subject.

 

Phoenix Zoo Protocols