During your visit to Fresno Chaffee Zoo, you might see some new things in the animal’s spaces. We are constantly adding new items or making changes to the animal’s habitats to give them something new to interact with and promote natural behaviors. We call these items or changes enrichment. During your visit, keep an eye out for different enrichment items and how the animals are using them.
Enrichment
At Fresno Chaffee Zoo, we are focused on our animals’ whole health including their bodies, minds, and social needs. This includes elements like food, training, veterinary care, habitat design, ongoing research of animal care standards, and enrichment.
Fresno Chaffee Zoo's Enrichment Committee is committed to integrating enrichment methods and practices into the daily care of the animals to enhance their overall welfare, provide professional development to foster excellent animal care, and give our guests a better understanding of animal behavior.
Types of Enrichment
Sensory
Animals rely on their five senses—vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell—to explore their environment. Sensory enrichment encourages animals to investigate their habitat, and stimulates natural behaviors such as scent marking.
Feeding
Searching for food is an animal’s main occupation in their natural habitat. Zookeepers encourage animals to search or hunt for their diet by presenting food to an animal in different ways, such as hidden, scattered throughout the habitat, or buried.
Play
Species of all ages can enjoy the physical and mental benefits from the act of playing. These are enrichment items that can be manipulated in some way via hands, mouth, legs, horns or head simply for investigation and exploration.
Environmental
Zookeepers want to provide the most interactive homes for the species in their care by changing their habitats on a regular basis. This can be done by providing features like wallows, different substrates, nesting areas, and climbing and perching opportunities, according to the species specific needs of the animals.
Mental Stimulation
By using a variety of task-oriented puzzle feeders such as balls, various feeding toys, cardboard boxes or tubes, animals must think about how to retrieve the food hidden inside. This keeps their minds active and natural behaviors are encouraged by requiring the animals to investigate, manipulate, and work for their food.
Training
Animals love to learn new things just like people do. Positive reinforcement training sessions allows animals to engage in the challenge of learning something new and participate in their care.