During the month of August, the Wildlife Center is highlighting an important aspect of animal care for the ambassadors at our Center—enrichment! Enrichment can best be described as any stimulus you provide an animal that encourages it to perform the natural behaviors its species would perform in the wild. In other words, it's a way of replicating the things that an animal would experience in the wild. This can be as simple as hiding an animal's food so it has to forage, or as complex as changing an animal's habitat throughout each season. There are many forms of enrichment, but the overall goal is the same: to help keep animals active and healthy, both physically and mentally.
To learn more and see our ambassadors enjoying some enrichment live on camera, check out the sessions here:
Turtle enrichment session with Wilson and Sheldon
Opossum enrichment session with Violet
Raptor Enrichment Session with Buddy
And here is a bonus video- a recap of the Buddy enrichment session we created for our YouTube channel: