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enriching ZSL’s Forum for Enrichment & Training
THIS MONTH’s ISSUE
Golden'Lion'Tamarin'Enrichment'
By Kelly-Anne Kelleher
ZSL London Zoo
'
The Clore rainforest at ZSL London Zoo houses a breeding
pair of Golden Lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia) within
a mixed species exhibit with a family of two-toed sloths.
Lion tamarins are frugivores, insectivores and will also
opportunistically feed on small vertebrates, gums, nectar
flowers and fungus. In the wild around a quarter of their time
is spent feeding on plant foods, 13% foraging for animal
prey and 3% feeding on animal prey. Up to 50% of the time
that Lion tamarins spend foraging for animal prey is spent
foraging within bromeliads.
Bromeliads foliage takes different
shapes, from needle-thin to broad
and flat, symmetrical to irregular,
spiky to soft.
Lion tamarins have modified hands,
which are elongated so that they can
forage inside of small cracks or in the centre of bromeliads
for insects as well as small frogs. The photo below shows
the differences between the small, stocky hands of an
Emperor tamarin (Saguinus imperator) on the left, and the
slim elongated hands of the
Golden-headed Lion tamarin
(Leontopithecus chrysomelas)
on the right.
Like other species within their
genus, Lion tamarins are
intelligent, curious and active
for between 10-12 hours per
day carrying out a range of
behaviours such as grooming, scent marking, foraging and
feeding. It is important to encourage them to exhibit natural
foraging behaviours and utilise all of their species specific
adaptations.
p.3!Sloth Bear Injection Training.!
The'Secret'‘Herb’'Garden'
By Jane Storr
ZSL Whipsnade Zoo
This year the Horticulture Department at Whipsnade
established a new herb garden
for enrichment throughout the
zoo.
This has been a huge success
and herbs tried included mint,
dill, parsley, bronze fennel,
chives, borage and sage. As they were grown on site fresh
herbs could be cut by the keepers in the quantities required.
This was available to all animal sections but primarily used for
the primates. Herbs were then presented in a variety of
different ways, including loose on the ground, tied up in
bundles, presented in socks or cotton bags and in hanging
basket cages. Herbs were offered in
this way to the Ring-tailed lemurs, the
Black-and-white ruffed lemurs and the
Silvery marmosets. The reactions
varied between species. The Silvery
marmosets did not pay much attention
to any of the herbs after an initial quick
investigation. The Ring-tailed lemurs
investigated all the herbs put in, but
showed much more interest in the parsley than anything else
and ate it every time it was presented. The Black-and-white
ruffed lemurs did not eat any of the herbs, but when herbs were
presented in bundles they did interact and pull the bundles
apart; they did this with the dill and the bronze fennel. Large
quantities of herbs were put in hessian sacks with straw and
then sewn up to create
hessian sack pillows and
these went down extremely
well with the chimpanzees.
They did not appear to
prefer any one herb over
the others in the sack, but
when presented loose, one chimp in particular (Koko) enjoyed
eating the borage. This seemed to be a favourite with her and
she went for this even when other foods were available.
Another method of presenting herbs was to rub them over the
walls and furniture of enclosures to create a scent trail leading
to a pile of herbs. This was particularly effective when bronze
fennel was used in the Dwarf mongoose enclosure. They were
seen following the trail and then decimating the herb pile. The
keepers are giving feedback to the Horticultural department
with suggestions of what we would like next year.
p.2!Bushbaby scale training.
p.2!Aye-aye Enrichment.
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A'Leap'Of'Confidence'
By Christina Stender
ZSL London Zoo
It has now been 12 months since the first training session
with our three Moholi bushbaby (Galago moholi) was set in
motion. The programme started last year from August to
October. The aim for this training was to encourage the
bushbabies to weigh voluntarily on a regular basis. Our belief
was that this would be a challenge, as normally they would
retreat to the far corner when keepers entered the enclosure.
Lesson number one, do not underestimate the curiosity of a
bushbaby!
For the actual training to take place a few modifications in the
enclosure were required. A sturdy platform was essential,
which would be strong enough to hold the weight of the
scales without falling off. For this, we utilised a tree trunk with
a wide diameter. The training plan was broken down into
three stages.
Stage 1: Get the bushbabies familiar and comfortable leaping
upon the trunk.
Stage 2: Bringing the scale in and leaving it on the ground.
The scale display lights up when in use. For the bushbaby to
get use to the light being activated when sitting on the scales,
we would make an effort to activate the light regularly.
Stage 3: Bringing the scale up to the trunk.
Mealworms were used as encouragement to regulate the
desired behaviour and locusts were used as the reward.
At the first session, the older male “Bob” (10 years of age)
leapt upon the trunk immediately. The other two bushbabies
tended to be more hesitant. As the sessions progressed so
did their behaviour and confidence in participating in the
training session.
It took only 18 sessions to get a successful reading of each of
their weights. “Bob” has been keen and shown a steady
involvement throughout the training. After the training
reached the desired objective, it has been made possible to
monitor their weight on a regularly basis. 10 months from the
beginning, the young male “Blayze” (3 years of age) is
participating to a satisfactory level and the female “Belle” (4
years of age) is now leaping with determination and
confidence upon the scale to get her reward of livefood.
Mission accomplished!
Volunteer'Enrichment'Making'Day'
AyeCAyes'
By Kelly-Anne Kelleher & Tegan McPhail
ZSL London Zoo
In January, a team of educational volunteers gave up an
afternoon of their time to come along to the Clore rainforest
to assist the keepers on Mammals North with making
enrichment devices for some of the zoo’s more unusual
inhabitants, the aye-ayes.
To start the day off the volunteers
were shown a presentation on the
aye-ayes giving the participants
background knowledge on the
species, their adaptations, as well
as why enrichment is so important
for them and which natural behaviours we were hoping to
encourage.
Enrichment stations were set up around the room for each
type of enrichment with instructions and equipment to
construct them. The volunteers divided themselves up
around the different stations and set to work making
hammocks, stuffing
pinecones with some
of the aye-ayes’
favourite food stuffs,
papier-mâché piñatas
and insect stuffed
logs.
The enrichment devices were then put into the aye-aye
enclosure with the following results observed by keepers:
‘Both aye-ayes took an immediate interest in their
enrichment. Mamy, the female, loves to gnaw at wood and
will work at things for a long time, so the logs with holes
drilled in and filled with wax worms are excellent for her. She
is very friendly and will always be waiting for feed time and
to see what we’ve brought her. Tany, the male, is a little
more highly strung and so it is very important that he gets
given some sort of stimulating enrichment daily. When we
want to closely health check the animals, the pine cones
stuffed with worms and seeds are great as they keep them
so focused that
we can check
that their hands
and modified
fingers are ok’.
A big thank you to all of the educational volunteers that
assisted us in constructing a range of enrichment devices!
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Husbandry'&'Medical'Training'Of'Sloth'Bears'
By Matt O’Leary
ZSL Whipsnade Zoo
As part of my new role as primary Sloth bear keeper I was
given the task to set up a new a training programme with the
aim of being able to achieve hand injections as well as other
behaviours that would help toward the care of Whipsnade
three sloth bears.
The bears are given annual inoculations against
Leptospirosis, which in the past was administered via a dart
gun by the vet team. The bears found this quite stressful as
well as being a more dangerous and unpredictable way of
administering the vaccine. Being able to hand inject the bears
would be mutually beneficial to the bears and vet team.
After a basic target training
system was set up with the
bears, I started to work on
the hand injection training,
beginning with getting the
bears in to a position that we
could administer the vaccine.
The safest way of doing this
would be to ask the bears to
lie down and the injection to
go in via the back leg.
I also introduced an additional safety feature, a broom stick
that the bears would have to touch with their front feet claws
under the metal work. This made it harder for the bear to
break behaviour and turn around towards the person
administering the drugs. Once the bear had picked up the
behaviour of lying down while touching the stick we started
getting them used to having someone by the back leg and
start to touch them, first with a brush and then a marlinspike.
One problem we had to solve was that the bears were
moving their back leg away from the mesh making it harder to
inject the bear safety so we introduced a log that would act as
a crush by creating a smaller area for the training to be
performed and pushing the back leg into the mess making it
easier and safer to inject the bears.
WI$H LIST:
Are!there!any!items!that!you!think!would!benefit!your!section!or!
your! animals,! which! fall! under! the! category! of! behavioural!
management?! If! so! please! forward! your! ideas! to! either! Alison!
Parbles!or!Jim!Mackie!for!London!and!Steve!White!for!Whipsnade.!!!
With this system now in place we were ready to use an
empty needle for the first time, which was inserted into the
bear a few seconds before being removed. The bears were
rewarded with diluted honey, as the injection was taking
place, to distract them from being injected and reacting to it.
This was continued over the next few sessions before we
decided to try and inject them with sterilised water.
This was important as the feeling of being injected with
liquid is a strange one and this proved the case with the
bears jumping up from their lie down and inspect what had
been injected. At this point I waited until the bear came back
into it original position and then reward it with the jackpot of
diluted honey and an egg to make the experience as
positive as possible.
Although the bears
had reacted to being
injected, the important
point was that they
returned to the original
position and allowed
the training to be
repeated. We have
continued the sessions
with a needle being
inserted and the bears’
confidence has grown
due to the positive
experience of being
rewarded with one of
their favourite foods.
On the 3
rd
of April 2014
all three bears were
successfully hand injected their inoculations without any
stress to the bears.
NEWS & UPCOMING
EVENTS
• 2nd International Animal Training Conference
Twycross Zoo
October 5th - 8th 2014
We want to give a big ‘THANK YOU’ to
everyone who contributed to this edition
of ‘enriching ZSL’. If any of the readers
have any questions, please feel free to
contact the author of the article directly
or us via email.
Grant Kother <grant.kother@zsl.org>
Alison Parbles <alison.parbles@zsl.org>
