|Back Behavioral Enrichment| Animals have emotions and feelings.
In some respects, animals have basic physical and mental health
needs which are similar to our own. They include food, shelter,
and in many cases, privacy for breeding as well as general peace
and quiet for just doing 'their own thing'. In the wild, much of
the animal's mental health has to do with eating, or being
eaten. In the comfortable environment of a zoo, devoid of
predators and competitive pressures, animals get bored easily.
And boredom is a zoo animals greatest enemy, affecting both
their physical and mental health. Behavioral enrichment tries to
evoke the natural stresses of the wild and bring out the animals
natural instincts and reflexes. These techniques aim to
stimulate all of the senses, mostly through the use of food and
feeding styles. One enrichment technique is to suddenly change
the features of an animal's enclosure. This adds zest to the
animal's life as it tries to figure out what happened, and to
reclaim the enclosure as