Every time you take your dog on a walk so they can smell all the other dogs in the neighborhood, that’s enrichment! Every time you try out a new toy for your cat, that’s also enrichment! Similarly, animal caregivers at zoos are constantly providing different forms of enrichment to the animals under their care, to provide them with new, interesting experiences that mimic the wide swath of stimulus that would occur in the wild.

For many wild animals, looking for food to eat is a large part of their day. If we were to place the same food, in the same bowl, in the same location every day, this would soon become just as boring as if you ate the exact same thing for every meal. So, lots of enrichment is based around stimulating foraging behavior! Instead of placing a meal in one place, our caregivers might scatter it throughout an animal’s habitat or hide it under objects that need to be lifted.

While enrichment is often food-based, it doesn’t have to be! Caregivers will sometimes introduce new smells or new sounds to our animals as well. Even rearranging the branches in a bird habitat counts as enrichment. The limits are often just the limits of our creativity! The caregivers at Safari West have many thick binders filled with enrichment ideas and records on what animals were or were not interested in.

We know that novel stimulus is important for the well-being of the animals at Safari West, but what about you? What enrichment have you treated yourself to recently? Do you ever take the scenic route on your way home from work to change things up? Have you tried a new recipe or new restaurant recently? Have you made any new friends, or interacted with your community in a different way than usual? Give enrichment a shot—your brain will thank you!

Photos by Mark Pressler, Video by Tamara Cooke