Providing animal enrichment

Thanksgiving feast: Succulent turkey and savory pumpkin pie are a wonderful holiday treat for human celebrants, but this turkey vulture prefers his pumpkin au naturale, no whipped cream necessary. Because vultures are not vegetarians, the pumpkin was given to Zorro (WERC’s non-releasable animal ambassador) for mental, rather than nutritional, enrichment. Just like most of us probably wouldn’t enjoy eating meatloaf day after day or watching the same television show over and over, the educational animals at WERC also get bored without variety.
Providing stimulating and challenging surroundings, food and activities is critical to an animal’s well-being. Enrichment helps keeps the animals mentally and physically fit and reduces stress. Enrichment stimulates the animals’ senses – the things they see, smell, hear, touch and taste. At the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center, we strive to enhance the environments of the critters under our care to keep them happy and healthy. Each species and individual animal may require different types of stimulus, depending on personal preferences and on what senses are their most acute.
Visual: Hawks and falcons, for example, have extraordinarily keen vision. Wapeka the red-tailed hawk, though blind in one eye, enjoys a fantastic view of the large rural pond outside her enclosure. She can watch colorful geese and ducks swimming and flying outside. Falcons Horus and Ariel can watch the doves, jays, towhees and assorted other songbirds that flourish around WERC. It’s their own real life Animal Planet show.
Olfactory: People start salivating at the aromas of apple spice cake and honey-baked ham emanating from the oven. Turkey vultures, on the other hand, prefer stinker cuisine. With their outstanding sense of smell, they’re able to smell carrion from a mile away while soaring high in the sky. Because Zorro isn’t able to fly, we pique his interest in foraging, hiding small rodents enticingly inside objects such as cardboard tubes.
Auditory: Owls, especially barn owls like Barnadette, have the best hearing in the animal world. While some wildlife facilities may employ taped animal sounds or music to keep the interest of their captive animals, WERC’s owl habitats have enclosure-length “windows” overhead and on three sides that allow them to hear the hoots and screeches of the abundant nighttime wildlife scampering and flying in the vicinity of their outdoor habitats.
Tactile: Also known as different strokes for different folks. Rosie the opossum enjoys having her thick fur brushed, which also allows us to examine her closely for possible skin problems. The raptors get tactile enjoyment from the diverse textures of their perching-daisy mat, AstroTurf, shrubbery and natural tree branches, which not only provide variety, but also help prevent foot problems. Just as your dogs and cats love to play with different types of toys, animals in the wild play with leaves, twigs, rocks, pine cones and other items.
To keep WERC’s educational birds amused, they’re given natural or man-made (non-toxic) items such as stuffed and rubber toys to move around and old phone books to rip up. Even WERC’s gopher and king snakes are provided with tactile enrichment, with rough logs to rub against, smooth rocks to slither over and gravelly flooring to dig into, all of which not only make their terrariums interesting but help them to shed.
Taste: Sometimes WERC’s “kitchen” seems to be right out of “Chopped.” WERC “chefs” prepare meals for omnivorous Rosie, selecting from a wide variety of food including exotic and seasonal produce such as persimmons and cactus pears, grapes (a favorite) and other fruit, yogurt and proteins such as eggs (hardboiled and scrambled), quail, rodents and fish – there’s always something new to keep her taste buds happy. Pocket gopher Digger relishes corn cobs, fruit and a selection of fresh veggies straight from the garden. Clarabelle the acorn woodpecker fancies unshelled peanuts, with wax worms and pine nuts as a special treat. Zorro normally dines on small rodents for breakfast, but enjoys occasional delicacies of ground squirrels, gophers and road-killed jackrabbits.
Finally, just as people are social beings, so are animals. But while we revel and mingle at holiday parties, animals in captivity socialize with volunteers who talk to them when they’re taken for “walkies” (actually the person does the walking while the bird perches on the gloved hand). These strolls outside allow the birds to enjoy the calming sounds of nature and stunning scenery around WERC. Social interaction enrichment also comes when the animals are taken to school programs and public events like the Taste of Morgan Hill. The birds may even socialize with members of their own species when they foster parent an orphaned owlet or eyas (baby hawk).
It’s a wonderful bonus that when we enrich these animals’ lives, our own lives are enriched as well.
A heartfelt thank you to the wonderful WERC team: The volunteers who feed our animals, clean up after them, tend to injuries, build and maintain enclosures and participate in public events; our veterinarians who donate expertise and time in the care and treatment of the educational and rehabilitation animals; and our generous supporters without whom these animals lives would not be healthy and enriched.
The Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center rehabilitates native wildlife. It is supported solely by donations from businesses and the public. To contact WERC, call (408) 779-9372 or visit www.werc-ca.org.