Welcome to the second blog post of CuriOdyssey’s “A Closer Look at Enrichment” series, which describe how animal senses inspire our animal keepers to make enrichment. An animal’s sense of taste is one of the most important senses because most animals are motivated to be active through food. Finding out what animals like to eat helps keepers encourage animals to participate in training sessions (for example, using a dog’s favorite treat when asking it to “sit” or “stay”). Keepers can also use an animal’s favorite food to make enrichment items, which give our animals the opportunity to forage as they would in the wild.

Our North American raccoon (Procyon lotor), Merlin, loves the taste of peanut butter. Because it is high in fat, he does not get it in his regular diet, however, our keepers will occasionally give him an empty peanut butter jar to lick, or dab peanut butter on his exhibit window.

Reptiles also have types of food that they are more drawn to than others. Our two desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii/berlandieri) Antiguo and Spork are attracted to red fruit. Keepers will give them raspberries, strawberries and cactus fruit as a special treat!

Our North American porcupine (Erithizon dorsatum) Peanut loves Leafeater biscuits.  As mentioned in the “Meet Our Animal Artists!” blog post, biscuits are her favorite food to train with.  Keepers also scatter these biscuits around her exhibit, which encourages her to explore her surroundings to find them.

Utilizing our animals’ sense of taste is a fun way to keep our animals active and stimulated.  This is also great for visitors because instead of sleeping, our animals are up and moving!  If you have photos of our animals moving and munching, be sure to share them on CuriOdyssey’s Flickr and Facebook pages!  Stay tuned for the next posting of this blog series, which will describe how an animal’s sense of touch makes for endless enrichment possibilities.

– post and photos by Rachael Tom, Animal Keeper