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enriching

Photo!by!Tony!Bates!

Summer!2014!

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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 3rd 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>