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To prevent captive animals from losing their natural behaviours, zoos are instituting enrichment programmes.

CAPTIVE animals in zoos and related institutions exist in an environment controlled by people. There are no zebras for lions to pounce on, no trees for elephants to wrestle with, and no rats scurrying through the undergrowth for our slithery friends to surprise.

In the captive environment, any opportunity to run, jump, pounce, climb, burrow, hunt and basically do what comes naturally to the animals, is afforded by humans. These are what zoo keepers call “enrichment programmes”.

Enrichment is all about making sure animals have the opportunities to remain stimulated, both mentally and physically. It can be as simple as filling the exhibit area with a variety of substrates and elevations for the animal to explore, to more complex measures such as providing puzzle feeders, scents and behavioural training.


Ronda Schwetz, deputy zoo director at Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin in the United States, has a special interest in primates. For her recent trip to Zoo Negara in Kuala Lumpur, Schwetz brought with her a large contraption.

“This is an orang utan enrichment device,” she says, spinning the holey white tube inside its plain metal frame. “It was a nightmare to carry through the airport!”

The object does not look like much but feed a few peanuts and raisins into the tube and you’ve got a peanut-dispensing machine for orang utans to tinker with.

So instead of sitting around on the same tree, the orang utan get to experience something novel and stimulating. The effort and cost to create such a device, which is perfect for keeping our intelligent (ape) cousins busy, is minimal.

Schwetz says her apes thoroughly enjoy sitting around and cogitating on the best tool – finger or twig? – for prying out the goodies.