In Defense of Trash

I’ve worked with a lot of bosses over the course of my career, some of whom could charitably be described as “old school.”  Their outlook on virtually every aspect of zoo work was stunted back when they started in the field, be it in the 1980s or the 1950s – exhibits, training, diets, etc.  A lot of them have been especially old-fashioned on the subject on enrichment.  To them, enrichment can be summed up in one word: trash.

Now, the idea of environmental enrichment has advanced tremendously over the past few years.  It’s not uncommon now for keepers to develop extremely complicated, elaborate, naturalistic enrichment devices.  For example, chimpanzees can fish for termites (or, more likely, honey, peanut butter, and raisins) out of artificial termite mounds.  An entire mini-industry has sprung up creating toys for zoo animals.  Some of the larger zoos have employees whose sole function it is to manufacture, implement, and evaluate enrichment.  Enrichment for some species is now required, both by AZA and USDA

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Of course, to the old-timers, enrichment will always be trash: paper bags, cardboard boxes, phone books and the like, scattered to pieces over the exhibit floor, caught in the branches and clogging up the pool drains.   This, in their eyes, is enrichment as it stereotypical worst.  I can understand their feelings – you spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to recreate a naturalistic habitat for the animals, and then you put a cereal box in the middle of the exhibit.  But is it that bad?

“Trash” enrichment really does have a lot to recommend itself.  For one thing, it is cheap – every zoo can afford it without budgeting for it (after all, produce and other zoo necessities come in bags and boxes anyway, right?).  Second, they are ideal enrichment for “destructive” animals.  If we can’t give live prey to zoo carnivores, we can at least let them “kill” inanimate objects – ripping open bags, tearing stiff cardboard, etc (this is also a great argument in favor of whole carcass feeding).  Primates, like human children, love to destroy things: it’s cliché but true that small children on Christmas morning get more joy out of wrapping paper than the presents within.  Animals are the same way. 

Surveys have shown that visitors, contrary to the worries of some zoo professionals, don’t seem to mind seeing “trash” enrichment in the enclosure; it works especially well if a keeper or docent is at hand to explain what visitors are seeing (also good to discourage them from adding trash of their own).  At any rate, the animals themselves don’t share our aesthetic opinions on what makes an exhibit “natural.”  Many of them just want to have some fun.

So let’s let them…

A meerkat pawing through a paper-bag filled with treats at the Philadelphia Zoo