Risky Enrichment

Elephant keepers around the world were dismayed by the tragic news from Melbourne Zoo this week, when the zoo’s elephant calf died unexpectedly. The cause of death was a tire, given to the elephants as an enrichment item, which somehow became stuck around the calf’s neck overnight, causing it to suffocate.  It was a heartbreaking loss, and I’m sure that I join virtually everyone in expressing condolences to the zoo staff (and the other elephants).

A few of the comments that I’ve read in articles on the death have expressed confusion over how the calf’s death came to be.  “A tire?  In with the elephants?  Why?”  The understanding is that if the tire hadn’t been there, the elephant wouldn’t have died, and that it was therefore preventable.  So what was the tire doing in there in the first place?

Like many keepers, I recognize the importance of enrichment for zoo animals, and I try to incorporate it into my daily work routine, especially for primates, parrots, and carnivores.  The problem with doing daily enrichment, however, is that you have to keep it fresh; give your bears two or three spices to smell day after day, very quickly they are going to get bored of it and it will lose the novelty.  The challenge, then, is to come up with new toys, new games, and new experiences for the animals every day (or at least often enough that they won’t be overused).  Constantly thinking of new enrichment means constantly creating new scenarios where something can go wrong.

There have been so many days when I have given animals enrichment, than woken up in the middle of the night with the horrified feeling that I might have made a major mistake.  I haven’t lost an animal to enrichment yet, but I do have an endless, imaginative inventory of ways that I could…

The toy will shatter and the animal will stab itself in the heart... 

The animal will try to eat the toy and choke to death... 

The toy will clog up the exhibit pool’s drain and the pool will overflow and the animal will escape/drown/catch a cold... 

The animal will throw a toy through a window and escape...

This last one did give me serious concern as I watched a young bear repeatedly pick up a bowling ball in her front paws and hurl it around the exhibit.  I was able to get it away from her before she threw it through the window.

On another occasion, I spritzed some perfume on the branches of an indoor tamarin enclosure.  Immediately upon letting the monkeys back in, I became convinced that the perfume was too strong and that the monkeys would all die of some wonky fumes.  I spent the next hour holding the door to their building open to try and air it out, fanning their exhibit frantically.  The tamarins seemed more concerned about my bizarre antics than they did the lemon scented perfume.

Given the risks (and the sleepless nights) is it worth it?  I like to think so.  If we wanted to keep the animals as safe as possible, we would just put them in plastic bubbles or in padded rooms… which in turn would drive them crazy from boredom and cause them to hurt themselves (which would defeat the purpose of said bubble/padded room).  Even without enrichment, animals could drown in pools or fall from climbing structures.

"Hey, I bet if we climb just a little bit higher and then pretend that we're about to fall, we can make one of the keepers have a heart attack or pee themself!"

We try to reduce the risks of enrichment to the best of our ability.  We have approval policies to make sure that enrichment is safe (aka, no razor blades for the monkeys…).  We base enrichment off of what has worked in the past, either at our own institutions or at other facilities.  We have lists of toxic browse vs. safe.  We observe and monitor and evaluate new enrichments.  We do our best.

That being said, sometimes tragedy does still strike, as it did in Melbourne.  When it does, we just try to learn from it and do our best from then on.